V.-1. The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, Head- 'Master of Shrewsbury School, 1798-1836, and after- Rev. Francis. St. John Thackeray. London, 1896. 3.. Education, and School. By the Rev. Edward Thring. VI. The Life of Nelson, the Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain. By Captain A. T. VII. 1. Essays, Addresses, and Translations. By the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. Edited by Sir Robert G. W. Herbert, G.C.B. Privately printed. 1896. 2. The Defence of the Empire; a Selection from the Letters and Speeches of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon. And other Works. VIII-Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy from Roman times to Voltaire, Rousseau, and Gibbon. By General Meredith Read, late U.S.A. Minister at Athens, Consul-General at Paris during the IX.-1. The National Gallery of British Art. Illustrated Catalogue with Introduction by David Croal Thom- 2. Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Pictures by Painters of the British School who have flourished during Her Majesty's Reign. Prepared by A. G. Temple, F.S.A., Director of the Art Gallery of the X.-Annals of a Publishing House. William Blackwood and his Sons. Their Magazine and Friends. Mrs. Oliphant. Edinburgh and London, 1897 I-1. The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By 2. The Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey. Liddon, D.D., &c. Edited and prepared cation by the Rev. J. O. Johnston, the II.-1. Industrial Democracy. By Sidney and Beatrice. 2. Aristocracy and Evolution. By W. H. Mallock. III.-1. Lettres inédites de Napoléon Ier. Publiées par Léon Lécestre. Two Vols. Paris, 1897. 2. New Letters of Napoleon I. From the French by 3. Mes Souvenirs sur Napoléon. Par le Comte Chaptal. 2. The Doctor, and other Poems. By T. E. Brown, M.A., late Fellow of Oriel College. London, 1887. 3. The Manx Witch, and other Poems. By the Same. 4. Old John, and other Poems. By the Same. London 2. Ethnology. By A. H. Keane, F.R.G.S. Cambridge 3. The Evolution of the Aryan. By Rodolph von 357 384 400 VI.-The Poems of Bacchylides, from a Papyrus in the British Museum. Edited by Frederick G. Kenyon, M.A.. D.Litt., Hon. Ph.D. in the University of Halle, Assistant in the Department of Manuscripts, British VII.-Gardiner's History of the Commonwealth and Protec- torate. Vols. I. and II. London, 1894, 1897 VIII.-1. Animals at Work and Play: their Activities and Emotions. By C. J. Cornish. London, 1896. 2. Life at the Zoo. By the Same. 3. Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory. The 2. Origin and Progress of Astronomy. Narrien. Lon- And other Works. 2. Une Erreur Judiciaire-La Verité sur l'Affaire Dreyfus. Par Bernard Lazare. Bruxelles, 1896 521 And other Works. XI.-1. Korea and her Neighbours. A Narrative of Travel, with an Account of the Recent Vicissitude and present Position of the Country. By Mrs. Bishop (Isabella L. Bird). Two Vols. London, 1898. 2. Hwang ch'ao ching shih wên su pien (The Blue- 3. Diplomatic and Consular Reports. 1897 XII.-1. The Irish University Question, the Catholic Case. Selections from the Speeches and Writings of the Archbishop of Dublin. Dublin, 1897. 2. The Reports of the Presidents of the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, Cork, and Galway. Presented to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. 3. Fifteenth Report of the Royal University of Ireland. 4. University Education in England, France, and Germany, with special reference to the needs of THE TO BE REFERENCE * BOOM QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Richard Wagner. Translated from the German of H. S. Chamberlain, by G. Ainslie Hight. London, 1897. 2. Das Leben Richard Wagner's. Von C. F. Glasenapp. I. II. (1813-1853). Leipzig, 1894-96. 3. Gesammelte Schriften und Reden. Von R. Wagner. I.-XI. 4. Wagner und Liszt. Briefwechsel. II. Leipzig, 1887. Von R. Wagner. 6. Un Voyage Artistique à Bayreuth. Par Albert Lavignac. Paris, 1897. And other Works. N his all-embracing volume, 'The Artist's Pilgrimage to having written' a thousand and first book upon Richard Wagner and his achievements.' But if M. Lavignac needed an apology, which he does not, since few or none have grasped the Wagnerian idea more firmly than himself, it would be for adding not one to a thousand, but one to ten thousand—a literal myriad of dissertations, assaults, defences, commentaries, all in diverse tones and on the most varied scale, under which, as some say, the creator of the Bayreuth drama lies buried, or upon which, according to others, he stands exalted, the greatest of Germans, equal to Sophocles and Shakespeare, raised above Goethe by his sublime gift of music, and uniting Beethoven the artist to Faust the philosopher. Such are, indeed, his own pretensions, put forth modestly yet with conviction, during a long day of struggling with enemies and friends, with his own circumstances, and with a temperament as impetuous as it was sensitive, as unwearied in effort as it was impressionable to influences, Vol. 187.-No. 373. though B though not to motives, from without. After endless conflict, the hour of triumph came. And then all the episodes of a battle so far-extended-the journeyings, rivalries, oppositions, misfortunes, disappointments-were taken up into a glory which no German, except the old laureate of Weimar, has enjoyed since that ambitious literature put on its modern wings and soared into a new heaven. Nietzsche declared that Wagner was not only a rare artist, but one of the greatest powers of civilization.' It seems an extravagant saying; yet who will deny that, if measured by influence, popularity, or discussion, a power of the first rank this Leipzig musician has become, on the stage, in the orchestra, in books, and in the life which art adorns or inspires? It does not follow that he is rightly read by the multitudes who worship his name. On the contrary, it would be amazing if he were. We may lift him to the pedestal which his biographers, Herr Glasenapp and Mr. Chamberlain, have erected for him, or agree with the disparaging judgments of the second Nietzsche 'contra Wagner,' but, in any case, it is impossible not to own that we are in presence of a complex and fascinating personality, whose views were as deep as his accomplishments were vast,—a man who stretched out his hands in all directions, who took hold of existence with a mighty power, whose emotions were violent enough to shake the pillars of the house where he had been brought out to make sport for the Philistines, and who passed with equal vehemence from one extreme of feeling to its opposite. If we are to know Wagner, we must not be ignorant of the principles on which he shaped his course, or allowed it to move. And they are German principles, not English or French; they keep their own colour; they rise out of an instinct which has been striving for centuries to make itself heard in the world of letters, which has done incomparably well in music, and which is now vindicating to itself the stage. As a name is of the utmost service when we would preach to the crowd, all these things have been brought to a focus by calling them the Bayreuth idea.' And it must be evident to those who have studied Wagner that the Bayreuth idea is not so simple, or so superficial, as to be easily assimilated by the pilgrims of every degree of culture who will henceforth flock to the Bavarian temple where this new worship is practised. The hour, then, is seasonable to enquire in what sense Wagner proposed, as undoubtedly it was his aim and intention, to become a power of civilization. Merely to have dreamt of such an enterprise, stamps the man as original; but he carried out his plan through storms and lightnings, in a life which was |