spoken of Wagner having finished his apprenticeship when he went to Magdeburg, and in a sense he had; but perhaps in the fuller sense he finished it only with the _Dutchman_. He made mistakes, and thanks largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared to take another and a vaster leap--from the _Dutchman_ to _Tannhäuser_. He cast the slough of the old Italian opera form. [Illustration] [Illustration] Some characteristics of his harmony and instrumentation will most conveniently be considered later. For the present I wish to draw my reader's attention rather to Wagner the musico-dramatist than to Wagner the technical musician. CHAPTER VII DRESDEN I When Wagner left Paris on the proceeds of some work for Schlesinger which still remained to be done, he had learnt three lessons. The first, that it was foolish for an unknown man to go off into unknown lands, proved useful for a time. That is, for a time he put up with many vexations rather than undertake such adventures. No one likes to be starved and to see his wife starving, Wagner least of all men; and we shall see that, once settled in Dresden, he set his teeth and grinned and bore up against lack of appreciation and against actual insult, so determined was he that his Minna should, if possible, live in comfort. This lesson had been emphasized by his experiences before he received a permanent appointment. His creditors of the north, learning of the success of _Rienzi_, and little dreaming his profits to be £45, immediately began to worry him; and until he got the conductorship of the Royal opera-house his plight was little, if any, better than it was in the Paris days. The second lesson was, that whatever might happen in the future, it was futile to raise his eyes to Paris: Paris would not listen to him or to any sincere artist. The third was that nothing was to be hoped at all from the modern opera. That lesson he never forgot. Unfortunately its teaching clashed with that of lesson number one, and for some time it was neglected. But Dresden reinforced it as only a court-ridden town can, a town whose inhabitants were, almost to a man, the sort of flunkeys who hang around a Court.