When some of Goethe's unqualified admirers admit that they can make little of the second part of "Faust," it is not surprising that those who hold a more moderate view should share the opinion. A school has, indeed, arisen which regards the second part as superior to the first, and which therefore, we must presume, bases upon the second part their claim for Goethe as supreme in poetry. And this notwithstanding the marked inferiority in workmanship; even if the term senile, of the older, severer criticism, is not applied, it would seem that few could fail to notice the lack of virility in the second part of "Faust" as relative to the first. We are concerned here, however, only with our independent judg ment, a poor thing, but our own. And of one thing we feel certain, that we prefer to read the second part of "Faust" by the unaided light of nature, rather than by the light of critical interpretation. And we grasp, as we presume, at the principal outcome, that Faust is elevated and purified by the influence of the Greek idea of the beautiful. - Notwithstanding this outcome, we find ourselves at the beginning of the fourth act, barring some twenty odd verses which Faust speaks by way of soliloquy, for all practical purposes where we were left at the end of the first part. Were this act in continuity with the first part, we should easily perceive that Faust, being with increase of years disgusted with pleasure, is desirous of some other resource, some other exercise for his activity, which Mephistopheles is about to provide for him. Our Richard is at least himself again, not only in person of Faust, but notably of Mephistopheles, who was in danger of becoming but a shadow of himself in the reconciliation of elements romantic and classical. And we observe here, as in the first part of "Faust," that Goethe throughout projects himself by occasion not only into Faust, but also into Mephistopheles, with somewhat of injury, at times, to the characterization. For Goethe's capacity for getting outside of himself is in inverse proportion to Shakespeare's, by which token, if no other, we should recognize in his being bracketed with Shakespeare an extraordinary vagary of criticism. Of this fourth act we need observe only that Faust gains, of course, through Mephistopheles, what he desires, ritory reclaimed from the sea, where he may lord it as over his own. a ter It is in the fifth act that the regeneration of Faust, in the view of those who find in Goethe's work a lofty spiritual motive, is at length accomplished. Allowing the piece to interpret itself, and speak of the vast prolixity of the earlier acts of the second part, and of the loose and disjointed fashion in which the different scenes are sometimes fitted together. If we consider the first part alone, we are confronted, as has been said, by the unsatisfactory conclusion. Fascinating this first part must always be, if only for a style singularly virile, this being the descriptive word which seems to apply to it preeminently. More, much more, is there in it of genius than in the second part, of the genius peculiar to Goethe. But a work may abound in genius, and yet fall short, as a whole, of the magic test; and "Faust," some passages of noble poetry notwithstanding, is rather an abortive work of genius, a splendid attempt, than a work of genius, at least of the higher order. We can only regret that inexorable limitations of space forbid even the most succinct outline of "William Meister's Apprenticeship," the best-known of Goethe's prose works, a work which an extreme Goethe school would have us regard as a criticism upon life, broad, large, in a manner divine. Starting with no such vast expectation, we start well. Goethe's narrative vein, if not the best in the world, meets our just expectation. We do not find William's account of the puppet-shows of his childhood the soporific that it was for Mariana. We are not prepared to smile at his fervors or exaltations, in his letter to Mariana he carries our sympathy; and the situation in the whole book which appeals most strongly to the feelings of the reader, which comes the nearest to dramatic in the genuine sense, we should say to be that where he stands under her window, unable to leave her though he has been repelled by her, outstaying the musicians whom he has hired to play for her, and seeing at last his rival, as he believes him to be, glide stealthily from her door. We ask nothing better in their way than the performances of the acrobats, the adventures of the improvised company, and the ways and wiles of Philina, of all the characters of the book the most truly alive, and in her absolute aliveness, her perfect consistency, the best, we had almost said, of Goethe's women. William's affection for Mignon (and we remark in passing that a tender feeling for childhood would seem to be one of the very good things about Goethe) heightens our interest in him. The introduction of Mignon and of the picturesque harper is felicitous to a degree, and we are in a manner indignant when we consider what a thread of gold running through the whole their story might have been, had not |