PICTURES OF THE MOIU f tNT1EQCTL A SELECTED - ABRIDGEMENT OF CRITICAL ESSAYS BY THOMAS CARLYLE. EDITED BY CHARLES C. D)AWSON. ' Carlyle, whose transcendent powers were welcomed in thieir ini fancy by Goethe, long years amo was recognised by statesllmen aInd thinkers in both hemispheres as the most remarkable of living meII. A hundred years hence, perhaps, people at.large will blegin to undertstand how vast a man has been among them. For a really great maii has to create the tastQ with which he is to be enjoyed."-- imuou-.. EAST SAGINAW, MICH(I1. CHAIIS. C. DAWSON. 1870. I -N 1J N:P, 1) B ~ ~Y ~DAWSON' CONTENTS& SIGNS OF THE TIMES. G-ERMAN LITERATURE G.rO~tHE............ BURN's............ BOSWEjLL'S LIFE OF JOHINSON CHIARACTERISTICS...... VOLTAIRIE MIRABEAU_ SCOTT............ DIDEROT CORN-LAW kHYMES...... 29 12 7 168k * 1919 231 261 288 306 DEATH OF THlE REV. EDWARD IRVING1.1. 318 THE XQXJ-KX1TX.LL'RTft 0 SIGNS OF THE TIMES. IT is no very good symptom either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in prophecy. Happy men are full of the present, 1'or its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Know'st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason; Work'st thou well To-day, for worthy things? Then calmly wait the Morrow's hidden season, And fear not thou, what hap soe'er it brings! But man's "large discourse of reason" will look "before and af-' ter;" and, impatient of the "ignorant present time," will indulge in anticipation far more than profits him. Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour, but paints yet wuore glorious triumphs, on the cloud-curtain of the, future. The case, however, is still worse with nations." For here the prophets are not one, but many; and each incites and confirms the other; so that the prophetic fury spreads wider and wider, till at last even Saul must join in it. For there is still a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual delirium of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of' many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of* 10 10 TIlE MoA N NT'fijAVCfV. their hodjlly 'senses;while. then mo t (dilul fiie nbelievin'.r heartý icitltlike, the, re II' he ti00frna ce, N Iti i, N(A ( ast a ttm ti11.I s 'x'osa tio fikl tuci, ihý P. 'ColI Ainiotenie o(f 8Syimt pathyiy h been so 1ai ci the k n eon's' ''4of Tri oh 1and IV')t11,1 )lI( s0 Citen tie I lin] to~ltr's I 1(-1dofA~X akoAmciie*and Fc) II iy _'N soltirv rlnisere'nLlf1t, >týICCe)Y 'lilY oolihtry a1411 IIXX 011(1veTitim-'O n SU-h wtos iiI ''n U 'im asI I 11 e ( ifftii I I of saile Iion ahve. iii ~ ~ ~ ~ Il Z11ieti'l(11''0(41. i iii sotol \xStd ii. itneOss fLOI c ~(' t "tI Iit 1011 I 'Yii~ifl WII)Icl~i)Ilediciik -it] blioodi tidarrn(alli id ti ii w'h iC1,i'oi (111 %1 ert taiid with 1d 0. p ( at~ ~ i 0i - '"tU i y x is 1]mno rol ection Icaiuamst sIlct xislt ItJ,- 0i'io'i i ii( chlinat, rui. The ~NvewPi! ",i iond huln 'iii lbpiV- xstL lor 3 br niontils Wiiiiitthe hori -1,i'S Oi all1 iii (O1i( 0'idl tl:1hauiastts, the d(ilynihad lttmiiy DiWII'CWtiiOC tli A f ýtho E 4 I)"rthen suddeal bothinokshim that fie is 0uJ1- ' 0 xC 1),ii+tteIV 'rcys Olilt t lud 1the hiiisti'yof' that. so tlal 1-1S bhci-'l 1him likewna P iph'lt('1i deam, tNelradily dmit ftia't flt: ifl'esert isatoi imiporiltaiit ine;is,ill prcei t~e cos-irily The. poorý,st I)'y ithatpasses over Its is 'lhe eee1fhitx ofl t l 1-oe it is ro tdc up (f' urrents flthtiso hoi 01tile rem no t4 1 i t, oIt nid flow onwar ds into tile remotest Future, AVýwre nc ote -iiie indefde oukid,we dýCrisrotr11iV the,signus of 01111 oWnI tilu i(:111d byh,l oYV ti'aetofits wavnits tind:nox vau't,-4es, wisely adjttst 0iii111 OV. )ýitO ioi~liill itP t.1 1't s then, iiiu tt 1 -,d of"'(pizirig 'dly- it;ith le )bscn5 'cit oAct'nec )ook c( tIiil'laroulndlus, for (a liftle, 0o1 the polp, eX_ 01ic~ii" ~ ~ ~:y xlide'pu i, 0i1o' Of' it5 lstle.hiraii O au, icid e a i trc dc.rly rexe~al thaoetVes whereby cour mvti 'in.'m0MStO (it. O,)i Ol~l- -nintenilns 5and. endeavourt, ini it, nfy l,-; o so i',ýwmcleaiti. 'ii W' ~tt~~ed t i i'itcZ' hi -e 0of oiii'5by-any sin~cr ):"-elai1,0111houbo to a nipi cato Cell iit,1ol "In Ueroicca1, lIw otionai1 Uhleotli (io X~i' 11Moral ' ii 'hiox iall!oti r, the Mlechan~tical PAIcIif 44.AI A o, Z7ii' i ~tV utadad nal ýiscie Of thiat -W\o,.t the ac ew'ichl withi it~s whole ilidi-vided mighit (9orwttCrd's, te"t'tces m ii~ rq tic6 ' sto iec-at kart of' adopting means to fen0I d INothiir; s nw (itone' ircctly,, or by iaiid; all is b; ruleý 11111 cadlculated cointrivxance.For flt sim-plest operation, some lhelps, Imud ~ ~ ~ ~ om cWOpiineis5(1 unuing1 u"rbbrevilltuig process is 1(1 SIAN-S OF THE TIMES. 11 readiness. Our old modes of'exertion tire all discredited, and thrown aqside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven fi-om his workcshiop, to mnake room flor a speedier, inianimiate one. The sailor fuirls hiis sail, and bids a st~rong, uinwearied servant, on vaporous WincrS, bear hilylthj~)jrough te wi e PliTheFire~kinlg has, visited the fiabub ens East and-I(Itjle geniujs of'the?Cajpe!, were- there any Camloculs now to singo it, has againI been aiariaedl, n(1 with fiar stranger thunders than 0-ama's, For a.ll ea~rthilv u(1-dfor some unearthly purposes, weo have machines and mee~iuic inietther-ances, We war with ruda N~ature 'mdl h1-)v ur resi'stless II Fleli s5come Off' alwNNays vietorious, and Iunded wNNith spolls. XArliat iwonderfull accessions Ii mxolthus been luade, anld(i11arcstill m11akino' to the phvsical pimxxcr of' Rm-inid; h10W Ilunch bettler fcdl clothed, andi in Call oLLNiCUtward especis. nwCc--111odated, umen now are, or minght. be, by a given (Iuantity o.' labour, IS ca gvac~te~ful retlectionl which Thbrees itself on every onLe. Wa ntoo, this caddition of' powerI' s intiromimcingr into the Social. Sy Olem- how wvealth ha',' mnore tand more, inc-reasýed. l.Uandat fthe,sametue IiI rithei ad itself' m-ore and muore into imasseý,s,1stranigely altering He ld 011 relatIons, anid incr-. eatsing t fimedstnebetween the rich and tepoor, wýill beI atIques t ion for Polh ical icmomi~iiits, -L(I (1 1 ic11ch (1 L L omuplex anti inipo(-rtanIt onle than11anny ieylkiv' vt npar-(ýed with.But lui'~thesa mo11atters flor fthe pres-enlt, lt. in o0,)ýervc how ftime iicellhilii ii o 11ias 01 on:1 timme has (Tiff! 1,74Aitself, ii to pm eother i pox inces ot thie, xtuaiaal andi jmlysical aloime is, ma-'mnalaaoIe by In."cluinery hbut tia mnter-iiai and~ spirit~umalsIo. HIeretoo, o I fohe'wI,0 is politun o0 iscours, othing is 1 Ii to mc cbyi;lad ld,01(1 iimt ad methiods. Lvcry'thming ha,(s itls C111.iuiaaly devisedIinpinme ints, 0pie estahilishied aRpparmtils,it is -no.t (do1mie ind bt lby ifltliiniery. UTims iwe havýe mcinel sc for Edlucation aiatin a~nd other nmachine-svstemin, ivionitorsmas, 1(1emlms. inStrIIetioIm, fltht Imysterious comnuitmnin' of* XV isdlomiu vt Ii lirorancce, is1nolonoger an indeq'mnable testiengixioces.,, requiriiig a studly of' ind~ividual apiue, an a 1)inilpetucaml variation of' meatns and methlods, to "Ittain the sam-le endi hut asecue, uiversal. taih-hradbusin-ess, to be cýonductedl ill the (gross, by p1(pe11ev lnc"ball sill. xvith schintellect, as conies to hand. Timemi. we laNve Religions nitichmies, of' all iluag~iiable vr icties;time Bible Society, proflessing a ftf'kmr highler and hecavenlly structure, is found, on inquiry, to be caltogether an earthly contrivance, supported by collection of moneys, by fomnentingr of vanities, by 12 THE MODERN INTELLECT. puffery, intrigue, and chicane; and yet, in effect, a very excellent machine for converting the Heathen. It is the same in all other departments. HIas any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do, they can nowise proceed at once, and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery they were hopeless, helpless; a colony of Hindoo weavers squatting amid our cotton factories. Mark, too, how every machine must have its moving power, in some of ihe great currents of society: every little sect among us, Utilitarians, Unitarians, Universalists, Phrenologists, must each have its Periodical, its monthly or quarterly Magazine,-hanging out, like its windmill, into the "gale of popular favour," to grind meal for the society. With individuals, in like manner, natural strength avails little. No individual hopes to accomplish the poorest enterprise singlehanded, and without mechanical aids he must make interest with some existing corporation, and till his field with their oxen. In these days, more emphatically than ever, "to live, signifies to unite with a party, or to make one." Philosophy, Science, Art, Literature, all depend on machinery. No Newton, by silent meditation, now discovers the system of the world from the falling of an apple; but some quite other than Newton stands in his Museum, his Scientific Institution, and behind whole batteries of retorts, digesters, and galvanic piles imperatively " interrogates Nature,"- who, however, shows no haste to answer. In defiect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and Mozarts, we have Academies of Painting, Sculpture, Music; whereby the languishing spirit of Art may be strengthened by the more generous diet of a Public Kitchen. Literature, too, has its Bookselling mechanism, its Trade dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge subterranean pulling bellows; so that books are not only printed, but in a great measure, written and 'obld, by machinery. National cultare, spiritual benefit of all sorts, is under the sanme managoement. No Queen Christina, in these times, needs to send for her Descartes; no King Frederic for his Voltaire, and painfully nourish him with pensions and flattery: but any sovereign of taste, who wishes to enlighten his people, has only to impose a tax, and with the proceeds establish Philosophic Institutes. IIeuce the many Royal and Imperial Societies, Literary, Scientific, Artistic, which SIGNS OF TJIE TIIES. 1 13 front us in all capital cities, like so many well-finished hives, to which it is expected the stray agencies of 'Wisdom will swarm of their own accord, and hive and make honey. In like manner, among ourselves, when it is thought that religion is declining, we hliave only to vote a million's worth of bricks an(d mortar, and build new church.es. In Ireland, it seems, they have gone still farther; having actually estaldished a '"Penny-a-week Punrgatory Society! " Thus does the Genius of' Mechanism stand llby t o hie~l p e inl all difihctltices and einergencies; and, with his iron back, be(ris all our burdens. These things, which vwe state lightly enough here, are yet of' deep import, and indicate a a mirghlty ch''n in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regtulates not o0ur modes of action alone, but our modes of' thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as wvell as in h mnd. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, - for Mechanism of' one sort or other, do they hope and struggl'e. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of' a mechanical character. We may trace this tendency, e think, very distinctly, in all the great manifestations of iour time; in its intellectual aspect, the studies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its practical aspects, its politics, arts, religion, morals; in the whole so urces and throughout the whole currents, of its spiritual, no less than its material activity. Consider, for example,f the state of Science cdgecrally, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, thatli tihe Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, wh ile the PIy iýcalu are Ieng'rossing, every day, more respect and attention. In minost of the nations. there is now no such thing as a Sciencie of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of i matter. The French were the first to desert this school of Metaphysics,,and since the days of' Malebranche, Pascal, De-artes, Fenclon, their highest Names have been1 found in the department of Pihysics. Among ourselves, the Philosophy of Mind, after a rickety infancy, which never reached the vigour of manhood, fell suddenly into decay, languished., and finally died out, with its last amiable cultivator, Professor Stewart. In no nation but Germany has any decisive effort been made in the science of Mind; not to speak of any decisive result. The science of the age, in short, is physical, clhemical, t4 '4THE?4NODLIINTINTELLECT. pin siolo~gi(al, arid, iii all silapes, ledl~( 11 lt LI Our 0favourite "Mfatht't si lie 16u-11ly prized1 expiii~mtant (Xi'01tie tothe,'Obýr Scelenees, u I - fI flr n oe iueelvieci( W heat 1aidervaiiitill th -adiil eut wviljeti at apoveeilmos y means o(A it, wema revurnkthat. AmrAuiinds andilalI Ioeitld 1not have read tMe M1)1chna w, Ovie0But I w u 1)((iifhit i' wold I lie wholý)e Irei(di Ill Stitiite 50w1v11) 0 1 1, ilVtlat aiii r (-0(1 d pai I iizes O ab ew 111It 1 bomst 101 y tiii I Ow l O 10'iii t warti u. iid lili ii it i eti shas;d 'vii;' d~ i ~not u 1 1)huim!nplliivoy(0 btueiiad is 'iiamv ie d'ii' d' 11etviiie isD001 ('V(illi cii(it (ILI Oimald (Iiigile5 inor ii 1le 0 l 11AeA bheyae 'vie edit a I iioýtlvy 0f whatiNlt SacA To! 1101it 1d. tO But thu gr'iiii -ecret,ý()f N emosstmiig an een ivi, o4the A,1liud's vjt~i d or vlfita(lepenlduuei(I(teMatter, i A, m O 010 livstriotis rehvial ft)E Timane Spac,(W(Ad. t1e1) W i'ePC'( re liiti iith in uiteBOOM(le'"eOtmuielicq' (U1 illthese il1(I'IHAE:MA0,1(eiiimit, to Jiaie the si nihlest ('o-1itictIOUl withiidw1ill. lint in lie 11'ter I iamdmc-aieaIIIPll dirci'elonI he FI ureii 'ae ''tice IR t l it vW I b911Si Cleli 1)v thuit(1,JO iluiJbtS lthat 10103 hw 1cigi are--it.py( Iia (W.1Qll jjt d. 011 sltusii 1 Jj~j)ujye tit(, gat ii)est And im t im l A tisl lae h ltletlihlt ftt jaut, a it 1]1,aat-I,- iw 1,~11Oil211 a 1." t~rbeidifhusiim ( 1tsealit aul aewEllstim! A, man-'oeed iitleaditee ),; luit, exeept thee mnterliuti sheeonv. wit syplimlil, ew tt to thye ilulvard 1WO'~1it th,, iev ie [-ILly)ou tnhe H11t 1Otittil eblulo d ii!hiralb(ighi the otwarud ta, llicii iotwa SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 1 cannot be irivestigatte inl nd understod mnechanically cannot be in,_ ve~stigratedl andl. understood -,tt 1all. 'e advert the mnore particularlyto theCse inltelleetunl (1propensý;i1ti I as to prom-inlent sx iptomis of our1 agfe, be-cause Opiniiont is at -III times d(lobiNy t01 o JAetiou, firSt Ias caUlse, then tfis effect;anl, i he,spWTIlativ eix deilanaxrofCanmag t111 0011 thrf re (nc ison tl'.INhe loI, theibes t indieations of its pi,4ne~N'owhelre, for examutplist itli deep. almo211st emlieliisive faiith wve 1have, inl Mreehcanlis, h11 11-1 ibk0tiete'i ie 1 Politicsof' this, time. Civil govermneutontdoes, b1wits nattireic iadelinachtuithat isimechainic~al, ut(.d musl ) t be tieit eI aeordiit'gV 'WAvete in it 'didin orinari bo gnaCIT, teIi/ahieof'So( 1,ndt-iiLot it a IInl. wheel f'ron.Ai141. 1,h1h1ab1)1iv(Oteli',ichiniesminnst der~ive or to which) they nus" 1altipt, thir iimovem iticiti(Coinsideir((dliiiicly as alit etaiphor,.1ll1this is A'xx (110oti01i;butithere, 'p it so ninny vother crte,ýos tite 11 flotn. Iitmildtis t'( tit ttfin to a. ll id tile slotidow wAe have 'n tonlv evoked sa tteri b' hafoie 11ii iii wNill mot depa!t at oni' Doiddiniig. Cmci imentinct iiofiidA. iiti(also ftIt i iat; ict mcchtti(at, aiid etuii'ot bce wet~~ c~h:iitw a dUN ot: of'ýrielilatter ti nith, as ajpp eat's to usý tht -I')oli~cad sjpc(UI itoion oi'0l exeria~tios OfL`olti tinmearc takincr less anid CWI " (111 Nay, inlthe very oiit.eV0eli'migt notce the mn ihtv intterest, tmnleii iii ~ '1 io J1?