LIFE WITHOUT
AND
LIFE WITHIN;
OR,
REVIEWS, NARRATIVES, ESSAYS, AND
POEMS.

BY
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI,
AUTHOR OF "WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "AT HOME AND ABROAD," "ART, LITERATURE, AND THE DRAMA," ETC.

EDITED BY HER BROTHER, ARTHUR B. FULLER.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
ARTHUR B. FULLER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts

Cambridge:
Presswork by John Wilson and Son.

PREFACE.

EVERY person, who can be said to really live at all, leads two lives during this period of mortal existence. The one life is outward; it is passed in reading the thoughts of others; in contemplating the struggles, the defeats, the victories, the virtues, the sins, in fine, all things which make the history of those who surround us; and in gazing upon the structures which Art has reared, or paintings which she hath inscribed on the canvas; or looking upon the grand temple of the material universe, and beholding scenes painted by a hand more skilled, more wondrous, in its creative power, than ever can be human hand. The life passed in examining what other minds have produced, or living other men's lives by looking at their deeds, or in any way discerning what addresses the bodily eye or the physical ear,—this is often wise and well; essential, indeed, to any inner life; but it is outward, not self-centred, not the product of our own individual natures.

But the thought of others suggests or develops thought of our own—the history of other men, as it is writing itself imperishably every day upon their souls, or already has written itself in letters of living light or lines of gloomy blackness—gives rise to internal sympathy or abhorrence on the part of us who look on and read what is thus writing and written. Our own spirits are stirred within us: our passions, which have been sleeping lions, our affections and aspirations, before angels with folded wings,—these are awakened by what others are doing, and then we struggle with the bad or yield to it; we obey or disobey the good, and our internal moral life begins; the outward universe or the Great Spirit in our hearts speaks to our souls, leading first to inward dissatisfaction, then to aspiration for and attainment of holiness, and now the inner spiritual life, which shall transfigure all outward life, and throw its own light and give its own hue to all the outward universe, has begun. These two lives are parallel streams; often they mingle their waters, and each imparts its own hue and characteristic to the other. Sometimes the outer life is the main stream; men live only in other men's thoughts and deeds—look only upon the material universe, and retire but seldom within: the inner life is but a silver thread—a little rill, scarce discoverable save by the eye of God. Again, with many the outer life is but little; the passing scene, the din of the battle which humanity is ever waging, the one scarce is gazed upon or the other heard by those who retire much from the outward world, and live almost exclusively upon their own thoughts, and in an ideal realm of fancy, or a real one of internal conflict, which is hidden from the outer vision. Better is it when the stream of outward and inner life are both full and broad—when the glories of the material universe attract the gaze, the realm of literature and learning invite the willing feet to wander in paths where poetry has planted many flowers, philosophy many a sturdy oak of truth, which centuries cannot overthrow—and when, on the other hand, men do not forget to retire often within, and find their own minds kingdoms, where many a noble thought spontaneously grows; their own souls heavens, where, the busy world withdrawn, they commune much with their own aspirations, fight many a noble battle with whatever hinders their spiritual peace, and where they commune yet more with that Comforter, the Divine Spirit, and Christ, that Friend and Helper of all who are seeking to make the life of thought and desire, as well as outward word and deed, high and holy.

It is not a brother's part to pass critical judgment upon a sister's literary attainments, or mental and spiritual gifts, nor is it needful in reference to Madame Ossoli. The world never has questioned her great learning or rich and varied culture; these have been uniformly acknowledged. As a keen and sagacious critic of literature, as an admirer of whatever was noble, an abhorrer of all low and mean, this she was early, and is, so far as we know, without any question regarded. That her judgments have always been acquiesced in is far from true; but the public has ever believed them alike sincere and fearless. The life without,—that of culture and intelligent, careful observation,—all know that stream to have been full to overflowing.

More and more, too, every year, the public are beginning to recognize and appreciate the richness and the beauty of her inner life. The very keenness of her critical acumen,—the very boldness of her rebuke of all she deemed petty and base—the very truthfulness of her conformity to her own standard—her very abhorrence of all cant and mere conformity, long prevented, and even yet somewhat hinder, many from adequately recognizing the loving spirit, the sympathetic nature, the Christian faith, and spiritual devoutness which made her domestic and social life, her action amid her own kindred and nation, and in Rome, for those not allied to her by birth and lineage, at once kindly, noble, and full of holy self-sacrifice. Yet continually the world is learning these things: the history of her life, as her memoirs reveal it, the testimony of so many witnesses here and in other lands, a more careful study and a wider reading of her works, are leading, perhaps rapidly enough, to a true appreciation of the spiritual beauty of her soul, and men see that the waters of her inner life form a stream at once clear and pure, deep and broad.

In presenting to the public the last volume of Margaret Fuller's works, the Editor is encouraged to hope for them a candid, cordial reception. It has been a work of love on his part, for which he has ever felt inadequate, and from it for a time shrunk. But each volume has had a wider and more cordial welcome than its predecessor, and works received by the great public almost with coldness when first published, have, when republished, had a large and cheering circulation, and, what is far better, a kindly appreciation not only by the few, but even by the many. This is evidence enough that the progress of time has brought the public and my sister into closer sympathy and agreement, and a better understanding on its part of her true views and character.

The present volume is less than any of its predecessors a republication. Only one of its articles has ever appeared before in book form. As a book, it is, then, essentially new, though some of its reviews and essays have appeared in the columns of the Tribune and Dial. A large portion of it has never appeared at all in print, especially its poetical portions. The work of collecting these essays, reviews, and poems has been a difficult one, much more than attended the preparation of the previous volumes. Unable, of course, to consult their author as to any of them, the revision I have given is doubtless very imperfect, and requires large allowance. It is even possible that among the poems one or more written by friends and sent her, or copied from some other author, may have crept in unawares; but this all possible pains have been taken to prevent. Such as it is, the volume is now before the public; it truly reveals her inner and outer life, and is doubtless the last of the volumes containing the writings of MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.

CONTENTS.

Life without and Life within.

PART I.
REVIEWS.

MENZEL'S VIEW OF GŒTHE.

MENZEL'S view of Gœthe is that of a Philistine, in the least opprobrious sense of the term. It is one which has long been applied in Germany to petty cavillers and incompetent critics. I do not wish to convey a sense so disrespectful in speaking of Menzel. He has a vigorous and brilliant mind, and a wide, though imperfect, culture. He is a man of talent, but talent cannot comprehend genius. He judges of Gœthe as a Philistine, inasmuch as he does not enter into Canaan, and read the prophet by the light of his own law, but looks at him from without, and tries him by a rule beneath which he never lived. That there was something Menzel saw; what that something was not he saw, but what it was he could not see; none could see; it was something to be felt and known at the time of its apparition, but the clear sight of it was reserved to a day far enough removed from its sphere to get a commanding point of view. Has that day come? A little while ago it seemed so; certain features of Gœthe's personality, certain results of his tendency, had become so manifest. But as the plants he planted mature, they shed a new seed for a yet more noble growth. A wider experience, a deeper insight, make rejected words come true, and bring a more refined perception of meaning already discerned. Like all his elder brothers of the elect band, the forlorn hope of humanity, he obliges us to live and grow, that we may walk by his side; vainly we strive to leave him behind in some niche of the hall of our ancestors; a few steps onward and we find him again, of yet serener eye and more towering mien than on his other pedestal. Former measurements of his size have, like the girdle bound by the nymphs round the infant Apollo, only served to make him outgrow the unworthy compass. The still rising sun, with its broader light, shows us it is not yet noon. In him is soon perceived a prophet of our own age, as well as a representative of his own; and we doubt whether the revolutions of the century be not required to interpret the quiet depths of his Saga.

Sure it is that none has yet found Gœthe's place, as sure that none can claim to be his peer, who has not some time, ay, and for a long time, been his pupil!

Yet much truth has been spoken of him in detail, some by Menzel, but in so superficial a spirit, and with so narrow a view of its bearings, as to have all the effect of falsehood. Such denials of the crown can only fix it more firmly on the head of the "Old Heathen." To such the best answer may be given in the words of Bettina Brentan: "The others criticise thy works; I only know that they lead us on and on till we live in them." And thus will all criticism end in making more men and women read these works, and "on and on," till they forget whether the author be a patriot or a moralist, in the deep humanity of the thought, the breathing nature of the scene. While words they have accepted with immediate approval fade from memory, these oft-denied words of keen, cold truth return with ever new force and significance.

Men should be true, wise, beautiful, pure, and aspiring. This man was true and wise, capable of all things. Because he did not in one short life complete his circle, can we afford to lose him out of sight? Can we, in a world where so few men have in any degree redeemed their inheritance, neglect a nature so rich and so manifestly progressive?

Historically considered, Gœthe needs no apology. His so-called faults fitted him all the better for the part he had to play. In cool possession of his wide-ranging genius, he taught the imagination of Germany, that the highest flight should be associated with the steady sweep and undazzled eye of the eagle. Was he too much the connoisseur, did he attach too great an importance to the cultivation of taste, where just then German literature so much needed to be refined, polished, and harmonized? Was he too sceptical, too much an experimentalist,—how else could he have formed himself to be the keenest, and, at the same time, most nearly universal of observers, teaching theologians, philosophers, and patriots that nature comprehends them all, commands them all, and that no one development of life must exclude the rest? Do you talk, in the easy cant of the day, of German obscurity, extravagance, pedantry, and bad taste,—and will you blame this man, whose Greek, English, Italian, German mind steered so clear of these rocks and shoals, clearing, adjusting, and calming on each side, wherever he turned his prow? Was he not just enough of an idealist, just enough of a realist, for his peculiar task? If you want a moral enthusiast, is not there Schiller? If piety, of purest, mystic sweetness, who but Novalis? Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each withered leaf in a tender breast, look to your Richter. Would you have men to find plausible meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature, well painted and dotted on its proper roller,—there are the Schlegels. Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows in autumn, and Jacobi wrote the heart into philosophy, as well as he could. Who could fill Gœthe's place to Germany, and to the world, of which she is now the teacher? His much-reviled aristocratic turn was at that time a reconciling element. It is plain why he was what he was, for his country and his age.

Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a peculiar force with which all things worked together to prepare him for his office of artist-critic to the then chaotic world of thought in his country. What an unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What endless change and contrast of circumstances and influences! Father and mother, life and literature, world and nature,—playing into one another's hands, always by antagonism! Never was a child so carefully guarded by fate against prejudice, against undue bias, against any engrossing sentiment. Nature having given him power of poetical sympathy to know every situation, would not permit him to make himself at home in any. And how early what was most peculiar in his character manifested itself, may be seen in these anecdotes related by his mother to Bettina.

Of Gœthe's childhood.—"He was not willing to play with other little children, unless they were very fair. In a circle he began suddenly to weep, screaming, 'Take away the black, ugly child; I cannot bear to have it here.' He could not be pacified; they were obliged to take him home, and there the mother could hardly console him for the child's ugliness. He was then only three years old."

"His mother was surprised, that when his brother Jacob died, who had been his playmate, he shed no tear, but rather seemed annoyed by the lamentations of those around him. But afterwards, when his mother asked whether he had not loved his brother, he ran into his room and brought from under his bed a bundle of papers, all written over, and said he had done all this for Jacob."

Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not loved his country and his fellow-men, he would not have answered by tears and vows, but pointed to his works.

In the first anecdote is observable that love of symmetry in external relations which, in manhood, made him give up the woman he loved, because she would not have been in place among the old-fashioned furniture of his father's house; and dictated the course which, at the crisis of his life, led him to choose an outward peace rather than an inward joy. In the second, he displays, at the earliest age, a sense of his vocation as a recorder, the same which drew him afterwards to write his life into verse, rather than clothe it in action. His indirectness, his aversion to the frankness of heroic meetings, is repulsive and suspicious to generous and flowing natures; yet many of the more delicate products of the mind seem to need these sheaths, lest bird and insect rifle them in the bud.

And if this subtlety, isolation, and distance be the dictate of nature, we submit, even as we are not vexed that the wild bee should hide its honey in some old moss-grown tree, rather than in the glass hives of our gardens. We believe it will repay the pains we take in seeking for it, by some peculiar flavor from unknown flowers. Was Gœthe the wild bee? We see that even in his boyhood he showed himself a very Egyptian, in his love for disguises; forever expressing his thought in roundabout ways, which seem idle mummery to a mind of Spartan or Roman mould. Had he some simple thing to tell his friend, he read it from the newspaper, or wrote it into a parable. Did he make a visit, he put on the hat or wig of some other man, and made his bow as Schmidt or Schlosser, that they might stare, when he spoke as Gœthe. He gives as the highest instance of passionate grief, that he gave up for one day watching the tedious ceremonies of the imperial coronation. In daily life many of these carefully recorded passages have an air of platitude, at which no wonder the Edinburgh Review laughed. Yet, on examination, they are full of meaning. And when we see the same propensity writing itself into Ganymede, Mahomet's song, the Bayadere, and Faust, telling all Gœthe's religion in Mignon and Makana, all his wisdom in the Western-Eastern Divan, we respect it, accept, all but love it.

This theme is for a volume, and I must quit it now. A brief summary of what Gœthe was suffices to vindicate his existence, as an agent in history and a part of nature, but will not meet the objections of those who measure him, as they have a right to do, by the standard of ideal manhood.

Most men, in judging another man, ask, Did he live up to our standard?

But to me it seems desirable to ask rather, Did he live up to his own?

So possible is it that our consciences may be more enlightened than that of the Gentile under consideration. And if we can find out how much was given him, we are told, in a pure evangelium, to judge thereby how much shall be required.

