It may be all very well for animals, but man with his high gifts must have a purer, higher origin.

The Homunculus, however, turns out to be an imp, and a very irreverent imp, who undertakes to instruct Mephisto, and conducts him and Faust into the Classical Walpurgis Night, which occupies the rest of the act. This Walpurgis Night, which is a classical pendant to the Brocken scene in the First Part, is a sort of olla podrida. It contains the gathered fragments of many years, thrown together without much care, and with infinite obscurity. It is an inexhaustible field for Commentators. A capital touch is that of making Mephisto feel quite a stranger among the classical figures, and very humorous his disapprobation of the Antique Nude!

Zwar sind auch wir von Herzen unanständig,

Doch das Antike find' ich zu lebendig!

In the Brocken scene of the First Part we had the German world of Witchcraft, and the German ideal of female loveliness and simplicity in Gretchen. In this Second Part we have the Classical world of Supernaturalism, and the Greek ideal of loveliness in Helen. The third act is occupied with Helena, which was originally published as a separate poem, and was reviewed at some length by Carlyle in the Foreign Review. He says of it truly enough that "it by no means carries its significance written on its forehead, so that he who runs may read; but on the contrary, it is enveloped in a certain mystery, under coy disguises, which to hasty readers may be not only offensively obscure, but altogether provoking and impenetrable." We should not quarrel with its obscurity, if the opaque forms themselves had transcendent beauty: an alabaster vase may give as much delight as a vase of crystal. Carlyle, indeed, is forced to add that the "outward meaning seems unsatisfactory enough, were it not that ever and anon we are reminded of a cunning, manifold meaning which lies hidden under it; and incited by capricious beckonings to evolve this more and more completely from its quaint concealment." The question at issue here rests entirely on the share to be allotted to Meaning in a work of Art. Carlyle refers to Bunyan as "nowise our best theologian; neither unhappily is theology our most attractive science; yet which of our compends and treatises, nay which of our romances and poems, lives in such mild sunshine as the good old Pilgrim's Progress in the memory of so many men." But this, if I have not altogether mistaken the point, is a condemnation; for who can say that the memories of men are fondly occupied with the Second Part of Faust in general, or with Helena in particular?

* Subsequently reprinted in his Miscellanies, vol. I.

But while I am thus thrown into a position of antagonism both with respect to the work itself and to its eulogists, I must guard against the supposition that I do not admire this Helena. The style of Art is one which requires for perfect success qualities absent from the whole Second Part; but no lover of poetry will fail to recognise the poetry and the charm here to a great degree thrown away. To those who love riddles, to those who love interpretations, the work is inexhaustible; to those who love beautiful verses, and glimpses of a deeply meditative mind, the work is, and always will be, attractive; but those who open it expecting a masterpiece will, I think, be perpetually disappointed. Some minds will be delighted with the allegorical Helen embracing Faust, and in the embrace leaving only her veil and vest behind, her body vanishing into thin air—typical of what must ever be the embrace of the defunct Classical with the living Romantic, the resuscitated Past with the actual Present—and in their delight at the recognition of the meaning, will write chapters of commentary. But the kiss of Gretchen is worth a thousand allegories.

The analysis need not be prolonged, the more so as nothing worthy of special notice occurs in the two last acts. Faust, who has viewed many of the aspects of life, is now grown jealous of the encroachments of the sea, and determines to shut it out. He is old, sad, reflective. Four grey old women—Want, Guilt, Misery, and Care— appear to him. On Care asking him if he has ever known her, he answers: "I have gone through the world, seized every enjoyment by the hair that which did not satisfy me I let go, that which ran away from me I would not follow. I have only wished and realised my wish, and wished again, and thus have stormed through life : first great and mighty; but now I take things wisely and soberly. I know enough of this life, and of the world to come we have no clear prospect. A fool is he who directs his blinking eyes that way, and imagines creatures like himself above the clouds! Let him stand firm and look around him here, the world is not dumb to the man of real sense. What need is there for him to sweep eternity? All he can know lies within his grasp." These concluding words contain Goethe's own philosophy, and I must quote the original :

Thor! wer dorthin die Augen blinzend richtet

Sich über Wolken seines Gleichen dichtet !

Er stehe fest und sehe hier sich um ;

Dem Tüehtigen ist diese Welt nicht stumm.

Was braucht er in die Ewigkeit zu schweifen!

Was er erkennt lässt sich ergreifen.

