1 haggard, tumultuous, as well as tearful class, | it likewise with those who can label their ragwere named the Kraftmänner, or Power-men; gathering employments, or perhaps their pasbut have all long since, like sick children, sions, with pompous titles, and represent them cried themselves to rest. Byron was our to mankind as gigantic undertakings for its English Sentimentalist and Power-man; the welfare and salvation. Happy the man who strongest of his kind in Europe; the wildest, can live in such wise! But he who, in his the gloomiest, and it may be hoped, the last. humility, observes where all this issues, who For what good is it to "whine, put finger i' the sees how featly any small thriving citizen can eye, and sob," in such a case? Still more, to trim his patch of garden into a Paradise, and snarl and snap in malignant wise, "like dog with what unbroken heart even the unhappy distract, or a monkey sick?" Why should crawls along under his burden, and all are we quarrel with our existence, here as it lies alike ardent to see the light of this sun but before us, our field and inheritance, to make one minute longer:-yes, he is silent, and he or to mar, for better or for worse; in which, too forms his world out of himself, and he too too, so many noblest men have, ever from the is happy because he is a man. And then, hembeginning, warring with the very evils we war med in as he is, he ever keeps in his heart the with, both made and been what will be vene- sweet feeling of freedom, and that this dungeon rated to all time? -can be left when he likes." * What Goethe's own temper and habit of What shapest thou here at the World? 'Tis shapen thought must have been, while the materials long ago; The Maker shaped it, and thought it were best even so. Thy journey's begun, thou must move and not rest; Meanwhile, of the philosophy which reigns in Werter, and which it has been our lot to hear so often repeated elsewhere, we may here produce a short specimen. The following passage will serve our turn; and be, if we mistake not, new to the mere English reader. of such a work were forming themselves within his heart, might be in some degree conjectured, and he has himself informed us. We quote the following passage from his Dichtung und Wahrheit. The writing of Werter, it would seem, vindicating so gloomy, almost desperate a state of mind in the author, was at the same time a symptom, indeed a cause, of his now having got delivered from such melancholy. Far from recommending suicide to others, as Werter has often been accused of doing, it was the first proof that Goethe himself had abandoned these "hypochondriacal crotchets:" the imaginary "Sorrows" had helped to free `him from many real ones. "Such weariness of life," he says, "has its physical and spiritual causes; those we shall "That the life of man is but a dream, has come into many a head; and with me, too, some feeling of that sort is ever at work. When I look upon the limits within which man's powers of action and inquiry are hemmed in; when I see how all effort issues sim-leave to the Doctor, these to the Moralist, for ply in procuring supply for wants, which again have no object but continuing this poor existence of ours; and then, that all satisfaction on certain points of inquiry is but a dreaming resignation, while you paint, with many-coloured figures and gay prospects, the walls you sit imprisoned by, all this, Wilhelm, makes me dumb. Í return to my own heart, and find there such a world! Yet a world too, more in forecast and dim desire, than in vision and living power. And then all swims before my mind's eye; and so I smile, and again go dreaming on as others do. investigation; and in this so trite matter, touch only on the main point, when that phenomenon expresses itself most distinctly. All pleasure in life is founded on the regular return of external things. The alternations of day and night, of the seasons, of the blossoms and fruits, and whatever else meets us from epoch to epoch with the offer and command of enjoyment,-these are the essential springs of earthly existence. The more open we are to such enjoyments, the happier we feel ourselves; but, should the vicissitude of these appearances come and go without our taking "That children know not what they want, all interest in it, should such benignant inviconscientious tutors and education-philoso-tations address themselves to us in vain, phers have long been agreed: but that fullgrown men, as well as children, stagger to and fro along this earth; like these, not knowing whence they come or whither they go; aiming, just as little, after true objects: governed just as well by biscuit, cakes, and birch-rods: this is what no one likes to believe; and yet, it seems to me, the fact is lying under our very nose. "I will confess to thee, for I know what thou wouldst say to me on this point, that those are the happiest, who, like children, live from one day to the other, carrying their dolls about with them, to dress and undress; gliding, also, with the highest respect, before the drawer where mamma has locked the gingerbread: and, when they do get the wished-for morsel, devouring it with puffed-out cheeks, and crying, More!-These are the fortunate of the earth. Well is then follows the greatest misery, the heaviest malady; one grows to view life as a sickening burden. We have heard of the Englishman who hanged himself, to be no more troubled with daily putting off and on his clothes. I knew an honest gardener, the overseer of some extensive pleasure-grounds, who once splenetically exclaimed: Shall I see these clouds for ever passing, then, from east to west? It is told of one of our most distinguished men,† that he viewed with dissatisfaction the spring again growing green, and wished that, by way of change, it would for once be red. These are specially the symptoms of life-weariness, *Leiden des jüngen Werther. Am 22 May. Lessing, we believe: but perhaps it was less the greenness of spring that vexed him than Jacobi's too lyric admiration of it.