Now, Gœthe has given us both his own standard and the way to apply it. "To appreciate any man, learn first what object he proposed to himself; next, what degree of earnestness he showed with regard to attaining that object."

And this is part of his hymn for man made in the divine image, "THE GODLIKE."

"Hail to the Unknown, the
Higher Being
Felt within us!
"Unfeeling
As nature,
Still shineth the sun
Over good and evil;
And on the sinner,
Smile as on the best,
Moon and stars.
Fate too, &c.
"There can none but man
Perform the Impossible.
He understandeth,
Chooseth, and judgeth;
He can impart to the
Moment duration.
"He alone may
The good reward,
The guilty punish,
Mend and deliver;
All the wayward, anomalous
Bind in the useful.
"And the Immortals,
Them we reverence
As if they were men, and
Did, on a grand scale,
What the best man in little
Does, or fain would do.
"Let noble man
Be helpful and good;
Ever creating
The Right and the Useful;
Type of those loftier
Beings of whom the heart whispers."

This standard is high enough. It is what every man should express in action, the poet in music!

And this office of a judge, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and of a sacred oracle, to whom other men may go to ask when they should choose a friend, when face a foe, this great genius does not adequately fulfil. Too often has the priest left the shrine to go and gather simples by the aid of spells whose might no pure power needs. Glimpses are found in his works of the highest spirituality, but it is blue sky seen through chinks in a roof which should never have been builded. He has used life to excess. He is too rich for his nobleness, too judicious for his inspiration, too humanly wise for his divine mission. He might have been a priest; he is only a sage.

An Epicurean sage, say the multitude. This seems to me unjust. He is also called a debauchee. There may be reason for such terms, but it is partial, and received, as they will be, by the unthinking, they are as false as Menzel's abuse, in the impression they convey. Did Gœthe value the present too much? It was not for the Epicurean aim of pleasure, but for use. He, in this, was but an instance of reaction, in an age of painful doubt and restless striving as to the future. Was his private life stained by profligacy? That far largest portion of his life, which is ours, and which is expressed in his works, is an unbroken series of efforts to develop the higher elements of our being. I cannot speak to private gossip on this subject, nor even to well-authenticated versions of his private life. Here are sixty volumes, by himself and others, which contain sufficient evidence of a life of severe labor, steadfast forbearance, and an intellectual growth almost unparalleled. That he has failed of the highest fulfilment of his high vocation is certain, but he was neither Epicurean nor sensualist, if we consider his life as a whole.

Yet he had failed to reach his highest development; and how was it that he was so content with this incompleteness, nay, the serenest of men? His serenity alone, in such a time of scepticism and sorrowful seeking, gives him a claim to all our study. See how he rides at anchor, lordly, rich in freight, every white sail ready to be unfurled at a moment's warning! And it must be a very slight survey which can confound this calm self-trust with selfish indifference of temperament. Indeed, he, in various ways, lets us see how little he was helped in this respect by temperament. But we need not his declaration,—the case speaks for itself. Of all that perpetual accomplishment, that unwearied constructiveness, the basis must be sunk deeper than in temperament. He never halts, never repines, never is puzzled, like other men; that tranquillity, full of life, that ceaseless but graceful motion, "without haste, without rest," for which we all are striving, he has attained. And is not his love of the noblest kind? Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up that pebble that lies at thy foot, and from it learn the all. Go out like Saul, the son of Kish, look earnestly after the meanest of thy father's goods, and a kingdom shall be brought thee. The least act of pure self-renunciation hallows, for the moment, all within its sphere. The philosopher may mislead, the devil tempt, yet innocence, though wounded and bleeding as it goes, must reach at last the holy city. The power of sustaining himself and guiding others rewards man sufficiently for the longest apprenticeship. Is not this lore the noblest?

Yes, yes, but still I doubt. 'Tis true, he says all this in a thousand beautiful forms, but he does not warm, he does not inspire me. In his certainty is no bliss, in his hope no love, in his faith no glow. How is this?

A friend, of a delicate penetration, observed, "His atmosphere was so calm, so full of light, that I hoped he would teach me his secret of cheerfulness. But I found, after long search, that he had no better way, if he wished to check emotion or clear thought, than to go to work. As his mother tells us, 'My son, if he had a grief, made it into a poem, and so got rid of it.' This mode is founded in truth, but does not involve the whole truth. I want the method which is indicated by the phrase, 'Perseverance of the saints.'"

This touched the very point. Gœthe attained only the perseverance of a man. He was true, for he knew that nothing can be false to him who is true, and that to genius nature has pledged her protection. Had he but seen a little farther, he would have given this covenant a higher expression, and been more deeply true to a diviner nature.

In another article on Gœthe, I shall give some account of that period, when a too determined action of the intellect limited and blinded him for the rest of his life; I mean only in comparison with what he should have been. Had it been otherwise, what would he not have attained, who, even thus self-enchained, rose to Ulyssean stature. Connected with this is the fact, of which he spoke with such sarcastic solemnity to Eckermann—"My works will never be popular."

I wish, also, to consider the Faust, Elective Affinities, Apprenticeship and Pilgrimages of Wilhelm Meister, and Iphigenia, as affording indications of the progress of his genius here, of its wants and prospects in future spheres of activity. For the present I bid him farewell, as his friends always have done, in hope and trust of a better meeting.

GŒTHE.

"Nemo contra Deum nisi Deus ipse."

The first of these mottoes is that prefixed by Gœthe to the last books of "Dichtung und Wahrheit." These books record the hour of turning tide in his life, the time when he was called on for a choice at the "Parting of the Ways." From these months, which gave the sun of his youth, the crisis of his manhood, date the birth of Egmont, and of Faust too, though the latter was not published so early. They saw the rise and decline of his love for Lili, apparently the truest love he ever knew. That he was not himself dissatisfied with the results to which the decisions of this era led him, we may infer from his choice of a motto, and from the calm beauty with which he has invested the record.

The Parting of the Ways! The way he took led to court-favor, wealth, celebrity, and an independence of celebrity. It led to large performance, and a wonderful economical management of intellect. It led Faust, the Seeker, from the heights of his own mind to the trodden ways of the world. There, indeed, he did not lose sight of the mountains, but he never breathed their keen air again.

After this period we find in him rather a wide and deep Wisdom, than the inspiration of Genius. His faith, that all must issue well, wants the sweetness of piety, and the God he manifests to us is one of law or necessity, rather than of intelligent love. As this God makes because he must, so Gœthe, his instrument, observes and re-creates because he must, observing with minutest fidelity the outward exposition of Nature; never blinded by a sham, or detained by a fear, he yet makes us feel that he wants insight to her sacred secret. The calmest of writers does not give us repose, because it is too difficult to find his centre. Those flame-like natures, which he undervalues, give us more peace and hope, through their restless aspirations, than he with his hearth-enclosed fires of steady fulfilment. For, true as it is, that God is every where, we must not only see him, but see him acknowledged. Through the consciousness of man, "shall not Nature interpret God?" We wander in diversity, and with each new turning of the path, long anew to be referred to the One.

Of Gœthe, as of other natures, where the intellect is too much developed in proportion to the moral nature, it is difficult to speak without seeming narrow, blind, and impertinent. For such men see all that others live, and, if you feel a want of a faculty in them, it is hard to say they have it not, lest, next moment, they puzzle you by giving some indication of it. Yet they are not, nay, know not; they only discern. The difference is that between sight and life, prescience and being, wisdom and love. Thus with Gœthe. Naturally of a deep mind and shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections enough to appreciate their workings in other men, but never enough to receive their inmost regenerating influence.

How this might have been had he ever once abandoned himself entirely to a sentiment, it is impossible to say. But the education of his youth seconded, rather than balanced, his natural tendency. His father was a gentlemanly martinet; dull, sour, well-informed, and of great ambition as to externals. His influence on the son was wholly artificial. He was always turning his powerful mind from side to side in search of information, for the attainment of what are called accomplishments. The mother was a delightful person in her way; open, genial, playful, full of lively talent, but without earnestness of soul. She was one of those charming, but not noble persons, who take the day and the man as they find them, seeing the best that is there already, but never making the better grow in its stead. His sister, though of graver kind, was social and intellectual, not religious or tender. The mortifying repulse of his early love checked the few pale buds of faith and tenderness that his heart put forth. His friends were friends of the intellect merely; altogether, he seemed led by destiny to the place he was to fill.

Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. Do not wonder, Heart, that he was so heartless. Believe, Soul, that one so true, as far as he went, must yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries of Soul. Perhaps even now he sees that we must accept limitations only to transcend them; work in processes only to detect the organizing power which supersedes them; and that Sphinxes of fifty-five volumes might well be cast into the abyss before the single word that solves them all.

Now, when I think of Gœthe, I seem to see his soul, all the variegated plumes of knowledge, artistic form "und so weiter," burnt from it by the fires of divine love, wingless, motionless, unable to hide from itself in any subterfuge of labor, saying again and again, the simple words which he would never distinctly say on earth—God beyond Nature—Faith beyond Sight—the Seeker nobler than the Meister.

For this mastery that Gœthe prizes seems to consist rather in the skilful use of means than in the clear manifestation of ends. His Master, indeed, makes acknowledgment of a divine order, but the temporal uses are always uppermost in the mind of the reader. But of this, more at large in reference to his works.

Apart from this want felt in his works, there is a littleness in his aspect as a character. Why waste his time in Weimar court entertainments? His duties as minister were not unworthy of him, though it would have been, perhaps, finer, if he had not spent so large a portion of that prime of intellectual life, from five and twenty to forty, upon them.

But granted that the exercise these gave his faculties, the various lore they brought, and the good they did to the community, made them worth his doing,—why that perpetual dangling after the royal family? Why all that verse-making for the albums of serene highnesses, and those pretty poetical entertainments for the young princesses, and that cold setting himself apart from his true peers, the real sovereigns of Weimar—Herder, Wieland, and the others? The excuse must be found in circumstances of his time and temperament, which made the character of man of the world and man of affairs more attractive to him than the children of nature can conceive it to be in the eyes of one who is capable of being a consecrated bard.

The man of genius feels that literature has become too much a craft by itself. No man should live by or for his pen. Writing is worthless except as the record of life; and no great man ever was satisfied thus to express all his being. His book should be only an indication of himself. The obelisk should point to a scene of conquest. In the present state of division of labor, the literary man finds himself condemned to be nothing else. Does he write a good book? it is not received as evidence of his ability to live and act, but rather the reverse. Men do not offer him the care of embassies, as an earlier age did to Petrarca; they would be surprised if he left his study to go forth to battle like Cervantes. We have the swordsman, and statesman, and penman, but it is not considered that the same mind which can rule the destiny of a poem, may as well that of an army or an empire.[2] Yet surely it should be so. The scientific man may need seclusion from the common affairs of life, for he has his materials before him; but the man of letters must seek them in life, and he who cannot act will but imperfectly appreciate action.

The literary man is impatient at being set apart. He feels that monks and troubadours, though in a similar position, were brought into more healthy connection with man and nature, than he who is supposed to look at them merely to write them down. So he rebels; and Sir Walter Scott is prouder of being a good sheriff and farmer, than of his reputation as the Great Unknown. Byron piques himself on his skill in shooting and swimming. Sir H. Davy and Schlegel would be admired as dandies, and Gœthe, who had received an order from a publisher "for a dozen more dramas in the same style as Gœtz von Berlichingen," and though (in sadder sooth) he had already Faust in his head asking to be written out, thought it no degradation to become premier in the little Duchy of Weimar.

"Straws show which way the wind blows," and a comment may be drawn from the popular novels, where the literary man is obliged to wash off the ink in a violet bath, attest his courage in the duel, and hide his idealism beneath the vulgar nonchalance and coxcombry of the man of fashion.

If this tendency of his time had some influence in making Gœthe find pleasure in tangible power and decided relations with society, there were other causes which worked deeper. The growth of genius in its relations to men around must always be attended with daily pain. The enchanted eye turns from the far-off star it has detected to the short-sighted bystander, and the seer is mocked for pretending to see what others cannot. The large and generalizing mind infers the whole from a single circumstance, and is reproved by all around for its presumptuous judgment. Its Ithuriel temper pierces shams, creeds, covenants, and chases the phantoms which others embrace, till the lovers of the false Florimels hurl the true knight to the ground. Little men are indignant that Hercules, yet an infant, declares he has strangled the serpent; they demand a proof; they send him out into scenes of labor to bring thence the voucher that his father is a god. What the ancients meant to express by Apollo's continual disappointment in his loves, is felt daily in the youth of genius. The sympathy he seeks flies his touch, the objects of his affection sneer at his sublime credulity, his self-reliance is arrogance, his far sight infatuation, and his ready detection of fallacy fickleness and inconsistency. Such is the youth of genius, before the soul has given that sign of itself which an unbelieving generation cannot controvert. Even then he is little benefited by the transformation of the mockers into worshippers. For the soul seeks not adorers, but peers; not blind worship, but intelligent sympathy. The best consolation even then is that which Gœthe puts into the mouth of Tasso: "To me gave a God to tell what I suffer." In "Tasso" Gœthe has described the position of the poetical mind in its prose relations with equal depth and fulness. We see what he felt must be the result of entire abandonment to the highest nature. We see why he valued himself on being able to understand the Alphonsos, and meet as an equal the Antonios of every-day life.

But, you say, there is no likeness between Gœthe and Tasso. Never believe it; such pictures are not painted from observation merely. That deep coloring which fills them with light and life is given by dipping the brush in one's own life-blood. Gœthe had not from nature that character of self-reliance and self-control in which he so long appeared to the world. It was wholly acquired, and so highly valued because he was conscious of the opposite tendency. He was by nature as impetuous, though not as tender, as Tasso, and the disadvantage at which this constantly placed him was keenly felt by a mind made to appreciate the subtlest harmonies in all relations. Therefore was it that when he at last cast anchor, he was so reluctant again to trust himself to wave and breeze.

