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234 'great, unique, glorious friend, when the 'you gives way, German fasliion, to the familiar ' thou,' the mutual position of the friends is reversed. Wagner sits on liis throne laying down the law in a dictatorial though by no means arrogant fashion, while Liszt speaks as it were with bated breath, accepts the dicta of the oracle as he would the dogmas of the Church of Rome, and apologises most humbly when he traverses Wagner's gigantic schemes with a piece of practical advice. This is all the more remarkable, because in his dealings with other folks Liszt was by no means humble, or wanting in self-assertion. Although less uncompromising in Ills convictions than Wagner, he had that contempt for arrogant mediocrity, social overbearing, and com- mercialism generally, which distinguish the higli- minded artist from the mere handicraftsman, and Nature had gifted him with a tongue and with a pen quite equal to ordinary occasions. People who knew Liszt only in liis latter years, or who saw him in London with a stereotyped beneolent smile on his features, could scarcely have guessed at this side of liis nature. When lie sat at the Royal Academy listening patiently to a long-winded speech by Sir George Macfarren, of which he did not understand a single w'ord, ^vhen he allowed himself to be dragged from one concert to the other, and to be exhibited to the vulgar gaze for the benefit of those who thus chose to exhibit him, he looked the very picture of a benign old gentleman enjoying liimself and being only too glad to give enjoy- ment to othei's. But those who had known him in former years, who had seen his eyes, now dimmed by age, rolling in a fine frenzy of indig- nation, knew that that smile was not altogether of the benignant order, that there was in it a good deal of sarcasm, and of a keen j^erception of the vulgarity and selfishness of the world. Let those who doubt this conjecture read the painstaking- biographical work by Fraulein Ramann, where tlK'' will find amusing accounts of how Liszt got, familiarly speaking, into hot water with the Italian press, how rudely he behaved to the French king, Louis Philippe, in whom he discovered the bane of the July revolution, and the embodiment of well- nourished bourgeoisdoni; how he snubbed Princess Metternich when. she insolently spoke of a musician as if he were a tradesman. Perhaps his English admirers would not have been quite so enthusiastic in 1887 had they had cognisance of an incident which happened more than forty years before, and has not been recorded by any biographer, although I have it on the authority of an eye and ear witness. It was during Liszt's former visit to this country that lie gave;i splendid breakfast at Verrev's in Regent Street. Many jnusicians and musical critics had been invited, and at the end of the repast speeches were made and toasts jiro posed after the manner of the country. Liszt at the time had no particular .sympathy for England, where fashionable drawing- rooms were open to him, but where a jiart of the press treated him with marked hostility, and the general public with indifference. Whilst smarting under this feeling, Liszt made a speech in which he referred to England as la ijep'imere de la MMiocriU, the hot-bed of mediocrity, as we should say. No wonder that after this the attacks on him grew more pungent than ever, and that nearly half a century elapsed before he again set foot on English ground. ^Vlien that event happened he came on a visit of reconciliation, general peace, and good-will;he was surrounded by admirers; handkerchiefs waved; voices were raised to a pa'an of enthusiasm whenever his venerable face, surrounded by a halo of flowing white liair, appeared in a concert-room, and even the very cabmen in the street ga^'e three cheers for the ' Habby Liszt.'' By this time he, and fortunately every one else, had forgotten all about the ' hot-bed of mediocrity.'' Moreover, Liszt used always to say that if he had not been a nuisician he would liave been the greatest diplomatist in Europe, and diplo- macy, as we know, grows upon one with growing age. In his attitude to AA''agner there is, however, no trace of diplomacy; it presents simply the beautiful and rare spectacle of a great man having met with a greater man, and acknowledging the fact in a natural and most imafFected manner, and without a shadow of that jealousy which such superiority might hae excited in a less noble and unselfish mind. Let it be added in justice to Wagner that he on his part did by no means assume the airs of a niightv man sjieaking to an inferior being. On the contrary, he is most eager to gixe back to Liszt friendship for friendship, admiration for admiration. ^^'^hen he does, as I saidbefore, lay down the law, it is done in the most unconscious, unassuming niamier, merely because he is full of his subject, and feels that such conviction as his nuist be founded on eternal and incontroertible truth. Altogether it is a matter for discussion — although such discussion would have ajipeared mean both to ^agner and Liszt — which of the two men profited most by their unparalleled friendship. Liszt supplied "Wagner with money; he produced his Lohengrin; lie made Weimar the centre of a A'^agner cult from which ' the music of the future ' went forth and spread to the confines of the earth. In all these things Wagner had no return to make; he had no money to give; neither tlid Liszt want any money;