for a great part of his life, accused of listening | by that stupendous All, of which it forms an with unwarrantable composure. Helena is no indissoluble though so mean a fraction. He exception to that practice, but rather among who would study all this must for a long time, the strong instances of it. This Interlude to we are afraid, be content to study it in the Faust presents itself abruptly, under a charac- original. ter not a little enigmatic; so that, at first view, But our English criticisms of Faust have we know not well what to make of it; and only been of a still more unedifying sort. Let any after repeated perusals, will the scattered man fancy the dipus Tyrannus discovered for glimmerings of significance begin to coalesce the first time, translated from an unknown into continuous light, and the whole, in any Greek manuscript, by some ready-writing measure, rise before us with that greater or less manufacturer, and "brought out" at Drury degree of coherence which it may have had in Lane, with new music, made as "apothecaries the mind of the poe. Nay, after all, no perfect make new mixtures, by pouring out of one clearness may be attained, but only various vessel into another!" Then read the theatrical approximations to it; hints and half glances report in the morning Papers, and the Magaof 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 rather "heavy?" How indifferent did the very vagueness was essential. For the whole audience sit; how little use was made of the | piece has a dream-like character; and, in these handkerchief, except by such as took snuff! cases, no prudent soothsayer will be altogether Did not Edipus somewhat remind us of a confident. To our readers we must now en- blubbering schoolboy, and Jocasta of a decayed deavour, so far as possible, to show both the milliner? 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.

without indications of genius: had we had the training of him,--And so on, through all the variations of the critical cornpipe.

So might it have fared with the ancient Gre cian; for so has it fared with the only modern that writes in a Grecian spirit. This treatment of Faust may deserve to be mentioned, for various reasons; not to be lamented over, because, as in much more important instances, it is inevitable, and lies in the nature of the case. Besides, a better state of things is evidently enough coming round. By and by, the labours, poetical and intellectual, of the Germans, as of other nations, will appear before us in their true shape; and Faus', among the rest, will have justice done it. For ourselves, it were unwise presumption, at any time, to pretend opening the full poetical significarce of Faust; nor is this the place for making such an attempt. Present purposes will be answered if we can point out some general features and bearings of the piece; such as to exhibit its relation with Helena; by what contrivances this latter has been intercalated into it, and how far the strange picture and the strange framing it is inclosed in correspond.

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 influHelena forms part of a continuation to Faust:ential classes:" for, after all, the man is not 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 talked of in England, appears still to be nowise known. We have made it our duty to inspect the English translation of Faust, as well as the Extracts which accompany Retzsch's Outlines; and various disquisitions and animadversions, vituperative or laudatory, grounded on these two works; but, unfortunately, have found there no cause to alter the above persuasion. Faust is emphatically a work of Art; a work matured in the mysterious depths of a vast and wonderful mind; and bodied forth with that truth and curious felicity of composition, in which this man is generally admitted to have no living rival. To reconstruct such a work in another language; to show it in its hard yet graceful strength; with those slight witching traits of pathos or of sarcasm, those glimpses of solemnity or terror, and so many reflexes and evanescent echoes of meaning, which connect it in strange union with the whole Infinite of thought, were business for a man of different powers than has yet attempted German 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-confident, 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

