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be true that the despotism of our rules of propriety mixes often something factitious with our finest French tragedies, we do not find more truth in the extravagant theories of a systematic mind: and if there be a want of nature in exaggeration, a certain sort of calmness is also an affectation. It is a self-assumed superiority over the emotions of the soul which may suit philosophy, but which will not at all accord with the dramatic

art.

We may without fear address these criticisms to Goethe, for almost all his works are composed on different systems. Sometimes he abandons himself wholly to passion, as in Werther and Count Egmont; at other times his fugitive poetry sets all the chords of imagination in vibration; again, he gives us historical facts with the most scrupulous truth, as in Goetz von Berlichingen; at another time he has all the simplicity of ancient times, as in Herman and Dorothea. In fine, he plunges himself with Faust into the stormy whirlwinds of life; then, all at once, in Tasso, the Natural Daughter, and even in Iphigenia, he considers the dramatic art as a monument erected among tombs. His works have then the fine forms, the splendor and dazzling whiteness of marble, but, like it, they are also cold and inanimate. We cannot criticise Goethe as a good author in one species of writing, while he is bad in another. He rather resembles nature, which produces every thing, and from every thing; and we may like his southern climate better than that of the north, without denying to him hose talents which are suitable to all the various regions of the soul,

CHAPTER XXIII.

FAUST.

AMONG the pieces written for the performance of puppets, there is one entitled Dr. Faust, or Fatal Science, which has always had great success in Germany. Lessing took up this subject before Goethe. This wonderful history is a tradition very generally known. Several English authors have written. the life of this same Dr. Faust, and some of them have even attributed to him the art of printing. His profound knowledge did not preserve him from being weary of life; in order to escape. from it, he tried to enter into a compact with the devil, who concludes the whole by carrying him off. From these slender materials Goethe has furnished the astonishing work, of which I will now try to give the idea.

Certainly, we must not expect to find in it either taste, or measure, or the art that selects and terminates; but if the imagination could figure to itself an intellectual chaos, such as the material chaos has often been painted, the Faust of Goethe should have been composed at that epoch. It cannot be exceeded in boldness of conception, and the recollection of this production is always attended with a sensation of giddiness. The devil is the hero of the piece; the author has not conceived him like a hideous phantom, such as he is usually represented to children; he has made him, if we may so express ourselves, the Evil Being par excellence, before whom all others, that of Gresset in particular, are only novices, scarcely worthy to be the servants of Mephistopheles (this is the name of the demon who has made himself the friend of Faust). Goethe wished to display in this character, at once real and fanciful, the bitterest pleasantry that contempt can inspire, and at the same time an audacious gayety that ainuses. There is an in

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fernal irony in the discourses of Mephistopheles, which extends itself to the whole creation, and criticises the universe like a bad book of which the devil has made himself the censor.

Mephistopheles makes sport with genius itself, as with the most ridiculous of all absurdities, when it leads men to take a serious interest in any thing that exists in the world, and above all when it gives them confidence in their own individual strength. It is singular that supreme wickedness and divine wisdom coincide in this respect, that they equally recognize the vanity and weakness of all earthly things: but the one proclaims this truth only to disgust men with what is good, the other only to elevate them above what is evil.

If the play of Faust contained only a lively and philosophical pleasantry, an analogous spirit might be found in many of Voltaire's writings; but we perceive in this piece an imagination of a very different nature. It is not only that it displays to us the moral world, such as it is, annihilated, but that hell itself is substituted in the place of it. There is a potency of sorcery, a poetry belonging to the principle of evil, a delirium of wickedness, a distraction of thought, which make us shudder, laugh, and cry in a breath. It seems as if the government of the world were, for a moment, entrusted to the hands of the demon. You tremble, because he is pitiless; you laugh, because he humbles the satisfaction of self-love; you weep, because human nature, thus contemplated from the depths of hell, inspires a painful compassion.

Milton has drawn his Satan larger than man; Michael Angelo and Dante have given him the hideous figure of the brute combined with the human shape. The Mephistopheles on Goethe is a civilized devil. He handles with dexterity that ridicule, so trifling in appearance, which is nevertheless often found to consist with a profundity of malice; he treats all sensibility as silliness or affectation; his figure is ugly, low, and crooked; he is awkward without timidity, disdainful without pride; he affects something of tenderness with the women, because it is only in their company that he needs to deceive, in order to seduce: and what he understands by seduction, is

to minister to the passions of others, for he cannot even imitate This is the only dissimulation that is impossible to

love. him.

The character of Mephistopheles supposes an inexhaustible knowledge of social life, of nature, and of the marvellous. This play of Faust is the nightmare of the imagination, but it is a nightmare that redoubles its strength. It discovers the diabolical revelation of incredulity, of that incredulity which attaches itself to every thing that can ever exist of good in this world; and perhaps this might be a dangerous revelation, if the circumstances produced by the perfidious intentions of Mephistopheles did not inspire a horror of his arrogant language, and make known the wickedness which it covers.

In the character of Faust all the weaknesses of humanity are concentered: desire of knowledge, and fatigue of labor; wish of success and satiety of pleasure. It presents a perfect model of the changeful and versatile being whose sentiments are yet more ephemeral than the short existence of which he complains. Faust has more ambition than strength; and this inward agitation produces his revolt against nature, and makes him have recourse to all manner of sorceries, in order to escape from the hard but necessary conditions imposed upon mortality. He is discovered, in the first scene, surrounded by his books, and by an infinite number of mathematical instruments and chemical phials. His father had also devoted himself to science, and transmitted to him the same taste and habits. A solitary lamp enlightens this gloomy retreat, and Faust pursues without intermission his studies of nature, and particularly of magic, many secrets of which are already in his possession.

He invokes one of the creating Genii of the second order; the spirit appears, and counsels him not to elevate himself above the sphere of the human understanding.1

We gladly avail ourselves of the very fine version of Faust, by Mr. Charles T. Brooks. His elegant and faithful rendering of this marvellous poem, is a triumph of translation and a new glory of American literaure.-Ed.

FAUST.

"Away, intolerable sprite!

SPIRIT.

"Thou breath'st a panting supplication To hear my voice, my face to see; Thy mighty prayer prevails on me,

I come!-what miserable agitation

Seizes this demigod! Where is the cry of thought?
Where is the breast? that in itself a world begot,
And bore and cherish'd, that with joy did tremble

And fondly dream us spirits to resemble.

Where art thou, Faust? whose voice rang through my ear Whose mighty yearning drew me from my sphere?

Is this thing thou? that, blasted by my breath,

Through all life's windings shuddereth,

A shrinking, cringing, writhing worm!

FAUST.

Thee, flame-born creature, shall I fear? 'Tis I, 'tis Faust, behold thy peer!

SPIRIT.

"In life's tide-currents, in action's storm,

Up and down, like a wave,

Like the wind I sweep!

Cradle and grave—

A limitless deep

An endless weaving

To and fro,

A restless heaving

Of life and glow,—

So shape I, on Destiny's thundering loom,

The Godhead's live garment, eternal in bloom.

FAUST.

"Spirit that sweep'st the world from end to end, How near, this hour, I feel myself to thee!

SPIRIT.

"Thou'rt like the spirit thou canst comprehend,

Not me!

[Vanishes.

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