(1c i cina selffthe, simof '(W t mceiahicmal wige The10-vh'u1(e d11eett'1T~tlOf'.,( iycv(oi-nitti tak-es ths irectioi Plo(, G.e0e,1) strolý-fcI ), of iS'tlvýed itt ions i ua Cy wicha Ii ( it on ienitt ý cred,trictiac' nrof' e itcls tion. -a. properVchok lipott the e-:xeenti'x,a a wxanitinaten O te udci ii s ohflit i itt mo rrfot hunmmOh it ppincm_4,s The Plhilosophet oftthis a'ge is ntot a S'oemuates.,'a Plato,'i11(Hooker,0orlaylor, Nwlto iflital'. ii eon meithtle ite(iait '111 itni wrltotmoalgodtc-sthe oreit trutht that ou), ltsptn o lafld on thie it''it 'I hticlh is Nwithntai. a nilnot on the Cire1ins'krics '(1(15 'lit'i 'i" c wliout its; but in Aila Smith and ti 1.t('IlyIV entl '''i. xx o hO tiefly iiieuic4ates thte ý.Cvon~e of thlis'-11"flit oir 8t pi'xltesS-de'eied,-cenitrely ott exitern d 0( circumstincecs;niay, that0 'the strength fotld dignity of' the ntii.l wAithin its is itself' tme creature and1(1cosiseqitenec of thlese. W~ere the laws, the ogovernmient, in (good order, all wNere well wxitli us; the, rest would care fo(r itself'! Dissenttienlts from this opintiont. expressed dir implied1 are now rarely to Ito iAet vv'ith; widelly and i'd nrily as mi diffelr in its application, the 16 TIHE MODE )i)tN T INTEIECT. principle is admitted by all. Equally mchanjical andl of equal simplicity, are the methods proposed by both I)partics for completing or securing this all-suflicient perfection of arrangement. It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws. LThus is the Body-politic more thcan ever worshipped and tended; but tile Soul-politic less than ever. Love of country, in any high or generMous Vse, in any other thtan an almost animal sense, or mere halbit, has little importance attached to it ill such reforms, or in the opposit ion showN them. Men aire to be guide(1 on ly by their self-interests. Good overnment is a g ood balancing of these; and, except a keen eve and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing muaclhine;" to the contented, a ' miachine for securing property." Its duties and its faults are not those of father, but of an active Policeman. Tinis it is by thre mere condition of the maclhine; by prieservinig it ulltouched, or else by ire-constructintr it, and oilinu it anew, that man's salvation as a sociali i)eIln is to be insured and indefinitely promoted. Contrive the fobric of la'w ''ight, and wlithout frthier effort on your part, that divine spirit of Freedom, whichli all hearts venerate and lonr for, AN-ill of' herself come to inhabit it; and undU er her healing wingis exvcry noxious influence will wither, every good and salutary one morne and more expand. Nay, so tidevoted are we to this principle, tand at the saune time so curiously m-echanical, that a new trade, speci'ally grlounded on it, has arisen among us, under the ttnme of' " Codification," or code-nmaking in the abstract; whereby any people, for a reasonable consideration, may be accommodated with a patent code,- more easily than curious individuals witih patent breeches, for the people does not needl to be mrneatsuredl first. To us, who live in the midst of all this, and see continually the faith, hope, anlld pretice of evelry one founded on Mechanism of one kind or) other, it is apt to seem quite natural, anld`as if it could never have lbeen otherwise. Nevertheless, if we recollect or reflect a little, we shall find both that it has been, and might again be, otherwise. The domain of' Mechanism, -me aning thereby political, ecclesiastieal, or other outward establishments, - was once considered as embracing, and we-are persuaded can at any time embrace but a limited portion of man's interests, and by no means the highest portion. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 17 To speak a little pedantically, there is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. Theie is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate "motives," as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment. Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as Moralists, Poets, or Priests, did, without neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with the Dynamical; applying themselves chiefly to regulate, increase, and purify the inward primary powers of man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake. But a wide difference is manifest in our age. For the wise men, who now appear as Political Philosophers, deal exclusively with the Mechanical province; and occupying themselves in counting up and estimating men's motives, strive by curious checking and balancing, and other adjustments of Profit and Loss, to guide them to their true advantage: while, unfortunately, those same "motives" are so innumerable, and so variable in every individual, that no really useful conclusion can ever be drawn from their enumeration. But though Mechanism, wisely contrived, has done much for man, in a social and moral point of view, we cannot be persuaded that it has ever been the chief source of his worth or happiness. Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him, and still continues to him. Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founder* of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the R9ger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any endowed society, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethoc ught, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Sci2 18 THE MODERN INTELLECT. ence and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift: often even a fatal one. These things rose up, as it were by spontaneous growth, in the free soil and sunshine of Nature. They were not planted or grafted, nor even greatly multiplied or improved by the culture or manuring of institutions. Generally speaking, they have derived only partial help from these: often have suffered damage. They made constitutions for themselves. They originated in the Dynamical nature of man, and not in his Mechanical nature. Or, to take an infinitely higher instance, that of the Christian Religion, which, under every theory of it, in the believing or the unbelieving mind, must be ever regarded as the crowning glory, or rather the life and soul, of our whole modern culture: How did Christianity arise and spread abroad among men? Was it by institutions, and establishments, and well-arranged systems of mechanism? Not so; on the contrary, in all past and existing institutions for those ends, its divine spirit has invariably been found to languish and decay. It arose in the mystic deeps of man's soul; and was spread abroad by the "preaching of the word," by simple, altogether natural and individual efforts; and flew, like hallowed fire, from heart to heart, till all were purified and illuminated by it; and itsheavenly light shone, as it still shines, and (as sun or star) will ever shine. through the whole dark destinies of man. Here again was no Mechanism; man's highest attainment was accomplished Dynamically, not Mechanically. Nay, we will venture to say, that no high attainment, not even any far-extending movement among men, was ever accomplished otherwise. Strange as it may seem, if we read History with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find, that the checks and balances of Profit and Loss have never been the grand agents with men; that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-pervading efforts by any computable prospect of Profit and Loss, for any visible, finite object; but always for some invisible and infinite one. The Crusades took their rise in Religion; their visible object was, commercially speaking, worth nothing. It was the boundless, Invisible world that was laid bare in the imaginations of those men; and in its burning light, the visible shrunk as a scroll. Not mechanical, nor produced by mechanical means, was this vast movement. No public dinner, with the other long train of modern machinery; no cunning reconciliation of" vested interests," was required here: only the passionate voice of one man, the rapt soul SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 19 looking through the eyes of one man; and rugged steel-clad Europe trembled beneath his words, and followed him whither he listed. In latter ages, it was still the same. The Reformation had an invisible, mystic, and ideal aim; the result was indeed to be embodied in external things; but its spirit, its worth, was internal, invisible, infinite. Men did battle, in those old days, not for Purse-sake, but for Conscience-sake. Nay, in our own days, it is no way different. The French Revolution itself had something higher in it than mere Political Change. Here, too, was an Idea; a Dynamic, not a Mechanie force. It was a struggle, though a blind and at last an insane one, for the infinite, divine nature of Right, of Freedom, of Country. Thus does man, in every age, vindicate, consciously or unconsciously, his celestial birthright. Thus does nature hold on her wondrous, unquestionable course; and all our systems and theories are but so many froth-eddies or sand-banks, which from time to time she casts up and washes away. When we can drain the Ocean into our mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in our gas-jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a steam engine, by checks, and valves, and balances. Nay, even with regard to Government itself, can it be necessary to reimind any one that Freedom, without which indeed all spiritual life is impossible, depends on infinitely more complex influences than either the extension or the curtailment of the "democratic interest?" Who is there that, taking the high "cause and effect" view, shall point out what these influences are; what deep, subtle, inextricably entangled influences they have been, and may be? For man is not? the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer: it is the noble People that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely. On the whole, Institutions are much; but they are not all. The freest and highest spirits of the world have often been found under strange outward circumstances: Saint Paul and his brother Apostles were plitically slaves; Epictetus was personally one. Forget the influences of Chivalry and Religion, and ask,--what country produced Columbus? Or, descending from virtue and heroism, to mere energy and spiritual talent: Cortes, Pizarro, Alba, Ximenes? The Spaniards of the sixteenth century were indisputably the noblest nation of Europe; yet they had the Inquisition and Philip II.. They have the same government at this day, or lately had, and are the lowest nation. The 20 THE MODERN INTELLECT. Dutch, too, have retained their old constitution; but no Siege of Leyden, no William the Silent, not even an Egmont or De Witt, any longer appears among them. In England, also, where much has changed, effect has nowise followed cause, as it should have done: two centuries ago, the Commons Speaker addressed Queen Elizabeth on bended knees, happy that the virago's foot did not even smite him; yet the people were then governed by Statesmen, and we are not; they had their Shakspeare and Philip Sidney, where to-day we may complain that true Poetry and noble Virtue are almhnost extinct. These and the like facts are so familiar, the truths which they preach so obvious, and have in all past times been so universally believed and acted on, that we should almost feel ashamed for repeating them; were it not that, on every hand, the memory of them seems to have passed away, or at best died into a faint tradition, of no value as a practical principle. To judge by the loud clamour of our Constitution-builders, Statists, Economists, directors, creators, reformers of Public Societies; in a word, all manner of Mechanists, from the Wagon-maker up to the Code-maker; and by the nearly total silvnce of all Preachers and Teachers who should give a voice to Poetry, Religion, and Morality, we might fancy either that man's Dynamical nature was, to all spiritual intents, extinct, or else so perfected, that nothing more was to be made of it by the old means; and henceforth only in his mechanical contrivances did any hope exist for him. To define the limits of these two departments of man's activity, which work into one another, and by means of one another, so intricately and inseparably, were by its nature an impossible attempt. Their relative importance, even to tle wisest mind, will vary in different times, according to the special wants and dispositions of these times. Meanwhile, it seems clear enough that only in the right coordination of the two, and the vigorous forwarding of both, does our true line of action lie. Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less inmmediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove.not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass that, in the management of SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 21 external things, we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilized ages. In fact, if we look deeper, we shall find that this faith in Mechanism has now struck its roots deep into men's most intimate, primary sources of conviction; and is thence sending up, over his whole life and activity innumerable stems,-fruit-bearing and poison-bearing. The truth is, men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and hope, and work only in the Visible; or, to speak it in other words: This is not a Religious age. Only the material, the immediately practical, not the divine and spiritual is important to us. The infinite, absolute character of Virtue lhas passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable. Worship, indeed, in any sense, is not recognised among us, or is mechanically explained into Fear of pain, or Hope of pleasure. Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and, we think, it will do all other things. We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than a metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also. The strong mechanical character, so visible in the spiritual pursuits and methods of this age, may be traced much farther into the condition and prevailing disposition of our spiritual nature itself. Consider, for example, the general fashion of Intellect in this era. Intellect, the power man has of knowing and believing, is now nearly synonymous with Logic, or the mere power of arranging and communicating. Its implement is not Meditation, but Argument. " Cause and effect" is almost the only category under which we look at, and work with, all Nature. Our first question with regard to any object is not, What is it? but, How is it? We are no longer instinctively driven to apprehend, and lay to heart, what is Good and Lovely, but rather to inquire, as onlookers, how it is produced, whence it comes, whither it goes. Our favourite Philosophers have no love and no hatred; they stand among us not to do, nor to create anything, but as a sort of Logic-mills to grind out the true causes and effects of all that is done and created. To the eye of a Smith, or a Hume, all is well that works quietly. An Order of Ignatius Loyola, a Presbyterianism of John Knox, a Wickliffe, or a Henry the Eighth, are simply so many mechanical phenomena, cauaed or causing. 22 THE MODREN INTELLECT. The intelectual Braggart of our day differs much from his pleasant predecessors. He boasts chiefly of his irresistible mental vision, his " dwelling in the daylight of truth," and so forth; which, on examination, turns out to be a dwelling in the rush-light of " closetlogic," and a deep unconsciousness that there is any other light to dwell in; or any other objects to survey with it. Wonder, indeed. is, on all hands, dying out: it is the sign of uncultivation to wonder. Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high, majestic Luther to lead it, and forthwith he sets about " accounting" for it! HIow the "circumstances of the time" called for such a ciaracter, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the " circumstances of the time" created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have performed the like himself! For it is the "force of circumstances" that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a "Machine," and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mixd. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think, is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is strolnger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men, that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand. But to us, in these times, such considerations rarely occur. We enjoy, we see nothing by direct vision; but only by reflection, and in anatomical dismemberment. For every Why, we must have a Wherefore. We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer withouiits scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline, and fill. Of our " Theories of Taste," as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is " explained," made mechanically visible, from "Association," and the like, why should we say anything? Hume has writ SIGNS Of THE TIMES'. 