a phrase which resembles one that has been heard before; and instead of letting the music make its natural and proper effect, they grow bewildered, and blame Wagner for what is in reality the fault of the analysis-makers. To follow _Tristan_, one need not know more than the few fragments I have quoted above; in fact, without any knowledge whatever it can be followed. The themes have no arbitrary significance attached to them; they are expressive music and tell their own tale. But, of course, when one has heard the opera many times--and twenty performances, supplemented by a study of Von Bülow's incomparable piano arrangement of the score, are hardly enough to enable us to begin to comprehend the real richness and vastness of _Tristan_--then gradually new features are found, new lights are thrown by the use of _leit-motifs_, and slowly the music yields us that multiplicity of complex delights--delights intellectual, emotional, or purely sensuous--that only the greatest works of art can give. Take, for example, the theme which Isolda sings when she perceives death to be the only cure for her woes. Later, when she is compelling Tristan to drink the poison-cup, the sailors break out into "Yo-heave-ho!" and he says, "Where are we?" "Near to the end!" she says, to the accompaniment of this same theme. To one who barely remembers the phrase the effect is marked enough, but to one who knows every phrase and its associations the double meaning is almost horrifying. It is idle to search out such points as this with the aid of a guide, for while you are waiting for them you lose the music in which they are set; the prevailing mood eludes you, and the points themselves fail to make their effect. There is another danger. People easily go _leit-motif_ mad, and their insane imagination creates a _leit-motif_ out of any two phrases that have a superficial and accidental resemblance. _Tristan_ and the _Ring_ are not musical puzzles. The themes are quite able to look after themselves, and to assert themselves at the proper moment. Many of them are not _leit-motifs_ at all. The passage out of the sea-song, which is heard constantly through the first act, is not a _leit-motif_, nor are many of the other subjects. They receive symphonic development; but, after all, the opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony do not form a _leit-motif_. I have dwelt at length upon this, for misguided people have blinded both themselves and others as to Wagner's true aims and methods and the splendour of the accomplished thing by trying to read into his music a host of trifling and pettifogging allusions which he never intended. There is enough to break our minds upon without troubling about these.