it has worked like a leaven in the estimation of Goethe among the present generation.

It is not the purpose of this essay to repeat the history of Friederike, Lili, or any other, or to discuss the possible or probable character of Goethe's relations with Frau Stein; to analyze the nature of the qualms of conscience for which skating was found to be the readiest quietus; or to attempt to gauge the curious heartlessness in the advice as to coffee-drinking. But when admirers of Goethe, clerical and lay, assure us, as a thing settled and past serious discussion, that the object of Goethe's life being a perfect self-culture, the noble and harmonious development of his intellectual nature, these trifles of broken hearts and poisoned lives, since they tended to that end, are not to be mentioned in the comparison, the proposition is so monstrous a one that the mind pauses thereon in consternation. If a genius, literary or other, has the force to dwell apart, his great soul nourishing itself out of its own vitality, as did the mighty artist of the Medicean Chapel, of the Sistine, and of St. Peter's of Rome, his sole intercourse with a distracting sex being of the character of that artist's with Vittoria Colonna, - this is one thing. But if, after a record such as that of Goethe's youth and earlier manhood, this genius becomes a father like common men; if the mother of his children is not a wife within his house, but a woman who could be spoken of between Goethe and Frau Stein as "that poor creature," when, moreover, the best thing we know concerning this genius in these central relations of life is that he married at last this same "poor creature," with a view to legitimating his children, we have a right to ask whether this perfect self-culture has left a record of itself commensurate with the sacrifice. Any survey of his works, made up, not of laudation, but of cautious criticism, would seem entitled to a certain consideration. And since it has come to be the fashion to bracket Goethe with Shakespeare, not to mention his being collocated with names of antiquity sacred and profane, it is the more necessary to distinguish between the idol, as we may say, and the man, the author, the real Goethe.

And here we may say, at the outset of an essay which aims to present Goethe in a somewhat different light from that in which it is the mode to regard him, that we are by no means insensible to the better element in his works, or to their fascinating quality. Much there is that is fine and strong, something that is noble. To deny this, would be to make criticism worthless at the startingpoint. We have no objection to an estimation of Goethe, only to

an over-estimation; not to his being credited with what he has done, but with what he has not done, or merely intended to do, the latter a sort of begging of the question unique in literary criticism. Leaving aside his character altogether, and its possible influence, there is no writer of anything like his reputation whose works require to be read from the literary, from the artistic standpoint, with so careful a discrimination. Far from perceiving in Goethe a genius supreme in poetry, in literature, we might say that no one of his works should be regarded as a work of genius in the higher, not to say the highest sense, taken, that is, in its entirety. It has indeed been asserted, in impatience, we presume, against the sort of idolatry in question, that Goethe did not possess genius, but talent only, of a more or less phenomenal order. This is an excess in the contrary direction. But if we might be permitted to express a candid opinion, based upon a careful perusal of Goethe's most noted works, it would be that the amount of real genius therein is, considering his reputation, singularly little. For the rest, his gift must be described as cleverness; not, indeed, the cleverness which has been termed "common as dirt, and as cheap; Goethe's, at its best, is a sort of transcendental cleverness, but still cleverness, and not the other, the vision, that is, the faculty divine. It is the mixture, as we think, that makes Goethe so puzzling, so difficult to pronounce upon; for the more part of clever writers, however clever, are not likely to be mistaken for geniuses, at least in the larger sense; while on the other hand an unmistakable genius is not likely to be characterized, by any one who appreciates values in language, as a clever writer.

Here, as in many other cases, it is easier to apprehend a difference than to formulate a definition. It is not that the work of Goethe is unequal; the works of a writer of indisputable genius are often singularly unequal. It is rather, and preeminently, that his work lacks that selective character which is the note of the highest literary art, as of every other. It is lacking, moreover, in unity of construction, in that initial sense in which a work seems to have grown, as the tree grows, in the mind of its author, so that every bough and every branch, with all its detail of leafage, is related vitally to the central life of the whole. Goethe's famous works seem rather like a mosaic, the parts of which have been deliberately fitted together. This mosaic work, however ingenious, however skillfully put together, cannot, in the nature of things, be set beside the other; it has not the vitality. The peculiarity of Goethe's work is that nuggets and threads of genius are

distributed, as chance may have it, through the whole. It is for this reason, as we conceive, that he is the most tantalizing of writers, in that he constantly arouses an expectation which his work, as a whole, is inadequate to fulfill. It means so much in some places as to impose upon us the delusion that it must mean greatly throughout; and with no other author, perhaps, has so much been read into his works as with Goethe.

We are entirely of the opinion that the first part of "Faust" is Goethe's best work, the one, that is, which best illustrates his peculiar intellectual quality. The "Faust," as all the world knows, is based remotely upon various Faust legends which abounded in the Middle Ages, legends which had developed notably, in English, into the "Faustus" of Marlowe. The inevitable woman of course enters into the Faust legend, and presently insists upon being the centre. In the play by Marlowe, Faustus demands of Mephistopheles the fairest maid of Germany to be his wife. Mephistopheles, who has no notion of resigning Faustus to the possible influences of domesticity, dissuades him, and calls up Helen of Troy as his paramour. Faustus loses his soul for Helen, and is summoned at the fatal moment by Mephistopheles in the good old-fashioned manner. Marlowe's work is too near to the mystery plays, the human interest is not sufficiently developed, at least in the modern sense, for us to care very much when the Devil claims his own. The unity of construction, however, the symmetry and proportion, are absolute; and the human interest is developed just sufficiently to arouse the desire for something more, and to prepare the way therefor. Goethe had certainly read Marlowe's "Faustus," and Marlowe's "fairest maid in Germany " may have been the germ of Margaret. For the rest, the tragedy of "Faust" (by which designation we mean the first part only) is so modernized throughout in sentiment, Mephistopheles is so entirely a dissolute, cynical man, that the few shreds of medieval apparatus which Goethe presents to us, the mantle which Mephistopheles spreads to bear himself and Faust through the air, the magic steeds, seem incongruities, which in a manner break the continuity of interest. But this last is a trifle scarce worth the noting.

There are many, we suspect, who have assisted at Gounod's opera of the name, but who have never read Goethe's "Faust," at least in the original, who are entirely unaware how much of the moral of the piece, when brought out by a lyrical artist of the highest power, as Christine Nilssen or Minnie Hauck,

are

entirely unaware how much of this moral has been imported into Goethe. Even in the opera, the jewel business is a serious stumbling-block, unless the Margaret has a conscientiousness and a capacity for self-denial which comparatively few actresses are possessed of. Coming to "Faust" for a first reading with prepossessions based upon the sort of presentation of which we have just spoken, the mind receives a somewhat severe shock from the comparison. We realize, too, to what extent Margaret was an incident with Goethe, at least in the outset, instead of being that about which the whole revolves, as in the opera. Goethe's Margaret is certainly good, in the negative sense at least, but it would require a stretch of the imagination to call her an ideal character. She repels Faust's first advance in a manner quite suitable; but in the interview with him shortly after in Martha's garden, we are somewhat aghast when, upon the parenthetical "He kisses her," she responds, seizing hold of him (ihn fassend) and returning the kiss. As for the jewels, the business in Goethe is cumulative. For the first casket, mistrusted by Margaret's mother, is handed over to the priest, as its safest depositary. A second casket is then supplied by Mephistopheles, and this is conveyed by Margaret to the house of the light-minded neighbor, precisely to keep it from her mother's observation. The comments, moreover, of Mephistopheles throughout illustrate how entirely Margaret, thus far, is a mere detail for his cynicism. None the less is Margaret a maiden after Goethe's own idea; he is troubled by no discrepancy between her and an ideal pattern.

In the play, it will be noticed, Faust leaves Margaret for a considerable interval; and then is introduced the naïve and musical lyric, "Meine Ruh' ist hin." The lyric is entirely in character. Margaret is not timid and fearful, shrinking from a love that at the same time she is powerless to resist. She recalls her lover's kiss, and would gladly die kissing him, if so be she might have him for the kissing. Faust returns, and in Martha's garden we have another scene, perfect of its kind. Nowhere more than in this later scene do we realize the truth of the Italian proverb as to flame and tow. Margaret's intuition is keen enough to mistrust Mephistopheles, and she expresses this mistrust to Faust, and endeavors to win from him some expression of religious belief. Faust answers in dithyrambic utterances, in which pantheistic sentiment and Leidenschaft are somewhat intermingled, and reproaches her antipathy. He then easily induces her to deepen her mother's sleep by means of the phial furnished by Mephis topheles.

We soon see Margaret in appeal to the Virgin, in another lyric exquisitely pathetic and musical. Perhaps it is an ineradicable taint of Puritanism in the mind that leads us to expect in this lyric a touch of that something expressed in the telling word remorse. But there is none. Margaret is deeply, deeply wretched; but her appeal ends as it begins, that the Virgin should look upon her necessity, should save her from disgrace and its possible consequences. This is very natural, perhaps, for an ordinary sort of peasant girl; it is far from being the Marguerite developed in the lyric drama.

Margaret's tale of misery is soon complete; and we find her in the church, the organ pealing, the evil spirit beside her. The words of the "Dies Iræ," as intoned by the choir, are set against the utterances of the evil spirit, sounding, in the pauses, in her ear. We thrill with the tension of the situation, the greatness of the scene. The whisperings of the demon are harrowing; the words of the hymn of judgment crush the soul. Margaret murmurs in her anguish, she gasps in the evil atmosphere which envelops her. The taunts of the demon become more poignant, the words of the choir more terrible. Margaret is past utterance. The demon repeats his concluding "Woe!" the choir repeats its "Quid sum miser," and Margaret exclaims, "Nachbarin, Euer Fläschchen!” after which we have the parenthetical "She falls unconscious." We are obliged to confess our complete ignorance as to the custom of German peasant girls of having smelling-bottles or not about them. So petty a detail need not be paused upon. But that poor Gretchen could not be allowed to fall unconscious after the repeated “Quid sum miser," without this prosaic note which drops us fathoms down from the height on which it found us, is a striking evidence of how little the real centre of this scene was the centre to the mind of its creator. Goethe is occupied with his theatric effect, his setting of the judgment of Heaven on the one hand against the curse of hell on the other. He does not gauge the woe of the woman soul, on which judgment and curse alike are falling. The smelling-bottle, as climax to so great a scene, is disastrous to extremity.

The introduction of Margaret into the Walpurgis Night is a thread of the pure gold of Goethe's genius. Faust sees her moving with difficulty, as if fettered. He looks again; she seems as it were a ghost, and about her neck a line, not broader than the back of the executioner's knife. Mephistopheles assures him that it is all an illusion, that what he sees is the Medusa, who can