28 "ten us a " Natural History of Religion;" in which one Natural: Religion, all the rest are included. Strangely, too, does the general feeling coincide with Hume's in this wonderful problem; for whether his "Natural History" be the right one or not, that Religion must have a Natural History, all of us, cleric and laic, seem to be agreed. He indeed regards it as a Disease, we again as Health; so far there is a difference; but in our first principle we are at one. To what extent theological Unbelief, we mean intellectual dissent from the Church, in its view of Holy Writ, prevails at this day, would-be a highly important, were it not, under any circumstances, an almost impossible inquiry. But the Unbelief, which is of a still more fundamental character, every man may see prevailing, with scarcely any but the faintest contradiction, all around him; even in the Pulpit itself. Religion in most countries,more or less in every country, is no longer what it was, and should be,- a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of Man to his invisible Father, the fountain of all Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and revealed in every revelation of these; but f6r the most part, a wise, prudential feeling grounded on a mere calculation; a matter, as all others now are, of Expediency and Utility: whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus Religion, too, is Profit; a working for wages;-- not Reverence, but vulgar Hope or. Fear. Many, we know, very many, we hope, are still religious in a far different sense; were it not so, our case were too desperate: but to witness that such is the temper of the times, we take any calm observant man, who agrees or disagrees in our feeling on the matter, and ask him whether our view of it is not in general well-founded. Literature, too, if we consider it, gives similar testimony. At no former era has Literature, the printed communication of Thought, been of such importance as it is now. We often hear that the Church is in danger; and truly so it is,--in a danger it seems not to know of: for, notwithstanding its ever increasing financial power, its functions are becoming more and more superseded." The true Church of Christendom, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its News. papers. These preach to the people daily, weekly; admonishing kings themselves; advising peace or war, with an authority which only the first Reformers and long-past class of Popes were possessed of; inflicting moral censure; imparting moral encouragement, conrm solation, edification; in all ways, diligently "administering the Dis 24 THE MODERN INTELLECT. eipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition, the new Preachers somewhat resemble the Mendicant Friars of old times: outwardly full of holy zeal; inwardly not without stratagem, and hunger for terrestrial things. But omitting this class, and the boundless host of watery personages who pipe, as they are able, on so many tin whistles, let us look at the higher regions of Literature, where, if anywhere, the pure tmelodies of Poetry and Wisdom should be heard. Of natural talent there is no deficiency: a few richly-endowed individuals even give us a superiority in this respect. But what is the song they sing? Is it a tone of the Memnon Statue, breathing music as the light first touches it? A "liquid wisdom," disclosing to our sense the deep, infinite harmonies of nature and man's soul? Alas, no! It is not a matin or vesper hymn to the Spirit of all Beauty, but a fierce clashing of cymbals, and shouting of multitudes, as children pass through the fire to Molech I Poetry itself has no eye for the Invisible. Beauty is no longer the Iod it worships, but some brute image of Strength; which we may well call an idol, for true Strength is one and the same with Beauty, and its worship also is a hymn. The meek, silent Light can mould, create, and purify all Nature; but the loud Whirlwind, the sign and product of Disunion, of Weakness, passes on, and is forgotten. How widely this veneration for the physically Strongest has spread itself through Literature, any one may judge, who reads either criticism or poem. We praise a work, not as " true," but as " strong;" our highest praise is that it has "affected" us, has "terrified" us. All this, it has been well observed, is the "maximum of the Barbarous," the symptom, not of vigorous refinement, but of luxurious corruption. It speaks much, too, for men's indestructible love of truth, that nothing of this kind will abide with them; that even the talent of a Byron cannot permanently seduce us into idol-worship; but that he, too, with all his wild syren charming, begins to be disregarded and forgotten. Again, with respect to our Moral condition: here also, he who runs may read that the same physical, mechaifal influences are everywhere busy. For the "superior morality," of which we hear so much, we too, would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this "superior morality" is properly rather an "inferior criminality," produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion. This last watches over us SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 25 with its Argus eyes more keenly than ever; but the "inward eye" seems heavy with sleep. Of any belief in invisible, divine things, we find as few traces in our Morality as elsewhere. It is by tangible, material considerations that we are guided, not by inward and spiritual. Self-denial, the parent of all virtue, in any true sense of that word, has perhaps seldom been rarer; so rare is it, that the most, even in their abstract speculations, regard its existence as a chimera. Virtue is Pleasure, is Profit; no celestial, but an earthly thing. Virtuous men, Philanthropists, Martyrs, are happy accidents; their "taste" lies the right way! In all senses we follow after power; which may be called a physical pursuit. No man now loves Truth, as Truth must be loved, with an infinite love; but only with a finite love. Nay, properly speaking, he does not believe and know it, but only "thinks" it, and that" there is every probability!" He preaches it aloud, and rushes courageously forth with it,--if there is a multitude huzzaing at his back; yet ever keeps looking over his shoulder, and the instant the huzzaing languishes, he too stops short, In fact, what morality we have takes the shape of Ambition, of Honour; beyond money and money's worth, our only rational blessedness is popularity. It were but a fool's trick to die for conscience, Only for " character," by duel, or in case of extremity, by suicide, is the wise man bound to die. By arguing on the " force of circumstances," we have argued away all force from ourselves; and stand leashed together, uniform in dress and movement, like the rowers of some boundless galley. This and that may be right and true; but we must not do it. Wonderful "Force of Public Opin^ ion!" We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us, realize the sum of money, the degree of "influ* ence" it expects of us, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mous thfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us, and this, what mortal courage can front? Thus, while civil Liberty is more and more sece ured to us, our moral Liberty is all but lost. Practically considered, our creed is Fatalism: and, free in hand and foot, we are shackled in heart and soul, with far straiter than Feudal chains. Truly may we say with the Philosopher, "the deep meaning of the Laws of Mechanism lies heavy on us;" and in the closet, in the marts of business, in the temple of God, in the social circle, encumbers the whole movements of our mind, and over our noblest faculties is sprp eading a nightmare sleeps THE MODERN INTELLECT. These dark features, we are aware, belong more or less to other ages, as well as to ours. This faith in Mechanism, in the all-importance of physical things, is in every age the common refuge of Weakness and blind Discontent; of all who believe, as many will -ver do, that man's true good lies without him, not within. We are aware also, that, as applied to ourselves in all their aggravation, they form but half a picture; that in the whole picture there are bright lights as well as gloomy shadows. If we here dwell chiefly on the latter, let us not be blamed: it. is in general more profitable to reckon up our defects, than to boast of our attainments. Neither, with all these evils more or less clearly before us, have we at any time despaired of the fortunes of society. Despair, or ev. en despondency, in that respect, appears to us, in all cases, a ground. less feeling. We have a faith in the imperishable dignity of man; in the high vocation to which, throughout this his earthly history, he has been appointed. However it may be with individual nations, whatever melancholic speculators may assert, it seems a well-ascertained fact, that even from early times, the happiness and greatness of mankind at large have been continually progressive. Doubtless this age also is advancing. Its very unrest, its ceaseless activity, its discontent, contains matter of promise. Knowledge, education, are opening the eyes of the humblest; are increasing the number of thinking minds without limit. This is as it should be; for, not in turning back, not in resisting, but only in resolutely struggling forward, does our life consist. Nay, after all, our spiritual maladies are but of Opinion; we are but fettered by chains of our own forging, and which ourselves also can rend asunder. This deep, paralysed subjection to physical objects comes rot from Nature, but from our own unwise mode of viewing Nature. Neither can we understand that man wants, at this hour, any faculty of heart, soul, or body, that ever belonged to him. "He, who has been born, has been a First Man;" has had lying before his young eyes, and as yet unhardened into scientific shapes, a world as plastic, infinite, divine, as lay before the eyes of Adam himself. If Mechanisrii. like some glass bell, encircles and imprisons us, if the soul looks forth on a fair heavenly country which it cannot reach, and pines, and in its scanty atmosphere is ready to perish, -yet the bell is but of glass; "one bold stroke to break the bell in pieces, and thou art delivered!" Not the invisible world is wanting, for it dwells in man's soul, and this last is still here. Are the solemn temples in which the Divinity was SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 27 once visibly revealed among us, crumbling away? We can repair them, we can rebuild them. The wisdom, the heroic worth of our forefathers, which we have lost, we can recover. That admiration of old nobleness, which now so often shows itself in a faint Love of the Heroic, will one day become a generous emulation, and man may again be all that he has been, and more than he has been. Nor are these the mere day-dreams of fancy; they are clear possibilities; nay, in this time, they are even assuming the character of hopes. Indications we do see, in other countries, and in our own, signs infin itely cheering to us, that Mechanism is not always to be our hard taskmaster, but one day to be our pliant, all-ministering servant; thai a new and brighter spiritual era is slowly evolving itself for all men. Meanwhile, that great outward changes are in progress can be doubtful to no one. The time is sick and out of joint. Many things have reached their height; and it is a wise adage that tells us. "the darkest hour is nearest the dawn." Whenever we can gather any indication of the public thought, whether from printed books, or from political changes and tumults, the voice it utters is the same. The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deeplying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless, grinding collision of the New and the Old. The French Revolution, as is now visible enough, was not the parent of this mighty movement, but its offspring. Those two hostile influences which always exist in human things, and on the constant intercommunion of which depends their health and safety, had lain in separate masses, accumulating through generations, and France was the scene of their fiercest explosion; but the final issue was not unfolded in that country: nay, it is not yet anywhere unfolded. Political freedom is hitherto the object of these efforts; but they will not and cannot stop there. It is towards a higher freedom than mere freedom from oppression by his fellow-mortal that man dimly aims. Of this higher, heavenly freedom, which is "man's reasonable service," all his noble institutions, his faithful endeavours, and loftiest attainments, are but the body, and more and more approximated emblem. On the whole, as this wondrous planet, Earth, is journeying with his fellows through infinite space, so are the wondrous destinies embarked on it journeying through infinite time, under a higher guidAnce than ours. Go where it will, the deep HEAVEN will be around it, Therein let us have hope and sure faith. To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish ~o - 0 GERMAN LITERATURE. 29 GERMAN LITERATURE. There is, we believe, much in the present aspect of German Literature, not only deserving notice but deep consideration from all thinking men, It is always advantageous to think justly of our neighbours; nay, in mere common honesty, it is a duty; and, like every other duty, brings its own reward, Happily, too, though still a difficult, it is no longer an impossible duty; for the commerce in material things has paved roads for commerce in things spiritual, and a true thought, or a noble creation, passes lightly to us from the remotest countries, provided only our minds be open to receive it. This, indeed, is a rigorous proviso, and a great obstacle lies in it; one which to many must be insurmountable, yet which it is the chief glory of social culture to surmount. For if a man who mistakes his own contracted individuality for the type of human nature, and deals with whatever contradicts him, as if it contradicted this, is but a pedant, and with1iut true wisdom, be he furnished with partial equipments as he may, - what better shall we think of any nation that, in like manner, isolates itself from foreign influence, regards its own modes as so many laws of nature, and rejects all that is different as unworthy, even of examination. It is true, the literature and character of Germany, which, within the last century, have been more worthy perhaps than any other of our study and regard, are still very generally unknown to us, or, what is worse, misknown: but for this there are not wanting less offensive reasons. That the false and tawdry waIe; which was in all hands, should reach us before the chaste and truly excellent, which it required some excellence to recognise; that Kotzebue's insanity should have spread faster, by some fifty years, than Lessing's wisdom; that Kant's Philosophy should stand in the back-ground as a dreary and abortive dream, and Gall's Phrenology be held out to us from every booth as a reality; - all this lay in the nature of the s0 30 tHE RMOD.N 9I4TN tL9EC1 case. That many readers should draw conclusions from imperfect premises, and by the imports judge too hastily of the stock imported from, was likewise natural. But wherever German Art, in those forms of it which need no interpreter, has addressed us immediately, our recognition of it has been prompt and hearty; from Durer to Mengs, from Handel to Weber and Beethoven, we have welcomed the painters and musicians of Germany, not only to our praise, but to our affections,and beneficence. In fact, prepossessions of all sorts naturally enough find their place here. To seize a character, even that of one man, in its life and secret mechanism, requires a philosopher; to delineate it with truth and impressiveness, is a work for a poet. How then shall a traveller, to whom all characters of individual men are like sealed books, of which he sees only the title and the covers, decipher from a Railway carriage, and depict to us, the character of a foreign nation? tHe courageously depicts his own optical delusions; and so, with a few flowing strokes, paints a picture which, though it may not even resemble any possible object, his countrymen are to take for a national portrait. Nor is the fraud so readily detected: for the character of a people has such complexity of aspect, that even the honest observer may not know, after long inspection, what to determine regarding it. The figure stands before him like the tracings on veined marble,-a mass of mere random lines, and tints, and entangled strokes, out of which a lively fancy may shape almost any image. With the aid of literary and intellectual intercourse, much of this fldsehood may, no doubt be corrected: yet even here, sound judgment is far from easy; and most national characters are still, as Hume long ago complained, the product rather of popular prejudice than of philosophic insight. Meanwhile, we believe that many groundless objections prevail upon the subject of German Literature; which we have thought it might be useful were the chief of these marshalled in distinct order, and examined with what degree of light and fairness is at our disposal. In dealing with the host of objections ich front us on this subject, we think it may be convenient to range them under two principal heads. The first, as respects chiefly unsoundness or imperfection of sentiment; an error which may in general be denominated Bad Taste. The second, as respects chiefly a Wrong condition of intellect; an error which may be designated by the gcneral title tf Mysticism. GERMAN LITERATURE. 