صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

too the genuineness of whatsoever he did; his hearty, idiomatic way; simplicity with loftiness, and nobleness, and aerial grace.-Pure works of art, completed with an antique Grecian polish as "Torquato Tasso," as "Iphigenie," Proverbs; "Xenien;" Patriarchal Sayings, which, since the Hebrew Scriptures were closed, | we know not where to match; in whose bomely depths lie often the materials for volumes.

system of society, to adju. t himself aright; and, working for the world, and in the world, keep himself unspotted from the world,-let him look here. This man, we may say, be came morally great, by being in his own age what in some other ages many might have been-a genuine man. His grand excellency was this, that he was genuine. As his primary faculty, the foundation of all others, was Intellect, depth and force of Vision, so his primary virtue was Justice, was the courage to be just. A giant's strength we admired in him; yet; strength ennobled into softest mildness; even like that "silent rock-bound strength of a world," on whose bosom, that rests on the adamant, grow flowers. The greatest of hearts was also the bravest: fearless, unwearied, peacefully invincible. A completed man; the trembling sensibility, the wild enthusiasm of a Mignon, can assort with the scornful worldmockery of a Mephistophiles; and each side of many-sided life receives its due from him.

Goethe reckoned Schiller happy that he died young, in the full vigour of his days: that he could "figure him as a youth for ever." To himself a different, higher destiny was ap pointed. Through all the changes of man's

To measure and estimate all this, as we said, the time is not come; a century hence will be the fitter time. He who investigates it best will find its meaning greatest, and be the readiest to acknowledge that it transcends him. Let the reader have seen, before he attempts to oversee. A poor reader, in the meanwhile were he, who discerned not here the authentic rudiments of that same New Era, whereof we have so often had false warning. Wondrously, the wrecks and pulverized rubbish of ancient things, institutions, religions, forgotten noblenesses, made alive again by the breath of Genius, lie here in new coherence and incipient union, the spirit of Art working creative through the mass: that chaos, into which the eighteenth century with its wild war of hypocrites and skeptics had reduced the Past, begins here to be once more a world.-life, onwards to its extreme verge, he was to This, the highest that can be said of written go; and through them all nobly. In youth, books, is to be said of these; there is in them flatterings of fortune, uninterrupted outward a new time, the prophecy and beginning of a prosperity cannot corrupt him; a wise ob new time. The corner stone of a new social server must remark, "only a Goethe, at the edifice for mankind is laid there; firmly, as sum of earthly happiness, can keep his Phoenixbefore, on the natural rock, far extending traces wings unsinged."-Through manhood, in the of a ground-plan we can also see, which future most complex relation, as poet, courtier, policenturies may go on to enlarge, amend, and tician, man of business, man of speculation; work into reality. These sayings seem strange in the middle of revolutions and counter-revoto some; nevertheless they are not empty ex-lutions, outward and spiritual; with the world aggerations, but expressions, in their way, of loudly for him, with the world loudly or si a belief, which is not now of yesterday; per-lently against him; in all seasons and situa haps when Goethe has been read and meditated for another generation, they will not seem so strange.

tions, he holds equally on his way. Old age itself, which is called dark and feeble, he was to render lovely: who that looked upon him there, venerable in himself, and in the world's reverence, ever the clearer, the purer, but could have prayed that he too were such an old man? And did not the kind Heavens continue kind, and grant to a career so glorious the worthiest end?

willed it, that between these two should be his own final rest. In life they were united, in death they are not divided. The unwearied Workman now rests from his labours; the fruit of these is left growing, and to grow. His earthly years have been numbered and ended: but of his activity (for it stood rooted

