intellectual rank, but still essentially the pamphlets and
manifestoes of a born agitator--on social evolution, religion,
life, art and the influence of riches. In 1853 the poem of The
Ring was privately printed; and in 1854, five years after the
Dresden insurrection, The Rhine Gold score was completed to the
last drum tap.

These facts are on official record in Germany, where the
proclamation summing up Wagner as "a politically dangerous
person" may be consulted to this day. The pamphlets are now
accessible to English readers in the translation of Mr. Ashton
Ellis. This being so, any person who, having perhaps heard that
I am a Socialist, attempts to persuade you that my interpretation
of The Rhine Gold is only "my socialism" read into the works of
a dilettantist who borrowed an idle tale from an old saga to make
an opera book with, may safely be dismissed from your
consideration as an ignoramus.

If you are now satisfied that The Rhine Gold is an allegory, do
not forget that an allegory is never quite consistent except when
it is written by someone without dramatic faculty, in which case
it is unreadable. There is only one way of dramatizing an idea;
and that is by putting on the stage a human being possessed
by that idea, yet none the less a human being with all the human
impulses which make him akin and therefore interesting to us.
Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, does not, like his unread
imitators, attempt to personify Christianity and Valour: he
dramatizes for you the life of the Christian and the Valiant Man.
Just so, though I have shown that Wotan is Godhead and Kingship,
and Loki Logic and Imagination without living Will (Brain without