ing," on the stage. "'Tis the rough brake which virtue must go through," and is to be endured with becoming philosophy. Any one who writhes under it, should get rid as soon as possible, and how he may, of his sensitive feelings, and encase himself in the hide of a rhinoceros. It is certainly not pleasant to think that the reputation which it has taken a quarter of a century to establish, may be "snuffed out by an article," and possibly an incompetent one, in a quarter of an hour. But the patient must console himself by reflecting, that mighty men have, ere now, been extinguished by trifling agencies. King Pyrrhus was slain by an old woman, who threw a tile on his head; Lord Anson, who sailed round the world, caught his death by tumbling into a brook; and the great Duke of Marlborough died of sixpence.

The actor of thirty years' standing is often criticised, and perhaps condemned by the scribbling tyro of three months' experience. John Kemble wrote out the part of Hamlet thirty times, and each time discovered something new which had escaped him before. During his last season, he said, "Now that I am retiring, I am only beginning thoroughly to understand my art." After Mrs. Siddons had left the stage, a friend calling on her one morning, found her in her garden musing over a book. What are you reading," said the visiter. "You will hardly guess," replied Melpomene. "I am reading over Lady Macbeth, and I am amazed to discover some new points in the character, which I never found out while acting it." In truth, to act is difficult, but to write what is called a criticism on acting, is wonderfully

easy.

66

THIS is by no means a book to be dishis time, still his was an honest, faithregarded. Eckermann was not quite the person to understand the greatest poet of ful, affectionate nature, and, for the last ten years of Goethe's life, he was constantly about his person,-was engaged in the details of preparing for the press the final edition, revised by the author, of Goethe's Works,-was in more intimate confidence with him than could have been likely to have existed between minds more nearly on the same level. We have here his recollections, -a pleasant, gossipping, good-natured book. The first part of it was published a few years after Goethe's death, and since translated in America by Mrs. Fuller. Her translation, as also the original of Eckerman's first publication, we have seen. The translation was, we thought, better than translations in general. Since then Eckermann added another volume, and both are now, for the first time, brought before the English reader by Mr. Oxenford, whose translation of "Goethe's Autobiography" leaves little to be desired that can be learned without a knowledge of the original language.

*

Of Eckermann himself our readers may desire to know something.

He was born at Winsen-on-the-Luke, a little town between Hamburg and Luneberg. It is scarcely possible to imagine a state of poverty greater than that of his family. His father's house was a mere hut. It had but one room capable of being heated. There was a hayloft above this room, to which they mounted by a ladder from outside.There were no stairs. All round were desolate heath and marsh lands, which seemed interminable. John Peter Ecker. mann, our hero, was the youngest child of his father's second marriage. His parents were advanced in years when he was born, and the accidents of life made him grow up very much alone with them. The elder children were scattered about in their search for means of life. One brother was a sailor; one a trader, engaged in the business of the whale fisheries. Sisters were either married or in service; and the child of his father's old age was thus without natural companionship of brothers and sisters. A cow supplied the family with milk, some of which they were able to sell for a few pence. A

small piece of land, rescued from the adjoining waste, gave some coarse vegetables. Corn, however, it did not produce, and they were obliged to buy flour. His mother had some skill in spinning wool, and she made caps for the women of the village, and thus something was earned. His father was what Wordsworth calls a "wanderer," surely, not a very happy name for a pedlar, moving with the regularity of Phoebus Apollo himself through all the signs of the Zodiac.

"My father's business consisted of a small traffic, which varied according to the seasons, and obliged him to be often absent from home, and to travel on foot about the country. In summer, he was seen with a light wooden box on his back, going in the heath country from village to village, hawking ribbons, thread, and silk. At the same time he purchased here woollen stockings and Beyderwand (a cloth woven out of the wool of the sheep on the heaths, and linen yarn), which he again disposed of in the Vierlande on the other side the Elbe, where he likewise went hawking. In the winter, he carried on a trade in rough quills and unbleached linen, which he bought up in the villages of the hut and marsh country, and took to Hamburgh when a ship offered. But in all cases his gains must have been very small, as we always lived in some degree of poverty."—p. 14.

