prefer anthologies to "works," who love to read tiny volumes prettily
bound, called "Beauties of Ruskin," and who have substituted for the
out-of-fashion "Daily Food" books, painted bits of cardboard with
sweet sayings culled from popular idols of the day, with which they
embellish the walls of their offices and bedrooms, in the hope that
they may hoist themselves into a more hallowed frame of mind. This
is the class--always with us, though more prosperous than the
poor--who prefer a cut bouquet to the natural flowers in wood and
meadow, and for whose comfort and convenience Browning declined to
work. His poetry is too stiff for these readers, partly because they
start with a preconceived notion of the function of poetry. Instead
of being charmed, their first sensation is a shock. They honestly
believe that the attitude of the mind in apprehending poetry should
be passive, not active: is not the poet a public entertainer? Did we
not buy the book with the expectation of receiving immediate pleasure?
The anticipated delight of many persons when they open a volume of
poems is almost physical, as it is when they settle themselves to
hear certain kinds of music. They feel presumably as a comfortable
cat does when her fur is fittingly stroked. The torture that many
listeners suffered when they heard Wagner for the first time was not
imaginary, it was real; "Oh, if somebody would only play a tune!" Yet
Wagner converted thousands of these quondam sufferers, and conquered
them without making any compromises. He simply enlarged their
conception of what opera-music might mean. He gave them new sources
of happiness without robbing them of the old. For my part, although
I prefer Wagner's to all other operas, I keenly enjoy Mozart's
_Don Giovanni_, Charpentier's _Louise_, Gounod's _Faust_, Strauss's
_Salome_, Verdi's _Aida_, and I never miss an opportunity to hear
Gilbert and Sullivan. Almost all famous operas have something good
in them except the works of Meyerbeer.