BOOKS.

LEWES'S LIFE OF GOETHE:.

AMONG the literary men of the last hundred years, there is no more interesting figure than Johann Wolfgang Goethe. With the exception of Napoleon Bonaparte, there is no one, be'he writer or actor, who stands out from the mass of his contemporaries so pro- minently, and who is so sure of being more and more identified— as time rolls on, ripening all things that are true, and destroying all things that are false and partial—with the history of •this

'ed. Whatever else perishes and is forgotten, these two—the

g of thought and the king of deed—will be among the ever- lasting heirlooms of European civilization; the ideas to which they gave articulate form with the pen and with the sword will be among the conscious influences destined to shape the ideas, the character, and the conduct of our latest posterity. Writers fond of antithesis somewhat hastily pronounce, in comparing the influ- ence of two such men, that the empire of the king of speech is of a more permanent character than that of the king of action ; as if the first Napoleon ceased to sway the world when he ceased to lead the.armies of France—as if the changes he effected in Europe had been really obliterated by the treaty of Vienna ! Calmer ob- servers may remember that the earth bears traces to this day of primaeval deluges, Noachian or Ethnic ; end, since Mr. Carlyle made the comparison between Goethe and Napoleon, a second em- pire has arisen, to prove that great action sows a seed which may be as prolific and as enduring in its progeny as great speech. Goethe interests :us on his own account, and on account of the persons by whom he was surrounded. He is not only the greatest figure in German literature, but he is the centre of the greatest group. He is not only the Shakspere of Germany, but the Shakspere of the Elizabethan age of Germany ; not only the author of the greatest works, but the source of the widest influence. Filling with his own activity the largest circle of thought, and cultivating to their highest power faculties originally- of extraor- dinary fertility, he has combined, more than any other writer that we know, excellence, variety, and quantity. Shakspere was a greater dramatist certainly, and we think with equal certainty a much greater poet. But Goethe wrote Werther, and Wilhelm Meister, and the W.ahlverwandtschalten, as well as Goetz, Egmont, and Faust. Milton could roll on in majestic word-thunder, and unfold to his grand music pictures as grand ; but where are we to look in Milton for the figures to put beside Mignon, Philina, Clarchen, and, greatest of all, the Faust-Gretchen P Bacon was minister of a greater sovereign than Karl August, and of a greater state than little Saxon Weimar,—a wise moralist, a noble prose- writer, the man to whom more than to any one Europe owes her scientific method. The discovery of the maxillary bone in man, the idea of the vertebrate character .of the skull, the elaborated theory of the metamorphosis of plants, though they indicate a marvellous advance en contemporary notions of philosophic method, and are themselves important steps in the science of development, must yield to the Novum Organum and the De Augmentis. But the wonder is, that these discoveries should have been made by the author of Werther and Hermann and Dorothea. Walter Scott was even more prolific, and in literature quite as various ; but, to say nothing of the important difference that Scott's variety is only specific, even enthusiastic Edinburgh would hesitate in placing the quality of Scott's hest works on a level with that of Goethe's best; and posterity will probably agree with Carlyle in classing the two men at very different elevations, and, while they regard Scott as the man who does beat to amuse the leisure-hour, will assign to Goethe the nobler function of occupying the most serious studies of the highest intellects, of blending the ministry of Wisdom with the grace of Art, profound reflection and wide culture with the force of imagination and the play of humour.

Thus producing largely, in the most various fields, and with con- summate excellence, Goethe was as a matter of course a man of wide acquaintance and of vast influence. What a group of names that is which spontaneously rises to the recollection associated with his ! what a vast change in the literatuae of his country is blended inseparably in the mind, as it was in fact, with the different eras of his life ! The fact becomes most impressive when we remember what German literature means to a German or a culti- vated Englishman now, and what it meant before Goethe's time. The only names of importance that precede his are Klopstoek and Leasing; and how small now is the practical influence of the former ! Round Goethe's image we now see Herder, Schiller, Wieland, the two Humboldts, the two Sehlegels, Jacobi, Novalis, Jean Paul Richter, and a crowd of others whose works are on the shelves of every reading man's library. The Goethe literature has attained a bulk which would make its complete mastery a life- study. Werther, Goetz von Berlichingen, Faust, and Wilhelm Meis- ter, were each in their turn the fruitful parents of a patriarchal family of imitations. The amount of activity excited by Goethe's works in the way of comment, criticism, and imitation, is, it ap- pears to us, quite without parallel, and must always be a prominent topic in any adequate literary history of the period. We believe that the catalogue of books illustrative of Goethe already fills a moderate octavo volume. He attained the questionable advantage of being made a classic when he was yet alive ; and while eager visitors took pilgrimages to Weimar as to a shrine of mysterious

