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when he formed the engagement, appears somehow to have always been liable to strange reverses when the time was coming, and almost come, to fulfil it. Mr. Lewes, however, contends that he acted a more moral part in relinquishing Frederika, than if he had swamped this lesser in a greater wrong, and escaped the wrong of breach of faith by that still greater breach of faith-a reluctant, because unloving, marriage. "The thoughtlessness of youth," continues his apologist-whether Goethe would or could have accepted the apology is at least doubtful, but let him have the benefit of the doubt by its insertion-" the thoughtlessness of youth, and headlong impetus of passion, frequently throw people into rash engagements, and in those cases the formal morality of the world, more careful of externals than of truth, declares it to be nobler for such rash engagements to be kept, even when the rashness is felt by the engaged, than that a man's honour should be stained by a withdrawal. The letter thus takes precedence of the spirit. To satisfy this prejudice a life is sacrificed. A miserable marriage rescues the honour; and no one throws the burden of that misery upon the prejudice. I am not forgetting the necessity of being stringent against the common thoughtlessness of youth in forming such relations; but I say that this thoughtlessness once having occurred, reprobate it as you will, the pain which a separation may bring had better be endured, than evaded by an unholy marriage, which cannot come to good."

Mr. Lewes adds, "So far I think Goethe right;" and intimates that Frederika herself must have thought so too, for never did a word of blame escape her, and, eight years afterwards, when Goethe revisited Sesenheim (1779), he was welcomed by her, his quondam Sophia Primrose, in common with the rest of that "Vicar of Wakefield" family," in the most friendly manner." The poet has described the réunion in a charming bit of narrative, written, however, with all the calm of any other retrospective review. "The second daughter loved me in those days better than I deserved, and more than others to whom I have given so much passion and faith. I was forced to leave her at a moment when it nearly cost her her life; she passed lightly over that episode to tell me what traces still remained of the old illness, and behaved with such exquisite delicacy and generosity from the moment that I stood before her unexpected on the threshold, that I felt quite relieved. I must do her the justice to say that she made not the slightest attempt to rekindle in my bosom the cinders of love. She led me into the arbour, and there we sat down. It was a lovely moonlight, and I inquired after every one and everything. Neighbours had spoken of me not a week ago. I found old songs which I had composed, and a carriage I had painted. We recalled many a pastime of those happy days, and I found myself as vividly conscious of all, as if I had been away only six months." This account was written to be sent to the woman who was to Goethe now, in 1779, what Frederika had been in 1771. There is a complacent egoism about it that

will revolt some minds-an intenser form only of the egoistic spirit which, in truth, repels them from Goethe, whom it seems to pervade and inform throughout. If Mr. Thackeray pleased, he could make Goethe's treatment of Frederika a most pregnant text for one of his most pungent homilies on Woman's unselfishness, and Man's graceless assumption of it as his due, a male perquisite, a guaranteed preference share, an absolute thing of course.

In that moonlight arbour scene, eight long years (long to her, short enough perhaps to Goethe) after the rudely broken troth, Frederika shows, as indeed everywhere, Mr. Lewes cordially owns, "a sweet and noble nature, worthy of a happier fate. Her whole life was one of sweet self-sacrifice. Lenz had fallen in love with her; others offered to marry her, but she refused all offers. The heart that has once loved Goethe,' she exclaimed, 'can belong to no one else.'"

Nor does Goethe's present biographer think that his love for Frederika was only a passing fancy, such as so often moves the feelings of youth without ever deepening into serious thoughts of marriage. Mr. Lewes rejects, too, as mere assumption, the excuse that "marriage would have crippled his genius," and, in a passage worth quoting for its eloquence and feeling, maintains, to the contrary, that had Goethe loved her enough to share a life with her, though his experience of women might have been less extensive, it would assuredly have gained an element it wanted-it would have been deepened. "He had experienced, and he could paint (no one better), the exquisite devotion of woman to man; but he had scarcely ever felt the peculiar tenderness of man for woman, when that tenderness takes the form of vigilant protecting fondness. He knew little, and that not until late in life, of the subtle interweaving of habit with affection, which makes life saturated with love, and love itself become dignified through the serious aims of life. He knew little of the exquisite companionship of two souls striving in emulous spirit of loving rivalry to become better, to become wiser, teaching each other to soar. He knew little of this; and the kiss, Frederika! he feared to press upon thy loving lips-the life of sympathy he refused to share with thee-are wanting to the greatness of his works."

