beauty to precede freedom I trust not only to accommodate it to my inclination, but to vindicate it by principles. I hope to convince you that this matter of æsthetic culture is far less foreign to the wants than to the taste of the age; nay, more, that in order to solve this political problem in experience one must pass through the aesthetic, since it is beauty that leads to freedom." Such was also Goethe's feeling. Freedom is not to be obtained by violence or at a blow; it is to be attained through culture, through an education, an education which may seem severe and even repressive, yet which shall serve the cause of freedom in the end by delivering from the vagueness and error and confusion of life that true humanity which lies encumbered within each

one of us.

66

Gar Viele müssen Vieles hier gewinnin,
Gar manche Blüthen bringt die Mutter Erde.
Looking back at "Wilhelm Meister "
from his elder years he described it as
one of the most incalculable produc-
tions." "I myself," he continued, "can
scarcely be said to have the key to it.
People seek a central point, and that is
hard, and, after all, not good. I should
think a rich manifold life, which deploys
before our eyes, were in itself something,
without an express tendency, which in-
deed is merely for the intellect." It is
with a work of art, says an excellent
French critic, M. Montégut, as with the
productions of nature; life encroaching
and overrunning soon covers up the prin-
ciples on which the work reposes, the
vegetation of thought reduces to nothing
the seed from which it springs, form takes
possession of the idea, conceals or veils

by this tyranny of life, loses sight of his
point of departure or recognizes it only in
the results of his toil. From the first
Goethe aimed at something more than
creating a kind of theatrical Gil Blas.
His letters to Frau von Stein show that
the representation of the upper classes of
society, with their virtues and their faults,
was to form an essential part of the work.
Can we name any thought as presiding
over a work so full of various matter? In
February, 1778, just after the first book of
"Wilhelm Meister" had been brought to
a close, Goethe made a characteristic and
highly significant entry in his diary:
"Bestimmteres Gefühl von Einschränk-
ung und dadurch der wahren Ausbreit-
27
ung
tion and thereby real expansion. I will
-a more definite sense of limita-
not say with Hettner, who calls attention
to this entry, that here we have "the great
and comprehensive ground-idea of the
romance;" but it may truly be said that
here we have the most important lesson
of life learnt by Goethe during the ten
years of service at Weimar, and from
these words we can infer the spirit which
was to preside over the representative
work of that period.

Mr. G. H. Lewes and other critics have maintained that Goethe's original inten-it, and the artist himself, overmastered tion in "Wilhelm Meister was to represent the nature, aims, and art of the comedian; that this was in fact the theme of the earlier books; and that when taking his novel again in hand after a lapse of years, the author altered the design, and made the remodelled story symbolical of the erroneous striving of youth towards culture. There can be no doubt that much in the story was suggested by the busy, shifting, irregular life which had for its centre the duke's amateur theatre. But with whatever intention Goethe may have started and it would seem from a letter to Merck (August 5, 1778), and from expressions in his later letters to Schiller, that he meant to treat fully of the stage. in due time a subject which interested him more profoundly than any question respecting the theatre became uppermost. It would not have been at all wonderful, he said to Schiller, if he had got bewildered over the book; but "I have, after all, held to my original idea."* That idea assuredly is more nearly related to the actual life of man than to human life as mirrored by the artist on the boards. We may bear in mind Mr. Lewes's view as possessing a portion of historical truth, but it does not help us much to understand the more important meanings of the book.

On the other hand we must be on our guard against reducing a book so full of reality and life to an idea or an abstraction or a theory. The stream flows for many wanderers, says Goethe of his poem

"Die Geheimnisse: "

Goethe to Schiller, December 10th, 1794.

