I will therefore give, that we may calmly consider what is its real significance. Beethoven, writing to Bettina in 1812, when he made Goethe's acquaintance in Töplitz, says: "Kings and princes can to be sure make professors, privy councillors, &c., and confer titles and orders, but they cannot make great men—minds which rise above the common herd—these they must not pretend to make, and therefore must these be held in honour. When two men, such as Goethe and I, come together, even the high and mighty perceive what is to be considered great in men like us. Yesterday, on our way home, we met the whole imperial Family. We saw them coming from a distance, and Goethe separated from me to stand aside: say what I would, I could not make him advance another step. I pressed my hat down upon my head, buttoned up my great coat, and walked with folded arms through the thickest of the throng. Princes and pages formed a line, the Archduke Rudolph took off his hat, and the Empress made the first salutation. Those gentry know me. I saw to my real amusement the procession file past Goethe. He stood aside with his hat off, bending lowly. I rallied him smartly for it; I gave him no quarter."*

This anecdote is usually quoted as evidence of Beethoven's independence and Goethe's servility. A very little consideration will make us aware that Beethoven was ostentatiously rude in the assertion of his independence, and that Goethe was simply acting on the dictates of common courtesy, in standing aside and taking off his hat, as all Germans do when Royalty passes them. It is as much a matter of courtesy to stand still, and take off the hat, when a Royal personage passes in carriage or on foot, as it is to take off the hat when an acquaintance passes. Beethoven might choose to ignore all such courtesies; indeed his somewhat eccentric nature would not move in conventional orbits; and his disregard of such courtesies might be pardoned as the caprices of an eccentric nature; but Goethe was a man of the world, a man of courtesies, and a minister; to have folded his arms, and pressed down his hat upon his head, would have been a rudeness at variance with his nature, his education, his position, and his sense of propriety.

It is possible, nay probable, that the very education Goethe had received may have given to his salutation a more elaborate air than was noticeable in other bystanders. In bowing, he may have bowed very low, with a certain formality of respect; for I have no wish to deny that he did lay stress on conventional distinctions. Not only was ho far from republican sternness, but he placed more value on his * SCHINDLER'S Life of Beethoven, edited by Moscheles, vol. 1, pp. 133-5.

star and title of Excellency, than his thorough-going partizans are willing to admit. If that be a weakness, let him be credited with it; but if he were as vain of such puerilities as an English Duke is of the Garter, I do not see any cause for serious reproach in it. So few poets have been Excellencies, so few have worn stars on their breasts, that we have no means of judging whether Goethe's vanity was greater or less than we have a right to expect. Meanwhile it does seem to me that sneers at his title, and epigrams on his stars, come with a very bad grace from a nation which is laughed at for nothing more frequently than for its inordinate love of titles. Nor are Englishmen so remarkable for their indifference to rank, as to make them the fittest censors of this weakness in a Goethe.

CHAPTER IV.

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES.

AMONG the Jena friends whom Goethe saw with constant pleasure was Frommann, the bookseller, in whose family there was an adopted child, by name Minna Herzlieb, strangely interesting to us as the original of Ottilie in the Wahlverwandtschaften. As a child she had been a great pet of Goethe's; growing into womanhood, she exercised a fascination over him which his reason in vain resisted. The disparity of years was great: but how frequently are young girls found bestowing the bloom of their affections on men old enough to be their fathers! and how frequently are men at an advanced age found trembling with the passion of youth! In the Sonnets addressed to her, and in the novel of Elective Affinities, may be read the fervour of his passion, and the strength with which he resisted it. Speaking of this novel, he says: "No one can fail to recognise in it a deep passionate wound which shrinks from being closed by healing, a heart which dreads to be cured. . . . . In it, as in a burial-urn, I have deposited with deep emotion many a sad experience. The 3rd of October 1809 (when the publication was completed) set me free from the work; but the feelings it embodies can never quite depart from me." If we knew as much of the circumstances out of which grew the Elective Affinities as we do of those out of which grew Werther, we should find his experience as clearly embodied in this novel as it is in Werther; but conjecture in such cases being perilous, I will not venture beyond the facts which have been placed at my disposal; and may only add therefore that the growing attachment was seen by all with pain and dismay. At length it was resolved to send Minna to school,* and this absolute separation saved them both.

