It was in "Lohengrin" that he first put in play his theory of the marriage of poetry and music, his idea being their complete devotion, with poetry as the master of the situation. He believed in independent melodies no more than in strong-minded wives. He lived this artistic theory in his own domestic relations, and it was not his fault that Minna, his melody, found it impossible to live in the light upper air of his poetry. He was so discouraged, however, by this time, by finding no encouragement at home, and a frenzy of hostility from the critics,--a frenzy almost incredible at this late day, in spite of the monumental evidences of it,--that for six years, after the completion of "Lohengrin," he wrote no music at all. He felt that he must first prepare the soil of battle with the critics in their own element--ink-slinging. On this fact Mr. Finck comments as follows: "Five years,--nay, six years, six of the best years of his life, immediately following the completion of 'Lohengrin,'--the greatest dramatic composer the world has ever seen did not write a note! Do you realise what that means? It means that the world lost two or three immortal operas, which he might have, and probably would have, written in these six years had not an unsympathetic world forced him into the role of an aggressive reformer and revolutionist." He received some money, and more fame, and still more enemies as a result of his powerful literary tilts against Philistinism. Then he took up the Nibelungen idea, planning to devote three years to the work; "little dreaming that it would keep him with interruptions for the next twenty-three years." For the accomplishment of this vast monument he asked only a humble place to work. He wrote Uhlig: "I want a small house, with meadow and a little garden! To work with zest and joy,--but not for the present generation.... Rest! rest! rest! Country! country! a cow, a goat, etc. Then--health--happiness--hope! Else, everything lost. I care no more." He found all in Zürich, where he and his wife rowed about the lake, and accumulated friends. He found special sympathy in the friendship of Frau Elise Wille, a novelist. Perhaps she was more than a friend, for one of his letters to her is superscribed "Precious." But all the while he suffered much from erysipelas and dyspepsia, and was occasionally moved with violent despair to the edge of suicide, for he was exiled from his Fatherland, and he was an outlaw from the world of music, which he longed to enlarge and beautify. He compared himself to Beethoven: "Strange that my fate should be like Beethoven's! he could not hear his music because he was deaf.... I cannot hear mine because I am more than deaf, because I do not live in my time at all, because I move among you as one who is dead.... Oh, that I should not arise from my bed to-morrow, awake no more to this loathsome life!"