" In 1848, at forty-five years old,
he wrote in his _Memoires_: "I find myself so old and tired and lacking
inspiration." At forty-five years old, Wagner had patiently worked out
his theories and was feeling his power; at forty-five he was writing
_Tristan_ and _The Music of the Future_. Abused by critics, unknown to
the public, "he remained calm, in the belief that he would be master of
the musical world in fifty years' time."[62]
[Footnote 61: He left Henrietta Smithson in 1842; she died in 1854.]
[Footnote 62: Written by Berlioz himself, in irony, in a letter of
1855.]
Berlioz was disheartened. Life had conquered him. It was not that he had
lost any of his artistic mastery; on the contrary, his compositions
became more and more finished; and nothing in his earlier work attained
the pure beauty of some of the pages of _L'Enfance du Christ_ (1850-4),
or of _Les Troyens_ (1855-63). But he was losing his power; and his
intense feeling, his revolutionary ideas, and his inspiration (which in
his youth had taken the place of the confidence he lacked) were failing
him. He now lived on the past--the _Huit scenes de Faust_ (1828) held
the germs of _La Damnation de Faust_ (1846); since 1833, he had been
thinking of _Beatrice et Benedict_ (1862); the ideas in _Les Troyens_
were inspired by his childish worship of Virgil, and had been with him
all his life.
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