• The Life and Works of Goethe: with Sketches of his Age and Contemporaries. from Published and Unpublished Sourcea. By G. H. Lewes, Author of Tie Biographical History of Philosophy," &c. In two volumes. Published by Nutt. sanctity, and not seldom found the god silent and sometimes ter- fill—and the limit appears to us wisely chosen—he has selected rible, ruthless commentators raisedhideous discord of the critic) orchestra round his unresisting books, and tried to unflesh the clearest art in Europe into metaphysical dry bones, and to hater- P

ret as they call it, magnificent music into formula of school or catechism of sect.

A. phenomenon of such magnitude, so wide and complex in its relations when viewed even in its literary aspect alone, was ant likely to make itself clearly understood at first .glance ; and— while in Germany Goethe's rank as facile princeps has not seriously been disputed, though Schiller was, and may be for all we know still, the more popular poet—the English public has scarcely yet begun to give him place among its household fa- vourites of the exotic species. His literary worth is accepted rather on the testimony of acknowledged authorities than on ex- perience. And this, natural enough among people who read his works only in translations, is also very largely true of English people who read German. So far as the excellence of his poems is untranslateable—and this would include all his lyrics and the finest qualities of his dramatic poetry—there is no remedy for an absence of appreciation which all foreign poets share. Form and substance in poetry are inseparable without vital injury to the poem which undergoes transformation into another language. Bat we think Goethe labours under prejudices which, quite apart from ignorance of the German language and the inevitable loss of beauty and force which poetry undergoes in translation, impede his claim to be studied with affectionate attention,—prejudices which affect the English reader of German, as well as the reader of German literature translated into English. They are mainly three, and may be summed up in the charge of want of heart, laxity of morals, indifferentism in politics. Like all lies that obtain any currency, there is a basis of facts, which, interpreted by a disposition to see everything from one particular point of view, and a resolution to believe a great man a little man if possible, lend colour to these Charges: and the general public, which knows nothing else of Goethe, is sure when his name is mentioned to recognize him as the man who went about in his youth breaking women's hearts, and in his old age made love to an innocent impulsive girl, to put her fresh feelings into poems for which his cold nature could not else find material ; as the man who had illegitimate children by a low woman, whom he was afterwards fool enough to marry, and was served right ; as the man who, when Germany rose—a nation for the moment—against Napoleon, had no sympathy with the movement, and who all his life preferred to be the servile courtier of a petty prince rather than the poet of a free people.

Now, so far as these prejudices have really stood in the way of England's recognition of Goethe's true greatness, and have pre- vented many from reading his works, and distorted the judgments of many who have dipped into them, the publication of this Life by Mr. Lewes will be a signal service to truth and justice. All these charges are candidly met, the facts on which they are founded stated with honesty, and the inferences from them fairly and tho- roughly discussed. Mr. Lewes is a great admirer of Goethe, as it is necessary that a biographer should be ; but his admiration has not made him shirk facts apparently to the discredit of his hero. It is of that deeper kind which has faith enough in its object to re- fuse to allow any shade of suspicion to rest upon his character; all shall be clear at any rate, whether it tells for him or against him. And the result is, that, while Goethe is shown to be a man, and as a man with the temperament as well as the faculties of the poet to have done much he ought not to have done and left undone much which he ought to have done, he is also shown to have pos- sessed one of the noblest and sweetest natures ever given to erring man, and to have lived as ever in the eyes of the Great Taskmaster who had given him his talents, and was by that gift 'wiling him to discharge great duties. Whatever other causes may hereafter mili- tate against Goethe's popularity in England among persons whose judgment is worth anything on such a question, the old miscon- ceptions of his character and conduct must henceforth go into Time's waste-paper-basket.

But Mr. Lewes has not written a polemical book, though era first thought of it has been connected with the vast amount of rubbish it is calculated to render finally obsolete among us. It is, on the contrary, an animated narrative, that never flags in in- terest, and leaves the reader at the end of the second volume long- ing for more ; the work of a man writing on a subject of which he knows much more than he tells, and whose chief difficulty has been to compress his ample materials into the prescribed space. We have been so accustomed of late to lives of inferior men writ- ten in many volumes by men inferior to them, that at first it seems difficult to believe that an adequate life of Goethe, who lived eighty-three years, and whose actuating principle was "ohne Hast, ohne East," can be compressed into two volumes. But a thorough study of his subject, a careful preparation extended through many years, a conscientious devotion to a task vo- luntarily undertaken, and trained skill in authorship, have enabled Mr. Lewes to convey a lively representation of the man Goethe as he lived, of the society of which he was the centre, of the general characteristics of the time, and to blend with all this picture of the man and his environment ample ana- lytical criticism on his principal writings, and intelligent discus- sion of the principles upon which poetry and prose fiction should be conducted. To say that more might be written on all these subjects, is to say simply that Mr. Lewes has written a work of art, and not thrown before the public a quarry of raw material or a bundle of separate treatises. Within the space he has chosen to judiciously and arranged skilfully ; and we owe to him a -very complete and satisfactory account.of the life and writings of the greatest literary man of modern Europe. Most persons who know of Goethe anything more than his name, know of his Strasburg passion; and those who know and honour him best have had hard thoughts of him for his treatment of Frederika. Why he did not marri, her has been often asked ; and never ve

marked good sense and moderation, and this is his verdict.

" I believe, then, that the egoism of genius, which dreaded marriage as the frustration of a career, had much to do with Goethe's renunciation of Frede- rika ; not consciously, perhaps, but powerfully. Whether the alarm was justifiable, is another question, and is not to be disposed of with an easy phrase. It is mere assumption to say marriage -would have crippled his genius.' Had be loved her enough to share a life with her, his experience of women might have been less extensive, but it would assuredly have gained an element it wanted. It would have been deepened. lie had experienced, and he could paint, (no one better,) the exquisite devotion of woman to man ; but he had scarcely ever felt the peculiar tenderness of man for woman, when that tenderness takes the form of vigilant protecting fondness. He knew little, and that not until late in life, of the aubtile interweaving of habit with affection, which makes life saturated with love, and love itself become dignified through the serious aims of life. He knew little of;the ex- quisite companionship of two souls striving in emulous spirit of loving ri- valry to become better, to become wiser, teaching each other to soar. He knew little of this ; and the kin, Frederika! he feared to ,press upon thy loving lips—the life of sympathy he refused to share with thee—are wanting to the greatness of his works."

But on the charge that Goethe sacrificed his genius to a Court life, Mr. Lewes can acquit his client with the consent of all men of sense.

