ture for Shakspeare, even though filtered through Dodd's "Beauties," and a very debating-societylike oration thereon, to the outburst of that melodramatic hurricane which is known in Germany under the title of Sturm und Drang-the spasmodic period when corsairs, and brigands, and villains, “bearded like the pard," and all that is now the special property of Mr. Webster and the Adelphi, enthralled the young literature of the North-when, in the words of Mr. Lewes, "Nature seemed to be a compound of volcanoes and moonlight; her force, explosion; her beauty, sentiment. To be insurgent and sentimental, explosive and lachrymose, were the true signs of genius." Part of the unripe fruit was "Goetz von Berlichingen," which first stimulated the literary fancy of a young writer in the "Signet," afterwards known as Sir Walter Scott. It was Goethe's first recognised work, and the wave of popularity impelled him onward to "Werther." Mr. Thackeray has told the story so well that we have given it in an article devoted to the works of that gentleman. When it is known that the lady here celebrated was one of Goethe's lady-loves, married to his friend, and pilloried by name at the very time she was in correspondence with the poet, the extreme absence of individuality on the part of the artist will be more apparent : The effect was prodigious. "That nameless unrest," says Carlyle, "the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing discontent which was agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. All felt it; he alone could give it voice. And here lies the secret of his popularity." Perhaps there never was a fiction which so startled and enraptured the world. Men of all kinds and classes were moved by it. It was the companion of Napoleon, when in Egypt; it penetrated into China. To convey in a sentence its wondrous popularity, we may state that in Germany it became a people's book, hawked about the streets, printed on miserable paper, like an ancient ballad; and in the Chinese Empire, Charlotte and Werther were modelled in porcelain. The great epoch of Goethe's life is his migration to Weimar on the 7th Nov., 1775. Here is one of the prettiest bits of the book: Weimar is an ancient city on the Ilm, a small stream rising in the Thuringian forests, and losing itself in the Saal, at Jena; a stream on which the sole navigation seems to be that of ducks, and which meanders peacefully through pleasant valleys, except during the rainy season, when mountain torrents swell its current and overflow its banks. The Trent, between Trentham and Stafford-"the smug and silver Trent" as Shakspeare calls it will give you an idea of this stream. The town is charmingly placed in the Ilm valley, and stands some eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. "Weimar," says the old topographer, Mathew Merian, "is Weinmar, because it was the wine market for Jena and its environs. Others say it was because some one here in ancient days began to plant the vine, who was hence called Weinmayer. But of this each reader may believe just what he pleases." On a first acquaintance, Weimar seems more like a village bordering a park, than a capital with a Court, and having all courtly environments. It is so quiet, so simple; and although ancient in its architecture, has none of the picturesqueness which delights the eye in most old German cities. The stone-coloured, light-brown, and apple-green houses have high-peaked, slanting roofs, but no quaint gables, no caprices of styles which elsewhere charm the traveller. One learns architectural fancy, none of the mingling of varied to love its quiet, simple streets, and pleasant paths, fit theatre for the simple actors moving across the scene; but one must live there some time to discover its charm. The aspect it presented when Goethe arrived was of course very different from that presented now; but by diligent inquiry we may get some rough image of the place restored. First be it noted that the city walls were still erect; gates and portcullis still spoke of days of warfare. Within these walls were six or seven hundred houses, not more; most of them very ancient. Under these roofs were about seven thousand inhabitants-for the most part not handsome. The city gates were strictly guarded. No one could pass through them in cart or carriage without leaving his name in the sentinel's book; even Goethe, minister and favourite, could not escape this tiresome formality, as we gather from one of his letters to the Frau von Stein, directing her to go out alone, and meet him beyond During Sunday service a chain was thrown across the the gates, lest their exit together should be known. streets leading to the church to bar out all passengers; a practice to this day partially retained: the chain is fastened, but the passengers step over it without ceremony. There was little safety at night in those silent streets; for if you were in no great danger from marauders, you were in constant danger of breaking a limb in some hole or other; the idea of lighting streets not having presented itself to the Thuringian mind. In the year 1685, the streets of London were first lighted with lamps; and Germany, in most things a century behind England, had not yet ventured on that experiment. If in this 1854 Weimar is still innocent of gas, and perplexes its inhabitants with the dim obscurity of an occasional oil-lamp slung on a cord across the streets, we may imagine that in 1775 they had not even advanced so far. And our supposition is exact. Milestones were unknown, although fingerposts existed. Instead of facilitating the transit of travellers, for the longer they remained the more money they it was thought good political economy to obstruct them, spent in the country. A century earlier, stage coaches were known in England; but in Germany, public conveyances, very rude to this day in places where no railway exists, were few and miserable; nothing but open carts with unstuffed seats. Diligences on springs were unknown before 1800; and what they were even twenty years ago many readers