'_December_, 1842.--When you were here, you seemed to think I
might perhaps have done something on the _Vita Nuova_; and the
next day I opened the book, and considered how I could do
it. But you shall not expect that, either, for your present
occasion. When I first mentioned it to you, it was only as a
piece of Sunday work, which I thought of doing for you alone;
and because it has never seemed to me you entered enough into
the genius of the Italian to apprehend the mind, which has
seemed so great to me, and a star unlike, if not higher than
all the others in our sky. Else, I should have given you
the original, rather than any version of mine. I intended to
translate the poems, with which it is interspersed, into plain
prose. Milnes and Longfellow have tried each their power at
doing it in verse, and have done better, probably, than I
could, yet not well. But this would not satisfy me for the
public. Besides, the translating Dante is a piece of literary
presumption, and challenges a criticism to which I am not sure
that I am, as the Germans say, _gewachsen_. Italian, as well
as German, I learned by myself, unassisted, except as to the
pronunciation. I have never been brought into connection
with minds trained to any severity in these kinds of elegant
culture. I have used all the means within my reach, but my not
going abroad is an insuperable defect in the technical part
of my education. I was easily capable of attaining excellence,
perhaps mastery, in the use of some implements. Now I know,
at least, _what I do not know_, and I get along by never
voluntarily going beyond my depth, and, when called on to do
it, stating my incompetency. At moments when I feel tempted to
regret that I could not follow out the plan I had marked
for myself, and develop powers which are not usual here, I
reflect, that if I had attained high finish and an easy range
in these respects, I should not have been thrown back on my
own resources, or known them as I do. But Lord Brougham should
not translate Greek orations, nor a maid-of-all-work attempt
such a piece of delicate handling as to translate the _Vita
Nuova_.'
Here is a letter, without date, to another correspondent:
'To-day, on reading over some of the sonnets of Michel Angelo,
I felt them more than usual. I know not why I have not read
them thus before, except that the beauty was pointed out to me
at first by another, instead of my coming unexpectedly upon
it of myself. All the great writers, all the persons who have
been dear to me, I have found and chosen; they have not been
proposed to me. My intimacy with them came upon me as natural
eras, unexpected and thrice dear. Thus I have appreciated, but
not been able to feel, Michel Angelo as a poet.
'It is a singular fact in my mental history, that, while I
understand the principles and construction of language much
better than formerly, I cannot read so well _les langues
méridionales_. I suppose it is that I am less _méridionale_
myself. I understand the genius of the north better than I
did.'
Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets,--for to
Ariosto she assigned a far lower place,--Alfieri and Manzoni, among
the new. But what was of still more import to her education, she had
read German books, and, for the three years before I knew her, almost
exclusively,--Lessing, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Novalis, and, above
all, GOETHE. It was very obvious, at the first intercourse with her,
though her rich and busy mind never reproduced undigested reading,
that the last writer,--food or poison,--the most powerful of all
mental reagents,--the pivotal mind in modern literature,--for all
before him are ancients, and all who have read him are moderns,--that
this mind had been her teacher, and, of course, the place was filled,
nor was there room for any other. She had that symptom which appears
in all the students of Goethe,--an ill-dissembled contempt of all
criticism on him which they hear from others, as if it were totally
irrelevant; and they are themselves always preparing to say the right
word,--a _prestige_ which is allowed, of course, until they do
speak: when they have delivered their volley, they pass, like their
foregoers, to the rear.
The effect on Margaret was complete. She was perfectly timed to it.
She found her moods met, her topics treated, the liberty of thought
she loved, the same climate of mind. Of course, this book superseded
all others, for the time, and tinged deeply all her thoughts. The
religion, the science, the Catholicism, the worship of art, the
mysticism and dæmonology, and withal the clear recognition of moral
distinctions as final and eternal, all charmed her; and Faust, and
Tasso, and Mignon, and Makaria, and Iphigenia, became irresistible
names. It was one of those agreeable historical coincidences, perhaps
invariable, though not yet registered, the simultaneous appearance
of a teacher and of pupils, between whom exists a strict affinity.
Nowhere did Goethe find a braver, more intelligent, or more
sympathetic reader. About the time I knew her, she was meditating
a biography of Goethe, and did set herself to the task in 1837. She
spent much time on it, and has left heaps of manuscripts, which are
notes, transcripts, and studies in that direction. But she wanted
leisure and health to finish it, amid the multitude of projected works
with which her brain teemed. She used great discretion on this point,
and made no promises. In 1839, she published her translation of
Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of
Eckermann since published in London, by Mr. Oxenford. In the Dial,
in July, 1841, she wrote an article on Goethe, which is, on many
accounts, her best paper.