III Wagner’s songs are few. They comprise only those written during his early years in Paris, when for a time he hoped to make himself a fashion in Parisian drawing rooms, and those written under the influence of Mathilde Wesendonck in the late fifties, when he was planning ‘Tristan.’ The former group, being composed at the time when he was writing ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and being, moreover, designed for a debased public taste, can by no means be ranked with his typical work. The songs it contains are not great. But Wagner’s genius was too imperative to blot itself out at any time and these early lyrics show evidences of the artistic energy which was later to flower in ‘The Ring.’ The earliest known of Wagner’s songs is ‘The Fir Tree,’ written in 1838 in Königsberg. It has little more than historic interest. In Paris he wrote the ‘Three Melodies,’ which are still occasionally sung and will repay a little study. The lullaby, _Dors, mon enfant_, is marked with a suavity in the melody and a variety in the accompaniment which betray with certainty the touch of the true musician. The second ‘melody,’ called ‘The Rose,’ is rather too sweet but is saved by its interesting accompaniment. ‘Waiting’ is vigorous in conception and execution. But the best of Wagner’s Parisian songs is ‘The Two Grenadiers,’ composed to a French version of Heine’s famous poem, to which Schumann wrote his popular setting. Wagner’s method is more dramatic than Schumann’s. It gives a much more important function to the accompaniment, which is something approaching the ‘orchestral comment’ of his later theories. At times the voice part is freely declamatory. Throughout it is kept remarkably free from the running comment of the piano. The long crescendo up to the final lines is managed with skill. For these lines the Marseillaise is used, as in Schumann’s setting, but only in the accompaniment, the voice singing an independent part. Here we have something approaching a true _leit motif_ used in a way foreshadowing the later revolutionary music dramas. The introduction of the Marseillaise by both Schumann and Wagner must be regarded purely as a coincidence, since the songs, as it happens, were written in the same year.