doubtless remember. Then as to speed: if you travelled post, it was said with pride that seldom more than an hour's waiting was necessary before the horses were got ready, at least on frequented routes. Mail travelling was at the rate of five English miles in an hour and a quarter. Letters took nine days from Berlin to Frankfurt, which in 1854 require only twenty-four hours. So slow was the communication of news that, as we learn from the Stein correspondence, so great an event as the death of Frederick the Great was only known as a rumour a week afterwards in Carlsbad. "By this time," writes Goethe, "you must know in Weimar if it be true." With these facilities it was natural that men travelled but rarely, and mostly on horseback. What the inns were may be imagined from the unfrequency of travellers, and the general state of domestic comfort. The absence of comfort and luxury (luxury as dis tinguished from ornament) may be gathered from the Memoirs of the time, and from such works as Bertuch's Mode Journal. Such necessities as good locks, doors that shut, drawers opening easily, tolerable knives, carts on springs, or beds fit for a Christian of any other than the " German persuasion," are still rarities in Thuringia; but in those days, when sewers were undreamed of, and a post-office was a chimera, all that we moderns consider comfort was necessarily fabulous. The furniture, even of palaces, was extremely simple. In the houses of wealthy bourgeois, chairs and tables were of common fir; not until the close of the eighteenth century did mahogany make its appearance. Looking glasses followed. The chairs were covered with a coarse green cloth; the tables likewise; and carpets are only now beginning to loom upon the national mind as a possible luxury. The windows were hung with woollen curtains, when the extravagance of curtains was ventured on. Easy chairs were unknown; the only arm chair allowed was the so-called Grandfather's chair, which was reserved for the dignity of grey hairs or the feebleness of age. sword, and stabbed the offender, and that a duel, in the very presence of these women, is only prevented by one of the combatants being dragged from the room. The foregoing survey would be incomplete without some notice of the prices of things, the more so as we shall learn hereafter that the pension Karl August gave Schiller was 200 thalers-about £60 of our moneyand that the salary Goethe received, as Councillor of Legation, was only 1,200 thalers-about £200 per annum. On reading this, Mr. Smith jingles the loose silver in his pockets, and, with that superb British pride, redolent of consols, which makes the family of Smith so accurate a judge of all social positions, exclaims, "These beggarly Germans; I give my head clerk twice the sum." he hunted, skated, drank, dressed, histrionized, The life that Goethe led at Weimar-how and played the buffoon; how he repelled the male and attracted the female dilettanti of that little Saxon kräh-winkel, or crow's-nest of a The salon de reception, or drawing-room into which greatly honoured visitors were shown, had of course a court; how he was ennobled ; how he dallied on kind of Sunday splendour, not dimmed by week-day the edge of frendship with Schiller,. dangled familiarity. There hung the curtains; the walls were with Frau von Stein, and duped that overadorned with family portraits or some work of extremely "native talent; " the tables alluring the eye credulous coquette; how he cohabited with with china, in guise of cups, vases, impossible shep- Christiane Vulpius for no apparent reason, and herds, and very allegorical dogs. Into this room the for just as little reason married her; how she honoured visitor was ushered; and there, no matter took to wine and beer, and demurred to her what the hour, he was handed refreshment of some kind. This custom-a compound product of hospihusband's taste for statuary and art, and after tality and bad inns-lingered until lately in England, that died; and how the many-sided poet beand perhaps is still not unknown in provincial towns. moaned her in very classical elegies, lamenting On eating and drinking was spent the surplus now the time when she lay asleep, and he counted devoted to finery. No one then, except gentlemen of the syllables of his verses on her back. Why the first water, boasted of a gold snuff-box; even a gold- need we imitate his biographer, and utter prolix headed cane was an unusual elegance. The dandy contented himself with a silver watch. The fine lady philosophy over? Accept all Mr. Lewes 's qualificablazoned herself with a gold watch and heavy chain; tions, abatements, appeals, and misericordian but it was an heirloom! To see a modern dinner testimonies as to character, the stern ethiservice glittering with silver, glass, and china, and to think that even the nobility in those days ate off pewter, cal total will be the same-a classic egotist, a is enough to make the lapse of time very vivid to us. poetic Bentham. In later life he was prudent, A silver teapot and teatray were held as princely mag- punctual, exact even to a political economist's exactitude; if he had a weakness it was not for nificence. The manners were rough and simple. The journey men ate at the same table with their masters, and joined in the coarse jokes which then passed for hilarity. Filial obedience was rigidly enforced, the stick or strap not unfrequently aiding parental authority. Even the brothers exercised an almost paternal authority over their sisters. Indeed, the "position of women" was by no means such as our women can conceive with patience; not only were they kept under the paternal, marital, and fraternal yoke, but society limited their actions by its prejudices still No woman, for instance, of the better class of citizens could go out alone; the servant girl followed her to church, to a shop, or even to the promenade. more than it does now. The coarseness of language may be gathered from our own literature of that period. The roughness of manners is shown by such a scene as that in Wilhelm