"Goethe, who expected some memorial worthy of the giver, held both for some time unopened in silent emotion. The various deputations now advanced. There were deputations from Jena, Weimar, Eisenach, and from the Lodge of Freemasons. The Jena students addressed him through two deputies. "Shortly after ten, Karl August and Luise came to offer their congratulations. They remained with him an hour alone; when the hereditary Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, with their two Princesses, arrived. Meanwhile the ministers of state, the chiefs of the courts of justice, the most distinguished persons of the court, and the deputations had collected together; the principal ladies of Weimar, among whom were the daughters and grand-daughters of Wieland and Herder, assembled in an upper room. As soon as all the invited had arrived, they were conducted, two by two, into the great room in which were placed the statue of the Grand Duke and Rauch's bust of Goethe, on a handsome pedestal, with a laurel crown beside it. Just as the procession reached the centre of the hall, music was heard from the galleries. The effect of this harmony in the lofty and beautiful hall, decorated with the busts and portraits, was indescribable. "At two o'clock a banquet was prepared for more than two hundred persons in the hall of the Stadthaus. In the evening Iphigenia was performed at the theatre. At the end of the third act, Goethe, warned by his physician, retired; and now a beautiful conclusion to this extraordinary day awaited him. A serenade was performed in front of his house by the orchestral band of the Grand Ducal Chapel. Hummel had with great feeling and taste combined the triumphal March in Titus, Gluck's overture to Iphigenia, and a masterly Adagio of his own, with an echo for horns. The opening expressed the triumphant glories of the day, while the melting tones of the Adagio seemed to invite to the tranquillity which follows tho accomplishment of work. "All the houses in the Frauenplan, where Goethe lived, were illuminated. A numerous company repaired to his house, where an elegant entertainment awaited them, and Goethe remained one hour with his guests before retiring for the night. This day was likewise celebrated at Leipsic and Frankfurt. In Frankfurt the consul general Bethmann marked the day by placing in his museum a statue of Goethe, as large as life, which Ranch had executed for him."* * These details and many others are given in Goethe's Goldener Jubeltag. Weimar : 1826. I have abridged the abridgment given by Mrs. Austin, Goethe and his Contemporaries, vol. 111. Reading this, and such anecdotes as the one formerly narrated about the Landtag, how can we wonder if the man, who was treated so like a god, adopted something of the imperiousness and assumption of the part thus thrust upon him? In the following year Germany showed her gratitude to him by a privilege which in itself is the severest sarcasm on German nationality—the privilege, namely, of a protection of his copyright. He announced a complete edition of his works, and the Bundestag undertook to secure him from piracy in German cities! Until that time his works had enriched booksellers; but this tardy privilege secured an inheritance for his children. In the way of honours, he was greatly flattered by the letter which Walter Scott sent to him, in expression of an old admiration; and on the 28th of August, 1827, Karl August came into his study accompanied by the King of Bavaria, who brought with him the Order of the Grand Cross as a homage. In strict etiquette a subject was not allowed to accept such an Order without his own sovereign granting permission, and Goethe, ever punctilious, turned to the Grand Duke, saying: "If my gracious sovereign permits." Upon which the Duke called out: "Du alter Kerl! mache doch kein dummes Zeug! Come, old fellow, no nonsense." On the 6th January, 1827, the Frau von Stein died, in her eightyfifth year. And now the good old Duke was to be taken from him whom he affectionately styled his Waffenbruder—his brother in arms. On the 14th of June, 1828, he was no more. Humboldt's letter to Goethe contains so interesting an account of the Duke's last hours, that some sentences may here be cited: "As if this great brightness, as with the lofty snow-capped Alps, were the forerunner of departing light, never have I seen the great humane prince more animated, more intelligent, more mild, more sympathizing with the further development of the people than in the last days when we had him here. I frequently said to my friends, anxiously and full of misgivings, that this animation, this mysterious clearness of intellect, combined with so much bodily weakness, was to me a fearful phenomenon. He himself evidently vacillated between hope of recovery, and expectation of the great catastrophe. In Potsdam I sat many hours with him. He drank and slept alternately, then drank again, then rose to write to his consort, and then slept again. He was cheerful, but much exhausted. In the intervals he overpowered me with the most difficult questions upon physics, astronomy, meteorology, and geology; upon the atmosphere of the moon; upon the coloured double stars; upon the influence of the spots in the sun upon the temperature; upon the appearance of organised forms