ART. III.-1. Goethe's Letters to Zelter, with Extracts from those of Zelter to Goethe. Selected, translated, and annotated by A. D. Coleridge, M.A., late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. London, 1887.

2. Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. Translated from the German by John Oxenford. New Edition. London, 1874.

3. Life of Goethe. By Heinrich Düntzer. Translated by Thomas W. Lyster, Assistant Librarian, National Library of Ireland. 2 vols. London, 1883.

4. Charlotte von Stein, Goethe's Freundin, &c. Von Heinrich Düntzer. Stuttgart, 1874.

5. Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe in den Jahren 1794 bis 1805. 2 vols. Stuttgart, 1870.

THER

HE times are changed since Carlyle and Lewes almost made us believe, that there never had been and never would be such a hero, poet, and philosopher as Goethe. Goethe societies have sprung up and flourished, it is true, since then; but Goethe-worship has been a little overdone, and the present age treats him somewhat coldly. We get our philosophy, as well as our religion and politics, from the four corners of the world, and do not take the trouble to be even eclectic. We dislike anything that savours of a system; and Goethe, who harmonized his life with Nature, and preached and practised a modern Stoicism, is thought pedantic and cold by a generation of impressionists and realists. But this generation may learn a lesson of patience, if nothing else, from Goethe; and we are glad to be recalled to the contemplation of serene old age as it is shown in the volume of correspondence with Zelter, which Mr. A. D. Coleridge has translated from the German.

The original work is in seven volumes, and contains more than an impatient age has time to read. In its leisurely attention to trifles, its luxurious independence of persons and things, its combination of poetry, theatre, literature, philosophy, science sound and unsound, music and court gossip, it presents us with an autobiography of Goethe in the last thirty years of his life, the unaffected picture of his closing days.

Zelter, to whom these letters are addressed, is better known to the musical than to the literary world, as the friend and teacher of Felix Mendelssohn. He was also a conspicuous figure among the musicians of his time: and his best claim to remembrance is that he was among the first who made the works of John Sebastian Bach the property of the world, instead of remaining, as they had been for a century, the hidden treasure

of

of musicians.

'Beyond a question,' says Mr. Coleridge (Preface, ix.), 'we owe to Zelter and his pupil the slow but true appreciation of the work of that immortal master, who, if Mendelssohn is to be believed in, is in no one point inferior to any master, and in many points superior to all.'

Zelter's friendship with Goethe began about the close of the last century; and for thirty years a frequent correspondence was carried on. Music was the first point of contact, an art in which Zelter was a master, and Goethe hardly a scholar. But Zelter a vigorous, warm-hearted, self-confident man, full of studies and projects-claimed Goethe's sympathy in all his interests; and relations which were at first mainly professional expanded into a warm and lasting friendship.

The book is interesting also as covering about the same ground as Eckermann's well-known Conversations.' The two volumes may well be compared together; and the fidelity of Eckermann's reporting, as well as the agreement between the speech and the letters of Goethe, is well shown by the close resemblance between them. The one portrait sets off the other, as a profile and a full face of the same subject.

Goethe's old age or rather senescence began early. The 'Third period,' as it is called in the jargon of Art, may come early or late in life: which it is to be, may depend partly on the work done in early life. Goethe's began early, and before middle age he had completed his conquest of the world of letters. His Italian journey and the end of his love for Charlotte von Stein marked the close of a period in his life. He was then, it is true, only forty years old: but he had lived forty years of zweckmässige Thätigkeit, energy working out an aim,' the Aristotelian definition which he had adopted as his motto; and for the rest of his life he had no discoveries to make. Indeed for men of genius, no less than for the common herd, a new vision is rarely revealed after the path of middle life is entered. To follow out the designs formed in youth is sufficient employment for the journey over the table-land and the downward slope of life. This was the aim of Goethe's later years, accepted by himself and steadily pursued. No faculty, either passive or active, was to be left unused, no province of thought was to be left unvisited; but his progresses are rather those of a sovereign visiting his provinces than of a general conquering new lands. The victorious excursions of his youth, the trophies of which are 'Götz' and 'Werther,' have come to an end. His battalions (to use Prof. Dowden's metaphor) now move more slowly and massively, supported but delayed by a vast train of experience. Much time is spent on studies in

Science,

Science, much in considering the principles of Art and Literature. His aim is henceforward not so much to create as to interpret. The first part of 'Faust' is a question, the second an answer. Wilhelm Meister sets out to solve the riddle of life: in 'Wahrheit und Dichtung' a poet's life is portrayed in the guise of biography: stories and scenes such as 'Der Gott und die Bajadere, ballads like Ritter von Toggenburg,' vivid action and passion as in Egmont' and 'Clavigo,' now please him less. Instead of this, he pours out thousands of distichs containing this experience as an observer of life; delights in situations which bring out play of character; gives us Tasso,' the second part of Faust,' and the 'Wahlverwandtschaften.' It has been said that the best poetry is written before thirty: what is at any rate true is, that the brightest flashes of genius are those of early years; later works have more of wisdom and less of fire. Would Goethe at thirty have said, ' To feel a situation and express it is the poet'? (Eckermann, p. 130.) Would he not have preferred to this conscious wisdom the fine frenzy of youth? It is only the greatest of all who can strike into maturity the heat of youth. The passion of Antony and Cleopatra is as vivid as that of Romeo and Juliet,-Beethoven's 9th Symphony is as full of youth as his earliest works. There is a greenness of old age which may produce such works as 'Alexander's Feast,' the brightest and grandest passages in Paradise Lost,' and such lyrics as are to be found in the later plays of Euripides and the later volumes of the Laureate. But we need not condemn the Excursion' because it has not the lightness of Ruth,' or complain of Goethe as dull because he writes no more Werthers.'