31 First, then, of the first: It is objected that the. Germans have a radically bad taste; and the spirit of the accusation seems to be somewhat as follows: That the Germans, with much national susceptibility, are still in a rather coarse and uncultivated state of mind; displaying, with the energy and other virtues of a rude people, many of their vices also; in particular, a certain wild and headlong temper, which seizes on all things too hastily and impetuously; weeps, storms, loves, hates, too fiercely and vociferously; delighting in coarse excitements, such as flaring contrasts, vulgar horrors, and all sorts of showy exaggeration. Their literature, in particular, is thought to dwell with peculiar complacency among wizards and ruined towers, with mailed knights, secret tribunals, monks, spectres, and banditti: on the other hand, there is an undue love of moonlight, and mossy fountains, and the moral sublime. Now, in all this there is a certain degree of truth. If any man will insist upon taking the above described, as his specimens of German literature, he may establish many things. By which truly we may learn that there is in that country a class of unwise beings; that many readers there labour under a degree of ignorance and mental vacancy, and read not actively but passively, not to learn but to be amused. But is this fact so very new to us? Or what should we think of a German critic that selected his specimens of.English literature from the Castle Spectre, the Monk, or the lysteries of Udolpho? Or would he judge rightly of our dramatic taste, if he took his extracts from Mr. Egan's Tom and Jerry; and told his readers, as he might truly do, that no play had ever enjoyed such currency on the stage as this most classic performance? We think not. But farther: among men of deeper views, and with regard to works of really standard character, we find, though not the same, a similar objection repeated. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, it is said, and Faust, are full of bad taste also. But we may remark that the objection would have more force, did it originate from a more mattire consideration of the subject. We have heard.:few criticisms of such works, in which the first condition of an approach to accuracy was complied with;- a transposition of the critic into the author's point of vision, a survey of the author's means and objects as they lay before himself, and a just trial of these by rules of universal application. Faust, for instance, passes with many of us for a mere tale of sorcery and art-magic: but it would scarcely be more unwise to consider Hamlet as depending for its main interest on the ghost 32 THE MODERN INTELLECT. that walks in it, than to regard Faust as a production of this sort. For the present, therefore, this objection may be set aside; and it may turn out rather that the German taste is different from ours, than that it is worse. Nay, with regard even to difference; two nations that agree in estimating Shakspeare as the highest of all poets, can differ in no essential principle, if they understand one another, that relates to poetry. Nevertheless, this opinion of our opponents has attained a certain degree of consistency with itself; the cause of this bad taste, we are assured, lies in the condition of the German authors. These, it seems, are generally very poor i the ceremonial law of the country excludes them from all society with the great; they cannot acquire the polish of drawing rooms, but must live in mean houses, and therefore write and think in a mean style. Apart from the truth of these assumptions, and in respect of the theory itself, we confess there is something in the face of it that affla icts us. Is it then so certain that taste and riches are indissolubly connected? That truth of feeling must ever be preceded by weight of purse, and the eyes be dim for universal and eternal Beauty, till they have long rested on gilt walls and costly furniture? We take the liberty of questioning the whole postulate. We think that, for acquiring true poetic taste, riches, or association with the rich, are distinctly among the minor requisites that, in fact, they have little or no concern with the matter, This we shall now endeavour to make probable. Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry judgement in Art, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence, all beauty, orders goodness, wheresoever; or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank br situation, but a finely gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration% Is culture of this sort found exclusively among the higher ranks? We believe it proceeds less from without than within, in every rank. 'The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the infinite loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the eye of the poor but from the eye of the vain, the corrupted, and self-seeking, be he poor or richl In all ages, the humble Minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing but his harp and his own free souls had intimations of those glories While to the proud Baron in his barbaric halls they were unknown. Nor GERMAN LITERATUREI 33 is there still any aristocratic monoply of judgment more than of genius: for as to that Science of Neisation, it is decidedly a subordinate accomplishment. Let us know what to love and affirm, and we shall know also what to reject and deny. As matters go, we need no man of polish to teach it; but rather, if possible, a hundred men of wisdom to show us its limits, and teach us its reverse, Such is our view of the case: But how stands it with the facts? Are the fineness and truth of sense manifested by the artist found, in most instances, to be proportionate to his wealth and elevation of acquaintance? We imagine not, Whose taste in painting, for instance, is truer and finer than Claude Lorraine's? And was not he 4 poor colour-grinder; outwardly, the meanest of menials? Where, again, we might ask, lay Shakspeare's rent-roll; and what generous peer took him by the hand and unfolded to him the "open secret' of the Universe teaching him that this was beautiful, and that not so? Was he not a peasant by birth, and by fortune something lowpr; and was it not thought much, even in the height of his reputation, that Lord Southampton allowed him equal patronage with the buffoons, jugglers, and bear-keepers of the time? Yet compare his taste, even as it respects the negative side of things; for in regard to the positive, and far higher side, it admits no comparison with any other mortals, Qcompare it, for instance, with the taste of Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself, Tried even by the nice, fastidious, and in great part false, and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it with the two parties: with the gay triumphant men of fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy? Does the latter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the former do? For one line, for one word, which some Chesterfield might wish blotted from Shakspearej are there not in the others whole pages and scenes which, with palpitating heart) he would hurry into deepest night? This, too, observe, respects not their genius, but their culture; not their appropriation of beauties, but their rejection of deformities, by supposition, the grand and peculiar result of hig breeding, The truth of the matter seems to be, that wid the culture of a genuine poet, thinker, or other aspirant to fame, the influence of rank has no exclusive or even special concern. We speak of men, who, from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements of their everyF day existence, are to form themselves into harmony and wisdom, (,nd show forth the same wisdom to others that exist along withl 84 TAR MODIMIRV I NTPLLkCT.. them. To such a man, high life, as it is called, will be a province of human life certainly, but nothing more. He will study to do it justice, and to draw instruction from it; but his light will come from a loftier region, or he wanders for ever in darkness. Still less can we think that he is to be viewed as a hireling; that his excellence will be regulated by his pay " Sufficiently provided for from within, he has need of little from without:" with food, raiment, and a homeA while the kind earth is round him, and the everlasti'g heaven is over him, the world has little more that it cangive. Is he poor? So also were Homer and Socrates; so was Samuel -Johnsoi; so was John Milton. Shall we reproach him With his pbierty, and iifer' that, because he is poor, he must likewise be w'6rthless? God forbid that the time should ever come when he too shall esteem riches another name for good I The spirit of Mammon has a wide empire; but it cannot, and must not, be worshipped in the Holy of Holies. Nay, is it not rather true, as D'Alembert has 'said, that for every man ofletters; who deserves that name, the motto and the watchword will be FVttEDOMt, TRUTH, and even this same Povtnit? And that if he fear the last, the two first can never be made sure to him! We have stated these things, to bring the question somewhat nearer its real basis t not for the sake of the Germans, Who nowise need the admission of them. The German authors are not poor; neither are they excluded from association with the Wealthy and Well-born. But tarther i From the number of universities, liberaries, and other liter" ary or scientific institutions, the chances are many more than with us, Which a meritorious man of letters has before him, of obtaining some independent civic existence. This is the weightiest item of all; for it Will be granted, that, for the votary of literature entire dependence on the merchants of literature, is, at best, and however liberal the terms, a highly questionable ones It tempts him daily and hourly to sink from an artist into a manufacturer, Many German authors, tnoreover, to their credit be it spoken, seem to set little store by wealthW Thete have been prudent, quiet men among them3 who actualy appeared not to want more wealth, - whon. Wealth could not tempt froPn their pre-appointed aims: Neither must we think so hardly of the German nobility as to believe them insensible to genius, or of opinion that a patent from the Lion King is so superior to ' a patent direct from Almighty God." Nay, we question whether there is an aristocraty in Europe, which, taken as a whole, more hbnburp art and literature3 and does more to encourage them: Ew" GERMAN LITERATURE. oluded from society! What, we would ask, was Wieland's, Schill. er's, Herder's society? Was not Goethe, by birth a Frankfort burgher, from his twenty sixth year, the companion, not of nobles but of princes, and for half his life a minister of state? And was not this man, unrivalled in so many far deeper qualities, known also and felt to be unrivalled in nobleness of breeding and bearing; fit not to learn of princes, in this respect, but by the example of his daily life to teach them? Nowhere is genius more devoutly hlaoured than there, by all ranks of men, from peasants and burghers up to legislators and kings. This hypothesis, therefore, it would seem, is not supported by facts, and so returns to its original elements. We deny that the Germans are defective in taste; taking one thing with another, we imagine they may stand comparison with any of their neighbours; as writers, as critics, they may decidedly court it. True, there is "a mass of dullness, awkwardness, and false susceptibility in the lower regions of their literature. To judge of a national taste, however, we must raise our view from the mass of vulgar writers, who blaze out and are extinguished with the popular delusion which they flatter, to those few who are admitted to shine with a pure and lasting lustre; to whom the eyes of the people are turned, as to its loadstars and celestial luminaries. Among German writers of this stamp, who of them show bad taste. Was Wieland's taste uncultivated? Taste, we should say, and taste of the very species which a disciple of the Negative School would call the highest, formed the great object of his life; and, more than any other perfection, has attained. And is not Klopstock, with his clear enthusiasm, his azure purity, and heavenly, if still somewhat cold and lunar light, a man of taste? His Messias reminds us oftener of no other poets than of Virgil and Racine. But it is to Lessing that we would turn with the readiest affection. Among all the writers of the eighteenth century, we will not except even Diderot and David Hume, there is not one of a more compact and rigid intellectual structure; who more distinctly knows what he is aiming at, or with more gracefulnessy vigour, and precision, sets it forth to his readers. It is with his style chiefly that we have to do here; yet the matter of his works is not less meritorious. His Criticism and philosophic or religious Skepticism were of a higher mood than had yet been heard in Europe: his Art of Dramatic Poetry first exploded the pretensions of the French theatre, and, with irresistible conviction, made Shakspeare known to his country 368 THE MODREN INTELLECT. men; preparing the way for a brighter era in their literature, the chief men of which still thankfully look back to Lessing as their patriarch. With Lessing and Klopstock might be joined nearly every one, we do not say of their distinguished, but even of their tolerated contemporaries. In truth, our opponents are so widely astray in this mat,. ter, that their views of it are not only dim and perplexed, but altogether imaginary and delusive. Far from being behind other nations in the science of Criticism, they are considerably in advance. Criticism has assumed a new form in Germany; it proceeds oii other principles, and proposes to itself a higher aim, The grand question is not now a question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in a work of art. Neither is it a question mainly of a study of the mind, to be answered by discovering and delipeating the peculiar nature of the poet from his poetry; but it is, inclusively of those two other questions, a question on the essence and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions, relates, strictly speaking, to the garment of poetry; the second, indeed, to its body aud material existence, a much higher point; but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by which alone can the body, in its movements and phases, be informed with significance and rational life.. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison composed sentences, and struck out comparisons, but by what far finer and more mysterious mechanism Shakspeare organized his dramas, and gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet. Wherein lies that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all hearts? Do these dramas of his not only appear to be, but are true; nay, truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from the general elements of all Thought, and grows up therefrom, into form and expansion, by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are the questions for the critic. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the prophet and GERMAN LITERATUIZE, 87 those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. Shli pretends to open for us this deeper import; to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eternal Beauty, and recognise it as heavenly, under all forms where it looks forth, and reject. as of the earth earthy, all forms, be their material splendour what it may, where no gleaming of that other shines through, This is the task of Criticism, as the Germans understand it. And how do they accomplish this task? By a vague declamation clothed in gorgeous mystic phraseology? By vehement tumultuous anthemns to the poet and his poetry; by epithets and laudatory comparisons drawn from Tartarus and Elysium, and all intermediate terrors and glories; whereby, in truth, it is rendered clear both that the poet is an extremely great poet, and also that the critic's allotment of understanding, overflowed by these entrancing raptures, has unhappily melted away? Nowise in this manner do the Germans proceed: but by rigorous scientific inquiry; by appeal to principles which, whether correct or not, have been deduced patiently, and by long investigation, from the highest and calmest regions of Philosophy. For this finer portion of their Criticism is now also embodied in systems; and standing, so far as these reach, coherent, distinct, and methodical, That this new Criticism is a complete, much more a certain science, we are far from meaning to affirm: the High Art theories of Kant, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Richter, can at best only be regarded as approaches to the truth. Thus much, however, we will say: That we reckon the mere circumstance of such a science being in existence, a ground of the highest consideration, and worthy the best attention of all inquiring men. For we should err widely, if we thought that this new tendency of critical science pertains to Germany alone. It is a Universal tendency, and springs from the general condition of intellect at this time. We ourselves have all more or less felt the necessity of such a science; witness our increasing admiration, not only of Shakspeare, but of all his conteporaries, and of all who breathe any portion of his spirit; and so much vague effort on the part of our best critics, everywhere, to express some still unexpressed idea concerning the nature of true poetry; as if they felt in their hearts that a pure glory, nay, a divineness, belonged to it, for which they had as yet no name, and no intellectual form. The first promulgation of this new critical doctrine descended unexpectedly on the German literary world, like a flood of ethereal fire; 88 THE MODERN INTELLECT. quickening all that was noble into new life, but visiting the ancient empire of Dullness with astonishment and unknown pangs, The agitation was extreme: scarcely since the age of Luther, has there been a controversy, if we consider its ultimate bearings on the best and noblest interests of mankind, so important as this, For it is the most sacred article of this creed to preach and practise universal tolerance, Every literature of the world has been cultivated by the Germans; and to every literature they have studied to give due honour. Shakspeare and Homer, no doubt, occupy alone the loft, iest station in the poetical Olympus; but there is space for all true Singers, out of every age and clime. The wayward mystic gloom of Calderon, the lurid fire of Dante, the auroral light of Tasso, the clear icy glitter of Racine, all are acknowledged and reverenced, The Germans study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to be oftener imitated. It is their honest endeavour to understand each, with its own peculiarities, in its own special manner of existing; that they may see this manner of existing as the nation itself sees it, and so participate in whatever worth or beauty it has brought into being. Of all literatures, accordingly, the German has the best as well as the most translations; men like Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, have not disdained this task. To attempt stating in separate aphorisms the doctrines of this new poetical system, in such space as we can allot to it, would be to insure them of misapprehension. The science of Criticism, as the Germans practise it, is no study of an hour; for it springs from the depths of thought and connects itself with the subtilest problems of all philosophy. One characteristic of it we may state, the parent of many others. Poetic beauty, in its pure essence, is not, by this theory, as by all our theories, from Hume's to Alison's, derived from anything external, or of merely intellectual origin. On the contrary, it is assumed as underived; not borrowing its existence from such sources, but as lending to most of these their significance and principal charm for the mind. It dwells, and is born in the inmost Spirit of Man, united to all love of Virtue, tadil true belief in God. To apprehend this beauty of poetry, in its full and purest brightness, is not easy, but difficnlt; thousands on thousands eagerly read poems, and attain not the smallest taste of it; yet to all uncorrupted hearts, some effulgences of this heavenly glory are here and there revealed; and to apprehend it clearly and wholly, to acquire and maintain a sense and heart that sees and worships it, is the last perfection of GERMAN LITERATiUmM 39 all human culture. With mere readers for amusement, therefore, this Criticism has nothing to do: the nature of Poetry remains forever hidden from them in the deepest concealment. On all hands, there is no truce given to the hypothesis that the ultimate object of the poet is to please, Sensation, even of the finest and most rapturous sort, is riot the end but the means. Art is to be loved, not be& cause of its effects, but because of itself; not because it is useful for spiritual pleasure, or even for moral culture, but because it is Art, and the highest in man, and the soul of all Beauty. To inquire after its utility, would be like inquiring after the utility of a God, of the utility of Virtue and Religion, Meanwhile, that all this must tend, among the Germans, to r'is the general standard of Art, and of what an Artist ought to be in his Own esteem and that of others, will be readily inferred. The character of a Poet does, accordingly, stand higher with the Germans than with'most nations. But of persons that employ their gifts for brutish or malignant purposesý it is understood that such lie without the limits of Criticism, being subjects not fbr the judge of Art, but for the judge of Police, But even with regard to the fair tradesman,--the ' Bread-artist," as they call him, - who does work of a harmless and acceptable sort for hire, their opinion is very low. "Unhappy mortal!" says the mild but lofty-minded Schiller, "UnL happy mortal! that with Science and Art, the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothing more than the day-drudge with the meanest; that in the domain of perfect freedom, bearest about in thee the spirit of a Slave!" And again " The Artists it is true, is the son of his age; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite! Let some beneficent divinity snautch him, When a suckling, from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time, that he may ripen to his full statz tire beneath a distant Grecian' sky. And having grown to manhood, let him rettun a foreign shape, into his century; not, however, to delight it by his presence, but dreadful, like the son of Agiamemnon, to purify it. The matter of his works i will take fronr the present, bat their form he Will derive from a nobler time; nayt from beyond all time, from the absolute iunchangifig unity of his own nature. SBut how is the Artist to guard himself from the corruptions of his time, which on every side assail him? By despising its de&i4 fitho Let him look upwards to his dignity and the lawý not doWnr THE MODERN INTELLECT* wards to his happiness and his wants. Free alike from the vain activity that longs to impress its traces on the fleeting instant, and from the querulous spirit of enthusiasm that measures by the scale of perfection the meagre product of reality, let him leave to mere Understanding, which is here at home, the province of the actual; while he strives, by uniting the possible with the necessary, to prodlice the ideal. This let him imprint and express in fiction and tru. th; imprint it in the sport of his imagination and the earnest of his actions; imprint it in all sensible and spiritual forms, and cast it silently into everlasting time." Fichte's notions on this subject are expressed in even higher terms, though the central principle is the same both in the philosopher and the poet. According to Fichte, there is a "Divine Idea" per= vading the visible Universe; which visible Universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence independent of it, To the mass of men this Divine Idea of the world lies hidden 1 yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age, Literary Men are the appointed interpreters of this Divine Idea; a perpetual priesthood, we might say, standing forth, generation af= ter generation, as the dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdomi, to show it and embody it in their writings and actions, in such particular form as their own particular times require it in, For each age, by the law of its nature, is different from every other age, and demands a different representation of this Divine Idea, the essence of which is the same in all; so that the literary man of one century is only by mediation and re-interpretation applicable to the wants of another. But in every century every inan who labours, be it in what province he may, to teach others, must first have possessed himself of this Divine Idea, or at least, be with his whole heart and his whole soul striving after it. If, without possessing it or striving after it, he abide diligently by some material practical depart= ment of knowledge, he may indeed still be a ý~pseful hodman;" but should he attempt to deal with the Whole, and to become an architv ect, he is5 in strictness of language, " Nothing.'ý From this bold and lofty principle the duties of the Literary man are deduced with scientific precision, and stated in all their sacred& ness and grandeur. Surely the sublime stoicism of such sentiments will find some response in many a heartc With such a notion of the GEORMA4 LITRATITlt E 41 Artist, it Were a strange inconsistency did Criticism show itself unAcientific 6r lax in estimating the products of his Art. For light on this point, we might refer to the writings of almost any individual among the German criticsq As an instance of a high kind, we might refer to Goethe's criticism of 1Eamlet in his Willhelm Meistsr. This truly is what may be called the poetry of criticism; for it is in some sort also a creative art; painting to the intellect what already lay painted to the heart and the imagination, Nor is it over poetry tlone that criticism watches With such loving strictness: the mimic, the pictorial, the musical arts, all modes of representing or addre.sing the highest nature of man, are fostered with the like care, But a weightier question still remains& What has been the fruit of this its high and just judgment on these matters? What has crit* icism profited it, to th. bringing forth of good works? How do its poems and its poets correspond with so lofty a standard? We arisa wer, that on this point also, Germany may rather court investigation than fear it. We luive no hesitation in stating, that We see in certain of the best German poets, something which associates them, more or less, with the Masters ef Art, the Saints of Poetry, long since departed, and, as we thought, without siucessors, from the earth; but canonized in the hearts of all generations, and yet living to all by the memory of what they did and were, Glances we do seem to find of that ethereal glory, which looks on us in its full brightness from the Transfiguration of Raphael, from the 'empest of Shakspeare and in broken, but purest and still heartapiercing beams, struggling through the'gloom of long ages, from the tragedies of Sophocles and the weather-worn sculptures of the Parthenon. This is that heavenly spirit, which, best seen in the aerial embodiment of poetry, but spreading likewise over all the thoughts and actions of an age, has given us Surreys, Sydneys, Raleighs in court nnd camp, Cecils in policy, Hookers in divinity, Bacons in philosoz phy, and Shakspeares and Spensers in songs All hearts that know this, know it to be the highest; and that, in poetry or elsewhere, it alone is true and impcrishable I In affirming th~t any vestige, however feeble of this divine spirit, is discernible iin erman poetry, we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other nationm To prove this bold assertion, logical argtiments were at all times unavailing; neither will any extract or specinmel help us; for it is not in parts, but in whole poems, that the spirit of a true poet ib to 5 42 THE MODKRKN IlNLLKCT. be seen. We can, therefore, only name such men as Tieck, Richter, Herder, Schiller, and, above all, Goethe; and ask any reader who has learned to admire wisely our own literature of Queen Elizabeth's age, to peruse these writers also; and to study them till he feels that he has understood them. Are there not tones here of that old melody? Are there not glimpses of that serene soul, that calm harmonious strength, that smiling earnestness, that Love and Faith and Humanity of nature? Do these foreign writers still exhibit, in their characters as men, something of that sterling nobleness, that union of majesty with meekness, which we must ever venerate in those our spiritual fathers? And do their works, in the new form of this century show forth that old nobleness, not consistent only, with the science, the precision, the skepticism of these days, but incorporated with them, and shining through them like their life and soul? Might it in truth almost seem to us, in reading the prose of Goethe, as if we were reading that of Milon; and of Milton writing with the culture of this time; combining French clearness with old English depth? And of his poetry may it indeed be said that it is poetry, and yet the poetry of our own time; an ideal World, and yet the world we even now live in? To ourselves it has long so appeared. The poetry of Goethe, for instance, we reckon to be Poetry, sometimes in the very highest sense of that word; yet it is no reminiscence, but something actually present and before us; no looking back into an antique Fairyland, divided by impassable abysses from the real world as it lies about us and within us; but a looking round upon that real world itself, now rendered holier to our eyes, and once more become a solemn temple, where the spirit of Beauty still dwells, and, under new emblems, to be worshipped as of old. With Goethe, the mythologies of bygone days pass only for what they are; we have no witchcraft or magic in the common acceptation; and spirits no longer bring with them airs from heaven or blasts from hell; for Pandemonium and the steadfast Empyrean have faded away, since the opinions which they symbolized no longer are. Neitler does he bring his heroes from remote Oriental climates, or periods of Chivalry, or any section either of Atlantis or the Age of Gold; feeling that the reflex of these things is cold and faint, and only hangs like a cloud-picture in the distance, beautiful but delusive. The end of Poetry is higher: she must dwell in Reality, and become manifest to men in the forms among which they live and move. And this is what we prize GERMAN LITERATURE. 48 in Goethe, and more or less in Schiller and the rest. The coldest skeptic, the most callous worldling, sees not the actual aspects of life more sharply than they are here delineated: the Nineteenth Century stands before us, in all its contradiction and perplexity; barren, mean, and baleful, as we have all known it; yet here no longer mean or barren, but enamelled into beauty in the poet's spirit; for its secret significance is laid open, and thus, as it were, the life-giving fire that slumbers in it is called forth, and flowers and foliage, as of old, are springing on its bleakest wildernesses, and overmantling its sternest cliffs. For these men have not only the clear eye, but the loving heart. They have penetrated into the mystery of Nature; after long trial they have been initiated; and, to unwearied endeavour, Art has at last yielded her secret; and thus can the Spirit of our Age, embodied in fair imaginations, look forth on us, earnest and full of meaning, from their works. As the first and indispensable condition of good poets, they are wise and good men: much they have seen and suffered, and they have conquered all this; they have known life in its heights and depths, and mastered it in both, and can teach others what it is, and how to lead it rightly. Their minds are as a mirror to us, where the perplexed image of our own being is reflected back in soft and clear interpretation. Here mirth and gravity are blended together; wit rests on deep devout wisdom, as the greensward with its flowers must. rest on the rock, whose foundations reach downward to the centre. In a word they are believers; but their faith is no sallow plant of darkness; it is green and flowery, for it grows in the sunlight. And this faith is the doctrine they have to teach us, the sense which, under every noble and graceful form, it is their endeavour to set forth: "As all nature's thousand changes But one changeless God proclaim, So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges One sole meaning, still the same; This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And, serene through time and season, Stands for aye in loveliness." The reader feels that if this our opinion be in any measure true, it is a truth of no ordinary moment. For it opens to us new views on the fortune of spiritual culture with ourselves and all natious. 