When

Our little Peterkin's own employment also varied with the season. spring commenced, and the waters of the Elbe had receded after their customary overflow, he collected the sedge which had been thrown into the dykes, and heaped them up as litter for the cow. Then came the lengthening days, and they were past watching the cow in the green spring meadows. Then came summer, and he had to bring dry wood from the thickets, distant about a German mile, for their firing through the year. When the harvest came he was seen as a gleaner in the fields of more fortunate men, or he was gathering acorns to sell for the purpose of feeding geese. The child of the old soldier longs to be old enough himself to shoulder a firelock.

"Armour rusting in his halls

On the blood of Clifford calls;
'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the lance,
Bear me to the heart of France
Is the longing of the shield.
Tell thy name thou trembling field-

Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!
Happy day and mighty hour
When our shepherd in his power,
Mail'd and hors'd with lance and sword,
To his ancestors restored,
Like a re-appearing star,
Like the glory from afar,
First shall lead the flock of war."

Like the Clifford of the poet's imagination, young Eckermann, too, had had his dreams of ambition; and even in early youth it was not altogether disappointed. "When I was old enough, I went with my father from hamlet to hamlet, and helped to carry his bundle."

At fourteen, Peterkin had learned to read and write. That he was born for anything better than the drudgery of some humble employment by which he might earn his bread never passed through his mind. Of poetry or of the fine arts he had heard nothing. There was not even that blind longing and striving which give evidence of the existence of something that may hereafter exhibit itself as power. Accident reveals to him the fact, that there was a world of beauty which he had not yet seen; a world, the creation of the mind itself exercising faculties of its own, called, no doubt, into action by occasions presented from without. His father had returned one evening from Hamburg, and his conversation was about his business there. The old man smoked, an accomplishment which Peterkin had not yet learned to indulge in, and he was particular as to his tobacco. The wrapper in which the tobacconist made up his wares exhibited his name and the device of a gallant horse, in full trot. Years after our young friend would have, on the sight of such a symbol, conjured up the demon that assumed the shape of the dead man who fell at Prague, and the lady that rode behind him till they came to the churchyard where she was to sleep for ever; but he had not yet heard of Bürger or of Leonore; and the horse was not to him much better or worse than a real horse of flesh, and blood, and bone. He had learned to write by copying matter set before him-why not draw? So, with pen, ink, and paper, he set to work, and drew a right good horse. He remained awake half the night with excitement and wonder at his success; and he rose early to look at his picture and satisfy

himself that it was not all a dream. His parents also admired. And then he copied five models which a potter gave him; these passed from hand to hand till they fell into the hands of the town bailiff a sort of sovereign of the place, who proposed to send him to Hamburg, for instruction. When this was mentioned to his parents, they, thinking the business of a painter was painting doors and houses, set themselves against it. The houses in Hamburg were, many of them, seventy feet high, and to fall from a ladder, at such a distance from the ground, was not to be regarded; thus this branch of the fine arts ceased to be thought of.

The attention of respectable persons, however, having been once directed to young Eckermann, opportunities arose of improvement. He was allowed to receive lessons in French, and Latin, and music with children of superior rank; and he found means of support in being employed in copying law papers in a public office, and for a year or two, passed from one situation of the kind to another. In 1813 some hope arose of the country freeing itself from the French yoke, and he joined a jager corps; and with them, in the course of his service, marched a good deal about Flanders and Brabant.

The pictures in the Netherlands now gave him the first notion of what it was to be a painter. He made some attempts at pictures, but soon found it was too late for him to think of distinction in this way, and he could have wept for vexation. He, however, studied oratory, with reference to art; lived some time with Ramberg of Hanover, in whom he found a kind friend and competent instructor. Health, however, broke down.

He

felt the unreasonableness of being an expensive burthen to Ramberg. Some contractor for supplying regimental clothing thought his services worth engaging, and, entering on this new line of life, he abandoned his artistic studies for ever.

His new occupation was in Hanover, and he still had the opportunity of conversing about art with Ramberg and his pupils. One of them made him acquainted with the works of Winkelman and Mengs. He read the books, but not having the opportunities of comparing the criticisms with the works of art discussed, he tells

us that he derived little benefit from discussions which thus left on his mind only vague generalities.

