In his ninth year Wagner went to the Kreuzschule, where he studied Greek, Latin, mythology, and ancient history, and in secret worshipped Weber, whom he saw daily passing by. The boy received some piano lessons, but beguiled his time with attempts to play “Der Freischütz” overture with “fearful fingering.” He never became a good pianist. More important for his future were his poetic studies. On the death of a schoolfellow he wrote a lament which was printed. He made a metrical translation of Romeo’s monologue, and he built a terrible tragedy, compounded of “Lear” and “Hamlet,” in which forty-two persons died, most of them returning as ghosts to finish the play. In 1828 he left Dresden and entered the Nicolaischule in Leipsic. At the Gewandhaus concerts he heard Beethoven’s music. The effect he afterwards described thus: “One evening I heard, for the first time, a Beethoven symphony. I then fell sick of a fever, and when I recovered I found myself a musician.” He tried to write music for one of his tragedies, but discovered that he needed instruction. Gottlieb Müller tried to teach him, but found his pupil too wilful. His wilfulness, however, secured the performance of an overture at the theatre in 1830. The public laughed at it because of the persistent thumping of the bass drum. Fortunately he realized his lack of knowledge, and applied to Theodore Weinlig, cantor at the Thomasschule. Weinlig led him in the right direction, and in less than six months dismissed him as competent to “solve with ease the hardest problems of counterpoint.” The immediate results of this course were an overture, applauded at a Gewandhaus concert, and a symphony in C major, modelled on Beethoven and Mozart.