Precious is the new light of knowledge which our teacher conquers for us; yet small to the new light of Love which also we derive from him; the most important element of any man's performance is the life he has accomplished. Under the intellectual union of man and man, which works by precept, lies a holier Such was Goethe's life; such has his deunion of affection, working by example: the parture been-he sleeps now beside his Schilinfluences of which latter, mystic, deep-reach-ler and his Carl August: so had the Prince ing, all-embracing, can still less be computed. For Love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light; works also more in the manner of fire. That Goethe was a great teacher of men, means already that he was a good man; that he himself learned; in the school of experience had striven and proved victorious. To how many hearers languish-in the Eternal) there is no end. All that we ing, nigh dead, in the airless dungeon of Unbelief (a true vacuum and nonentity) has the assurance that there was such a man, that such a man was still possible, come like tidings of great joy! He who would learn to reconcile Reverence with clearness, to deny and defy what is false, yet believe and worship what is true; amid raging factions, bent on what is either altogether empty or has substance in it only for a day, which stormfully convulse and tear hither and thither a distracted, expiring

mean by the higher Literature of Germany, which is the higher Literature of Europe, already gathers round this man, as its creator; of which grand object, dawning mysterious on a world that hoped not for it, who is there that can assume the significance and far-reaching influences? The Literature of Europe will pass away; Europe itself, the Earth itself will pass away; this little life-boat of an Earth, with its noisy crew of Mankind, and all their troubled History, will one day have vanished,

faded like a cloud-speck from the azure of the All! What then is man! What then is man? He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains not to this wild death-element of TIME; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be

no more.

And now we turn back into the world, with

drawing from this new made grave. The man whom we love lies there: but glorious, worthy: and his spirit yet lives in us with an authentic life. Could each here vow to do his little task, even as the Departed did his great one; in the manner of a true man, not for a Day, but for Eternity! To live, as he counselled and commanded, not commodiously in the Repu table, the Plausible, the Half, but resolutely in the Whole, the Good, the True:

"Im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren resolut zu leben :

GOETHE'S WORKS.*

[FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, 1832.]

perhaps never seriously asked before: What the purport and character of his presence here was: now when he has gone hence, and is not present here, and will remain absent for evermore. It is the conclusion that crowns the work; much more the irreversible conclusion wherein all is concluded: thus is there no life so mean but a death will make it memorable.

Ir is now four years since we specially in-ness, and now seriously ask itself a question, vited attention to this Book; first in an essay on the graceful little fantasy-piece of Helena, then in a more general one on the merits and workings of Goethe himself: since which time two important things have happened in reference to it; for the publication, advancing with successful regularity, reached its fortieth and last volume in 1830; and now, still more emphatically to conclude both this "completed final edition," and all other editions, endeavours and attainments of one in whose hands lay so much, come tidings that the venerable man has been recalled from our earth, and of his long labours and high faithful stewardship we have had what was appointed us.

The greatest epoch in a man's life is not always his death; yet for bystanders, such as contemporaries, it is always the most noticeable. All other epochs are transition-points from one visible condition to another visible; the days of their occurrence are like any other days, from which only the clearer-sighted will distinguish them; bridges they are, over which the smooth highway runs continuous, as if no Rubicon were there. But the day in a mortal's destinies which is like no other, is his deathday: here too is a transition, what we may call a bridge, as at other epochs; but now from the keystone onwards half the arch rests on invisibility; this is a transition out of visible Time into invisible Eternity.

Since death, as the palpable revelation (not to be overlooked by the dullest) of the mystery of wonder, and depth, and fear, which every where from beginning to ending through its whole course and movement lies under life, is in any case so great, we find it not unnatural that hereby a new look of greatness, a new interest should be impressed on whatsoever has preceded it and led to it; that even towards some man, whose history did not then first become significant, the world should turn, at his departure, with a quite peculiar earnest

Goethes Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe letzer Hand, (Goethe's Works. Completed, final editlon,) 40 voll. Stuttgard and Tübingen. 1827-30.