But we must hasten on, if we would see how this great artist soul, devoutly studious of womankind's attractions and of his own peace of mind,

from Beauty passed to Beauty, Constant to a constant change.

Frederika therefore retires, and her place is filled by Charlotte Buff, or Lottchen, a "serene, calm, joyous, open-hearted German maiden, an excellent housewife, and a priceless manager," now (1772) in her sixteenth year, and betrothed to Kestner, to whom she was married soon after; a worthy couple, who were sufficiently scandalised by being reproduced, with a difference, in the pages of

"Werther," as the Charlotte and Albert of that (literally) die-away tale. The same year, Goethe is captivated by Maximiliane Laroche, the future mother of Bettina: "they seemed to have looked into each other's eyes, flirted and sentimentalised, as if no Lotte had been left in Wetzlar." Nay, more; Maximiliane marries Brentano, and Goethe frequents the house, and seems to have urged on the flirting and sentimentalising, as if no Brentano were extant in his own, the said Brentano's house in Frankfurt. That house smells somewhat of oil and cheese, and its master, a middle-aged "merchant"-a widower, too, with five ready-made children-is disposed to be bearish to his young wife: accordingly the househaunter extraordinary, their fellow-townsman Goethe, who is "beloved" and welcomed by M. Brentano (" quoique assez jaloux pour un Italien"), is a great acquisition to madame, and, in Merck's version of the story, "il a la petite Madame Brentano à consoler sur l'odeur de l'huile, du fromage, et des manières de son mari." (What the malicious Merck means by l'odeur of the mari's manières is not quite clear; but his drift is even too much so.) Passing from this too unctuous, cheesy German atmosphere, and passing over our versatile gallant's "homage" to Anna Sybilla Münch, whom he seems to have only "admired" in a dispassionate, or unimpassioned sort of way-we come to "Lili," the woman whom, he assured Eckermann, he loved beyond any other. "Lili" was Anna Elizabeth Schönemann, the daughter of a great banker in Frankfurt; at this time (1774) a child of sixteen, who, as Mr. Lewes pretty clearly proves, in spite of Goethe's senile assurances to Eckermann, though she managed, in all the merciless grace of maidenhood, proudly conscious of her power, to ensnare his roving heart through the lures of passionate desire, never really touched his soul. In 1775 he is settled at Weimar; and here his opening career is " perplexed with love affairs." Many charmers are named, amongst whom the biographer mentions Fräulein von Kalb, Corona Schröter (the actress), and Kotzebue's sister, Amalia; but these seem to have been but flirtations, while the tendresse for the Baroness von Stein (a relation of that magnanimous baron who parted with his wife, for a consideration, to Warren Hastings) was no transitory flash, but a fire which burnt for ten years, and thereby is distinguished from all previous attachments." The baroness was gay, coquettish, experienced, and thirty-three. Hitherto Goethe had taken to girls in their teens; this time he was taken by a fullblown woman, full of tact and knowledge of life. We are presented with excerpts from his letters to her, and very rapturous and uninteresting they are. Not quite so rapturous, but more interesting, is the serious petition one of them presses on his beloved to "send him a sausage." In 1787 his passion for Charlotte von Stein has had time to cool down, and we see him caught by a young Milanese: "with the rashness of a boy he falls in love, and then learns that his mistress is already betrothed." Next year, 1788,