I have before spoken of the antagonistic influences under which he was educated. He was driven from the severity of study into the world, and then again drawn back, many times in the course of his crowded youth. Both the world and the study he used with unceasing ardor, but not with the sweetness of a peaceful hope. Most of the traits which are considered to mark his character at a later period were wanting to him in youth. He was very social, and continually perturbed by his social sympathies. He was deficient both in outward self-possession and mental self-trust. "I was always," he says, "either too volatile or too infatuated, so that those who looked kindly on me did by no means always honor me with their esteem." He wrote much and with great freedom. The pen came naturally to his hand, but he had no confidence in the merit of what he wrote, and much inferior persons to Merck and Herder might have induced him to throw aside as worthless what it had given him sincere pleasure to compose. It was hard for him to isolate himself, to console himself, and, though his mind was always busy with important thoughts, they did not free him from the pressure of other minds. His youth was as sympathetic and impetuous as any on record.

The effect of all this outward pressure on the poet is recorded in Werther—a production that he afterwards under-valued, and to which he even felt positive aversion. It was natural that this should be. In the calm air of the cultivated plain he attained, the remembrance of the miasma of sentimentality was odious to him. Yet sentimentality is but sentiment diseased, which to be cured must be patiently observed by the wise physician; so are the morbid desire and despair of Werther, the sickness of a soul aspiring to a purer, freer state, but mistaking the way.

The best or the worst occasion in man's life is precisely that misused in Werther, when he longs for more love, more freedom, and a larger development of genius than the limitations of this terrene sphere permit. Sad is it indeed if, persisting to grasp too much at once, he lose all, as Werther did. He must accept limitation, must consent to do his work in time, must let his affections be baffled by the barriers of convention. Tantalus-like, he makes this world a Tartarus, or, like Hercules, rises in fires to heaven, according as he knows how to interpret his lot. But he must only use, not adopt it. The boundaries of the man must never be confounded with the destiny of the soul. If he does not decline his destiny, as Werther did, it is his honor to have felt its unfitness for his eternal scope. He was born for wings; he is held to walk in leading-strings; nothing lower than faith must make him resigned, and only in hope should he find content—a hope not of some slight improvement in his own condition or that of other men, but a hope justified by the divine justice, which is bound in due time to satisfy every want of his nature.

Schiller's great command is, "Keep true to the dream of thy youth." The great problem is how to make the dream real, through the exercise of the waking will.

This was not exactly the problem Gœthe tried to solve. To do somewhat, became too important, as is indicated both by the second motto to this essay, and by his maxim, "It is not the knowledge of what might be, but what is, that forms us."

Werther, like his early essays now republished from the Frankfort Journal, is characterized by a fervid eloquence of Italian glow, which betrays a part of his character almost lost sight of in the quiet transparency of his later productions, and may give us some idea of the mental conflicts through which he passed to manhood.

The acting out the mystery into life, the calmness of survey, and the passionateness of feeling, above all the ironical baffling at the end, and want of point to a tale got up with such an eye to effect as he goes along, mark well the man that was to be. Even so did he demand in Werther; even so resolutely open the door in the first part of Faust; even so seem to play with himself and his contemporaries in the second part of Faust and Wilhelm Meister.

Yet was he deeply earnest in his play, not for men, but for himself. To himself as a part of nature it was important to grow, to lift his head to the light. In nature he had all confidence; for man, as a part of nature, infinite hope; but in him as an individual will, seemingly, not much trust at the earliest age.

The history of his intimacies marks his course; they were entered into with passionate eagerness, but always ended in an observation of the intellect, and he left them on his road, as the snake leaves his skin. The first man he met of sufficient force to command a large share of his attention was Herder, and the benefit of this intercourse was critical, not genial. Of the good Lavater he soon perceived the weakness. Merck, again, commanded his respect; but the force of Merck also was cold.

But in the Grand Duke of Weimar he seems to have met a character strong enough to exercise a decisive influence upon his own. Gœthe was not so politic and worldly that a little man could ever have become his Mæcenas. In the Duchess Amelia and her son he found that practical sagacity, large knowledge of things as they are, active force, and genial feeling, which he had never before seen combined.

The wise mind of the duchess gave the first impulse to the noble course of Weimar. But that her son should have availed himself of the foundation she laid is praise enough, in a world where there is such a rebound from parental influence that it generally seems that the child makes use of the directions given by the parent only to avoid the prescribed path. The duke availed himself of guidance, though with a perfect independence in action. The duchess had the unusual wisdom to know the right time for giving up the reins, and thus maintained her authority as far as the weight of her character was calculated to give it.

Of her Gœthe was thinking when he wrote, "The admirable woman is she, who, if the husband dies, can be a father to the children."

The duke seems to have been one of those characters which are best known by the impression their personal presence makes on us, resembling an elemental and pervasive force, rather than wearing the features of an individuality. Gœthe describes him as "Dämonische," that is, gifted with an instinctive, spontaneous force, which at once, without calculation or foresight, chooses the right means to an end. As these beings do not calculate, so is their influence incalculable. Their repose has as much influence over other beings as their action, even as the thunder cloud, lying black and distant in the summer sky, is not less imposing than when it bursts and gives forth its quick lightnings. Such men were Mirabeau and Swift. They had also distinct talents, but their influence was from a perception in the minds of men of this spontaneous energy in their natures. Sometimes, though rarely, we see such a man in an obscure position; circumstances have not led him to a large sphere; he may not have expressed in words a single thought worth recording; but by his eye and voice he rules all around him.

He stands upon his feet with a firmness and calm security which make other men seem to halt and totter in their gait. In his deep eye is seen an infinite comprehension, an infinite reserve of power. No accent of his sonorous voice is lost on any ear within hearing; and, when he speaks, men hate or fear perhaps the disturbing power they feel, but never dream of disobeying. But hear Gœthe himself.

"The boy believed in nature, in the animate and inanimate the intelligent and unconscious, to discover somewhat which manifested itself only through contradiction, and therefore could not be comprehended by any conception, much less defined by a word. It was not divine, for it seemed without reason; not human, because without understanding; not devilish, because it worked to good; not angelic, because it often betrayed a petulant love of mischief. It was like chance, in that it proved no sequence; it suggested the thought of Providence, because it indicated connection. To this all our limitations seem penetrable; it seemed to play at will with all the elements of our being; it compressed time and dilated space. Only in the impossible did it seem to delight, and to cast the possible aside with disdain.

"This existence which seemed to mingle with others, sometimes to separate, sometimes to unite, I called the Dämonische, after the example of the ancients, and others who have observed somewhat similar."—Dichtung und Wahrheit.

"The Dämonische is that which cannot be explained by reason or understanding; it lies not in my nature, but I am subject to it.

"Napoleon was a being of this class, and in so high a degree that scarce any one is to be compared with him. Also our late grand duke was such a nature, full of unlimited power of action and unrest, so that his own dominion was too little for him, and the greatest would have been too little. Demoniac beings of this sort the Greeks reckoned among their demigods."—Conversations with Eckermann.[3]

This great force of will, this instinctive directness of action, gave the duke an immediate ascendency over Gœthe which no other person had ever possessed. It was by no means mere sycophancy that made him give up the next ten years, the prime of his manhood, to accompanying the grand duke in his revels, or aiding him in his schemes of practical utility, or to contriving elegant amusements for the ladies of the court. It was a real admiration for the character of the genial man of the world and its environment.

Whoever is turned from his natural path may, if he will, gain in largeness and depth what he loses in simple beauty; and so it was with Gœthe. Faust became a wiser if not a nobler being. Werther, who must die because life was not wide enough and rich enough in love for him, ends as the Meister of the Wanderjahre, well content to be one never inadequate to the occasion, "help-full, comfort-full."

A great change was, during these years, perceptible to his friends in the character of Gœthe. From being always "either too volatile or infatuated," he retreated into a self-collected state, which seemed at first even icy to those around him. No longer he darted about him the lightnings of his genius, but sat Jove-like and calm, with the thunderbolts grasped in his hand, and the eagle gathered to his feet. His freakish wit was subdued into a calm and even cold irony; his multiplied relations no longer permitted him to abandon himself to any; the minister and courtier could not expatiate in the free regions of invention, and bring upon paper the signs of his higher life, without subjecting himself to an artificial process of isolation. Obliged to economy of time and means, he made of his intimates not objects of devout tenderness, of disinterested care, but the crammers and feeders of his intellect. The world was to him an arena or a studio, but not a temple.

"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."

Had Gœthe entered upon practical life from the dictate of his spirit, which bade him not be a mere author, but a living, loving man, that had all been well. But he must also be a man of the world, and nothing can be more unfavorable to true manhood than this ambition. The citizen, the hero, the general, the poet, all these are in true relations; but what is called being a man of the world is to truckle to it, not truly to serve it.

Thus fettered in false relations, detained from retirement upon the centre of his being, yet so relieved from the early pressure of his great thoughts as to pity more pious souls for being restless seekers, no wonder that he wrote,—

"Es ist dafür gesorgt dass die Bäume nicht in den Himmel wachsen."

"Care is taken that the trees grow not up into the heavens." Ay, Goethe, but in proportion to their force of aspiration is their height.

Yet never let him be confounded with those who sell all their birthright. He became blind to the more generous virtues, the nobler impulses, but ever in self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not manly. If his genius lost sight of the highest aim, he is the best instructor in the use of means; ceasing to be a prophet poet, he was still a poetic artist. From this time forward he seems a listener to nature, but not himself the highest product of nature,—a priest to the soul of nature. His works grow out of life, but are not instinct with the peculiar life of human resolve, as are Shakspeare's or Dante's.

Faust contains the great idea of his life, as indeed there is but one great poetic idea possible to man—the progress of a soul through the various forms of existence.

All his other works, whatever their miraculous beauty of execution, are mere chapters to this poem, illustrative of particular points. Faust, had it been completed in the spirit in which it was begun, would have been the Divina Commedia of its age.

But nothing can better show the difference of result between a stern and earnest life, and one of partial accommodation, than a comparison between the Paridiso and that of the second part of Faust. In both a soul, gradually educated and led back to God, is received at last not through merit, but grace. But O the difference between the grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism, and the loophole redemption of modern sagacity! Dante was a man, of vehement passions, many prejudices, bitter as much as sweet. His knowledge was scanty, his sphere of observation narrow, the objects of his active life petty, compared with those of Gœthe. But, constantly retiring to his deepest self, clearsighted to the limitations of man, but no less so to the illimitable energy of the soul, the sharpest details in his work convey a largest sense, as his strongest and steadiest flights only direct the eye to heavens yet beyond.

Yet perhaps he had not so hard a battle to wage, as this other great poet. The fiercest passions are not so dangerous foes to the soul as the cold scepticism of the understanding. The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz with physical ills, the Lucifer of the middle ages tempted his passions; but the Mephistopheles of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt to solve all the problems of the soul.

This path Faust had taken: it is that of modern necromancy. Not willing to grow into God by the steady worship of a life, men would enforce his presence by a spell; not willing to learn his existence by the slow processes of their own, they strive to bind it in a word, that they may wear it about the neck as a talisman.

Faust, bent upon reaching the centre of the universe through the intellect alone, naturally, after a length of trial, which has prevented the harmonious unfolding of his nature, falls into despair. He has striven for one object, and that object eludes him. Returning upon himself, he finds large tracts of his nature lying waste and cheerless. He is too noble for apathy, too wise for vulgar content with the animal enjoyments of life. Yet the thirst he has been so many years increasing is not to be borne. Give me, he cries, but a drop of water to cool my burning tongue. Yet, in casting himself with a wild recklessness upon the impulses of his nature yet untried, there is a disbelief that any thing short of the All can satisfy the immortal spirit. His first attempt was noble, though mistaken, and under the saving influence of it, he makes the compact, whose condition cheats the fiend at last.

Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je belügen
Dass ich mir selbst gefallen mag,
Kannst du mich mit Genuss betrügen:
Das sey für mich der letzte Tag.
Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schön!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zu Grunde gehen.
Canst thou by falsehood or by flattery
Make me one moment with myself at peace,
Cheat me into tranquillity? Come then
And welcome, life's last day.
Make me but to the moment say,
O fly not yet, thou art so fair,
Then let me perish, &c.

But this condition is never fulfilled. Faust cannot be content with sensuality, with the charlatanry of ambition, nor with riches. His heart never becomes callous, nor his moral and intellectual perceptions obtuse. He is saved at last.

With the progress of an individual soul is shadowed forth that of the soul of the age; beginning in intellectual scepticism; sinking into license; cheating itself with dreams of perfect bliss, to be at once attained by means no surer than a spurious paper currency; longing itself back from conflict between the spirit and the flesh, induced by Christianity, to the Greek era with its harmonious development of body and mind; striving to reëmbody the loved phantom of classical beauty in the heroism of the middle age; flying from the Byron despair of those who die because they cannot soar without wings, to schemes however narrow, of practical utility,—redeemed at last through mercy alone.

The second part of Faust is full of meaning, resplendent with beauty; but it is rather an appendix to the first part than a fulfilment of its promise. The world, remembering the powerful stamp of individual feeling, universal indeed in its application, but individual in its life, which had conquered all its scruples in the first part, was vexed to find, instead of the man Faust, the spirit of the age,—discontented with the shadowy manifestation of truths it longed to embrace, and, above all, disappointed that the author no longer met us face to face, or riveted the ear by his deep tones of grief and resolve.

