-how make them understood, if not by that accent which passes from soul to soul, without the intermediate office even of words! Manlius draws his dagger to strike Servilius with it; his hand seeks his heart, and trembles lest it should find it: the remembrance of so many years, during which Servilius was dear to him, raises as it were a cloud of tears between his revenge and his friend.

The fifth act has been less spoken of, and yet Talma is perhaps still more admirable in that than in the fourth. Servilius has encountered all hazards to expiate his fault and preserve Manlius. At the bottom of his heart he has resolved, if his friend should perish, to partake his lot. The grief of Manlius is softened by the regret of Servilius; nevertheless he dares not tell him that he forgives his frightful treason, but he takes the hand of Servilius in private, and presses it to his heart; his involuntary motions seek the guilty friend, whom he wishes to embrace once more before he parts from him forever. Nothing, or scarcely any thing in the play itself, pointed out this admirable beauty of a feeling soul still paying respect to ancient affection, in spite of the treason that has broken it. The parts of Pierre and Jaffier, in the English play, indicate this situation very forcibly. Talma has found means of giving to the tragedy of Manlius the energy it wants, and nothing does so much honor to his talent as the truth with which he expresses the invincibility of friendship. Passion may hate the object of its love; but when the tie is formed by the sacred relations of the soul, it seems that crime itself is incapable of destroying it, and that we look for remorse just as, after a long absence, we should look for the return.

In speaking somewhat in detail about Talma, I do not consider myself as having rested on a subject foreign to that of my work. This artist gives as much as possible to French tragedy of what, either justly or unjustly, the Germans accuse it of wanting-originality and nature. He knows how to characterize foreign manners in the different parts he represents, and no actor more frequently hazards great effects by simple. expedients. In his mode of declaiming, he has artificially

VOL. II.-3

combined Shakspeare and Racine together. Why should not. dramatic writers endeavor also to unite in their compositions what the actor has been able to amalgamate so happily in his performance?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OF ROMANCES.

Or all fictions, romances being the easiest, there is no career in which the writers of modern nations have more generally essayed themselves. The romance constitutes what may be called the transition between real and imaginary existence. The history of every individual is, with some modifications, a romance sufficiently similar to those which are printed, and personal recollections often, in this respect, take place of invention. It has been attempted to give more importance to this species of compositions, by mixing with it poetry, history, and philosophy; but it seems to me that this is to alter its nature. Moral reflections and impassioned eloquence may find room in romances, but the interest of situations ought always to be the first principle of action in this sort of writings, and nothing can ever properly supply its place. If theatrical effect is the indispensable condition for all pieces for representation, it is equally true that a romance can be neither a good work, nor a happy fiction, unless it inspires a lively curiosity; it is in vain that we would supply the want of this by ingenious digressions: the expectation of amusement frustrated would cause an insurmountable fatigue.

The multitude of love romances published in Germany has somewhat turned into ridicule the light of the moon, the harps that resound at evening through the valley, in short, all known. and approved methods of softly soothing the soul; and yet we have a natural disposition that is delighted with these easy sorts of reading, and it is the part of genius to avail itself of a

disposition which it would be in vain to think of combating. It is so sweet to love and to be loved, that this hymn of life is susceptible of infinite modulation, without the heart experiencing any lassitude; thus we return with pleasure to the first melody of a song embellished by brilliant variations. I shall not however dissemble that romances, even those which are most pure, do mischief; they have too well discovered to us the most secret recesses of sentiment. Nothing can be experienced that we do not remember to have read before, and all the veils of the heart have been rent. The ancients would never thus have made of the human soul a subject of fiction; it remained a sanctuary for them, into which their own looks would have feared to penetrate; but in fine, the class of romances once admitted, there must be interest in it; and it is, as Cicero said of action in the Orator, the condition trebly

necessary.

man.

The Germans, like the English, are very fertile in romances descriptive of domestic life. The delineation of manners is more elegant in the English, but more diversified in the GerThere is in England, notwithstanding the independence of characters, a generality of manner inspired by good company; in Germany nothing of this sort is matter of convention. Many of these romances, founded on our sentiments and manners, which hold among books the rank of dramas in the theatre, deserve to be cited; but that which is without equal and without parallel is Werther; there we behold all that the genius of Goethe was capable of producing when impassioned. It is said that he now attaches little value to this work of his youth; the effervescence of imagination, which inspired him almost with enthusiasm for suicide, may now appear to him deserving of censure. In youth, the degradation of existence. not having yet any commencement, the tomb appears only a poetical image, a sleep surrounded with figures weeping for us on their knees; it is no longer the same in middle life, and we then learn why religion, that science of the soul, has mingled the horror of murder with the attempt upon one's own existence. Nevertheless, Goethe would be much in the wrong did he