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he is united in all but marriage to Christiane Vulpins-and eighteen years later actually makes up his mind, and marrics her outright-the story of the huddled-up nuptial ceremony, during the hurry and riot of French invasion, being a favourite jest with those who love any jest in general for the sake of a laugh, and this one in particular for the sake of a laugh at Goethe. Alas, these eighteen years are no theme for laughter, nor is their sequel a jest. At the first, Christiane was a fresh, young, bright-looking girl, with "golden-brown locks, laughing eyes, ruddy cheeks, kiss-provoking lips, small and gracefully rounded figure"-endowed, too, with quick "mother-wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great aptitude for domestic duties." Goethe certainly appears to have been completely fascinated by her: "there are few poems in any language which approach the passionate gratitude of those in which he recals the happiness she gave him." Before he married her, however, Christiane had put an end to her beauty, whatever that may have originally been, by habits of intoxication, which had been the ruin of her father. Mr. Lewes throws no light-except conjectural and psychological-on the cause of the delay in this marriage ceremony; but he corrects the error which dates it "during the cannonade" of the battle of Jena, the actual date being the 19th of October, five days after that battle.

Not even with this very mature wedding terminates the list of the elderly bridegroom's tendresses. In 1809 he is perilously captivated by a school-girl, Minna Herzlieb, an adopted child in the family of Frommann, the Jena bookseller, and the original of Ottilie in the "Elective Affinities." And in 1825 (nine years after his wife's death), Goethe, aged seventy-six, meets at Marienbad with a Fräulein von Lewezon, for whom he conceives a vehement passion, and whom he is only withheld from marrying by the remonstrances of friends, "and perhaps the fear of ridicule." All these love-phases go to prove a too close resemblance between Goethe himself and his own Wilhelm Meister, who, as Mr. Lewes describes him, passes (with a sad lack of persistency in his emotions) from love of the passionate Mariana to an inclination for the coquettish Philina; from Philina to the Countess, whom he immediately forgets for the Amazon; and when about to marry Theresa, he relinquishes her as soon as he is accepted, and offers himself to Natalie. Like hero, like author. And what though "souls feminine" unite "as one man" to cry shame on Goethe's choppings and changings?

That was wrong, perhaps-but then
Such things be-and will, again.
Women cannot judge for men.*

But they can judge of men, or at any rate they do; and of Goethe, sharply enough. Nor in his case does their mercy rejoice against judgment, but is as good as ordered out of court.

"Bertha in the Lane."

THE QUESTION OF THE DAY.

A WAR of exceeding severity, marked by the most energetic perseverance on the one hand, and an equally stubborn resistance on the other, by immense losses from sickness and exposure, as well as from the usual casualties in the field, appears at length about to be terminated by a compromise.

The propositions emanating from Austria, which have to a certain extent been adopted by the Allied Powers, are well calculated to meet the exigencies of those who hold that to arrive at a peaceful solution of the question nothing must be done to humiliate Russia. In the propositions submitted to that power by Count Esterhazy it can be truly said, that although certain special conditions were held in reserve, little appears on the surface that could in any way militate against the most sensitive nationality;-nothing, indeed, when we consider the system of aggression so long and so successfully carried on against neighbouring petty states, and which it became the duty of the great contracting powers to repel as far as possible.

The complete abolition of the Russian protectorate over the Danubian Principalities will indeed be a great point, and the reorganisation of those states will do more towards insuring permanent peace than even the occupation of the Crimea; but there is nothing in such a concession that militates either against the honour, or against the true interests of the Russian Empire.

The freedom of the Danube is essentially a European question. No power but Russia, who has never hesitated to put her foot upon the neck of any other neighbouring state, would have ventured upon so selfish and unprincipled an act as to close up the mouth of the main artery of Central Europe. Russia can lose nothing, she can only gain in the opinion of the civilised world by ceding such an invidious position. But for the Allies to make all the strong places and territories occupied by their armies a matter of exchange for a rectification of the frontier on the Danube, is, in reality, to cast all that has been done by France, England, Sardinia, and Turkey into the scale for the benefit of Austria.

That the Black Sea should be open to merchant vessels and closed to war navies presents nothing that could possibly be objectionable to any of the belligerent powers. But that no naval or military arsenals shall be created or maintained there, appeared to many a stumbling-block to all pacific arrangements. Would so ambitious and especially warlike and aggressive a power as Russia give up the holding of all naval or military arsenals on the Black Sea? How would France like to disarm on the coast of

VOL. XXXIX.

I

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