When the world shall have got rid of the still overpowering influence of the first part, it will be seen that the fundamental idea is never lost sight of in the second. The change is that Gœthe, though the same thinker, is no longer the same person.

The continuation of Faust in the practical sense of the education of a man is to be found in Wilhelm Meister. Here we see the change by strongest contrast. The mainspring of action is no longer the impassioned and noble seeker, but a disciple of circumstance, whose most marked characteristic is a taste for virtue and knowledge. Wilhelm certainly prefers these conditions of existence to their opposites, but there is nothing so decided in his character as to prevent his turning a clear eye on every part of that variegated world-scene which the writer wished to place before us.

To see all till he knows all sufficiently to put objects into their relations, then to concentrate his powers and use his knowledge under recognized conditions,—such is the progress of man from Apprentice to Master.

'Tis pity that the volumes of the Wanderjahre have not been translated entire, as well as those of the Lehrjahre, for many, who have read the latter only, fancy that Wilhelm becomes a master in that work. Far from it; he has but just become conscious of the higher powers that have ceaselessly been weaving his fate. Far from being as yet a Master, he but now begins to be a Knower. In the Wanderjahre we find him gradually learning the duties of citizenship, and hardening into manhood, by applying what he has learned for himself to the education of his child. He converses on equal terms with the wise and beneficent; he is no longer duped and played with for his good, but met directly mind to mind.

Wilhelm is a master when he can command his actions, yet keep his mind always open to new means of knowledge; when he has looked at various ways of living, various forms of religion and of character, till he has learned to be tolerant of all, discerning of good in all; when the astronomer imparts to his equal ear his highest thoughts, and the poor cottager seeks his aid as a patron and counsellor.

To be capable of all duties, limited by none, with an open eye, a skilful and ready hand, an assured step, a mind deep, calm, foreseeing without anxiety, hopeful without the aid of illusion,—such is the ripe state of manhood. This attained, the great soul should still seek and labor, but strive and battle never more.

The reason for Gœthe's choosing so negative a character as Wilhelm, and leading him through scenes of vulgarity and low vice, would be obvious enough to a person of any depth of thought, even if he himself had not announced it. He thus obtained room to paint life as it really is, and bring forward those slides in the magic lantern which are always known to exist, though they may not be spoken of to ears polite.

Wilhelm cannot abide in tradition, nor do as his fathers did before him, merely for the sake of money or a standing in society. The stage, here an emblem of the ideal life as it gleams before unpractised eyes, offers, he fancies, opportunity for a life of thought as distinguished from one of routine. Here, no longer the simple citizen, but Man, all Men, he will rightly take upon himself the different aspects of life, till poet-wise, he shall have learned them all.

No doubt the attraction of the stage to young persons of a vulgar character is merely the brilliancy of its trappings; but to Wilhelm, as to Gœthe, it was this poetic freedom and daily suggestion which seemed likely to offer such an agreeable studio in the greenroom.

But the ideal must be rooted in the real, else the poet's life degenerates into buffoonery or vice. Wilhelm finds the characters formed by this would-be ideal existence more despicable than those which grew up on the track, dusty and bustling and dull as it had seemed, of common life. He is prepared by disappointment for a higher ambition.

In the house of the count he finds genuine elegance, genuine sentiment, but not sustained by wisdom, or a devotion to important objects. This love, this life, is also inadequate.

Now, with Teresa he sees the blessings of domestic peace. He sees a mind sufficient for itself, finding employment and education in the perfect economy of a little world. The lesson is pertinent to the state of mind in which his former experiences have left him, as indeed our deepest lore is won from reaction. But a sudden change of scene introduces him to the society of the sage and learned uncle, the sage and beneficent Natalia. Here he finds the same virtues as with Teresa, and enlightened by a larger wisdom.

A friend of mine says that his ideal of a friend is a worthy aunt, one who has the tenderness without the blindness of a mother, and takes the same charge of the child's mind as the mother of its body. I don't know but this may have a foundation in truth, though, if so, auntism, like other grand professions, has sadly degenerated. At any rate, Gœthe seems to be possessed with a similar feeling. The Count de Thorane, a man of powerful character, who made a deep impression on his childhood, was, he says, "reverenced by me as an uncle." And the ideal wise man of this common life epic stands before us as "The Uncle."

After seeing the working of just views in the establishment of the uncle, learning piety from the Confessions of a Beautiful Soul, and religious beneficence from the beautiful life of Natalia, Wilhelm is deemed worthy of admission to the society of the Illuminati, that is, those who have pierced the secret of life, and know what it is to be and to do.

Here he finds the scroll of his life "drawn with large, sharp strokes," that is, these truly wise read his character for him, and "mind and destiny are but two names for one idea."

He now knows enough to enter on the Wanderjahre.

Gœthe always represents the highest principle in the feminine form. Woman is the Minerva, man the Mars. As in the Faust, the purity of Gretchen, resisting the demon always, even after all her faults, is announced to have saved her soul to heaven; and in the second part she appears, not only redeemed herself, but by her innocence and forgiving tenderness hallowed to redeem the being who had injured her.

So in the Meister, these women hover around the narrative, each embodying the spirit of the scene. The frail Philina, graceful though contemptible, represents the degradation incident to an attempt at leading an exclusively poetic life. Mignon, gift divine as ever the Muse bestowed on the passionate heart of man, with her soft, mysterious inspiration, her pining for perpetual youth, represents the high desire that leads to this mistake, as Aurelia, the desire for excitement; Teresa, practical wisdom, gentle tranquillity, which seem most desirable after the Aurelia glare. Of the beautiful soul and Natalia we have already spoken. The former embodies what was suggested to Gœthe by the most spiritual person he knew in youth—Mademoiselle von Klettenberg, over whom, as he said, in her invalid loneliness the Holy Ghost brooded like a dove.

Entering on the Wanderjahre, Wilhelm becomes acquainted with another woman, who seems the complement of all the former, and represents the idea which is to guide and mould him in the realization of all the past experience.

This person, long before we see her, is announced in various ways as a ruling power. She is the last hope in cases of difficulty, and, though an invalid, and living in absolute retirement, is consulted by her connections and acquaintance as an unerring judge in all their affairs.

All things tend towards her as a centre; she knows all, governs all, but never goes forth from herself.

Wilhelm at last visits her. He finds her infirm in body, but equal to all she has to do. Charity and counsel to men who need her are her business, astronomy her pleasure.

After a while, Wilhelm ascertains from the Astronomer, her companion, what he had before suspected, that she really belongs to the solar system, and only appears on earth to give men a feeling of the planetary harmony. From her youth up, says the Astronomer, till she knew me, though all recognized in her an unfolding of the highest moral and intellectual qualities, she was supposed to be sick at her times of clear vision. When her thoughts were not in the heavens, she returned and acted in obedience to them on earth; she was then said to be well.

When the Astronomer had observed her long enough, he confirmed her inward consciousness of a separate existence and peculiar union with the heavenly bodies.

Her picture is painted with many delicate traits, and a gradual preparation leads the reader to acknowledge the truth; but, even in the slight indication here given, who does not recognize thee, divine Philosophy, sure as the planetary orbits, and inexhaustible as the fountain of light, crowning the faithful Seeker at last with the privilege to possess his own soul.

In all that is said of Macaria,[4] we recognize that no thought is too religious for the mind of Gœthe. It was indeed so; you can deny him nothing, but only feel that his works are not instinct and glowing with the central fire, and, after catching a glimpse pf the highest truth, are forced again to find him too much afraid of losing sight of the limitations of nature to overflow you or himself with the creative spirit.

While the apparition of the celestial Macaria seems to announce the ultimate destiny of the soul of man, the practical application of all Wilhelm has thus painfully acquired is not of pure Delphian strain. Gœthe draws, as he passes, a dart from the quiver of Phœbus, but ends as Æsculapius or Mercury. Wilhelm, at the school of the Three Reverences, thinks out what can be done for man in his temporal relations. He learns to practise moderation, and even painful renunciation. The book ends, simply indicating what the course of his life will be, by making him perform an act of kindness, with good judgment and at the right moment.

Surely the simple soberness of Gœthe should please at least those who style themselves, preëminently, people of common sense.

The following remarks are by the celebrated Rahel von Ense, whose discernment as to his works was highly prized by Gœthe.

"Don Quixote and Wilhelm Meister!

"Embrace one another, Cervantes and Gœthe!

"Both, using their own clear eyes, vindicated human nature. They saw the champions through their errors and follies, looking down into the deepest soul, seeing there the true form. Respectable people call the Don as well as Meister a fool, wandering hither and thither, transacting no business of real life, bringing nothing to pass, scarce even knowing what he ought to think on any subject, very unfit for the hero of a romance. Yet has our sage known how to paint the good and honest mind in perpetual toil and conflict with the world, as it is embodied; never sharing one moment the impure confusion; always striving to find fault with and improve itself, always so innocent as to see others far better than they are, and generally preferring them to itself, learning from all, indulging all except the manifestly base; the more you understand, the more you respect and love this character. Cervantes has painted the knight, Gœthe the culture of the entire man,—both their own time."

But those who demand from him a life-long continuance of the early ardor of Faust, who wish to see, throughout his works, not only such manifold beauty and subtle wisdom, but the clear assurance of divinity, the pure white light of Macaria, wish that he had not so variously unfolded his nature, and concentred it more. They would see him slaying the serpent with the divine wrath of Apollo, rather than taming it to his service, like Æsculapius. They wish that he had never gone to Weimar, had never become a universal connoisseur and dilettante in science, and courtier as "graceful as a born nobleman," but had endured the burden of life with the suffering crowd, and deepened his nature in loneliness and privation, till Faust had conquered, rather than cheated the devil, and the music of heavenly faith superseded the grave and mild eloquence of human wisdom.

The expansive genius which moved so gracefully in its self imposed fetters, is constantly surprising us by its content with a choice low, in so far as it was not the highest of which the mind was capable. The secret may be found in the second motto of this slight essay.

"He who would do great things must quickly draw together his forces. The master can only show himself such through limitation, and the law alone can give us freedom."

But there is a higher spiritual law always ready to supersede the temporal laws at the call of the human soul. The soul that is too content with usual limitations will never call forth this unusual manifestation.

If there be a tide in the affairs of men, which must be taken at the right moment to lead on to fortune, it is the same with inward as with outward life. He who, in the crisis hour of youth, has stopped short of himself, is not likely to find again what he has missed in one life, for there are a great number of blanks to a prize in each lottery.

But the pang we feel that "those who are so much are not more," seems to promise new spheres, new ages, new crises to enable these beings to complete their circle.

Perhaps Gœthe is even now sensible that he should not have stopped at Weimar as his home, but made it one station on the way to Paradise; not stopped at humanity, but regarded it as symbolical of the divine, and given to others to feel more distinctly the centre of the universe, as well as the harmony in its parts. It is great to be an Artist, a Master, greater still to be a Seeker till the Man has found all himself.

What Gœthe meant by self-collection was a collection of means for work, rather than to divine the deepest truths of being. Thus are these truths always indicated, never declared; and the religious hope awakened by his subtle discernment of the workings of nature never gratified, except through the intellect.

He whose prayer is only work will not leave his treasure in the secret shrine.

One is ashamed when finding any fault with one like Gœthe, who is so great. It seems the only criticism should be to do all he omitted to do, and that none who cannot is entitled to say a word. Let that one speak who was all Gœthe was not,—noble, true, virtuous, but neither wise nor subtle in his generation, a divine ministrant, a baffled man, ruled and imposed on by the pygmies whom he spurned, an heroic artist, a democrat to the tune of Burns:

Hear Beethoven speak of Gœthe on an occasion which brought out the two characters in strong contrast.

Extract from a letter of Beethoven to Bettina Brentano Töplitz, 1812.

"Kings and princes can indeed make professors and privy councillors, and hang upon them titles; but great men they cannot make; souls that rise above the mud of the world, these they must let be made by other means than theirs, and should therefore show them respect. When two such as I and Gœthe come together, then must great lords observe what is esteemed great by one of us. Coming home yesterday we met the whole imperial family. We saw them coming, and Gœthe left me and insisted on standing one side; let me say what I would, I could not make him come on one step. I pressed my hat upon my head, buttoned my surtout, and passed on through the thickest crowd. Princes and parasites made way; the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat; the empress greeted me first. Their highnesses KNOW ME. I was well amused to see the crowd pass by Gœthe. At the side stood he, hat in hand, low bowed in reverence till all had gone by. Then I scolded him well; I gave no pardon, but reproached him with all his sins, most of all those towards you, dearest Bettina; we had just been talking of you."

If Beethoven appears, in this scene, somewhat arrogant and bearish, yet how noble his extreme compared with the opposite! Gœthe's friendship with the grand duke we respect, for Karl August was a strong man. But we regret to see at the command of any and all members of the ducal family, and their connections, who had nothing but rank to recommend them, his time and thoughts, of which he was so chary to private friends. Beethoven could not endure to teach the Archduke Rudolph, who had the soul duly to revere his genius, because he felt it to be "hofdíenst," court service. He received with perfect nonchalance the homage of the sovereigns of Europe. Only the Empress of Russia and the Archduke Karl, whom he esteemed as individuals, had power to gratify him by their attentions. Compare with, Gœthe's obsequious pleasure at being able gracefully to compliment such high personages, Beethoven's conduct with regard to the famous Heroic Symphony. This was composed at the suggestion of Bernadotte, while Napoleon was still in his first glory. He was then the hero of Beethoven's imagination, who hoped from him the liberation of Europe. With delight the great artist expressed in his eternal harmonies the progress of the Hero's soul. The symphony was finished, and even dedicated to Bonaparte, when the news came of his declaring himself Emperor of the French. The first act of the indignant artist was to tear off his dedication and trample it under foot; nor could he endure again even the mention of Napoleon until the time of his fall.

