an over-estimation; not to his being credited with what he has done, but with what he has not done, or merely intended to do, the latter a sort of begging of the question unique in literary criticism. Leaving aside his character altogether, and its possible influence, there is no writer of anything like his reputation whose works require to be read from the literary, from the artistic standpoint, with so careful a discrimination. Far from perceiving in Goethe a genius supreme in poetry, in literature, we might say that no one of his works should be regarded as a work of genius in the higher, not to say the highest sense, taken, that is, in its entirety. It has indeed been asserted, in impatience, we presume, against the sort of idolatry in question, that Goethe did not possess genius, but talent only, of a more or less phenomenal order. This is an excess in the contrary direction. But if we might be permitted to express a candid opinion, based upon a careful perusal of Goethe's most noted works, it would be that the amount of real genius therein is, considering his reputation, singularly little. For the rest, his gift must be described as cleverness; not, indeed, the cleverness which has been termed "common as dirt, and as cheap; " Goethe's, at its best, is a sort of transcendental cleverness, but still cleverness, and not the other, the vision, that is, the faculty divine. It is the mixture, as we think, that makes Goethe so puzzling, so difficult to pronounce upon; for the more part of clever writers, however clever, are not likely to be mistaken for geniuses, at least in the larger sense; while on the other hand an unmistakable genius is not likely to be characterized, by any one who appreciates values in language, as a clever writer.

Here, as in many other cases, it is easier to apprehend a difference than to formulate a definition. It is not that the work of Goethe is unequal; the works of a writer of indisputable genius are often singularly unequal. It is rather, and preeminently, that his work lacks that selective character which is the note of the highest literary art, as of every other. It is lacking, moreover, in unity of construction, in that initial sense in which a work seems to have grown, as the tree grows, in the mind of its author, so that every bough and every branch, with all its detail of leafage, is related vitally to the central life of the whole. Goethe's famous works seem rather like a mosaic, the parts of which have been deliberately fitted together. This mosaic work, however ingenious, however skillfully put together, cannot, in the nature of things, be set beside the other; it has not the vitality. The pecul iarity of Goethe's work is that nuggets and threads of genius are

entirely unaware how much of this moral has been imported into Goethe. Even in the opera, the jewel business is a serious stumbling-block, unless the Margaret has a conscientiousness and a capacity for self-denial which comparatively few actresses are possessed of. Coming to "Faust" for a first reading with prepossessions based upon the sort of presentation of which we have just spoken, the mind receives a somewhat severe shock from the comparison. We realize, too, to what extent Margaret was an incident with Goethe, at least in the outset, instead of being that about which the whole revolves, as in the opera. Goethe's Margaret is certainly good, in the negative sense at least, but it would require a stretch of the imagination to call her an ideal character. She repels Faust's first advance in a manner quite suitable; but in the interview with him shortly after in Martha's garden, we are somewhat aghast when, upon the parenthetical "He kisses her," she responds, seizing hold of him (ihn fassend) and returning the kiss. As for the jewels, the business in Goethe is cumulative. For the first casket, mistrusted by Margaret's mother, is handed over to the priest, as its safest depositary. A second casket is then supplied by Mephistopheles, and this is conveyed by Margaret to the house of the light-minded neighbor, precisely to keep it from her mother's observation. The comments, moreover, of Mephistopheles throughout illustrate how entirely Margaret, thus far, is a mere detail for his cynicism. None the less is Margaret a maiden after Goethe's own idea; he is troubled by no discrepancy between her and an ideal pattern.

In the play, it will be noticed, Faust leaves Margaret for a considerable interval; and then is introduced the naïve and musical lyric, "Meine Ruh' ist hin." The lyric is entirely in character. Margaret is not timid and fearful, shrinking from a love that at the same time she is powerless to resist. She recalls her lover's kiss, and would gladly die kissing him, if so be she might have him for the kissing. Faust returns, and in Martha's garden we have another scene, perfect of its kind. Nowhere more than in this later scene do we realize the truth of the Italian proverb as to flame and tow. Margaret's intuition is keen enough to mistrust Mephistopheles, and she expresses this mistrust to Faust, and endeavors to win from him some expression of religious belief. Faust answers in dithyrambic utterances, in which pantheistic sentiment and Leidenschaft are somewhat intermingled, and reproaches her antipathy. He then easily induces her to deepen her mother's sleep by means of the phial furnished by Mephis topheles.

present herself as Margaret, or any other; and furthermore he urges Faust toward a little hill, which becomes at once a theatre. By one of those stage transformations in which Goethe delighted, we are swung at once into the Intermezzo, the "Oberon's and Titania's Golden Wedding." Whether it is good art or not that the Walpurgis Night should run into the Intermezzo in this fashion, may be a question. Certainly there would seem to be no question as to the impropriety of the transition being made upon so strong a revulsion of feeling. Goethe must, we should think, have intended this vision of Margaret to stand as the climax of the scene. It comes in, we observe, after Faust's wild dance with the young witch, out of whose mouth a red mouse has leaped, and comes in more strikingly by the contrast. If the end of the scene was possibly changed upon the interpolation of the Intermezzo, the whole should have been recast, and the vision of Margaret placed earlier, before the Proktophantasmist and his group, for instance, who have no connection with the substance of the But whether the clever trick, the shuffle of cards, at the end, were an afterthought or in the original intention, the effect of disproportion, of lack of relative values, is the same upon the mind of the reader.

scene.

No sane person could dispute that the prison scene, as such, is one of the finest passages in modern literature; that the vision here is perfect, that this is the sort of thing which strikes through to the soul. None the less, that which impresses the mind when the end of "Faust" is reached, is the lame and impotent conclusion. Margaret should either have been less in the play, or she should have been more. Faust has shown himself so human, he so gains upon us, that when he disappears with Mephistopheles we feel a distinct sense of wrong. If Goethe preferred in his splendid heathenism not to be dominated by the chivalrous idea, and the undue influence of woman, her undue centrality, in a literary work, he should not have suffered the Margaret idea to run away with him. Margaret, having become so much, should somehow have availed for Faust's salvation.

But at this point we are confronted by the impression, all along felt, of Margaret's own inadequacy. Perhaps it is the incurable Puritanism to which we have alluded, but others than ourselves must have felt that Margaret's salvation partakes of the nature of a coup de main. She is a victim of the tendencies of things, saved by the compassion of an indulgent Heaven. This perception was intensified by the version of "Faust" in which Margaret was