Faust refusing to recognise the omnipotence of Care, she breathes

ex

on him, and blinds him; but, blind though he be, he resolves that the work he has planned shall be concluded. "A marsh," he says, tends along the mountain's foot, infecting all that is already won: to draw off the noisome pool would be a crowning success. I lay open a space for many millions to dwell upon, not safely it is true, but in free activity. *** Yes, heart and soul am I devoted to this wish; this is the last resolve of wisdom. He only deserves freedom and life who is daily compelled to conquer them for himself; and thus here, hemmed round by danger, bring childhood, manhood, and old age their well-spent years to a close. I would fain see such a busy multitude stand upon free soil with free people. I might then say to the moment, Stay, thou art fair!' The trace of my earthly days cannot perish in centuries. In the presentiment of such exalted bliss, I now enjoy the most exalted moment." He has thus said to the passing moment, "Stay! thou art fair," and with this he expires.

Venit summa dies et ineluctabile fatum,—

the troubled career is closed. And as far as the problem of Faust can receive a solution more general than the one indicated at the close of the criticism on the First Part, the solution is I think given in this dying speech; the toiling soul, after trying in various directions of individual effort and individual gratification, and finding therein no peace, is finally conducted to the recognition of the vital truth that man lives for man, and that only in as far as he is working for Humanity can his efforts bring permanent happiness.

CHAPTER VITI.

the closing scenes.

The spring of 1830 found Goethe in his eighty-first year, busy with Faust, writing the preface to Carlyle's Life of Schiller, and deeply interested in the great philosophical contest which was raging in Paris, between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, on the question of Unity of Composition in the Animal Kingdom. This question, one of the many important and profound questions which are now agitated in Biology, which lies indeed at the bottom of almost all speculations on Development, had for very many years been answered by Goethe in the spirit which he recognised in Geoffroy St. Hilaire; and it was to him a matter of keen delight to observe the world of science earnestly bent on a solution of the question. The anecdote which M. Soret narrates in the supplemental volume to Eckermann's conversations, is very characteristic.

"Monday, 1st August 1830. The news of the Revolution of July reached Weimar to-day, and set every one in commotion. I wont in the course of the afternoon to Goethe. Now,' exclaimed he, as I entered, 'what do you think of this great event? The volcano has come to an eruption; everything is in flames.' 'A frightful story,' I answered; but what could be expected otherwise under such notoriously bad circumstances and with such a ministry, than that the whole would end in the expulsion of the royal family.' 'We do not appear to understand each other, my good friend,' said Goethe; 'I am not speaking of those people, but of something quite different. I am speaking of the contest so important for science between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, which has come to an open rupture in the Academy.' This expression of Goethe's was so unexpected that I did not know what to say, and for some minutes was perfectly at a standstill. The matter is of the highest importance,' he continued; and you can form no conception of what I felt at the intelligence of the séance of the 19th July. We have now in Geoffroy a powerful and permanent ally. I see how great must be the interest of the French scientific world in this affair; because

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notwithstanding the terrible political commotion, the séanee of the 19th July was very fully attended. However, the best of it is that the synthetic manner of looking at Nature, introduced by Geoffroy into France, cannot be kept back any longer. From the present time Mind will rule over Matter in the scientific investigations of the French. There will be glances of the great maxims of creation—of the mysterious workshop of God! Besides, what is all intercourse with Nature, if we merely occupy ourselves with individual material parts, and do not feel the breath of the spirit which prescribes to every part its direction, and orders or sanctions every deviation by means of an inherent law! I have exerted myself in this great question for fifty years. At first I was alone, then I found support, and now at last to my great joy I am surpassed by congenial minds.'"

Instead of exclaiming against the coldness of the man who at such a moment could turn from politics to science, let us glance at a somewhat parallel case. Englishmen will be slow in throwing stones at the immortal Harvey; let them hear what Dr. Ent reports. Soon after the most agitating event in English history— the execution of Charles I.—Dr. Ent called on Harvey, and found him seeking solace in anatomical researches. "Did I not," said the great philosopher, "find a balm for my spirit in the memory of my observations of former years, I should feel little desire for life. But so it has been that this life of obscurity, this vacation from public business, which causes tedium and disgust to so many, has proved a sovereign remedy to me."

Goethe was not a politician, and he was a biologist. His view of the superior importance of such an event as the discussion between Geoffroy and Cuvier, to the more noisy but intrinsically less remarkable event, the Revolution of July, is a view which will be accepted by some philosophers, and rejected by all politicians. Goethe was not content with expressing in conversation his sense of the importance of this discussion; he also commenced the writing of his celebrated review of it, and finished the first part in September.

In November another great affliction smote him: it was the last he had to bear the news arrived that his only son, who had a little while before gone to Italy in failing health, had died in Rome on the 28th of October. The sorrowing father strove, as usual, to master all expression of emotion, and to banish it by restless work. But vain was the effort to live down this climbing sorrow. The trial nearly cost him his life. A violent hæmorrhage in the lungs was the result. He was at one time given over; but he rallied again,