regret that I had not earlier been able to take advantage of it; in rewriting this volume, as well as in writing the second, I have made the freest use both of his and of Schäfer's work. Acknowledg ment of assistance is a cardinal point in literary courtesy too often neglected; and my book is in spirit, form and matter so widely different from those of Viehoff and Schäfer, containing so much which they have not, and omitting so much which they contain, that a reader who should make a comparison, remembering that the same sources were open to me as to them, would probably form no idea of the assistance I have received; I am therefore the more anxious to acknowledge it.

Nor can I let this opportunity pass without recording my debt to Mrs. Austin's delightful work Goethe and his Contemporaries, of which Falk's Reminiscences forms the nucleus. This book was a loved companion long before I could read German; and, in common with many readers, I felt very grateful to Mrs. Austin for the mass of details, and occasional fine remark, with which she gave us glimpses of that distant world. The book has been of service to me in more than one chapter of this biography. The reader is advised to get it at once, together with Mr. Oxenford's translation of Eckermann's Conversations; for not only will they charm

by their contents, but assist him in forming a conception of Goethe as he was in the decline of life.

Mr. Oxenford has also translated the Wahrheit und Dichtung, so that the English reader may judge how far the Autobiography renders a biography superfluous. One objection, indeed, will occur at the outset Goethe lived to the age of eighty-two, and his Autobiography only includes the first five or sixand-twenty years. Nor will the Annals (Tag und Jahres Hefte) supply the deficiency. A more serious objection, however, rises from the nature of the work. That work has great charm, but the charm is scarcely, if at all, the kind which belongs to Autobiography. Its calm artistic delineation of men, scenes and influences, and the occasional episodes of winning grace, however we may prize them, only approximate to Autobiography; left as they are without the precise detail, and above all without the direct eloquent egotism which constitutes the value and the interest of such works. Liberal enough in dissertation, and in record of details respecting others, he is provokingly reticent about himself; nay, in one place, he actually apologizes for speaking of himself; which in an Autobiography is surely misplaced modesty?

*In Bohn's Standard Library, vol. xxxi.

To the biographer, this Wahrheit und Dichtung is almost as much of a stumbling block as a stepping stone; at least I found it so. In obedience to the advice of German friends, and to what seemed the most natural plan, I originally confined myself to the reproduction and abridgment of it in the first three Books, merely correcting inaccuracies, and inserting such novelty of detail as had come to hand. It seemed proper to let him speak for himself wherever that could be done. But this plan was more plausible than felicitous; and on rewriting the first volume — which I did during my last residence in Germany through the autumn and winter of 1854-5-I found it indispensable to recast the whole, and begin again upon a different principle. Thus the Autobiography came to be treated only as one of the various sources from which the story was to be constructed. The main reason for this was the abiding inaccuracy of tone, which, far more misleading than the many inaccuracies of fact, gives to the whole youthful period, as narrated by him, an aspect so directly contrary to what is given by contemporary evidence, especially his own letters, that an attempt to reconcile the contradiction is futile. If any one doubts this, and persists in his doubts after reading the first volume of this work, let him take up Goethe's Letters to the

Countess von Stolberg, or the recently published letters to Kestner and Charlotte, and compare their tone with the tone of the Autobiography, wherein the old man depicts the youth as the old man saw him, not as the youth felt and lived. The picture of youthful follies and youthful passions comes softened through the distant avenue of years. The turbulence of a youth of genius is not indeed quite forgotten, but it is hinted with stately reserve. Jupiter, serenely throned upon Olympus, forgets that he was once a rebel with the Titans.

When we come to know the real facts, we see that the Autobiography does not so much misstate as understate; we, who can read between the lines,' perceive that it errs more from want of sharpness of relief and precision of detail than from positive misrepresentation. Controlled by contemporary evidence, it furnishes one great source for the story of the early years; and I greatly regret there is not more contemporary evidence to furnish more details.

For the later period, besides the mass of printed testimony in shape of Letters, Memoirs, Reminiscences, etc., I have endeavored to get at the truth by consulting those who lived under the same roof with him, those who lived in friendly intercourse with him, and those who have made his life and

works a special study. I have sought to acquire and to reproduce a definite image of the living man, and not simply of the man as he appeared in all the reticences of print. For this purpose I have controlled and completed the testimonies of print by means of papers which have never seen the light, and papers which, in all probability, never will see the light — by means of personal corroboration, and the many slight details which are gathered from far and wide when one is alive to every scrap of authentic information and can see its significance; and thus comparing testimony with testimony, completing what was learned yesterday by something learned to-day, not unfrequently helped to one passage by details furnished from half-a-dozen quarters, I have formed the conclusions which appear in this work. In this difficult, and sometimes delicate task, I hope it will be apparent that I have been guided solely by the desire to get at the truth, not having any cause to serve, any partisanship to mislead me, or personal connection to trammel my judgment. It will be seen that I neither deny, nor attempt to slur over, points which may tell against him. The man is too great and too good to forfeit our love, because on some points he may incur our

blame.

Considerable space has been allotted to analyses