who have left behind them in writing the defence, or even sometimes the accusation, of their earthly life. Without estimating such procedure, I am not minded to imitate it. With trembling I reflect that I myself shall first learn in its whole terrific compass what properly I was, when these lines shall be read by men; that is to say, in a point of Time which for me will be no Time; in a condition wherein all experience will for me be too late! Rex tremendo majestatis, join myself to Judaism, or to the Bramins on the Ganges: but to that shallowest, driest, most contradictory, inanest Inanity of Protestantism, never, never, never!" Here, perhaps, there is a touch of priestly, of almost feminine vehemence; for it is to a Protestant and an old friend that he writes: but the conclusion of his Preface shows him in a better light. Speaking of Second Parts, and regretting that so many of his works were unfinished, he adds: "But what specially comforts me is the prospect of our general Second Part; where, even in the first Scene, this consolation, that there all our works will be known, may not indeed prove solacing for us all but where, through the strength of Him that alone completes all works, it will be granted to those whom He has saved, not only to know each other, but even to know Him, as by Him they are known! not yet won, I regard, with the Teacher of the Gentiles, all things but dross that I may win Him; and to him, cordially and lovingly do I, in life or at death, commit you all, my beloved Friends and my beloved Enemies!" But if I do, till that day when All shall be laid open, draw a veil over my past life, it is not merely out of false shame that I so order it; for though not free from this vice also, I would willingly make known my guilt to all and every one whom my voice might reach, could hope, by such confession, to atone for what I-With my trust in Christ, whom I have have done; or thereby to save a single soul from perdition. There are two motives, however, which forbid me to make such an open personal revelation after death: the one, because the unclosing of a pestilential grave may be dangerous to the health of the uninfected lookeron; the other, because in my writings, (which may God forgive me!) amid a wilderness of poisonous weeds and garbage, there may also be here and there a medicinal herb lying scattered, from which poor patients, to whom it might be useful, would start back with shuddering, did they know the pestiferous soil on which it grew. "So much, however, in regard to those good creatures as they call themselves, namely, to those feeble weaklings who brag of what they designate their good hearts,-so much must I say before God, that such a heart alone, when it is not checked and regulated by forethought and steadfastness, is not only incapable of saving its possessor from destruction, but it is rather certain to hurry him, full speed, into that abyss, where I have been, whence I-perhaps?!!!-by God's grace am snatched, and from which may God mercifully preserve every reader of these lines."-Werner's Letzte Lebenstagen, (quoted by Hitzig, p. 80.) "All this is melancholy enough; but it is not like the writing of a hypocrite or repentant apostate. To Protestantism, above all things, Werner shows no thought of returning. In allusion to a rumour, which had spread, of his having given up Catholicism, he says (in the Preface already quoted): "A stupid falsehood I must reckon it; since, according to my deepest conviction, it is as impossible that a soul in Bliss should return back into the Grave, as that a man, who, like me, after a life of error and search has found the priceless jewel of Truth, should, I will not say, give up the same, but hesitate to sacrifice for it blood and life, nay, many things perhaps far dearer, with joyful heart, when the one good cause is concerned." And elsewhere in a private letter: "I not only assure thee, but I beg of thee to assure all men, if God should ever so withdraw the light of his grace from me, that I ceased to be a Catholic, I would a thousand times sooner On the whole, we cannot think it doubtful that Werner's belief was real and heartfelt. But how then, our wondering readers may inquire, if his belief was real and not pretended, how then did he believe? He, who scoffs in infidel style at the truths of Protestantism, by what alchemy did he succeed in tempering into credibility the harder and bulkier dogmas of Popery? Of Popery, too, the frauds and gross corruptions of which he has so fiercely exposed in his Martin Luther! and this, moreover, without cancelling, or even softening his vituperations, long after his conversion, in the very last edition of that drama? To this question, we are far from pretending to have any answer that altogether satisfies ourselves; much less that shall altogether satisfy others. Meanwhile, there are two considerations which throw light on the difficulty for us: these, as some step, or at least, attempt towards a solution of it, we shall not withhold. The first lies in Werner's individual character and mode of life. Not only was he born a mystic, not only had he lived from of old amid freemasonry, and all manner of cabalistic and other traditionary chimeras; he was also, and had long been, what is emphatically called dissolute; a word, which has now lost somewhat of its original force; but which, as applied here, is still more just and significant in its etymological, than in its common acception. He was a man dissolute; that is, by a long course of vicious indulgences, enervated and loosened asunder. Everywhere in Werner's life and actions, we discern a mind relaxed from its proper tension; no longer capable of effort and toilsome resolute vigilance; but floating almost passively with the