Thus far we see the embryo poet-musician. In his sixteenth year the mysticism in his nature was roused by a study of E. A. Hoffmann: “I had visions by day in semi-slumber, in which the ‘Keynote,’ ‘Third,’ and ‘Dominant’ seemed to take on living form and reveal to me their mighty meaning.” These visions are curiously confirmed by the scientific phenomena of Chladni’s sand figures and the sound forms of Mrs. Watts Hughes. The fact that sound is the means through which all form is produced is a very old teaching. Pythagoras, who brought the art of music from India to Greece, taught that the Universe was evolved out of chaos by the power of sound and constructed according to the principles of musical proportion. About this time Wagner seriously studied Counterpoint under Theodor Weinlig. In less than six months he was dismissed as perfect. “What you have made by this dry study,” he said to his youthful pupil, “we call ‘Self-dependence.’” In 1832 he composed “an opera-book of tragic contents: _Die Hochzeit_”; his sister disapproved of the work and he at once destroyed it, although some of the music was already written. _Die Feen_ (The Fairies) followed in the next year and was the first of his completed operatic works. At the age of twenty-one he tells us: “I had emerged from abstract Mysticism, and I learnt a love for Matter.” The result was _Das Liebesverbot_ founded on Shakespeare’s _Measure for Measure_, in which “free and frank physicalism” prevails over “Puritanical hypocrisy.” This wild mood soon ceased under the pressure of petty cares; in 1836 he married the woman whose devotion helped him through so many years of bitter struggle. The following year he began his first large work, _Rienzi_, and became musical director at the Riga theatre. The poem was finished in 1838, and in 1839 when the music was nearly completed, Wagner embarked with his wife and his beloved big dog on board a sailing ship bound for London _en route_ for Paris. His object was to get _Rienzi_ performed there, but despite the influence of Meyerbeer he was doomed to disappointment and found himself stranded there in the utmost poverty. This, as we shall see from an essay later in the volume, was the turning-point in his life; but we have now to consider the next essay, the famous ART AND REVOLUTION.