Nature, whose mighty power hath fix'd the rock, She sends her storm, the passive wave is driven, And rolls, and swells, and falls in billowy foam. Dimm'd is the splendour, vanish'd is the calm !— The helm is broken, and on ev'ry side The reeling vessel splits. The riven planks, Cling to the rock whereon his vessel struck. Even in this inadequate analysis the reader will perceive the ground there is for Madame de Stael's remark that "les couleurs du Midi ne sont pas assez prononcées." The piece is indeed thoroughly German; and whatever the amount of historical detail woven into it, the spirit is throughout unlike that of Italy in the days of Tasso. The Princess is a purely German figure, analysing her feelings more than she indulges in them; and Tasso, with his vacillations and reflections, would have astonished no one more than the real Torquato, whose wayward, passionate, impetuous nature would have despised the reflective, self-interrogating German. Nor would he have at all understood the German's conception of poetry as the urn wherein are contained the ashes of past sufferings, the confidant of secret thoughts. Obliged to employ a thin disguise in the expression of his sentiments for the Princess, Tasso employed a disguise as transparent as possible; and in other matters employed no disguise at all. CHAPTER X. THE POET AS A MAN OF SCIENCE. TASSO was completed shortly after the rupture with the Frau von Stein. He then began the study of Kant. The Kritik der reinen Vernunft is written in an esoteric language he was quite unable to follow; and could he have followed it, the matter was more metaphysical than suited his tendencies; but he read in it, as he read in Spinoza ; and the Kritik der Urtheilskraft, especially in its æsthetical sections, greatly interested him. Kant was a means of bringing him nearer to Schiller, who still felt the difference between them to be profound; as we see in what he wrote to Körner: "His philosophy draws too much of its material from the world of the senses, where I only draw from the soul. His mode of presentation is altogether too sensuous for me. But his spirit works and seeks in every direction, striving to create a whole, and that makes him in my eyes a great man." Remarkable indeed is the variety of his strivings. After completing Tasso, we find him writing on the Roman Carnival, and on Imitation of Nature, and studying with strange ardour the mysteries of botany and optics. In poetry it is only necessary to name the Roman Elegies, to show what pro VOL. II. 8 ductivity in that direction he was capable of; although, in truth, his poetical activity was then in subordination to his activity in science. He was, socially, in an unpleasant condition; and, as he subsequently confessed, would never have been able to hold out, had it not been for his studies of Art and Nature. In all times these were his refuge and consolation. On Art, the world listened to him attentively. On Science, the world would not listen; but turned away in silence, sometimes in derision. In both he was only an Amateur. He had no practical superiority in Painting or Sculpture to give authority to his opinions, yet his word was listened to with respect, often with enthusiasm. But while artists and the public admitted that a man of genius might speak with some authority, although an Amateur, men of science were not willing that a man of genius should speak on their topics, until he had passed College Examinations and received his diploma. To this day, the veriest blockhead who has received a diploma, considers himself entitled to sneer at the "poet" who "dabbled in comparative anatomy." Nevertheless that poet made discoveries and enunciated laws, the importance of which our professional sneerer cannot even appreciate, so far do they transcend his professional knowledge. The men of science scorned Goethe in his own day; and all but the best informed scorn him still. Nor is this unintelligible. Professional men have a right to be suspicious of facile amateurs, for they know how arduous a training is required by Science. But while it is just that they should be suspicious, it is absurd for them to shut their eyes. When the amateur brings forward crudities, which he announces to be Rauch, the sculptor, told me that among the influences of his life, he reckons the enthusiasm which Goethe's remarks on Art excited in him. Many others would doubtless say the same. discoveries, their scorn may be legitimate enough; but when he happens to bring forward discoveries which they treat as crudities, their scorn becomes self-stultification. If their professional training gives them superiority, that superiority should give them greater readiness of apprehension. The truth is, however, that professional training gives them nothing of the sort. The mass of men, simply because they are a mass of men, receive with difficulty every new idea, unless it lies in the track of their own knowledge; and this opposition, which every new idea must vanquish, becomes tenfold greater when the idea is promulgated from a source not in itself authoritative. When Goethe wrote his exquisite little treatise on the Metamorphoses of Plants,* he had to contend against the twofold obstacle of resistance to novelty, and his own reputation, Had an obscure professor published this work, its novelty would have sufficed to render it unacceptable; but the obscurest name in Germany would have had a prestige greater than the name of the great poet. All novelty is prima facie suspicious; none but the young welcome it; for is not every new discovery a kind of slur on the sagacity of those who overlooked it? And can novelty, promulgated by a Poet, be worth the trouble of refutation? The professional authorities decided that it could not. The publisher of Goethe's works, having consulted a botanist, declined to undertake the printing of the Metamorphoses of Plants. The work was only printed at last because an enterprizing bookseller hoped thereby to gain the publication of the other works. When it appeared, the public saw in it a pretty piece of fancy, nothing more. Botanists shrugged their shoulders, and regretted the author had not reserved his imagination for his poems. No one believed in the theory, not even his attached friends. He had to wait * He has also a poem on this subject, but it is scarcely more poetical. many years before seeing it generally accepted, and it was then only accepted because great botanists had made it acceptable. A considerable authority on this matter has told us how long the theory was neglected, and how "depuis dix ans (written in 1838) il n'a peut-être pas été publié un seul livre d'organographie, ou de botanique descriptive, qui ne porte l'empreinte des idées de cet écrivain illustre.' It was the fact of the theory being announced by the author of Werther which mainly retarded its acceptance; but the fact also that the theory was leagues in advance of the state of science in that day, must not be overlooked. For it is curious that this very theory had been briefly yet explicitly announced as early as 1759, by Caspar Frederick Wolff, in his now deservedly celebrated Theoria Generationis, and again, in 1764, in his Theorie von der Generation. I shall have to recur to Wolff; at present it need only be noted that even his professional authority and remarkable power could not secure the slightest attention from botanists for the morphological theory-a proof that the age was not ripe for its acceptance. One purpose of the present chapter would be lost if I did not fortify my statements with the authority of important writers on the special sciences; my purpose being to show that Goethe's scientific labours, received with scorn by the public, have met, at length, with recognition from the greatest authorities. "Linnæus," says M. Auguste St. Hilaire, "had thrown out a phrase which contained implicitly the doctrine of the Metamorphoses: he said, Principium florum et foliorum idem est. This aperçu Goethe elaborated into a system. But Auguste St. Hilaire: Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Acad., VII, 437. See also his work Morphologie Végétale, vol. 1, p. 15. I have only been able to procure this latter work, which is, however, a more popular and excursive exposition of the principles maintained in the Inaugural Dissertation of 1759. |