Let me make an acknowledgment to Hermann Hettner which will serve to cover a large obligation. Several years ago I Goethe, working my way as best I could gave a course of public lectures on (and one always advances in any literature except one's own with uncertainty and difficulty) from "Werther" and "Goetz "

Types Littéraires et Fantaisies Esthétiques, Wil helm Meister, pp. 153, 154.

formed into a true man; the vague and void of indefinite idealism is to be filled hereafter by a life of well-chosen, well-defined activity. He is to be educated not in the schools-it is now unhappily too late for that- but by the harder discipline of life; he is to be delivered from the splendid prison painted with idle visions into the liberty of modest well-doing.

to the "West-Eastern Divan" and the dreams of little profit; and it is out of
second part of "Faust." On reaching such stuff as this that a worthy, useful,
"Wilhelm Meister," viewing it as I did in even admirable man is to be formed. It
connection with what went before and what is enough at first if there lies within him
followed after, its meaning or meanings, the capacity of growth, the possibility of
formerly obscure, seemed to grow clearer progress. But the way is long; delusions,
and clearer as I read. Order began to snares, wanderings must be experienced;
emerge from what had been a chaotic by error he must be delivered from error.
crowd of impressions. The whole work In "Werther" Goethe had exhibited the
seemed to become intelligible, and I felt, ruin that comes upon an idealist who will
or believed that I felt, how the parts stood not and cannot abandon his dreams and
related to the whole and to each other. immoderate desire. In "Tasso " he had
Those were for me fruitful and happy shown how a masculine prudence, an en-
hours. And then I turned to that section lightened worldliness-presented in the
of Hettner's admirable" History of Litera-person of Antonio - may come to the aid
ture in the Eighteenth Century" which and deliverance of the idealist when he
deals with what he terms "the ideal of hu- cannot deliver himself.* Here in "Wil-
manity" in the classical age of German lit-helm Meister" a foolish dreamer is to be
erature, anticipating that I should have to
abandon my own view of Goethe's novel in
favor of one wider perhaps and deeper,
such as I had often gained in other matters
by trying to see things through Hettner's
eyes. It was a source of satisfaction, not
of chagrin, to find that all which I called
my own had been long in possession of
the German critic. One can hardly hope
to say a new word in studying a foreign lit-
erature; it is perhaps enough if one says
a true word. And now, when reading
"Wilhelm Meister" once again, after an
interval of several years, I find that every-
thing takes form again in the same way.
I seem to feel the same Goethean irony in
all the narrative contained in the earlier
portion of the novel, and the same Goe-
thean seriousness underlying the irony.
And for what I shall say of the book I
will make no claim to originality, but offer
it to the English reader as Hettner's criti-
cism, and bearing the authority of his
eminent name, while for my private satis-
faction I may preserve the remembrance
that at one time I had found my way
through the book, as I think aright, with

A dreamer the boy was born. As a
child he hung over his puppets, which
were for his imagination Jonathan, and
David, and Goliath: "I surrendered my
self to fantasy, rehearsed and prepared
forever, built a thousand castles in the
air, and saw not that I had shaken the
foundations of the little edifice." Now in
early manhood he creates glorious visions
out of the petty stage of his native town,
and the poor little plays represented upon
it. His spirit is too large to interest itself
in his father's merchandise; the narrow
concerns of the homestead cannot satisfy
his aspiring soul; his ideal beckons bim
away. Then in a sudden first. love the
youth seems to enter Paradise. While
her first true passion brings to Mariana a
sense of the waste and void within. her
It is a novel without a hero. When soul, a sense of the abject desert which
William first appears in this pseudo-epos, her life has been, and fills her with alarm
we see him as a kind of tamer, less inter-lest she may prove "that miserable. crea-
esting Werther; less imaginative than
Werther, less of a poet, but like Werther
vague, unpractical, self-involved, indulg-
ing to excess a shallower sensibility and
a poorer kind of passion. How he came
by the name of Meister was unknown to
Goethe, for his right name was Wilhelm
Schüler. William must start from low
beginnings. He has small sense of his
duties to others; he wastes himself in

out much external aid.

So Goethe terms his novel in a letter to Schiller. † Goethe to Schiller, December 6th 1794.

ture a woman who, inspiring. desire, does not also inspire reverence and love," William "paints a picture out of manifold ideas upon a canvas of cloud; the figures of it, to be sure, ran a good deal into one another, yet the whole had an effect the more charming on that account." He soars into the upper regions of illusion. He ardently continues his endless tale of the puppets, and does not notice that

"Tasso" was conceived at a later date than "Wilhelm Meister, but it was completed: long before the. completion of the novel.

cence

ner and William once again side by side before the close.