Meister, where the Fair Saint in her confessions (speak. ing of high, well-born society) narrates how, at an evening party, forfeits were introduced; one of these forfeits is, that a gentleman shall say something gallant to every lady present: he whispers in the ear of a lady, who boxes his ears, and boxes it with such violence that the powder from his hair flies into the Fair Saint's eyes; when she is enabled to see again, it is to see that the husband of the lady has drawn his humanity, but for sausage, for rose-wine (to wash away his sins in fragrance), and a most commendable liking for Madeira. He even descended, like Jupiter, into the consciousness of little household details, and, as we learn from some letters which have appeared in Germany since Mr. Lewes's publication, became what married men often become-sensitive on the subject of buttons, socks, and flannel. Here is a picture of his domicile and Weimar life: Passing through an ante-chamber, where, in cupboards, stand his mineralogical collections, we enter the study, a low-roofed, narrow room, somewhat dark, for it is lighted only through two tiny windows, and furnished with a simplicity quite touching to behold. In the centre stands a plain oval table of unpolished oak. No arm-chair is to be seen, no sofa, nothing which speaks of ease. A plain hard chair has beside it the basket in which he used to place his handkerchief. Against the wall, on the right, is a long peartree table, with bookshelves, on which stand lexicons and manuals. Here hangs a pincushion, venerable in dust, with the visiting cards, and other trifles which death has made sacred. Here, also, a medallion of Na poleon, with this circumscription: "Scilicet immenso superest ex nomine multum." On the side-wall, again, a bookcase with some works of poets. On the wall to the left is a long desk of soft wood, at which he was wont to write. A sheet of paper with notes of contemporary history is fastened near the door, and behind this door schematic tables of music and geology. with a window. A simple bed, an arm chair by its side, and a tiny washing-table, with a small white basin on it and a sponge, is all the furniture. the other side of the study we enter the library, The same door leads into a bed-room: it is a closet From which should rather be called a lumber-room of books. Rough deal shelves hold the books, with bits of paper, on which are written "philosophy," "history," "poetry," &c., to mark the classification. He rose at seven, sometimes earlier, after a sound and prolonged sleep; for, like Thorwalsden, he had a "talent for sleeping" only surpassed by his talent for continuous work. Till eleven he worked without interruption. A cup of chocolate was then brought, and he resumed work till one. At two he dined. This meal was the important meal of the day. His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry, he ate much more than most men. Puddings, sweets, and cakes were always welHe sat a long while over his wine, chatting gaily to some friend or other (for he never dined alone), or to one of the actors, whom he often had with him, after dinner, to read over their parts, and to take his instructions. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. Lest this statement should convey a false impression, I hasten to recal to the reader's recollection the very different habits of our fathers in respect of drinking. It was no unusual thing to be a "three-bottle man" in those days in England, when the three bottles were of port or Burgundy; and Goethe, a Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank never did more than exhilarate him; never come. made him unfit for work or for society. Over his wine, then, he sat some hours; no such thing as dessert was seen upon his table in those days; not even the customary coffee after dinner. His mode of living was extremely simple; and even when persons of very modest circumstances burned wax, two poor tallow candles were all that could be seen in his rooms. In the evening he went often to the theatre, and there his customary glass of punch was brought at six o'clock. If not at the theatre, he received friends at home. Between eight and nine a frugal supper was laid, but he never took anything except a little salad or preserves. By ten o'clock he was usually in bed. We have not space to enter into his energy and discoveries in science and anatomy, his visit to Italy, his impassive sight of the sea at Venice for the first time, and his apathetic demeanour on hearing of the French revolution. He admired Napoleon and Byron, who had admired him, and left behind eulogies upon those and other heroes-a fact which Mr. Lewes contrasts with Shakspeare's silence. He supported a foundling or two, no doubt from disinterested benevolence, and maintained a misanthrope, apparently for the same reason that some abnormal dogmatists in these days keep a bull-dog or a monkey. His last years exhibit the strength of the ruling passion-"a passionate wound " in his breast, caused by a girl of fourteen, and a mania for minerals, which often confused the clearness of his morality. Everybody knows his last words, "More light;" few, perhaps, the hurried, incoherent fragments preceding: " The lovely woman's head with black curls-in splendid colours-a dark background." If all the world, according to Coleridge, is either Platonist or Aristotelian, we had rather be weak and suffering and human, with Schiller, than passionless and haughty and artistic, with Goethe; and if we are to admire grandeur, choose rather the lofty shadow of Lessing, or the pure philanthropy of Herder, than drop our pilgrim's staff, and undergo petrifaction at the shrine of the sage of Weimar. 66 We might have noticed Mr. Lewes's Germanisms-his love for such exotics as "geniusperiod, avid, net results; such outbreaks the insurrection of the against metaphor as feelings carrying away on their triumphant shoulders the reason and violations of Lindley Murray, we little expected from so practised a writer as our biographer. At page 141 there will be found two curiosities of this kind. Over the critical part and the well-culled “ plaster-casts" of translations we have neither time nor patience to wrangle. 