current of its impulses, in languid, imaginative, Asiatic reverie. That such a man should discriminate, with sharp, fearless logic, between beloved errors and unwelcome truths, was not to be expected. His belief is likely to have been persuasion rather than conviction, both as it related to Religion, and to other subjects. What, or how much a man in this way may bring himself to believe, with such force and distinctness as he honestly and usually calls belief, there is no predicting. they are men of earnest hearts, and seem to have a deep feeling of devotion: but it should be remembered, that what forms the groundwork of their religion, is professedly not DeBut another consideration, which we think monstration but Faith; and so pliant a theory should nowise be omitted, is the general state of could not but help to soften the transition from religious opinion in Germany, especially among the former to the latter. That some such prinsuch minds as Werner was most apt to take ciple, in one shape or another, lurked in for his examplars. To this complex and high- Werner's mind, we think we can perceive ly interesting subject, we can for the present from several indications; among others, from do nothing more than allude. So much, how- the Prologue to his last tragedy, where, mysever, we may say: It is a common theory teriously enough, under the emblem of a Phoamong the Germans, that every Creed, every nix, he seems to be shadowing forth the histoForm of worship, is a form merely; the mortal ry of his own Faith; and represents himself and everchanging body, in which the immortal even then as merely "climbing the tree, where and unchanging spirit of Religion is, with more the pinions of his Phoenix last vanished;" but or less completeness, expressed to the mate- not hoping to regain that blissful vision, till his rial eye, and made manifest and influen-eyes shall have been opened by death. tial among the doings of men. It is thus, for On the whole, we must not pretend to underinstance, that Johannes Müller, in his Univer- stand Werner, or expound him with scientific sal History, professes to consider the Mosaic rigour: acting many times with only half conLaw, the creed of Mahomet, nay, Luther's Re-sciousness, he was always, in some degree, an formation; and, in short, all other systems of enigma to himself, and may well be obscure to Faith; which he scruples not to designate, us. Above all, there are mysteries and unwithout special praise or censure, simply as sounded abysses in every human heart; and Vorstellungsarten, "modes of Representation." that is but a questionable philosophy which We could report equally singular things of undertakes so readily to explain them. ReliSchelling and others, belonging to the philoso-gious belief especially, at least when it seems phic class; nay of Herder, a Protestant clergyman, and even bearing high authority in the Church. Now, it is clear, in a country where such opinions are openly and generally professed, a change of religious creed must be comparatively a slight matter. Conversions to Catholicism are accordingly by no means unknown among the Germans: Friedrich Schlegel, and the younger Count von Stolberg, men, as we should think, of vigorous intellect, and of character above suspicion, were colleagues, or rather precursors, of Werner in this adventure; and, indeed, formed part of his acquaintance at Vienna. It is but, they would pay perhaps, as if a melodist, inspired with harmony of inward music, should choose this instrument in preference to that, for giving voice to it: the inward inspiration is the grand concern; and to express it, the "deep majestic solemn organ" of the Unchangeable Church may be better fitted than the "scrannel pipe" of a withered, trivial, Arian Protestantism. That Werner, still more that Schlegel and Stolberg, could, on the strength of such hypotheses, put off or put on their religious creed, like a new suit of apparel, we are far from asserting; heartfelt and well-intentioned, is no subject for harsh or even irreverent investigation. He is a wise man that, having such a belief, knows and sees clearly the grounds of it in himself: and those, we imagine, who have explored with strictest scrutiny the secret of their own bosoms, will be least apt to rush with intolerant violence into that of other men's. "The good Werner," says Jean Paul, "fell, like our more vigorous Hoffmann, into the poetical fermenting vat (Gährbottich) of our time, where all Literatures, Freedoms, Tastes, and Untastes are foaming through each other: and where all is to be found, excepting truth, diligence, and the polish of the file. Both would have come forth clearer had they studied in Lessing's day."* We cannot justify Werner: yet let him be condemned with pity! Aud well were it could each of us apply to himself those words, which Hitzig, in his friendly indignation, would "thunder in the ears" of many a German gainsayer: Take thou the beam out of thine own eye; then shalt thou see clearly to take the mote out of thy brother's. * Letter to Hitzig, in Jean Paul's Leben, by Doering. GOETHE'S HELENA.