Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
JOURNEY TO TRENTON FALLS 361
SUE ROSA CRUX 365
THE DAHLIA, THE ROSE, AND THE HELIOTROPE 367
TO MY FRIENDS, (TRANSLATION.) 368
STANZAS WRITTEN AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN 370
FLAXMAN 371
THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY MORNING, WHEN PREVENTED BY A SNOWSTORM
FROM GOING TO CHURCH 371
TO A GOLDEN HEART WORN ROUND THE NECK 374
LINES ACCOMPANYING A BOUQUET OF WILD COLUMBINE 375
DISSATISFACTION, (TRANSLATION.) 377
MY SEAL-RING 378
THE CONSOLERS, (TRANSLATION.) 379
ABSENCE OF LOVE 380
MEDITATIONS 381
RICHTER 383
THE THANKFUL AND THE THANKLESS 384
PROPHECY AND FULFILMENT 385
VERSES GIVEN TO W. C., WITH A BLANK BOOK 385
EAGLES AND DOVES, (TRANSLATION.) 387
TO A FRIEND, WITH HEARTSEASE 388
ASPIRATION 389
THE ONE IN ALL 390
A GREETING 393
LINES TO EDITH, ON HER BIRTHDAY 394
LINES WRITTEN IN HER BROTHER R.F.F.'S JOURNAL 395
ON A PICTURE REPRESENTING THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 396
THE CAPTURED WILD HORSE 397
EPILOGUE TO THE TRAGEDY OF ESSEX, (TRANSLATION.) 400
HYMN WRITTEN FOR A SUNDAY SCHOOL 404
DESERTION, (TRANSLATION.) 405
SONG WRITTEN FOR A MAY-DAY FESTIVAL 406
CARADORI SINGING 409
LINES IN ANSWER TO STANZAS CONTAINING SEVERAL PASSAGES OF
DISTINGUISHED BEAUTY 409
INFLUENCE OF THE OUTWARD 410
TO MISS R.B. 411
SISTRUM 413
IMPERFECT THOUGHTS 414
SADNESS 414
LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 416
TO S.C. 417
LINES WRITTEN IN BOSTON ON A BEAUTIFUL AUTUMNAL DAY 420
TO E.C., WITH HERBERT'S POEMS 422
Life without and Life within.
PART I.
REVIEWS.
MENZEL'S VIEW OF GOETHE.
Menzel's view of Goethe is that of a Philistine, in the least
opprobrious sense of the term. It is one which has long been applied in
Germany to petty cavillers and incompetent critics. I do not wish to
convey a sense so disrespectful in speaking of Menzel. He has a vigorous
and brilliant mind, and a wide, though imperfect, culture. He is a man
of talent, but talent cannot comprehend genius. He judges of Goethe as
a Philistine, inasmuch as he does not enter into Canaan, and read the
prophet by the light of his own law, but looks at him from without, and
tries him by a rule beneath which he never lived. That there _was_
something Menzel saw; what that something was _not_ he saw, but _what_
it _was_ he could not see; none could _see_; it was something to be felt
and known at the time of its apparition, but the clear sight of it was
reserved to a day far enough removed from its sphere to get a commanding
point of view. Has that day come? A little while ago it seemed so;
certain features of Goethe's personality, certain results of his
tendency, had become so manifest. But as the plants he planted mature,
they shed a new seed for a yet more noble growth. A wider experience, a
deeper insight, make rejected words come true, and bring a more refined
perception of meaning already discerned. Like all his elder brothers of
the elect band, the forlorn hope of humanity, he obliges us to live and
grow, that we may walk by his side; vainly we strive to leave him behind
in some niche of the hall of our ancestors; a few steps onward and we
find him again, of yet serener eye and more towering mien than on his
other pedestal. Former measurements of his size have, like the girdle
bound by the nymphs round the infant Apollo, only served to make him
outgrow the unworthy compass. The still rising sun, with its broader
light, shows us it is not yet noon. In him is soon perceived a prophet
of our own age, as well as a representative of his own; and we doubt
whether the revolutions of the century be not required to interpret the
quiet depths of his _Saga_.
Sure it is that none has yet found Goethe's place, as sure that none
can claim to be his peer, who has not some time, ay, and for a long
time, been his pupil!