17 Men and Women. By ROBERT BROWNING. London: Chapman and Hall. 1855. THIS is a profoundly-thoughtful and vigorouslywritten book, demanding from the critics an attention far more minute and elaborate than our present limits will permit us to devote to its consideration. Every page of the two volumes of poetry now before us is instinct and alive with a bold and vivid beauty utterly distinctive from any thing in contemporary song. But it is not on account of the manifold beauties in their development, but because the principles applied in this work to poetry are altogether novel, and worthy of very careful remark, that we predict to the author of " Men and Women," from the publication of the present work, no inconsiderable increase to the dignity of his poetical reputation. Independently of any opinions which may be formed as to his success or failure in the due development of the theory he originated, the estimation of Wordsworth as a poet must always, and justly, be a high one, from the simple fact of his having sought and found, in regions hitherto unexplored, and even unrecognised, the subtlest elements of poetry. What Wordsworth originated in the treatment of nature as apprehended through contemplation, Mr. Browning has sought to achieve in that of nature revealed through passion. If to divine and disclose a presence of power among the silence and solitudes of an external creation be, for the poet, a lofty and spiritual. ambition, how daringly beneficent must be that which urges him to explore, below the sound and tumult of human life, the secret and silent motions of Divinity in the heart of man! The most remarkable characteristic of the present work is that, with an indomitable and unbaffled instinct for the spiritual beneath its manifold material disguises, it reveals to the thoughtful reader how much of the immutable, the holy, and the awful hourly escapes our common observation in the trivial emotions and passing impulses-the wandering lights and shadows of the soul--that chequer and agitate our daily life. With an almost Protean power of reproduction, the genius of the author flings itself into innumerable conditions of human existence; from each it looks out upon us through faces always familiar. For its pathos and its power it needs but the simplest materials; no discrowned kings or classic crimes, but merely the everyday feelings of every-day persons, and such common circumstances as those under which the greatest part of us must be resigned to exist. As the widely-instructed chemist evolves from the commonest substances the self-same elements and gases which kindle the storms and sustain the spheres, till what was merely household stuff to the vulgar assumes before their eyes a supernatural potency, so does Mr. Browning, by his original and powerful treatment of humble subjects, extract from use and custom, and the commonplace, unguessed-of evidences of the beautiful and sublime. Our narrow limits, and the space we have already devoted to their general criticism, do not suffer us to give many extracts from these two crowded volumes. The first poem, however, although by no means characteristic of those features in the book to which we have adverted, is so beautiful that we extract it at length :Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep, Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say,) Of our country's very capital, its prince Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Now-the country does not even boast a tree, As you see, Then follows a lover's quarrel, very beautifully treated. What thoughtful beauty in this next little poem! Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead: Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Little has yet been changed, I think- Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name- Her life had many a hope and aim, And now was quiet, now astir— Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, And our paths in the world diverged so wide, No, indeed! for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, Ere the time be come for taking you. But the time will come,-at last it will, In the new life come in the old one's stead. Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see! I loved you, Evelyn, all the while; My heart seemed full as it could holdThere was place and to spare for the frank young smile And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold. So, hush,-I will give you this leaf to keep See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand. Of the mere beauty of description contained. in these volumes the reader may judge by the following extracts from one of the most charming of the poems in the first volume. And all day long a bird sings there, And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times: The place is silent and aware; It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, But that is its own affair. But at afternoon or almost eve "Tis better; then the silence grows To that degree, you half believe It must get rid of what it knows, Its bosom does so heave. Hither we walked, then, side by side, Arm in arm, and cheek to cheek, And still I questioned or replied, While my heart, convulsed to really speak, Lay choking in its pride. Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, And wish for our souls a like retreat, Stoop and kneel on the settle under- Nothing to see! for fear of plunder, The cross is down and the altar bare, As if thieves don't fear thunder. We stoop and look in through the grate, See the little porch and rustic door, Read duly the dead builder's date, Then cross the bridge we crossed before, Take the path again-but wait! Oh moment, one and infinite! The water slips o'er stock and stone; The west is tender, hardly bright. How grey at once is the evening grown One star, the chrysolite! We two stood there with never a third, But each by each, as each knew well. |