[ocr errors]

At all lykewakes, accordingly, the doings and endurances of the Departed are the theme: rude souls, rude tongues grow eloquently busy with him; a whole septuagint of beldames are striving to reuder, in such dialect as they have, the small bible, or apochrypha, of his existence, for the general perusal. The least famous of mankind will for once become public, and have his name printed, and read not without interest: in the Newspaper obituaries; on some frail memorial, under which he has crept to sleep. Foolish lovesick girls know that there is one method to impress the obdurate, false Lovelace, and wring his bosom; the method of drowning: foolish ruined dandies, whom the tailor will no longer trust, and the world turning on its heel is about forgetting, can recall it to attention by report of pistol; and so, in a worthless death, if in a worthless life no more, re-attain the topgallant of renown,-for one day. Death is ever a sublimity, and supernatural wonder, were there no other left: the last act of a most strange drama, which is not dramatic but has now become real: wherein, miraculously, Furies, god-missioned, have in actual person risen from the abyss, and do verily dance there in that terror of all terrors, and wave their dusky-glaring torches, and shake their serpent-hair! Out of which heart-thrilling, so authentically tragic fifth act there goes, as we said, a new meaning over all the other four: making them likewise tragic and authentic, and memorable in some measure, were they formerly the sorriest pickle-herring farce.

But above all, when a Great Man dies, then has the time come for putting us in mind that he was alive: biographies and biographic sketches, criticisms, characters, anecdotes

reminiscences, issue forth as from opened springing fountains; the world, with a passion whetted by impossibility, will yet a while retain, yet a while speak with, though only to the unanswering echoes, what it has lost without remedy thus is the last event of life often the loudest; and real spiritual Apparitions, (who have been named Men,) as false imaginary ones are fabled to do, vanish in thunder.

For ourselves, as regards the great beauty, if not seeking to be foremost in this natural movement, neither do we shun to mingle in it. The life and ways of such men as he, are, in all seasons, a matter profitable to contemplate, to speak of; if in this death season, long with a sad reverence looked forward to, there has little increase of light, little change of feeling arisen for the writer, a readier attention, nay a certain expectance, from some readers is call sufficient. Innumerable meditations and disquisitions on this subject must yet pass through the minds of men; on all sides must it be taken up, by various observers, by successive generations, and ever a new light may evolve itself: why should not this observer, on this side, set down what he partially has seen into, and the necessary process thereby be forwarded, at any rate, continued?

A continental Humourist, of deep-piercing, resolute, though strangely perverse faculty, whose works are as yet but sparingly if at all cited in English literature, has written a chapter, somewhat in the nondescript manner of metaphysico-rhetorical, homiletic-exegetic rhapsody, on the Greatness of great men; which topic we agree with him in reckoning one of the most pregnant. The time, indeed, is come when much that was once found visibly subsistent Without must anew be sought for Within; many a human feeling, indestructible, and to man's well-being indispensable, which once manifested itself in expressive forms to the Sense, now lies hidden in the formless depths of the Spirit, or at best struggles out obscurely in forms become superannuated, altogether inexpressive, and unrecognisable; from which paralysed, imprisoned state, often the best effort of the thinker is required, and moreover were well applied, to deliver it. For if the Present is to be the "living sum-total of the whole Past," nothing that ever lived in the Past must be let wholly die; whatsoever was done, whatsoever was said or written aforetime, was done and written for our edification. In such state of imprisonment, paralysis and unrecognisable defacement, as compared with its condition in the old ages, lies this our feeling towards great men; wherein, and in the much that else belongs to it, some of the deepest human interests will be found involved. A few words from Herr Professor Teufelsdreck, if they help to set this preliminary matter in a clearer light, may be worth translating here. Let us first remark with him, however, "how wonderful in all cases, great or little, is the importance of man to man:"

"Deny it as he will," says Teufelsdreck, "man reverently loves man, and daily by action evidences his belief in the divineness of What a more than regal mystery encircles the poorest of living souls for us! The

man.

highest is not independent of him; his suffrage has value: could the highest monarch convince himself that the humblest beggar with sincere mind despised him, no serried ranks of halberdiers and body-guards could shut out some little twinge of pain; some emanation from the low had pierced into the bosom of the high. Of a truth, men are mystically united; a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

