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11.

See!-the large, silent, pale-blue light
Flares, to lead all to where the bright
Loud rockets rush on high,

Like a long comet, roaring through
The night, then melting into blue,
And starring the dark sky!

12.

And Catherine wheels, and crowns, and names
Of great men whizzing in blue flames;

Lights, like the smiles of hope;

And radiant, fiery palaces

Showing the tops of all the trees,

And Blackmore on the rope!

13.

Then late the hours, and sad the stay!

The passing cup, the wits astray,

The row, and riot call!

The tussle, and the collar torn,

The dying lamps, the breaking morn!
And hey for-Union Hall!

NED WARD, Jun.

GOETHE.

(Review of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, continued.)

To be an eidoloclast is not a pleasant office, because an invidious one. Whenever that can be effected therefore, it is prudent to decline the odium of such an office upon the idol himself. Let the object of the false worship always, if possible, be made his own eidoloclast. As respects Wilhelm Meister, this is possible: and so far, therefore, as Goethe's pretensions are founded on that novel, Goethe shall be his own eidoloclast. For our own parts we shall do no more than suggest a few principles of judgment, and recall the hasty reader to his own more honourable thoughts, for the purpose of giving an occasional impulse and direction to his feelings on the passages we shall quote-which passages, the very passages of Goethe, will be their own sufficient review and Mr. Goethe's best exposure. Something indeed is already known of him in this country. Wilhelm Meister will but confirm an impression already made. “The Sorrows of Werther," by itself" Stella," through the Antijacobin Review of former days,-the

"Life," through the analysis of an accomplished German Scholar of Norwich-and the " Faust," through various channels, have left such an impression of Mr. Goethe's state of feeling and his talents in this country, as leaves us happily no body of partial prejudices to contend with. We need not waste time in deprecating unreasonable prepossesions: for, except amongst his clannish coterie of partizans in London (collectively not enough to fill the boudoir of a bluestocking), there are no such prepossessions. Some indeed of that coterie have on occasion of our former article pushed their partizanship to the extent of forgetting the language of gentlemen. This at least has been reported to us. We are sorry for them; not angry on our own account, nor much surprised. They are to a certain degree excusably irritable, from the consciousness of being unsupported and unsteadied by general sympathy. Sectarians are allowably ferocious. However we shall reply only by recalling a little anecdote of John Henderson, in the

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* The two authorities for all authentic information about J. Henderson are, 1. The Funeral Sermon of Mr. Aguttar; 2. A Memoir of him by Mr. Cottle of Bristol, inserted in Mr. Cottle's Poems. We know not whether we learned the anecdote from these sources, or in conversation with Mr. Cottle many years ago.

spirit of which we mean to act. Upon one occasion, when he was disputing at a dinner party, his opponent being pressed by some argument too strong for his logic or his temper, replied by throwing a glass of wine in his face: upon which Henderson, with the dignity of a scholar who felt too justly how much this boyish petulance had disgraced his antagonist to be in any danger of imitating it, coolly wiped his face, and said -"This, sir, is a digression: now, if you please, for the argument."

And now, if you please, for our argument. What shall that be? How shall we conduct it? As far as is possible, the translator of Wilhelm Meister would deny us the benefit of any argument: for thus plaintively he seeks to forestal us (Pref. xii.)-"Every man's judgment is, in this free country, a lamp to himself:" (Free country! why we hope there is no despotism so absolute, no not in Turkey, nor Algiers, where a man may not publish his opinion of Wilhelm Meister!) "and many, it is to be feared, will insist on judging Meister by the common rule; and, what is worse, condemning it, let Schlegel bawl as loudly as he pleases." This puts us in mind of a diverting story in the memoirs of an old Cavalier, published about a year and a half since by Sir Walter Scott: at the close of the war he was undergoing some examination (about passports, as we recollect) by the Mayor of Hull: upon which occasion the mayor, who was a fierce fanatic, said to him some such words as these: "Now, Captain, you know that God has judged between you and us: and has given us the victory-praise be unto his name! and yet you see how kindly the Parliament treats you. But, if the victory had gone the other way, and you of the malignant party had stood in our shoes, -I suppose now, Captain, you would have evil entreated us; would have put all manner of affronts upon us; kicked us peradventure, pulled our noses, called us sons of w"You're in the right on't, sir,"was the reply of the bluff captain,

