We have now traced the origin of the three elementary principles out of which Wagner elaborated his system: First, the dramatic advantage of mythological or legendary subjects; second, the “intelligible representation of the subject”; and third, the use of the representative theme, “typical phrase” or _leit motif_. In “The Flying Dutchman” we find his system in its embryonic state, but the perfected system, as displayed in “Tristan” and “The Ring,” is only a logical outcome of these first thoughts, intensified, as it were, by his realization that the whole thing was simply a modernization of the practice of the greatest Greek dramatists. This realization caused him to question whether, through the medium of an art founded on his theories, the modern stage could not acquire a national importance and influence, such as the Greek theatre possessed. It will undoubtedly be easier for the reader now to take a comprehensive survey of the full-blown Wagnerian system than to try to follow its growth through the transitional stage of “Tannhäuser” and “Lohengrin.” Wagner’s first law, as formulated succinctly by W. F. Apthorp in a magazine article, is: “That the text—what in old-fashioned dialect was called the libretto—once written by the poet, all other persons who have to do with the work—composer, stage architect, scene painter, costumer, stage manager, conductor, and singing actors—should aim at one thing only: the most exact, perfect, and lifelike embodiment of the poet’s thought.” So far as the composition of the music is concerned, this is precisely what Peri and Gluck believed. But Peri had to invent dramatic recitative; and standing, as it were, just on the hither side of chaos, he could not be expected to produce at once a perfected art world. The materials of operatic art were in process of making; the first builder had not the wherewith to rear a musical cathedral. Gluck erred in preserving the cut-and-dried operatic forms which made it impossible for him to achieve his sincere design,—“to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry by enforcing the expression of the sentiment and the interest of the situations, without interrupting the action, or weakening it by superfluous ornament.” It was comparatively easy to get rid of the “superfluous ornament”; but the methodical distribution of the old forms was found to interrupt the action. It remained for Wagner to see that these forms were unavailable for the composer who aimed at the complete embodiment of the poet’s thought; and it remained for him also to discern that the ideal lyric drama demanded an ideal harmony among its various elements. In other words, the perfected Wagnerian theory of the lyric drama contemplates the compact union of poetry, music, painting, action, and all the other factors of dramatic illusion on a basis of common interdependence, so binding that it shall be impossible to say that one is more important than another,