He boasted that here, at last, was a sheer German opera. Well, that is not in itself very much. Personally, I would rather be an Englishman than a German; and few of us will be prepared to accept the view that because a work of art, or so-called work of art, happens to be by a German, it must therefore be a great work of art, or even a work of art at all. Richard never lived down the tendency, natural in one, I suppose, of a conquered tribe (the Saxons), to incorporate and identify himself with his conquerors, and he glorified everything Prussian as German, and everything German as perfect; but, even so late as 1852, I cannot imagine that he quite understood what he meant when he held forth on the subject of German art, its non-existence, and--of all things--its supremacy. He certainly felt very keenly what many members of every half-grown nation must feel--the necessity of acquiring a national conscience, artistic or other; he wanted to create an art-work which would appeal to the heart and understanding of every German, and would make the Germans feel themselves one race, an entity. Which, precisely, of the German races he would have accepted in the new brotherhood of man I cannot say. But the point is that Wagner longed to create, and in _Tannhäuser_ thought he had created, this universal work of art; and in declaring, as he did, that he had achieved the feat, he was revealing the truth about himself. He had thrown overboard Bellini, Donizetti, even Spontini and Marschner, and by going back to his first idols, Beethoven and Weber (especially Weber), he found his natural voice and mode of expression. Paradoxically, _Tannhäuser_, while one of his least original compositions--owing as much to Weber as ever one composer had owed to another--is one of his most original. He spoke the matter that was in his own heart, but he freely, without self-consciousness, used the Weber idiom.