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Except when she managed to animate him by her paradoxes or wit, he was cold and formal to her, even more so than to other remarkable people; and he has told us the reason. Rousseau had been drawn into a correspondence with two women, who addressed themselves to him as admirers; he had shown himself in this correspondence by no means to his advantage, now (1803) that the letters appeared in print. * Goethe had read or heard of this correspondence, and Madame de Stael had frankly told him she intended to print his conversation.

This was enough to make him ill at ease in her society; and although she said he was "un homme d'un esprit prodigeux en conversation.... . quand on le sait faire parler il est admirable", she never saw the real, but a factitious Goethe. By dint of provocation-and champagne-she managed to make him talk brilliantly; she never got him to talk to her seriously. On the 29th of February she left Weimar, to the great relief both of Goethe and Schiller.

Nothing calls for notice during the rest of this year, except the translation of an unpublished work by Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, and the commencement of the admirable work on Winckelmann and his Age. The beginning of 1805 found him troubled with a presentiment that either he or Schiller would die in this year. Both were dangerously ill. It was a touching scene when Schiller, a little recovered from his last attack, entered the sick room of his friend. They walked up to each other, and, without speaking a word, expressed their joy at meeting in a long and manly kiss. Both hoped with the return of spring for return of health and power. Schiller meanwhile was translating the Phèdre of Racine; Goethe was translating the Rameau's Nephew, and writing the history of the Farbenlehre.

*The correspondence alluded to can be no other than that of Rousseau with Madame de la Tour-Franqueville and her friend, whose name is still unknown; it is one of the most interesting among the many interesting correspondences of women with celebrated men. A charming notice, of it may be found in St. Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, vol. II.

** In the Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1804 ( Werke, xxv11, p. 143), the reader will find Goethe's account of Mad. de Stael and her relation to him.

The spring was coming, but on its blossoms Schiller's eyes were not to rest. On the 30th of April the friends parted for the last time. Schiller was going to the theatre. Goethe, too unwell to accompany him, said good-bye at the door of Schiller's house. During Schiller's illness Goethe was much depressed. Voss found him once pacing up and down his garden, crying by himself. He mastered his emotion as Voss told him of Schiller's state, and only said, "Fate is pitiless, and man but little."

It really seemed as if the two friends were to be united in the grave as they had been in life. Goethe grew worse. From Schiller life was fast ebbing. On the 8th of May he was given over. "His sleep that night was disturbed; his mind again wandered; with the morning he had lost all consciousness. He spoke incoherently and chiefly in Latin. His last drink was champagne. Towards three in the afternoon came on the last exhaustion; the breath began to fail. Towards four he would have called for naphtha, but the last syllable died upon his lips; finding himself speechless, he motioned that he wished to write something; but his hand could only trace three letters, in which was yet recognizable the distinct character of his writing. His wife knelt by his side; he pressed her hand. His sister-in-law stood with the physician at the foot of the bed, applying warm cushions to the cold feet. Suddenly a sort of electric shock came over his countenance; the head fell back; the deepest calm settled on his face. His features were as those of one in a soft sleep.

"The news of Schiler's death soon spread through Weimar. The theatre was closed; men gathered into groups. Each felt as if he had lost his dearest friend. To Goethe, enfeebled himself by long illness, and again stricken by some relapse, no one had the courage to mention the death of his beloved rival. When the tidings came to Henry Meyer, who was with him, Meyer left the house abruptly lest his grief might escape him. No one else had courage to break the intelligence. Goethe perceived that the members of his household seemed embarrassed and anxious to avoid him. He divined something of the fact, and said at last 'I see-Schiller must be very ill.'

That night they overheard him-the serene man who seemed almost above human affection, who disdained to reveal to others whatever grief he felt when his son died-they overheard Goethe weep! In the morning he said to a friend, 'Is it not true that Schiller was very ill yesterday?' The friend (it was a woman) sobbed. 'He is dead,' said Goethe faintly. 'You have said it,' was the answer. 'He is dead,' repeated Goethe, and covered his face with his hands."*

"The half of my existence is gone from me," he wrote to Zelter. His first thought was to continue the Demetrius in the spirit in which Schiller had planned it, so that Schiller's mind might still be with him, still working at his side. But the effort was vain. He could do nothing. "My diary," he says, "is a blank at this period; the white pages intimate the blank in my existence. In those days I took no interest in anything."

*Bulwer's Life of Schiller.

LEWES, VOL. II.

16

CHAPTER VII.

FAUST.

ALTHOUGH the First Part of Faust was not published until 1806, it was already completed before Schiller's death, and may therefore be fitly noticed in this place. For more than thirty years had the work been growing in its author's mind, and although its precise chronology is not ascertainable, yet an approximation is possible which will not be without service to the student.

The Faust-fable was familiar to Goethe as a child. In Strasburg, during 1770-71, he conceived the idea of fusing his personal experience into the mould of the old legend; but he wrote nothing of the work until 1774-5, when the ballad of the King of Thule, the first monologue, and the first scene with Wagner, were written; and, during his love affair with Lili, he sketched Gretchen's catastrophe, the scene in the street, the scene in Gretchen's bedroom, the scenes between Faust and Mephisto during the walk, and in the street, and the garden scene. In his Swiss journey he sketched the first interview with Mephisto, and the compact; also the scene before the city gates, the plan of Helena (subsequently much modified), the scene between the student and Mephisto, and Auerbach's cellar. When in Italy, he read over the old manuscript, and wrote the scenes of the witches' kitchen and the cathedral; also the monologue in the forest. In 1797 the whole was remodelled. Then were added the two Prologues,

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the Walpurgis night, and the dedication.

In 1801 he com

pleted it, as it now stands, retouching it perhaps in 1806, Let us now with some carefulness

when it was published.

examine this child of so much care.

The cock in Esop scratched a pearl into the light of day, and declared that to him it was less valuable than a grain of millet seed. The pearl is only a pearl to him who knows its value. And so it is with fine subjects: they are only fine in the hands of great artists. Where the requisite power exists, a happy subject is a fortune; without that power, it only serves to place incompetence in broader light. Mediocre poets have tried their prentice hands at Faust; poets of undeniable genius have tried to master it; Goethe alone has seen in it the subject to which his genius was fully adequate, and has produced from it the greatest poem of modern times:

"An Orphic tale indeed,

A tale divine, of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chaunted."

Although genius can find material in the trifles ordinary minds pass heedlessly by, it is only a very few subjects which permit the full display of genius. The peculiarities of a man's organization and education invest certain subjects with a charm and a significance which they have not to others. Such was Der Freischütz for Weber; the maternity of the Madonna for Raphael; Faust for Goethe. Thus it is that a fine subject becomes the pedestal whereon genius may stand in the unconstrained display of full proportions; or we may call it the marble out of which the lasting monument is carved.

Quite beyond my purpose and my limits would be any account of the various materials, historical and æsthetical, which German literature has gathered into one vast section on Faust and the Faust legend. There is not a single detail which has not exercised the industry and ingenuity of commentators, so that the curious need complain of no lack of informants. English readers will find in the translations by Hayward and Blackie a reasonable amount of such information pleasantly given; German readers will only have the embar

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