[...] I would beg you to be so good as to return the copy of my poem The Ring of the Nibelungs. Apart from my own it is the last of the copies which I destined to be distributed to people whose understanding and sympathy I might hope to evoke on behalf of my work. It cannot, therefore, be a matter of indifference to me that this particular copy is in the hands of those who in self-justification must feel that it is to their own interest to see that such understanding and sympathy are not aroused, or if so are destroyed again by the verdict of some third party before my work is made public. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 315