Honourable Mr. Caudour. One day, in London, Lord Sale overheard a conversation between his sister and Mr. Archer, and had joked her about it before his father. The earl snapped at the matter, and Mr. Archer was so infatuated as to confess to him that he loved the Lady Georgina. The earl poohed him down contemptuously, paid him what was due, and civilly dismissed him from the house that same hour. He saw the Lady Georgina before he left, and she treated it lightly said she could not help him, that it was no fault of hers, but she should ever retain a pleasant reminiscence of his flattering sentiments towards her. "You should have seen his poor wan face, Miss Halliwell, when he left de house," whispered Mademoiselle to me, confidentially. "I was coming in from a walk wid de littel girl, and met him in de hall: he held out his hand to me to say good-by, and I looked up at his face-it was one tableau of miserie. And de Lady Georgina, she went, all gay, to a soirée at de Duchess of Gloucester's dat same evening, and I do not tink she did care one pin for de killed heart of dat poor young clergyman." So my brother became curate of Seaford, and, in time, our mother died, and I grew into an old maid. And never more at Seaford did news come to us of the Reverend George Archer. THE OLD AND THE NEW YEAR. A SONG FROM THE DANISH. BY MRS. BUSHBY. SEE, how the Old Year sinks, oppressed with days Already Janus wields his power to bring Another from the ample stores of Time; While the weird midnight hour its far bells chime. While from their bowers of bliss and radiance bright The tree of sorrow other fruit may bear A brimming bumper quaff-to the New Year! Three sisters, daughters of Jupiter and Themis, who presided over spring, summer, and winter, and were represented as opening the gates of Heaven and Olympus. VOL. XXXIX. H New-Book Notes by Monkshood. LEWES'S LIFE AND WORKS OF GOETHE.* THIS long-expected work, the result of ten years' preparation, will not (for what would?) satisfy the demands of thorough-going Goethe worshippers. Almost before it was begun, Madame Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli condemned it peremptorily, unseen, unheard; and now that it is finished, transcendentalists male and female, and symbolists of indefinite sex and sect, will scout it as no life of their All-sided One, and will pity the blindness that cannot see what they see in the heart of a milestone, cannot grasp and handle and weigh what to them is palpable and ponderable in the mystery of moonbeams. For Mr. Lewes is one who looks before he leaps, especially in the dark; and declines to affect raptures over what to him is unintelligible, or to praise up to the skies what he knows to be worthless. Honestly he guards himself, in the personal portraiture of his great subject-object, against any temptation to gloss over faults, or to conceal short-comings; he assures us that he reproduces all that testimony warrants-good and evil, as in the mingled yarn of life. Honestly he confesses, in the course of his often elaborate analyses and critical comments on Goethe's poetry and prose, his inability, wherever he is conscious of it, to admire, and applaud, and discover what longer-sighted second-sight seers, esoteric and extravagant exceedingly, pronounce full of beauty and over-full of meaning. Thus, while German critics are in ecstasies with the "wit and irony" of that unreadable extravaganza, the "Triumph of Sensibility" (1778), "I confess myself at a loss," quoth Mr. Lewes," to conceive clearly what they mean." He allows that the "Tour in Italy" is a "disappointing book." In reviewing Goethe's "Doctrine of Colours," he candidly "shows up" the author's doctrinal fallacy, as well as his " astounding" irritability and "polemical bad taste." He criticises the "slow languid movement" of "Egmont," the "triviality of the machinery" in "Wilhelm Meister," the preposterous perversion of "Romeo and Juliet," the defective style of the "Elective Affinities," the inequalities and weaknesses of "Meister's Years of Travel" (a work "feeble, and careless even to impertinence," with its incongruous little stories, “for the most part tiresome and sometimes trivial," &c.), and the hopeless obscurity of the second part of "Faust." Of the "Natural Daughter," he frankly and significantly says: "I confess not to have read this work, although I have twice commenced it." And of the "Great Copt:" "One is really distressed to find such productions among the writings of so great a genius, and exasperated *The Life and Works of Goethe: with Sketches of his Age and Contemporaries, from Published and Unpublished Sources. By G. H. Lewes. Two Vols. London: Nutt. 1855. to find critics lavish in their praise of a work which their supersubtle ingenuity cannot rescue from universal neglect."