"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 cease to be a Catholic, I would a thousand times sooner 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!With my trust in Christ, whom I have 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!"

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 acceptation. 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.

But another consideration, which we think should nowise be omitted, is the general state of religious opinion in Germany, especially among such minds as Werner was most apt to take for his exemplars. To this complex and highly interesting subject we can, for the present, do nothing more than allude. So much, however, we may say: It is a common theory among the Germans, that every Creed, every Form of worship, is a form merely; the mortal and ever-changing body, in which the immortal and unchanging spirit of Religion is, with more or less completeness, expressed to the material eye, and made manifest and influential among the doings of men. It is thus, for instance, that Johannes Müller, in his Universal History, professes to consider the Mosaic Law, the creed of Mahomet, nay Luther's Reformation; and, in short, all other systems of Faith; which he scruples not to designate, without special

praise or censure, simply as Vorstellungsarten, "Modes of Rep resentation." We could report equally singular things of Schelling and others, belonging to the philosophic 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 perhaps say, 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; 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 Demonstration but Faith; and so pliant a theory could not but help to soften the transition from the former to the latter. That some such principle, in one shape or another, lurked in Werner's mind, we think we can perceive from several indications; among others, from the Prologue to his last tragedy, where, mysteriously enough, under the emblem of a Phoenix, he seems to be shadowing forth the history of his own Faith; and represents himself even then as merely "climbing the tree, where the pinions of his Phoenix last vanished;" but not hoping to regain that blissful vision, till his eyes shall have been opened by death.

On the whole, we must not pretend to understand Werner, or expound him with scientific rigor; acting many times with

only half consciousness, he was always, in some degree, an enigma to himself, and may well be obscured to us. Above all, there are mysteries and unsounded abysses in every human heart; and that is but a questionable philosophy which undertakes so readily to explain them. Religious belief especially, at least when it seems 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 (Gähr bottich) 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! And 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.

1 Letter to Hitzig, in Jean Pauls Leben, by Döring.

GOETHE'S HELENA.1

[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 enterprises, 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

1 FOREIGN REVIEW, No. 2. - Goethes Sämmtliche Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand. (Goethe's Collective Works. Complete Edition, with his final Corrections.) First Portion, vol. i.-v. 16mo and 8vo. Cotta; Stuttgard and Tübingen, 1827.