rude and earnest people, in an age when its | article, suited for immediate use, and immedidialect was not yet obsolete, and such contracts ate oblivion. with the principle of Evil were thought not Goethe, we believe, was the first who tried only credible in general, but possible to every this subject; and is, on all hands, considered individual auditor who here shuddered at the as by far the most successful. His manner of mention of them. The day of Magic has gone treating it appears to us, so far as we can unby; Witchcraft has been put a stop to by act derstand it, peculiarly just and happy. He of parliament. But the mysterious relations retains the supernatural vesture of the story, which it emblemed still continue; the Soul of but retains it with the consciousness, on his Man still fights with the dark influences of and our part, that it is a chimera. His artIgnorance, Misery, and Sin; still lacerates magic comes forth in doubtful twilight; vague itself, like a captive bird, against the iron in its outline; interwoven every where with limits which Necessity has drawn round it; light sarcasm; nowise as a real Object, but as still follows False Shows, seeking peace and a real Shadow of an Object, which is also good on paths where no peace or good is to be real, yet lies beyond our horizon, and, except found. In this sense, Faust may still be con- in its shadows, cannot itself be seen. Nothing sidered as true; nay, as a truth of the most were simpler than to look into this poem for a impressive sort, and one which will always new "Satan's Invisible World displayed," or remain true. To body forth, in modern sym- any effort to excite the skeptical minds of these bols, a feeling so old and deep-rooted in our days by goblins, wizards, and other infernal whole European way of thought, were a task ware. Such enterprises belong to artists of a not unworthy of the highest poetical genius. different species: Goethe's Devil is a cultiIn Germany, accordingly, it has several times vated personage, and acquainted with the been attempted, and with very various success. modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and Klinger has produced a Romance of Faust, full the black-art, even while employing them, as of rugged sense, and here and there not with- heartily as any member of the French Instiout considerable strength of delineation; yet, tute; for he is a philosophe, and doubts most on the whole, of an essentially unpoetical cha- things, nay, half disbelieves even his own exracter; dead, or living with only a mechanical istence. It is not without a cunning effort that life; coarse, almost gross, and, to our minds, all this is managed; but managed, in a consifar too redolent of pitch and bitumen. Maler derable degree, it is; for a world of magic is Müller's Faust, which is a Drama, must be re-opened to us which, we might almost say, we garded as a much more genial performance, so far as it goes; the secondary characters, the Jews and rakish Students, often remind us of our own Fords and Marlowes. His main persons, however, Faust and the Devil, are but inadequately conceived; Faust is little more than self-willed, supercilious, and, alas, insolvent; the Devils, above all, are savage, longwinded, and insufferably noisy. Besides, the piece has been left in a fragmentary state; it can nowise pass as the best work of Müller's.* Klingemann's Faust, which also is (or lately was) a Drama, we have never seen; and have only heard of it as of a tawdry and hollow

* Frederic Müller (more commonly called Maler, or Painter Müller) is here, so far as we know, named for the first time to English readers. Nevertheless, in any solid study of German literature, this author must take precedence of many hundreds whose reputation has travelled faster. But Müller has been unfortunate in his own country, as well as here. At an early age, meeting with no success as a poet, he quitted that art for painting; and retired, perhaps in disgust, into Italy; where also but little preferment seems to have awaited him. His writings, after almost half a century of neglect, were at length brought into sight and general estimation by Ludwig Tieck; at a time when the author might indeed say, that he was "old and could not enjoy it, solitary and could not impart it,” but not, unhappily, that he was "known and did not want it," for his fine genius had yet made for itself no free way amid so many obstructions, and still continued unrewarded and unrecognised. His paintings, chiefly of still-life and animals, are said to possess a true though no very extraordinary merit: but of his poetry we will venture to assert that it bespeaks a genuine feeling and talent, nay, rises at times even into the higher regions of Art. His Adam's Awakening, his Satyr Mopsus, his Nusskernen (Nutshelling), informed as they are with simple kindly strength, with clear vision, and love of nature, are incomparably the best German or, indeed, modern Idyls; his "Genoveva" will still stand reading, even with that of Tieck. These things are now acknowledged among the Germans; but to Müller the acknowledgment is of no avail. He died some two years ago at Rome, where he seems to have subsisted latterly as a sort of picture-cicerone.

feel to be at once true and not true.

