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it was just in Him to send earthquakes and storms. Religion was already to him what it ever continued to be,-not the communion with holiness, but at most a graceful development of human life, a fountain of cool mystery playing gratefully over the parched earth.

Mr. Lewes has translated a delightful anecdote of Goethe's relation to his mother, from Bettina von Arnim's account. That bold young lady's authority is generally more than questionable; here, however, there is the strongest evidence of internal truth:

"This genial, indulgent mother employed her faculty for storytelling to his and her own delight. Air, fire, earth, and water, I represented under the forms of princesses; and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning, in which I almost believed more fervently than my little hearers. As we thought of paths which led from star to star, and that we should one day inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet there, I was as eager for the hours of story-telling as the children themselves; I was quite curious about the future course of my own improvisation, and any invitation which interrupted these evenings was disagreeable. There I sat, and there Wolfgang held me with his large black eyes; and when the fate of one of his favourites was not according to his fancy, I saw the angry veins swell on his temples, I saw him repress his tears. He often burst in with 'But, mother, the princess won't marry the nasty tailor, even if he does kill the giant.' And when I made a pause for the night, promising to continue it on the morrow, I was certain that he would in the meanwhile think it out for himself, and so he often stimulated my imagination. When I turned the story according to his plan, and told him that he had found out the dénouement, then was he all fire and flame, and one could see his little heart beating underneath his dress! His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidant of all his ideas as to how the story would turn out; and as she repeated these to me, and I turned the story according to these hints, there was a little diplomatic secrecy between us, which we never disclosed. I had the pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my hearers, and Wolfgang saw with glowing eyes the fulfilment of his own conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic applause.""

His self-command and self-importance showed themselves early. He once waited resolutely for many minutes till schooltime was "up," though his schoolfellows were lashing his legs with switches till they bled, before he would defend himself by a single movement; and then fell upon them with immense success. Like all petted children, he did not like school; his pride was hurt by the unrespecting self-assertion of the republic around him. His most intimate friends were usually women and younger men. He never could endure to be laughed at. Her

der's rather vulgar pun on his name (Göthe), made in college days,

"Thou, the descendant of gods, or of Goths, or of gutters,"

was perhaps a little annoying for the time; but it clearly rankled in his mind; and he mentions it bitterly forty years later, after Herder's death, in the course of a very kindly criticism, as an instance of the sarcasm which rendered Herder often unamiable; characteristically adding this most true principle of etiquette, "the proper name of a man is not like a cloak, which only hangs about him, and at which one may at any rate be allowed to pull and twitch; but it is a close-fitting garment, which has grown over and over him, like his skin, and which one cannot scrape and flay without injuring him himself." As a small boy he is said to have walked in an old-fashioned way, in order to distinguish himself from his schoolfellows, and to have told his mother, I begin with this. Later on in life I shall distinguish myself in far other ways." One cannot help thinking a little judicious whipping and nonchalance at home might at this period have been of great service to him. Yet the oracular so entered into his nature, that one could ill spare it now from his essence. It gives a certain antique support to the light leaves of poetry that are twined round it.

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His minute self-observation early showed itself. The following recollection in his Autobiography is extremely characteristic:

"We boys held a Sunday assembly, where each of us was to produce original verses. And here I was struck by something strange, which long caused me uneasiness. My poems, whatever they might be, always seemed to me the best. But I soon remarked that my competitors, who brought forth very lame affairs, were in the same condition, and thought no less of themselves. Nay, what appeared yet more suspicious, a good lad (though in such matters altogether unskilful), whom I liked in other respects, but who had his rhymes made by his tutor, not only regarded these as the best, but was thoroughly persuaded they were his own, as he always maintained in our confidential intercourse. Now, as this illusion and error was obvious to me, the question one day forced itself upon me, whether I myself might not be in the same state, whether those poems were not really better than mine, and whether I might not justly appear to those boys as mad as they to me? This disturbed me much and long; for it was altogether impossible for me to find any external criterion of the truth; I even ceased from producing, until at length I was quieted by my own light temperament, and the feeling of my own powers."

He could not see then that what really distinguished him above them was not near so much, probably, the excellence of

* In German " Koth," literally “mud.”

his verses, as the power of detecting and applying to his own case the general law of self-deception.

Goethe was, as he intimates in Wilhelm Meister, in a passage well known to be in fact autobiographical, a very inquisitive child, and as unscrupulous as spoiled children are in gratifying his inquisitiveness. His childish fondness for the 'store-room' is rather universal and human than individual and personal. "More than any other of the young ones I was in the habit of looking out attentively to see if I could notice any cupboard left open, or key standing in its lock." There are few minuter bits of life in his writings than his description of the predatory excursion into the store-room one Sunday morning, when the key had not been withdrawn. "I marked this oversight," he says. He pilfered, however, with less than his usual self-possession; the cook made "a stir in the kitchen," and even Goethe was flurried. But he seems to have had no ordinary childish shame and selfreproach connected with the adventure-the loved puppets were always dearer to him because of the "French-plum” fragrance which they had acquired in the scene of theft.

