principles in the matters of spelling and punctuation would have been opening the door to subjective caprice without accomplishing any discernible good whatever.

I have of course endeavored to profit by the labors of preceding editors, critics and expounders, of whom a list of the more important will be found in an appendix. In dealing with a subject like Faust, about which such mountains of literature exist, it is, in general, possible to attain originality only at the expense of either truth, usefulness or importance; and my aim has been to be useful rather than to seem acute or learned. I have, however, from first to last tried to work independently, i. e., to go to first-hand sources of information and derive from them my knowledge and my impressions. In the notes I have as a rule avoided controversy and the rehearsal and discussion of conflicting views. My method has been to form my opinion from the data, then to read what the various commentators have to say, changing my own opinion where necessary, and then to present my final conclusion without argument. In dealing with matters of fact which I could verify I have not always been particular to name the writer who first called my attention to the primary source of information, but have proceeded, like most of my predecessors, on the Roman maxim quod bene dictum est meum est. On the other hand, in dealing with matters of opinion, or of fact that I could not verify, I have endeavored always to acknowledge all real obligation. Everywhere I have essayed the utmost brevity consistent with a satisfactory treatment of real difficulties. I have tried to waste no words in trivial, obvious or useless comment. Citations possessing only a curious or erudite interest, but not needed for scientific illustration, have not been admitted. I have also avoided any attempt to do the work of an etymological dictionary or a historical grammar,

According to my conceptions the one great purpose of the editor's notes to a classic should be to help the reader enter more perfectly than he otherwise might into the thought and feeling of the author. Philological lore which would have been news to the author and does not contribute to a proper understanding of the author's meaning, is, in general, out of place and entitled to no better name than pedantry. The rule is, however, subject to this limitation: peculiarities of diction, which pertain to the author's individual style (the style is the man), may properly be made the subject of brief philological comment for the purpose of giving the reader, so far as may be, the author's exact point of view.

ANN ARBOR, MICH., August, 1892.

CALVIN THOMAS.

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.

In this second edition I have tried to correct the mistakes of the first and in other ways to bring the book up to date. The Introduction has seemed to require but little change. I have been criticised for dealing too briefly with certain topics, such as the historical Faust, the growth of the legend, and Lessing's Faust, but this criticism is not well grounded. My work being intended primarily for college students, brevity with regard to unessentials was an important part of my plan. Now the topics just mentioned are interesting enough in their way, but Goethe knew nothing about them. If an authentic biography of the old magician should be discovered, there is no reason to suppose that it would throw any light on Goethe's poem. So also Lessing's Faust is a subject by itself. There is no evidence that it ever influenced Goethe.

In the Notes the changes are much more numerous and important. Corrections that have been suggested to me by letter or in published reviews have been introduced wherever I have been convinced. Among those who have put me under special obligation are Prof. Witkowski of Leipzig, Dr. Blau of Bryn Mawr, and Prof. Senger of California. I do not flatter myself, however, that these friends or any one else in the wide world will be entirely satisfied with my Notes even in their revised form. Faust is a very difficult subject for the commentator. It teems with words and phrases the meaning of which is uncertain and which are differently understood by the most competent experts. Every German reads the poem, and every German, as Scherer once remarked in an essay, has his own Goethe. He is also apt to be sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust that his Goethe is the only true one. Now an American whose feeling for the German language is an acquisition of adult life would naturally like to defer to those who should know better than he; but what shall he do when his natural counsellors fall out and take to berating one another? What I have done is to weigh and decide according to my best judgment. I am well aware that in some cases the decision is only too vulnerable.

The most important contributions to Faust-scholarship since the appearance of my first edition are the works of Collin, Baumgart, Valentin and Witkowski, and the third edition of the Göchhausen Faust with its valuable Introduction. It is pleasant to notice a tendency to emphasize once more the artistic unity of Faust. In this general attitude of mind I am quite at one with the writers named, though sometimes at variance with them in regard to particular lines of argument. The familiar comparison of

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PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.

Faust to a mosaic has a certain value. When one looks at it very closely with a philological magnifier, one sees various imperfections; the pieces are not always perfectly fitted, the colors are sometimes out of harmony. But when we step back far enough to see the work as a whole, its general design becomes perfectly obvious and the little imperfections fade out of sight or no longer offend the eye. But shall we then deny that they exist, and be over anxious to explain them away? There are those who seem to feel that what we call artistic unity must involve perfect congruity in every detail. For them even the Intermezzo' is sacrosanct; it must be shown to be just the right thing in the right place or else the whole Faust is a failure. But this is going too far. The student of Faust must learn to pick his way discreetly between the Widerspruchsphilister and the Einheitsphilister without being taken in by either of them. I may be pardoned for thinking that my edition will help him.

NEW YORK, June, 1898.

C. T.

INTRODUCTION.

I.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS UPON FAUST AND THE STUDY OF FAUST.

It was as early as 1769 that the mind of Goethe, then a youth of twenty, began to be teased by the alluring problem of a Faustdrama. After musing on the subject some three or four years, he put pen to his work, little thinking, as he did so, that this particular poetic project would be the great task of a long lifetime, and would leave his hands some sixty years hence as the masterpiece of his country's poetry.

The general conception of the proposed drama, he tells us, lay clear in his mind at an early date; but from the first his procedure was unmethodical. The legend yielded, or could be made to yield, a hint for every mood: poetry, pathos, humor, satire, hocuspocus - all were there. And so he worked in a desultory way, writing a passage here and a passage there, now a soliloquy, now a song, and again a bit of dialogue or a succession of dialogues, according as he had caught the vision of this or that interesting situation. Thus, without concern for acts or for a logical development of his plan, he allowed his work to take shape in a series of pictures, leaving the intervals to be filled in by the imagination. In this way a number of pictures (we may call them scenes') had been written down previous to his settlement at Weimar in November, 1775.

Then came a period in which the temper and circumstances of the poet were unfavorable to the continuation of the work. In 1788-9 a little more was written, and a part of the scenes on hand were revised for publication. These appeared in 1790 under