of the world's stage."* While leaving to others the political problem, he confined himself as usual to the purely human and individual interest. Instead of declamations on Freedom, he tried to teach men to be free; and by Freedom he meant the complete healthy development of their own natures, not a change of political institutions. In one of the Xenien he says: Zur Nation euch zu bilden, ihr hoffet es, Deutsche, vergebens. And in this sense Hermann und Dorothea may be accepted as a Hymn to the Family, a solemn vindication of the eternal claims which, as a first necessity, should occupy men. With regard to the second point, that namely of style, Schiller's cordial praise, in a letter to Meyer, may here find place. "Nor have we in the meantime been inactive, as you know, and least of all our friend, who in the last few years has really surpassed himself. His epic poem you have read; you will admit that it is the pinnacle of his and all our modern art. I have seen it grow up, and have wondered almost as much at the manner of its growth as at the completed work. Whilst the rest of us are obliged painfully to collect and to prune, in order slowly to bring forth anything passable, ho has only gently to shake the tree, in order to have fall to him the most beautiful fruit, ripe and heavy. It is incredible with what ease he now reaps for himself the fruits of a well-bestowed life and a persistent culture; how significant and sure all his steps now are; how the clearness as to himself and as to objects, preserves him from every idle effort and beating about. But you have him now yourself, and can satisfy yourself of all this with your own eyes. But you will agree with me in this, that on the summit whore he now stands, he ought to think more of bringing the beautiful form he has given himself to outward exhibition, than to go out in search of new material; in short, that he now ought to live entirely for poetic execution." The Homeric form is admirably adapted to this kind of narrative; and Voss had already made it popular by his Luise. Respecting the style of this poem, I would further beg the reader to compare it with that of the last books of Wilhelm Meister, composed about the same period, and he will then see Goethe's immense superiority on quitting prose for poetry. None of the faults of his prose are traceable here. The language is as clear as crystal, and as simple; the de *Briefe an und von Goethe. + Germans, you hope in vain to develope yourselves into a nation; strive, therefore, to develope yourselves all the more freely into men." EE tails are all, without exception, significant; not a line could be lopped away without injury. One feels that the invigorating breezes of Ilmenau have roused the poet out of the flaccid moods of prose, and given him all his quiet strength. Before finally dismissing the poem, it may amuse the reader to have a specimen of that ingenious criticism which delights in interpreting the most obvious facts into profound meanings. Hegel, in his Æsthetik, and after him Rosenkrantz, in his excellent book Goethe und seine Werke, call attention to the fact that Goethe is far truer in his German colouring than Voss, whose Luise gave the impulse to this poem. Not having read the Luise I am unable to judge of this superiority; but the example cited by these critics is assuredly amusing. Voss, they tell us, makes his people drink copiously of coffee; but, however wide spread the custom of coffeedrinking, we must remember that coffee, and the sugar which sweetens it, are not German, they come from Arabia and the West Indies; the very cups in which the coffee is drunk are of Chinese origin, not German. We are miles away from Germany. How different in Goethe! His host of the Golden Lion refreshes guests with a glass of wine; and what wine? Rhine wine; the German wine, par excellence; the wine growing on the hill behind his own house! And this Rhine wine, is it not drunk out of green glasses, the genuine German glasses? And upon what do these glasses stand? Upon a tin tray: that is also genuine German! It would be the merest prosaism to suggest that in Luise the pastor drinks coffee, because coffee is habitually drunk in the parsonage; while in Hermann und Dorothea the characters drink wine, because they are in the Golden Lion, and Rhine wine, because they are in the Rhine country; yet to such prosaisms is the British critic reduced in answering the subtleties of German æsthetics. CHAPTER V. THE THEATRICAL MANAGER. It will be briefer, and help to convey a more accurate notion of Goethe's efforts in the direction of the Theatre, if, instead of scattering through this biography a number of isolated details, recording small events in chronological order, I endeavour to present some general view of his managerial efforts. We have already seen how, on his arrival at Weimar, the Court was given to theatrical entertainments, and how eagerly he entered into them. The Theatre was in ruin from the fire of the previous year. Theatres were improvised in the Ettersburg woods, and Tiefurt valley, whereon the gay courtiers" strutted their brief hour" by torchlight, to the accompaniment of horns. Actors were improvised from the Court circle. Plays were improvised, and sometimes written with elaborate care. The public was the public of private theatricals. All this has been narrated in Book iv. What we have here to do with it is to call attention to the contrast thus presented by the Weimar stage with other German stages, and, above all, with the essential conditions of a stage which is to be anything more than the amusement of a dilettante circle. The drama is essentially a national outgrowth. In Weimar, instead of growing out of a popular tendency, and appealing to the people, it grew out of the idleness of a court, and appealed to dilettantism. The actors, instead of being recruited from runaway clerks, ambitious