-ED. which not seldom issues in suicide, and, at this time, among men of meditative, secluded character, was more frequent than might be supposed. "Nothing, however, will sooner induce this feeling of satiety than the return of love. The first love, it is said justly, is the only one; for in the second, and by the second, the highest significance of love is in fact lost. That idea of infinitude, of everlasting endurance, which supports and bears it aloft, is destroyed; it seems transient, like all that returns. * * "Further, a young man soon comes to find, if not in himself, at least in others, that moral epochs have their course, as well as the seasons. The favour of the great, the protection of the powerful, the help of the active, the good-will of the many, the love of the few, all fluctuates up and down; so that we cannot hold it fast, any more than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. And yet these things are not mere natural events: such blessings flee away from us, by our own blame or that of others, by accident or destiny; but they fiee away, they fluctuate, and we are never sure of them. To griefs congenial prone More wounds than nature gave he knew, In dark ideal hues, and horrors not its own.* fairs, which, how much soever it may have already been discussed and commented upon, excites an interest in every mortal; and, at tesquieu confers on his heroes and great men every new era, must be discussed again. Monthe right of putting themselves to death when they see good; observing, that it must stand at the will of every one to conclude the Fifth Act of his Tragedy whenever he thinks best. Here, however, our business lies not with per"But what most pains the young man of sensons who, in activity, have led an important sibility is the incessant return of our faults: life, who have spent their days for some mighty for how long is it before we learn, that in cul- empire, or for the cause of freedom: and whom tivating our virtues, we nourish our faults one may forbear to censure, when, seeing the along with them? The former rests on the high ideal purpose which had inspired them latter, as on their roots; and these ramify it to that other undiscovered country. Our vanish from the earth, they meditate pursuing themselves in secret as strongly and as wide as those others in the open light. Now, as we business here is with persons to whom, profor the most part practise our virtues with perly for want of activity, and in the peaceforethought and will, but by our faults are theless, by their exorbitant requisitions on fullest condition imaginable, life has, neverovertaken unexpectedly, the former seldom themselves, become a burden. As I myself give us much joy, the latter are continually giving us sorrow and distress. Indeed, here was in this predicament, and know best what lies the subtilest difficulty in Self-knowledge, pain I suffered in it, what efforts it cost me to the difficulty which almost renders it impossi- escape from it, I shall not hide the speculable. But figure, in addition to all this, the heat tions, I from time to time considerately proseof youthful blood, an imagination easily fasci-cuted, as to the various modes of death one nated and paralyzed by individual objects; further, the wavering commotions of the day, and you will find that an impatient striving to free one's self from such a pressure was no unnatural state. "However, these gloomy contemplations, which, if a man yield to them, will lead him to boundless lengths, could not have so decidedly developed themselves in our young German minds, had not some outward cause excited and forwarded us in this sorrowful employment. Such a cause existed for us in the Literature, especially the Poetical Literature, of England, the great qualities of which are accompanied by a certain earnest melancholy, which it imparts to every one that occupies himself with it. * * had to choose from. break loose from himself, not only to hurt, but from youth upwards you there see that punishment frequent without being specially ignominibut at parting slowly from life; and the most reous. By poison, by opening of veins, men aim fined the speediest, the most painless death, by had spent her life in pomp and luxurious plea means of an asp, was worthy of a Queen, who sure. All these, however, are external helps. "In such an element, with such an environ-happen more readily than elsewhere, because ment of circumstances, with studies and tastes of this sort, harassed by unsatisfied desires, externally nowhere called forth to important action; with the sole prospect of dragging on a languid, spiritless, mere civic life, we had recurred, in our disconsolate pride, to the thought that life, when it no longer suited one, might be cast aside at pleasure; and had helped ourselves hereby, stintedly enough, over the *So in the original. are enemies, with which a man, that he may fight against himself, makes league. the writer's history; and in this point of view, it certainly seems, as contrasted with its more popular precursor, to deserve our best attention: for the problem which had been stated in Werter, with despair of its solution, is here solved. The lofty enthusiasm, which, wandering wildly over the universe, found no resting place, has here reached its appointed home; and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten it with annihilation. gloomy and perturbed spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good fruits. Neither, which is most important of all, has this Peace been attained by a surrender to Necessity, or any compact with