It is possible, however, that Goethe's later works might have had more splendour if he had lived more in the stream of the world. The catalogue of events in the last thirty years of his life is scanty. His fine constitution was injured by a serious illness in the year 1800; and though his strength carried him on to the age of eighty-three, and he was at no time of his life an invalid or a valetudinarian, he never subjected his health to rude trials. He travelled little. Living for the most part at Weimar, his journeys extended no further than to Jena, Frankfurt, and various watering-places, which his doctors advised him to visit. The events of his life are the French invasion, his marriage to Christiane Vulpius, the deaths of his wife, his only son, his best friend Schiller, and of many others— for 'to live long is to outlive many;' the visits of admirers and friends, compliments and presents, transient love-affairs, conversation, correspondence, literary work great and small.

He

He was the acknowledged sovereign of Literature, 'the greatest man of Germany-perhaps of Europe,' as Byron calls him.* But the isolation of Germany from the politics and literature of Europe is indicated by the local character of the details of the poet's life, and the absence of foreign visitors, who rarely appear at Weimar, although his works are translated into all languages and noticed in the literary publications of all countries. His life is spent, so far as it is not passed in his study, in a round of small duties and amusements hardly worthy of so great a fame. Come to Paris,' Napoleon said to him; there you will find a world.' But he preferred to leave the world to find himself: to the loss, as it seems to us, both of himself and the world. For Goethe was a man of the world; neither a bookworm nor a dreamer: self-sufficient, it is true, in a classic independence, and therefore all the more fitted to take part among his like rather than sit attentive to his own applause.'

Cosmopolitan friendships, however, are rare except in the days of the Roman Empire and the Roman Church. The mountain peaks stand apart: there is something stilted in the transmarine visits of men of letters; their claims to empire are more easily acknowledged by their inferiors than by their fellows. On the other hand, no man of genius except Scott was more truly human and undisturbed by egotism than Goethe. He found friends as well as admirers in Rome; and his later life would have been made richer by an English and a French journey. Scott would have welcomed him; an interview with Byron would have been an event in the lives of both men ; Coleridge and Wordsworth both esteemed him highly; and the younger men, headed by Carlyle, would have thronged round him with unfeigned homage. He would have moved with ease in the salons of Mme. de Stael and Mme. Récamier, and have given and taken ideas in the company of the newly rising Romantic school which owed him so much. The wonder is that, in spite of the narrow circumstances in which he moved, the mean detail of grand ducal buildings and plantings, Weimar theatre-gossip, the cursed tea-table clatter' which sickened Heine, he never became provincial.

We must look in Wahrheit und Dichtung' and in the correspondence with Schiller for Goethe's portrait en grande tenue. Here we see him in his dressing-gown at Weimar ; smiling, though never merry; genial, courteous, loving all mankind; but with no loves or friendships of an exacting nature.

*Letter to Mr. Murray, June 7th, 1820.

We

We are admitted to the domestic life of the Geheimrath, reflecting on his little town something of the importance which attaches to a cathedral or a battle-field. Pilgrims come to his shrine from all countries; a few are sent away empty, but most go home with note-books stored, and the honour of having seen Goethe. One of them, Felix Mendelssohn, has left us in his letters the most vivid of all the portraits of the poet; one of those descriptions which make the dead live again. Presents of all sorts arrive: books, antiques, casts, cameos, drawings by old masters, translations of his works, musical settings of his songs, gold snuff-boxes, ribands and grand crosses from great and little sovereigns, and humbler presents from their subjects. Homage of all sorts, and from all sorts of men, is laid at the feet of this sovereign of literature, and he accepts it with the lofty good nature of an epicurean deity, lying beside his nectar and smiling purpureo ore: a deity in dressing-gown, that is. The tone of the letters becomes more familiar and unrestrained as the elder man accepts the friendship of the younger; each subject, however trivial, having justice done it, like the breakfast and dinner of the day; all is natural and spontaneous; the incidents of the day are there, and have their due place in the day. The translator, in his selection of letters, has wisely given us just enough of daily incident to make the reader feel that his omissions have been well omitted, and to give the tone of familiar intercourse which runs through the letters, and makes them a better image of Goethe in the everyday world than other portraits afford.

We may compare with the letters to Zelter and the notices of Schiller in the Conversations' of Eckermann, the correspondence with Schiller (1794-1805), the latter part of which falls within this period. Goethe owed much to the influence of Schiller, the most refined spirit with which he came into contact. The friendship of the two poets is famous, and honourable to both. Men of letters are less disturbed by the demon of envy than artists; and though we read of plenty of antipathies and quarrels in the history of literature, there are also many instances of friendship. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Scott and Byron, Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb, are among many poets whose respect for each other excluded jealousy. No shade of jealousy ever interrupted the harmony in which Goethe and Schiller lived. There was, however, some constraint in their friendship. They agreed heartily, and wrote to each other candidly, on all matters connected with poetry and the drama. They criticized each other's works freely and without offence. But though there is no display, there is some

effort.