despise the admirable talent that manifests itself in Werther it is not only the sufferings of love, but the maladies of the imagination, so prevalent in our times, of which he has painted the picture; those thoughts that press into the mind, without our being able to change them into acts of the will; the singular contrast of a life much more monotonous than that of the ancients, and of an internal existence much more tumultnous, cause a sort of dizziness like that which we experience on the brink of a precipice, when the very fatigue of long contemplating the abyss below may urge us to throw ourselves into it. Goethe has been able to join to this picture of the inquietudes of the soul, so philosophical in its result, a fiction, simple, but of prodigious interest. If it has been thought necessary in all the sciences to strike the eyes by outward images, is it not natural to interest the heart, in order to impress it with great thoughts?'

1 "Werther is a masterpiece of style; we may look through German literature in vain for such clear, sunny, pictures, fulness of life, and delicately managed simplicity. Its style is one continuous strain of music, which, restrained within the limits of prose, fulfils all the conditions of poetry; dulcet as the sound of falling waters, and as full of sweet melancholy as an autumnal eve.

Nothing can be simpler than the structure of this book, wherein, as M. Marmier well remarks,2 every detail is so arranged as to lay bare the sufferings of a diseased spirit. Werther arrives at his chosen retreat, believing himself cured, and anticipating perfect happiness. He is painter and Doct. The fresh spring mornings, the sweet cool evenings, soothe and strengthen him. He selects a place under the limes to read and dream away the hours. There he brings his pencil and his Homer. Every thing interests him-the old woman who brings his coffee, the children who play around him, the story of a poor family. In this serene convalescence he meets with Charlotte, and a new passion agitates his soul. His simple uniform existence becomes changed. He endeavors by bodily activity to charm away his desires. The days no longer resemble each other; now ecstatic with hope, now crushed with despair. Winter comes—cold, sad, gloomy. He must away. He departs and mingles with the world, but the world disgusts him. The monotony and emptiness of official life are intolerable to his pretensions; the parchment pride of the noblesse is insulting to his sense of superiority. He returns to the peaceful scene of his foruner contentment, and finds indeed Charlotte, the children, his favorite

2 Etudes sur Goethe, p. 11.

Romances by means of letters, always suppose more of sentiment than of fact; the ancients would never have thought of giving this form to their fictions; and it is only for two centuries past that philosophy has been sufficiently directed within

woods and walks, but not the calmness which he seeks. The hopelessness of his position overwhelms him. Disgusted with the world-unsatisfied in his cravings-he dies by his own hand.

Rosenkrantz, in the true spirit of that criticism which seeks everywhere for meanings more recondite than the author dreamed of, thinks that Goethe exhibits great art in making Werther a diplomatist, because a diplomatist is a man of shams (scheinthuer); but the truth is, Goethe made him precisely what he found him. His art is truth. He is so great an artist that the simplest realities have to him significance. Charlotte cutting bread and butter for the children--the scene of the ball-the children clinging round Werther for sugar, and pictures of that kind, betray so little inventive power, that they have excited the ridicule of some English critics, to whom poetry is a thing of pomp and classicality, not the beautiful vesture of reality. The beauty and art of Werther is not in the incidents (a Dumas would shrug despairing shoulders over such invention), but in the representation. What is Art but Representation? "The effect of Werther was prodigious. 'That nameless unrest,' says Carlyle, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing discontent which was agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. All felt it; he alone could give it voice. And here lies the secret of his popularity; in his deep, susceptive heart he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative gift which belenged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a name; and so made himself the spokesman of his generation. Werther is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it paints the misery, it assionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice all over Europe iudly and at once respond to it. True, it prescribes no remedy; for that was a far different, far harder enterprise, to which other years and a higher ulture were required; but even this utterance of pain, even this little for the present is grasped at, and with eager sympathy appropriated in every bosom. If Byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad, stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a British heart, now that the whole matter e no longer new-is indeed old and trite-we may judge with what vehement acceptance this Werther must have been welcomed, coming, as it did, like a voice from the unknown regions; the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge which, in country after country, men's ears have listened to till they were deaf to all else. For Werther, infusing itself into the core and whole spirit of literature, gave birth to a race of sentimentalists who have raged and wailed in every part of the world, till the better light dawned on them, or, at worst, exhausted nature laid herself to sleep, and it was