44 Tl II?5 3N OiDFRN 1nirrr.LFL,, Have we not heard gifted men complaining that Poetry had passed away without return; that creative imagination consorted not with vigour of intellect, and that in the cold light of science there was no longer room for faith in things unseen? The old simplicity of heart was gone; earnest emotions must no longer be expressed in earnest symbols; beauty must recede into elegance, devoutness of character be replaced by clearness of thought, and grave wisdom by shrewdness and ridicule. If the poetry of the Germans have even begun to prove the contrary, it will deserve far higher encomiums than any we have passed upon it. We come now to the second grand objection against German literatture, its Mysticism, Mysticism is a word in the mouths of all: vet, perhaps no one has ever asked himself what this oprobrious epithet properly signified in his mind. Examined strictly, mystical, in most cases, will turn out to be merely another name for not understood. Yet it is well known, that, to the understanding of anything, two conditions are equally required; intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it, " am bound to find you in reasons, Sir," said Johnoin, "*but not in brains;" a speech of the most shocking unpoliteness, yet truly enough expressing the state of the case. It may throw some light on this question, if we remind our readers of the following fact. In the field of human investigation, there are objects of two sorts: First, the visible, including not only such as are material, and may be seen by the bodily eye; but all such, likewise, as may be represented in a shap)e, before the mind's eye: And, secondly, the,invisible, or such as cannot be seen by any eye; not capable, in short, of being in any way represented by a sh/apeJ either without the mind or within it. If any man shall here turn upon us, and assert that there are no such invisible objects; we shall regret the circumstance. We shall request him, however, to consider seriously within himself what he means siily by these two words, GOD and his own SOUL; and whether he finds that visible shape and true existence are here also one and the same? If he still persist in denial, he and we will agree to differ on this subject of mysticism, as on so many more important ones. Now, we do not hesitate to admit, that there is in the German mind a tendency to mysticism; as perhaps there is, unless carefully guarded against, in all minds tempered like theirs. It is a fault; GERMAN LITERATURE. 45 but one hardly separable from the excellencies we admire most in them. A simple, tender, and devout nature, seized by some touch of divine Truth, and of this perhaps under some rude enough symbol, is wrapt with it into a whirlwind of unutterable thoughts; wild gleams of splendour dart to and fro in the eye of the seer, but the vision will not abide with him, and yet he feels that its light is light from heaven, and precious to him beyond all price. Suppose then that such a nature, ignorant of all the ways of men, or the forms by which they think, is labouring with a poetic, a religious idea, which like all such ideas, must express itself by word and act, or consume the heart it dwells in. Yet he cannot speak to us; he knows not our state, and cannot make known to us his own. Thus his words are an inexplicable rhapsody, a speech in an unknown tongue. But it is not to apologize for mystics, properly so called, that we have here undertaken. Neither is it on such persons that the charge of mysticism brought against the Germans mainly rests. The chief mystics in Germany, it would appear, are the Transcendental Philosophers, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling! With these is the chosen seat of mysticism, these are its "obscure constellation," from which it 'doth ray out darkness" over the earth. Among a certain class of thinkers, does a frantic exaggeration in sentiment, a crude fever-dream in opinion, anywhere break forth, it is directly labelled as Kantism; and the moon-strkuc speculator is, for the time. silenced and put to shame by this epithet. For often, in such circles, Kant's Philosophy is not only an absurdity, but a wickedness and a horror; the pious and peaceful sage of Konigsberg passes for a sort of Necromancer and Black-artist in Metaphysics; his doctrine is a region of boundless balefull gloom, too cunningly broken here and there by splendours of unholy fire; spectres and tempting demons people it; and, hovering over fathomless abysses, hang gay and gorgeous air-castles, into which the hapless traveller is seduced to enter, and so sinks to rise no more. If anything in the history of Philosophy could surprise us, it might well be this. Perhaps among all the metaphysical writers of the eighteenth century, there is not one that so ill meets the conditions of a mystic, as this same Immanuel Kant. A man who had become distinguished to tht world in mathematics before ie attempted philosophy; who, in all his writing, is perhaps characterized by no quality so much as precisely by the distinctness of' his conceptions, and the iron strictness with which he reasons. It is true, thore 46G TILE MOiDERtN INTELLECT. is an unknown and forbidding terminology to be mastered; but is not this the ease also with all other sciences? It is true, a careless or unpreparedl reader will find liant's w aiting i riddle; but will a reader of this sort not also pronounce Newton's Prim-ainr to be nimalnesF. Yet if the lPhilosophiy of' Mind is any philosophy at all, Physics anld AMathematicis must be plain -subjects compared with it. The truth is, German Philosophy differs not more widely from that of other nations in the substance of its doctrines, than in its inanner of communiciiiiatinr, them. Nro rigrlht treatise oil anything, it is believed, lecast of all on the nature of' the humuan minid, can bv profitably read, unless the reader himself co-operates: lie hmust be atlert, and strain elvery faculty, or it p)rofits nothing. Philosophy, wvith these men, pretends to be the living principle and soul of all Sciences, and mus.tlt be treated anid studied scientifically, or not at all. Its( doctrines shloul d be present witli every cultivated writer; its spirit should lerva(ie every piece of composition, how slight or popular soever; but to treat itself popularly would be an impossibility. It is the hidse, notion prev alent respecting the objects aimed at, and the purposeld mauner of attaining them, in G'ermni aPhilosophy, that, caiiscs, in great part, this diskappointmevnt of our attemlpts to study it. Let the reader believ-e us, the Critical Philosophers are no mystics, and have no fe6llowvship) wvith mystics. Of Kant We have already sk n eitiLer can wNe reckon Sehelting a mystic. lie is a man evi(iently of deep insigrht into individual things; speaks wisely, and reasons with theo nicest accuracy, on all matters where we underýstand hiW6 data. Inut above ail, the mysticism of Fichte might astonisih us. The cold, colossal, adaimantine spirit, standillng erect and clear:tit to have been the teacher of the School of the Stoics, and to have discoursiedo (IA*eautv fand Virtue in thfe groves of Academe We state Fichte's chaftracter, as it is known. and admitted by miien of all parties am8ong the Germnans, wenCU We Cav that so robust an intellect, a!oul so calm, so lofty, massive, and immovable, has not mingled inl philosophlical discussion since the time of Luther. For the inan rises before us, amid conitradiction andaebate, like a grranite mounta.in amid clouds and winid. Ridicule, of the best that could be ýomnnimnn*mided7 was tried against him; but what was the wit of' at thousand Nwits to him? Fichte's opinions mi-ay be true or false; but his character, as a thinker, can be slightly valued only by such 11s know it iII; tand a a mann, approved by action and sufifring, in hisi ijio and in his death. hle ranksý with a class of men who were coma GERMAN LITERATURIi. 47 mno only in better ages than ours. The Critical Philosophy has been regarded by persons of approred judgment, as distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to light. The noble system of morality, the purer theology, the lofty views of man's nature derived from it, have told with remarkable and beneficial influence on the whole spiritual character of Germany. No writer of any importance in that country, but breathes a spirit of devoutness and elevation more or less directly drawn frt>m it. Such men as Goethe and Schiller cannot exist without effect in any literature or in any century: but if one circumstance more than another has contributed to forward their endeavours, and introduce that higher tone into the literatui c of Germany, it has been this philosophical system; to which, in wisely believing its results, or even in wisely denying them, al that was lofty and pure in the genius of poetry, or the reason of man, so readily allied itself. Meanwhile, as an advance or first step towards the study of this philosophy, we may state something of what has most struck ourselves as characterizing Kant's system; as distinguishing it from every other known to us. The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke, commences from within, and proceeds outwards; instead of commencing from without, and, with various precautions and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards, The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to interpret appearances,-from thle given symbol to ascertain the thing. Now the first step towards this, the aim of what may be called Primary or Critical Philosophy, must be to fix ourselves on some unchangeable basis: to discover what the Germans call the Primitive Truth, the necessarily, absolutely, and eternally True., This absolute basis of Truth, Locke finds in a certain modified Experience, and evidence of Sense, in the universal and natural persuasions of all men. Not so tlhe Germans: they deny that there is here any absolute Truth, or that any Philosophy whatever can be built on such a basis: nay, they go. the length of asserting, that such an appeal even to the universal persuasions of mankind, gather them with what precautions you may, amounts to a total abdication of Philosophy,, and renders its very existence impossible. What, they would say, have the persuasions, or instinctive beliefs of men to do in the matter? Is it not the object of Philosophy to enlighten, and, rectify, and many times directly contradict these very beliefs. Take, for instance, the voice of all generationr tiUR MObERW INTELLMCT6 of men on the subject of Astronomy, Will there he one dissentient against the fact of the Sun's going round the Earth? Can any evidence be clearer, is there any persuasion more universal, any belief more instinctive? And yet it is the Sun that stands in the centre of his Planets, which revolve around him, let us vote as we please& )3ritii;h Philosophy, since the time of Hume, appears to the Germans nothing more than a laborious and unsuccessful striving to build wall after wall in front of our Churches and Judgment-halls, and so turn back from them the deluge of Skepticism, with which that extraordinary writer overflowed us& The Germans take up the matter differently, and would assail Hume, not in his outworks, but in the centre of his citadel. They deny his first principle, that Sense is the only inlet of Knowledge% that Experience is the primary ground of Belief. Their Primitive Truth, however, they seek, not in the universal persuasions of men, but by intuition, in the deepest and purest nature of Man. Instead of attempting, which the' consider vain, to prove the existence of God, Virtue, an immaterial Soul, by inferences drawn, as the con. clusion of all Philosopey, from the world of senseP they find these things written as the beginning of all Philosophy, in obscured but inz effaceable characters, within our inmost being; and themselves first affording any certainty and clear meaning to that very world of senA se, God is, nay, alone is, for with like emphasis we cannot say that anything else is% This is,the Absolute, the Primitively Truer which the philosopher seeks% To open the inward eye to the sight of this Primitively True; or rather we might call itj to clear off the Obscurations of sense, which eclips6 this truth within us, so that we may see itj and believe it not only to be true, but the foundation and essence of all other truth, may be said to be the problem of Critical Philosophy, In this point of views Kant's system may be thought to have a remote affinity to those of Malebranche and Descartest But if they in some measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest differenca as to the means, We state what to ourselves has long appeared the grand characteristic of Kant's Philosophy, wl en we mention his distinction between Understanding and Reason, This may seem a disz tinction without a difference i nevertheless, to the Kantists it is by no mieans such. They believe that both Understanding and Reason are organs, by which the mind discovers truth; but they think that their manner of proceeding is essentially different Reasons the Kantists GRRMAN LITERATURB. 49 say, is of a higher nature than Understanding; it works by more subtle methods, on higher objects, and requires a far finer culture for its development, indeed in many men it is never developed at all; but its results are much more certain; for Reason discerns Truth itself, the absolutely and primitively True; while Understanding discerns only relations, and cannot decide without if. The proper province of Understanding is all real, practical, and material knowledge, Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, the adaptation of means to ends in the whole business of life. Let it not step beyond this province, however, not usurp the province of Reason, which it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. Should Understanding attempt to prove the existence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and consistent with itself, in Atheism: should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love of Self the highest good. Nevertheless, say the Kantists, there is a truth in these things. Virtue is Virtue, and not Prudence; neither is it more certain that I myself exist, than that God exists, infinite, eternal, invisible. To discern these truths is the province of Reason, which therefore is to be cultivated as the highest faculty in man. Not by logic and argument does it work; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work: and its domain lies in that holier region where Poetry, and Virtue, and Divinity abide, in whose presence Understanding wavers and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that "sea of light," at once the fountain and the termination of all true knowledge. It may illustrate this distinction still farther, if we say that, in the opinion of a Kantist, the French are of all European nations the most gifted with Understanding, and the most destitute of Reason; that Hume had no forecast of this latter, and that Shakspeare and Luther dwelt continually in its purest sphere. Of the vast, nay, in these days boundless, importance of this distinction, could it be scientifically established, we need remind no thinking man. As an appendage to the charge of Mysticism rought against the Germans, there is often added the seemingly inconsistent one of Irreligion. Let the reader be assured, that to the charge of Irreligion the Germans will plead not guilty. On the contrary they will notscruple to assert that their lilerature is, in a positive sense, religious; nay, perhaps to maintain, that if ever other nations are to recover that pure and high spirit of devotion, the loss of which can be hidden from no observant mind, it must be by travelling, if not on 'A 50 Tilk M ODUAR IN tIT~tt~plctg the same path, at least in the same direction, in which the Germtan have already begun to travel, Here, however, we must close our examination or defence, We confess the present aspect of the spiritual Universe might fill a melancholic observer with doubt and fbreboding, It is mournful to see so many noble, tender, and high-aspiring minds deserted of that religious light which once guided all such: standing sorrowful on the scene of past convulsions and controversies, as on a scene blackened And burnt up with fire; mourning in the darknessi because there is desolation, and no home for the soul; or what is worse, pitching tents aniong the ashes, and kindling weak earthly lamps which we are to take for stars, 'This darkness is but transitory 6bscuration these ashes are the soil of future herbage aud richer harvests. ReligiontPo6etry is not dead; it will never die, Its dwelling and birthplace is in the soul of man, and it is eternal as the being of man. Itrany point of Space, in any section of Time$ let there be a living Man; and there is an Infinitude above him and beneath him, and ant eternity encompasses him on this hand and on that; and tones of Sphere music, and tidings from loftier Worlds, will flit round him, if he can btit listen, and tisit him with holy influences, even in the thickest press of triviialities, or the din of busiest life, Happy the man, happy the nation that can hear these tidings; that has them Written ih fit tharabters; legible to every eye, and the solemn import bf them present at all moments to every heart! That there