the appearances which frighten the child; thus mingling the natural and supernatural, as well as imagery with narrative all these are cut with the distinctness of plastic art. The Erl King is usually supposed to have been original; but Viehoff, in his Commentary on Goethe's Poems, thinks that the poem Herder translated from the Danish Erlkönigs Tochter suggested the idea. The verse is the same. The opening line and the concluding line are nearly the same; but the story is different, and none of Goethe's art is to be found in the Danish ballad, which tells simply how Herr Oluf rides to his marriage, and is met on the way by the Erl King's daughter, who invites him to dance with her; he replies that he is unable to stop and dance, for to-morrow is his wedding-day. She offers him golden spurs and a silk shirt, but he still replies, "To-morrow is my wedding-day." She then offers him heaps of gold. Heaps of gold will I gladly take; but dance I dare not-will not." In anger she strikes him on the heart, and bids him ride to his bride. On reaching home, his mother is aghast at seeing him so pallid. He tells her he has been in the Erl King's country. "And what shall I say to your bride?" "Tell her I am in the wood with my horse and hound." The morning brings the guests, who ask after Herr Oluf. The bride lifts up the scarlet cloak; "there lay Herr Oluf, and he was dead." I have given this analysis of the Danish ballad for the reader to compare with the Erlkönig: a comparison which will well illustrate the difference between a legend and a perfect poem. It is in not the ballads alone, of which three have just been mentioned, that Goethe's superiority is seen. I might go through the two volumes of Lyrics, and write a commentary as long as this Biography, without exhausting so fertile a topic. Indeed his Biography is itself but a commentary on these poems, which are real expressions of what he has thought and felt: Spät erklingt was früh erklang, Even when, as in the ballads, or in poems such as the exquisite Idyl of Alexis and Dora, he is not giving utterance to any personal experience, he is scarcely ever feigning. Many of the smaller poems are treasures of wisdom; many are little else than the carollings of a bird "singing of summer in full-throated ease". But one and all are inaccessible through translation; therefore I cannot attempt to give the English reader an idea of them; the German reader has already anticipated me, by studying them in the original. BOOK THE SEVENTH. SUNSET. 1805 to 1832. Ὡς εὖ ἴσθι ότι εμοιγε όσον αἱ αλλαι αἱ κατα το σώμα ήδοναι απομαραίνονται, τοσούτον αύξονται αἱ περὶ τους λογους επιθυμίαι τε και ήδοναι.-PLATO, Rep. I, 6. « Le Temps l'a rendu spectateur." MAD. DE STAEL. |