Delusion; a seeming blessing, such as years and dispiritment will of themselves bring to most men, and which is indeed no blessing, since even continued battle is better than destruction or captivity; and peace of this sort is like that of Galgacus's Romans, who "called it peace when they had made a desert." Here the ardent, "When I considered these various methods, and, further, looked abroad over history, I could find among all suicides no one that had gone about this deed with such greatness and freedom of spirit as the Emperor Otho. This man, beaten indeed as a general, yet nowise reduced to extremities, determines for the good of the Empire, which already in some measure belonged to him, and for the saving of so many | Anarchy has now become Peace; the once thousands, to leave the world. With his friends he passes a gay, festive night, and next morning it is found that with his own | hand he has plunged a sharp.dagger into his heart. This sole act seemed to me worthy of imitation; and I convinced myself that who ever could not proceed herein as Otho had done, was not entitled to resolve on renouncing life. By this conviction, I saved myself from the purpose, or indeed, more properly speaking, from the whim, of suicide, which in those fair peaceful times had insinuated itself into the mind of indolent youth. Among a considera-high aspiring youth has grown into the calmest ble collection of arms, I possessed a costly well-ground dagger. This I laid down nightly beside my bed; and before extinguishing the light, I tried whether I could succeed in sending the sharp point an inch or two deep into my breast. But as I truly never could succeed, I at last took to laughing at myself; threw away all these hypochondriacal crotchets, and determined to live. To do this with cheerfulness, however, I required to have some poetical task given me, wherein all that I had felt, thought, or dreamed on this weighty business, might be spoken forth. With such view, I endeavoured to collect the elements which for a year or two had been floating about in me; I represented to myself the circumstances which had most oppressed and afflicted me; but nothing of all this would take form; there was wanting an incident, a fable, in which I might imbody it. man, yet with increase and not loss of ardour, and with aspirations higher as well as clearer. For he has conquered his unbelief; the Ideal has been built on the actual; no longer floats vaguely in darkness and regions of dreams, but rests in light, on the firm ground of human interest and business, as in its true scene, on its true basis. It is wonderful to see with what softness the skepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing, polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay, animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, in his proper form; and how, as Wilhelm himself, the mild-hearted, all-hoping, all-believing Wilhelm, struggles forward towards his world of Art "All at once I hear tidings of Jerusalem's through these curiously complected influences, death; and directly following the general all this unites itself into a multifarious, yet rumour, came the most precise and circum- so harmonious Whole, as into a clear poetic stantial description of the business; and in mirror, where man's life and business in this this instant the plan of Werter was invented; age, his passions and purposes, the highest the whole shot together from all sides, and be-equally with the lowest, are imaged back to came a solid mass; as the water in the vessel, which already stood on the point of freezing, is by the slightest motion changed at once into firm ice."* us in beautiful significance. Poetry and Prose are no longer at variance, for the poet's eyes are opened: he sees the changes of manycoloured existence, and sees the loveliness and A wide, and every way most important, in- deep purport which lies hidden under the very terval divides Werter, with its skeptical philo- meanest of them; hidden to the vulgar sight, sophy, and "hypochondriacal crotchets," from but clear to the poet's; because the " open Goethe's next novel, Wilhelm Meister's Appren- secret," is no longer a secret to him, and he ticeship, published some twenty years after-knows that the Universe is full of goodness; wards. This work belongs, in all senses, to that whatever has being has beauty. the second and sounder period of Goethe's life, and may indeed serve as the fullest, if perhaps not the purest, impress of it; being written with due forethought, at various times, during a period of no less than ten years. Considered as a piece of Art, there were much to be said on Meister; all which, however, lies beyond our present purpose. We are here .ching at the work chiefly as a document for Dichtung und Wahrheit, b. iii. s. 200-213. Apart from its literary merits or demerits, such is the temper of mind we trace in Goethe's Meister, and, more or less expressly exhibited, in all his later works. We reckon it a rare phenomenon, this temper; and worthy, in our times, if it do exist, of best study from all inquiring men. How has such a temper been attained in this so lofty and impetuous mind, once, too, dark, desolate, and full of doubt, more than any other? How may we, each of us in his several sphere, attain it, or strengthen it, for ourselves? These are questions, this last is a question, in which no one is unconcerned. To answer these questions, to begin the answer of them, would lead us very far beyond our present limits. It is not, as we believe, without long, sedulous study, without learning much, and unlearning much, that, for any man, the answer of such questions is even to be hoped. Meanwhile, as regards Goethe, there is one feature of the business which, to us, throws considerable light on his moral persuasions, and