is, in these days, no nation so happy, is too clear; but that all nations ard with more or less discernment of its nature, struggling towards this happiness; is the hope and the glory of our time: And the first condition of success is, that, iti striving honestly ourselves, we honestly acknowledge the striving of other nations i that with a Will unwearg ied in seeking Truthg we have a Sense open for it, Wheresoever and howsoever it may arise: Are there not alfead.y clear indications that aýpew era in the spir4 itual int1t'Uitrse Uf the kbrld is appi-oaching; that instead of isolatedi mutually repulsive National Literatures, a World Literature may one day be lobked for? The betteir nwnds bf all touhtries begin to understand each other; and, whibh follows naturally; to love each other and help each other; by whom ultimately all countries in all their proceedings are governed. Late in -man's history, yet clearly at length it becomes manifest that not brute Force, but only Persu GERMAN LITZRATURB, 51 asion and Faith is the king of this world. The true Autocrat of Christendom is not the Napoleon, with his million even of obedient bayonets; such Autocrat is himself but a more cunningly devised bayonet in the hands of a mightier than he. The true Autocrat is that man, the real or seeming Wisest of the past age; crowned after ieath; who finds his Hierarchy of gifted Authors, his Clergy of assiduous Journalists; whose Decretals, written not on parchment, but on the living souls of men, it were an inversion of the Laws of Nature to disobey. In these times of ours, all Intellect has fused itself into Literature: Literature is the molten Sea and wonder-bearing Chaos, into which mind after mind dists forth its opinion, its feeling, to be molten into the general mass, and to wrork there; Interest after Interest is engulfed in it, or embarked on it: higher, higher it rises round all the Edifices of Existence. But wo to him whose Edifice is not built of true Asbestos, and on the everlasting Rock; but on the false sand, and of the drift-wood of Accident, and the paper and parchment of antiquated Habit! For the power, or powers, exist not on our Earth, that can say to that Sea, roll back, or bid its proud waves be still. THEi MODERN INTELLEMr GOETHE. A German Ilumourist of deep piercing faculty, has written a ch(apter on the G reatness of Great Men; which topic we agree with him in reckoning one of the most important. The time, indeed, is come when much that was once found visibly subsistent Without must anew be sought for Within; many a human feeling, indistructible, and to man's well-being indispensable, which once manifested itself in expressive forms to the Sense, now lies hidden in the formle.ss depths of the Spirit, or at best struggles out obscurely in forms become superannuated, inexpressive, and unrecognisable; from which paralysed, imprisoned state, often the best efobrt of the thinker is required, and moreover were well applied to deliver it. In such state of imprisonment, paralysis. and unrecognisable defacement, li;; this our feeling towards great men; wherein some of the deepest humnan interests will be found involved. A few words from Heer Teufelsdreck, if they help to set this preliminary matter in a clearer light, may be worth translating here. )Deny it as lie will man reverently loves man, and daily by action evidences his belief in the divineness of man. Thus too has that fierce hunting after Popularity, which you often wonder at, and laugh at, a basis on something true: nay, under the other aspect, what is that wonderful spirit of Interference, were it but manifested as the paltriest scandal, other than a heartfelt sympathy of man with man? Hatred itself is but an inverse love. The philosopher's wife complained to the philosopher that certain two-legged animals without feathers spake evil of him: 'Light of my life' answered he 'it is their love of us, unknown to themselves, and taking a foolish shape; thank them for it, and do thou love them more wisely. Were we mere steam-engines working here under this rooftree, they would scorn to speak of us once in a twelvemouth.' - And now rising from these lowest regions of hnman communion GOETHE. 58 into the highest, is there not still in the world's demeanour towards Great Men, enough to make the old practice of Hero-worship intelligible? Simpleton! I tell thee Hero-worship still continues; it is the only creed which never can grow obsolete. Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinitude shadowed forth in something finite. Yes, in practice, we are all Supernaturalists; and have an infinite happiness or an infinite wo not only waiting us hereafter, but looktng out on us through any pitifullest present good or evil;- as, for example, on a high poetic Byron through his lameness. Atheism, it has been said, is impossible; and truly, no Atheist denies a Divinity, but only some NAME of a Divinity: the God is still present there, working in that benighted heart, were it only as a god of darkness. "Consider under how many categories, down to the most impertinent, tle world inquires coneerning Great Men, and never wearies striving to represent to itself their whole structure, aspect, procedure. outward and inward! This comes of the world's old-established necessity to worship: and, indeed, whom but its great ones, that 'like celestial fire-pillars go before it on the march," ought it to worship? No Holy Alliance, though plush, and gilding, and genealogical parchment, be hung round it, can gain for itself a dominion in the heart of any man; some thirty millions of men's hearts being, on the other hand, subdued into loyal reverence by a Corsican Lieutenant of'Artillery. So, too, in matters spiritual, what avails it that a man be Doctor of Laws, and with the parchment of his diplomas could shingle the whole street he lives in: what avails it? The man is but an owl, to whose sorrowful hootings no creature hastens, eager to listen. While, again, let but some riding gauger arrive under cloud of night at a Scottish tavern, and word be whispered that it is Robert Burns; in few instants all beds are left vacant, and gentle and simple, with open eyes and erect ears, are gathered together." Thus we see what unspeakable importance the world attaches to its great men. Deep and venerable is this love of men for great men; a quality of vast significance; for, as in -s origin it reaches up into the highest and even holiest provinces of man's nature, so, in his practical history it will be found to play the most surprising part. Does not the fact of such a temper indistructibly existing in all men, point out man as an essentially governable and teachable creature? Men never for a length of time rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against. Is not love, from of old, 34 THE M()tOltlN YN TELLECT. known to be the beginning of all things? And the first product ot love is imitation. Now great men, in particular spiritually great 1men, are the men universally imitated and learned of, the glass in which whole generations survey and shape themselves. Thus is the Great Man of an age the most important phenomenon therein; all other phenomena, were they Waterloo Victories, Con" stitutipns of the year One, glorious revolutions, new births of the golden age, are small and trivial. Alas, all these pass away, and are left extinct behind, and the new-born golden age proves always to be stilleborn; neither is there any other golden age possible, save only in this: in new increase of worth and wisdom;--that is to say, therefore, in the new arrival among us of wise and worthy men. And ever must we wait on the bounty of' Time, to see what leader shall be born for us, and whether he will lead. Thus too, in defect of great meu, noted men become important: the Noted Man of an age is the emblem and living summary of the Ideal which that age has fashioned for itself. Such figures walk in the van, for great good, or for great evil. To enlighten this principle of reverence for the great, to teach us reverence, and whom we are to revere and admire, should ever be a chief aim of Education, and in these late ages, perhaps more than ever; so indispensible is now.our need of clear reverence, so inexpressibly poor our supply. "For alas!" cries Teufelsdreck, " though in susceptive hearts it is felt that a great man is unspeakably great, the specific marks of him are mournfully mistaken: thus must innumerable pilgrims journey, in toil and hope, to shrines where there is no healing. On the fairer half of the creation, above all, such error presses hard. Women are born worshippers; in their good little hearts lies the most craving relish for greatness: it is even said, each chooses her husband on the supposition of his being a great man-in his way. The good creatures, yet the, foolish! For their choices, no insight, or next to none, being vouchsafed them, are unutterable, still more fatal is that other mistake, whereby the devotional youth, seeking for a great hman to worship, finds such within hl's own worthy person, and proceeds with all zeal to worship there. Unhappy enough: to realize, in an age of such gas-light illumination, this basest superstition of the ages of Egyptian darkness! For the Self-worshipper has no seasons of light, which are not of blue sulphur-light; hungry, envious pride, not humility, is the ashy fruit of his worship; and his self-god growls on him with the perpetual wolf-cry, Give! Give!" fototiHt 1ut it lnty now be high time to proceed with the mitter more in hand; and remark that, in noted men ive surpass all ages since the creation of the world; and from two causes: First, that there iA now pretty rapidly proceeding a Universal Revolution; whereby everythingý as when all mortals are removing; lias been0 so to speak, set out into the street; and many a foolish vessel of dishonour, worth no notice in its own dark corner3 has become utiversally recognisable when once mounted on the summit of some furnitureiwagon and tottering there (as committee.president or other head director,) with what is put under it, slowly onwards to its new lodging and arrangementj itself, alas, hardly to get thither without breakage. Secondly, that the Printing Press has now come into full action; and makes, as it were, a sort of universal day-light for removal and revolutions and everything else, to proceed in, far more commLodiously; yet also far more conspiciouslyi Accordingly, we are quite overrun with famous men: however, the remedy lies in the di^ ease itself; crowded succession already means quick oblivionu Of great men, among so many millions of noted meny it is comn puted that in our time there have been two; one in the practical; another in the speculative province t Napoleon Bonaparte and Johann Wolfgang von Goethes In which dual number) our time may. perhaps, specially pride itself; Iin particular, reckon itself the flowertime of the whole last century and halfi Of Napoleon and his wo; rks all ends of the world have heard& Goethe, again, though of longer continuance in the world, and really of much more unquestionable greatnessi and.even importance there, conld not be so noted by the world for if the explosion of powder-mines and artillery: parks naturally attracts every eye and ear; the approach of a newn created star, though this, and not the artillery-parksý is to shape our destiny and rule the earth, is notable at first only to certain stargazers and weather prophets; Yet, sixty years ago; to rank him with Napoleon, like him as rising unattainable beyond his classi woe uld have seemed a wonderful procedure; But now, however, the progress of clearer apprehension has been rapid and satisfactoryp In most minds that can be considered as in a state of growth, German literature is taking its due place; in suchi some thankful appreciation of the greatest in German literature can: not fail To forward such on their way towards appropriating what excellence this man realised and created for them, much still waits to be done. The field) indeed; is large; there are forty volumes of 56 THI MODERN INTELLECT. the most significant Writing that has been produced for the last two centuries; there is the whole long Life and heroic Character of him who produced them, to expatiate over and inquire into; in both which departments the deepest thinker may find scope enough. Nevertheless, in these days, when the wits of so many have gone into politics to gather wool, and must needs return more or less shorn; it were foolish to invite either old or young into great depths of thought on such a remote matter; the tendency of which is neither for political changes nor against them, but quietly through them and beyond them; nowise to prescribe this or that mode of electing members, but only to produce a few members worth electing. As things actually stand, could we, in any measure, disclose the wondrous wonder-working element it hovers in, the light it is to be studied and enquired after in, what is needfullest at present were accomplished. The matter in hand being Goethe and his Works, and the greatest work of every man, or rather the summary and net amount of all his works being the Life he has led, we ask, as the first question: How it went with Goethe in that matter; what was the practical basis, of want and fulfilment, of joy and sorrow, from which his spiritual productions grew forth, the characters of which they must more or less legibly bear? In which sense, those Volumes entitled by him Truth and Fiction, wherein his personal history, what he has thought fit to make known of it, stands delineated, will long be valuable. A noble commentary, instructive in many ways, lies opened there; which all readers will rejoice that circumstances induced and allowed him to write. Looking now into these magically-recalled scenes of childhood and manhood, the student of human nature will, under all manner of shapes, from first to last, note one thing: The singularly complex Possibility offered from without, yet along with it the deep never-failing Force from within, whereby all this is conquer and realized. It was as if accident and primary endowment had conspired to produce a character on the great scale; a will is cast abroad into the widest, wildest element, and gifted also in an extreme degree, to prevail over this, to fashlon this to its own form: in which subordinating and 8elf-fashioning of its circumstances, a character properly consists. In external situations, it is true, in occurrences such as could be recited in the Newspapers, Goethe's existence is not more complex than GOETHEI. 57 other men's; outwardly rather a pacific smooth existence: but in his inward specialities and depth of faculty and temper, in his position spiritual and temporal towards the world as it was and the world as he could have wished it, the observant eye may discern complexity, perplexity enough. And now, as mentioned, the force for solving this was, in like manner, granted him in extraordinary measure; so that we must say, his possibilities were faithfully and with wonderful success turned into acquisitions; and this man fought the good fight, not only victorious, as all true men are, but victorious without damage, and with an ever-increasing strength for new victory, as only great and happy men are. Good fortune, what the world calls good fortune, awaits him from beginning to end; but also a far deeper felicity than this. Only in virtue of good guidance does that same good fortune prove good. Wealth, health, fiery light with many-sidedness of mind, peace, honour, length of days: with all this you may make no Goethe but only some Voltaire; with the most that was fortuitous in all this, make only some short-lived, unprofitable Byron. At no period of the World's History can a gifted man be born when he will not find enough to do; in no circumstances come into life but there will be contradictions for him to reconcile, difficulties which it will task his whole strength to surmount, if his whole strength suffice. Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlastingly hostile empires, Necessity and Freewill. A pious adage says "the back i made for the burden:" we might with no less truth invert it, and say, the burden is made for the back. Nay, so perverse is the nature of man, it has in all times been found that an external allotment superior to the common was more dangerous than one inferior; thus for a hundred that can bear adversity, there is hardly one that can bear prosperity. Of riches, in particular, as of' the grossest species of prosperity, the perils are recorded by all moralists. Riches in a cultured community are the strangest of things; a power all-moving, yet which any the most poeerless and skilless can put in motion; the readiest to become a great blessing or a great curse. The first fruit of riches, especially for the man born rich, is to teach him faith in them, and all but hide from him that there is any other faith: thus is he trained up in the miserable eye-service of what is called Honour, Respectability, Gigmanity. Consider too what this same gigmanhood issues in. Look at Phaeton, for insta.. 