[...] Accept my thanks for the work you have now completed! You will no doubt realise how very much we have been moved both by the intention and by the execution of this work. Briefly, I have found less to criticise in the occasional (unavoidable) inexactitude, or even obscurity, in your presentation and arrangement of facts, than in your having been compelled to report so much on hearsay from others (very frequently in their own words and at far too great length), whose accounts compare very unfavourably with your own descriptions taken from personal experience and knowledge. Nohl and his associates, for instance, often give themselves extravagant licence and allow themselves to be far too witty, particularly in describing my person, my words and conversation. I may well feel disgusted, for I often see a most puerile and absurd image of myself in the mirror they hold up.
I would prefer the English translation to be made from a somewhat compressed original. Also you might easily incorporate in [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 703