be found, to the honour of Richard Wagner’s German nature, that he has acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done—owing to the circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the French;—perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is not only at present, but forever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried, that very free man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-Catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when—anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics—he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at least, the way to Rome , if not to walk therein.—That these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean—what I mean counter to the “last Wagner” and his Parsifal music:—
—Is this our mode?— From German heart came this vexed ululating? From German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation, This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured heaven-o’erspringing? —Is this our mode?— Think well!—ye still wait for admission— For what ye hear is Rome — Rome’s faith by intuition!