it must have its own substance; it presents us with a story, characters, passions, characterisation; it rests on a certain basis of ideas. All this it should normally be possible to understand without the music; these things ought to offer in themselves an interest that is independent of the music. No doubt at a mere reading the imagination will not associate itself with this interest as keenly as might be desired; those poems will not produce the emotion or exhale the poetry which when they are heard, may be the chief attraction, and which depend above all on the music. But one to whose mind this music is familiar could not re-read these dramas without hearing the music singing in the words, without seeing the situations coloured by it. And if he gives an analysis or description of the dramatic stories of Wagner, the lines with which he draws them will find themselves quite naturally impregnated with this musical colouring, and they will not have the comparative dryness of the bare text.
This method seems undoubtedly the right one. But however much the question in general may be open to debate, there is, where Wagner is concerned, a reason of fact which imposes it on us, and renders especially necessary a previous and separate study of the Wagnerian dramas. In the very considerable influence exercised in France by Wagner's work, his dramatic poems have had their own independent share. I am quite ready to agree that they have owed their influence solely to the renown of the music which accompanied or supported them, and I admit that without its aid they would not simply as samples of German literature have succeeded in capturing the attention of Frenchmen. But once introduced within our borders by this powerful musical medium, they