Before the cruel wreck of his illusion

Mariana has dropped asleep. Old Barbara, tippling wine and trading in her mistress's beauty, does not repel him. He had known order in his father's house; as a lover, William obtains a momentary not an order allied with beauty, for old glimpse of what the player's life actually Meister had turned into money the art is; he makes acquaintance with the treasures of William's grandfather, but stroller Melina. With his pleasing figure, the order of a certain bourgeois magnifi- sonorous voice, and sensitive heart, Meheavy plate, costly furniture, dull lina surely must find in the stage a noble substantial dinners. The wild disorder field for his ambition, and know the pure of the actress's room-music, fragments and elevated joy of the artist. How of plays and pairs of shoes, washes and greatly is William taken aback to discover Italian flowers, hair pins, rouge-pots, rib-that Melina, so weary is he of vulgar vagbons, books, straw-hats, all tossed about in admired confusion - gives him a pleasure which the heavy pomp of his own home had never communicated. He looks upon himself as a beggar fed upon the alms of his beloved.

abondage, longs for a little quiet home to which he may take his young bride, and could be well content with some small post of clerk or collector, from which he might draw a modest salary. As is natural, William regards Melina in no favorable light, and mentally contrasts the player unworthy of his high profession with himself and Mariana, the gifted ones, who are destined to revive the German theatre. "Amid such words and thoughts our friend undressed himself and went to bed, with feelings of the deepest satisfaction."

And then all the dream-fabric suddenly tumbles in the false supposal of Mariana's infidelity. It is the old story of Troilus in his salad days finding heaven in the love of Cressida, and forthwith dropping from heaven into the uncomely limbo of lost illusions. Only that Cressida was indeed loveless and base; whereas here Mariana is true even to the death, and William's second error of renouncing his love and purposed marriage is more grievous than his first error of unwise pas-sation, as they walk together, soon tends

sion.

A little later, a stranger, seeking a certain inn, accosts him. This mysterious person seems wonderfully familiar with William's past history, and their conver

"I

towards the most serious questions. The
stranger would fain impress upon his
young companion the danger of living
upon chances and accident, the duty of
clear-sightedness and firmness of will.
can look with satisfaction on that man
alone who knows what is of use to himself
and others, and who labors to set bounds
to his caprice and self-will. Each man
has his own fortune in his hands, as the
artist has the raw material which he is to
fashion to a certain shape. But it is with
this art as with all others; the capacity
alone is born with us; it must be learnt
and practised with incessant care." The
stranger goes his way; in the street there

William is no young hero like Troilus; but shall we despise him because he is vague, unpractical, lost in illusions? Shakespeare, while presenting the Trojan youth and his erroneous passion with finest irony, yet sees in him the promise of a great and noble warrior; and Goethe will not permit us to think slightingly of his idealist, since excellent possibilities lie unfolded within him. Over against William is set his early companion, Werner, of the same age, but already a shrewd man of business who sticks to his desk, regards his occupation as merchant with entire satisfaction, finds a daily pleasure in adding to his possessions, and yet per-is heard the sound of clarionets, French haps amid all his additions and balancings, forgets, as William puts it, the true sumtotal of life. Goethe does not despise merchandise or commerce; he sincerely honors them. It is William, not Goethe, who thinks scorn of the life of man in trade. When Werner and William are first presented to us, Werner has in several respects the advantage of his young companion; at least he has attained to more of manhood. And yet we already see that living as he does regarding the means of life as its ends he is not in the way of growth; and we shall see Wer

horns, and bassoons; it is a travelling showman's troop. In a moment the words of the monitor are clean forgotten. Here is a chance not to be lost. William will hire the musicians to perform a serenade outside Mariana's door.

