und max. ine Fren‣ literature has never afforded any example. We may venture to say of him, that his province is high and peculiar; higher y poet but himself, for several generations, has so far succeedhaps even has stedfastly attempted. In reading Goethe's perpetually strikes us that we are reading the poetry of our own day and generation. No demands are made on our credulity; the light, the science, the scepticism of the age, are not hid from us. He does not deal in antiquated mythologies, or ring changes on traditionary poetic forms; there are no supernal, no infernal influences, for Faust is an apparent rather than a real exception: but there is the barren prose of the nineteenth century, the vulgar life which we are all leading; and it starts into strange beauty in his hands; and we pause in delighted wonder to behold the flower of Poesy blooming in that parched and rugged soil. This is the end of his Mignons and Harpers, of his Tassos and Meisters. Poetry, as he views it, exists not in time or place, but in the spirit of man; and Art, with Nature, is now to perform for the poet, what Nature alone performed of old. The divinities and demons, the witches, spectres, and fairies, are vanished from the world, never again to be recalled: but the Imagination which created these still lives, and will forever live in man's soul; and can aga ur its wizard light over the Universe, and summon forth enchan. ats as lovely or impressive, and which its sister faculties will not con.radict. To say that Goethe has accomplished all this, would be to say that his genius is greater than was ever given to any man : was a high and glorious mind, or rather series of minds, that the first ages with their peculiar forms of poetry, it must be a series of minds much higher and more glorious that shall so people the resent. The angels and demons that can lay prostrate our hearts in the nineteenth century, must be of another and more cunning shion than those that subdued us in the ninth. To have atte. ed, to have begun this enterprise, may be accounted the greatest praise. That Goethe ever meditated it, in the form here set forth, we have no direct evidence: but indeed such is the end and aim of high poetry at all times and seasons; for the fiction of the poet is not falsehood, but the purest truth; and if he would lead captive our whole being, not rest satisfied with a part of it, he must address us on interests that are, not that were, ours; and in a dialect which finds a response, and not a contradiction, within our bosoms. How Goethe has fulfilled these conditions in addressing us, an inspection of his works, but no description, can inform us. Let me advise the reader to study them, and see. If he come to the task with an opinion that poetry is an amusement, a passive recreation; that its highest object is to supply a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions, his measure of enjoyment is likely to be scanty, and his criticisms will be loud, angry and manifold. But if he know and believe that poetry is the essence of all science, and requires the purest of all studies; if he recollect that the new maco always be the false; that the excellence which can be seen in a moment is not usually a very deep one; above all, if his own heart be full of feelings and experiences, for which he finds no name and no solution, but which lie in pain imprisoned and unuttered in his breast, till the Word be spoken, the spell that is to unbind them, and bring them forth to liberty and light; then, if I mistake not, he will find that in this Goethe there is a new world set before his eyes; a world of Earnestness and Sport, of solemn cliff and gay plain; some such temple - far inferior, as it may well be, in magnificence and beauty, but a temple of the same architecture some such temple for the Spirit of our age, as the Shakspeares and Spensers have raised for the Spirit of theirs. This seems a bold assertion: but it is not made without deliberation, and such conviction as it has stood within my means to obtain. If it invite discussion, and forward the discovery of the truth in this matter, its best purpose will be answered. Goethe's genius is a study for other minds than have yet seriously engaged with it among us. By and by, apparently ere long, he will be tried and judged righteously; he himself, and no cloud instead of him; for he comes to us in such a questionable shape, that silence and neglect will not always serve our purpose. England, the chosen home of justice in all its senses, where the humblest merit has been acknowledged, and the highest fault not unduly punished, will do no injustice to this extraordinary man. And if, when her impartial sentence has been pronounced and sanctioned, it shall appear that Goethe's earliest admirers have wandered too far into the language of panegyric, I hope it may be reckoned no unpardonable sin. It is spirit-stirring rather than spirit-sharpening, to consider that there is one of the Prophets here with us in our own day; that a man who is to be numbered with the Sages and Sacri Vates, the Shakspeares, the Tassos, the Cervanteses of the world, is looking on the things which we look on, has dealt with the very thoughts which we have to deal with, is reigning in serene dominion over the perplexities and contradictions in which we are still painfully entangled. That Goethe's mind is full of inconsistencies and shortcomings, can be a secret to no one who has heard of the Fall of Adam. Nor would it be difficult, in this place, to muster a long catalogue of darknesses defacing our perception of this brightness: but it might be still less profitable than it is difficult; for in Goethe's writings, as in those of all true masters, an apparent blemish is apt, after maturer study, to pass into a beauty. His works cannot be judged in fractions, for each of them is conceived and written as a whole; the humble and common may be no less essential there than the