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    it ) he will produce a work of extraordinary interest ; for surely never was a life so varied in its scenes , so ennobled by intellectual labour . The great and illustrious men he has known—the court 3 he ba £ resided at—the lands he has traversed—the sciences he has mastered—the works he has accomplished are themes which , rightly to be treated , require a skilful writer ; such a writer , indeed , jas one very rarely sees the promise of in Germany . I t is to be regretted Humboldt did not himself record the annals of his own life ; but we suppose the conclusion of Cosmos at his advanced age was as much as could reasonably be undertaken ,.

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    CONVERSATIONS WITH jGOBTHE . Conversations of Goethe poilh Eckermann . and Sorei . Translated from the German by John Oxenford . In 2 vols . Smith and Elder . We can scarcely name a more perfectly charming book than Eckermann on Goethe . It has the mild magnificence of a summer ' s eve ; and the serenity of this sunset of the greatest mind that has appeared in our times , steals oyer the reader with a soothing

    influence to which we can recal no parallel . Goethe is elsewhere seen in greater fulness and power , but nowhere to greater advantage . The calm , happy , active , high-thoughted , large .-souled old man . stands out in all the grandeur , in all the dignity of age , without any of the asperities , the pettinesses , or the weaknesses which usually thwart its proper influence : his auburn locks have whitened , but not { dunned : he has become grey with years , not bald .

    Four times have we read this book in the original , and now again we have read it in this translation with unabated delight . So much , wisdom , so much beauty , so much gentleness , and so much high culture one cannot weary of . If we compare it with the conversations of other celebrated men , they all sink into insignificance , except one—Boswell ' s Johnson . It has not the variety , the movement , the wit , the biographical richness of that work , unique in

    literature ; but it is throughout of a higher strain , and stands above it as poetry does above common sense . The worship of Eckermann for Goethe was of a different nature from that felt by the vain , babbling , servile , but dexterous Boswell . He was not lured to Goethe by the splendours of a great name ; the lonely cowboy had educated himself into a wise and reverential man , and Goethe was worshipped because Goethe ' s influence rilled his soul . The connection

    of Boswell with Johnson is one that excites bitter scorn . Old Sam bullied him , ridiculed him , but could not shake him off ; the parasitic plant would cling round the old oak : not because the oak was a grand tree , but because the world said it was . Johnson neglected , unknown to fame , would have had no lickspittle in that servile sot . It was the

    blaze of light which attracted this fluttering moth , and a farthing rushlight , by reason of its greater brilliancy , would have lured him sooner than a star " pinnacled dim in the intense inane . " Of Eckermann this is in no sense true . His worship of Goethe we feel to be genuine reverence ; and this feeling saves it from , being ridiculous .

    Of the present translation we may say that , in one respect it is more useful than the original—that of arrangement . Eckermann published his first two volumes in 183 G . The great success led him to believe that another volume might be acceptable , and he published it in 1848 . The reason of this delay ho frankly explains . Having to fill up the brief

    skeleton of his journal by efforts of memory , xt was only in certain moods that he could sufficiently recal Goethe ' s tone and words , so as to write them down with the conviction that thus Goethe spoke , and that ho , Eckermann , was not speaking for him ; and these moods were " few and far , between . " The translator hns taken no notice of this difference which exists

    boenough to produce some new poem . I was now in my four-and-twentieth year : within me , a world of feelings , impulses , and good-will was in full action ; but I was entirely deficient in information and mental culture . The study of our great poets was recommended to me , especially Schiller and Klopstock . I procured their works—I read , I admired them , without receiving much assis . tance from them ; the path of these geniuses , though I was not aware of it at the time , being too far from the natural tendency of my own mind . " At this time I first heard the name of Goethe , and obtained a volume of his poems . I read bis songs again

    and again , and enjoyed a happiness which no words can express . I seemed as if I had not till now begun to wake , and attain real consciousness ; it appeared to me that my own inmost soul , till then unknown even to myself , was reflected in these songs . Nowhere did J meet any learned or foreign matter beyond the reach of my own uncultivated thoughts and feelings ; nowhere any names of outlandish and obsolete divinities , which to me said nothing ; but , on the contrary , I found the human heart , with its desires , joys , and sorrows—I found a German nature , clear as the bright actual day—pure reality in the light of a mild glorification .

