other sphere, since goodness is greatness; and the good man, high or humble, is ever a martyr, and spiritual hero that ventures for'ward into the gulf for our deliverance.' The gulf into which this man ventured, which he tamed and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly all others lie included: The whole distracted Existence of Man is an Age of Unbelief. Whoso lives, whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely in that mad element, may yet know, perhaps too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the Chosen of our time, who could prevail in that same, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as can belong to no other.

"How far he prevailed in it, by what means, with what endurances and achievements, will in due season be estimated; the data are now all ready; those volumes called Goethe's Works will receive no farther addition or alteration; and the record of his whole spiritual Endeavour lies written there, were the man or men but ready who could read it rightly! A glorious record; wherein he that would understand himself and his environment, and struggles for escape out of darkness into light, as for the one thing needful, will long thankfully study. For the whole chaotic time, what it has suffered, attained, and striven after, stands imaged there; interpreted, ennobled into poetic clearness. From the passionate longings and wailings of Werter,' spoken as from the heart of all Europe; onwards through the wild unearthly melody of 'Faust' (like the spirit-song of falling worlds); to that serenely smiling wisdom of Meisters Lehrjahre,' and the German Hafiz, - what an interval; and all enfolded in an ethereal music, as from unknown spheres, harmoniously uniting all! A long interval; and wide as well as long for this was a universal man. History, Science, Art, human Activity under every aspect; the laws of light, in his Farbenlehre;' the laws of wild Italian life in his 'Benvenuto Cellini;' nothing escaped him, nothing that he did not look into, that he did not see into. Consider too the genuineness of whatsoever he did; his hearty, idiomatic way; simplicity with loftiness, and nobleness, and aërial grace. Pure works of art, completed with an antique Grecian polish, as Torquato Tasso,' as Iphigenie'; Proverbs; 'Xenien '; Patriarchal Sayings, which, since the Hebrew Scriptures were closed, we know not where to match; in whose homely depth lie often the materials for volumes.

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To measure and estimate all this, as we said, the time is not come; a century hence will be the fitter time. He who investigates it best will find its meaning greatest, and be the readiest to acknowledge that it transcends him. Let the reader have seen, before he attempt to oversee. A poor reader, in the mean while, were he, who discerned not here the authentic rudiments of that same New Era, whereof we have so often had false warning. Wondrously, the wrecks and pulverized rubbish of ancient things, institutions, religions, forgotten noblenesses, made alive again by

the breath of Genius, lie here in new coherence and incipient union, the spirit of Art working creative through the mass: that chaos, into which the eighteenth century with its wild war of hypocrites and skeptics had reduced the Past, begins here once more to be a world. This, the highest that can be said of written books, is to be said of these: there is in them a new time, the prophecy and beginning of a new time. The corner-stone of a new social edifice for mankind is laid there; firmly as before, on the natural rock; far-extending traces of a ground-plan we can also see, which future centuries may go on to enlarge, amend, and work into reality. These sayings seem strange to some; nevertheless they are not empty exaggerations, but expressions, in their way, of a belief, which is not now of yesterday; perhaps when Goethe has been read and meditated for another generation, they will not seem so strange."

The blessed era to be brought about by this most extraordinary man, who, during a great part of his life was "filled full with skepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions," is to be effected, we must presume, from what is said, not by his Werter or Faust, but by William Meister's Apprenticeship, and his later poems. We are not told what part in this grand renovation is to be accomplished by his other novel, entitled "Elective Affinities," which, to most English readers, if ever translated, will appear only a cold, disgusting story of complicated adultery. Werter and Faust may well be put out of the question. The day of the former has passed. The weakest of sentimentalists, at least out of Germany, would now regard it as a book too silly to cry As to Faust, the most zealous of its admirers must allow, that the moral renovation which it is adapted to produce is of a very questionable kind. It may be worth while to translate and quote what is said of it by a writer, Albert Stapfer, who may be supposed to have a sufficiently high estimate of the genius of its author, as he is the translator of his dramatic works into French.

over.

