CHAPTER IV.

POLITICS AND RELIGION.

ANOTHER Volume would be required to record with anything like fulness the details of the remaining years. There is no deficiency of material. In his letters, and the letters of friends and acquaintances, will be found an ample gleaning; but unhappily the materials are abundant precisely at the point where the interest of the story begins to fade. From sixty to eighty-two is a long period; but it is not a period in which persons and events influence a man; his character, already developed, can receive no new direction. At this period biography is at an end, and necrology begins. For Germans, the details to which I allude, have interest; but the English reader would receive with quite mediocre gratitude a circumstantial narrative of all Goethe did and studied; all the excursions he made; every cold and toothache which afflicted him; every person he conversed with.*

I may mention, however, his acquaintance with Beethoven, on account of the undying interest attached to the two names. They were together for a few days at Töp

*The period which is included in this Seventh Book occupies no less than 563 pages of Viehoff's Biography; yet while I have added a great many details to those collected by Viehoff, I do not think any of interest have been omitted.

litz, with the most profound admiration for each other's genius. The biographer of Beethoven adds: But though Beethoven has praised Goethe's patience with him (on account of his deafness), still it is a fact, that the great poet and minister, too soon forgot the great composer; and when, in 1823, he had it in his power to render him an essential service with little trouble to himself, he did not even deign to reply to a very humble epistle from our master.' This is the way accusations are made; this is the kind of evidence on which they are believed. The only facts here established are, that Beethoven wrote to Goethe, and that Goethe did not reply. Beethoven's letter requested Goethe to recommend the Grand Duke to subscribe to his Mass. It was doubtless very mortifying not to receive a reply; such things always are mortifying, and offended self-love is apt to suggest bad motives for the offence. But a bystander, knowing how many motives may actuate the conduct, and unwilling to suppose a bad motive for which there is no evidence, will at once see that the inferences of Goethe's not deigning to reply,' and of having forgotten the great composer,' are by no means warranted by the facts. We know that Goethe was naturally of an active benevolence; we know that he was constantly recommending to the Grand Duke some object of charitable assistance; we know that he profoundly admired Beethoven, and had no cause to be offended with him; and, knowing this, we must accept any interpretation of the fact of silence in preference to that which the angry Beethoven, and his biographer, have inferred.

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To pursue our narrative: The year 1813, which began the War of Independence, was to Goethe a year of troubles. It began with an affliction the death of his old friend Wieland; which shook him more than those who

knew him best were prepared for. Herder; Schiller; the Duchess Amalia; his Mother; and now Wieland, one by one had fallen away, and left him lonely, advancing in years.

Nor was this the only source of unhappiness. Political troubles came to disturb his plans. Germany was rising against the tyranny of Napoleon; rising, as Goethe thought, in vain. You will not shake off your chains,' he said to Körner, the man is too powerful; you will only press them deeper into your flesh.' His doubt swere shared by many; but happily the nation shared them not. While patriots were rousing the wrath of the nation into the resistance of despair, he tried to escape from the present, because it is impossible to live in such circumstances and not go mad;' he took refuge, as he always did, in Art. He wrote the ballads Der Todtentanz, Der getreue Eckart, and die wandelnde Glocke; wrote the essay Shakespeare und kein Ende, and finished the third volume of his Autobiography. He buried himself in the study of Chinese history. Nay, on the very day of the battle of Leipsic, he wrote the epilogue to the tragedy of Essex, for the favorite actress, Madame Wolf.*

Patriotic writers are unsparing in sarcasms on a man who could thus seek refuge in Poetry from the bewildering troubles of politics, and find no other explanation than that he was an Egoist. Other patriotic writers, among them some of ultra republicanism, such as Karl Grün, have eloquently defended him. They may fight it out between them. I do not think it necessary to add arguments to those already suggested respecting his relation to politics (pp. 168 seq). Those who are impatient with

* Curiously enough, on that very day of Napoleon's first great defeat, his medallion, which was hung on the wall of Goethe's study, fell from its nail on to the ground.

him for being what he was, and not what they are, will listen to no arguments. It is needless to point out how, at sixty-four, he was not likely to become a politician, having up to that age sedulously avoided politics. It is needless to show that he was not in a position which called upon him to do anything. The grievance seems to be that he wrote no war songs, issued no manifestoes, but strove to keep himself as much as possible out of the hearing of contemporary history. If this was a crime, the motive was not criminal. Judge the act as you will, but do not misjudge the motive. To attribute such an act to cowardice, the fear of compromising himself, is infamous in the face of all the evidence we have of his character. When the mighty Napoleon threatened the Grand Duke, we have seen how Goethe was roused. That was an individual injustice which he could clearly understand, and was prepared to combat. For the Duke he would turn ballad-singer; for the Nation he had no voice; and why? Because there was no Nation. He saw clearly then, what is now seen clearly, that Germany had no existence as a Nation. And he failed to see what now is clearly seen, that the German Peoples were, for the time, united by national enthusiasm, united by a common feeling of hatred against France; failing to see this, he thought that a collection of disunited Germans were certain to be destroyed in a struggle with Napoleon. He was wrong; the event has proved his error, but his error of opinion must not be made an accusation against his sincerity. When Luden the historian, whose testimony is the weightier because it is that of a patriot, had that interview with him, after the battle of Leipsic, which he has recorded *. with so much feeling, the impression left was, he says, that I was deeply con

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*Luden's Rückblicke in mein Leben, p. 113, seq.

vinced they are in grievous error who blame Goethe for a want of love of country, a want of German feeling, a want of faith in the German people, or of sympathy with its honor and shame, its fortune or misery. His silence. about great events was simply a painful resignation, to which he was necessarily led by his position and his knowledge of mankind.' Luden came to him to speak of a projected journal, the Nemesis, which was to excite the nation's hatred of France. Goethe dissuaded him. 'Do not believe,' he said, after a pause, that I am indifferent to the great ideas - Freedom, Fatherland and People. No; these ideas are in us; they form a portion of our being which no one can cast off. Germany is dear to my heart. I have often felt a bitter pain at the thought that the German people, so honorable as individuals, should be so miserable as a whole. A comparison of the German people with other peoples awakens a painful feeling, which I try to escape in any way I can; and in Art and Science I have found such escapes: for they belong to the world at large, and before them vanish all the limits of nationality. But this consolation is after all but a poor one, and is no compensation for the proud conviction that one belongs to a great, strong, honored and dreaded people.' He spoke also of Germany's future, but he saw that this future was still far distant. 'For us, meanwhile, this alone remains: let every one, according to his talents, according to his tendencies and according to his position, do his utmost to increase the culture and development of the people, to strengthen and widen it on all sides, that the people may not lag behind other peoples, but may become competent for every great action when the day of its glories arrives.' Very wise words, however unpalatable to enthusiastic patriotism. Turning from such abstract considerations to the question of the journal, and the prob