Admit that Gœthe had a natural taste for the trappings of rank and wealth, from which the musician was quite free, yet we cannot doubt that both saw through these externals to man as a nature; there can be no doubt on whose side was the simple greatness, the noble truth. We pardon thee, Gœthe,—but thee, Beethoven, we revere, for thou hast maintained the worship of the Manly, the Permanent, the True!

The clear perception which was in Gœthe's better nature of the beauty of that steadfastness, of that singleness and simple melody of soul, which he too much sacrificed to become "the many-sided One," is shown most distinctly in his two surpassingly beautiful works, The Elective Affinities and Iphigenia.

Not Werther, not the Nouvelle Héloise, have been assailed with such a storm of indignation as the first-named of these works, on the score of gross immorality.

The reason probably is the subject; any discussion of the validity of the marriage vow making society tremble to its foundation; and, secondly, the cold manner in which it is done. All that is in the book would be bearable to most minds if the writer had had less the air of a spectator, and had larded his work here and there with ejaculations of horror and surprise.

These declarations of sentiment on the part of the author seem to be required by the majority of readers, in order to an interpretation of his purpose, as sixthly, seventhly, and eighthly were, in an old-fashioned sermon, to rouse the audience to a perception of the method made use of by the preacher.

But it has always seemed to me that those who need not such helps to their discriminating faculties, but read a work so thoroughly as to apprehend its whole scope and tendency, rather than hear what the author says it means, will regard the Elective Affinities as a work especially what is called moral in its outward effect, and religious even to piety in its spirit. The mental aberrations of the consorts from their plighted faith, though in the one case never indulged, and though in the other no veil of sophistry is cast over the weakness of passion, but all that is felt expressed with the openness of one who desires to legitimate what he feels, are punished by terrible griefs and a fatal catastrophe. Ottilia, that being of exquisite purity, with intellect and character so harmonized in feminine beauty, as they never before were found in any portrait of woman painted by the hand of man, perishes, on finding she has been breathed on by unhallowed passion, and led to err even by her ignorant wishes against what is held sacred. The only personage whom we do not pity is Edward, for he is the only one who stifles the voice of conscience.

There is indeed a sadness, as of an irresistible fatality, brooding over the whole. It seems as if only a ray of angelic truth could have enabled these men to walk wisely in this twilight, at first so soft and alluring, then deepening into blind horror.

But if no such ray came to prevent their earthly errors, it seems to point heavenward in the saintly sweetness of Ottilia. Her nature, too fair for vice, too finely wrought even for error, comes lonely, intense, and pale, like the evening star on the cold, wintry night. It tells of other worlds, where the meaning of such strange passages as this must be read to those faithful and pure like her, victims perishing in the green garlands of a spotless youth to atone for the unworthiness of others.

An unspeakable pathos is felt from the minutest trait of this character, and deepens with every new study of it. Not even in Shakspeare have I so felt the organizing power of genius. Through dead words I find the least gestures of this person, stamping themselves on my memory, betraying to the heart the secret of her life, which she herself, like all these divine beings, knew not. I feel myself familiarized with all beings of her order. I see not only what she was, but what she might have been, and live with her in yet untrodden realms.

Here is the glorious privilege of a form known only in the world of genius. There is on it no stain of usage or calculation to dull our sense of its immeasurable life. What in our daily walk, mid common faces and common places, fleets across us at moments from glances of the eye, or tones of the voice, is felt from the whole being of one of these children of genius.

This precious gem is set in a ring complete in its enamel. I cannot hope to express my sense of the beauty of this book as a work of art. I would not attempt it if I had elsewhere met any testimony to the same. The perfect picture, always before the mind, of the chateau, the moss hut, the park, the garden, the lake, with its boat and the landing beneath the platan trees; the gradual manner in which both localities and persons grow upon us, more living than life, inasmuch as we are, unconsciously, kept at our best temperature by the atmosphere of genius, and thereby more delicate in our perceptions than amid our customary fogs; the gentle unfolding of the central thought, as a flower in the morning sun; then the conclusion, rising like a cloud, first soft and white, but darkening as it comes, till with a sudden wind it bursts above our heads; the ease with which we every where find points of view all different, yet all bearing on the same circle, for, though we feel every hour new worlds, still before our eye lie the same objects, new, yet the same, unchangeable, yet always changing their aspects as we proceed, till at last we find we ourselves have traversed the circle, and know all we overlooked at first,—these things are worthy of our highest admiration.

For myself, I never felt so completely that very thing which genius should always make us feel—that I was in its circle, and could not get out till its spell was done, and its last spirit permitted to depart. I was not carried away, instructed, delighted more than by other works, but I was there, living there, whether as the platan tree, or the architect, or any other observing part of the scene. The personages live too intensely to let us live in them; they draw around themselves circles within the circle; we can only see them close, not be themselves.

Others, it would seem, on closing the book, exclaim, "What an immoral book!" I well remember my own thought, "It is a work of art!" At last I understood that world within a world, that ripest fruit of human nature, which is called art. With each perusal of the book my surprise and delight at this wonderful fulfilment of design grew. I understood why Gœthe was well content to be called Artist, and his works, works of Art, rather than revelations. At this moment, remembering what I then felt, I am inclined to class all my negations just written on this paper as stuff, and to look upon myself, for thinking them, with as much contempt as Mr. Carlyle, or Mrs. Austin, or Mrs. Jameson might do, to say nothing of the German Gœtheans.

Yet that they were not without foundation I feel again when I turn to the Iphigenia—a work beyond the possibility of negation; a work where a religious meaning not only pierces but enfolds the whole; a work as admirable in art, still higher in significance, more single in expression.

There is an English translation (I know not how good) of Gœthe's Iphigenia. But as it may not be generally known, I will give a sketch of the drama. Iphigenia, saved, at the moment of the sacrifice made by Agamemnon in behalf of the Greeks, by the goddess, and transferred to the temple at Tauris, appears alone in the consecrated grove. Many years have passed since she was severed from the home of such a tragic fate, the palace of Mycenæ. Troy had fallen, Agamemnon been murdered, Orestes had grown up to avenge his death. All these events were unknown to the exiled Iphigenia. The priestess of Diana in a barbarous land, she had passed the years in the duties of the sanctuary, and in acts of beneficence. She had acquired great power over the mind of Thoas, king of Tauris, and used it to protect strangers, whom it had previously been the custom of the country to sacrifice to the goddess.

She salutes us with a soliloquy, of which I give a rude translation:—

Beneath your shade, living summits
Of this ancient, holy, thick-leaved grove,
As in the silent sanctuary of the Goddess,
Still I walk with those same shuddering feelings,
As when I trod these walks for the first time.
My spirit cannot accustom itself to these places;
Many years now has kept me here concealed
A higher will, to which I am submissive;
Yet ever am I, as at first, the stranger;
For ah! the sea divides me from my beloved ones,
And on the shore whole days I stand,
Seeking with my soul the land of the Greeks,
And to my sighs brings the rushing wave only
Its hollow tones in answer.
Woe to him who, far from parents, and brothers, and sisters,
Drags on a lonely life. Grief consumes
The nearest happiness away from his lips;
His thoughts crowd downwards—
Seeking the hall of his fathers, where the Sun
First opened heaven to him, and kindred-born
In their first plays knit daily firmer and firmer
The bond from heart to heart—I question not the Gods,
Only the lot of woman is one of sorrow;
In the house and in the war man rules,
Knows how to help himself in foreign lands,
Possessions gladden and victory crowns him,
And an honorable death stands ready to end his days.
Within what narrow limits is bounded the luck of woman!
To obey a rude husband even is duty and comfort; how sad
When, instead, a hostile fate drives her out of her sphere!
So holds me Thoas, indeed a noble man, fast
In solemn, sacred, but slavish bonds.
O, with shame I confess that with secret reluctance
I serve thee, Goddess, thee, my deliverer.
My life should freely have been dedicate to thee,
But I have always been hoping in thee, O Diana,
Who didst take in thy soft arms me, the rejected daughter
Of the greatest king! Yes, daughter of Zeus,
I thought if thou gavest such anguish to him, the high hero,
The godlike Agamemnon;
Since he brought his dearest, a victim, to thy altar,
That, when he should return, crowned with glory, from Ilium,
At the same time thou would'st give to his arms his other treasures,
His spouse, Electra, and the princely son;
Me also, thou would'st restore to mine own,
Saving a second time me, whom from death thou didst save,
From this worse death,—the life of exile here.

These are the words and thoughts; but how give an idea of the sweet simplicity of expression in the original, where every word has the grace and softness of a flower petal?

She is interrupted by a messenger from the king, who prepares her for a visit from himself of a sort she has dreaded. Thoas, who has always loved her, now left childless by the calamities of war, can no longer resist his desire to reanimate by her presence his desert house. He begins by urging her to tell him the story of her race, which she does in a way that makes us feel as if that most famous tragedy had never before found a voice, so simple, so fresh in its naïveté is the recital.

Thoas urges his suit undismayed by the fate that hangs over the race of Tantalus.

Thoas.
Was it the same Tantalus,
Whom Jupiter called to his council and banquets,
In whose talk so deeply experienced, full of various learning,
The Gods delighted as in the speech of oracles?
Iphigenia.
It is the same, but the Gods should not
Converse with men, as with their equals.
The mortal race is much too weak
Not to turn giddy on unaccustomed heights.
He was not ignoble, neither a traitor,
But for a servant too great, and as a companion
Of the great Thunderer only a man. So was
His fault also that of a man, its penalty
Severe, and poets sing—Presumption
And faithlessness cast him down from the throne of Jove,
Into the anguish of ancient Tartarus;
Ah, and all his race bore their hate.
Thoas.
Bore it the blame of the ancestor, or its own?
Iphigenia.
Truly the vehement breast and powerful life of the Titan
Were the assured inheritance of son and grandchild;
But the Gods bound their brows with a brazen band,
Moderation, counsel, wisdom, and patience
Were hid from their wild, gloomy glance,
Each desire grew to fury,
And limitless ranged their passionate thoughts.

Iphigenia refuses with gentle firmness to give to gratitude what was not due. Thoas leaves her in anger, and, to make her feel it, orders that the old, barbarous custom be renewed, and two strangers just arrived be immolated at Diana's altar.

Iphigenia, though distressed, is not shaken by this piece of tyranny. She trusts her heavenly protectress will find some way for her to save these unfortunates without violating her truth.

The strangers are Orestes and Pylades, sent thither by the oracle of Apollo, who bade them go to Tauris and bring back "The Sister;" thus shall the heaven-ordained parricide of Orestes be expiated, and the Furies cease to pursue him.

The Sister they interpret to be Dian, Apollo's sister; but Iphigenia, sister to Orestes, is really meant.

The next act contains scenes of most delicate workmanship, first between the light-hearted Pylades, full of worldly resource and ready tenderness, and the suffering Orestes, of far nobler, indeed heroic nature, but less fit for the day and more for the ages. In the first scene the characters of both are brought out with great skill, and the nature of the bond between "the butterfly and the dark flower," distinctly shown in few words.

The next scene is between Iphigenia and Pylades. Pylades, though he truly answers the questions of the priestess about the fate of Troy and the house of Agamemnon, does not hesitate to conceal from her who Orestes really is, and manufactures a tissue of useless falsehoods with the same readiness that the wise Ulysses showed in exercising his ingenuity on similar occasions.

It is said, I know not how truly, that the modern Greeks are Ulyssean in this respect, never telling straightforward truth, when deceit will answer the purpose; and if they tell any truth, practising the economy of the King of Ithaca, in always reserving a part for their own use. The character which this denotes is admirably hit off with few strokes in Pylades, the fair side of whom Iphigenia thus paints in a later scene.

Bless, ye Gods, our Pylades,
And whatever he may undertake;
He is the arm of the youth in battle,
The light-giving eye of the aged man in the council.
For his soul is still; it preserves
The holy possession of Repose unexhausted,
And from its depths still reaches
Help and advice to those tossed to and fro.

Iphigenia leaves him in sudden agitation, when informed of the death of Agamemnon. Returning, she finds in his place Orestes, whom she had not before seen, and draws from him by her artless questions the sequel to this terrible drama wrought by his hand. After he has concluded his narrative, in the deep tones of cold anguish, she cries,—

Immortals, you who through your bright days
Live in bliss, throned on clouds ever renewed,
Only for this have you all these years
Kept me separate from men, and so near yourselves,
Given me the child-like employment to cherish the fires on your altars,
That my soul might, in like pious clearness,
Be ever aspiring towards your abodes,
That only later and deeper I might feel
The anguish and horror that have darkened my house.
O Stranger,
Speak to me of the unhappy one, tell me of Orestes.
Orestes.
O, might I speak of his death!
Vehement flew up from the reeking blood
His Mother's Soul!
And called to the ancient daughters of Night,
Let not the parricide escape;
Pursue that man of crime; he is yours!
They obey, their hollow eyes
Darting about with vulture eagerness;
They stir themselves in their black dens,
From corners their companions
Doubt and Remorse steal out to join them.
Before them roll the mists of Acheron;
In its cloudy volumes rolls
The eternal contemplation of the irrevocable
Permitted now in their love of ruin they tread
The beautiful fields of a God-planted earth,
From which they had long been banished by an early curse,
Their swift feet follow the fugitive,
They pause never except to gather more power to dismay.
Iphigenia.
Unhappy man, thou art in like manner tortured,
And feelest truly what he, the poor fugitive, suffers!
Orestes.
What sayest thou? what meanest by "like manner"?
Iphigenia.
Thee, too, the weight of a fratricide crushes to earth; the tale
I had from thy younger brother.
Orestes.
I cannot suffer that thou, great soul,
Shouldst be deceived by a false tale;
A web of lies let stranger weave for stranger
Subtle with many thoughts, accustomed to craft,
Guarding his feet against a trap.
But between us
Be Truth;—
I am Orestes,—and this guilty head
Bent downward to the grave seeks death;
In any shape were he welcome.
Whoever thou art, I wish thou mightst be saved,
Thou and my friend; for myself I wish it not.
Thou seem'st against thy will here to remain;
Invent a way to fly and leave me here.