Yet much truth has been spoken of him in detail, some by Menzel, but in
so superficial a spirit, and with so narrow a view of its bearings, as
to have all the effect of falsehood. Such denials of the crown can only
fix it more firmly on the head of the "Old Heathen." To such the best
answer may be given in the words of Bettina Brentan: "The others
criticise thy works; I only know that they lead us on and on till we
live in them." And thus will all criticism end in making more men and
women read these works, and "on and on," till they forget whether the
author be a patriot or a moralist, in the deep humanity of the thought,
the breathing nature of the scene. While words they have accepted with
immediate approval fade from memory, these oft-denied words of keen,
cold truth return with ever new force and significance.
Men should be true, wise, beautiful, pure, and aspiring. This man was
true and wise, capable of all things. Because he did not in one short
life complete his circle, can we afford to lose him out of sight? Can
we, in a world where so few men have in any degree redeemed their
inheritance, neglect a nature so rich and so manifestly progressive?
Historically considered, Goethe needs no apology. His so-called faults
fitted him all the better for the part he had to play. In cool
possession of his wide-ranging genius, he taught the imagination of
Germany, that the highest flight should be associated with the steady
sweep and undazzled eye of the eagle. Was he too much the connoisseur,
did he attach too great an importance to the cultivation of taste, where
just then German literature so much needed to be refined, polished, and
harmonized? Was he too sceptical, too much an experimentalist,--how else
could he have formed himself to be the keenest, and, at the same time,
most nearly universal of observers, teaching theologians, philosophers,
and patriots that nature comprehends them all, commands them all, and
that no one development of life must exclude the rest? Do you talk, in
the easy cant of the day, of German obscurity, extravagance, pedantry,
and bad taste,--and will you blame this man, whose Greek, English,
Italian, German mind steered so clear of these rocks and shoals,
clearing, adjusting, and calming on each side, wherever he turned his
prow? Was he not just enough of an idealist, just enough of a realist,
for his peculiar task? If you want a moral enthusiast, is not there
Schiller? If piety, of purest, mystic sweetness, who but Novalis?
Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each withered leaf in a tender
breast, look to your Richter. Would you have men to find plausible
meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature,
well painted and dotted on its proper roller,--there are the Schlegels.
Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows in autumn, and Jacobi
wrote the heart into philosophy, as well as he could. Who could fill
Goethe's place to Germany, and to the world, of which she is now the
teacher? His much-reviled aristocratic turn was at that time a
reconciling element. It is plain why he was what he was, for his country
and his age.
Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a
peculiar force with which all things worked together to prepare him for
his office of artist-critic to the then chaotic world of thought in his
country. What an unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What
endless change and contrast of circumstances and influences! Father and
mother, life and literature, world and nature,--playing into one
another's hands, always by antagonism! Never was a child so carefully
guarded by fate against prejudice, against undue bias, against any
engrossing sentiment. Nature having given him power of poetical sympathy
to know every situation, would not permit him to make himself at home in
any. And how early what was most peculiar in his character manifested
itself, may be seen in these anecdotes related by his mother to Bettina.
Of Goethe's childhood.--"He was not willing to play with other little
children, unless they were very fair. In a circle he began suddenly to
weep, screaming, 'Take away the black, ugly child; I cannot bear to have
it here.' He could not be pacified; they were obliged to take him home,
and there the mother could hardly console him for the child's ugliness.
He was then only three years old."
"His mother was surprised, that when his brother Jacob died, who had
been his playmate, he shed no tear, but rather seemed annoyed by the
lamentations of those around him. But afterwards, when his mother asked
whether he had not loved his brother, he ran into his room and brought
from under his bed a bundle of papers, all written over, and said he had
done all this for Jacob."
Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not loved his
country and his fellow-men, he would not have answered by tears and
vows, but pointed to his works.
In the first anecdote is observable that love of symmetry in external
relations which, in manhood, made him give up the woman he loved,
because she would not have been in place among the old-fashioned
furniture of his father's house; and dictated the course which, at the
crisis of his life, led him to choose an outward peace rather than an
inward joy. In the second, he displays, at the earliest age, a sense of
his vocation as a recorder, the same which drew him afterwards to write
his life into verse, rather than clothe it in action. His indirectness,
his aversion to the frankness of heroic meetings, is repulsive and
suspicious to generous and flowing natures; yet many of the more
delicate products of the mind seem to need these sheaths, lest bird and
insect rifle them in the bud.
And if this subtlety, isolation, and distance be the dictate of nature,
we submit, even as we are not vexed that the wild bee should hide its
honey in some old moss-grown tree, rather than in the glass hives of our
gardens. We believe it will repay the pains we take in seeking for it,
by some peculiar flavor from unknown flowers. Was Goethe the wild bee?
We see that even in his boyhood he showed himself a very Egyptian, in
his love for disguises; forever expressing his thought in roundabout