In the previous series of articles entitled “Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas,” my purpose was to throw some light on the inner meaning of those dramas. In doing this some quotations were made from the prose writings, where Wagner has made actual explanations or thrown out hints of his meaning. In dealing with the prose works themselves, my aim will be to show the basis of Wagner’s reform in the field of dramatic art, and the great motives which led him to strike out a totally new path. And here at the outset let me say that no brief review of these volumes can possibly convey any clear conception of their contents; it will therefore be necessary to devote several of these articles to the more important essays. The volume with which I am about to deal opens with an AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCH. Wagner wrote this in 1843, at the request of a German editor. In it we see the germs of his future genius, and I will select such details as serve to indicate them. Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born at Leipzig on May 22, 1813, and learnt to play a little on the piano at the age of seven. Two years later, when the family migrated to Dresden, he used to watch Weber “with a reverent awe,” as the composer of _Der Freischütz_ passed to and fro to rehearsals. Thereupon his piano exercises were speedily neglected in favor of the overture to _Der Freischütz_ executed “with the most fearful fingering.” “But this music-strumming was quite a secondary matter: Greek, Latin, mythology and ancient history were my principal studies.” At this time he wrote some prize verses on the death of a schoolfellow. “I was then eleven years old. I promptly determined to become a poet, and sketched out tragedies on the model of the Greeks.” He also translated twelve books of the Odyssey, and learnt English in order to study Shakespeare. “I projected a grand tragedy which was almost nothing but a medley of _Hamlet_ and _King Lear_. The plan was gigantic in the extreme; two-and-forty human beings died in the course of this piece, and I saw myself compelled in its working out to call the greater number back as ghosts, otherwise I should have been short of characters for my last acts.” Being removed to the Leipzig _Nikolaischule_ he there for the first time came into contact with Beethoven’s genius; “its impression upon me was overpowering.... Beethoven’s music to _Eg-mont_ so much inspired me, that I determined—for all the world—not to allow my now completed tragedy to leave the stocks until provided with suchlike music. Without the slightest diffidence, I believed that I could myself write this needful music, but thought it better to first clear up a few of the general principles of thorough-bass.... But this study did not bear such rapid fruit as I had expected: its difficulties both provoked and fascinated me; I resolved to become a musician.”