in the primitive world; and upon the internal warmth of the earth. He slept at intervals during his discourse and mine, was often restless, and then said, kindly excusing his apparent inattention, 'You see, Humboldt, it is all over with me!' Suddenly he began to talk desultorily upon religious matters. He regretted the increase of pietism, and the connection of this species of fanaticism with a tendency towards political absolutism, and the suppression of all free mental action. Then,' he exclaimed, there are false-hearted fellows, who think that by means of pietism they can make themselves agreeable to princes, and obtain places and ribbons. They have smuggled themselves in with a poetical predilection for the middle ages.' His anger soon abated, and he said that he had found much consolation in the Christian religion. 'It is a humane doctrine,' said he, but has been distorted from the beginning. The first Christians were the free thinkers among the ultras.'" Knowing Goethe's love for the Duke, his friends entertained great fears that the shock of this event would be terrible. He was seated at dinner when the news arrived. It was whispered from one to the other. At length it was gently broken to him. They were breathless with suspense. But his face remained quite calm— a calmness which betrayed him. "Ah! this is very sad," he sighed; "let us change the subject." He might banish the subject from conversation, he could not banish it from his thoughts. It affected him deeply; all the more so, because he did not give expression to his grief. "Nun ist alles vorbei! Nothing now remains," he said. When Eckermann came in the evening, he found him utterly prostrate.* Retiring to the pleasant scenes of Dornburg, the old man strove in work and in contemplation of nature to call away his thoughts from his painful loss. The next year—1829—he finished the Wanderjahre in the form it now assumes, worked at the Second Part of Faust, and in conjunction with a young Frenchman, Soret, who was *The calmness with which he received the announcement recalls those grand scenes in Marston's Malcontent and Ford's Broken Heart, where the subordination of emotion to the continuance of offices of politeness rises into sublimity. Herodotus has touched the same chord in his narrative of the terrific story of Thyestes (Clio, 119). Harpagus on discovering that he has feasted on his own children in the banquet set before him by Thyestes remains quite calm. Shakepeare has expressed the true philosophy of the matter in his usual pregnant language: "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak occupied translating the Metamorphoses of Plants, revised his scientific papers. In February 1830, the death of the Grand Duchess once more overshadowed the evening of his life. These clouds gathering so fast are significant warnings of the Night which hurries on for him— "the night in which no man can work!" Before narrating the last days of this long career, it will be necessary to say something of the Second Part of Faust, which was not indeed finally completed until the 20th July 1831, but which may be noticed here to avoid interruption of the closing scene. CHAPTER VII. THE SECOND PART OF FAUST. In the presence of this poem, I feel more embarrassment than with any other of Goethe's works. Difficult as the task has been in each instance to convey an adequate idea of the work before me, and to give expression to the critical opinions I had formed respecting it, that difficulty becomes complicated in the present instance by the consciousness of the opposition existing between a certain class of admirers and myself, a class not of ignorant, prejudiced, but of enlightened and ingenious intellects. These admirers speak of the Second Part of Faust as a work of transcendent merit, surpassing all that Goethe has written, a storehouse of profound and mystic philosophy, a miracle of execution. Others again, and these among Goethe's most loving students, declare it to be of mediocre interest, very far inferior to the First Part, and both in conception and execution an elaborate mistake. And of these I am one. I have tried to understand the work; tried to place myself at the right point of view for perfect enjoyment; but repeated trials, instead of clearing up obscurities and deepening enjoyment, as with the other works, have more and more confirmed my first impressions. Now although it needs but little experience to suggest that the fault may be wholly mine, "the most legible hand," as Goethe says, "being illegible in the twilight"; although I might learn from what I have felt, and from what others have felt about the First Part, not to be hasty in pronouncing judgment, nevertheless I must express my real convictions, and not withhold them on the chance that future enlightenment may cause me to alter them. What Channing says of opinions generally, is applicable to critical opinions: we are answerable for their uprightness, not for their rightness. Moreover, comparing the impressions produced by Faust and by the Second Part, although it is true that in both cases a sense of disappointment is created, the kind of objection made to each is entirely different. In Faust, a want of familiarity with the work may cause it to appear fragmentary, discordant, irreverent, not |