Wagner's life and his individuality are of unusual importance in rightly estimating his work, because, unlike the other great masters, he not only devoted all his genius to one branch of music--the opera--but he gradually evolved a theory and an ideal which he consciously formulated and adopted, and perseveringly followed. It may be asked whether Wagner's premises were sound and his conclusions right; and also whether his genius was great enough to be the worthy champion of a cause involving such revolutions. Unless Wagner's operas, considered solely as music, are not only more advanced in style, but worthy in themselves to stand at least on a level with the greatest efforts of his predecessors, no amount of proof that these were wrong and he right will give his name the place his admirers claim for it. It is now universally acknowledged that Wagner can only be compared with the greatest names in music. His instrumentation has the advantage in being the inheritor of the enormous development of the orchestra from Haydn to Berlioz, his harmony is as daring and original as Bach's, and his melody is as beautiful as it is different from Beethoven's or Mozart's. (These names are used not in order to institute profitless comparisons, but as convenient standards; therefore even a qualification of the statement will not invalidate the case.) [Illustration: Wagner and his Friends.] His aim (stated very generally) was to reform the whole structure of opera, using the last or "Beethoven" development of instrumental music as a basis, and freeing it from the fetters which conventionality had imposed, in the shape of set forms, accepted arrangements, and traditional concessions to a style of singing now happily almost extinct. The one canon was to be dramatic fitness. In this "Art Work of the Future," as he called it, the interest of the drama is to depend not entirely on the music, but also on the poem and on the acting and staging as well. It will be seen that Wagner's theory is not new. All or most of it is contained in the theories of Gluck and others, who at various periods in the development of opera consciously strove after an ideal music drama. But the times were not ripe, and therefore such music could not exert its proper influence. The twin arts of music and poetry, dissociated by the rapid advance of literature and the slow development of music, pursued their several paths alone. The attempt to reunite them in the end of the sixteenth century was futile, and only led to opera which never needed, and therefore did not employ, great poetry. In Germany music was developed along instrumental lines until the school arrived at its culmination in Beethoven; and when an opera composer stopped to think on the eternal verities, the result must always have been such a prophecy of Wagner's work as we find in Mozart's letters: