Not Goethe's life but the development of his mind and
character is the subject of Goethe and Faust, by F. M. Stawell and G. Lowes Dickinson (Bell, 15s.) Mr. Lowes Dickinson and Miss Stawell regard " Faust " as a kind of confession. Goethe began it in his youth and finished it in his extreme old age, " carrying it in his heart like a fairy tale," as he himself said," finding in it secrets from his own experience and knowledge." The story of the great drama is told here in all detail and long passages are translated into glowing verse which blazes up now and then into something like real poetry. Goethe is defined in this book as " the last of the men who have dared to take all knowledge for their province," and, in that respect, the final heir of Aristotle and Leonardo, at the same time as he " was the most discursive of all the great poets, the most imperfect of all great thinkers, and the least systematic." Through the whole volume there runs a religious theory, reaching its climax in the last few pages— which are somewhat startling in their almost orthodox piety. The literary charm of this collaboration will be appreciated both by Goethe scholars and by the uninitiated.
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