"Thus too has that fierce hunting after Popu larity, which you often wonder at, and laugh at, a basis on something true: nay, under the other aspect, what is that wonderful spirit of Interference, were it but manifested as the paltriest scandal and tea-table backbiting, other than, inversely or directly, a heartfelt indestructibl. sympathy of man with man? Hatred itself is but an inverse love. The philosopher's wife complained to the philosopher that certain twolegged animals without feathers spake evil of him, spitefully criticised his goings out and comings in; wherein she too failed not of her share: Light of my life,' answered the philosopher, it is their love of us, unknown to themselves, and taking a foolish shape; thank them for it, and do thou love them more wisely. Were we mere steam-engines working here under this rooftree, they would scorn to speak of us once in a twelve-month.' The last stage of human perversion, it has been said, is when sympathy corrupts itself into envy; and the indestructible interest we take in men's doings has become a joy over their faults and misfortunes: this is the last and lowest stage; lower than this we cannot go: the absolute petrifaction of indifference is not attainable on this side total death.

"And now," continues the Professor, "rising from these lowest tea-table regions of human communion into the higher and highest, is there not still in the world's demeanour towards Great Men, enough to make the old practice of Herc-worship intelligible, nay, signi ficant? Simpleton! I tell thee Hero-worship still continues; it is the only creed which never and nowhere grows or can grow obsolete. For always and everywhere this remains a true saying: Il y a dans le caur humain un fibre religieux. Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon. Yes, in practice, be it in theory or not, we are all Supernaturalists; and have an infinite happiness or an infinite wo not only waiting us hereafter, but looking out on us through any pitifullest present good or evil;-as, for example, on a high poetic Byron through his lameness; as on all young souls through their first lovesuit; as on older souls, still more foolishly, through many a law. suit, paper-battle, political horse-race or assrace. Atheism, it has been said, is impossi ble; and truly, if we will consider it, no Atheist denies a Divinity, but only some NAME (Nomen, Numen) of a Divinity: the God is still present there, working in that benighted heart, were it only as a god of darkness. Thousands of stern Sansculottes, to seek no other instance, go chanting martyr hymns to their guillotine; these spurn at the name of a God; yet worship

one (as hapless 'Proselytes without the Gate') | only some barbarous mixed lingua rustua, more under the new pseudonym of Freedom. What like a jargon than a language, must prevail; and indeed is all this that is called political fanati- thus the deepest matters be either barbarously cism, revolutionary madness, force of hatred, spoken of, or wholly omitted and lost sight of, force of love, and so forth; but merely under which were still worse." But to let the homily new designations, that same wondrous, won-proceed: der-working reflex from the Infinite, which in all times has given the Finite its empyrean or tartarean hue, thereby its blessedness or cursedness, its marketable worth or unworth?

"Consider, at any rate," continues he elsewhere," under how many categories, down to the most impertinent, the world inquires concerning Great Men, and never wearies striving to represent to itself their whole structure, aspect, procedure, outward and inward! Blame not the world for such minutest curiosity about its great ones: this comes of the world's oldestablished necessity to worship: and, indeed, whom but its great ones, that "like celestial fire-pillars go before it on the march," ought it to worship? Blame not even that mistaken worship of sham great ones, that are not celestial fire-pillars, but terrestrial glass-lanterns with wick and tallow, under no guidance but a stupid fatuous one; of which worship the litanies, and gossip-homilies are, in some quarters of the globe, so inexpressibly uninteresting. Blame it not; pity it rather, with a certain loving respect.

"Man is never, let me assure thee, altogether a clothes-horse; under the clothes there is always a body and a soul. The Count von Bügeleisen, so idolized by our fashionable classes, is not, as the English Swift asserts, created wholly by the Tailor: but partially, also, by the supernatural Powers. His beautifully cut apparel, and graceful expensive tackle and environment of all kinds, are but the symbols of a beauty and gracefulness supposed to be