-S.

to the great indignation of the Mayor -and infinite fun of the goodnatured aldermen. So also, when the translator tells us that it is to be feared that many will condemn Wilhelm Meister in spite of Schegel's vociferation, we reply, "You're in the right on't, sir: they will do so; and Schlegel is not the man, neither William nor Frederick, to frighten them from doing so. We have extracted this passage however for the sake of pointing the reader's eye to one word in it: "many will judge it by the common rule." What rule? we ask. The translator well knows that there is no rule: no rule which can stand in the way of fair and impartial criticism; and that he is conjuring up a bugbear which has no existence. In the single cases of epic and dramatic poetry (but in these only as regards the mechanism of the fable) certain rules have undoubtedly obtained an authority which may prejudice the cause of a writer; not so much however by corrupting sound criticism, as by occupying its place. But with regard to a novel, there is no rule which has obtained any "prescription" (to speak the language of civil law) but the golden rule of good sense and just feeling; and the translator well knows that in such a case if a man were disposed to shelter his own want of argument under the authority of some "common rule," he can find no such rule to plead. How do men generally criticise a novel? Just as they examine the acts and conduct, moral or prudential, of their neighbours. And how is that? Is it by quoting the Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle? Do they proceed as the French Consul did when the Dey of Tunis informed him that he meant to cut off his head? Upon which

The Consul quoted Wickefort

And Puffendorf and Grotius;
And proved from Vattel
Exceedingly well,

Such a deed would be quite atrocious. No: they never trouble Puffendorf and Grotius; but try the case "proprio marte," appealing only to

*One objection only we have heard to our last article from any person not a partizan of Goethe: being plausible, and coming from a man of talents, we reply to it. "Surely," says he, "it cannot be any fault of Goethe's that he is old." Certainly not: no fault at all, but a circumstance of monstrous aggravation connected with one particular fault of Wilhelm Meister, &c.

their own judgments and their own feelings. This is wise, they say, and that is foolish: this is indecorous, and that is inconsistent: this argues a bad motive, and that leads to a bad consequence. In this way they judge of actions, in this way of a novel; and in this way we shall judge of Wilhelm Meister; and cannot allow that our criticism shall be forestalled by any pretence that we are opposing mechanic rules, which do not and cannot exist, to the natural and spontaneous movements of the unprejudiced judgment.

"Scribendi recte SAPERE est principium et fons"-Good sense is the principle and fountain of all just composition. This is orthodox doctrine all over the world, or ought to be. Next, we presume that in all latitudes and under every meridian a poet stands amenable to criticism for the quality of his sentiments and the passions he attributes to his heroes, heroines, and "pattern people." That the general current of feeling should be deeper than that of ordinary life, nobler, and purer,-is surely no unreasonable postulate: else wherefore is he a poet? Now within a short compass there is no better test by which we can try the style and tone of a poet's feelings than his ideal of the female character as expressed in his heroines. For this purpose we will have a general turnout and field day for Mr. Goethe's ladies. They shall all parade before the reader. This, while it answers our end, will provide for his amusement. Ex abundanti, we will fling in a sketch of the hero's love affairs. This display will be sufficient for the style of sentiment: as to the good sense, that will be adequately put on record by every part of our analysis: yet, as a special commentary dedicated to that particular point, we will (if we have room) move an inquiry into the meaning of the title-Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: why Apprenticeship, Mr. Göthe?-Finally, as the part of Mignon has been insisted upon often and earnestly as a poetic creation of the highest order and as Mignon is not a woman grown, we will separate her from the rest of the ladies, and put her through the ma

nual and drill exercise when the general parade is over.