At this period he met Körner's "Lyre and Sword." Körner's poems gave him back his own experience; and their military fervour seemned but the echo of his own feelings. The poems of Körner fed his enthusiasm, and, while they possess little other merit, it is impossible to deny to them a sort of drum-and-trumpet power of stirring sound, if there be nothing in them that is properly music. The "Iron Bride" is a fine thing in its way. The "Five oaks of Dallwitz" is a poem of great beauty, far superior to all else that he has written, but his tragedies are good for nothing. Still, there is in his works something suggestive. One campaign is not unlike another; and Körner's brought back his own to Eckermann; and then he recollected that he too had, now and then, made rhymes, as occasions arose, and he tried to remember them. If Körner could write verses, why not he? This he was determined to test, and straightway he wrote a poem on the hardships and fatigues of war, and printed it, and distributed it through the town. The war was at an end, but there was in the poem something to delight the soldier returning to the duties of ordinary life; and Eckermann found that he had succeeded. Not a week now

passed without a poem. He now began to study Schiller and Klopstock. He admired them, but they seemed to move in a region too high for his sympathies. He next met a volume of Goethe, and it influenced him as we imagine Burns influencing and exciting the genius of a young man who had before been only acquainted with more formal poets. Here were songs direct from the heart, not mere repetitions of natural emotions, but the language of a man who had watched all those emotions, who meditated on, and thus was enabled to reproduce in other minds the feelings which had once agitated his own. The young poet found his own inmost soul and its secrets, as yet scarcely known to himself, revealed in these poems. There was also here the absence of all that could intercept the effect. It seemed to be mind directly communing with mind, and not, as in the case of Klopstock and Schiller, clouded by the intervention of symbols and figures, angels and demons, remote

allegories, of which he could make nothing, and relics of paganism which, to an uneducated soldier, were even less than nothing. The difference between the books he had before read, and Goethe's, were as if Burns had been put into the hands of a Scotch boy whom his masters had been before endea vouring to indoctrinate in all that was good, and great, and glorious, through the medium of Wilkie's Epigoniad, or Glover's Leonidas. In Goethe's songs he found nature and reality, and honest, truth-speaking, German feeling. Of Goethe's greater works, images more or less perfect have been produced in translation, both in Eng. land and in France. Of the songs it is impossible to give anything approaching a representation.

Through Goethe's essays and smaller poems Eckermann first became acquainted with the great poet who was destined to produce such powerful

effects on his after life and fortunes. He first read "Wilhelm Meister;" then the earlier parts of the "Dichtung and Wahrheit," and then "Faust." Faust he appears to have at first read with that strange attraction and recoil of spirit which we remember as our own sensation when in our boyhood we first met that marvellous book; but though he recoiled and shuddered, he was again and again drawn to it, even perhaps the more powerfully that it suggests much which the understanding feels it impossible adequately to represent to itself. Eckermann lived absolutely in these works. Goethe became to him the object not alone of admiration but of idolatry. In him and in his works-and in them alone-were Eckermann's life and whole conscious being.

The kind of admiration which we describe is one which can only exist in an early period of life. No man can thus surrender his own proper individuality, nor if it were possible for him to do so could the sacrifice be accepted by a benevolent demon. As yet, however, Eckermann knew Goethe but in his works; and the chief advantage he derived from them was that he was forced out of himself; that, though his internal nature was reflected back to him, as from the surface of a mirror, in these poems, yet they forced upon his notice that varied and external world of which the young and enthusiastic have scarcely a notion, and pre

vented early life from being that vague dream, which, when the inevitable contrast of severe realities comes, is sure to end in morbid humours, in despondency and sadness. The poets do us most service in creating for us a world without; and to this world of theirs Goethe led the young aspirant. The Germans are more fortunate than we are in these countries. Their translations, though praised far more than we think they deserve, if we may speak from an examination of some of the far-famed ones that have fallen into our hands, are infinitely better than most of ours. It has occurred to us to wish to look at a passage of Sophocles when the original was not at hand. Through the clouds of Franklin no guess whatever could we make as to what the meaning of the poet was, while an intelligible meaning was at least presented by Stolberg, whose translation was also on our shelves. Eckermann was enabled to lay hands on some German versions of Horace, and Sophocles, and Shakspeare. He even found that while he met much to sympathise with and to admire, there was no enjoying what was peculiar in poetry without a knowledge of details, and he honestly laboured to learn the languages of the originals. Old as he was for a schoolboy he placed himself under the instruction of a good language-master; worked hard at Greek; placed himself at a gymna sium; rose at five each morning; and worked through the day in such hours as he could spare from his office at his books. He read dramas, too-Müllner's "Guilt," and Grillparzer's "Ancestress," built on doctrines of inevitable fate, and he straightway set to answer them by dramas asserting the freedom of the will. Eckermann's earnestness was appreciated by the persons in authority at the war office, where he was employed, and when he determined on going to the University, he was given by them a pension of 150 dollars yearly for two years, to assist him in the prosecution of his studies. He printed a volume of poems by subscription, and thus got 150 dollars more; and in May, 1821, made his way to Göttingen.

