(3) The use of the term "symphony" is à priori evidence of Wagner's ignorance of the work.
(4) No evidence can be brought to show that he knew either Cellini or Faust, while everything indicates that he could not know them. Wagner was not in Paris in 1838 and 1846, when they were respectively given; nor could he have known them from the scores, which were not published till after 1852—the date of the letter to Liszt.
(5) In Hueffer's translation of the Wagner-Liszt correspondence, of which the second edition is "revised and furnished with an index by W. Ashton Ellis," the word "symphony" is deliberately omitted, thus hiding from the reader the one word that might set him doubting whether Wagner really knew the work he disparaged.
(6) In the third volume of Mr. Ellis's "Life of Wagner," which deals with this correspondence of 1852, the whole sentence referring to the "Faust Symphony" is omitted. Wagner is thus made to appear a perfect angel of goodwill towards Berlioz, without any such qualification as the letter as a whole suggests.
Mr. Ellis is first of all very angry with me for dragging him into the matter at all. Then he gets more angry with me for failing to see what is clear enough to him, that Wagner was invariably and inevitably right in everything he did or said—as it were the "Archibald the All-right" of music. Finally, he produces what he takes to be conclusive evidence in Wagner's favour. Let us look into these matters in a calm and friendly way.
(1) It cannot be disputed that Hueffer's omission of the word "symphony" from his translation of Wagner's letter to Liszt of 8th September 1852 was deliberate. Now in his preface to the volumes he goes out of his way to plume himself on the perfect fidelity of his translation to the original. "There are things in the letters," he says, "which are of comparatively little interest to the English reader." "There is no doubt that judicious omissions might have made these pages more readable and more amusing." But the book "is almost of a monumental character, and his deep respect for this character has induced the translator to produce its every feature.... Not a line has been omitted." And again: "To sum up, this translation of the correspondence is intended to be an exact facsimile of the German original." As we have seen, these statements are not true; Hueffer suppressed a vital word. The only reason we can imagine for his doing so was the knowledge that the inclusion of the word might make people suspect that Wagner did not know the work he miscalled a "Faust Symphony."
(2) A second edition of Hueffer's translation was brought out, "revised, and furnished with an index, by W. Ashton Ellis." Mr. Ellis now indignantly points out that in his preface he distinctly stated that "in view of the admirable nature of Dr. Hueffer's work, revision was unnecessary save in the case of a few misprinted words and dates." Very good. Did Mr. Ellis compare Hueffer's translation with the original? Then he should have detected and rectified Hueffer's suppression of the word "symphony." Did he not compare the two? Then he had no right to certify Hueffer's work as so "admirable" that "revision was unnecessary." In this one point, at any rate, it was decidedly not admirable; it evidently stood more in need of Mr. Ellis's revision than Mr. Ellis's certificate.
(3) Mr. Ellis can say nothing better in defence of his own omission of the whole passage from the third volume of his "Life" than that, as he was writing a life not of Berlioz but of Wagner, he had no space for "a dissertation on so entirely distinct a theme as the Faust of Berlioz." No one expected from him a dissertation on Faust. All he was expected to do was to find space, in a voluminous biography that takes about 1800 pages to tell the story of the first forty-two years of Wagner's life, for five or six lines of a letter that threw an important light on Wagner, especially as Mr. Ellis was actually quoting from the letter in question.
Here is the passage in the original:—
"Glaub mir—ich liebe Berlioz, mag er sich auch misstrauisch und eigensinnig von mir entfernt halten: er kennt mich nicht; aber ich kenne ihn. Wenn ich mir von Einem etwas erwarte, so ist dies von Berlioz: nicht aber auf dem Wege, auf dem er bis zu den Geschmacklosigkeiten seiner Faust-symphonie gelangte—denn geht er dort weiter, so kann er nur noch vollständig lächerlich werden. Gebraucht ein Musiker den Dichter, so ist diess Berlioz, und sein Unglück ist, dass er sich diesen Dichter immer nach seiner musikalischen Laune zurechtlegt, bald Shakespeare, bald Goethe, sich nach seinem Belieben zurichtet. Er braucht den Dichter, der ihn durch und durch erfüllt, der ihn vor Entzücken zwingt, der ihm das ist, was der Mann dem Weibe ist."