Now therefore turn out, ladies! turn out before London on this fine 26th of August 1824. Muster, muster, ye belles of Germany! Place aux dames! We will have a grand procession to the temple of Paphos with its hundred altars: and Mr. Goethe, nearly 50 years old at the date of Wilhelm Meister, shall be the high-priest; and we will exhibit him surrounded by all " his young Corinthian laity."* Here then, reader, is Mr. Goethe's 1. GALLERY OF FEMALE PORTRAITS. Mariana.-No. 1 is Mariana, a young actress. With her the novel opens: and her situation is this. She is connected in the tenderest style of clandestine attachment with Wilhelm Meister the hero. Matters have gone so far that she-how shall we express it? Oh: the novel phrase is that she "carries a pledge of love beneath her bosom." Well, suppose she does: what's that to us -us and the reader? Why nothing, we confess. The reader is yet but in the vestibule of the tale: he is naturally in good humour, willing to be pleased, and indisposed to churlish constructions. Undoubtedly he is sorry: wishes it had been otherwise; but he is human himself; and he recollects the old excuse which will be pleaded on this frail planet of ours for thousands of years after we are all in our graves-that they were both young: and that she was artless and beautiful. And finally he forgives them: and, if at the end of the third volume when they must necessarily be a good deal older, he finds them still as much attached to each other as when their hearts were young, he would feel it presumption in him to remember the case as a transgression. But what is this? Hardly have we gone a few pages further, before we find that-about one month before this lady had surrendered her person to the hero-she had granted all she could grant to one Mr. Norberg a merchant and a vile sensualist. Aye, says Mr. Goethe, but that was for money; she had no money; and how could she do without money? Whereas now, on the contrary, in Wilhelm's case it

"Young Corinthian laity :" Milton. Apol. for Smectymn.

could not be for money; for why? he had none; ergo, it was for love pure love. Besides she was vexed that she had ever encouraged Norberg, after she came to be acquainted with Wilhelm. Vexed! but did she resolve to break with Norberg? Once or twice she treated him harshly, it is true: but hear her latest cabinet council on this matter with her old infamous attendant (p. 65, i): "I have no choice, continued Mariana, do you decide for me! Cast me away to this side, or to that; mark only one thing. I think I carry in my bosom a pledge that ought to unite me with him (i. e. Wilhelm) more closely. Consider and determine: whom shall I forsake? whom shall I follow?

"After a short silence, Barbara exclaimed: Strange that youth should still be for extremes." By extremes Barbara means keeping only one; her way of avoiding extremes is to keep both. But hear the hag: "To my view nothing would be easier than for us to combine both the profit and enjoyment. Do you love the one, let the other pay for it: all we have to mind is being sharp enough to keep the two from meeting."

Certainly, that would be awkward: and now what is Mariana's answer? "Do as you please; I can imagine nothing, but I will follow." Bab schemes, and Poll executes. The council rises with the following suggestion from the hag. "Who knows what circumstances may arise to help us? If Norberg would arrive even now, when Wilhelm is away! who can hinder you from thinking of the one in the arms of the other? I wish you a son and good fortune with him: he will have a rich father."

Adopting this advice, the lady receives Wilhelm dressed in the clothes furnished by Norberg. She is however found out by Wilhelm, who forsakes her; and in the end she dies. Her death is announced in the high German style to Wilhelm: old Bab places a bottle of Champaigne and three glasses on the table. Then the scene proceeds thus: "Wilhelm knew not what to say, when the crone in fact let go the cork, and filled the three glasses to the brim. "Drink!" cried she, having emptied at a draught her foaming glass. "Drink

ere the spirit of it pass! This third glass shall froth away untasted to the memory of my unhappy Mariana. How red were her lips when she last drank your health! Ah! and now for ever pale and cold!" At the next Pitt or Fox dinner this suggestion may perhaps be attended to. Mr. Pitt of course will have a bottle of good old Port set for him: for he drank no Champaigne.--As Kotzebue hastened to the Palais Royal of Paris for consolation on the death of his wife, so does Wilhelm on reading his sweetheart's farewell letters abscond in a transport of grief to a coffeehouse, where he disputes upon the stage and acting in general.—We are rather sorry for this young creature after all: she has some ingenuthe second best person in the novel. ous feelings; and she is decidedly The child, which she leaves behind, is fathered by old Bab (drunk perhaps) upon every man she meets; and she absolutely extorts money from one or other person on account of three different fathers. If she meets the reader, she'll infallibly father it upon him. In the hands now of a skilful artist this surviving memorial of the frail Mariana might have been turned to some account: by Mr. Goethe it is used only as a handle for covering his hero with irresistible ridicule. He doubts whether he is the father of the child; and goes about, like Mr. Matthews's fat man who aspires after leanness, asking people in effect "Do you think I can be the father? Is he like me? That Mariana's conduct had given him little reason to confide in thing she could say except upon her death-bed, we admit; and, as to old Bab's assurances, they clearly were open to that objection of the logicians