It is very curious to read Die Wahlverwandtschaften by this light; to see not only the sources of its inspiration, but the way in which Goethe dramatises the two halves of his own character. Eduard and Charlotte loved each other in youth. Circumstances separated

* In the novel, Ottilie also is sent back to school.

them ; and each made a mariage de convenance from which, after a time, they were released by death. The widower and the widow, now free to choose, naturally determine on fulfilling the dream of their youth. They marry. At the opening of the story we see them placidly happy. Although a few quiet touches make us aware of a certain disparity between their natures, not enough to create unhappiness, but enough to prevent perfect sympathy, the keenest eye would detect no signs which threatened the enduring stability of their happiness. Eduard has a friend, almost a brother, always called "The Captain," whom he invites to come and live with them. Charlotte strongly opposes this visit at first, having a dim presentiment of evil; but she yields, the more so as she desires that her adopted daughter, Ottilie, should now be taken from school, and come to live with them.

Thus are the four actors in the drama brought together on the stage; and no sooner are they brought together, than the natural elective affinities of their natures come into play. Charlotte and the Captain are drawn together; Eduard and Ottilie are drawn together. This is shown to be as inevitable as the chemical combinations which give the novel its title. A real episode in the tragedy of life is before us; felt to be inevitable; felt to be terrible; felt also to present a dilemma to the moral judgment, on which two parties will pronounce two opposite opinions.

Those critics who look at human life, and consequently at Art, from the abstract point of view, who, disregarding fact and necessity, treat human nature as a chess-board on which any moves may be made which the player chooses, the player himself being considered an impersonal agent untroubled by rashness, incapable of overlooking what is palpable to the bystanders,—those critics, I say, will unhesitatingly pronounce the situation an immoral situation, which the poet should not have presented, and which in real life would at once have been put an end to by the idea of Duty.

Others, again, who look at life as it is, not as it might be; who accept its wondrous complexity of impulses, and demand that Art should represent reality—consider this situation as terribly true, and although tragic, by no means immoral; for the tragedy lies in the collision of Passion with Duty—of Impulse with Social Law. Suppose Charlotte and Eduard unmarried, and these "affinities" would have been simple impulses to marriage. But the fact of marriage stands as a barrier to the impulses: the collision is inevitable.

The divergence of opinion, here indicated, must necessarily exist among the two great classes of readers. Accordingly in Germany

and in England the novel is alternately pronounced immoral and profoundly moral. I do not think it is either the one or the other. When critics rail at it, and declare it saps the whole foundation of marriage, and when critics enthusiastically declare it is profoundly moral because it sets the sacredness of marriage in so clear a light, I see that both have drawn certain general conclusions from an individual case; but I do not see that they have done more than put their interpretations on what the author had no intention of being interpreted at all. Every work of Art has its moral, says Hegel; but the moral depends on him that draws it. Both the conclusion against marriage, and the conclusion in favour of marriage, may therefore be drawn from this novel; and yet neither conclusion be correct—except as the private interpretation of the reader. Goethe was an Artist, not an Advocate; he painted a true picture, and because he painted it truly, he necessarily presented it in a form which would permit men to draw from it those opposite conclusions which might be drawn from the reality itself. Suppose the story actually to have passed before our eyes, the judgments passed on it, even among those thoroughly acquainted with all the facts, would have been diametrically opposite. It is not difficult to write a story carrying the moral legible in every page; and if the writer's object be primarily that of illustrating a plain moral, he need not trouble himself about truth of character. And for this reason: he employs character as a means to an end, he does not make the delineation of character his end; his purpose is didactic, not artistic. Quite otherwise is the artist's purpose and practice : for him human life is the end and aim; for him the primary object is character, which is, as all know, of a mingled woof, good and evil, virtue and weakness, truth and falsehood, woven inextricably together.

Those who object to such pictures, and think that truth is no warrant, may reasonably consider Goethe blameable for having chosen the subject. But he chose it because he had experienced it. And once grant him the subject, it is difficult to blame his treatment of it, as regards the social problem. He did his utmost to present this truthfully.

There is, it is true, one scene, which, although true to nature, profoundly true, is nevertheless felt to be objectionable on moral and æsthetical grounds. The artist is not justified in painting every truth; and if we in this nineteenth century often carry our exclusion of subjects to the point of prudery, that error is a virtue compared with the demoralising licence exhibited in French litera