bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim
of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he
joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He fought their
perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from their insolent
triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were
hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the Independents,
and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free
conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the
same great object, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime
treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and
as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in general, directed
less against particular abuses than against those deeply-seated errors
on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of eminent
men and the irrational dread of innovation.
That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more
effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary
services. He never came up in the rear, when the outworks had been
carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the
beginning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable energy and
eloquence against the bishops. But when his opinion seemed likely to
prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the
crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no
more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into
those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But
it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome
vapors, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove
of his opinions must respect the hardihood with which he maintained
them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and
defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He
took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen
reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for
divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education.
His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and
fertility.
"Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui caetera, vincit
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."
It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our
time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of
every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the
English language. They abound with passages compared with which the
finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a
perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous
embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the
great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial
works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts
of devotional and lyrical rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic
language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."
We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyze
the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime
wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast
and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the
Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But
the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this
impossible.
We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the
subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of
Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory.
And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found
lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering
which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be
contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty
years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small
lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded
green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling
in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his noble
countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his
affliction. We imagine to ourselves the breathless silence in which we
should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with
which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness
with which we should endeavor to console him, if indeed such a spirit
could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his
talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest
with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of
reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which
flowed from his lips.
These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them;
nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite
them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either
the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain
indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity
which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen
Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest
scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace
and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have
not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general
consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and
superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know
how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound
of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial
fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from
the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from
the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They
are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we
envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great
poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime
works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal
with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he
endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked
down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to
bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his
country and with his fame.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.[5]
1749-1832.
GERMANY'S GREATEST WRITER.
BY FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE.
I. THE MAN.
Genius of the supreme order presupposes a nature of equal scope as the
prime condition of its being. The Gardens of Adonis require little
earth, but the oak will not flourish in a tub; and the wine of Tokay is
the product of no green-house, nor gotten of sour grapes. Given a
genuine great poet, you will find a greater man behind, in whom, among
others, these virtues predominate,--courage, generosity, truth.
[Footnote 5: From "Hours with the German Classics," by FREDERIC HENRY
HEDGE (copyright by him in 1886). With permission of Messrs. LITTLE,
BROWN, & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass.]
Pre-eminent among the poets of the modern world stands Goethe, chief of
his own generation, challenging comparison with the greatest of all
time. His literary activity embraces a span of nigh seventy years in a
life of more than fourscore, beginning, significantly enough, with a
poem on "Christ's Descent into Hell" (his earliest extant composition),
and ending with Faust's--that is, Man's--ascent into heaven. The rank
of a writer--his spiritual import to human kind--may be inferred from
the number and worth of the writings of which he has furnished the topic
and occasion. "When kings build," says Schiller, speaking of Kant's
commentators, "the draymen have plenty to do." Dante and Shakspeare have
created whole libraries through the interest inspired by their writings.
The Goethe-literature, so-called,--though scarce fifty years have
elapsed since the poet's death,--already numbers its hundreds
of volumes.
I note in this man, first of all, as a literary phenomenon, the
unexampled fact of supreme excellence in several quite distinct
provinces of literary action. Had we only his minor poems, he would rank
as the first of lyrists. Had he written only "Faust," he would be the
first of philosophic poets. Had he written only "Hermann and Dorothea,"
the sweetest idyllist; if only the "Märchen," the subtlest of
allegorists. Had he written never a verse, but only prose, he would hold
the highest place among the prose-writers of Germany. And lastly, had he
written only on scientific subjects, in that line also--in the field of
science--he would be, as he is, an acknowledged leader.
Noticeable in him also is the combination of extraordinary genius with
extraordinary fortune. A magnificent person, a sound physique, inherited
wealth, high social position, official dignity, with eighty-three years
of earthly existence, compose the framework of this illustrious life.
