Wagner’s earliest dramatic effort was made at the age of fourteen, when he wrote a great tragedy _à la_ Shakespeare; forty-two of his characters were slaughtered in the first four acts, so for the _dénouement_ they were in part resuscitated as ghosts! These early attempts may cause us to smile, but in them may be seen the power to grapple with work on a large scale, which was so characteristic a feature of the man’s later life. He struggled to master the pianoforte, very unsuccessfully, and also wrote the usual pianoforte sonatas and pieces. His education, proceeded with at Dresden and Leipsic, was of a very broken nature, and he was a bad pupil: his inclination being to study Weber and Beethoven rather than Latin and Greek; consequently he was always uneasy and desirous of escaping from the trammels of education. [Sidenote: =At Würzburg, 1833=] This he did when he was about nineteen years of age, taking a post as chorus master at the Würzburg theatre, and writing at the age of twenty his first opera, _The Fairies_; this work and its successor, _Das Liebesverbot_, need not detain us, except to record that the latter had two productions at Magdeburg in 1836, Wagner having gone there to act as conductor. Of these the first was a failure, the second was to an audience consisting of Wagner’s landlady, her husband, and a Polish Jew. After this the Magdeburg theatre retired gracefully into bankruptcy, and with it went the conductor. [Sidenote: =At Königsberg, 1836=] Being attracted by a certain Wilhelmina Planer, who was acting at Königsberg, Wagner’s next steps were directed to this small town, where he married his lady-love, and also received the directorship of the opera. Bankruptcy fell to the lot of this theatre also, and Wagner shifted to Riga, where he found better work on a more secure footing. [Sidenote: =At Riga, 1838=] Riga had a good opera-house, and so inspired the ambitious composer that he longed to scale greater heights, and set out for Paris. He went by sea to London, being well-nigh wrecked off the coast of Norway, and received impressions which are ably recorded for us in his setting of the story of the _Flying Dutchman_, composed shortly after the voyage. [Sidenote: =At Paris, 1839=] Crossing to Paris, Wagner lived for some time on the very verge of starvation; he had had introductions to Meyerbeer and other persons of influence in the French capital, but no one wanted the work of an unknown German composer, and he was forced to earn a living as best he could by arranging fantasias from popular operas, and turning out tuneful melodies for the cornet. His wife cheered him on and did her best, but misfortune dogged him, for a little theatre that agreed to produce _Das Liebesverbot_ failed before the day of production came. [Sidenote: “=Rienzi=”]