    * f I lived whole weeks and months absorbed in these songs . Then I succeeded in obtaining Wilhelm Meister , then Goethe ' s Life , then his dramas . Faust > from whose abysses of human nature and perdition J at first , shuddering , drew back , but whose profound enigmatical character ever attracted me again , I read always in holidays . My admiration and love encreased daily ; for a long time I completely lived in these works , and thought and talked of nothing but Goethe . «« The advantage which we derive from studying the

    works of a great author may be of different kinds ; but the chief benefit probably consists in this , that we become more clearly conscious , not only of our own internal nature , but also of the varied world without us . Such an effect was produced on me by the works of Goethe . I was also impelled by them to a better observation and apprehension of sensible objects and characters ; I came gradually to understand the unity or internal harmony of an individual with itself , and thus the enigma of the great variety in phenomena , both of nature and art , was solved to me more and more . "

    MODERN" DRAMATISTS . " Intellect , and some poetry , cannot be denied to our modern tragic poets , but most of them are incapable of an easy , living representation ; they strive after something beyond their powers ; and for that reason I might call them forced talents . "

    GOETHE AND THE PEOPLE . " Sometimes , ' said Goethe , * people do not like to look on me as I am , but turn their glances from everything which could show me in my true light . Schiller , on the contrary—who , between ourselves , was much more of an aristocrat than I am , but who considered what he said more than I—had the wonderful fortune to be looked upon as a particular friend of the people . I give it up to him with all my heart , and console myself with the thought that others before me have fared no better .

    ' * ' It is true that I could bo no friend to the French Hevolution ; for its horrors were too near me , and shocked me daily and hourly , whilst its beneficial results were not then to be discovered . Neither could I be indifferent to the fact that the Germans were endeavouring , artificially , to bring about such scenes here as were , in France , the consequence of a great necessity . •* ' But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule . Indeed , I was perfectly convinced that a great revolution is never a fault of the people , but of the government . Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant , bo that they may anticipate them by improvements at the right time , and not hold out until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath . 4

    " Because I hated the Revolution , the name of the " Friend of the powers that be " was bestowed upon me . That is , however , a very ambiguous title , which I would beg to decline . If the " powers that be" were all that is excellent , good , and just , I should have no objection to the title ; but , since with much that is good there is also much that is bad , unjust , and imperfect , a friend of the " powers that be" means often little less than the friend of the obsolete and bad . " ' But time is constantly progressing , and human affairs wear every fifty years a different aspect ; so that an arrangement which , in the year 1800 , was perfection , may , perhaps , in the year 1850 , be a defect . " ' And , furthermore , nothing is good for a nation but that which arises from its own core and its own

    general wants , without apish imitation of another ; since what to one race of people , of a certain age , is a wholesome nutriment , may , perhaps , prove a poison for another . All endeavours to introduce any foreign innovation , the necessity for which is not rooted in the core of the nation itself , are , therefore , foolish ; and all premeditated revolutions of the kind are unsuccessful , for they are without God , who keeps aloof from such bungling . If , however , there exists an actual necessity for a great reform amongst a people , God is with it , and it

    prospers . He was visibly with Christ and his first adherents ; for the appearance of the new doctrine of love was a necessity to the people . He was also visibly with Luther ; for the purification of the doctrine corrupted by the priests was no less a necessity . Neither of the great poivers whom I have named was , however , a friend of the permanent ; much more were both of them convinced that , the old leaven must be got rid of , and that it would be impossible to go on aud remain in the untrue , unjust , and defective way . '"

    JEALOUSIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN . 11 Scientific questions , ' answered Goethe , ' are very oftrn questions of existence . A single discovery may make a muu renowned , and lay the foundation of his

    worldly prosperity . It is for this reason that , in the sciences , there prevails this great severity , this pertinacity , and this jealousy concerning the discovery of another . In the sphere of aesthetics everything is deemed more venial ; the thoughts are , more or less , an innate property of all mankind , with respect to which the only point is the treatment and execution—and , naturally enough , little envy is excited . A single idea may give foundation for a hundred epigrams ; and the question is , merely , which poet has been able to embody this idea in the most effective and most beautiful manner .