Like all pure productions of genius, this may be injured by the slightest change, and I dare not flatter myself that the English words give an idea of the heroic dignity expressed in the cadence of the original, by the words

where the Greek seems to fold his robe around him in the full strength of classic manhood, prepared for worst and best, not like a cold Stoic, but a hero, who can feel all, know all, and endure all. The name of two syllables in the German is much more forcible for the pause, than the three-syllable Orestes.

is fine to my ear, on which our word Truth also pauses with a large dignity.

The scenes go on more and more full of breathing beauty. The lovely joy of Iphigenia, the meditative softness with which the religiously educated mind perpetually draws the inference from the most agitating events, impress us more and more. At last the hour of trial comes. She is to keep off Thoas by a cunningly devised tale, while her brother and Pylades contrive their escape. Orestes has received to his heart the sister long lost, divinely restored, and in the embrace the curse falls from him, he is well, and Pylades more than happy. The ship waits to carry her to the palace home she is to free from a century's weight of pollution; and already the blue heavens of her adored Greece gleam before her fancy.

But, O, the step before all this can be obtained;—to deceive Thoas, a savage and a tyrant indeed, but long her protector,—in his barbarous fashion, her benefactor! How can she buy life, happiness, or even the safety of those dear ones at such a price?

Then follows the sublime song of the Parcæ, well known through translations.

But Iphigenia is not a victim of fate, for she listens steadfastly to the god in her breast. Her lips are incapable of subterfuge. She obeys her own heart, tells all to the king, calls up his better nature, wins, hallows, and purifies all around her, till the heaven-prepared way is cleared by the obedient child of heaven, and the great trespass of Tantalus cancelled by a woman's reliance on the voice of her innocent soul.

If it be not possible to enhance the beauty with which such ideal figures as the Iphigenia and the Antigone appeared to the Greek mind, yet Gœthe has unfolded a part of the life of this being, unknown elsewhere in the records of literature. The character of the priestess, the full beauty of virgin womanhood, solitary, but tender, wise and innocent, sensitive and self-collected, sweet as spring, dignified as becomes the chosen servant of God, each gesture and word of deep and delicate significance,—where else is such a picture to be found?

It was not the courtier, nor the man of the world, nor the connoisseur, nor the friend of Mephistopheles, nor Wilhelm the Master, nor Egmont the generous, free liver, that saw Iphigenia in the world of spirits, but Gœthe, in his first-born glory; G[o]ethe, the poet; Gœthe, designed to be the brightest star in a new constellation. Let us not, in surveying his works and life, abide with him too much in the suburbs and outskirts of himself. Let us enter into his higher tendency, thank him for such angels as Iphigenia, whose simple truth mocks at all his wise "Beschrankungen," and hope the hour when, girt about with many such, he will confess, contrary to his opinion, given in his latest days, that it is well worth while to live seventy years, if only to find that they are nothing in the sight of God.

THOMAS HOOD.

NOW almost the last light has gone out of the galaxy that made the first thirty years of this age so bright. And the dynasty that now reigns over the world of wit and poetry is poor and pale, indeed, in comparison.

We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not economize our wine; it will not be so often needed now.

Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world—that of a professed wit; and we may say with deeper feeling than of others who shuffle off the load of care, May he rest in peace! The fatigues of a conqueror, a missionary preacher, even of an active philanthropist, like Howard, are nothing to those of a professed wit. Bad enough is it when he is only a man of society, by whom every one expects to be enlivened and relieved; who can never talk gravely in a corner, without those around observing that he must have heard some bad news to be so out of spirits; who can never make a simple remark, while eating a peaceful dinner, without the table being set in a roar of laughter, as when Sheridan, on such an occasion, opened his lips for the first time to say that "he liked currant jelly." For these unhappy men there are no intervals of social repose, no long silences fed by the mere feeling of sympathy or gently entertained by observation, no warm quietude in the mild liveries of green or brown, for the world has made up its mind that motley is their only wear, and teases them to jingle their bells forever.

But far worse is it when the professed wit is also by profession a writer, and finds himself obliged to coin for bread those jokes which, in the frolic exuberance of youth, he so easily coined for fun. We can conceive of no existence more cruel, so tormenting, and at the same time so dull. We hear that Hood was forever behindhand with his promises to publishers; no wonder! But when we hear that he, in consequence, lost a great part of the gains of his hard life, and was, as a result, harassed by other cares, we cannot mourn to lose him, if,

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;"

or if, as our deeper knowledge leads us to hope, he is now engaged in a better life, where his fancies shall take their natural place, and flicker like light on the surface of a profound and full stream flowing betwixt rich and peaceful shores, such as, no less than the drawbacks upon his earthly existence, are indicated in the following

SONNET.
The curse of Adam, the old curse of all,
Though I inherit in this feverish life
Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife,
And fruitless thought in care's eternal thrall,
Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall
I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife
Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure passion still might frame
Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers,
If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came
To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers;
But, O! as many and such tears are ours
As only should be shed for guilt and shame.

In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear. True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeless mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth.

Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth, when he wrote thus:—

All things are touched with melancholy
Born of the secret soul's mistrust,
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy
Bring on conclusions of disgust,
Like the sweet blossoms of the May,
Whose fragrance ends in must.
O, give her, then, her tribute just,
Her sighs and tears and musings holy;
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy.

Hood was true to this vow of acceptance. He vowed to accept willingly the pains as well as joys of life for what they could teach. Therefore, years expanded and enlarged his sympathies, and gave to his lightest jokes an obvious harmony with a great moral design, not obtrusively obvious, but enough so to give a sweetness and permanent complacency to our laughter. Indeed, what is written in his gayer mood has affected us more, as spontaneous productions always do, than what he has written of late with grave design, and which has been so much lauded by men too obtuse to discern a latent meaning, or to believe in a good purpose unless they are formally told that it exists.

The later serious poems of Hood are well known; so are his jest books and novel. We have now in view to speak rather of a little volume of poems published by him, some years since, republished here, but never widely circulated.

When a book or a person comes to us in the best possible circumstances, we judge—not too favorably, for all that the book or person can suggest is a part of its fate, and what is not seen under the most favorable circumstances is never quite truly seen either as to promise or performance—but we form a judgment above what can be the average sense of the world in general as to its merits, which may be esteemed, after time enough has elapsed, a tolerably fair estimate of performance, though not of promise or suggestion.

We became acquainted with these poems in one of those country towns which would be called, abroad, the most provincial of the province. The inhabitants had lost the simplicity of farmers' habits, without gaining in its place the refinement, the variety, the enlargement of civic life. Their industry had received little impulse from thought; their amusement was gossip. All men find amusement from gossip—literary, artistic, or social; but the degrees in it are almost infinite. They were at the bottom of the scale; they scrutinized their neighbors' characters and affairs incessantly, impertinently, and with minds unpurified by higher knowledge; consequently the bitter fruits of envy and calumny abounded.

In this atmosphere I was detained two months, and among people very uncongenial both to my tastes and notions of right. But I had a retreat of great beauty. The town lay on the bank of a noble river; behind it towered a high and rocky hill. Thither every afternoon went the lonely stranger, to await the fall of the sunset light on the opposite bank of the full and rapid stream. It fell like a smile of heavenly joy; the white sails on the stream glided along like angel thoughts; the town itself looked like a fair nest, whence virtue and happiness might soar with sweetest song. So looked the scene from above; and that hill was the scene of many an aspiration and many an effort to attain as high a point of view for the mental prospect, in the hope that little discrepancies, or what seemed so when on a level with them, might also, from above, be softened into beauty and found subservient to a noble design on the whole.

This town boasted few books, and the accident which threw Hood's poems in the way of the watcher from the hill, was a very fortunate one. They afforded a true companionship to hours which knew no other, and, perhaps, have since been overrated from association with what they answered to or suggested.

Yet there are surely passages in them which ought to be generally known and highly prized. And if their highest value be for a few individuals with whom they are especially in concord, unlike the really great poems which bring something to all, yet those whom they please will be very much pleased.

Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great strength under his circumstances. Dickens has fallen, and Sue is falling; for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature. But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender, and brave. From the absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection. His black is admirably contrasted with his white, but his love has no converse of hate. His descriptions of nature, if not accurately or profoundly evidencing insight, are unstudied, fond, and reverential. They are fine reveries about nature.

He has tried his powers on themes where he had great rivals—in the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," and "Hero and Leander." The latter is one of the finest subjects in the world, and one, too, which can never wear out as long as each mind shall have its separate ideal of what a meeting would be between two perfect lovers, in the full bloom of beauty and youth, under circumstances the most exalting to passion, because the most trying, and with the most romantic accompaniments of scenery. There is room here for the finest expression of love and grief, for the wildest remonstrance against fate. Why are they made so lovely and so beloved? Why was a flower brought to such perfection, and then culled for no use? One of the older English writers has written an exquisite poem on this subject, painting a youthful pair, fitted to be not only a heaven but a world to one another. Hood had not power to paint or conceive such fulness of character; but, in a lesser style, he has written a fine poem. The best part of it, however, is the innocent cruelty and grief of the Sea Siren.

"Lycus the Centaur" is also a poem once read never to be forgotten. The hasty trot of the versification, unfit for any other theme, on this betokens well the frightened horse. Its mazy and bewildered imagery, with its countless glancings and glimpses, expressed powerfully the working of the Circean spell, while the note of human sadness, a yearning and condemned human love, thrills through the whole and gives it unity.

The Sonnets, "It is not death," &c., and that on Silence, are equally admirable. Whoever reads these poems will regard Hood as something more than a great wit,—as a great poet also.

To express this is our present aim, and therefore we shall leave to others, or another time, the retrospect of his comic writings. But having, on the late promptings of love for the departed, looked over these, we have been especially amused with the "Schoolmistress Abroad," which was new to us. Miss Crane, a "she Mentor, stiff as starch, formal as a Dutch ledge, sensitive as a daguerreotype, and so tall, thin, and upright, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she was the very Dryad to have fitted it," was left, with a sister little better endowed with the pliancy and power of adaptation which the exigencies of this varied world-scene demand, in attendance upon a sick father, in a foreign inn, where she cannot make herself understood, because her French is not "French French, but English French," and no two things in nature or art can be more unlike. Now look at the position of the sisters.

"The younger, Miss Ruth, was somewhat less disconcerted. She had by her position the greater share in the active duties of Lebanon House, and under ordinary circumstances would not have been utterly at a loss what to do for the comfort or relief of her parent. But in every direction in which her instinct and habits would have prompted her to look, the materials she sought were deficient. There was no easy chair—no fire to wheel it to—no cushion to shake up—no cupboard to go to—no female friend to consult—no Miss Parfitt—no cook—no John to send for the doctor—no English—no French—nothing but that dreadful 'Gefullig,' or 'Ja Wohl,' and the equally incomprehensible 'Gnadige Frau!'

"'Der herr,' said the German coachman, 'ist sehr krank,' (the gentleman is very sick.)

"The last word had occurred so frequently on the organ of the Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important significance.

"'Ruth, what is krank?'

"'How should I know?' retorted Ruth, with an asperity apt to accompany intense excitement and perplexity. 'In English, it's a thing that helps to pull the bell. But look at papa—do help to support him—you're good for nothing.'

"'I am, indeed,' murmured poor Miss Priscilla, with a gentle shake of her head, and a low, slow sigh of acquiescence. Alas! as she ran over the catalogue of her accomplishments, the more she remembered what she could do for her sick parent, the more helpless and useless she appeared. For instance, she could have embroidered him a night-cap—or knitted him a silk purse—or plaited him a guard-chain—or cut him out a watch-paper—or ornamented his braces with bead-work—or embroidered his waistcoat—or worked him a pair of slippers—or openworked his pocket handkerchief. She could even, if such an operation would have been comforting or salutary, have roughcasted him with shell-work—or coated him with red or black seals—or encrusted him with blue alum—or stuck him all over with colored wafers—or festooned him.

"But alas! what would it have availed her poor dear papa in the spasmodics, if she had even festooned him, from top to toe, with little rice-paper roses?"

The comments of the female chorus, as the author reads aloud the sorrows of Miss Crane, are droll as Hood's drollest. Who can say more?

So farewell, gentle, generous, inventive, genial, and most amusing friend. We thank thee for both tears and laughter; tears which were not heart-breaking, laughter which was never frivolous or unkind. In thy satire was no gall, in the sting of thy winged wit no venom, in the pathos of thy sorrow no enfeebling touch! Thou hadst faults as a writer, we know not whether as a man; but who cares to name or even to note them? Surely there is enough on the sunny side of the peach to feed us and make us bless the tree from which it fell.

LETTERS FROM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER.[5]

THIS is a very pleasing book, and if the "Essays of Summer Hours" resemble it, we are not surprised at the favor with which they have been received, not only in this country, but in England.

The writer is, we believe, very young, and as these Essays have awakened in us a friendly expectation which he has time and talent to fulfil, we will, at this early hour, proffer our counsel on two points.