"Remark, however, as illustrative of several things, and more to the purpose here, that man does in strict speech always remain the clearest symbol of the Divinity to man. Friend Novalis, the devoutest heart I knew, and of purest depth, has not scrupled to call man what the Divine Man is called in Scripture, a 'Revelation in the Flesh.' There is but one temple in the world,' says he, and that is the body of man. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.' In which notable words, a reader that meditates them, may find such meaning and scientific accuracy as will surprise him. "The age of superstition, it appears to be sufficiently known, are behind us. To no man, were he never so heroic, are shrines any more built, and vows offered as to one having supernatural power. The sphere of the TRANSCENDENTAL cannot now, by that avenue of heroic worth, of eloquent wisdom, or by any other avenue, be so easily reached. The worth that in these days could transcend all estimate or survey, and lead men willingly captive into infinite admiration, into worship, is still waited for (with little hope) from the un-inherent in the Count himself; under which seen Time. All that can be said to offer itself in that kind, at present, is some slight household devotion, (Haus-Andacht,) whereby this or the other enthusiast, privately in all quietness, can love his hero or sage without measure, and idealize, and, so in a sense, idolize him; -which practice, as man is by necessity an idol-worshipper, (no offence in him so long as idol means accurately vision, clear symbol,) and all wicked idolatry is but a more idolatrous worship, may be excusable, in certain cases, praiseworthy. Be this as it will, let the curious eye gratify itself in observing how the old antediluvian feeling still, though now struggling out so imperfectly, and forced into unexpected shapes, asserts its existence in the newest man and the Chaldeans or old Persians, with their Zerdusht, differ only in vesture and dialect from the French, with their Voltaire étouffé sous des roses.”*

This, doubtless, is a wonderful phraseology, but referable, as the Professor urges, to that capacious reservoir and convenience, "the nature of the time :" "A time," says he, "when as in some Destruction of a Roman Empire, wrecks of old things are everywhere confusedly jumbled with rudiments of new; so that, till once the mixture and amalgamation be complete, and even have long continued complete, and universally apparent, no grammatical langue d'oc or langue d'oui can establish itself, but

Die Kleider: ihr Werden und Wirken Von D. TEUPELSDRECK. Weissnichtwo. Stillschweign'sche Buchhandlung, 1830.

predicament come also our reverence for his counthood, and in good part that other notable phenomenon of his being worshipped, because he is worshipped, of one idolater, sheep-like, running after him, because many have already run. Nay, on what other principle but this latter hast thou, O reader, (if thou be not one of a thousand,) read, for example, thy Homer, and found some real joy therein? All these things, I say, the apparel, the counthood, the existing popularity, and whatever else can combine them, are symbols;-bank notes, which, whether there be gold behind them, or only bankruptcy and empty drawers, pass current for gold. But how, now, could they so pass, if gold itself were not prized, and believed and known to be somewhere extant? Produce the actual gold visibly, and mark how, in these distrustful days, your most accredited bankpaper stagnates in the market! No holy Alliance, though plush, and gilding, and genealo gical parchment, to the utmost that the time yields, be hung round it, can gain for itself a dominion in the heart of any man; some thirty or forty millions of men's hearts being, on the other hand, subdued into loyal reverence by a Corsican Lieutenant of Artillery. Such is the difference between God-creation and Tailorcreation. Great is the tailor, but not the greatest. So, too, in matters spiritual, what avails it that a man ne Doctor of the Sorbonne, Doctor of Laws, of Both Laws, and can cover half a square foot in pica-type with the list of his fellowships, arranged as equilateral triangle,

with, and the new-born golden age proves always to be still-born: neither is there, was there, or will there, be any other golden age pos

at the vertex an '&c.' over and above, and with the parchment of his diplomas could thatch the whole street he lives in: What avails it? The man is but an owl; of pre-sible, save only in this: in new increase of possessing gravity indeed; much respected by simple neighbours; but to whose sorrowful hootings no creature hastens, eager to listen. While, again, let but some riding gauger arrive under cloud of night at a Scottish inn, and word be whispered that it is Robert Burns; in few instants all beds and truckle-beds, from garret to cellar, are left vacant, and gentle and simple, with open eyes and erect ears, are gathered together."

