not deviate from the letter of the text; while we yet do not allow ourselves to forget that the poet is exercising a magic of his own in a region, Where fancies vague are gifted with strange life, Pure Forms, whose Being is the magic light The purposes of MEPHISTOPHELES are not distinctly communicated, and they have the appearance of arising accidentally. The Classical Walpurgis Night will, perhaps, be rendered more easily intelligible by saying something of the locality of each scene. A sentence in Lucan, which describes the Peneios as discoloured by the blood shed in the battle, perhaps led Goethe to place the Pharsalian fields on the banks of the Peneios. The part of the poem called the Classical Walpurgis Night is divided into four parts as far as place is concerned. The first, the Pharsalian fields. The second, the Lower Peneios. Of the third, the stage-direction is the Upper Peneios, as before.' And the fourth part exhibits to us the Ægean Sea and its shores. In the first our travellers find themselves in company with Sphinxes, Griffins, Arimaspians, &c., in which are supposed to be represented the old Mythologies, from which the Grecian was derived. The Sphinxes are Egypt, the Griffins Persia, Faustus and Mephistopheles are differently affected by these ancient figures. Faustus sees the Power and the Beauty which they symbolise and predict. Mephistopheles's sense of propriety is shocked and scandalised by the Nude. A chorus of Sirens is heard from the trees, and seek to win to themselves the attentions of the travellers. We soon lose sight of Faustus. He has gone to the Lower Peneios, has there met Cheiron, and is by him led to the temple of Manto, from which there is a secret passage to Hades, whither he descends, like Orpheus of old, to try to obtain Helena from Proserpine. When he has parted company with Mephistopheles, the latter too has his love-fits, and we have a sort of half-angry, half-amorous dialogue between him and one of the Sphinxes. Game more attractive catches his eye, and he leaves the Sphinxes for a group of Lamiæ, and finally we have him in a den where monsters not unlike the Gorgons dwell-the three daughters of Phorcys, Goddesses, the old sinner says, uglier than the c Deadly Sins. He persuades them that if the world knew of them, there would be everywhere statues of the three black Graces; Junos and Pallases would be nothing to them, Kings-was Goethe thinking of kings of Bavaria ?-would inaugurate -is not that the word ?-the statues. This is irresistible. In the depths of their nature Mephistopheles's oratory has found the woman's heart. They are tempted by the hope of being exhibited in sculpture or painting, but are unwilling to stir from their den. This presents no serious difficulty. There are few things which such an agent as Mephistopheles would not undertake, and he proposes to compress their triple being into two, and consign to him for a season the outward seeming of the third-more indeed than the outward seeming-the actual real self. All this is the easiest possible thing-in Mythology. This he, if any one, is the professor to prove, and the attorney to carry out in practice. He thus obtains the semblance or living mask of a Phorcyad, in which character he appears in the 'Helena'-a hideous old woman-not the less Mephistopheles, thus uniting and reconciling the Classical and the Romantic. Before this, however, has occurred, the Pharsalian plain, or that part of the plain where the Sphinxes and Griffins are, is disturbed by symptoms of coming earthquake, and a giant, pushing a mountain up before him, makes his appearance. Goethe calls him Seismos, and tells you that he is the same Titan who had fixed the wandering island Delos, and who had effected other Vulcanic wonders. The Sphinxes will not stir; the Griffins, alive to their own interest, think they can make something of it; the Sirens, of whom we must say a word presently, determine to fly the place as unlucky. Wherever there are unusual appearances, you will find physicists endeavouring to explain them, and adding to the difficulties. The spectral mountain and its accompaniments bring up Thales and Anaxagoras, each in his own way philosophising about it, and Homunculus joins them in the hope of learning something that may be of use to him for his own purposes. The conversation between Thales and Anaxagoras is on the questions agitated by the geologists of Goethe's own day. Thales is the Wernerian Neptunist, Anaxagoras the Vulcanist. In an after part of the drama, the Vulcanists are again introduced, and the defence of their system given to Mephistopheles. The conversation occurs from the strange incident of the hill rising above the surface of the earth. Anaxagoras refers it to igneous matter forcing its way through the crust of the earth, and he refers to such incidents the present appearance of the globe. Thales regards the phenomenon as an isolated accident. The hill has scarcely arisen when it becomes crowded with trees and shrubs, and in this Goethe is supposed to have intended to state that each part of the earth has its own peculiar vegetation. Its own peculiar inhabitants Seismos, the hill-called after the Titan to whom it owes its existence-has; and a strange set they are-all little fellows, Thumblings, Fingerlings, Pygmies; there is marrying and giving in marriage; there is industry and prosperity and Anaxagoras thinks it would not be a bad speculation for our little friend, the manikin adventurer, to become king there-Homunculus of the Mountain.' Homunculus wisely declines; the society is not long without its wars; we are in some Outopia or land of No-where, nor does Time exist here, and we scarcely have seen the hill arise before we find the population with all the vices of an old people. We have ambition, we have aristocratic and landed gentry, we have battles for plumes and feathers, and something of a popular insurrection is got up or threatened, of which is not this like Ireland ?-the Emmets are among the leaders. The Dactyls the Idæan Dactyls were in the old books of Mythology described as workers in iron-complain that they |
