not of the kind recognised by conventional taste, because it wants the conventional regularity of feature. "Wenn du mir sagst, du habest als Kind, Geliebte, den Menschen Nicht gefallen, und dich habe die Mutter verschmäht, Bis du grösser geworden und still dich entwickelt; ich glaub' es: Gerne denk' ich mir dich als ein besonderes Kind. Fehlet Bildung und Farbe doch auch der Blüthe des Weinstocks, Wenn die Beere gereift, Menschen und Götter entzückt."1 Surely the poet's word is to be taken in such a case? While, however, rectifying a general error, let me not fall into the opposite extreme. Christiane had her charm; but she was not a highly gifted woman. She was not a Frau von Stein, capable of being the companion and the sharer of his highest aspirations. Quick mother-wit, a lively spirit, a loving heart, and great aptitude for domestic duties, she undoubtedly possessed she was gay, enjoying, fond of pleasure even to excess, and as may be read in the poems which she inspired was less the mistress of his Mind than of his Affections. Her golden-brown locks, laughing eyes, ruddy cheeks, kiss-provoking lips, small and gracefully rounded figure, gave her "the appearance of a young Dionysos."2 Her naïveté, gaiety, and enjoying temperament completely fascinated Goethe, who recognised in her one of those free, healthy specimens of Nature which education had not distorted by artifices. She was like a child of the sensuous Italy he had just quitted with so much regret; and there are few poems 1" When you tell me, dearest, that as a child you were not admired, and even your mother scorned you, till you grew up and silently developed yourself; I can quite believe it. I can readily imagine you as a peculiar child. If the blossoms of the vine are wanting in colour and form, the grapes once ripe are the delight of gods and men." 2 So says Madame Schopenhauer, not a prejudiced witness. in any language which approach the passionate grati- . tude of those in which he recalls the happiness she gave him. Why did he not marry her at once? His dread of marriage has already been shown; and to this abstract dread there must be added the great disparity of station: a disparity so great that not only did it make the liaison scandalous, it made Christiane herself reject the offer of marriage. Stahr reports that persons now living have heard her declare that it was her own fault her marriage was so long delayed; and certain it is that when Christmas, 1789-she bore him a child (August von Goethe, to whom the duke stood godfather) he took her with her mother and sister to live in his house, and always regarded the connection as a marriage. But however he may have regarded it, Public Opinion has not forgiven this defiance of social laws. The world blamed him loudly; even his admirers cannot think of the connection without pain. "The Nation," says Schäfer, "has never forgiven its greatest poet for this rupture with Law and Custom; nothing has stood so much in the way of a right appreciation of his moral character, nothing has created more false judgments on the tendency of his writings than his half-marriage." But let us be just. While no one can refrain from deploring that Goethe, so eminently needing a pure domestic life, should not have found a wife whom he could avow, one who would in all senses have been a wife to him, the mistress of his house, the companion of his life; on the other hand, no one who knows the whole circumstances can refrain from confessing that there was also a bright side to this dark episode. Having indicated the dark side, and especially its social effect, we have to consider what happiness it brought him at a time when he was most lonely, most unhappy. It gave him the joys of paternity, for which his heart yearned. It gave him a faithful and devoted affection. It gave him one to look after his domestic existence ; and it gave him a peace in that existence which hitherto he had sought in vain. "Oftmals hab' ich geirrt, und habe mich wieder gefunden, Und benehmt mir ihn erst drüben am kalten Gestad." 1 There is a letter still extant (unpublished) written ten years after their first acquaintance, in which, like a passionate lover, he regrets not having taken something of hers on his journey even her slipper - that he might feel less lonely! To have excited such love, Christiane must have been a very different woman from that which it is the fashion in Germany to describe her as being. In conclusion, let it be added. that his mother expressed herself perfectly satisfied with his choice, received Christiane as a daughter, and wrote affectionately to her, calling her dear daughter years before the marriage, and from the first refused to listen to the officious meddlers who tried to convince her of the scandal which the connection occasioned. The "Roman Elegies" are doubly interesting: first, as expressions of his feelings; secondly, as perhaps the most perfect poems of the kind in all literature. In them we see how the journey to Italy had saturated his mind with the spirit of ancient Art. Yet while reproducing the past with matchless felicity, he is, at the same time, thoroughly original. Nowhere in Greek or Roman literature do I remember this union of great thoughts, giving grandeur to the verse, with individual passion, giving it intensity. They are not 66 1" Often have I erred, and always found the path again, but never found myself happier : now in this maiden lies my happiness! If this, too, is an error, O spare me the knowledge, ye gods, and let me only discover it beyond the grave." simply elegies - outpourings of individual feelings they are Roman elegies, and mirror a world. In modern poems classical recollections and allusions are for the most part frigid and laboured, not the spontaneous forms of poetic expression. In these "Roman Elegies the classic world lives again; indeed at times one can almost say he is more antique than the ancients.1 The thirteenth elegy, "Amor der Schalk," for example, is in Anacreon's manner, but far above anything we have of Anacreon. Antique also is the direct unmisgiving sensuousness of the poet, and his unperplexed earnestness of passion, an earnestness which does not absorb the other activities of his nature, but allies itself with them. Thus in the fifth elegy there is a picture of the most vivid sensuousness, aiding, not thwarting, the poetical activity. What a poem, what a world of emotion and thought these lines suggest : “Ueberfällt sie der Schlaf, lieg'ich und denke mir viel. Und es durchglühet ihr Hauch mir bis ins Tiefste die Brust. This picture of the poet murmuring verses while his beloved sleeps softly by his side; warmed by her breath, yet with fingering hand marking the rhythm of verse; is typical of the whole story of Goethe's love. Passion fed, it never stifled the flame of his genius. He enjoyed; but in the brief pauses of enjoyment the presence of high aims was felt. The blending of individual passion with classic forms, making the past live again in the feeling of the present, may be illustrated by the following example: 1 Schlegel happily says of them, "They enrich Roman poetry with German poems." ("Characteristiken und Kritiken," ii. p. 199.) "Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n, dass du mir so schnell dich ergeben! Glaub' es, ich denke nicht frech, denke nicht niedrig von dir. Und vom schleichenden Gift kranket auf Jahre das Herz. Many of the finest passages are as antique in their directness of expression as in other qualities. He said justly to Eckermann, that metre is a peculiar veil which clothes the nakedness of expression, and makes that admissible which in prose would be offensive, and which even in another lighter kind of metre would be offensive. In the "Don Juan" stanza, he says, the material of the "Roman Elegies" would be indelicate. On the question how far a poet is justified in disregarding the conventional proprieties of his age in the portrayal of feeling, let Schiller be heard: "The laws 1 In Sir Theodore Martin's volume of privately printed poems and translations the passage in the text is thus rendered: "Blush not, my love, at the thought, thou yieldedst so soon to my passion; Trust me, I think it no shame think it no vileness in thee ! And the heart sickens for years with the insidious bane: Think'st thou Love's goddess hung back, when deep in the forest of Ida, She, with a thrill of delight, first her Anchises beheld? Coyly had Luna delayed to fondle the beautiful sleeper, |