* On the other hand, no moderate, no even fervent admirer and student of Goethe, can reasonably complain that his present biographer has not thrown his whole soul and spirit into the task of proving him one of the greatest among the very great, and (harder labour, but real labour of love) one of the best among the truly good. Mr. Lewes defends him with warmth of feeling, as well as dexterity of fence, against the stereotyped charges of coldness, selfishness, "moral laxity," irreligion, and political apathy. He contends, handing in evidence to argue from, that Goethe's was a nature "exquisite in far-thoughted tenderness," most "true and human in its sympathies with suffering," and eager to "alleviate suffering by sacrifices rarely made to friends, much less to strangers." It is, indeed, his pervading design to convince the world of the truth of Jung Stilling's assertion, that Goethe's heart, which was known to few, was as great as his intellect, which was known to all. To investigate the justice and success of the biographer's apologetics, whether on the question of his author's egoism, or want of patriotism, or immoral tendency, or artistic views of life, or petty spirit of courtiership,-would require space wholly out of proportion to our present object, that of advertising and giving some rough notes of a book prominently note-worthy among the books of the day. It is divided into seven sections, each devoted to some group of cognate events, or the illustration of some one phase of life and character, in the poet's life-history. The first book, having for its motto "The Child is Father to the Man," relates his boyish experiences, with ample notice of his family, his native town, the precocity he unquestionably showed, the impressions produced upon his mind by the earthquake at Lisbon, the occupation of Frankfurt by the French, the French theatre, &c., and leaving him in his sixteenth year, shortly after the exposé of his quasi-intrigue with Gretchen, which his Autobiography dwells on with circumstantial candour. The second book is occupied with his student days, and exhibits him in collegiate life at Leipsic, absorbed now in jurisprudence, now in eccentric dandyism, now in pranks of the "cider-cellar" sort, now in the fresh charms of more decent society, and sometimes in the zestful despatch of certain first-rate fritters," hot from the pan precisely at the hour of lecture," and therefore leaving the lecturer a poor chance, unless of empty benches. It narrates, too, his trip to Dresden, and neglect of law and logie for art, his illness, and unsettled religious state, his return home and disagreement with his ungenial sire-his freshmanship in the University of Strasburg, See Lewes, vol. i. pp. 391-2, 396-7; ii. pp. 53, 66, 119 sqq., 163, 206, 254 sqq., 272, 379 sq., 411, 423. "Strangers"-à propos of Goethe's singular pensioner, Kraft. See the story at large, in Lewes, vol. i. pp. 398-408. where he studies the fine arts and mystical metaphysics, learns dancing and gets into a scrape with his dancing-master's daughter, becomes acquainted with Stilling and Herder, makes love to Frederika, and, having won her, makes off, glides away, evanishes, like a guilty thing surprised. Book the third is concerned with the Sturm und Drang, storm and stress, period-that period of some four years (1771 to 1775) in Goethe's history which is characterised by the preparation, and culminates in the production, of "Werther." To this section belong also "Clavigo" and "Götz von Berlichingen." One chapter sets forth the author in the aspect of "literary lion"-another his affection for Lili-a third gives a valuable bird's-eye view of German literature previous to Goethe's rise, no mere bibliographical analysis or catalogue résumé, but a survey distinguished by philosophical investigation and a spirit of critical sagacity, ably and adroitly employed. Book the fourth takes up the four years next ensuing, from 1775 to 1779, which is defined the “genialisch period in Weimar"-meaning the period when every extravagance was excused on the plea of genius. A capital picture is given of Weimar in the eighteenth century—the park with its sunny walks, and winding shades, and magnificent avenue of chesnut-trees, stretching for two miles to the summer palace of Belvedere-the quiet, simple streets, with their stone-coloured, light-brown, and apple-green houses the rough and homely manners and habits then and there in