    " ' But in science the treatment is nothing , and all the effect lies in the discovery . There is here little that is universal and subjective , for the isolated manifestations of the laws of nature lie without us—all sphynxlike , motionless , firm , and dumb . Every new phenomenon that is observed is a discovery—every discovery a property . Now , only let a single person meddle with property , and man will soon be at hand with all his passions . " ' However , ' continued Goethe , * in the sciences that also is looked upon as property which has been handed down or taught at the universities . And , if any one

    advances anything new which contradicts , perhaps threatens to overturn , the creed which we have for years repeated , and have handed down to others , all passions are raised against him , and every effort is made to crush him . People resist with all their might ; they act as if they neither heard nor could comprehend ; they speak of the new view with contempt , as if it were not worth the trouble of even so much as an investigation or a regard ; and thus a new truth may wait a long time before it can make its way . '"

    IMAGINATION V . UNDERSTANDING . " If imagination did not originate things which must ever be problems to the understanding , there would be but little for the imagination to do . It is this which separates poetry from prose ; in which latter understanding always is , and always should be , at home . " " We extract , for the sake of a remark , the following passage in a conversation on . Sophocles : — " One can see that , in his youth , he enjoyed an excellent rhetorical education , by which he became trained to look for all the reasons and seeming reasons of things . Still , his great talent in this respect betrayed him into faults , as he sometimes went too far .

    " There is a passage in Antigone which I always look upon as a blemish , and I would give a great deal for an apt philologist to prove that it is interpolated and spurious . " After the heroine has , in the course of the piece , explained the noble motives for her action , and displayed the elevated purity of her soul , she at last , when she is led to death , brings forward a motive which is quite unworthy , and almost borders upon the comic . she would

    " She says that , if she had been a mother , not have done either for her dead children or for her dead husband , what she has done for her brother . ' For , ' says she , ' if my husband died , I could have had anothei- ; and , if my children died , I could have had others by my new husband . But , with my brother , the case is different . I cannot have another brother ; for , since my mother and father are dead , there is no one to beget one . ' " There is , at least , the bare sense of this passage , which , in my opinion , when placed in the mouth of a heroine going to her death , disturbs the tragic tone , and appears to me very far-fetched—to savour too much of dialectical calculation . As I said , I should like a philologist to show us that the passage is spurious . "

    Very probably most readers will have been struck with , that passage , and will echo Goethe ' s condemnation of it as far-fetched . We have our own doubts , however , respecting the soundness , of the criticism . It is in the nature of passion to reach , out into extravagance for reasons and images . Passion is a great sophister . Antigone ' s argument seems to us an example of dramatic subtlety quite in the manner of Shakspeare . For do we not always declare the present evil we are actually suffering greater than any possible evil that lies contingent in the future , or half obliterated in the past ? Are we not apt to magnify present woes ? and is Antigone ' s argument anything

    more than this logic of passion ? Observe , moreover , that the tragic pivot of the Antigone is love for a brother braving the laws ; and to justify herself in the eyes of her fellow-citizens for her breach of the laws , she exaggerates her own position as a sister . We quote with peculiar pleasure Goethe ' s dissection of that strangely-overrated critic Schlcgel : —

    MOLIEllE AND SCIILEGEL . " < I have known and loved Moliere , ' continued Goethe , ' from my youth , and have learned from him during my whole life . I never fail to read some of his plays every year , that I may keep up a constant intercourse witli what is excellent . It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment which delights me , but particularly the amiablo nature , the highly-formed mind , of the poet . There is in him a grace and a feeling for the decorous , and a tone of good society , which his innutc beautiful nature could only attain by daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his a me . Of Menancler , I only know tbe ^ few fragments ; but these give me so high an idea of him that 1 look upon this great Greek as the only man who could be compared to Moliere '

    " « I am happy / returned I , « to hear you speak so highly of Molitire . This sounds a little diH ' erent from Herr Von Schlegel ! I have to-day , with great rrpu « - nancp , swallowed what he says concerning Moliore in his lectures on dramatic poetry , lie quite looks down , upon him as a vulgar buffoon , Who has only seen g » ou

    tween the absolutely authentic conversations of the first work and the relatively authentic conversations of the supplement ; but Eckermann has stated it so plcimingly , and his veracity is so unmistakable , that the second preface should not have been omitted . H owever , in this now translation the conversations of the supplement are inserted under their proper dates , thus intermingling with the old , and making a complete work out pf two w . orks .

    The matter of ¦ this book is various , and always interesting , so that we know not , in the embarrassment of riches , what to extract . Wo will imitate the variety itnlf : ' - * [; OOHTHR ' S INFfcVBNOJl ON A YOU NO VQV . T . " Not u , week passed ijo ^ r in which 1 was not hnppy

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    904 ® t > e ^ Leaker . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 14, 1850, page 904, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1862/page/16/