* [FOREIGN REVIEW, 1828.] NOVALIS has rather tauntingly asserted of Goethe, that the grand law of his being is to conclude whatsoever he undertakes; that, let, him engage in any task, no matter what its difficulties or how small its worth, he cannot quit it till he has mastered its whole secret, finished it, and made the result of it his own. This, surely, whatever Novalis might think, is a quality of which it is far safer to have too much than too little; and if, in a friendlier spirit, we admit that it does strikingly belong to Goethe, these his present occupations will not seem out of harmony with the rest of his life; but rather it may be regarded as a singular constancy of fortune, which now allows him, after completing so many single enterprizes, to adjust deliberately the details and combination of the whole; and thus, in perfecting his individual works, to put the last hand to the highest of all his works, his own literary character, and leave the impress of it to posterity in that form and accompaniment which he himself reckons fittest. For the last two years, as many of our readers may know, the venerable Poet has been employed in a patient and thorough revisal of all his Writings; an edition of which, designated as the "complete and final" one, was commenced in 1827, under external encouragements of the most flattering sort, and with arrangements for private co-operation, which, as we learn, have secured the constant progress of the work" against every accident." The first Lieferung, of five volumes, is now in our hands; a second of like extent, we understand to be already on its way hither; and thus by regular "Deliveries," from half-year to half-year, the whole Forty Volumes are to be completed in 1831. seems moderate; so that, on every account, we doubt not but that these tasteful volumes will spread far and wide in their own country, and by and by, we may hope, be met with here in many a British library. Hitherto, in the First Portion, we have found little or no alteration of what was already known; but, in return, some changes of arrangement; and, what is more important, some additions of heretofore unpublished poems; in particular, a piece entitled "Helena, a classico-romantic Phantasmagoria," which occupies some eighty pages of Volume Fourth. It is to this piece that we now propose directing the attention of our readers. Such of these, as have studied Helena for themselves, must have felt how little calculated it is, either intrinsically or by its extrinsic relations and allusions, to be rendered very interesting or even very intelligible to the English public, and may incline to augur ill of our enterprise. Indeed, to our own eyes it already looks dubious enough. But the dainty little "Phantasmagoria," it would appear, has become a subject of diligent and truly wonderful speculation to our German neighbours; of which, also, some vague rumours seem now to have reached this country, and these likely enough to awaken on all hands a curiosity, which, whether intelligent or idle, it were a kind of good deed to allay. In a Journal of this sort, what little light on such a matter is at our disposal may naturally be looked for. Helena, like many of Goethe's works, by no means carries its significance written on its forehead, so that he who runs may read; but, on the contrary, it is enveloped in a certain mystery, under coy disguises, which, to hasty To the lover of German literature, or of readers, may not be only offensively obscure, literature in general, this undertaking will not but altogether provoking and impenetrable. be indifferent: considering, as he must do, the Neither is this any new thing with Goethe. works of Goethe to be among the most import- Often has he produced compositions, both in ant which Germany for some centuries has prose and verse, which bring critic and comsent forth, he will value their correctness and mentator into straits, or even to a total noncompleteness for its own sake; and not the plus. Some we have, wholly parabolic; some less, as forming the conclusion of a long pro- half-literal, half-parabolic; these latter are occess to which the last step was still wanting; casionally studied, by dull heads, in the literal whereby he may not only enjoy the result, but sense alone; and not only studied, but coninstruct himself by following so great a mas- demned: for, in truth, the outward meaning ter through the changes which led to it. seems unsatisfactory enough, were it not that can now add, that, to the mere book-collector ever and anon we are reminded of a cunning, also, the business promises to be satisfactory. manifold meaning which lies hidden under This Edition, avoiding any attempt at splen- it; and incited by capricious beckonings to dour or unnecessary decoration, ranks, never-evolve this, more and more completely, from theless, in regard to accuracy, convenience, its quaint concealment. and true, simple elegance, among the best specimens of German typography. The cost, too, We Did we believe that Goethe adopted this mode of writing as a vulgar lure, to confer on his poems the interest which might belong to *See, for instance, the "Athenæum," No. vii., where an article stands headed with these words: FAUST, HELEN OF TROY, AND LORD BYRON. interpretation; or they remain, as in all prosaic minds the words of poetry ever do, a dead letter: indications they are, barren in themselves, but by following which, we also may reach, or approach, that Hill of Vision where the poet stood, beholding the glorious scene which it is the purport of his poem to show others. A reposing state, in which the Hill were brought under us, not we obliged to mount it, might, indeed, for the present be more convenient; but, in the end, it could not be equally satisfying. Continuance of passive pleasure, it should never be forgotten, is here, as under all conditions of mortal existence, an impossibility. Everywhere in life, the true question is, not what we gain, but what we do: so also in intellectual matters, in conversation, in reading, which is more precise and careful conversation, it is not what we receive, but what we are made to give, that chiefly contents and profits us. True, the mass of readers will object; because, like the mass of men, they are too indolent. But if any one affect, not the active and watchful, but the passive and somnolent line of study, are there not writers, expressly so many