worth and wisdom;—that is to say, therefore, in the new arrival among us of wise and worthy men. Such arrivals are the great occurrences, though unnoticed ones; all else that can occur, in what kind soever, is but the road, up hill or down hill, rougher or smoother: nowise the power that will nerve us for travelling forward thereon. So little comparatively can forethought or the cunningest mechanical pre-contrivance do for a nation, for a world! Ever must we wait on the bounty of Time, and see what leader shall be born for us, and whither he will lead. Thus too, in defect of great men, noted men become important: the Noted Man of an age is the emblem and living summary. of the Ideal which that age has fashioned for itself: show me the noted man of an age, you

figures walk in the van, for great good, or for great evil; if not leading, then driven and still farther misleading. The apotheosis of Beau Brummel has marred many a pretty youth; landed him not at any goal where oak garlands, earned by faithful labour and valour, carry men to the immortal gods; but, by a fatal inversion, at the King's Bench gul, where he that has never sowed shall not any longer reap, still less any longer burn his barn, but scrape himself with potsherds among the ashes thereof, and consider with all deliberation "what he wanted, and what he wants."

Whereby, at least, from amid this questionable lingua, "more like a jargon than a language," so much may have become apparent: What unspeakable importance the world attaches, has ever attached, (expressing the same by all possible methods,) and will ever attach, to its great men. Deep and venerable, whether looked at in the Teufelsdreck manner or other-show me the age that produced him. Such wise, is this love of men for great men, this their exclusive admiration of great men; a quality of vast significance, if we consider it well; for, as in its origin it reaches up into the highest and even holiest provinces of man's nature, so, in his practical history it will be found to play the most surprising part. Does not, for one example, the fact of such a temper indestructibly existing in all men, point out man as an essentially governable and teachable creature, and for ever refute that calumny of his being by nature insubordinate, prone to rebellion? Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against To enlighten this principle of reverence for any thing that does not deserve rebelling against. the great, to teach us reverence, and whom we Ready, ever zealous is the obedience and de-are to revere and admire, should ever be a chief votedness they show to the great, to the really high; prostrating their whole possession and self, body, heart, soul, and spirit, under the feet of whatsoever is authentically above them. Nay, in most times, it is rather a slavish devotedness to those who only seem and pretend to be above them that constitutes their fault.

But why seek special instances? Is not Love, from of old, known to be the beginning of all things? And what is admiration of the great but love of the truly loveable? The first product of love is imitation, that allimportant peculiar gift of man, whereby Mankind is not only held socially together in the present time, but connected in like union with the past and the future; so that the attainment of the innumerable Departed can be conveyed down to the Living, and transmitted with increase to the Unborn. Now great men, in particular spiritually great men, for all men have a spirit to guide, though all have not kingdoms to govern and battles to fight, are the men universally imitated and learned of, the glass in which whole generations survey and shape themselves.

aim of Education, (indeed it is herein that instruction properly both begins and ends ;) and in these late ages, perhaps more than ever, so indispensable is now our need of clear reverence, so inexpressibly poor our supply. "Clear reverence!" it was once responded to a seeker of light: "all want it, perhaps thou thyself."” What wretched idols, of Leeds cloth, stuffed out with bran of one kind or other, do men either worship, or being tired of worshipping, (so expensively without fruit,) rend in pieces and kick out of doors, amid loud shouting and crowing, what they call "tremendous chɩers," as if the feat were miraculous! In private life, as in public, delusion in this sort does its work; the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch.

"For alas!" cries Teufelsdreck on this occasion, "though in susceptive hearts it is felt that a great man is unspeakably great, the specific marks of him are mournfully mistaken: thus must innumerable pilgrims journey, in toil and hope, to shrines where there is no healing. On the fairer half of the creation, above all, such error presses hard. Women are born worshippers; in their good little hearts lies the most craving relish for great

Thus is the Great Man of an age, beyoud comparison, the most important phenomenon therein; all other phenomena, were they Water-ness: it is even said, each chooses her husloo Victories, Constitutions of the year One, glorious revolutions, new births of the golden age, in what sort you will, are small and trivial. Alas, all these pass away, and are left extinct behind, like the tar-barrels they were celebrated

band on the hypothesis of his being a great man-in his way. The good creatures, yet the foolish! For their choices, no insight, or next to none, being vouchsafed them, are unutterable. Yet how touching, also to see, for ex

« السابقةمتابعة »