With these materials in hand, let us take up the novel to see how Goethe employs them. Werther is a man who, not having yet learned self-mastery, imagines that his immense desires are proofs of immense superiority; one of those of whom it has been wittily said that they fancy themselves great painters because they paint with a big brush. He laughs at all rules, whether they be rules of Art, or rules which Convention builds like walls around our daily life. He hates order in speech, in writing, in costume, in office. In a word, he hates all control. Gervinus remarks that he turns from men to children because they do not pain him, and from them to Nature because she does not contradict him; from truth to poetry and in poetry from the clear world of Homer to the formless world of Ossian. Very characteristic of the epoch is the boundless enthusiasm inspired by Ossian, whose rhetorical trash the Germans hailed as the finest expression of Nature's poetry. Old Samuel Johnson's stern, clear sense saw into the very heart of this subject when he said, ‘Sir, a man might write such stuff forever if he would but abandon his mind to it.' It is this abandonment of the mind, this throwing the reins on the horse's neck, which makes such writing possible; and it was precisely this abandonment to impulse, this disregard of the grave remonstrances of reason and good sense, which distinguished the Werther epoch.

Werther is not Goethe. Werther perishes because he is wretched, and is so wretched because he is so weak. Goethe was "king over himself.' He saw the danger and evaded it; tore himself away from the woman he loved, instead of continuing in a dangerous position. Yet although Werther is not Goethe, there is one part of Goethe living in Werther. This is visible in the incidents and language as well as in the character. It is the part we

see re-appearing under the various masks of Weislingen, Clavigo, Faust, Fernando, Edward, Meister and Tasso, which no critic will call the same lay figure variously draped, but which every critic must see belong to one and the same genus: men of strong desires and weak volitions, wavering impressionable natures unable to attain self-mastery. Goethe was one of those who are wavering because impressionable, but whose wavering is not weakness; they oscillate, but they return into the direct path which their wills have prescribed. He was tender as well as impressionable. He could not be

stern, but he could be resolute. He had only therefore to keep in abeyance the native force of resolution which gave him mastery, and in that abeyance a weak wavering character stood before him, the original of which was himself.

When a man delineates himself, he always shrinks from a complete confession. Our moral nature has its modesty. Strong as the impulse may be to drag into light that which lies hidden in the recesses of the soul, pleased as we may be to create images of ourselves, we involuntarily keep back something, and refuse to identify ourselves with the creation. There are few things more irritating than the pretension of another to completely understand us. Hence authors never thoroughly portray themselves. Byron, utterly without self-command, is fond of heroes proud and self-sustaining. Goethe, the strongest of men, makes heroes the footballs of circumstance. But he also draws from his other half the calm, self-sustaining characters. Thus we have the antithesis of Götz and Weislingen Albert and Werther - Carlos and Clavigo — Jarno and Meister Antonio and Tasso the Captain and Edward; and, deepened in coloring, Mephistopheles and Faust.

Werther is not much read now-a-days, especially in

England, where it labors under the double disadvantage of a bad name and an execrable translation. Yet it is well worth reading in the original, where it will be found very unlike the image of it current among us. I remember many years ago reading it in the execrable English version with astonishment and contempt; this contempt remained, until accidentally falling in with a Spanish translation, the exquisite beauty of the pictures changed my feeling into admiration, and Goethe's own wonderful prose afterwards fixed that admiration forever. It is a masterpiece of style; we may look through German literature in vain for such clear sunny pictures, fulness of life, and delicately managed simplicity. Its style is one continuous strain of music, which, restrained within the limits of prose, fulfils all the conditions of poetry; dulcet as the sound of falling waters, and as full of sweet melancholy as an autumnal eve.

Nothing can be simpler than the structure of this book, wherein, as M. Marmier well remarks,* every detail is so arranged as to lay bare the sufferings of a diseased spirit. Werther arrives at his chosen retreat, believing himself cured, and anticipating perfect happiness. He is painter and poet. The fresh spring mornings, the sweet cool evenings, soothe and strengthen him. He selects a place under the limes to read and dream away the hours. There he brings his pencil and his Homer. Everything interests him the old woman who brings his coffee, the children who play around him, the story of a poor family. In this serene convalescene he meets with Charlotte, and a new passion agitates his soul. His simple uniform existence becomes changed. He endeavors by bodily activity to charm away his desires. The days no longer resemble

*Etudes sur Goethe, p. 11.

each other: now ecstatic with hope, now crushed with despair. Winter comes: cold, sad, gloomy. He must away. He departs, and mingles with the world, but the world disgusts him. The monotony and emptiness of official life are intolerable to his pretensions; the parchment pride of the noblesse is insulting to his sense of superiority. He returns to the peaceful scene of his former contentment, and finds indeed Charlotte, the children, his favorite woods and walks, but not the calmness which he seeks. The hopelessness of his position overwhelms him. Disgusted with the world—unsatisfied in his cravings - he dies by his own hand.

Rosenkrantz

in the true spirit of that criticism which seeks everywhere for meanings more recondite than the author dreamt of- thinks that Goethe exhibits great art in making Werther a diplomatist, because a diplomatist is a man of shams (scheinthuer); but the truth is, Goethe made him precisely what he found him. His art is truth. He is so great an artist that the simplest realities have to him significance. Charlotte cutting bread and butter for the children the scene of the ball- the children clinging round Werther for sugar, and pictures of that kind, betray so little inventive power, that they have excited the ridicule of some English critics to whom poetry is a thing of pomp and classicality, not the beautiful vesture of reality. The beauty and art of Werther is not in the incidents (a Dumas would shrug despairing shoulders over such invention), but in the representation. What is Art but Representation ? *

*L'art n'est qu'une forme,' says George Sand, with a truth few critics have penetrated; let me add Goethe's own opinion — surely of weight in such matters: None will comprehend the simple truth that the highest, the only operation of art is representation.' — (Gestaltung.)

The effect of Werther was prodigious. "That name. less unrest,' says Carlyle, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing discontent which was agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. All felt it; he alone could give it voice. And here lies the secret of his popularity; in his deep, susceptive heart he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative gift which belonged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a name; and so made himself the spokesman of his generation. Werther is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint ; and heart and voice all over Europe loudly and at once respond to it. True it prescribes no remedy; for that was a far different, far harder enterprise, to which other years and a higher culture were required; but even this utterance of pain, even this little, for the present is grasped at, and with eager sympathy appropriated in every bosom. If Byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad, stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a British heart, now that the whole matter is no longer new-is indeed old and trite may judge with what vehement acceptance this Werther must have been welcomed, coming, as it did, like a voice from the unknown regions: the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge which, in country after country, men's ears have listened to till they were deaf to all else. For Werther infusing itself into the core and whole spirit of literature, gave birth to a race of sentimentalists who have raged and wailed in every part of the world, till the better light dawned on them, or, at worst, exhausted nature laid

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