will not, in investigating the secret of them, be overlooked. We allude to the spirit in which he cultivates his Art; the noble, disinterested, almost religious love with which he looks on Art in general, and strives towards it as towards the sure, highest, nay, only good. We extract one passage from Wilhelm Meister: it may pass for a piece of fine declamation, but not in that light do we offer it here. Strange, unaccountable as the thing may seem, we have actually evidence before our mind that Goethe believes in such doctrines, nay, has, in some sort, lived and endeavoured to direct his conduct by them. "Look at men,' continues Wilhelm, 'how they struggle after happiness and satisfaction! Their wishes, their toil, their gold, are ever hunting restlessly; and after what? After that which the Poet has received from nature; the right enjoyment of the world: the feeling of himself in others; the harmonious conjunction of many things that will seldom go together. "What is it that keeps men in continual discontent and agitation? It is that they cannot make realities correspond with their conceptions, that enjoyment steals away from among their hands, that the wished-for comes too late, and nothing reached and acquired produces on the heart the effect which their longing for it at a distance led them to anticipate. Now fate has exalted the Poet above all this, as if he were a god. He views the conflicting tumult of the passions; sees families and kingdoms raging in aimless commotion; sees those perplexed enigmas of misunderstanding, which often a single syllable would explain, occasioning convulsions unutterably baleful. He has a fellow-feeling of the mournful and the joyful in the fate of all mortals. When the man of the world is devoting his days to wasting melancholy for some deep disappointment; or, in the ebullience of joy, is going out to meet his happy destiny, the lightly-moved and allconceiving spirit of the Poet steps forth, like the sun from night to day, and with soft transition tunes his harp to joy or wo. From his heart, its native soil, springs the fair flower of Wisdom; and if others while waking dream, and are pained with fantastic delusions from their every sense, he passes the dream of life like one awake, and the strangest event is to him nothing, save a part of the past and of the future. And thus the Poet is a teacher, a prophet, a friend of gods and men. How! Thou wouldst have him descend from his height to some paltry occupation? He who is fashioned, like a bird, to hover round the world, to nestle on the lofty summits, to feed on flowers and fruits, exchanging gaily one bough for another, hel ought also to work at the plough like an ox; like a dog to train himself to the harness and draught; or, perhaps, tied up in a chain, to guard a farm-yard by his barking?” Werner, it may well be supposed, had listened with the greatest surprise. All true,' he rejoined, 'if men were but made like birds; and, though they neither spun nor weaved, could spend peaceful days in perpetual enjoyment; if, at the approach of winter, they could as easily betake themselves to distant regions; could retire before scarcity, and fortify themselves against frost.' י "Poets have lived so,' exclaimed Wilhelm, 'in times when true nobleness was better reverenced; and so should they ever live. Sufficiently provided for within, they had need of little from without; the gift of imparting lofty emotions, and glorious images to men, in melodies and words that charmed the ear, and fixed themselves inseparably on whatever they might touch, of old enraptured the world, and served the gifted as a rich inheritance. At the courts of kings, at the tables of the great, under the windows of the fair, the sound of them was heard, while the ear and the soul were shut for all beside; and men felt, as we do when' delight comes over us, and we pause with rapture if, among the dingles we are crossing, the voice of the nightingale starts out, touching and strong. They found a home in every habitation of the world, and the lowliness of their condition but exalted them the more. The hero listened to their songs, and the Conqueror of the Earth did reverence to a Poet; for he felt that, without poets, his own wild and vast existence would pass away like a whirlwind, and be forgotten for ever. The lover wished that he could feel his longings and his joys so variedly, and so harmoniously as the Poet's inspired lips had skill to show them forth; and even the rich man could not of himself discern such costliness in his idol grandeurs, as when they were presented to him shining in the splendour of the Poet's spirit, sensible to all worth, and ennobling all. Nay, if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet was it that first formed Gods for us; that exalted us to them, and brought them down to us ?" "* ?' For a man of Goethe's talent to write many such pieces of rhetoric, setting forth the dignity of poets, and their innate independence on external circumstances, could be no very hard task: accordingly, we find such sentiments again and again expressed, sometimes with still more gracefulness, still clearer emphasis, in his various writings. But to adopt these sentiments into his sober practical persuasion; in any measure to feel and believe that such was still, and must always be, the high vocation of the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of ancient and now almost forgotten nobleness, to take his stand, even in these trivial, jeering, withered, unbelieving days; and through all their complex, dispiriting, mean, yet tumultuous influences, to "make his light shine before men," that it might beautify even our "rag-gathering age" with some beams of that mild, divine splendour, which had long * Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, book