apprentices; romantic barbers, and scapegrace students, were princes, noblemen, poets, musicians. Instead of playing to a Public,—that heteroge neous, but in dramatic matters indispensable, jury, whose verdicts are in the main always right—they played to courtiers, whose judg✩ ment, even when unfettered, would not have had much value; and it never was unfettered. The consequence may be foreseen. As a Court amusement, the theatre was a pleasant and not profitless recreation; as an influence, it was pernicious. The starting point was false. Not so can dramatic art flourish; not so are Molières and Shakspeares allowed to manifest their strength. The national co operation is indispensable. Academies may compile Dictionaries, they cannot create Literature; and Courts may patronise Theatres, they cannot create a Drama. The reason lies deep in the nature of things. Germany has never had a Drama, because she has never had a Stage which could be, or would be, national. Lessing knew what was needed, but he had not the power to create it. Schiller early mistook the path, and all his noble strivings were frustrated. Goethe and Schiller, profoundly in earnest, and profoundly convinced of the great influences to be exercised by the stage, endeavoured to create a German Drama which should stand high above the miserable productions then vitiating public taste. They aspired to create an Ideal Drama, in which the loftiest forms of Art should be presented. But they made a false step at the outset. Disgusted with the rude productions of the day, and distrusting the instincts of the public, they appealed to the cultivated few. Culture was set above Passion and Humour, Literature above Emotion. The stage was to be literary; which is saying, in other words, that it was not to be popular. Nor did experience enlighten them. During the whole period of their reform, the principal performances were of the old style. At first a wandering troupe, with a wandering repertory, performed opera, drama, and farce, as best it could, with more real success than High Art could boast. Even when Schiller had ennobled the stage with his masterpieces, the ever pressing necessity of amusing the public forced the manager to give the vulgar appetite its vulgar food. The dramatic problem is: How to unite the demands of an audience insisting on amusement, with the demands of Art, looking beyond amusement? There are many writers who can amuse, but who reach no higher aim; and there are writers who have lofty aims, but cannot amuse. In the drama the first class is nearer the mark than the second; but the true dramatist is he who can unite the two. Shakspeare and Moliere—to take the greatest examples are as amusing as they are profound; and they live only because they continue to amuse. Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, Tartuffe, L'école des Femmes, and the Malade Imaginaire, may be enjoyed by the pit, and by the most cultivated critic. Goethe and Schiller fell into the error which in England, a few years ago, was preached as a gospel by a band of clever writers, who gloried in the title of "Unacted Dramatists;" the error of supposing a magnificent dome could be erected without a basis on our common earth; *Goethe confosses so much. See Eckermann, vol. 1, p. 305; Oxenford's translation. the error of supposing that a Drama could be more successful as Literature, than as the reflection of national life. It was in 1790 that the Weimar Theatre was rebuilt and reopened. Goethe undertook the direction with powers more absolute than any other director ever had; for he was independent even of success. The Court paid all expenses; the stage was left free for him to make experiments upon. He made them, and they all failed. He superintended rehearsals with great care. Shakspeare's King John and Henry IV, his own Gross-Kophta, Bürgergeneral, Clavigo, Die Geschwister, were produced, but without any great effect; for the actors were mediocre and ill paid, and there was no audience to stimulate actors by enthusiasm and criticism. The audience was chilled by the presence of the Court, and could rarely be emboldened into rapture, which is the life, the pulse, the stimulus of acting. The pit was cowed by the Court, and the Court was cowed by Goethe. His contempt of public opinion was undisguised. "The direction," he wrote to his second in command, "acts according to its own views, and not in the least according to the demands of the public. Once for all, understand that the public must be controlled—will determinirt seyn." To Schiller, who was quite of this opinion, he said: "No one can serve two masters, and of all masters the last that I would select is the public which sits in a German theatre." It is all very well for a poet or a philosopher to scorn the fleeting fashions of the day, and to rely on the verdict of posterity; but the Drama appeals to the public of the day, and while the manager keeps his eye on posterity, the theatre is empty. Wer machte denn der Mitwelt Spass? "Who is to amuse the present?" asks the sensible Merry Andrew, in the Theatre-Prologue to Faust. A dramatist appealing to posterity, is like an orator hoping to convince the descendants of his audience instead of persuading the listening crowd. The Weimar audiences might be treated despotically, but they could not be forced into enthusiasm for that which wearied them. They submitted in silence. The riotous gallery and dogged pit of France and England only tolerate the absurdities which delight them; they admit no arbiter but their own amusement. An infusion of this rebellious element would have aided Goethe and Schiller in their efforts, by warning them from many a mistake. The Jena students might have supplied this element, had they been more constant visitors, and less controlled. The student is by nature and profession a rebel; and the Jena student had this tendency culti |