vogue-the people, a slow, heavy, ungraceful, ignorant, but good-natured, happy, honest race, feeding on black bread and sausages; the nobility, poor and pompous; and then the notabilities of the place, including the DowagerDuchess Amalia, capricious and frivolous, but spirituelle and even (in spite of Schiller) strong-minded-quite capable of managing her kingdom, but defiant of the proprieties and dignities of state; her maid of honour (nicknamed Thusnelda), the "merry and malicious little humpbacked Göchhausen," who figured in "wit combats" with the duke, and corresponded by the ream with clever people far and wide; that "jovial, careless epicurean," Einsiedel, l'ami KaT' 'goxn-court-chamberlain, privileged madcap, and licensed featherbrain in ordinary; the gay poet of good society, Wieland; Musæus, great in folk-lore and gardening, "who might be seen daily crossing the quiet streets with a cup of coffee in one hand, his garden tools in the other, trudging along to his loved Erholung;" the musical Seckendorf; the financial Bertuch, who had to give up, however reluctantly, his Gartenhaus to Goethe; Bode, who translated "Don Quixote," and selections from Smollett;-and 'According to Wieland, she lived sometimes in 'student' fashion, especially at Belvedere, where student-songs, not always the most decorous, rang joyously through the moonlit gardens. Driving once with seven friends in a hay-cart from Tiefurt, and overtaken by a storm, she made no more ado, but drew over her light clothing Wieland's great-coat, and in that costume drove on."-Lewes, i. 331. lastly, the reigning duke and duchess-he, Karl August, active, sensuous, witty, but coarse in his wit, clever, but wanting in tact, sound and keen in his judgment, "offending by his roughness and wilfulness, but never estranging his friends," and, "with all his errors, a genuine and admirable character" on the whole-she, Luise, "so grand a creature that we can afford to add that she was of a cold temperament, somewhat rigid in her enforcement of etiquette (in this so unlike the dowager), and wore to the last the old costume which had been the fashion in her youth; apt in the early years of her marriage to be a little querulous with her husband, but showing throughout their lives a real and noble friendship for him." The fifth book carries us on from 1779 to 1793, and traces the official career of Goethe in Karl August's little court, his journey to Italy, and his campaign in France; separate chapters of great interest being engrossed by criticisms of the masterpieces he produced during this interval-" Iphigenia," "Egmont," "Tasso," &c.-while one of more than average length, ability, and information, discusses the poet's position and pretensions as man of science. Book the sixth is mainly illustrative of his friendship with Schiller, but also comprises a spirited review of "Wilhelm Meister," a warmly appreciative analysis of "Hermann and Dorothea," an elaborate appraisal of "Faust" and its congeners of an earlier date, a fervent éloge of the lyrical poems, together with a shrewd estimate of Germany's "Romantic School," and a very complete notice of Goethe's practice and policy in his long-sustained character of theatrical manager. Book the seventh, and last, brings us from 1805 to 1832, the closing scene; and its chapters are severally devoted to the battle of Jena, Goethe's relations with Bettina and with the Emperor Napoleon, a review of the "Elective Affinities," and of the second parts of "Wilhelm Meister" and "Faust," the stand Goethe took in respect of politics and religion, the literary and scientific activity of his old age, and the quiet merging of old age into the stillness of death. Mr. Lewes has skill and taste in enhancing the interest of his narrative, by surrounding it with associations and illustrations, picturesque and suggestive. Thus, in his mention of Goethe's birth-year, 1749, he fails not to remind us of synchronous events, which the most "intelligent reader" will gladly be reminded of. "In that month of August, Madame du Châtelet, the learned and pedantic Uranie of Voltaire, died in childbed, leaving him without a companion, and without a counseller to prevent his going to the court of Frederick the Great. In that year Rousseau was seen in the brilliant circle of Mad. d'Epinay, discussing with the Encyclopedists, declaiming eloquently on the sacredness of maternity, and going home to cast his new-born infant into the basket of the Foundling Hospital. In that year Samuel Johnson was toiling manfully over his English dictionary; Gibbon was at Westminster, trying with unsuccessful diligence to |