terly and comprehensive of his works. Its historical value is partially impaired by the fact of its regarding the earlier stages of his career through the light of his mature philosophy. No man at sixty can describe with accuracy the motives and emotions of twenty; but few men looking back from the height from which Göthe did in their past life, can describe it so honestly and in the main so faithfully. The "West-œstlicher Divan" (1819) is no less astonishing from the mass of erudition on which it rests, than from the warmth and buoyancy which characterize most of the lyrics.
"Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre" (1821-29) is considered by some the least interesting of Göthe's works, while Carlyle and others regard it as containing the deepest results of his philosophy. We cannot but regard its frequent obscurity and want of arrangement as serious defects. It is more a collection of thoughts and fancies on the manifold phases and problems of life than a systematic work, but it is adorned by various masterpieces of illustration and comprehensiveness and subtlety. The second part of "Faust" was completed in 1831. Its rare poetical beauties—the perfect artistic form of some of its parts, as the Helena, which forms a distinct whole, and was composed at a much earlier date, and the lyrics interspersed through the work—are universally acknowledged. The meaning of the whole is partially clouded by the mysticism which resulted from the poet's growing tendency to the symbolic representation of truth; but it is yet discernible enough to those who will read it aright. The problem which agitated Faust in the first part of the tragedy, is carried out more fully here. The solution lies neither in books nor in a materialistic service of nature, but in the sustained effort to evolve a harmony between nature and the individuality of man. The drama has another and a religious aspect. The problem of the good man struggling against external evil had been wrought out in the loftiest of the old Hebrew poems. What of him who struggles against the evil of his own heart, and is tempted and falls, and strives to rise again? "Faust" points towards an answer—He falls, but never yields; he is never satisfied with evil, and so never entirely loses his power to resist, or his hope of rising above it. No scene in the drama is more impressive than that with which it closes, where, after the whole of his wild and stormy life has passed, the spirit of the erring yet ever aspiring man is permitted to enter the kingdom of the future as a little child.
"Faust" had thus accompanied the poet through life. A year after its completion he too found rest. On the 22nd of March, 1832, Germany lost her greatest son. His last words ere he passed serenely away memorably summed the desire of his long life—"More light; more light."
What Göthe was we may partly realize to ourselves; what he did for mankind cannot be appreciated till we can see the issue of his ever-widening influence. More than any other writer he represented the thoughts of the last epoch of the world, and more than any other he combined an appreciation of former ages with a comprehension of his own. Among the artists of modern times he takes his place above all others beside Dante and our own Shakspeare. Of that supreme triumvirate, Göthe perhaps owed least to inspiration—most to culture; he was the least intense and the most comprehensive. Inferior to the other two as a poet, he had even a wider grasp of life in a more complex era. Of this life he regarded art and poetry as the natural and legitimate representation. The events and experiences of his career were moulded into fitness for reproduction, and made to reappear in his works. Neither "Werther," nor "Tasso," nor "Faust" were written to prove a priori theories, or work out mere subjective ideas; they represent the various phases of his own and more or less of every man's life. Göthe's poetical masterpieces are those in which he has most directly reflected those phases, his lyrics and his dramatic delineation of character. He never succeeded with the epos.
Turning from the consideration of Göthe as an artist to review his personal character, we touch on disputed ground. It is the fate of men who have, through the great experience possible only to a great mind, raised themselves to a central view of human strife, to be pronounced cold because they are dispassionate, and selfish because they refuse to commit themselves wholly to half truths. Critics who are ready to sympathize with all the errors of genius, have no forbearance for an impartiality which they misconstrue into indifference. The real faults of Göthe have been passed over to fasten on him a charge which he least of all deserved, and which is most of all inconsistent with the whole tone of his character. A man may be a poet and a universal favourite in spite of defects even more serious than apathy, but coldness of heart is inconsistent with the very essence of a poet's nature, and it is fatal to popularity. Göthe's poetry is in great measure the record of passion, toned down, indeed, and harmonized by reflection, but intense in proportion to the intensity of emotion which it arouses in the reader. Keen feeling, as well as calm thought, was the source of much of his inspiration. It is as inconceivable that the author of the lyrics, the creator of Margaret and Mignon, should have been cold-hearted, as that the arbiter of German literature should have remained the idol of his contemporaries without sympathies as deep as his insight was comprehensive.
Gifted with a personal beauty that in youth made him the cynosure of all circles he entered, in manhood the centre of a brilliant court, and even in old age an object of almost adoration to young men and maidens, old men and children, he was one who not only attracted admiration, but for ever chained it down.
His character was far from perfect, but it was lovable to a degree that few who have not studied the letters of his friends can comprehend , his benevolence was as wide as his intellect, the manner of his charity as chaste as that of his verse. The jealousy which is too prevailing a characteristic of literary men fell dead at Göthe's approach. Klopstock loved him, Herder loved him, Wieland loved him, Schiller loved him; the cynic Merck and the fanatic Lavater, the savage Basedow and the gentle Jean Paul, were similar only in their veneration and esteem for Göthe. His prince, his family, his servants, worshipped him equally. Napoleon felt the spell of his presence, and the old peasants at Weimar stood still as he passed. The heart of Göthe which few knew—remarks one of his contemporaries—was as large as his head, which many knew. What he lived—said another—was greater than what he wrote. The irregularities of his early life sprang from the waywardness or an ardent constitution; what appeared selfish was the result of the impulse of passion, not the egotism of indifference. When the fermentations of youth had subsided, he marked out and with an unparalleled steadfastness pursued the path of self-culture, disdaining alike all frivolous distractions and grosser pleasures that threatened to retard the accomplishment of his task. Few have had his opportunities, but fewer have so used them. His own determination rendered him cold to systems of morality or religion whose relation to himself was not apparent; he had too little sympathy for ideas which he had not made entirely his own. Accepting the ordinances of fate as data for his mental and moral progress, he preserved a certain distaste for abstract speculation and metaphysical inquiry. "Totus teres atque rotundus," he looked ever with a touch of scorn upon the falsehood of extremes. The struggle of the youth of Germany for a free and national development found in the young Göthe, when he was not only in it but of it, a ready champion. In later days when he fully formed his course, and accepted as his rule, "tranquillam degere vitam," he stood too much apart from the political movement of 1813. He shed tears at the spoliation of the German provinces, but became reconciled to the conqueror. Had he been of Körner's age, he said, he might have felt like Körner; here as elsewhere manifesting a truthfulness which warrants us, in all the vicissitudes of his career, in accepting unreservedly his own account of the motives which guided his action. Marred by the faults of humanity, Göthe to a degree which is seldom permitted to mortals, seemed to soar beyond the limits of human weakness. The record of his life is the record of a sustained endeavour to solve a clearly-perceived problem, to find the key to the mystery of existence, and to use it as the record of a success which may point the path and hold the lamp for all after runners in the same great race.—A. W., J. N.
* GOETTLING, Karl Wilhelm, a German philologist, was born at Jena in 1793. He left the university to serve as a volunteer against Napoleon, and after the restoration of peace completed his studies at Berlin. In 1819 he obtained the headmastership of the Neuwied gymnasium, and some years later was called to a chair at Jena, where he has since distinguished himself as an efficient and popular teacher. He several times travelled in France, Italy, and Greece. Besides a history of the Roman constitution, he has written a number of learned treatises and edited several classical authors.—K. E.
