any rate to leave the insoluble mystery without its perplexing and tormenting influence. Activity and sincerity carry us far, if we begin by Renunciation, if we at the outset content ourselves with the Knowable and Attainable, and give up the wild impatience of desire for the Unknowable and Unattainable. The mystery of existence is an awful problem, but it is a mystery and placed beyond the boundaries of human faculty. Recognise it as such, and renounce! Knowledge can only be relative, never absolute. But this relative knowledge is infinite, and to us infinitely important: in that wide sphere let each work according to ability. Happiness, ideal and absolute, is equally unattainable: renounce it! The sphere of active Duty is wide, sufficing, ennobling to all who strenuously work in it. In the very sweat of labour there is stimulus which gives energy to life; and a consciousness that our labour tends in some way to the lasting benefit of others, makes the rolling years endurable. CHAPTER VIII. THE LYRICAL POEMS. THE Faust and the Lyrics suffice to give Goethe pre-eminence among the poets of modern times, Shakspeare excepted; and had they stood alone as representatives of his genius, no one would ever have disputed his rank. But he has given the world many other works: in other words, he has thrown open many avenues through which the citadel of his fame may be attacked. His fame is lessened by his wealth; the fact of his doing so much, has lessened the belief in his power; for as the strength of a beam is measured by its weakest part, so, but unjustly, are poets tested by their weakest works, whenever enthusiasm does not drown criticism. Thus does mere wealth endanger reputation; for when many targets are ranged side by side, the clumsiest archer will succeed in striking one; and that writer has the best chance with the critics who presents the smallest surface. Greek Literature is so grand to us mainly because it is the fragment of fragments; the masterpieces have survived, and no failures are left to bear counterwitness. Our own contemporary Literature seems so poor to us, not because there are no good books, but because there are so many bad, that even the good are hidden behind the mass of mediocrity which obtrudes itself upon the eye. Goethe has written forty volumes on widely different subjects. He has written with a perfection no German ever achieved before, and he has also written with a feebleness which it would be gratifying to think no German would ever emulate again. But the weak pages are prose. In verse he is always a singer; even the poorest poems have something of that grace which captivates us in his finest. The gift of Song, which is the especial gift of the poet, and which no other talents can replace, makes his trifles pleasant, and his best lyrics matchless. The lyrics are the best known of his works, and have by their witchery gained the admiration even of antagonists. One hears very strange opinions about him and his works; but one never hears anything except praise of the minor poems. They are instinct with life and beauty, against which no prejudice can stand. They give musical form to feelings the most various, and to feelings that are true. They are gay, coquettish, playful, tender, passionate, mournful, reflective, and picturesque; now simple as the tune which beats time to nothing in your head, now laden with weighty thought; at one moment reflecting with ethereal grace the whim. and fancy of caprice, at another sobbing forth the sorrows which press a cry from the heart. "These songs," says Heine, himself a master of song, "have a playful witchery which is inexpressible. The harmonious verses wind round your heart like a tender mistress. The Word embraces you while the Thought imprints a kiss."* Part of this witchery is the sincerity of the style. It does not seek surprises in diction, nor play amid metaphors, which, in most poets, are imperfect expressions of the meaning they are thought to adorn. It opens itself like a flower with unpretending grace, and with such variety as lies in the nature of the subject. There is no ornament in it. The beauties which it reveals are organic, they form part and parcel of the very tissue of the poem, and are not added as ornaments. Read, for example, the ballad of the Fisherman (translated p. 228). How simple and direct the images; and yet how marvellously pictorial. Turning to a totally different poem, the Bride of Corinth,-what can surpass the directness with which every word indicates the mysterious and terrible situation? every line is as a fresh page in the narrative, rapidly and yet gradually unfolded. A young man arrives at Corinth from Athens, to seek the bride whom his and her parents have destined for him. Since that agreement of the parents her family has turned Christian; and "when a new faith is adopted, love and truth are often uprooted like weeds." Ignorant of the change, he arrives. It is late in the night. The household are asleep; but a supper is brought to him in his chamber, and he is left alone. The weary youth has no appetite; he throws himself on his bed without undressing. As he falls into a doze the door opens, and by the light of his lamp he sees a strange guest enter a maiden veiled, clothed in white, about her brow a black and gold band. On seeing him, she raises a white hand in terror. She is about to fly, but he entreats her to stay-points to the banquet, and bids her sit beside