charades, we should hold it a very poor proceeding. Of this most readers of Goethe will know that he is incapable. Such juggleries, and uncertain anglings for distinction, are a class of accomplishments to which he has never made any pretension. The truth is, this style has, in many cases, its own appropriateness. Certainly, in all matters of Business and Science, in all expositions of fact or argument, clearness and ready comprehensibility are a great, often an indispensable, object. Nor is there any man better aware of this principle than Goethe, or who more rigorously adheres to it, or more happily exemplifies it, wherever it seems applicable. But in this, as in many other respects, Science and Poetry, having separate purposes, may have each its several law. If an artist has conceived his subject in the secret shrine of his own mind, and knows, with a knowledge beyond all power of cavil, that it is true and pure, he may choose his own manner of exhibiting it, and will generally be the fittest to choose it well. One degree of light, he may find, will beseem one delineation; quite a different degree of light another. The Face of Agamem-fashioned for him, enough and to spare? It is non was not painted but hidden in the old Picture: the Veiled Figure at Sais was the most expressive in the Temple. In fact, the grand point is to have a meaning, a genuine, deep, and noble one; the proper form for embodying this, the form best suited to the subject and to the author, will gather round it almost of its own accord. We profess ourselves unfriendly to no mode of communicating Truth; which we rejoice to meet with in all shapes, from that of the child's Catechism to the deepest poetical Allegory. Nay, the Allegory itself may sometimes be the truest part of the matter. John Bunyan, we hope, is nowise our best theologian; neither, unhappily, is theology our most attractive science; yet, which of our compends and treatises, nay, which of our romances and poems, lives in such mild sunshine as the good old Pilgrim's Progress, in the memory of so many men? but the smaller number of books that become more instructive by a second perusal: the great majority are as perfectly plain as perfect triteness can make them. Yet, if time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all. And were there an artist of a right spirit; a man of wisdom, conscious of his high vocation, of whom we could know beforehand that he had not written without purpose and earnest meditation, that he knew what he had written, and had imbodied in it, more or less, the creations of a deep and noble soul,-should we not draw near to him reverently, as disciples to a master; and what task could there be more profitable than to read him as we have described, to study him even to his minutest meanings? For, were not this to think as he had thought, to see with his gifted eyes, to make the very mood and feeling of his great and rich mind the mood also of our poor and little one? It is under the consciousness of some such mutual relation that Goethe writes, and his countrymen now reckon themselves bound to read him; a relation singular, we might say solitary, in the present time; but which it is ever necessary to bear in mind in estimating his literary procedure. Under Goethe's management, this style of composition has often a singular charm. The reader is kept on the alert, ever conscious of his own active co-operation; light breaks on him, and clearer and clearer vision, by degrees; till at last the whole lovely Shape comes forth, definite, it may be, and bright with heavenly radiance, or fading, on this side and that, into vague expressive mystery; but true in both To justify it in this particular, much more cases, and beautiful with nameless enchant- might be said, were it our chief business at ments, as the poet's own eye may have beheld present. But what mainly concerns us here, it. We love it the more for the labour it has is, to know that such, justified or not, is the given us; we almost feel as if we ourselves poet's manner of writing; which also must had assisted in its creation. And herein lies prescribe for us a correspondent manner of the highest merit of a piece, and the proper art studying him, if we study him at all. For the of reading it. We have not read an author till rest, on this latter point he nowhere expresses we have seen his object, whatever it may be, any undue anxiety. His works have invariaas he saw it. It is a matter of reasoning, and bly been sent forth without preface, without has he reasoned stupidly and falsely? We note or comment of any kind; but left, someshould understand the circumstances which to times plain and direct, sometimes dim and his mind made it seem true, or persuaded him typical, in what degree of clearness or obscuto write it, knowing that it was not so. In any rity he himself may have judged best, to be other way we do him injustice if we judge him. scanned, and glossed, and censured, and disIs it of poetry? His words are so many sym-torted, as might please the innumerable multibols, to which we ourselves must furnish the tude of critics; to whose verdict he has been, by that stupendous All, of which it forms an indissoluble though so mean a fraction. He who would study all this must for a long time, we are afraid, be content to study it in the original. But our English criticisms of Faust have been of a still more unedifying sort. Let any man fancy the Edipus Tyrannus discovered for the first time, translated from an unknown Greek manuscript, by some ready-writing manufacturer, and "brought out" at Drury Lane, with new music, made as "apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring out of one vessel into another!" Then read the theatrical report in the morning