Wagner seriously contemplated writing a biography of Beethoven at one
time, and devoted several months to collecting materials for it. But his
finances were still in bad shape, and he was unable to undertake it
without an order from some publisher, who would have been required to
advance money. He was unable to find such a party, and the project was
abandoned, most unfortunately, as he would have made a valuable
contribution to the subject. The short biographical sketch he wrote on
Beethoven on the centenary anniversary of the master's birth, shows
marvellous insight, especially in relation to the critical and
analytical parts of it. This work, instinct with worship of the master,
is a product of Wagner's mature years. Here, as in his earliest
utterances on Beethoven, he is the disciple glad to do homage to his
master.
"A century may pass," said Schopenhauer in a letter to the publishers of
the (English) Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany, offering to
translate Kant for them, in response to a wish he had seen expressed in
their journal that England might ere long have a translation of Kant, "a
century may pass ere there shall again meet in the same head so much
Kantian Philosophy, with so much English, as happen to dwell together in
mine.
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