First. Avoid details, so directly personal, of emotion. A young and generous mind, seeing the deceit and cold reserve which so often palsy men who write, no less than those who act, may run into the opposite extreme. But frankness must be tempered by delicacy, or elevated into the region of poetry. You may tell the world at large what you please, if you make it of universal importance by transporting it into the field of general human interest. But your private griefs, merely as yours, belong to yourself, your nearest friends, to Heaven and to nature. There is a limit set by good taste, or the sense of beauty, on such subjects, which each, who seeks, may find for himself.

Second. Be more sparing of your praise: above all, of its highest terms. We should have a sense of mental as well as moral honor, which, while it makes us feel the baseness of uttering merely hasty and ignorant censure, will also forbid that hasty and extravagant praise which strict truth will not justify. A man of honor wishes to utter no word to which he cannot adhere. The offices of Poet—of Hero-worship—are sacred, and he who has a heart to appreciate the excellent should call nothing excellent which falls short of being so. Leave yourself some incense worthy of the best; do not lavish it on the merely good. It is better to be too cool than extravagant in praise; and though mediocrity may be elated if it can draw to itself undue honors, true greatness shrinks from the least exaggeration of its claims. The truly great are too well aware how difficult is the attainment of excellence, what labors and sacrifices it requires, even from genius, either to flatter themselves as to their works, or to be otherwise than grieved at idolatry from others; and so, with best wishes, and a hope to meet again, we bid farewell to the "Landscape Painter."

BEETHOVEN.[6]

THIS book bears on its outside the title, "Life of Beethoven, by Moscheles." It is really only a translation of Schindler, and it seems quite unfair to bring Moscheles so much into the foreground, merely because his name is celebrated in England. He has only contributed a few notes and a short introduction, giving a most pleasing account of his own devotion to the Master. Schindler was the trusty friend of Beethoven, and one whom he himself elected to write his biography. Inadequate as it is, there is that fidelity in the collection of materials which makes it serviceable to our knowledge of Beethoven, and we wish it might be reprinted in America. Though there is little knowledge of music here, yet so far as any exists in company with a free development of mind, the music of Beethoven is the music which delights, which awakens, which inspires, an infinite hope.

This influence of these most profound, bold, original and singular compositions, even upon the uninitiated, above those of a simpler construction and more obvious charms, we have observed with great pleasure. For we think its cause lies deep, far beneath fancy, taste, fashion, or any accidental cause.

It is because there is a real and steady unfolding of certain thoughts which pervade the civilized world. They strike their roots through to us beneath the broad Atlantic; and these roots shoot stems upward to the light wherever the soil allows them free course.

Our era, which permits of freer inquiry, of bolder experiment, than ever before, and a firmer, broader, basis, may also, we sincerely trust, be depended on for nobler discovery and a grander scope of thought.

Although we sympathize with the sadness of those who lament the decay of forms and methods round which so many associations have wound their tendrils, and understand the sufferings which gentle, tender natures undergo from the forlorn homelessness of a period of doubt, speculation, reconstruction in every way, yet we cannot disjoin ourselves, by one moment's fear or regret, from the advance corps. That body, leagued by an invisible tie, has received too deep an assurance that the spirit is not dead nor sleeping, to look back to the past, even if they must advance uniformly through scenes of decay and the rubbish of falling edifices.

But how far it is from being so! How many developments, in various ways, of truth! How manifold the aspirations of love! In the church the attempt is now to reconstruct on the basis proposed by its founder—"Love one another;" in the philosophy of mind, if completeness of system is, as yet, far from being attained, yet mistakes and vain dogmas are set aside, and examinations conducted with intelligence and an enlarged discernment of what is due both to God and man. Science advances, in some route with colossal strides; new glimpses are daily gained into the arcana of natural history, and the mysteries attendant on the modes of growth, are laid open to our observation; while in chemistry, electricity, magnetism, we seem to be getting nearer to the law of life which governs them, and in astronomy "fathoming the heavens," to use the sublime expression of Herschel, daily to greater depths, we find ourselves admitted to a perception of the universal laws and causes, where harmony, permanence and perfection leave us no excuse for a moment of despondency, while under the guidance of a Power who has ordered all so well.

Then, if the other arts suffer a temporary paralysis, and notwithstanding the many proofs of talent and genius, we consider that is the case with architecture, painting, and sculpture, music is not only thoroughly vital, but in a state of rapid development. The last hundred years have witnessed a succession of triumphs in this art, the removal of obstructions, the transcending of limits, and the opening new realms of thought, to an extent that makes the infinity of promise and hope very present with us. And take notice that the prominent means of excellence now are not in those ways which give form to thought already existent, but which open new realms to thought. Those who live most with the life of their age, feel that it is one not only beautiful, positive, full of suggestion, but vast, flowing, of infinite promise. It is dynamics that interest us now, and from electricity and music we borrow the best illustrations of what we know.

Let no one doubt that these grand efforts at synthesis are capable of as strict analysis. Indeed, it is wonderful with what celerity and precision the one process follows up the other.

Of this great life which has risen from the stalk and the leaf into bud, and will in the course of this age be in full flower, Beethoven is the last and greatest exponent. His music is felt, by every soul whom it affects, to be the explanation of the past and the prophecy of the future. It contains the thoughts of the time. A dynasty of great men preceded him, each of whom made conquests and accumulated treasures which prepared the way for his successor. Bach, Handel, Hadyn, Mozart, were corner-stones of the glorious temple. Who shall succeed Beethoven? A host of musicians, full of talent, even of genius, live now he is dead; but the greatest among them is confessed by all men to be but of Lilliputian size compared with this demigod. Indeed, it should be so! As copious draughts of soul have been given to the earth, as she can quaff for a century or more. Disciples and critics must follow, to gather up the gleanings of the golden grain.

It is observable as an earnest of the great Future which opens for this country, that such a genius is so easily and so much appreciated here, by those who have not gone through the steps that prepared the way for him in Europe. He is felt, because he expresses, in full tones, the thoughts that lie at the heart of our own existence, though we have not found means to stammer them as yet. To those who have obtained some clew to all this,—and their number is daily on the increase,—this biography of Beethoven will be very interesting. They will here find a picture of the great man, as he looked and moved in actual life, though imperfectly painted,—as by one who saw the figure from too low a stand-point.

It will require the united labors of a constellation of minds to paint the portrait of Beethoven. That of his face, as seen in life, prefixed to these volumes, is better than any we have seen. It bears tokens of the force, the grandeur, the grotesqueness of his genius, and at the same time shows the melancholy that came to him from the great misfortune of his life—his deafness; and the affectionateness of his deep heart.

Moscheles thus gives a very pleasing account of his first cognizance of Beethoven:—

"I had been placed under the guidance and tuition of Dionysius Weber, the founder and present director of the Prague Musical Conservatory; and he, fearing that in my eagerness to read new music, I might injure the systematic development of my piano-forte playing, prohibited the library, a circulating musical library, and in a plan for my musical education which he laid before my parents, made it an express condition that for three years I should study no other authors but Mozart, Clemente, and S. Bach. I must confess, however, that in spite of such prohibition, I visited the library, gaining access to it through my pocket money. It was about this time that I learned from some schoolfellows that a young composer had appeared in Vienna, who wrote the oddest stuff possible, such as no one could either play or understand—crazy music, in opposition to all rule; and that this composer's name was Beethoven. On repairing to the library to satisfy my curiosity as to this so-called eccentric genius, I found there Beethoven's 'Sonate Pathetique.' This was in the year 1804. My pocket money would not suffice for the purchase of it, so I secretly copied it. The novelty of its style was so attractive to me, and I became so enthusiastic in my admiration of it, that I forgot myself so far as to mention my new acquisition to my master, who reminded me of his injunction, and warned me not to play or study any eccentric productions until I had based my style upon more solid models. Without, however, minding his injunction, I seized upon the piano-forte works of Beethoven as they successively appeared, and in them found a solace and delight such as no other composer afforded me.

"In the year 1809, my studies with my master, Weber, closed; and being then also fatherless, I chose Vienna for my residence, to work out my future musical career. Above all, I longed to see and become acquainted with that man who had exercised so powerful an influence over my whole being; whom, though I scarcely understood, I blindly worshipped. I learned that Beethoven was most difficult of access, and would admit no pupil but Ries; and for a long time my anxiety to see him remained ungratified. In the year 1810, however, the longed-for opportunity presented itself. I happened to be one morning in the music shop of Domenico Artaria, who had just been publishing some of my early attempts at composition, when a man entered with short and hasty steps, and gliding through the circle of ladies and professors assembled on business, or talking over musical matters, without looking up, as though he wished to pass unnoticed, made his way direct for Artaria's private office at the bottom of the shop. Presently Artaria called me in, and said, 'This is Beethoven,'—and to the composer, 'This is the youth of whom I have been speaking to you.' Beethoven gave me a friendly nod, and said he had just been hearing a favorable account of me. To some modest and humble expressions which I stammered forth he made no reply, and seemed to wish to break off the conversation. I stole away with a greater longing for that which I had sought, than before this meeting, thinking to myself, 'Am I then, indeed, such a nobody that he could not put one musical question to me? nor express one wish to know who had been my master, or whether I had any acquaintance with his works?' My only satisfactory mode of explaining the matter, and comforting myself for the omission, was in Beethoven's tendency to deafness; for I had seen Artaria speaking close to his ear. But I made up my mind that the more I was excluded from the private intercourse which I so earnestly coveted, the closer I would follow Beethoven in all the productions of his mind."

If Moscheles had never seen more of Beethoven, how rejoiced he would have been on reading his pathetic expressions recorded in those volumes, as to the misconstructions he knew his fellow-men must put on conduct caused by his calamity, at having detected the true cause of coldness in his own instance, and that no mean suggestions of offended vanity made him false to the genius, because repelled by the man!

Moscheles did see him further, and learned a great deal from this intercourse, though it never became intimate. He closes with these excellent remarks:—

"My feelings with respect to Beethoven's music have undergone no variation, save to become warmer. In my first half score of years of acquaintance with his works, he was repulsive to me, as well as attractive. In each of them, while I felt my mind fascinated by the prominent idea, and my enthusiasm kindled by the flashes of his genius, his unlooked-for episodes, shrill dissonances, and bold modulations gave me an unpleasant sensation. But how soon did I become reconciled to them! all that had appeared hard I soon found indispensable. The gnome-like pleasantries, which at first appeared too distorted, the stormy masses of sound which I found too chaotic, I have in after times learned to love. But while retracting my early critical exceptions, I must still maintain as my creed that eccentricities like those of Beethoven are reconcilable with his works alone, and are dangerous models to other composers, many of whom have been wrecked in their attempts at imitation."

No doubt the peculiarities of Beethoven are inimitable, though as great would be as welcome in a mind of equal greatness. The natural office of such a genius is to rouse others to a use and knowledge of their own faculties; never to induce imitation of its own individuality.

As an instance of the justice and undoubting clearness of such a mind, as to its own methods, take the following anecdote from Beethoven's "Pupil Ries":—

"All the initiated must be interested in the striking fact which occurred respecting one of Beethoven's last solo sonatas, (in B major, with the great fugue, Op. 106,) a sonata which has forty-one pages of print. Beethoven had sent it to me, to London, for sale, that it might appear there at the same time as in Germany. The engraving was completed, and I in daily expectation of the letter naming the day of publication. This arrived at last, but with this extraordinary request: 'Prefix the following two notes, as a first bar, to the beginning of the adagio.' This adagio has from nine to ten pages of print. I own the thought struck me involuntarily that all might not be right with my dear old master, a rumor to that effect having often been spread. What! add two notes to a composition already worked out and out, and completed months ago? But my astonishment was yet to be heightened by the effect of these two notes. Never could such be found again—so striking—so important; no, not even if contemplated at the very beginning of the composition. I would advise every true lover of the art to play this adagio first without, and then with these two notes which now form the first bar, and I have no doubt he will share in my opinion."

No instance could more forcibly show how in the case of Beethoven, as in that of other transcendent geniuses, the cry of insanity is raised by vulgar minds on witnessing extraordinary manifestations of power. Such geniuses perceive results so remote, are alive to combinations so subtle, that common men cannot rise high enough to see why they think or do as they do, and settle the matter easily to their own satisfaction, crying, "He is mad"—"He hath a devil." Genius perceives the efficacy of slight signs of thought, and loves best the simplest symbols; coarser minds demand coarse work, long preparations, long explanations.

But genius heeds them not, but fills the atmosphere with irresistible purity, till they also are pervaded by the delicate influence, which, too subtile for their ears and eyes, enters with the air they breathe, or through the pores of the skin.

The life of a Beethoven is written in his works; and all that can be told of his life beside, is but as marginal notes on that broad page. Yet since we have these notes, it is pleasant to have them in harmony with the page. The acts and words of Beethoven are what we should expect,—noble, leonine, impetuous,—yet tender. His faults are the faults of one so great that he found few paths wide enough for his tread, and knew not how to moderate it. They are not faults in themselves, but only in relation to the men who surrounded him. Among his peers he would not have had faults. As it is, they hardly deserve the name. His acts were generally great and benignant; only in transports of sudden passion at what he thought base did he ever injure any one. If he found himself mistaken, he could not humble himself enough,—but far outwent, in his contrition, what was due to those whom he had offended. So it is apt to be with magnanimous and tender natures; they will humble themselves in a way that those of a coarser or colder make think shows weakness or want of pride. But they do so because a little discord and a little wrong is as painful to them as a great deal to others.

In one of his letters to a young friend, Beethoven thus magnanimously confesses his errors:—

"I could not converse with you and yours with that peace of mind which I could have desired, for the late wretched altercation was hovering before me, showing me my own despicable conduct. But so it was; and what would I not give could I obliterate from the page of my life this last action, so degrading to my character, and so unlike my usual proceedings!"