Papers, and the Maga for a great part of his life, accused of listening with unwarrantable composure. Helena is no exception to that practice, but rather among the strong instances of it. This Interlude to Faust presents itself abruptly, under a character not a little enigmatic; so that, at first view, we know not well what to make of it; and only after repeated perusals, will the scattered glimmerings of significance begin to coalesce into continuous light, and the whole, in any measure, rise before us with that greater or less degree of coherence which it may have had in the mind of the poet. Nay, after all, no perfect clearness may be attained, but only various approximations to it; hints and half glances of a meaning, which is still shrouded in vague-zines of next month. Was not the whole affair ness; nay, to the just picturing of which this very vagueness was essential. For the whole piece has a dream-like character; and, in these cases, no prudent soothsayer will be altogether confident. To our readers we must now endeavour, so far as possible, to show both the dream and its interpretation: the former as it stands written before us; the latter from our own private conjecture alone; for of those strange German comments we yet know nothing, except by the faintest hearsay. rather " heavy?" How indifferent did the audience sit; how little use was made of the handkerchief, except by such as took snuff! Did not Edipus somewhat remind us of a blubbering schoolboy, and Jocasta of a decayed milliner? Confess that the plot was monstrous; nay, considering the marriage-law of England, highly immoral. On the whole, what a singular deficiency of taste must this Sophocles have laboured under! But probably he was excluded from the "society of the influential classes:" for, after all, the man is not without indications of genius: had we had the training of him,-And so on, through all the variations of the critical cornpipe. Helena forms part of a continuation to Faust; but, happily for our present undertaking, its connection with the latter work is much looser than might have been expected. We say, happily; because Faust, though considerably So might it have fared with the ancient Gretalked of in England, appears still to be nowise cian; for so has it fared with the only modern known. We have made it our duty to inspect that writes in a Grecian spirit. This treatthe English translation of Faust, as well as the ment of Faust may deserve to be mentioned, Extracts which accompany Retzsch's Outlines; for various reasons; not to be lamented over, and various disquisitions and animadversions, because, as in much more important instances, vituperative or laudatory, grounded on these it is inevitable, and lies in the nature of the two works; but, unfortunately, have found case. Besides, a better state of things is evithere no cause to alter the above persuasion.dently enough coming round. By and by, the Faust is emphatically a work of Art; a work|labours, poetical and intellectual, of the Germatured in the mysterious depths of a vast and mans, as of other nations, will appear before wonderful mind; and bodied forth with. that us in their true shape; and Faust, among the truth and curious felicity of composition, in rest, will have justice done it. For ourselves, which this man is generally admitted to have it were unwise presumption, at any time, to no living rival. To reconstruct such a work pretend opening the full poetical significance in another language; to show it in its hard yet of Faust; nor is this the place for making such graceful strength; with those slight witching an attempt. Present purposes will be answertraits of pathos or of sarcasm, those glimpses ed if we can point out some general features of solemnity or terror, and so many reflexes and bearings of the piece; such as to exhibit and evanescent echoes of meaning, which con- its relation with Helena; by what contrivances nect it in strange union with the whole Infinite this latter has been intercalated into it, and of thought, were business for a man of differ- how far the strange picture and the strange ent powers than has yet attempted German framing it is inclosed in correspond. translation among us. In fact, Faust is to be read not once but many times, if we would understand it: every line, every word has its purport; and only in such minute inspection will the essential significance of the poem display itself. Perhaps it is even chiefly by following these fainter traces and tokens, that the true point of vision for the whole is discovered to us; and we stand at last in the proper scene of Faust; a wild and wondrous region, where, in pale light, the primeval Shapes of Chaos, -as it were, the Foundations of Being itself,seem to loom forth, dim and huge, in the vague Immensity around us; and the life and nature of man, with its brief interests, its misery and sin, its mad passion and poor frivolity, struts and frets its hour, encompassed and overlooked The story of Faust forms one of the most remarkable productions of the Middle Ages; or rather, it is the most striking embodiment of a highly remarkable belief, which originated or prevailed in those ages. Considered strictly, it may take the rank of a Christian mythus, in the same sense as the story of Prometheus, of Titan, and the like, are Pagan ones; and to our keener inspection, it will disclose a no less impressive or characteristic aspect of the same human nature,-here bright, joyful, self-confi dent, smiling even in its sternness; there deep, meditative, awe-struck, austere,-in which both they and it took their rise. To us, in these days, it is not easy to estimate how this story of Faust, invested with its magic and infernal horrors, must have harrowed up the souls of a |