Behind the author, behind the poet, behind the world-renowned genius, a
not unreasonable curiosity seeks the original man, the human individual,
as he walked among men, his manner of being, his characteristics, as
shown in the converse of life. In what soil grew the flowers and ripened
the fruits which have been the delight and the aliment of nations? In
proportion, of course, to the eminence attained by a writer,--in
proportion to the worth of his works, to their hold on the world,--is
the interest felt in his personality and behavior, in the incidents of
his life. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the person is not always
proportioned to the lustre of the name. Of the two great poets to whom
the world's unrepealable verdict has assigned the foremost place in
their several kinds, we know in one case absolutely nothing, and next to
nothing in the other. To the question, Who sung the wrath of Achilles
and the wanderings of the much-versed Odysseus? tradition answers with a
name to which no faintest shadow of a person corresponds. To the
question, Who composed "Hamlet" and "Othello"? history answers with a
person so indistinct that recent speculation has dared to question the
agency of Shakspeare in those creations. What would not the old
scholiasts have given for satisfactory proofs of the existence of a
Homer identical with the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey? What
would not the Shakspeare clubs give for one more authentic anecdote of
the world's great dramatist?
Of Goethe we know more--I mean of his externals--than of any other
writer of equal note. This is due in part to his wide relations,
official and other, with his contemporaries; to his large correspondence
with people of note, of which the documents have been preserved by the
parties addressed; to the interest felt in him by curious observers
living in the day of his greatness. It is due in part also to the fact
that, unlike the greatest of his predecessors, he flourished in an
all-communicating, all-recording age; and partly it is due to
autobiographical notices, embracing important portions of his history.
Two seemingly opposite factors--limiting and qualifying the one the
other--determined the course and topics of his life. One was the aim
which he proposed to himself as the governing principle and purpose of
his being,--to perfect himself, to make the most of the nature which God
had given him; the other was a constitutional tendency to come out of
himself, to lose himself in objects, especially in natural objects, so
that in the study of nature--to which he devoted a large part of his
life--he seems not so much a scientific observer as a chosen confidant,
to whom the discerning Mother revealed her secrets.
In no greatest genius are all its talents self-derived. Countless
influences mould our intellect and mould our heart. One of these, and
often one of the most potent, is heredity. Consciously or unconsciously,
for good or for evil, physically and mentally, the father and mother are
in the child, as indeed all his ancestors are in every man.
Of Goethe's father we know only what the son himself has told us in his
memoirs. A man of austere presence, from whom Goethe, as he tells us,
inherited his bodily stature and his serious treatment of life,--
"Vom Vater hab ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes führen."
By profession a lawyer, but without practice, living in grim seclusion
amid his books and collections; a man of solid acquirements and large
culture, who had travelled in Italy and first awakened in Wolfgang the
longing for that land; a man of ample means, inhabiting a stately
mansion. For the rest, a stiff, narrow-minded, fussy pedant, with small
toleration for any methods or aims but his own; who, while he
appreciated the superior gifts of his son, was obstinately bent on
guiding them in strict professional grooves, and teased him with the
friction of opposing wills.
The opposite, in most respects, of this stately and pedantic worthy was
the Frau Räthin, his youthful wife, young enough to have been his
daughter,--a jocund, exuberant nature, a woman to be loved; one who
blessed society with her presence, and possessed uncommon gifts of
discourse. She was but eighteen when Wolfgang was born,--a companion to
him and his sister Cornelia; one in whom they were sure to find sympathy
and ready indulgence. Goethe was indebted to her, as he tells us, for
his joyous spirit and his narrative talent,--
"Von Mütterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabuliren."
