Nietzsche died August 28, 1900, literally the _Morgenröthe_ of the new century. It was at Weimar, once the home of Goethe and Liszt. Nietzsche was in an insane asylum from 1888. Dr. Hermann Turck asserts that his work was done during a comparatively sane interval between two incarcerations. In 1868 he met Richard Wagner, and under the spell of his synthetic genius he wrote Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik, and dedicated it to Wagner, his “sublime forerunner.” Every line of it, he declares in the preface, was “conceived in close communion with Wagner.” And let those who know only the later Nietzsche casually read this essay to be convinced of its sanity, its acuity, its penetrating originality. Here we find the enthusiastic, impetuous youth, fresh from his Grecian studies, a valiant champion of Hellenistic culture, an opponent of the orientalization of modern life and thought. Twelve years later he discovered in Parsifal this very despised orientalization, and did not hesitate to say so in The Wagner Case, that fatal illustration of George Moore’s pithy axiom: When we change our opinions we change our friends. The man who marshalled in the most deadly array of attack his arguments against Wagnerism is also the man who wrote the most brilliant book of all on Wagner. Richard Wagner in Bayreuth is a masterpiece of critical rhapsody. The sister who nursed the sick-brained man for twelve years, Frau Friedrich Förster-Nietzsche, tells the story of the dissensions in this friendship, a friendship that could have endured only through a miracle. Both men had “nerves” in a highly irritable condition; and, while Wagner had weathered the storm and had, perforce, developed a stout integument of disdain, Nietzsche had always remained the sensitive, morbid, cloistered student. There is no doubt that Richard Wagner, at the triumphant culmination of his life-work, was an arrogant, exacting, and jealous being. Wahnfried was, as it now is, a Star Chamber, where the _Vehmgericht_ judged swiftly, fiercely. Here is one story told by the sister and quoted by H. E. Krehbiel in his too brief review of the episode:— My brother and I heard the Triumphlied of Brahms in the Bâle Cathedral. It was a splendid performance and pleased Fritz very much. When he went to Bayreuth in August, he took the pianoforte arrangement with him, apparently in the naïve belief that Wagner would like it. I say “apparently,” for upon later reflection it has occurred to me that this red-bound Triumphlied was meant as a sort of goad, and therefore Wagner’s prodigious wrath seems to have been not altogether groundless. So I will leave the continuation of the tale to Wagner, who had an exquisite fashion of satirizing himself:—