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that they proved nothing by proving a little too much: even Lord Chesterfield's rule of believing only one half of what she says is not applicable to her; at the most we can believe only one-third: but can any gravity stand the ridicule of a father's sitting down to examine his child's features by his own? and that he, who would not believe the dying and heart-broken mother, is finally relieved from his doubts (p. 120, iii.) by two old buffoons, who simply assure him that the child is his-and thus pretend to an au

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thority transcending that of the mother herself? But pass to

No. 2. Philina.-This lady is a sort of amalgam of Doll Tear-sheet and the Wife of Bath-as much of a termagaunt as the first, and as frankhearted as the second. Mr. Goethe's account of the matter (p. 172, i.) is that "her chief enjoyment lay in loving one class of men, and being loved by them." In all particulars, but the good ones, she resembles poor Mariana: like her she is an actress; like her she has her "pledge" —and, like Mariana's, this pledge is open to doubts of the learned, on the question of its paternity; for, like her, she is not content with one lover; not however, like her, content with two, for she has nearer to two dozen. She plays off the battery of her charms upon every man she meets with the following is a list of the killed and wounded.*-But stay: we must hurry onwards. What becomes of her the reader never learns. Among her lovers, who in general keep her, is one whom she keeps: for he is her footman; a "fair-haired boy" of family. Him she kicks out of her service in vol. the first, p. 174, ostensibly because he will not lay the cloth; but in fact because he has no more money; as appears by p. 228, vol. ii. where she takes him back on his having "cozened from his friends a fresh supply;" and to him she finally awards her pledge' and we think she does right. For he is a fine young lad this Frederick; and we like him much: he is generous and nbt suspicious as 66 our friend" Wilhelm; and he is par parenthese a great fool, who is willing to pass for such, which the graver fools of the novel are not; for they are all "philosophers." Thus pleasantly does this believing man report the case to the infidel Wilhelm: ""Tis a foolish business that I must be raised at last to the paternal dignity: but she asserts, and the time agrees. At first, that cursed visit, which she paid you after Hamlet, gave me qualms. The pretty flesh-and-blood spirit of that night, if you do not know it, was Philina. This story was in truth a hard dower for me, but, if we cannot

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be contented with such things, we should not be in love. Fatherhood at any rate depends entirely upon conviction; I am convinced, and so I am a father."-But time presses: so adieu! most philanthropic Philina— thou lover of all mankind!

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No. 3. is Mrs. Melina. She also is an actress with a pledge' and so forth. But she marries the father, Herr Melina, and we are inclined to hope that all will now be well. And certainly as far as page so and so, the reader or ourselves, if summoned by Mrs. Melina on any trial affecting her reputation, would be most happy to say that whatever little circumstances might have come to our knowledge, which as gentlemen we could not possibly use to the prejudice of a lady,-we yet fully believed her to be as irreproachable as that lady who only of all King Arthur's court could wear the magic girdle; and yet it shrunk a little, until she made a blushing confession that smoothed its wrinkles. This would be our evidence up perhaps to the end of vol. i. ; yet afterwards it comes out that she "sighed" for Mr. Meister; and that, if she sighed in vain, it was no fault of hers.

The manners of all these good people are pretty much on a level with their characters: more than once all are drunk together,--men, women, and children: women are seen lying on the sopha "in no very elegant position:" the children knock their heads against the table: one plays the harp, one the triangle, another the tambourine: some sing canons; another "whistles in the manner of a nightingale ;" another "gives a symphony pianissimo upon the Jew's harp:" and last of all comes an ingenious person who well deserves to be imported to London for the further improvement of the Freischütz: "by way of termination, Serlo (the manager) gave a fire-work or what resembled one: for he could imitate the sound of crackers, rockets, and firewheels, with his mouth, in a style of nearly inconceivable correctness. You had only to shut your eyes, and the deception was complete." After the lyrical confusion of these Dutch

The list was too extensive to be made out in time with due regard to accuracy ;....... but a copy will be given gratis to every subscriber to the London Magazine.

+ See the ballad somewhere in Percy's 'Reliques.'

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