"One may at first thought," he says, "be astonished at the "enthusiasm of the Germans for a work in which subjects so much respected are treated with pleasantry, and which, from beginning "to end, breathes, so to speak, an infernal air. How, it may be asked, can men with so much faith delight in a work adapted to "shake all belief in the firmest mind? How can men so strict "in their_morality take pleasure in a spectacle of triumphant "vice? It may be answered, that, as the pleasantries proceed "from the mouth of the Devil, the more impious they are, the "the more edifying they become; and, as regards the second point, vice is painted in colors too odious to render its success dangerous. Though it be triumphant, Margaret is not the less "interesting; for, to interest us, it is of more avail to merit success

"than to attain it. But the best reason that can be given for the "enthusiasm for Faust, so general, and it must be confessed so "frantic, in Germany, is the exquisite perfection of its style. It "unites grace, vigor, conciseness, richness, purity, perfect ease, simplicity, and harmony. Its reading is a perpetual enchant"ment."*

''

Of this drama we have an English translation by Lord Leveson Gower. It is, indeed, only a reflection in the water. But Shelley has given us some scenes with a bolder hand; and though his admiration of the original outran his knowledge, for his translation is not very correct, yet he has sufficiently well preserved its spirit. Of the pleasantries upon sacred subjects, (pleasantries!) a specimen may be found in his version of the Prologue in Heaven, a parody upon the first chapter of Job. Shelley likewise has rendered a scene which contains the most powerful display of the nightmare poetry of this drama; omitting the gross indecencies, which are such as could not be tolerated in English. Madame de Staël who follows Goethe's German admirers, but is compelled by her good taste and right feelings to toil after them in vain, says of Faust, that "whether it be considered as a production of the de"lirium of genius, or of the satiety of reason, it is to be wished "that such works should not be multiplied." But whatever, in connexion with the other writings of Goethe, are to be its effects in the moral regeneration of mankind, it was one of the last which employed the mind of its author. An unfinished second part has been for some time before the public. The completion of this was one of Goethe's last toils for the good of his race. The old man finished it on the eve of his eighty-second birth-day, and left the manuscript sealed up with ten seals, for the benefit of those who might come after him. In Germany, the drama of Faust is generally considered, we believe, as the master-work of his genius, the most characteristic of his productions.

But of the great engines which are to move the world, it seems one of the principal is William Meister's Apprenticeship, with "its smiling wisdom.” The full advantages which this novel is adapted to confer may be enjoyed by all English readers, properly qualified, for there is an excellent translation of it. But its wisdom is hidden wisdom to profane eyes. They will read in vain. To them, with the exception of some passages, it will appear in the main a vulgar, childish, immoral tale, the personages and incidents of which are not like those of the earth, and yet are on it. It has afforded occasion to one of the most happy pieces of criticism which are to be found in our language. We do not recollect to have

* Euvres Dramatiques de Goethe. Tom. I, p. 85.

seen a more true account of a book in more felicitous language, than is given of this novel in the Edinburgh Review.*

We doubt whether any English writer has yet attained to the mystic, transcendental, exalted style of the article in the New Monthly. We had thought that the force of folly could no further go. But the same author (evidently the same) reappears with more elaborate display in the article in the Foreign Quarterly; some passages of which, taken from their connexion, would produce a conviction in most readers, that they were parts of a burlesque too extravagant to be amusing. Not venturing to say all that he would in his proper person about the worship of great men being the only true worship of the wise, he brings forward a man of straw whom he baptizes, as if in joke, Professor Teufelsdreck,† to utter his extravagances for him in the strangest language. Under the cover of this Professor Asafœtida (to take the mildest rendering of his well-chosen name), he exclaims:

"Blame not the world for such minutest curiosity about its great ones this comes of the world's old established necessity to worship: and, indeed, whom but its great ones, that 'like celestial 'fire-pillars go before it on the march,' ought it to worship? Blame not even that mistaken worship of sham great ones, that are not celestial fire-pillars, but terrestrial glass lanterns with wick and tallow, under no guidance but a stupid fatuous one; of which worship the litanies and gossip homilies are, in some quarters of the globe, so inexpressibly uninteresting. Blame it not; pity it rather, with a certain loving respect.

