He was now thirty, and although he had written two long works, one of them a great one, they constituted the merest prelude to the gigantic achievements of the next forty years. He was busily engaged at the opera, but set to work at once on an endless number and variety of projects. _Tannhäuser_ was finished by 1845, _Lohengrin_ by 1847, and his brain was occupied with _The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (Die Meistersinger)_ and _The Nibelung's Ring_, both to be completed long afterwards. During this period he also composed the _Love-feast of the Apostles_, and did a bit of mending to Gluck's _Iphigenia in Aulis_. But, though scheming many things, he seemed by no means sure of his road at first. With Schröder-Devrient, the singer, and others, he discussed lengthily the question of whether he should attempt another _Rienzi_ or go on from the _Dutchman_. If to realize his artistic dreams was dear to Wagner, so were immediate success, fame and money. Of the last he could never have enough, for he spent it faster than he gained it--spent it on himself, needy artists, on any object which suggested itself to him. However, the creative artist in him had the victory. The notion of a second _Rienzi_ was abandoned and _Tannhäuser_ commenced. He had come across the legend of an illicit passion and its punishment somewhere, and he set to work on the book of words. Of course he sentimentalized the story--it was a trick he was always given to, especially during these, his younger, years--and, of course, he made a woman sacrifice herself for a man. In the older form of the tale Tannhäuser lived goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a competition in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise of foul carnal lust and the joy of living with the Goddess of Love in the heart of the hills. Coming to himself, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and asked and was refused the Pope's forgiveness. Then he returned to Venus, and so the story ends with the eternal damnation of Tannhäuser, just as the ancient legend of the Flying Dutchman ends with the eternal damnation of Vanderdecken.