His delight in the theatre was the same through life. He liked the little mystery. He liked still better to have the key to the mystery. He was as quick as any child to find out "the man in the bear;" but it did not destroy his pleasure, especially if he was able to be "the man in the bear" himself; and besides, his heart was always in his eyes. But what mainly fascinated him in the theatre, we think, was its condensation and concentration of life into one consecutive piece. His imagination was wandering, digressive, microscopic, incoherent; he had the greatest difficulty in grasping in one vision a consecutive whole. He saw vivid points in succession, and saw the continuity and growth; but his sight was like the passing of a microscope over a surface,-it laid bare the transition, but did not give a connected vision. He saw too intensely and too far at each point to be able to sweep his eye quickly over the whole. The theatre helped to remedy this defect, and he was grateful to it. But for that very reason he never could write successfully for the theatre. The boy's passion for the theatre had one very bad effect. During the French occupation of Frankfort he (then a lad of ten to twelve years old) had a free admission to the French theatre, which he used daily, accompanied by no older friend. His mother unwisely obtained the reluctant permission of his father that he should go; and his consequent quick progress in French reconciled his father to the habit. The lad had constant access behind the scenes and in the greenroom along with his young French companions. Here we have little doubt the first delicacy of his mind was rubbed off. Pro

bably he was constitutionally deficient in that element of mind which shame and reverence have in common (aidas, as the Greeks called it); and during the French occupation of Frankfort, at a most susceptible age, he was subjected to influences that would be likely to have endangered the most delicate of natures. He was too young, his friends imagined, for danger; but certainly he was not at all too young for that kind of curiosity about evil which is often more tainting than evil itself. Even in the late-written autobiographical recollections of his youth this is distinctly visible.

At the age of fourteen he was a great tale-composer; and one of these tales, "The New Paris," full of the genius of his later years, he has preserved in his Autobiography. It is a most characteristic tale, brimming over with the self-importance of the boy, and full also of the fanciful grace, the mysterious simplicity, and the simple mysteriousness of his older compositions. It is far the most graceful of his short tales; and must, we think, have received some touches from his older hand. For our own parts, we greatly prefer it to the second part of Faust. But the childlike delight in puzzling his readers is the same. The scene of the fairy-tale, which is autobiographic, is laid in gardens discovered by him through the old wall of the city. The tale ends with the following charming mystery:

"The porter did not speak another word; but before he let me pass the entrance, he stopped me, and showed me some objects on the wall over the way, while at the same time he pointed backwards to the door. I understood him; he wished to imprint the objects on my mind, that I might the more certainly find the door which had unexpectedly closed behind me. I now took good notice of what was opposite to

me.

Above a high wall rose the boughs of extremely old nut-trees, and partly covered the cornice at the top. The branches reached down to a stone tablet, the ornamented border of which I could perfectly recognise, though I could not read the inscription. It rested on the corbel of a niche, in which a finely-wrought fountain poured water from cup to cup into a great basin, that formed, as it were, a little pond, and disappeared in the earth. Fountain, inscription, nut-trees, all stood directly one above another; I would paint it as I saw it.

Now, it may well be conceived how I passed this evening and many following days, and how often I repeated to myself this story, which even I could hardly believe. As soon as it was in any degree possible, I went again to the Bad Wall, at least to refresh my remembrance of these signs, and to look at the precious door. But, to my great amazement, I found all changed. Nut-trees, indeed, overtopped the wall, but they did not stand immediately in contact. A tablet also was inserted in the wall, but far to the right of the trees, without ornament, and with a legible inscription. A niche with a fountain was found far to the left, but with no resemblance whatever to that which I had seen; so that I almost believed that the second adventure

was, like the first, a dream; for of the door there is not the slightest trace. The only thing that consoles me is the observation, that these three objects seem always to change their places. For in repeated visits to the spot, I think I have noticed that the nut-trees have moved somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and the fountain seem likewise to approach each other. Probably, when all is brought together again, the door, too, will once more be visible; and I will do my best to take up the thread of the adventure. Whether I shall be able to tell you what further happens, or whether it will be expressly forbidden me, I cannot say.

This tale, of the truth of which my playfellows vehemently strove to convince themselves, received great applause. Each of them visited alone the place described, without confiding it to me or the others, and discovered the nut-trees, the tablet, and the spring, though always at a distance from each other; as they at last confessed to me afterwards, because it is not easy to conceal a secret at that early age. But here the contest first arose. One asserted that the objects did not stir from the spot, and always maintained the same distance: a second averred that they did move, and that too away from each other: a third agreed with the latter as to the first point of their moving, though it seemed to him that the nut-tree, tablet, and fountain rather drew near together: while a fourth had something still more wonderful to announce, which was, that the nut-trees were in the middle, but that the tablet and the fountain were on sides opposite to those which I had stated. With respect to the traces of the little door they also varied. And thus they furnished me an early instance of the contradictory views men can hold and maintain in regard to matters quite simple and easily cleared up. As I obstinately refused the continuation of my tale, a repetition of the first part was often desired. I was on my guard, however, not to change the circumstances much, and by the uniformity of the narrative I converted the fable into truth in the minds of my hearers."

How vividly this reminds us of his mysterious conduct to Eckermann with regard to some portions of the second part of Faust. In that dark composition Faust asks Mephistopheles to show him Helena; and Mephistopheles tells him it can only be managed by application "to goddesses who live sublime in loneliness, but not in space, still less in time-of whom to speak is embarrassment"-the mothers;' a glowing tripod❜* is to assure him that he has attained the deepest point of all, and by its shining he is to see the mothers. But there is no way there, as there can be no way into the "untrodden and untreadable," where he is to be surrounded by "lonelinesses." On hearing the mothers' mentioned, Faust starts back shuddering; and when asked why, only replies,

"Die Mütter! Mütter! 's klingt so wunderlich."
(The mothers! mothers! it has the strangest ring.)

The passage is, it seems to us, a satire upon the Hegelian practice of deducing every thing out of "the pure nothing," by what may be called the tripartite cork-screw philosophy, which does every thing in logical triplets, but winds itself a little higher at each repetition.

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