"As good
Not write as not be understood."
Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the
most part, refuse to be written. Who tells all tells falsely. There are
untold subtleties in things seen as unseen. Only the idealist touches
the core of their secret tenderly, and extracts the mystery; Nature,
like the coy Isis, disclosing these to none else. Most edifying is the
author who suggests, and leaves to his reader the pleasure and profit
of following his thought into its various relations with the whole
of things, thus stimulating him to explore matters to their issues.
The great masters have observed this fine law, and of modern scholars
especially Goethe.
For whether considered as poet or naturalist, he is our finest example
of the reverent faith in nature and tenderness of treatment that
becomes her student and devotees. And hence the rich spoils and prime
suggestions with which he charms and rewards in his books. Wooed
in this spirit, nature vouchsafed him the privilege of reading her
secrets. An eye-witness of the facts, he had the magic pen to portray
them as they rose midway between matter and mind, there caught them
lovingly and held them forth in intertwisted myths and gay marriages to
the sense and sentiment of his reader. Writing faithfully to the form
of things, he yet had a finer moral than these could deliver; the vein
of quiet mysticism in which he delighted, giving a graceful charm to
the writing. How finely his senses symbolized his thought, and his eye
how Olympian! What subtle perception of the contraries in character!
He has treated the strife of the Worst for the Best, the problem of
evil, more cunningly than any; than Moses; than the author of Job of
Uz; than Milton, the Puritan, fitted as he was alike by birth and
culture to deal with this world fable,--his faith in nature being so
entire, his rare gifts at instant command for rendering perfect copies
of what he saw, and loved to represent in its truthfulness to sense
and soul alike. A seer of Spirit, the draughtsman of guile; to him sat
the demons gladly, and he sketched their likenesses,--portraits of the
dualities he knew so well; the same with which most are too familiar;
the drama of the temptation being coeval with man, the catastrophe thus
far repeated disastrously, the striving of the Many against the One,
the world-spirit bribing the will, proffering the present delights
for the future pains. Ah! could he but have found himself in the One,
whom, with such surpassing skill he individualized, but failed to
impersonate. His aloofness from life, his residence in the Many, his
inability to identify himself with the whole of things,--this duplicity
of genius denied him free admittance to unity. Cunning he was, not wise
in the simplicity of wisdom. As the Fates conceived, so they slew him,
yet by subtleties so siren, as to persuade him of an immortality not
theirs to bestow. All he was, his Faust celebrates--admitted to heaven,
as Goethe to glory, without the fee that opens honestly its gates.
Oh, artist of beauty! Couldst thou but have been equal to portray the
Spirit of spirits as cunningly as of Matter! But it was the temper of
that age of transition, and thou wast its priest and poet.
But whatever his deficiencies, he has been one of the world's teachers,
and is to be for some time to come. The spirit and movement of an age
are embodied in his books, and one reads with a growing reverence at
every perusal of the mind that saw and has portrayed the world-spirit
so well. If not the man complete that in our admiration of his genius
we could desire, he yet was faithful to the law of his pen, and
therewith justifies his existence to mankind. Nor do I find any of his
contemporaries who made as much of this human life during his century.
"Light, more light!" With this request he passed behind the clouds into
the fullest radiance.