He commenced with the study of Jurisprudence, but poetry was strong at his heart, and during the lectures on the Institutes and Pandects he was busy disposing some story into dramatic form. For the purpose of obtaining a higher range of education than was

otherwise attainable, he had gone to the University. To succeed in this was only possible on the condition of his describing himself as a student of one of the Faculties, and with this view alone did he call himself a law student. Heeren was at this time lecturing on history, and Dissen on languages, in the same University, and to their lectures, more than to anything else, our young student attended.

Meanwhile his pecuniary means were nearly exhausted, and he sought to relieve himself from anxiety on this score by authorship. A drama was to be produced; then an essay on the principles of poetry. He took lodgings in the country, and began with his essay. He had, when he began to publish poetry, sent a copy of his verses to Goethe, which was good-naturedly received, and he got a few words of kindly encouragement from the benevolent old man. When his essay was completed he sent the manuscript to Goethe, and towards the end of May, 1823, he set out on foot for Weimar.

The volumes which Mr. Oxenford has translated give a few notices of Goethe, referring to a period before Eckermann's first visit. They are from the notes of M. Soret.

Goethe was at the time to which Soret's notes refer (Sept. 1822), somewhat more than seventy. He was still vigo. rous, and years had but added dignity to his graceful figure. The forehead was, as every bust and every picture of him exhibit, majestic. He spoke, however, more than was quite intelligible, considering his appearance and the lively interest which he took in everything, of the infirmities of years. He was too old, he said, for society, and he had ceased to go to court. His own levees and drawing-rooms were often crowded; and this, after all, was the better and happier arrangement. Here he was best seen, and here every movement was natural.

We have an entry from Soret's journal of the 24th of September, 1822, in which he gives an account of an evening spent at Goethe's. The old man's zeal with regard to all scientific discoveries is dwelt on. The advances made in chemistry were a subject of great interest with him. Of iodine and chlorine he spoke as if the new discoveries had taken him quite by surprise. He had iodine brought in, and volatilised it in the flame of a taper. He

"man

pointed out the violet vapour as confirmatory of a law in his "Theory of Colours." A few days afterwards we find Blumenbach at one of his parties, and then the next entry introduces us to Kolbe the painter and Hummel the musician. We have an account then of a winter's evening in which Goethe, after the party had been looking at copperplates and books for awhile, read aloud one of his poems. This is rather a dangerous step for a man of whatever genius; and parties on earth have, like that which Byron describes in another world, been dispersed by a laureate's volunteering to recite epic, or ode, or even sonnet. Burke's throwing a dagger on the table of the House of Commons could not have produced half the terror which thrills every breast, whatever complacency the features may be tutored into expressing, when or woman, but far more when man,"and, above all, when man in his own house, where the genius of hospitality would seem to promise safety, produces some fatal manuscript-an elegy, perhaps, which has added to the grief of an afflicted household an epithala mium congratulating some poor people on sufferings which they are trying to forget. Let no man be idiot enough to read his verses aloud. From every account we have of the matter, the habit rendered Wordsworth and Southey intolerable even to their blindest idolaters. Well, having indulged this fit of spleen, and taken vengeance on a cruel poet who lately wounded us with a broken stump of an ode, we must say that Goethe's friends seem to have been pleased with his "recital" or "reading" of "Charon." His manner was clear, distinct, energetic; the fire of his eye is described as a part of the charm. And then his voice-"What a voice! alternately like thunder, and then soft and mild." The old man must have exerted himself overmuch, for his voice and emphasis are described as too great for the small room in which he received his friends on this evening. A few nights afterwards we have an actual opera at his house.

From an album which was exhibited at Goethe's, containing the handwriting of Luther, Erasmus, and others, Soret has transcribed a sentence which is worth recording, which exists there in Mosheim's handwriting: - "Renown is a source of toil and sorrow-obscu rity a source of happiness."