"As we familiarize ourselves with the details of this 'episode, there ap- pears less and less plausibility in the often iterated declamation against Goethe on the charge of his having 'sacrificed his genius to the Court.' It becomes indeed a singularly foolish display of rhetoric. Let us for a moment consider the charge. He had to choose seamen That of poet was then, even more than now, impossible ; verse could create fame, but uo money : fame and fames were then, as ever, in terrible contiguity. As soon as the neces- sity, for a career is admitted, much objection falls to the ground ; for those who reproach him with having wasted his time on court festivities, and the duties of government which others could have done as well, must ask whe- ther he would have eared that time had he followed the career of jurisprn- deuce and jostled the lawyers through the courts at Frankfurt ? or would they prefer seeing him reduced to the condition of poor Schiller. wasting so much of his precious life in literary 'hack-work,' translating French books for a miserable pittance ? Time, in any case, would have been claimed ; in return for that given to Karl August, be received, as he confesses in the poem addressed to the Duke, what the great seldom bestow—affection, lei- sure, confidence, garden and house. No one have I had to thank but him ; and much have I wanted, who, as a poet, ill-understood the arts ofgain. If Europe praised me, what has Europa done for me? Nothing. Even my works have been an expense to me.' "In 1801, writing to his mother on the complaints uttered against him by those who judged so falsely of his condition, he says they only saw what he gave up, not what be gained—they could not comprehend how ho grew daily richer, though be. daily gave up so much. He confesses that the nar- row circle of a burgher life would have ill accorded with his ardent and wide-sweeping spirit. Had he remained at Frankfurt, he would have been ignorant of the world. But here the panorama of life was unrolled before him, and his experience was every way enlarged. Did not Leonardo da Vinci spend much of his time charming the Court of Milan with his poetry and lute-playing? did he not also spend time in mechanical and hydrostati- cal labours for the state? No reproach is lifted against his august name; no one cries out against his being false to his genius ; no one rebukes him for having painted so little at one period. The 'Last Supper' speaks for him. Will not Tale°, 1phigoria, Hermann and Dorothea, Faust, Meister, and the long list of Goethe's works, speak for him? "I have dwelt mainly on the dissipation of his time, because the notion that a court life affected his genius by corrupting his mind' is preposterous. No reader of this biography, it is to be hoped, will fail to see the true rela- tions in which he stood to the Duke ; how free they were from anything like servility or suppression of genuine 'impulse. Indeed, one of the complaints against him, according to the unexceptionable authority of Biemer, was that madeby the subalterns, 'of his not being sutfieieatly attentive to Court eti- quette.' To say, as Niebuhr says, that the Court was a Delilah to whith he sacrificed his locks,' is profoundly to misunderstand his genius, profound- ly to misread his life. Had his genius been of that stormy class which pro- duces great reformers and great martyrs—had it been his mission to-agitate mankind by words which, reverberating to their inmost recesses, called them to lay down their lives in the service of an idea—had it been his tendency to meditate upon the far-off destinies of man, and sway men by the coercion of grand representative abstractiona,—then, indeed, we might say his place was aloof from the motley throng, and not in sailing down the swiftly-flowing stream to sounds of mirth and music on the banks. But he was not a re- former, not a martyr. He was a poet, whose religion was Beauty, whose worship was of Nature, whose aim was culture. His mission was to paint life ; and for that it was requisite he should see life, to know ' The haunt and the main region of his song.'

Happier circumstances might indeed have surrounded him and given him a greater sphere. It would have been very clifferent, as he often felt, if there had been a nation to appeal to, instead of a heterogeneous mass of small peoples, willing enough to talk of Fatherland, but in nowise prepared to be- come a nation. There are many other ifs in which much virtue could bo found ; but inasmuch as he could not create circumstances, we must follow his example, and be content with what the gods provided. I do not, I con- fess, see what other sphere was open to him in which his genius could have been more sacred ; but I do see that he built out of circumstance a noble temple, in which the altar-dame burnt with a steady light. To hypothetical biographers he left the task of settling what Goethe might have been ; enough for us to catch some glimpse of what he was."

As a specimen of the narrative portion of the book, we subjoin the account of Goethe's daily life at Weimar, about the beginning of this century, when he was fifty years old.

" He rose at seven, sometimes earlier, after a sound and prolonged sleep for like Thorwaldsen, he had a 'talent for sleeping' only surpassed by his talent for continuous work. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup of chocolate was then brought, and he resumed work till one. At two he dined. This meal was the important meal of the day. His appetite was immense. -Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry, he ate much more than most men. Puddings sweets and cakes were always

satisfactorily answers . Mr. Lewes discusses the question with

welcome. He eat a long while over his wine, chatting gaily to some friend or other, for he never dined alone ; or to one of the actors, whom he often had with him, after dinner, to read over their parts, and to take his in- structions. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. " Lest this statement should convey a false impression, I hasten to recall to the reader's recollection the very different habits of our fathers in respect of drinking. It was no unusual thing to be a three-bottle man' in those days in England, when the three bottles were of port or burgundy ; and Goethe, a Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank never did more than exhilarate him—never made him unfit for work or for society.

" Over his wine, then, he sat some hours : no such thing as dessert was seen upon his table in those days—not even the customary coffee after din- ner. His mode of living was extremely simple ; and even when persons of very modest circumstances burned wax, two poor tallow candles were all that could be seen in his rooms. In the evening he went often to the theatre, and there his customary glass of punch was brought at six o'clock. If not at the theatre, he received friends at home. Between eight and nine a frugal supper was laid ; but he never took anything except a little salad or preserves. By ten o'clock he was usually in bed."