For every consideration Richard Wagner was right in desiring to confine his great poem to the circle of his friends and well-wishers for some years to come. Wagner's objection to publicity was not without its mental reservation with that prefatory warning to incautious friends, he sent out the following invitation card to all his Zurich acquaintances. Besides Franz Liszt's colourless own, the only laudation preserved to us from these first few months of the Ring-poem's existence is that of Louis Kohler, contained in a letter to Liszt. The mental impressions of a bygone generation are naturally most difficult to recall. Wagner'sche Broschiiren' stands written thereon in the master's small, regular hand, fine as if engraved. It should be observed that Adolf Stahr is about to approach Wagner's poem with a whole sheaf of preconceived ideas.