He

In fact, Mephistopheles comes before us, not arrayed in the terrors of Cocytus and Phlegethon, but in the natural indelible deformity of Wickedness; he is the Devil, not of Superstition, but of Knowledge. Here is no cloven foot, or horns and tail: he himself informs us that, during the late march of intellect, the very Devil has participated in the spirit of the age, and laid these appendages aside. Doubtless, Mephistopheles "has the manners of a gentleman;" he "knows the world;" nothing can exceed the easy tact with which he manages himself; his wit and sarcasm are unlimited; the cool heartfelt contempt with which he despises all things, human and divine, might make the fortune of half a dozen "fellows about town." Yet, withal, he is a devil in very deed; a genuine Son of Night. calls himself the Denier, and this truly is his name; for, as Voltaire did with historical doubt, so does he with all moral appearances; settles them with a N'en croyez rien. shrewd, all-informed intellect he has, is an attorney intellect; it can contradict, but it cannot affirm. With lynx vision, he descries at a glance the ridiculous, the unsuitable, the bad; but for the solemn, the noble, the worthy, he is blind as his ancient Mother. Thus does he go along, qualifying, confuting, despising: on ail hands detecting the false, but without force to bring forth, or even to discern, any glimpse of the true. Poor Devil! what truth should there be for him? To see Falsehood is his only truth: falsehood ar evil are the rule, truth and gr. the exception which confirms it. He car. believe in nothing, but in his own self-conceit, and in the indestructible baseness, folly, and hypocrisy of men. For him, virtue

The

is some bubble of the blood: "it stands written | Brutus, reproaches as a shadow, what he once on his face that he never loved a living soul." worshipped as a substance. Whither shall Nay, he cannot even hate: at Faust himself he now tend? For his loadstars have gone he has no grudge; he merely tempts him by out one by one; and as the darkness fell, the way of experiment, to pass the time scientifi- strong and steady wind has changed into a cally. Such a combination of perfect Under- fierce and aimless tornado. Faust calls himstanding with perfect Selfishness, of logical self a monster, "without object, yet without Life with moral Death; so universal a denier, rest." The vehement, keen, and stormful naboth in heart and head,-is undoubtedly a ture of the man is stung into fury, as he thinks child of Darkness, an emissary of the pri- of all he has endured and lost; he broods in meval Nothing: and coming forward, as he gloomy meditation, and, like Bellerophon, does, like a person of breeding, and without wanders apart, "eating his own heart;" or any flavour of Brimstone, may stand here, in bursting into fiery paroxysms, curses man's his merely spiritual deformity, at once potent, whole existence as a mockery; curses hope, dangerous, and contemptible, as the best and and faith, and joy, and care, and what is worst, only genuine Devil of these latter times. curses patience more than all the rest." Had his weak arm the power, he could smite the Universe asunder, as at the crack of Doom, and hurl his own vexed being along with it into the silence of Annihilation.

In strong contrast with this impersonation of modern worldly-mindedness, stands Faust himself, by nature the antagonist of it, but destined also to be its victim. If Mephistopheles represent the spirit of Denial, Faust may represent that of Inquiry and Endeavour: the two are, by necessity, in conflict; the light and the darkness of man's life and mind. Intrinsically, Faust is a noble being, though no wise one. His desires are towards the high and true; nay, with a whirlwind impetuosity he rushes forth over the Universe to grasp all excellence; his heart yearns towards the infinite and the invisible: only that he knows not the conditions under which alone this is to be attained. Confiding in his feeling of himself, he has started with the tacit persuasions, so natural to all men, that he at least, however it may fare with others, shall and must be happy a deep-seated, though only half-conscious conviction lurks in him, that wherever he is not successful, fortune has dealt with him unjustly. | His purposes are fair, nay, generous: why should he not prosper in them? For in all his lofty aspirings, his strivings after truth and more than human greatness of mind, it has never struck him to inquire how he, the striver, was warranted for such enterprises; with what faculty Nature had equipped him; within what limits she had hemmed him in; by what right he pretended to be happy, or could, some short space ago, have pretended to be at all. Experience, indeed, will teach him, for "Experience is the best of schoolmasters; only the school-fees are heavy." As yet, too, disappointment, which fronts him on every hand, rather maddens than instructs. Faust has spent his youth and manhood, not as others do in the sunny crowded paths of profit, or among the rosy bowers of pleasure, but darkly and alone in the search of Truth: | is it fit that Truth should now hide herself, and his sleepless pilgrimage towards Knowledge and Vision end in the pale shadow of Doubt? To his dream of a glorious higher happiness, all earthly happiness has been sacrificed; friendship, love, the social rewards of ambition were cheerfully cast aside, for his eye and his heart were bent on a region of clear and supreme good; and now, in its stead, he finds isolation, silence, and despair. What solace remains? Virtue once promised to be her own reward; but because she does not pay him in the current coin of worldly enjoyment, he reckons her too a delusion; and, like