It seems this action of his was not of importance in the eyes of others. Of the causes which acted upon him at such times he gives intimations in another letter.

"I had been wrought into this burst of passion by many an unpleasant circumstance of an earlier date. I have the gift of concealing and restraining my irritability on many subjects; but if I happen to be touched at any time when I am more than usually susceptible of anger, I burst forth more violently than any one else. B. has doubtless most excellent qualities, but he thinks himself utterly without faults, and yet is most open to blame for those for which he censures others. He has a littleness of mind which I have held in contempt since my infancy."

As a correspondent example of the manner in which true greatness apologizes for its errors, we must quote a letter, lately made public, from Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke.

"Sir: Being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women, and by other means, I was so much affected with it as that, when one told me you were sickly, and would not live, I answered, ''Twere better if you were dead.' I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for having had hard thoughts of you for it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office, or to embroil me.

"I am your most humble and unfortunate servant,

"ISAAC NEWTON."

And this letter, observe, was quoted as proof of insanity in Newton. Locke, however, shows by his reply that he did not think the power of full sincerity and elevation above self-love proved a man to be insane.

At a happy period Beethoven thus unveils the generous sympathies of his heart.

"My compositions are well paid, and I may say I have more orders than I can well execute; six or seven publishers, and more, being ready to take any of my works. I need no longer submit to being bargained with; I ask my terms, and am paid. You see this is an excellent thing; as, for instance, I see a friend in want, and my purse does not at the moment permit me to assist him; I have but to sit down and write, and my friend is no longer in need."

Some additional particulars are given, in the letters collected by Moscheles, of the struggles of his mind during the coming on of deafness. This calamity, falling upon the greatest genius of his time, in the prime of manhood,—a calamity which threatened to destroy not only all enjoyment of life, but the power of using the vast treasure with which he had been endowed for the use of all men,—casts common ills so into the shade that they can scarcely be seen. Who dares complain, since Beethoven could resign himself, to such an ill at such a time as this?

"This beautiful country of mine, what was my lot in it? The hope of a happy futurity. This might now be realized if I were freed from my affliction. O, freed from that, I should compass the world! I feel it—my youth is but beginning; have I not been hitherto but a sickly creature? My physical powers have for some time been materially increasing—those of my mind likewise. I feel myself nearer and nearer the mark; I feel but cannot describe it; this alone is the vital principle of your Beethoven. No rest for me: I know of none but in sleep, and I grieve at having to sacrifice to that more time than I have hitherto deemed necessary. Take but one half of my disease from me, and I will return to you a matured and accomplished man, renewing the ties of our friendship; for you shall see me as happy as I may be in this sublunary world; not as a sufferer; no, that would be more than I could bear; I will blunt the sword of fate; it shall not utterly destroy me. How beautiful it is to live a thousand lives in one! No; I am not made for a retired life—I feel it."

He did blunt the sword of fate; he did live a thousand lives in one; but that sword had power to inflict a deep and poisoned wound; those thousand lives cost him the pangs of a thousand deaths. He, born for perpetual conquest, was condemned through life to "resignation." Let any man, disposed to complain of his own ills, read the "Will" of Beethoven; and see if he dares speak of himself above a whisper, after.

The matter of interest new to us in this English book is in notes and appendix. Schindler's biography, whose plain and naïve style is fit for the subject, is ironed out and plaited afresh to suit the "genteel" English, in this translation. Elsewhere we have given in brief the strong lineaments and piquant anecdotes from this biography;[7] here there is not room: smooth and shorn as it is, we wish the translation might be reprinted here.

We may give, at parting, two directions for the study of Beethoven's genius and the perusal of his biography in two sayings of his own. For the biography, "The limits have never yet been discovered which genius and industry could not transcend." For the music, "From the depths of the soul brought forth, she (Poesy) can only by the depths of the soul be received or understood."

BROWN'S NOVELS.[8]

WE rejoice to see these reprints of Brown's novels, as we have long been ashamed that one who ought to be the pride of the country, and who is, in the higher qualities of the mind, so far in advance of our other novelists, should have become almost inaccessible to the public.

It has been the custom to liken Brown to Godwin. But there was no imitation, no second hand in the matter. They were congenial natures, and whichever had come first might have lent an impulse to the other. Either mind might have been conscious of the possession of that peculiar vein of ore, without thinking of working it for the mint of the world, till the other, led by accident, or overflow of feeling, showed him how easy it was to put the reveries of his solitary hours into words, and upon paper, for the benefit of his fellow-men.

"My mind to me a kingdom is."

Such a man as Brown or Godwin has a right to say that. Their mind is no scanty, turbid rill, rejoicing to be daily fed from a thousand others, or from the clouds. Its plenteous source rushes from a high mountain between bulwarks of stone. Its course, even and full, keeps ever green its banks, and affords the means of life and joy to a million gliding shapes, that fill its deep waters, and twinkle above its golden sands.

Life and Joy! Yes, Joy! These two have been called the dark Masters, because they disclose the twilight recesses of the human heart. Yet the gravest page in the history of such men is joy, compared with the mixed, shallow, uncertain pleasures of vulgar minds. Joy! because they were all alive, and fulfilled the purposes of being. No sham, no imitation, no convention deformed or veiled their native lineaments, or checked the use of their natural force. All alive themselves, they understood that there is no happiness without truth, no perception of it without real life. Unlike most men, existence was to them not a tissue of words and seemings, but a substantial possession.

Born Hegelians, without the pretensions of science, they sought God in their own consciousness, and found him. The heart, because it saw itself so fearfully and wonderfully made, did not disown its Maker. With the highest idea of the dignity, power, and beauty of which human nature is capable, they had courage to see by what an oblique course it proceeds, yet never lose faith that it would reach its destined aim. Thus their darkest disclosures are not hobgoblin shows, but precious revelations.

Brown is great as ever human writer was in showing the self-sustaining force of which a lonely mind is capable. He takes one person, makes him brood like the bee, and extract from the common life before him all its sweetness, its bitterness, and its nourishment.

We say makes him, but it increases our own interest in Brown, that, a prophet in this respect of a better era, he has usually placed this thinking, royal mind in the body of a woman. This personage, too, is always feminine, both in her character and circumstances, but a conclusive proof that the term feminine is not a synonyme for weak. Constantia, Clara Wieland, have loving hearts, graceful and plastic natures, but they have also noble, thinking minds, full of resource, constancy, courage. The Marguerite of Godwin, no less, is all refinement and the purest tenderness; but she is also the soul of honor, capable of deep discernment, and of acting in conformity with the inferences she draws. The Man of Brown and Godwin has not eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and been driven to sustain himself by the sweat of his brow for nothing, but has learned the structure and laws of things, and become a being, natural, benignant, various, and desirous of supplying the loss of innocence by the attainment of virtue. So his Woman need not be quite so weak as Eve, the slave of feeling or of flattery; she also has learned to guide her helm amid the storm across the troubled waters.

The horrors which mysteriously beset these persons, and against which, so far as outward facts go, they often strive in vain, are but a representation of those powers permitted to work in the same way throughout the affairs of this world. Their demoniacal attributes only represent a morbid state of the intellect, gone to excess from want of balance with the other powers. There is an intellectual as well as a physical drunkenness, and which, no less, impels to crime. Carwin, urged on to use his ventriloquism till the presence of such a strange agent wakened the seeds of fanaticism in the breast of Wieland, is in a state no more foreign to nature than that of the wretch executed last week, who felt himself drawn as by a spell to murder his victim, because he had thought of her money and the pleasures it might bring him, till the feeling possessed his brain that hurls the gamester to ruin. The victims of such agency are like the soldier of the Rio Grande, who, both legs shot off, and his life-blood rushing out with every pulse, replied serenely to his pitying comrades, that "he had now that for which the soldier enlisted." The end of the drama is not in this world, and the fiction which rounds off the whole to harmony and felicity before the curtain falls, sins against truth, and deludes the reader. The Nelsons of the human race are all the more exposed to the assaults of Fate, that they are decorated with the badges of well-earned glory. Who but feels as they fall in death, or rise again to a mutilated existence, that the end is not yet? Who, that thinks, but must feel that the recompense is, where Brown places it, in the accumulation of mental treasure, in the severe assay by fire that leaves the gold pure to be used some time—somewhere?

Brown,—man of the brooding eye, the teeming brain, the deep and fervent heart,—if thy country prize thee not, and had almost lost thee out of sight, it is because her heart is made shallow and cold, her eye dim, by the pomp of circumstance, the love of gross outward gain. She cannot long continue thus, for it takes a great deal of soul to keep a huge body from disease and dissolution. As there is more soul, thou wilt be more sought; and many will yet sit down with thy Constantia to the meal and water on which she sustained her full and thoughtful existence, who could not endure the ennui of aldermanic dinners, or find any relish in the imitation of French cookery. To-day many will read the words, and some have a cup large enough to receive the spirit, before it is lost in the sand on which their feet are planted.

Brown's high standard of the delights of intellectual communion and of friendship, correspond with the fondest hopes of early days. But in the relations of real life, at present, there is rarely more than one of the parties ready for such intercourse as he describes. On the one side there will be dryness, want of perception, or variety, a stupidity unable to appreciate life's richest boon when offered to its grasp; and the finer nature is doomed to retrace its steps, unhappy as those who, having force to raise a spirit, cannot retain or make it substantial, and stretch out their arms only to bring them back empty to the breast.

We were glad to see these reprints, but sorry to see them so carelessly done. Under the cheap system, the carelessness in printing and translating grows to a greater excess day by day. Please, Public, to remonstrate; else very soon all your books will be offered for two shillings apiece, and none of them in a fit state to be read.

EDGAR A. POE.[9]

MR. POE throws down the gauntlet in his preface by what he says of "the paltry compensations, or more paltry commendations, of mankind." Some champion might be expected to start up from the "somewhat sizable" class embraced, or, more properly speaking, boxed on the ear, by this defiance, who might try whether the sting of Criticism was as indifferent to this knight of the pen as he professes its honey to be.

Were there such a champion, gifted with acumen to dissect, and a swift-glancing wit to enliven the operation, he could find no more legitimate subject, no fairer game, than Mr. Poe, who has wielded the weapons of criticism without relenting, whether with the dagger he rent and tore the garment in which some favored Joseph had pranked himself, secure of honor in the sight of all men, or whether with uplifted tomahawk he rushed upon the new-born children of some hapless genius, who had fancied, and persuaded his friends to fancy, that they were beautiful, and worthy a long and honored life. A large band of these offended dignitaries and aggrieved parents must be on the watch for a volume of "Poems by Edgar A. Poe," ready to cut, rend, and slash in turn, and hoping to see his own Raven left alone to prey upon the slaughter of which it is the herald.

Such joust and tournament we look to see, and, indeed, have some stake in the matter, so far as we have friends whose wrongs cry aloud for the avenger. Natheless we could not take part in the mêlée, except to join the crowd of lookers-on in the cry "heaven speed the right!"

Early we read that fable of Apollo who rewarded the critic, who had painfully winnowed the wheat,—with the chaff for his pains. We joined the gentle Affirmative School, and have confidence that if we indulge ourselves chiefly with the appreciation of good qualities, Time will take care of the faults. For Time holds a strainer like that used in the diamond mines—have but patience and the water and gravel will all pass through, and only the precious stones be left. Yet we are not blind to the uses of severe criticism, and of just censure, especially in a time and place so degraded by venal and indiscriminate praise as the present. That unholy alliance; that shameless sham, whose motto is,

that system of mutual adulation and organized puff which was carried to such perfection in the time, and may be seen drawn to the life in the correspondence, of Miss Hannah More, is fully represented in our day and generation. We see that it meets a counter-agency, from the league of Truth-tellers, few, but each of them mighty as Fingal or any other hero of the sort. Let such tell the whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth, but let their sternness be in the spirit of Love. Let them seek to understand the purpose and scope of an author, his capacity as well as his fulfilments, and how his faults are made to grow by the same sunshine that acts upon his virtues, for this is the case with talents no less than with character. The rich field requires frequent and careful weeding; frequent, lest the weeds exhaust the soil; careful, lest the flowers and grain be pulled up along with the weeds.

It has often been our lot to share the mistake of Gil Blas with regard to the Archbishop. We have taken people at their word, and while rejoicing that women could bear neglect without feeling mean pique, and that authors, rising above self-love, could show candor about their works, and magnanimously meet both justice and injustice, we have been rudely awakened from our dream, and found that chanticleer, who crowed so bravely, showed himself at last but a dunghill fowl. Yet Heaven grant we never become too worldly-wise thus to trust a generous word, and we surely are not so yet, for we believe Mr. Poe to be sincere when he says,—

"In defence of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort, in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice."

We believe Mr. Poe to be sincere in this declaration; if he is, we respect him; if otherwise, we do not. Such things should never be said unless in hearty earnest. If in earnest, they are honorable pledges; if not, a pitiful fence and foil of vanity. Earnest or not, the words are thus far true; the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better. With the exception of the Raven, which seems intended chiefly to show the writer's artistic skill, and is in its way a rare and finished specimen, they are all fragments—fyttes upon the lyre, almost all of which leave a something to desire or demand. This is not the case, however, with these lines:—

To One in Paradise.
Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"—but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er!
No more—no more—no more
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

The poems breathe a passionate sadness, relieved sometimes by touches very lovely and tender:—

"Amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose.") * * *
* * * *

>"For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes—
The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes."

This kind of beauty is especially conspicuous, even rising into dignity, in the poem called the Haunted Palace.