him and taste the joys of the gods, Bacchus, Ceres, and Amor. But she tells him she belongs no more to joy; the gods have departed from that silent house where One alone in Heaven, and One upon the Cross, are adored; no * "Die harmonischen Verse umschlingen dein Herz wie eine zärtliche Geliebte ; das Wort umarmt dich, während der Gedanke dich küsst." sacrifices of Lamb or Ox are made, the sacrifice is that of a human life. This is a language the young pagan understands not. He claims her as his bride. She tells him she has been sent into a cloister. He will hear nothing. Midnight-the spectral hoursounds; and she seems at her ease. She drinks the purple wine with her white lips, but refuses the bread he offers. She gives him a golden chain, and takes in return a lock of his hair. She tells him she is cold as ice, but he believes that Love will warm her, even if she be sent from the grave: Wechselhauch und Kuss! Brennst du nicht und fühlest mich entbrannt? Love draws them together; eagerly she catches the fire from his lips, and each is conscious of existence only in the other; but although the vampire bride is warmed by his love, no heart beats in her breast. It is impossible to describe the weird voluptuousness of this strange scene; this union of Life and Death; this altar of Hymen erected on the tomb. It is interrupted by the presence of the mother, who, hearing voices in the bridegroom's room, and the kiss of the lovers mingling with the cockcrow, angrily enters to upbraid her slave, whom she supposes to be with the bridegroom. She enters angry "and sees-God! she sees her own child!" The vampire rises like a Shadow, and reproaches her mother for having disturbed her. "Was it not enough that you sent me to an early grave?" she asks. But the grave could not contain her: the psalms of priests-the blessings of priests had no power over her; earth itself is unable to stifle Love. She has come; she has sucked the blood from her bridegroom's heart; she has given him her chain and received the lock of his hair. To-morrow he will be grey; his youth he must seek once more in the tomb. She bids her mother prepare the funeral pyre, open her coffin, and burn the bodies of her bridegroom and herself, that they together may hasten to the gods. In the whole of this wondrous ballad there is not a single image. Everything is told in the most direct and simple style. Everything stands before the eye like reality. The same may be said of the well-known Gott und die Bajadere, which is, as it were, the inverse of the Bride of Corinth. The Indian god passing along the banks of the Ganges is invited by the Bajadere to enter her hut, and repose himself. She coquettes with him, and lures him with the wiles of her caste. The god smiles and sees with joy, in the depths of her degradation, a pure human heart. He gains her love; but, to put her to the severest proof, he makes her pass through Lust und Entsetzen und grimmige Pein. She awakes in the morning to find him dead by her side. In an agony of tears she tries in vain to awaken him. The solemn, awful sounds of the priests chanting the requiem break on her ear. She follows his corpse to the pyre, but the priests drive her away; she was not his wife; she has no claim to die with him. But Passion is triumphant; she springs into the flames, and the god rises from them with the rescued one in his arms. The effect of the changing rhythm of the poem, changing from tender lightness to solemn seriousness, and the art with which the whole series of events is unfolded in successive pictures, are what no other German poet has ever attained. The same art is noticeable in the Erl King, known to every reader through Schubert's music, if through no other source. The father riding through the night, holding his son warm to his breast; the child's terror at the Erl King, whom the father does not see; and the bits of landscape which are introduced in so masterly a way, as explanations on the father's part of the appearances which frighten the child; thus mingling the natural and supernatural, as well as imagery with narrative all these are cut with the distinctness of plastic art. The Erl King is usually supposed to have been original; but Viehoff, in his Commentary on Goethe's Poems, thinks that the poem Herder translated from the Danish, Erlkönigs Tochter, suggested the idea. The verse is the same. The opening line and the concluding line are nearly the same; but the story is different, and none of Goethe's art is to be found in the Danish ballad, which tells simply how Herr Oluf rides to his marriage, and is met on the way by the Erl King's daughter, who invites him to dance with her; he replies that he is unable to stop and dance, for to-morrow is his wedding-day. She offers him golden spurs and a silk shirt, but he still replies, "Tomorrow is my wedding-day." She then offers him heaps of gold. Heaps of gold will I gladly take; but dance I dare not-will not." In anger she strikes him on the heart, and bids him ride to his bride. On reaching home, his mother is aghast at seeing him so pallid. He tells her he has been in the Erl King's country. "And what shall I say to your bride?" "Tell her I am in the wood with my horse and hound." The morning brings the guests, who ask after Herr Oluf. The bride lifts up the scarlet cloak; "there lay Herr Oluf, and he was dead." I have given this outline of the Danish ballad for the reader to compare with the Erlkönig: a com |