high and splendid it is only Chinese pictures that have no shade. There is a maxim, far better known than practised, that to detect faults is a much lower occupation than to recognise merits. We may add also, that though far easier in the execution, it is not a whit more certain in the result. What is the detecting of a fault, but the feeling of an incongruity, of a contradiction, which may exist in ourselves as well as in the object? Who shall say in which? None but he who sees this object as it is, and himself as he is. We have all heard of the critic fly; but none of us doubts the compass of his own vision. It is thus that a high work of art, still more that a high and original mind, may at all times calculate on much sorriest criticism. In looking at an extraordinary man, it were good for an ordinary man to be sure of seeing him, before attempting to oversee him. Having ascertained that Goethe is an object deserving study, it will be time to censure his faults when we have clearly estimated his merits; and if we are wise judges, not till then. Whether this work of Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre1 will exalt or depress our actual judgment of him, I pretend not to predict. Like all Goethe's works, its immediate reception is doubtful, or rather, perhaps, it is not doubtful. That these Travels will surprise and disappoint the reader, is too likely; and perhaps the reader of the Apprenticeship will be more surprised than any other. The book is called a romance; but it treats not of romance characters or subjects; it has less relation to Fielding's Tom Jones than to Spenser's Faery Queen. The scene is not laid on this firm Earth, but in a fair Utopia of Art and Science and free Activity: the figures, light and aëriform, come unlooked for, and melt away abruptly, like the pageants of Prospero in his enchanted Island. Whether this the baseless fabric of their vision is beautiful and significant like his, or vague and false, our readers are now to determine. To a reader of the 1 Wanderjahre denotes the period which a German artisan is, by law or usage, obliged to pass in travelling, to perfect himself in his craft, after the conclusion of his Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship), and before his Mastership can begin. In many gilds this custom is as old as their existence, and continues still to be indispensable; it is said to have originated in the frequent journeys of the German Emperors to Italy, and the consequent improvement observed in such workmen among their menials as had attended them thither. Most of the gilds are what is called geschenkten, that is, presenting, having presents to give to needy wandering brothers. This word Wanderjahre I have been obliged to translate by Travels, after in vain casting about for an expression that should more accurately represent it. Our mechanics have a word much nearer the mark: but this was never printed; and must not be printed, for the first time, here. original this question may appear already pretty well decided: in both languages, it is true, the work is still a fragment, hanging suspended in middle air; but the matchless graces of its workmanship, the calm fulness, the noble simplicity of its style, are, in many points, for the one language only. Nevertheless, I present this work to the English people without reluctance or misgivings, persuaded that though it may be caviare to the general, there are not wanting tastes among us to discern its worth and worthlessness, even under its present disadvantages, and to pronounce truly on both. Of his previous reception in this country, neither Goethe nor his admirers have reason to complain. By all men who have any pretension to depth or sensibility of mind, the existence of a high and peculiar genius has been cheerfully recognised in him ; a fact which, considering the unwonted and in many points forbidding aspect of his chief works, does honour both to the author and his critics; while their often numerous and grave objections have proved only that they had studied him with the cursory eye, which may suffice for cursory writers, but for him is not sufficient, nor likely to be final. In no quarter has there appeared any tendency to wilful unfairness, any jealousy as towards a stranger, any disposition to treat him otherwise than according to his true deserts. Indeed, wherefore should there? We of England have of all nations, past and present, the least cause to be jealous with this mean jealousy. Our own literature is peopled with kingly names; our language is beautiful with their English intellects and English characters; their works live forever in our hearts. If we cannot love and hold fast our own, and yet be just to others, who is there that can? In soliciting and anticipating a true estimate of Goethe, I have only to wish that the same sentiments may continue with us. For the rest, if it seem that I advocate this cause too warmly; that Goethe's genius, whether it be good or bad, is in truth a very small concern to us, I may be allowed to remind my readers, that the existence or non-existence of a new Poet for the World in our own time, of a new Instructor and Preacher of Truth to all men, is really a question of more importance to us than many that are agitated with far greater noise. FRACTIONS: TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH. 469 II. FRACTIONS. [1823-1833.] I. TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH. Magna ausus. 'Tis placid midnight, stars are keeping But see! a wandering Night-moth enters, With awe she views the candle blazing; To moth-savante with rapture gazing, Or Fount whence Life and Motion streams. What passions in her small heart whirling, At length her tiny pinions twirling, She darts and puff!- the moth is dead! The sullen flame, for her scarce sparkling, Her bright gray form that spread so slimly, Her silky cloak that lay so trimly, Her wee, wee eyes that looked so keen. |