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Dulness, striving for certain wages, of pudding or praise, by the month or quarter, to perpetuate the reign of presumption and triviality on earth? If the latter, will he not be counselled to pause for an instant, and reflect seriously, whether starvation were worse or were better than such a dog's-existence? -M. Novalis.

THE CRITIC FLY.

WE are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad. This maxim is so clear to ourselves, that, in respect to poetry at least, we almost think we could make it clearer to other men. In the first place, at all events, it is a much shallower and more ignoble occupation to detect faults than to discover beauties. The 'critic fly,' if it do but alight on any plinth or single cornice of a brave stately building, shall be able to declare, with its halfinch vision, that here is a speck, and there an inequality; that, in fact, this and the other individual stone are nowise as they should be; for all this the 'critic fly 'will be sufficient: but to take in the fair relations of the Whole, to see the building as one object, to estimate its purpose, the adjustment of its parts, and their harmonious cooperation towards that purpose, will require the eye of a Vitruvius, or a Palladio.

-M. Goethe.

THE FAULTS OF A WORK OF ART.

THE faults of a poem, or other piece of art as we view them at first, will by no means continue unaltered when we view them after due and final investigation. Let us consider what we mean by a fault. By the word fault, we designate something that displeases us, that contradicts us. But here the question might arise: Who are we? This fault displeases, contradicts us; so far is clear; and had we, had I, and my pleasure and confirmation, been the chief end of the poet, then doubtless he has failed in that end, and his fault remains

a fault irremediably, and without defence. But who shall say whether such really was his object, whether such ought to have been his object? And if it was not, and ought not to have been, what becomes of the fault? It must hang altogether undecided; we as yet know nothing of it; perhaps it may not be the poets, but our own fault; perhaps it may be no fault whatever. To see rightly into this matter, to determine with any infallibility, whether what we call a fault is in very deed a fault, we must previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before his own eye, and how far, with such means as it afforded him, he has fulfilled it. Secondly, we must have decided whether and how far this aim, this task of his, accorded, not with us and our individual crotchets, and the crotchets of our little senate where we give and take the law, but with human nature, and the nature of things at large; with the universal principles of poetic beauty, not as they stand written in our text-books, but in the hearts and imaginations of all men. Does the answer in either case come out unfavourable; was there an inconsistency between the means and the end, a discordance between the end and truth, there is a fault: was there not, there is no fault. -M. Goethe.

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THE STUDY OF POETRY.

WE reckon it the falsest of all maxims that a true Poem can be adequately tasted; can be judged of 'as men judge of a dinner,' by some internal tongue, that shall decide on the matter at once and irrevocably. Of the poetry which supplies spouting-clubs, and circulates in circulating libraries, we speak not here. That is quite another species; which has circulated and will circulate, and ought to circulate, in all times; but for the study of which no man is required to give rules, the

rules being already given by the thing itself. We speak of that Poetry which Masters write, which aims not at 'furnishing a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions,' but at incorporating the everlasting. Reason of man in forms visible to his Sense, and suitable to it and of this we say, that to know it is no slight task; but rather that, being the essence of all science, it requires the purest of all study for knowing it. "What!" cries the reader, "are we to study Poetry? To pore over it as we do over Fluxions ?" Reader, it depends upon your object: if you want only amusement, choose your book, and you get along, without study, excellently well. 'But is not Shakspeare plain, visible to the very bottom, without study?" cries he. Alas, no, gentle Reader; we cannot think so; we do not find that he is visible to the very bottom even to those that profess the study of him. It has been our lot to read some criticisms on Shakspeare, and to hear a great many; but for most part they amounted to no such visibility.' Volumes we have seen that were simply one huge Interjection printed over three hundred pages. Nine-tenths of our critics have told us little more of Shakspeare than what honest Franz Horn says our neighbours used to tell of him, 'that he was a great spirit, and stept majestically along.' M. Goethe.

JUDGMENT OF A FOREIGN WORK.

IN judging a foreign work, it is not enough to ask whether it is suitable to our modes, but whether it is suitable to foreign wants; above all, whether it is suitable to itself. The fairness, the necessity of this can need no demonstration; yet how often do we find it, in practice, altogether neglected! We could fancy we saw some Bond-street Tailor criticising the costume of an ancient Greek; censuring the highly improper cut of collar and lappel; lamenting, indeed, that collar and lappel were nowhere to be seen. He pronounces the

costume, easily and decisively, to be a barbarous one: to know whether it is a barbarous one, and how barbarous, the judgment of a Winkelmann might be required, and he would find it hard to give a judgment. For the questions set before the two were radically different. The Fraction asked himself: How will this look in Almacks, and before Lord Mahogany? The Winkelmann asked himself: How will this look in the Universe, and before the Creator of Man? -M. Goethe. 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 Magazines of next month. Was not the whole affair 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 school-boy, 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 the training of him—And so on, through all the variations of the critical cornpipe.

So might it have fared with the ancient Grecian; for so has it fared with the only modern that writes in a Grecian spirit. -M. Goethe's Helena.

SCIENTIFIC CRITICISMA

THE grand question is not now a question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of metaphors, the The German School. Written in 1827.

*Goethe. This was written in 1828.

fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in a work of art, as it was some half century ago among most critics; neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from his poetry: but it is, not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those two other questions, properly and ultimately a question on the essence and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions, as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticism of Johnson and Kames, relates, strictly speaking, to the garment of poetry; the second, indeed, to its body and material existence, a much higher point; but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by which alone can the body, in its movements and phases, be informed with significance and rational life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison composed sentences, and struck out similitudes; but by what far finer and more mysterious. mechanism Shakspeare organised his dramas, and gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet. Wherein lies that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay, truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from the general elements of all Thought, and grows up therefrom, into form and expansion by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are the questions for the critic. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and

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