subject, and in telling him the true story, begged him to

correct the false reports.

He says:

In the first part of

Werther, Werther is Goethe himself.

In Lotte and Albert he has borrowed traits from us, my wife and myself. Many of the scenes are quite true, and yet partly altered; others are, at least in our history, unreal. For the sake of the second part, and in order to prepare for the death of Werther, he has introduced various things into the first part which do not at all belong to us. For example, Lotte has never either with Goethe or with any one else stood in the intimate relation which is there described; in this we have certainly great reason to be offended with him, for several accessory circumstances are too true and too well known for people not to point to us. He regrets it now, but of what use is that to us? It is true he has a great regard for my wife; but he ought to have depicted her more faithfully in this point, that she was too wise and delicate ever to let him go so far as is represented in the first part. She behaved to him in such a way as to make her far dearer to me than before, if this had been possible. Moreover, our engagement was never made public, though not, it is true, kept a secret; still she was too bashful ever to confess it to any one. And there was no engagement between us but that of hearts. It was not till shortly before my departure (when Goethe had already been a year away from Wetzlar at Frankfurt, and the disguised Werther had been dead half a year) that we were married. After the lapse of a year, since our residence here, we have become father and mother. The dear boy lives still, and gives us, thank God, much joy. For the rest, there is in Werther much of Goethe's character and manner of thinking. Lotte's portrait is completely that of my wife. Albert might have been made a little more ardent. The second part of Werther has nothing whatever to do with

us... When Goethe had printed his book, he sent us an early copy, and thought we should fall into raptures with what he had done. But we at once saw what would be the effect, and your letter confirms our fears. I wrote very angrily to him. He then, for the first time saw what he had done; but the book was printed, and he hoped our fears were idle.' In another letter to the same, Kestner says: You have no idea what a man he is. But when his great fire has somewhat burnt itself out, then we shall all have the greatest joy in him.'

We have thus brought to a close the history of Werther, its composition and effect; a history so important in the biography of its author, that we might have been excused for having devoted so much space to it, even if the letters, which have furnished the evidence, did not throw so strong a light upon a period very inadequately represented in the Wahrheit und Dichtung.

On the 28th August, 1849, the hundredth anniversary of the great poet's birth, when all Germany joined in a jubilee, a small marble monument was erected in the well known Wertherplatz without the Wetzlar gates, where Goethe was wont to sit and muse; three lime trees are planted round it, bearing this inscription:

RUHEPLATZ DES DICHTERS

GOETHE

ZU SEINEM ANDENKEN FRISCH BEPFLANZT

BEI DER JUBELFEIER AM 28 AUG. 1849.

CHAPTER VI.

SURVEY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.

THERE never was a solitary Great Man. We may single one man from out the crowd, and place him on a pedestal; but, if we look attentively, we shall perceive others surrounding him also deserving pedestals, though none perhaps so eminent as he. Shakespeare, who lets few things escape his glance, has noted this in Julius

Cæsar :

• When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?'

The reason is, that whenever the confluence of circumstances calls for great energies, the energies are ready to the call. Men are equal to their destiny, and, as Schiller finely says, ' grow with the circle wherein they move.'

'Es wächst der Mensch mit seinem grosserem Kreise.' Eminent as Goethe stood above his contemporaries, he did not stand alone; around him, on his first splendid entrance into the arena, were men who had already fixed the fluctuating reverence of the public-Lessing, Herder, Klopstock, Wieland, and many lesser names. These, and their works, I might presuppose the reader to be more or less familiar with; and, consulting my own ease rather than his profit, might pass on with the briefest indication.

But, in truth, it is a great mistake to presuppose such knowledge; only a few readers will possess it; the majority would by no means be grateful for a compliment which left them in darkness, and it is for the sake of these that the present chapter is written. It is a chapter, not a volume, and must therefore only touch upon leading traits. For readers who desire more detail, there is no lack of voluminous works.

Germany is a large and heterogeneous country. It is washed by the waves of the Baltic, German and Adriatic Seas; it lies between the woods of Poland and the marshes of Holland, between the Alpine ranges and the Danish plains; it shakes hands with Scandinavia, with Italy, and with France, and thus presents an area of many peoples united by a common language and a certain community of thought. As the land is, so is the literature: a vast heterogeneous mass, not easily reducible to any one distinct formula. To select a characteristic from such varieties, and say that is the spirit of German literature, must, on the face of it, be an arbitrary proceeding; whatever we select will assuredly be liable to numerous counterstatements. Nevertheless with a full consciousness of what there is of arbitrary in the attempt, it will be necessary to make one here, if only for the sake of brevity. Let us then resolutely overlook all varieties, and fix our attention. solely on the dominant type that which has persisted through history, and is never wholly obscured by the temporary tendencies of the time. This dominant and persistent characteristic, which may be taken as the spirit of German literature, is Idealism—a much-abused word, which I am forced to use for want of a better. By Idealism is here understood what is often expressed by the words Spiritualism and Mysticism: the tendency to see in Nature a deeper and higher meaning than she carries in

her face; a tendency to disregard Matter or Form, as the mere body, the rude hieroglyph of Spirit; a tendency which is also characterized by the word subjective.

This Idealism is pre-eminently German. It is also essentially Christian, and is thus diametrically opposed to the tendency of the Pagan mind. A comparison of Greek and Christian Art will serve to bring both characteristics into distinct relief.

The famous Tannhäuser legend will serve us an illustration of the Christian tendency. Tannhäuser, the German knight and minstrel, is lured by Venus into her enchanted domain on the Wartburg, where she and her nymphs live a voluptuous and thoroughly Pagan life, hateful to all Christians, as a life of mere sin and sensuousness. He passes some time with her in voluptuous oblivion of the world. Growing weary, and eager for change, he once more enters the world he had left, but finds himself under the universal ban. The mere fact of his having been in the Venusberg is tantamount to his having formally sold himself to the Evil One. Hunted by his former companions like a wild beast, and shunned by every Christian, he repairs repentant to Rome, to seek absolution from the Pope. But large as the power of absolution is, there are sins so tremendous that no absolution can remove them; and when the Pope hears what has been the sin of Tannhäuser, he refuses pardon, and drives him forth to wander, like another Cain, homeless on the earth.

Such was the German conception of Venus, the mother of Love. She was no longer the Goddess Aphrodite, but a lovely Devil luring the souls of men to everlasting perdition. Nay, Ritter Tannhäuser himself, even when under her spell, knows she is not a Goddess, but tells her plainly, 'Oh Venus, my lovely wife, you know you are but a devil.'