ii. chap. 2. . left us the very possibility of which was denied; heartily and in earnest to meditate all this, was no common proceeding; to bring it into practice, especially in such a life as his has been, was among the highest and hardest enterprises, which any man whatever could engage in. We reckon this a greater novelty, than all the novelties which as a mere writer he ever put forth, whether for praise or censure. We have taken it upon us to say that if such is, in any sense, the state of the case with regard to Goethe, he deserves not mere approval as a pleasing poet and sweet singer; but deep, grateful study, observance, imitation, as a Moralist and Philosopher. If there be any probability that such is the state of the case, we cannot but reckon it a matter well worthy of being inquired into. And it is for this only that we are here pleading and arguing. Books, too, have their past happiness, which no chance can take away: Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte. * Here are strange diversities of taste; "national discrepancies" enough, had we time to investigate them! Nevertheless, wishing each party to retain his own special persuasions, so On the literary merit and meaning of Wilhelm far as they are honest, and adapted to his inMeister we have already said that we must not tellectual position, national or individual, we enter at present. The book has been trans- cannot but believe that there is an inward and lated into English; it underwent the usual essential Truth in Art; a Truth far deeper judgment from our Reviews and Magazines; than the dictates of mere Mode, and which, was to some a stone of stumbling, to others could we pierce through these dictates, would foolishness, to most an object of wonder. On be true for all nations and all men. To arrive the whole, it passed smoothly through the criti- at this Truth, distant from every one at first, cal Assaying-house, for the Assayers have approachable by most, attainable by some Christian dispositions, and very little time; so small number, is the end and aim of all real Meister was ranked, without umbrage, among the study of Poetry. For such a purpose, among legal coin of the Minerva Press; and allowed others, the comparison of English with foreign to circulate as copper currency among the rest. judgment, on works that will bear judging, That in so quick a process, a German Freid- forms no unprofitable help. Some day, we rich d'or might not slip through unnoticed may translate Friedrich Schlegel's Essay on among new and equally brilliant British brass Meister, by way of contrast to our English aniFarthings, there is no warranting. For our madversions on that subject. Schlegel's praise, critics can now criticise impromptu, which, whatever ours might do, rises sufficiently high: though far the readiest, is nowise the surest neither does he seem, during twenty years, to plan. Meister is the mature product of the first have repented of what he said; for we observe genius in our times; and must, one would think, in the edition of his works, at present publishbe different, in various respects, from the im-ing, he repeats the whole Character, and even mature products of geniuses who are far from appends to it, in a separate sketch, some new the first, and whose works spring from the assurances and elucidations. brain in as many weeks as Goethe's cost him years. '' Nevertheless, we quarrel with no man's verdict; for Time, which tries all things, will try this also, and bring to light the truth, both as regards criticism and the thing criticised; or sink both into final darkness, which likewise will be the truth as regards them. But there is one censure which we must advert to for a moment, so singular does it seem to us. Meister, it appears, is a "vulgar" work; no gentleman,” we hear in certain circles, could have written it; few real gentlemen, it is insinuated, can like to read it; no real lady, unless possessed of considerable courage, should profess having read it at all. Of Goethe's "gentility" we shall leave all men to speak that have any, even the faintest knowledge of him; and with regard to the gentility of his readers, state only the following fact. Most of us have heard of the late Queen of Prussia, and know whether or not she was genteel enough, and of real ladyhood: nay, if we must prove every thing, her character can be read in the Life of Napoleon, by Sir Walter. Scott, who passes for a judge of those matters. And yet this is what we find written in the Kunst und Alterthum for 1824.* * Band v. s. 8. It may deserve to be mentioned here that Meister, at its first appearance in Germany, was received very much as it has been in England. Goethe's known character, indeed, precluded indifference there; but otherwise it was much the same. The whole guild of criticism was thrown into perplexity, into sorrow; everywhere was dissatisfaction open or concealed. Official duty impelling them to speak, some said one thing, some another; all felt in secret that they knew not what to say. Till the appearance of Schlegel's Character, no word, that we have seen, of the smallest chance to be decisive, or indeed to last beyond the day, had been uttered regarding it. Some regretted that the fire of Werter was so wonderfully abated; whisperings there might be about “lowness," "heaviness;" some spake forth boldly in behalf of suffering "virtue.” Novalis was not among the speakers, but he censured the work in secret, and this for a reason which to us will seem the strangest; for its being, as we should say, a Benthamite work! Many are the bitter aphorisms we find, among his Frag* Who never ate his bread in sorrow; Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping and watching for the morrow, He knows you not, ye unseen Powers. Wilhelm Meister, book ii. chap. 13. |