It is necessary to discuss as briefly as may be the leitmotiv, because with _Lohengrin_ Wagner first began to use it with serious purpose. In the _Dutchman_ two themes may be rightly described as leitmotivs; in _Tannhäuser_ not one theme may be rightly so described. While in _Lohengrin_ Wagner showed himself as much as ever the inspired musician, he made for the first time use of the leitmotiv for dramatic as well as musical ends. There we find three leitmotivs: one intended by the power of association of ideas to evoke on the instant the vision of Montsalvat and the Grail; a second to recall the thought and emotion of Lohengrin the man; the third to remind us of the conditions which Lohengrin imposes on Elsa before he is willing to fight for her. The first (_a_, p. 191) is perhaps the most lovely thing Wagner invented; the third (_d_)--not second--is a thing any one might have concocted, though not a thing that any one I ever heard of could use as Wagner uses it; the second (_c_) is by way of being a study for the best of the _Parsifal_ themes. It must be remarked, in passing, that the study is much more finely used than when his powers, largely exhausted by a tedious struggle with the world, had got into a state of decrepitude. The leitmotiv (_a_) is of a serene beauty. I must cut out of it a little bit (_b_) which colours the opera and gives it atmosphere from the beginning far more than the complete theme. It is this, more than anything else, which gives _Lohengrin_ the vividness of reality combined with the vanishing loveliness of a sweet dream. The idea of the swan, symbolizing the broad, shining river flowing from afar-off mysterious lands to the eternal sea, is given us in this phrase, as delicate and as firm, as unmistakable, as ever painter drew with his brush. Here we have, not indeed Montsalvat the domain of monks, but the land of ever-enduring dawn--a land that other poets have dreamed of, a land where hope could be subsisted on. From beginning to end Lohengrin, the man on the stage, moves in the atmosphere of this strange, dreamy, fresh and silent land: if he did not, no one would tolerate for a moment his behaviour. It is the magic charm that reconciles him to us; it is this that makes us feel how he is conditioned, chained, cribbed, cabined and confined. In obedience to inexorable law he comes down the river, drawn by the swan; in obedience to the same inexorable law he is drawn away, as helplessly as a needle drawn by a magnet.