Thus Faust is a man who has quitted the ways of vulgar men, without light to guide him on a better way. No longer restricted by the sympathies, the common interests and common persuasions by which the mass of mortals, each individually ignorant, nay, it may be, stolid, and altogether blind as to the proper aim of life, are yet held together, and like stones in the channel of a torrent, by their very multitude and mutal collision, are made to move with some regularity, he is still but a slave; the slave of impulses, which are stronger, not truer or better, and the more unsafe that they are solitary. He sees the vulgar of mankind happy; but happy only in their baseness. Himself he feels to be peculiar; the victim of a strange, an unexampled destiny; not as other men, he is “with them, not of them." There is misery here; nay, as Goethe has elsewhere wisely remarked, the beginning of madness itself. It is only in the sentiment of companionship that men feel safe and assured: to all doubts and mysterious" questionings of destiny," their sole satisfying answer is, Others do and suffer the like. Were it not for this, the dullest day-drudge of Mammon might think himself into unspeakable abysses of despair; for he, too, is "fearfully and wonderfully made;" Infinitude and Incomprehensibility surround him on this hand and that; and the vague spectre Death, silent and sure as Time, is advancing at all moments to sweep him av to sweep him away for ever. But he answers, Others do and suffer the like; and plods along without misgivings. Were there but One Man in the world, he would be a terror to himself; and the highest man not less so than the lowest. est. Now it is as this One Man that Faust regards himself; he is divided from his fellows; cannot answer with them, Others do the like; and yet, why or how he specially is to do or suffer will nowhere reveal itself. For he is still "in the gall of bitterness;" Pride and an entire uncompromising, though secret love of Self, are still the mainsprings of his conduct. Knowledge with him is precious only because it is power; even virtue he would love chiefly as a finer sort of sensuality, and because it was his virtue. A ravenous hunger for enjoyment haunts him everywhere; the stinted allotments of earthly life are as a mockery to him: to the iron law of Force h

with orient beauty, as a Land of Wonders, and new Poetic Heaven.

With regard to that part of the work already finished, we must here say little more. Faust, as it yet stands, is, indeed, only a stating of the difficulty; but a stating of it wisely, truly, and with deepest poetic emphasis. For how many living hearts, even now imprisoned in the perplexities of Doubt, do these wild piercing tones of Faust, his withering agonies and fiery desperation, "speak the word they have long been waiting to hear!" A nameless pain had long brooded over the soul: here, by some light touch, it starts into form and voice; we see it and know it, and see that another also knew it. This Faust is as a mystic Oracle for the mind; a Dodona grove, where the oaks and fountains prophesy to us of our destiny, and murmur unearthly secrets.

"How I, for my part, had determined to essay this, lay silently before my own mind, from time to time exciting me to some progress; while, from all and each, I carefully guarded my secret, still in hope of bringing the work to the wished-for issue. Now, however, I must no longer keep back; or, in publishing my collective Endeavours, conceal any further secret from the world; to which, on the contrary, I feel myself bound to submit my whole labours, even though in a fragmentary state.

