The change was astounding; but Wagner was an astounding genius. The bald fact is that he was musical as well as dramatic; hitherto the dramatist in a favourable environment had grown and flourished while the musician lay latent waiting his time; but the moment the spirit of Beethoven spoke to his spirit the musician sprang up and responded. Weber had been his musical god, but he was now set a little lower, and Beethoven took his place. When he started to compose seriously it was Weber and not Beethoven he copied, but that is easily explained: Wagner, like Weber, wrote theatrical music for the theatre, whilst Beethoven wrote only utterly untheatrical music for the theatre, and it was from Weber and not Beethoven he had to learn his art of theatre music. But it was from Beethoven and not from Weber that the impulse to, compose came. He had heard, probably, all Weber's operas without any desire to go and do likewise; but having heard Beethoven's symphonies, and the incidental music to _Egmont_, he at once realized that his tragedy would be incomplete without music, and he resolved to write it. Carlyle, overlooking the trifling fact that there is such a thing as the technique of the novelist's trade, and believing in the omnipotence of the human will, set out to write a work of fiction; and we may imagine his disgust and the sincerity of his objurgations when the brute of a novel obstinately refused to be written. When the incidental music to--whatever the name of his play was--obstinately refused to be written, young Wagner may have said something, though it is not on record; but having a finer instinct than Carlyle he perceived the necessity of acquiring the technique of his new trade. So he got possession of Logier's _Method_; in a few days made a complete study of it; then he set to work in earnest --with, alas! no more satisfactory fruits. Something that might serve, however, was achieved, and the ambitious composer went on to a fresh struggle. He had heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, so, taking Goethe's _Laune des Verliebten_, he started a kind of fantasia, concocting words and music together. An account of Wagner's youth would be incomplete without some mention of these brave doings; they show clearly how strong the instinct which led him on to the _Ring_ was in him at this early time--to what an unusual degree the child was father of the man. But to take seriously his tragedy and these first musical attempts, made at the unusually advanced age of sixteen, even if I had seen them--which I have not: I do not know whether they are in existence--would be preposterous.