"Man is never, let me assure thee, altogether a clothes-horse ; under the clothes there is always a body and a soul. The Count von Bügeleisen, so idolized by our fashionable classes, is not, as the English Swift asserts, created wholly by the tailor; but partially also by the supernatural powers. His beautifully cut apparel, and graceful expensive tackle and environment of all kinds, are but the symbols of a beauty and gracefulness, supposed to be inherent in the Count himself; under which predicament come also our reverence for his counthood, and in good part that other notable phenomenon of his being worshipped, because he is worshipped, of one idolator, sheep-like, running after him, because many have already run. Nay, on what other principle but this latter hast thou, O reader, (if thou be not one of a thousand,) read, for example, thy Homer, and found some real joy therein? All these things, I say, the apparel, the counthood, the existing popularity, and whatever else can combine there, are symbols; -bank notes, which, whether there be gold behind them, or only bankruptcy and empty

In the eighty-fourth number, for August, 1825. See particularly pages 414, 415. Teufelsdreck, i. e. Devilsdung, Asafoetida.

drawers, pass current for gold. But how, now, could they so pass, if gold itself were not prized, and believed and known to be somewhere extant? "*

As a specimen of the style of this writer, speaking in his own person, may be quoted his annunciation of the fact, that soon after the death of an eminent individual, it is common for biographies, and other works concerning him, to be published; together with the philosophical solution which he gives of this phenomenon.

"At all lykewakes the doings and endurances of the Departed are the theme: rude souls, rude tongues grow eloquently busy with him; a whole septuagint of beldames are striving to render, in such dialect as they have, the small bible, or apocrypha, of his existence, for the general perusal. The least famous of mankind will for once become public, and have his name printed, and read not without interest in the newspaper obituaries; on some frail memorial, under which he has crept to sleep. Foolish lovesick girls know that there is one method to impress the obdurate false Lovelace, and wring his bosom; the method of drowning: foolish ruined dandies, whom the tailor will no longer trust, and the world turning on its heel is about forgetting, can recall it to attention by report of pistol; and so in a worthless death, if in a worthless life no more, reattain the topgallant of renown, for one day. Death is ever a sublimity, and supernatural wonder, were there no other left: the last act of a most strange drama, which is not dramatic but has now become real; wherein, miraculously, Furies, god-missioned, have in actual person risen from the abyss, and do verily dance there in that terror of all terrors, and wave their dusky-glaring torches, and shake their serpent hair! Out of which heart-thrilling, so authentically tragic fifth act there goes, as we said, a new meaning over all

* As a commentary on this rhapsody (if it deserve so respectable a name) on the worship of great men, we give two epigrams from one of the many worthless works which have been showered upon the German public since the death of Goethe.

"Einstmals logen die Kreter, es sei Zeus selbst gestorben;

Sagen sie jetzo, 'Es starb Göthe,' so lugen sie's auch.” "Formerly the Cretans lied, in saying Jupiter himself is dead; Should men now say, 'Goethe died,' it would be a lie also.” "Zeus ist dem Volke Beginn, und Zeus ist Ende dem Volke; Mir ist Göthe Beginn, Göthe mir Mitt' und Beschluss." "To the vulgar, Jupiter is the beginning, and to the vulgar, Jupiter is the end;

"To me, Goethe is the beginning, to me, Goethe is the middle and

the conclusion."

The work quoted is entitled "Blumen auf Göthe's Ruhestatt gestreut." "Flowers strewed over Goethe's Place of Rest." By J. A. Gotthold. Königsberg, (Hungary.) 1832.