altered by travel, and in altogether different | must necessarily elevate itself altogether away costume, have again risen into sight. Our long from the hampered sphere of the First, and preface was not needless, for Faust and Helena, conduct a man of such a nature into higher though separated by some wide and marvel- regions, under worthier circumstances. lous interval, are nowise disconnected. The characters may have changed by absence; Faust is no longer the same bitter and tempestuous man, but appears in chivalrous composure, with a silent energy, a grave, and, as it were, commanding ardour. Mephistopheles alone may retain somewhat of his old spiteful shrewdness: but still the past state of these personages must illustrate the present; and only by what we remember of them, can we try to interpret what we see. In fact, the style of Helena is altogether new: quiet, simple, joy ful; passing by a short gradation from Classic dignity into Romantic pomp; it has everywhere a full and sunny tone of colouring; resembles not a tragedy, but a gay gorgeous mask. Neither is Faust's former history al: luded to, or any explanation given us of occurrences that may have intervened. It is a light scene, divided by chasms and unknown distance from that other country of gloom. Nevertheless, the latter still frowns in the back-ground; nay, rises aloft, shutting out further view, and our gay vision attains a new significance as it is painted on that canvas of

storm.

We question whether it ever occurred to any English reader of Faust, that the work needed a continuation, or even admitted one. To the Germans, however, in their deeper study of a favourite poem, which also they have full means of studying, this has long been no secret; and such as have seen with what zeal most German readers cherish Faust, and how the younger of them will recite whole scenes of it, with a vehemence resembling that of Gil Blas and his Figures Hibernoises, in the streets of Oviedo, may estimate the interest excited in that country by the following Notice from the Author, published last year in his Kunst und Alterthum.

“Helena. Interlude in Faust. "Faust's character, in the elevation to which latter refinement, working on the old rude Tradition, has raised it, represents a man who, feeling impatient and imprisoned within the limits of mere earthly existence, regards the possession of the highest knowledge, the enjoyment of the fairest blessings, as insufficient even in the slightest degree to satisfy his longing a spirit, accordingly, which, struggling out on all sides, ever returns the more unhappy.

"This form of mind is so accordant with our modern disposition, that various persons of ability have been induced to undertake the treatment of such a subject. My manner of attempting it obtained approval: distinguished men considered the matter, and commented on my performance; all which I thankfully observed. At the same time I could not but wonder that none of those who undertook a continuation and completion of my Fragment, had lighted on the thought, which seemed so obvious, that the composition of a Second Part

Accordingly I have resolved that the abovenamed Piece, a smaller drama, complete within itself, but pertaining to the Second Part of Faust, shall be forthwith presented in the First Portion of my Works.

"The wide chasm between that well-known dolorous conclusion of the first part, and the entrance of an antique Grecian Heroine, is not yet overarched; meanwhile, as a preamble, my readers will accept what follows:

"The old Legend tells us, and the Puppetplay fails not to introduce the scene, that Faust, in his imperious pride of heart, required from Mephistopheles the love of the fair Helena of Greece; in which demand the other, after some reluctance, gratified him. Not to overlook so important a concern in our work, was a duty for us; and how we have endeavoured to discharge it, will be seen in this Interlude. But what may have furnished the proximate occasion of such an occurrence, and how, after manifold hindrances, our old magical Craftsman can have found means to bring back the individual Helena, in person, out of Orcus into Life, must, in this stage of the business, remain undiscovered. For the present, it is enough if our reader will admit that the real Helena may step forth, on antique tragedy-cothurnus, before her primitive abode in Sparta. We then request him to observe in what way and manner Faust will presume to court favour from this royal all-famous Beauty of the world."

To manage so unexampled a courtship will be admitted to be no easy task; for the mad hero's prayer must here be fulfilled to its largest extent, before the business can proceed a step; and the gods, it is certain, are not in the habit of annihilating time and space, even to "make two lovers happy." Our Marlowe was not ignorant of this mysterious liaison of Faust's: however, he slurs it over briefly, and without fronting the difficulty; Helena merely flits across the scene as an airy pageant, without speech or personality, and makes the lovesick philosopher "immortal by a kiss.' bably there are not many that would grudge Faust such immortality; we at least nowise envy him: for who does not see that this, in all human probability, is no real Helena, but only some hollow phantasm attired in her shape, while the true Daughter of Leda still dwells afar off in the inane kingdoms of Dis, and heeds not and hears not the most poten: invocations of black-art? Another matter it is to call forth the frail fair one in very deed; not in form only, but in soul and life, the same Helena

Pro