"On the whole, he produces very little now, rich as he still is in invention and execution. His spirit is not sufficiently at ease; his wretched domestic circumstances, which he is too weak to alter, make him so unhappy." Too weak to alter! there the explanation. from inflicting pain, he to put an end to such a condition. much because he could not inflict suffering. To the bystander such endurance seems inexplicable; for the bystander knows not how the insidious first steps are passed over, and how endurance strengthens with repeated trials; he knows not the hopes of a change which check violent resolutions, nor how affection prompts and cherishes such hopes against all evidence. The bystander sees certain broad facts, which are inexplicable to him only because he does not see the many subtle links which bind those facts together; he does not see the mind of the sufferer struggling against a growing evil, and finally resigning itself, and trying to put a calm face on the matter. It is easy for us to say, Why did not Goethe part from her at once? But parting was not easy. She was the mother of his child; she had been the mistress of his heart, and still was dear to him. To part from her would not have arrested the fatal tendency; it would only have accelerated it. He was too weak to alter his position. He was strong enough to bear it. Schiller divined this by his own moral instincts. "I wish," he writes in a recently discovered letter, "that I could justify Goethe in respect to his domestic relations as I can confidently in all points respecting literature and social life. But unfortunately, by some false notions of domestic happiness, and an unlucky aversion to marriage, he has entered upon an engagement which weighs upon him in his domestic circle, and makes him unhappy, yet to Yes, there lies the tragedy, and He was hake off which, I am sorry to say, he is too weak and soft-hearted. This is the only shortcoming in him; but even this is closely connected with a very noble part of his character, and he hurts no one but himself." And thus the years rolled on. Her many good qualities absolved her few bad qualities. sincerely attached to her, and she was devoted to him; and now, in his fifty-eighth year, when the troubles following the battle of Jena made him "feel the necessity of drawing all friends closer," who, among those friends, deserved a nearer place than Christiane? He resolved on marrying her. It is not known whether this thought of marriage had for some time previous been in contemplation, and was now put in execution when Weimar was too agitated to trouble itself with his doings; or whether the desire of legitimising his son in these troublous days suggested the idea. Riemer thinks the motive was gratitude for her courageous and prudent conduct during the troubles; but I do not think that explanation acceptable, the more so as, according to her own statement, marriage was proposed in the early years of their acquaintance. In the absence of positive testimony, I am disposed to rely on psychological evidence; and, assuming that the idea of marriage had been previously entertained, the delay in execution is explicable when we are made aware of one peculiarity in his nature, namely, a singular hesitation in adopting any decisive. course of action singular, in a man so resolute and imperious when once his decision had been made. This is the weakness of imaginative men. However strong the volition, when once it is set going, there is in men of active intellects, and especially in men of imaginative, apprehensive intellects, a fluctuation of motives keeping the volition in abeyance, which practically amounts to weakness; and is only distinguished from weakness by the strength of the volition when let loose. Goethe, who was aware of this peculiarity, used to attribute it to his never having been placed in circumstances which required prompt resolutions, and to his not having educated his will; but I believe the cause lay much deeper, lying in the nature of psychological actions, not in the accidents of education. But be the cause of the delay this or any other, it is certain that on the 19th of October, i. e. five days after the battle of Jena, and not, as writers constantly report, "during the cannonade," he was united to Christiane, in the presence of his son, and of his secretary, Riemer. The scandal which this act of justice excited was. immense, as may readily be guessed by those who know the world. His friends, however, loudly applauded his emergence from a false position. From that time forward, no one who did not treat her with proper respect could hope to be well received by him. She bore her new-made honours unobtrusively, and with a quiet good sense, which managed to secure the hearty good will of most of those who knew her. CHAPTER III. BETTINA AND NAPOLEON. It is very characteristic that during the terror and the pillage of Weimar, Goethe's greatest anxiety on his own account was lest his scientific manuscripts should be destroyed. Wine, plate, furniture, could be replaced; but to lose his manuscripts was to lose what was irreparable. Herder's posthumous manuscripts were destroyed; Meyer lost everything, even his sketches; but Goethe lost nothing, except wine and money.1 The duke, commanded by Prussia to submit to Napoleon, laid down his arms and returned to Weimar, there to be received with the enthusiastic love of his people, as some compensation for the indignities he had endured. Peace was restored. Weimar breathed again. Goethe availed himself of the quiet to print his "Farbenlehre" and "Faust," that they might be rescued from any future peril. He also began to meditate once more an epic on William Tell; but the death of the Duchess Amalia on the 10th of April drove the subject from his mind. On the 23d of April Bettina came to Weimar. We must pause awhile to consider this strange figure, who 1 It is at once ludicrous and sad to mention that even this has been the subject of malevolent sneers against him. His antagonists cannot forgive him the good fortune which saved his house from pillage, when the houses of others were ransacked. They seem to think it a mysterious result of his selfish calculations! fills a larger space in the literary history of the nineteenth century than any other German woman. Every one knows "the Child" Bettina Brentano, - daughter of the Maximiliane Brentano with whom Goethe flirted at Frankfort in the "Werther" days-wife of Achim von Arnim, the fantastic Romanticist the worshipper of Goethe and Beethoven for some time the privileged favourite of the King of Prussia- and writer of that wild, but unveracious book, "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child." She is one of those phantasts to whom everything seems permitted, woman, yet with flashes of genius which light up in splendour whole chapters of nonsense, she defies criticism, and puts every verdict at fault. If you are grave with her, people shrug their shoulders, and saying, "she is a Brentano," consider all settled. "At the point where the folly of others ceases, the folly of the Brentanos begins," runs a proverb in Germany. More elf than I do not wish to be graver with Bettina than the occasion demands; but while granting fantasy its widest license, while grateful to her for the many picturesque anecdotes she has preserved from the conversation of Goethe's mother, I must consider the history of her relation to Goethe seriously, because out of it has arisen a charge against his memory very false and injurious. Many unsuspecting readers of her book, whatever they may think of the passionate expressions of her love for Goethe, whatever they may think of her demeanour toward him, on first coming into his presence, feel greatly hurt at his coldness; while others are still more indignant with him for keeping alive this mad passion, feeding it with poems and compliments, and doing this out of a selfish calculation, in order that he might gather from her letters materials for his poems! In both these views there is complete misconception of the actual case. True it is that the "Correspondence" furnishes ample evidence for |