Outside of the poet's household, the most important figure in the circle
of his childish acquaintance was his mother's father, from whom he had
his name, Johann Wolfgang Textor, the _Schultheiss_, or chief
magistrate, of the city. From him Goethe seems to have inherited the
superstition of which some curious examples are recorded in his life. He
shared with Napoleon and other remarkable men, says Von Müller, the
conceit that little mischances are prophetic of greater evils. On a
journey to Baden-Baden with a friend, his carriage was upset and his
companion slightly injured. He thought it a bad omen, and instead of
proceeding to Baden-Baden chose another watering-place for his summer
resort. If in his almanac there happened to be a blot on any date, he
feared to undertake anything important on the day so marked. He had
noted certain fatal days; one of these was the 22d of March. On that day
he had lost a valued friend; on that day the theatre to which he had
devoted so much time and labor was burned; and on that day, curiously
enough, he died. He believed in oracles; and as Rousseau threw stones at
a tree to learn whether or no he was to be saved (the hitting or not
hitting the tree was to be the sign), so Goethe tossed a valuable
pocket-knife into the river Lahn to ascertain whether he would succeed
as a painter. If behind the bushes which bordered the stream, he saw the
knife plunge, it should signify success; if not, he would take it as an
omen of failure. Rousseau was careful, he tells us, to choose a stout
tree, and to stand very near. Goethe, more honest with himself, adopted
no such precaution; the plunge of the knife was not seen, and the
painter's career was abandoned.
Wordsworth's saying, "the child is the father of the man,"--a saying
which owes its vitality more to its form than its substance,--is not
always verified, or its truth is not always apparent in the lives of
distinguished men. I find not much in Goethe the child prophetic of
Goethe the man. But the singer and the seeker, the two main tendencies
of his being, are already apparent in early life. Of moral traits, the
most conspicuous in the child is a power of self-control,--a moral
heroism, which secured to him in after life a natural leadership
unattainable by mere intellectual supremacy. An instance of this
self-control is recorded among the anecdotes of his boyhood. At one of
the lessons which he shared with other boys, the teacher failed to
appear. The young people awaited his coming for a while, but toward the
close of the hour most of them departed, leaving behind three who were
especially hostile to Goethe. "These," he says, "thought to torment, to
mortify, and to drive me away. They left me a moment, and returned with
rods taken from a broom which they had cut to pieces. I perceived their
intention, and, supposing the expiration of the hour to be near, I
immediately determined to make no resistance until the clock should
strike. Unmercifully, thereupon, they began to scourge in the cruellest
manner my legs and calves. I did not stir, but soon felt that I had
miscalculated the time, and that such pain greatly lengthens the
minutes." When the hour expired, his superior activity enabled him to
master all three, and to pin them to the ground.
In later years the same zeal of self-discipline which prompted the child
to exercise himself in bearing pain, impelled the man to resist and
overcome constitutional weaknesses by force of will. A student of
architecture, he conquered a tendency to giddiness by standing on
pinnacles and walking on narrow rafters over perilous abysses. In like
manner he overcame the ghostly terrors instilled in the nursery, by
midnight visits to churchyards and uncanny places.
To real peril, to fear of death, he seems to have had that native
insensibility so notable always in men of genius, in whom the conviction
of a higher destiny begets the feeling of a charmed life,--such as
Plutarch records of the first Caesar in peril of shipwreck on the river
Anio. In the French campaign (1793), in which Goethe accompanied the
Duke of Weimar against the armies of the Republic, a sudden impulse of
scientific curiosity prompted him, in spite of warnings and
remonstrances, to experiment on what is called the "cannon-fever." For
this purpose he rode to a place in which he was exposed to a cross-fire
of the two armies, and coolly watched the sensations experienced in that
place of peril.
Command of himself, acquired by long and systematic discipline, gave him
that command over others which he exercised in several memorable
instances. Coming from a ball one night,--a young man fresh from the
University,--he saw that a fire had broken out in the Judengasse, and
that people were standing about helpless and confused without a leader;
he immediately jumped from his carriage, and, full dressed as he was, in
silk stockings and pumps, organized on the spot a fire-brigade, which
averted a dangerous conflagration. On another occasion, voyaging in the
Mediterranean, he quelled a mutiny on board an Italian ship, when
captain and mates were powerless, and the vessel drifting on the rocks,
by commanding sailors and passengers to fall on their knees and pray to
the Virgin,--adopting the idiom of their religion as well as their
speech, of which he was a master.
