forced by his office to consider what are the technical demands. If the poet has attempted a drama, he must be tried by dramatic standards. However much we may delight in the picture Goethe has presented in this third act, we cannot but feel that Shakespeare, while giving the picture, would have made it subservient to the progress and development of the piece; for Shakespeare was not only a poet, he was also a dramatic poet.

Act the fourth again shows us citizens talking about the time, which grow more and more ominous. In the next scene Alva, the terrible Alva, appears, having laid all his plans. Orange has fled, but Egmont comes. A long discussion, very argumentative but utterly undramatic, between Alva and Egmont, is concluded by the arrest of the latter.

Act the fifth shows us Clärchen in the streets trying to rouse Brackenburg and the citizens to revolt and to the rescue of Egmont. There is great animation in this scene, wherein love raises the simple girl into the heroine. The citizens are alarmed, and dread to hear Egmont named.

"Clärchen. Stay! stay! Shrink not away at the sound of his name, to meet whom ye were wont to press forward so joyously! When rumour announced his approach, when the cry arose, Egmont comes! he comes from Ghent !' then happy were they who dwelt in the streets through which he was to pass. And when the neighing of his steed was heard, did not every one throw aside his work, while a ray of hope and joy, like a sunbeam from his countenance, stole over the toil-worn faces which peered from every window. Then as ye stood in doorways ye would lift up your children and pointing to him exclaim, See! that is Egmont! he who towers above the rest! 'Tis from him ye must look for better times than those your poor fathers have known !'"

Clärchen, unable to rouse the citizens, is led home by Brackenburg. The scene changes to Egmont's prison, where he soliloquises on his fate; the scene again

changes, and shows us Clärchen waiting with sickly impatience for Brackenburg to come and bring her the news. He comes; tells her Egmont is to die; she takes poison, and Brackenburg, in despair, resolves also to die. The final scene is very weak, and very long. Egmont has an interview with Alva's son, whom he tries to persuade into aiding him to escape; failing in this, he goes to sleep on a couch, and Clärchen appears in a vision as the figure of Liberty. She extends to him a laurel crown. He wakes to find the prison filled with soldiers who lead him to execution.

There are great inequalities in this work, and some disparities of style. It was written at three different periods of his life; and although, when once completed, a work may benefit by careful revision extending over many years, it will inevitably suffer from fragmentary composition; the delay which favours revision is fatal to composition. A work of Art should be completed before the paint has had time to dry; otherwise the changes brought by time in the development of the artist's mind will make themselves felt in the heterogeneous structure of the work. "Egmont" was conceived in the period when Goethe was under the influence of Shakespeare; it was mainly executed in the period when he had taken a classical direction. It wants the stormy life of "Götz," and the calm beauty of "Iphigenie." Schiller thought the close was too much in the opera style; and Gervinus thinks that preoccupation with the opera, which Goethe at this period was led into by his friendly efforts to assist Kayser, has given the whole work an operatic turn. I confess I do not detect this; but I see a decided deficiency in dramatic construction, which is also to be seen in all his later works; and that he really did not know what the drama required, to be a drama as well as a poem, we shall see clearly illustrated in a future chapter. Nevertheless, I end as I began with saying

that, find what fault you will with "Egmont," it still remains one of those general favourites against which criticism is powerless.

Still less satisfactory from the dramatic point of view is "Tasso;" of which we may say what Johnson says of "Comus," "it is a series of faultless lines, but no drama." Indeed, for the full enjoyment of this exquisite poem, it is necessary that the reader should approach it as he approaches "Comus," or " Manfred," or "Philip von Artevelde," with no expectations of finding in it the qualities of "Othello," or "Wallenstein." It has a charm which few can resist; but it wants all the requisites of stage representation. There is scarcely any action; and what little there is only serves as a vehicle of struggle which goes on in Tasso's mind, instead of the struggle and collision of two minds. Even the dramatic elements of love and madness are

not dramatically treated. We feel their presence in Tasso's mind; we never see their flaming energy fusing the heterogeneous materials of circumstance into fiery unity; we are thus spectators of a disease, not of an acted story. Hence the beauty of this work lies in its poetry, and cannot be reproduced in a translation.

The moment chosen by Goethe is when Tasso, having just completed his "Jerusalem Delivered," gives unmistakable signs of the unhappy passion and unhappy malady which have made his biography one of the saddest in the sad list of "mighty poets in their misery dead." German critics have affirmed that the piece is saturated with historical facts and local colour. But it is clear that great liberties have been taken both with history and local colour. Indeed, there was too obvious a superficial resemblance between the position of Tasso at the Court of Ferrara and Goethe at the Court of Weimar not to make these liberties necessary. Had Goethe painted the actual relation between Tasso and Alphonso, the public might have read between the

lines reflections on Karl August. Moreover, it is difficult to deny the truth of Madame de Staël's remark, that "les couleurs du Midi ne sont pas assez prononcées." The tone of the work is German throughout, and would considerably have surprised an Italian of the court of Ferrara.

"Tasso" was finally completed shortly after the rupture with the Frau von Stein, presently to be related; but I have noticed it here, as the most convenient place. It is in truth to be regarded as one of the products of his early Weimar years, having been merely versified in Italy, and after his return home.

CHAPTER VII.

RETURN HOME.

GOETHE came back from Italy greatly enriched, but by no means satisfied. The very wealth he had accumulated embarrassed him, by the new problems it presented, and the new horizons it revealed:

"For all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever as we move."

He had in Rome become aware that a whole life of study would scarcely suffice to still the craving hunger for knowledge; and he left Italy with deep regret. The return home was thus, in itself, a grief; the arrival was still more painful. Every one will understand this, who after living for many months away from the circle of old habits and old acquaintances, feeling in the new world a larger existence more consonant with his nature and his aims, has returned once more to the old circle, to find it unchanged, -pursuing its old paths, moved by the old impulses, guided by the old lights, so that he feels himself a stranger. To return to a great capital, after such an absence, is to feel ill at ease; but to return from Italy to Weimar! If we, on entering London, after a residence abroad, find the same interests occupying our friends which occupied them when we left, the same family gossip, the same books talked about, the same placards loud