That will suffer and weep,

Will rejoice and enjoy,

And scorn thee,

As I !"

Even in this rough plaster-cast of translation, does not the grandeur and beauty of the original shine through?

CHAPTER VII.

LILI.

This

"I MUST tell you something which makes me happy; and that is the visit of many excellent men of all grades, and from all parts, who, among unimportant and intolerable visitors, call on me often, and stay some time. We first know that we exist, when we recognise ourselves in others (man weiss erst dass man ist, wenn man sich in andern wiederfindet)." It is thus he writes to the Countess Augusta von Stolberg, with whom he had formed, through correspondence, one of those romantic friendships which celebrated men, sometime in their lives, are generally led to form. correspondence is among the most characteristic evidences we have of his mental condition, and should be read by every one who wishes to correct the tone of the Autobiography. Above all, it is the repository of his fluctuating feelings respecting Lili, the woman whom, according to his statement to Eckermann, he loved more than any other. "She was the first, and I can also add she is the last, I truly loved; for all the inclinations which have since agitated my heart were superficial and trivial in comparison."1 There is no statement he has made respecting a matter of feeling, to which one may oppose a flatter contradiction. Indeed we find it difficult to believe he uttered such a sentence, unless we remember how carelessly in conversation such retrospective statements are made, and 1"Gespräche," iii. p. 299.

how, at his very advanced age, the memory of youthful feelings must have come back upon him with peculiar tenderness. Whatever caused him to make that statement, the statement is very questionable. I do not think that he loved Lili more than Frederika; and we shall hereafter have positive evidence that his love for the Frau von Stein, and for his wife, was of a much deeper and more enduring nature. "My love for Lili,” he said to Eckermann, "had something so peculiar and delicate, that even now it has influenced my style in the narrative of that painfully happy epoch. When you read the fourth volume of my Autobiography, you will see that my love was something quite different from love in novels."

Well, the fourth volume is now open to every one, and he must have peculiar powers of divination who can read any profound passion in the narrative. A colder love-history was never written by a poet. There is no emotion warming the narrative; there is little of a loving recollection, gathering all details into one continuous story; it is, indeed, with great difficulty one unravels the story at all. He seems to seize every excuse to interrupt the narrative by general reflections, or by sketches of other poeple. He speaks of himself as "the youth of whom we now write!" He speaks

of her, and her circle, in the vaguest manner; and the feelings which agitated him we must "read between the lines."

It is very true, however, that the love there depicted is unlike the love depicted in novels. In novels, whatever may be the amount of foolishness with which the writers adumbrate their ideal of the passion, this truth, at least, is everywhere set forth, that to love we must render up body and soul, heart and mind, all interests and all desires, all prudences and all ambitions, identifying our being with that of another, in union to become elevated. To love is for

the soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when the path is terrible with dangers, mutually exhorting, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make the journey a delight, showing in the quiet distance the resting-place we all seek in this world.

It was not such companionship he sought with Lili; it was not such self-devotion which made him restlessly happy in her love. This child of sixteen, in all the merciless grace of maidenhood, proudly conscious of her power, ensnared his roving heart through the lures of passionate desire, but she never touched his soul; as the story we have to tell will sufficiently prove.

Anna Elizabeth Schönemann, immortalised as Lili, was the daughter of a great banker in Frankfort, and a French woman of birth, now a widow living in splendid style. She was sixteen when Goethe first fell in love with her. The age is significant. It was somewhat the age of Frederika, Lotte, Antoinette, and Maximiliane. An age when girlhood has charms of grace and person, of beauty and freshness, which even those will not deny who profoundly feel the superiority of a developed woman. There is poetry in this age; but there is no depth, no fulness of character. Imagine the wide-sweeping mind of the author of "Götz," Faust," "Prometheus," "The Wandering Jew,” “ Mahomet," in companionship with the mind of a girl of

sixteen!

Young, graceful, and charming, she was confessedly a coquette. Early in their acquaintance, in one of those pleasant hours of overflowing egotism wherein lovers take pride in the confession of faults (not without intimation of nobler qualities), Lili told him the story of her life; told him what a flirt she had been;

told him, moreover, that she had tried her spells on him, and was punished by being herself ensnared. Armida found herself spellbound by Rinaldo; but this Rinaldo followed her into the enchanted gardens more out of adventurous curiosity than love.

There was considerable difference in their stations; and the elegant society he met in the house of the banker's widow was every way discordant to the wild youth, whose thoughts were of Nature, and unconstrained freedom. The balls and concerts to which he followed her were little to his taste. "If," he writes to Augusta von Stolberg, "if you can imagine a Goethe in braided coat, from head to foot in the gallantest costume, amid the glare of chandeliers, fastened to the card-table by a pair of bright eyes, surrounded by all sorts of people, driven in endless dissipation from concert to ball, and with frivolous interest making love to a pretty blonde, then will you have a picture of the present Carnival-Goethe." In the following poem he expresses Lili's fascination and his uneasiness (the translation aims at accuracy of meaning rather than poetry, because the meaning is here the motive for my citing the poem):

"Wherefore so resistlessly dost draw me
Into scenes so bright?

Had I not enough to soothe and charm me
In the lonely night?

"Homely in my little room secluded,

While the moon's bright beams

In a shimmering light fell softly on me,
As I lay in dreams.

Dreaming thro' the golden hours of rapture
Soothed my heart to rest,

As I felt thy image sweetly living

Deep within my breast.