As a student, first at Leipsic, then at Strasburg, including the years
from 1766 to 1771, he seems not to have been a very diligent attendant
on the lectures in either university, and to have profited little by
professional instruction. In compliance with the wishes of his father,
who intended him for a jurist, he gave some time to the study of the
law; but on the whole the principal gain of those years was derived from
intercourse with distinguished intellectual men and women, whose
acquaintance he cultivated, and the large opportunities of social life.
In Strasburg occurred the famous love-passage with Friederike Brion,
which terminated so unhappily at the time, and so fortunately in the
end, for both.
Goethe has been blamed for not marrying Friederike. His real blame
consists in the heedlessness with which, in the beginning of their
acquaintance, he surrendered himself to the charm of her presence,
thereby engaging her affection without a thought of the consequences to
either. Besides the disillusion, which showed him, when he came fairly
to face the question, that he did not love her sufficiently to justify
marriage, there were circumstances--material, economical--which made it
practically impossible. Her suffering in the separation, great as it
was,--so great indeed as to cause a dangerous attack of bodily
disease,--could not outweigh the pangs which he endured in his penitent
contemplation of the consequences of his folly.
The next five years were spent partly in Frankfort and partly in
Wetzlar, partly in the forced exercise of his profession, but chiefly in
literary labors and the use of the pencil, which for a time disputed
with the pen the devotion of the poet-artist. They may be regarded as
perhaps the most fruitful, certainly the most growing, years of his
life. They gave birth to "Götz von Berlichingen" and the "Sorrows of
Werther," to the first inception of "Faust," and to many of his sweetest
lyrics. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of
Charlotte Buff, the heroine of the "Sorrows of Werther," from whom he
finally tore himself away, leaving Wetzlar when he discovered that their
growing interest in each other was endangering her relation with
Kestner, her betrothed. In those years, also, he formed a matrimonial
engagement with Elizabeth Schönemann (Lili), the rupture of which, I
must think, was a real misfortune for the poet. It came about by no
fault of his. Her family had from the first opposed themselves to the
match on the ground of social disparity. For even in mercantile
Frankfort rank was strongly marked; and the Goethes, though respectable
people, were beneath the Schönemanns in the social scale. Goethe's
genius went for nothing with Madame Schönemann; she wanted for her
daughter an aristocratic husband, not a literary one,--one who had
wealth in possession, and not merely, as Goethe had, in prospect. How
far Lili was influenced by her mother's and brother's representations it
is impossible to say; however, she showed herself capricious, was
sometimes cold, or seemed so to him, while favoring the advances of
others. Goethe was convinced that she did not entertain for him that
devoted love without which he felt that their union could not be a happy
one. They separated; but on her death-bed she confessed to a friend that
all she was, intellectually and morally, she owed to him.
In 1775 our poet was invited by the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl
August,--whose acquaintance he had made at Frankfort and at Mentz, his
junior by two or three years,--to establish himself in civil service at
the Grand-Ducal Court. The father, who had other views for his son, and
was not much inclined to trust in princes, objected; many wondered, some
blamed. Goethe himself appears to have wavered with painful indecision,
and at last to have followed a mysterious impulse rather than a clear
conviction or deliberate choice. His Heidelberg friend and hostess
sought still to detain him, when the last express from Weimar drove up
to the door. To her he replied in the words of his own Egmont:--
"Say no more! Goaded by invisible spirits, the sun-steeds of time run
away with the light chariot of our destiny; there is nothing for it but
to keep our courage, hold tight the reins, and guide the wheels now
right, now left, avoiding a stone here, a fall there. Whither away? Who
knows? Scarcely one remembers whence he came."