When happiness and hope, dreams and aspirations, crash down together in the hap less boy's first loss of illusion, he has virtue enough to recover himself. His whole being, indeed seems to be laid waste; his bodily health gives way before the stress of his misery; but when strength returns, he destroys the relics of his past folly, he

flings his poems into the fire, he abandons | in opposition and error." The inference
the theatre, and sets himself diligently to is obvious; it is the "Fly, youth, fly!
work at the merchant's business. From which afterwards sounds in William's ears.
infinity he returns to the office-desk. Yet But for the present he chooses to confide
he has not learnt the true lesson of human rather in fate than in self-direction and
duty, for this is but the zeal of despair. self-control. "Fate," said the other, smil-
Deep in his heart new illusions begin to ing, "is an excellent but an expensive
push and sprout -illusions which are, private tutor."
indeed, but half illusions, since they give Among the figures, so lively and so real,
promise of a real life, worthier and better of William's companions appear two about
suited to his nature, if only it could be whom Goethe has thrown an air of ro-
attained, than this life of desperate self-mance, two who seem framed to suffer and
repression and enforced toil in an alien to love — Mignon and the Harper. "Mig-
field.
non," writes M. Scherer, "has been ele
The second book of "Wilhelm Meister" vated into a poetic creation; but Mignon
has been named by Hettner the romance of has neither charm nor mystery nor verita-
poetical vagabondage. Sent forth by his ble existence; nor any other poetry-let
father on the task of collecting certain us dare to say it-than a few immortal
debts, William falls in with the wandering stanzas put into her mouth." I shall not
fragments of a company of players. The consider the justice of M. Scherer's criti-
commonplace morality of gathering his cism. On the whole it is more important
father's coin counts as nothing when set to attend to the opinions of German critics
beside the opportunity of cultivating his on a German creation than to that of any
talent among a troop of theatrical gipsies. foreign critic; and there is a consensus of
There is at once something admirable and German feeling and opinion in opposition
something ludicrous in William's lofty to M. Scherer's. But here I want to indi-
views, set forth with imperturbable ear- cate the moral intention of Goethe in the
nestness, while he sits in company with creation of these two romantic figures. A
that hearty youth, Laertes, and the incom-life of emotion which cannot be converted
parable Philina, who has no more moral into action is, according to the teaching of
sense than a lively sparrow. He would Goethe, a life of disease. William is to
have the State employ the theatre in be led in the end from vain dreaming to
serious art for the elevation of the work-wholesome practical activity.
Here are
ing classes; but Philina cannot imagine two sufferers, one still a child, one seem-
statesmen except in periwigs, and "a peri-ing an old man though in years he is not
wig, let who will be the wearer, always
gives my fingers a spasmodic motion."

An

really old, who are wasted by deep but vain longing, an endless Sehnsucht, and Again at this juncture, when William is who must needs descend to the tomb as drifting into a close alliance with the wan- the victims or martyrs of desire. All dering players, a stranger appears whom, Mignon's existence is summed up in two by his dress and dignified mien, one might absorbing sentiments- -the longing for have taken for a clergyman. He and her native land, and a deep devotion to William fell into conversation on the the benefactor who has rescued her from needs and education of the artist. "Will a life of harsh, loveless, and degrading not genius save itself," asks William, servitude, a devotion which can never at"from the results of its own errors? Will tain the satisfaction which it needs.* it not heal the wounds which itself has in- inward fire consumes her being; when flicted?" "By no means," replies the her young heart suddenly ceases to beat, stranger, "or at best to a very small ex- she reaches the only rest attainable by one tent. Let no one think that he can con- who has become enamored of the impossi quer the first impressions of his youth. If ble. The Harper lives a life still more he has grown up in enviable freedom, sur- remote from sanity, with his gaze fixed rounded with beautiful and noble objects, forever upon the past; fixed forever upon in constant intercourse with good men, one season of intoxicating joy, cut short if he has never learnt anything which by the terror of an appalling discovery, he requires to unlearn, if his first efforts and upon that early love which he remem. have been so guided that, without break-bers with a mingled delight, horror, and ing himself of his habits, he can more remorse. It were possible for him to reeasily produce what is excellent in the new his existence and recover his moral future; then such a one will lead a purer, more perfect, and happy life, than another man who has wasted the force of his youth

See the words of her physician, in book viii., chap. iii.