have drawn from them, and now the half of life is over, I find myself advanced no step on my way, but stand here as one who, escaped from the waves, begins to dry himself in the sun. The period in which I have mingled with the world, since October, 1775, I dare not yet trust myself to look at. God help me further, and give me light, that I may not so much stand in my own way, but see to do from morning till evening the work which lies before me, and obtain a clear conception of the order of things; that I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache!"

There is something quite solemn in those words. The same thought is expressed in a letter to Lavater: "The desire to raise the pyramid of my existence, the basis of which is already laid, as high as practicable in the air, absorbs every other desire, and scarcely ever quits me. I dare not longer delay; I am already advanced in life, and perhaps Death will break in at the middle of my work, and leave the Babylonic tower incomplete. At least men shall say it was boldly schemed, and if I live, my powers shall, with God's aid, reach the completion." And in a recently published letter to the duke, he says: "I let people say what they will, and then I retire into my old fortress of Poetry and work at my 'Iphigenia.' By this I am made sensible that I have been treating this heavenly gift somewhat too cavalierly, and there is still time and need for me to become more economical if ever I am to bring forth anything."1

No better index of the change can be named than his "Iphigenia auf Tauris," written at this period. The reader will learn with some surprise that this wonderful poem was originally written in prose. It was the fashion of the day. "Götz," "Egmont," "Tasso," and

1 "Briefwechsel zwischen Karl August und Goethe," i. 11.

Iphigenia," no less than Schiller's " Robbers," " Fiesco," "Kabale und Liebe," were written in prose; and when "Iphigenia" assumed a poetic form, the Weimar friends were disappointed-they preferred the prose.

This was part of the mania for returning to Nature. Verse was pronounced unnatural; although, in truth, verse is not more unnatural than song. Song is to speech what poetry is to prose; it expresses a different mental condition. Impassioned prose approaches poetry in the rhythmic impulse of its movements; as impassioned speech in its varied cadences also approaches the intonations of music. Under great emotional excitement the Arabs give their language a recognisable metre, and almost talk poetry. But prose never is poetry, or is so only for a moment; nor is speech song. Schiller learned to see this, and we find him writing to Goethe, "I have never before been so palpably convinced as in my present occupation how closely in poetry Substance and Form are connected. Since I have begun to transform my prosaic language into a poetic rhythmical one, I find myself under a totally different jurisdiction; even many motives which in the prosaic execution seemed to me to be perfectly in place, I can no longer use: they were merely good for the common domestic understanding, whose organ prose seems to be; but verse absolutely demands reference to the imagination, and thus I was obliged to become poetical in many of my motives."

That Goethe should have fallen into the sophism which asserted prose to be more natural than verse is surprising. His mind was full of song. To the last he retained the faculty of singing melodiously, when his prose had degenerated into comparative feebleness. And this prose "Iphigenia" is saturated with verses; which is also the case with "Egmont." He meant to write prose, but his thoughts instinctively expressed themselves in verse. The critical reader will do well

to compare the prose with the poetic version.1 He will not only see how frequent the verses are, but how few were the alterations necessary to transform the prose drama into a poem. They are just the sort of touches which elevate poetry above prose. Thus, to give an example, in the prose he says: "Unnütz seyn, ist todt seyn (To be useless is to be dead)," which thus grows into a verse:

"Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod

(A life not useful is an early death).”

Again, in the speech of Orestes (Act II. sc. i.), there is a fine and terrible allusion to Clytemnestra, "Better die here before the altar than in an obscure nook where the nets of murderous near relatives are placed." In the prose this allusion is not clear Orestes simply says "the nets of assassins." 2

The alterations do not touch the substance of this drama; we must therefore consider it a product of the period now under review; and as such we may examine it at once.

1 See vol. xxxiv. of the edition of 1840.

2 Neither Taylor nor Miss Swanwick appears to have seized the allusion. One translates it, "by the knives of avenging kindred;" the other, "where near hands have spread assassination's wily net."

CHAPTER II.

IPHIGENIA.

It was very characteristic in Schlegel to call "Iphigenia" "an echo of Greek song;" he delighted in such rhetorical prettinesses; but that German scholars should have so often repeated the phrase, and should have so often without misgiving declared "Iphigenia" to be the finest modern specimen of Greek tragedy, is truly surprising, until we reflect on the mass of flagrant traditional errors afloat respecting the Greek drama. For a long while the Three Unities were held to be inseparable from that drama; in spite of the fact that in several plays Unity of Time is obviously disregarded, and in two or three the Unity of Place is equally so. Again there was the notion that Comedy and Tragedy were not suffered to mingle in the same play; in spite of the palpable fact of Eschylus and Euripides having mingled them. It was also believed that Destiny formed the tragic-pivot; in spite of the fact that in the majority of these plays Destiny has no place, beyond what the religious conceptions of the poets must of necessity have given to it; just as Christianity must of necessity underlie the tragic conceptions of Christian poets.

The very phrase with which critics characterise "Iphigenia" is sufficient to condemn them. They tell us it has "all the repose of Greek tragedy." Consider it for a moment: Repose in a tragedy that is to say, calmness in the terrific upheaving of volcanic passions. Tragedy, we are told by Aristotle, acts through Terror

and Pity, awakening in our bosoms sympathy with suffering; and to suppose this effect can be accomplished by the "meditative repose which breathes from every verse," is tantamount to supposing a battle-song will most vigorously stir the blood of combatants if it borrow the accents of a lullaby.

Insensibly our notions of Greek art are formed from sculpture; and hence, perhaps, this notion of repose. But acquaintance with the drama ought to have prevented such an error, and taught men not to confound calmness of evolution with calmness of life. The unagitated simplicity of Greek scenic representation lay in the nature of the scenic necessities; but we do not call the volcano cold, because the snow rests on its top. Had the Greek drama been exhibited on stages like those of modern Europe, and performed by actors without cothurnus and mask, its deep agitations of passion would have welled up to the surface, communicating responsive agitations to the form. But there were reasons why this could not be. In the Grecian drama, everything was on a scale of vastness commensurate with the needs of an audience of many thousands; and consequently everything was disposed in masses rather than in details; it thus necessarily assumed something of the sculpturesque form, threw itself into magnificent groupings, and, with a view to its effect, adapted a peculiar eurhythmic construction. It thus assumed

slowness of movement, because it could not be rapid without distortion. If the critic doubts this, let him mount on stilts, and, bawling through a speaking-trumpet, try what he can make of Shakespeare; he will then have an approximative idea of the restraints laid upon the Grecian actor, who, clothed so as to aggrandise his person, and speaking through a resonant mask, which had a fixed expression, could not act, in our modern sense of the word, but could only declaim; he had no means of representing the fluctuations of pas