7 THE MOD)ERN INTELLECT. nee, who ws his father's heir; born to attain the higlest fortune without earning it: he had built no sun-chariot, but would insist' on driving one; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent chariot and horses spinning through infinite space, and set the iuiveree ot fire!Or, to speak in more modest figures, Poverty, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which, if they mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe for him a sort of course and goal; great part of his guidance is secure against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. Goethe's childhood is throughout of a joyful e*tacter.; kind plenty in every sense, security, affection, encircles him. A beautiful boy, of earnest, lucid, serenely deep nuture, with thrafimite iuesant expansiveness of a boy, has begun to be: be*itifu!: ho looks and moves; rapid, gracefully prompt; wise, noble: nay, he is, in very truth, a miniature incipient world-poet; of all heavenly figures the. beautifullest we know of that can visit this lower wrth. Lovely enough shine for us those young years in old Teutonic Frainfort; real yet ideal, they are among our most genuine poetic Idyls. Do not smile more than enough (if thou be wise) that the grey-haired, allexperienced Self-historian remembers how the boy walked on the Mayne bridge, and "liked to look at the bright weather-cock" on the barrier there. That foolish piece of gilt wood, there glittering sunlit, with its reflex wavering in the Mayne waters, is awakening quite another glitter in the young gifted soul. The eye of the young seer is here, through the paltriest chink, looking into the infinite Splendours of Nature,- where, one day, himself is to enter and dwell, Goethe's mother appears to have been the more gifted of the pa&r ents; a woman of altogether genial character, great spiritusi feeulty and worth. His father, a prosperous citizen of Frankfort, skilled in many things, improved by travel, by studies both practical and ornamental; passing, among his books, paintings, collections and household possessions, a quite independent life. The father, with occasional private tutors, is his son's schoolm er. Languages, to the number of six or seven; histories, knowledges-made*easy: all is taken in with boundless appetite and aptitude. Let us notice also, as a token for good, how the young universal spirit takes pleasure in the workshops of handicraftsmen, and loves to understand their methods of labouring and of living: " My father had early accustomed me to manage little matters for GOETHEi. 59 him. In particular, it was often my commission to stir up the craftsmen he employed, who were too apt to loiter with him. I came in this way, into almost all manner of workshops; and as it lay in my nature to shape myself into the circumstances of others, to feel every species of human existence, and with satisfaction participate therein, I spent many pleasant hours in such places; grew to understand the procedure of each, and what of joy and of sorrow, advantage or drawback, the indispensable conditions of this or that way of life brought with them. And so unfolded, so confirmed itself in me the feeling of the equality, if not of all men, yet of all men's situations; existence by itself appearing as the head condition, all the rest as indifferent and accidental." And so, amid manifold instructive influences, has the boy grown out of boyhood; when now a new figure enters on the seene, brings ing far higher revelations: "As at last the wine was failing, one of them called the maid; but instead of her there came a maiden of uncommon, and, to see her in this environment, of incredible beauty. 'What is it?' said she, after kindly giving us good evening: 'the maid is ill and gone to bed: can I serve you?'-'Our wine is done,' said one; 'couldst thou get us a couple of bottles over the way, it were very good of thee.'-' Surely!' said she: took a couple of empty bottles from the table and hastened out. Her figure, when she turned away from you, was almost prettier than before. The little cap sat so neat on the little head, which a slim neck so gracefully united with back and shoulders. Everything about her seemed select; and you could follow the whole form more calmly, as attention was not now attracted and arrested by the true still eyes and the lovely mouth alone." It is at the very threshold of youth that this episode occurs; the young critic of slim necks and true still eyes shall now know something of natural magic, and the importance of one mortal to another; the wild-flowing bottomless sea of human Passion, glorious in Auroral light, (which, alas, may become infernal.ghtning,) unvails itself a little to him. His first love,--pure and poor,-vanishes from us here; but, we trust, in some quiet nook of the Rhineland, became wife and mother, and was the joy and sorrow of some brave man's heart, - according as it is appointed. To the boy himself it ended painfully and almost fatally, had not sickness come to his deliverance; and here too he may experience how "a shadow chases us in all manner of sunshine," and in this What-d'ye-call-it of Exist 60 0 HE XObEkn tNTELLECT6 ence the tragic element is not wanting. Leipsic University had the honour of entering him to membei' ship. The name of his "propitious mother" she may boast of, but not of the reality: alas, in these days, the University of the Universe is the only propitious mother of such; all other propitious mothers are but unpropitious superannuated dry-nurses fallen bedrid, from whom the famished nurseling has to steal even bread and water, if he will not die; whom for most part he soon takes leave of, giving perhaps, for farewell thanks, some rough tweak of the nose; and rushes desperate into the wide world an orphan, Goethe's employments and culture at Leipsic lay in quite other groves than the academic. Already by multifarious discoursings and readings he has convinced himself, to his despair, that in German literature and philosophy there is neither landmark nor loadstar, Here, too, he makes inquiries about religion, and falls into "black scruples" about most things. He falls sick, becomes wretched enough; and thus, somewhat in a wrecked state, he quits his propitious mother, and returns home. Nevertheless let there be no reflections i he must now in earnest get forward with his Law, and on to Strasburg to complete himself' therein; so has the paternal judgment arranged it, So the youth goes to Strasburg to prepare for the Examination though, as it turned out, for quite a different than the Law one, Confusion enough is in his head and heart; poetic objects too have taken root there, and will not rest till they have worked themselves into form, "These," says he, " were Gotz von Berlichingen and Faust." He already shows great firmness of mind, Hear in what manner he expresses himself towards Herr Sulzer, whose beautiful hypothesis, that " Nature meant, by the constant influx of satisfactions streaming in upon us, to fashion our minds, on the whole, to softness and sensibility," he will not leave a leg to stand on, " On the whole," says he, " she does no such thing; she rather, God be thanked, hardens her genuine children against te pains and evils she incessantly prepares for them; so that we name him the happiest man who is the strongest to make front against evil, to put it aside from him, and in defiance of it go the road of his own will." In Goethe's Writings,too, we all know the moral lesson is seldom so easily educed as one would wish. Alas, how seldom is he so direct ia tendency as his own plain spoken moralist * GOETHE. Sbear Christian People, one and all, When will you cease your sinning? Else can your comfort be but small, Good hap scarce have beginning; For Vice is hurtful unto man, In Virtue lies his surest plan." to a man standing in the midst of German literature, and looking out thither for his highest good, the view was troubled with Various peculiar perplexities, For two centuries, German literature had lain in the sere leaf, The Luther, "whose words were half battles," and such half battles as could shake and overset half Europe with their cannonading, had long since gone to sleep; and all other words were but the miserable bickering of theological campsutlers in quarrel over the stripping of the slain. But now, in manifold enigmatical signs a new Time announces itself. A pious Klopstock rises anew into something of seraphic music; the brave spirit of a Lessing pierces, in many a life-giving ray, through the dark inertness i Germany has risen to a level with Europe; nay, it is now appointed that Germany is to be the leader of spiritual Europe. A deep movement agitates the universal mind of Germany, though as yet no one sees towards what issue; only that heavings and eddyings, confused, conflicting tendencies, work unquietly everywhere. Even to the young man now looking on with an anxious intensity had this very task been allotted: To find it a course and set it flowing thereon. Whoever will represent this confused revolutionary condition of all things, has but to fancy how it would act on the most susceptive and comprehensive of living minds; what a Chaos he had taken inj and was dimly struggling to body forth into a Creation. Add to which his so confused, contradictory, personal condition; appointed by a positive father to be practitioner of Lal, by a still more positive mother (old Nature herself) to be practitiorie of Wisdom, and we have for him a whole world of confusion and doubt. Nevertheless to the young Strasburg student the gods had given their most precious gift,--a mind of all-piercing vision and a faithful loving heart.,His first literary productions fall in his twenty-third year; Werter, the most celebrated of these, in his twenty-fifth. Of which wonderful Book, and its now recognised character as poetic (and TIM' MODERaN IXTILH~tLC'r. prophetic) utterance of ith World's DeJ4pir, we shall not here speak. Soime trifling incidents at Wetzlar, and the suicide of an unhappy acquaintan(e were the means of " crystallizing" that woodroius, perilous stuffl which tle young heart oppressively held dissolved in it. into this world-famous, and as it proved world-medicative ierhr,. l1e,had gone to Wetzlar with an eye still to Law, which now, however,/was abandoned, never to be resumed. With the comnpletion of Wertir, also of Gotz von Berlichingen, commences wlhat we can specially call his Life, his activity as Man. The outward particulars of it, from this point where his own Narrative ends may be briefly summed up as follows; In 1776, the Heir-apparent of Weimar, passing through Frankfort, waited upon Goethe. The visit must have been mutually agreeable; for a short time afterwards the young author was invited to Court; apparently to contribute his assistance in various literary institutions and arrangements then proceeding or contemplated; and in pursuance of this honourable call, he accordingly settled at Wei - mar. The connection begun under such favourable auspices, and ever afterwards continued, has been productive of important consequences, not only to Weimar, but to all Germany. By degrees whatever was brightest in the genius of Germany had been gathered to this little court; a classical theatre was under the superintendence of Goethe and Schiller; here Wieland taught and sung; in the pulpit was Herder. Occupied so profitably to his country, and honourably to himself, Goethe continued rising in favour with his Prince, by degrees a political was added to his literary trust; in 1779 he became Privy Councillor; President in 1782; and at length after his return from Italy, where he had spent two years in varied studies and observation, he was appointed Minister; a post which he only resigned, on his final retirment from public affairs. Notable enough that Weimar, though it reverenced Goethe as a Poet, did not suppose he had lost his wits aw a man; but could employ him in the highest services of the state, the fittest to discharge these. Very different with us, where Diplomatists and Governors can be picked up from the highways, or chosen in the manner of blindman's buff, (the first figure you clutch, say rather that clntches you, will make a Governor;) as if the Poet, with his Poetry, were no other than a pleasant mountebank, with faculty of a certain gaound-and-lotty tumbling which would amuse. As if there were any talent whatsoever; above all, of Poetry, the first foundation of which GOETHIE. were not even these two things: intellectual acuteiness of )iscernme wt, with force and hlionesty of 'Will. Which two, o(10 they not, in their simnlplest form, constitute the very equipment a Maln of Busi, ness needs: as in their noblest concentration they are still the inoving faculty of the Artist and Prophet! To Goethe himself, this connection with Weinimar opened thu ha1i-4' piest course of life, which probalily the age hlie lived in couldhaNVu yielded him. Moderation yet abundance; elegance without lwxury: Art enough to give a lheavenly firmament to his existne;. ieBusiesso enough to give it a solid earth. The greatest of Poets is also tOe skillfullest of Manwgers: and one sees with a sort of sm1ilQ, in which. may liu a' deep seriousness, how the Weiniar Institutioun 3are i smoothly on, by a hand which could have worthily swuycd hmpcrial sceptres. But, on the whole, we name his external life haNppy), i4 this, that a noble princely Courtesy could dwell in it based on thp worship, by speech and practice, of Truth only; but happy, above all, in this, that it forwarded him, as no olther could hav doee, j his inward fifb, the good or evil hap of which lwas alone of perinau-1 ont importance. Since death, as the palpable revelation of the nmystery of wonde.r, and depth, and fear, which everywhere, through its whole course lies under life, is in any case so great, that the least famous of mpi. kind will for once becomnle public, and have his name printed, nid read not without interest; in the Newspaper obituaries; on Oouwr frail memori'all1 under which lie has crept to sleep. Death is evier 4 sublimity: the last act of a most strange drania, which is not drainatic bat has now become real: wherein, miraculously, Furnies, gomissioned, have in actual person risen fram the abyss, and do verily dance there in that terror of all terrors, and wave their dusky-gluring torcheis, and shake their serpent-hair 1 iln the obituary of this age stands one article of' quite peculiar illm)ort; -this, namely, that Johann Wolfgang,oni Goethe died at Weimar, on the 22nd. March, 1832. "lie expii;4-,"1 says the record, w ithout any apparent suffering, havilng a few minuv1tes previuusly, called for paper for the purpose of' writing." A beautifiul death; like that of a soldier found faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his arihs still grasped! It was on the 28th. of' August, 1749, that this man entered the world: and now, -the End The changeful.life-picture, growing daily into new coherence, under new touches and hues, has suddenly become completed and unchangeable 64 THETE )!ODRN INTILLECT, there, as it lay, it is dipped, from this momont, in the tether of the Heavens, and shines transfigured, to endure so--forever, Time and Time's Empire; stern, wide-devouring, yet not without their grandeur: for this week-day man has put on the garment of Eternity, and become radiant and triumphant! So dies a hero; sight to be worshipped." At the present date and distance, however, let us consider the Exequies as past; that the high Rogus, with its sweet scented wood, amid the wail of music eloquent to speechless hearts, has flamed al. oft, heaven-kissing, in sight of all the Greeks; and that now the ashes of the Hero are gathered into their urn, and the host has marched onwards to new victories and new toils. The host of the Greeks, in this case, was the thinking men of all nations; and it is not unnatural-to look with new earnestness before and behind, and ask, what space in the years of computed Time, this man with his activity may influence. Goethe, it is commonly said, made a New Era in Literature; the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet nowise generally visible. For the true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose eye has been gifted to discern the godlike Mystery of God's Universe, and decipher some new lines of its celestial writing; he sees into this greatest of secrets "the open secret;" hidden things become clear; how the Future is but another phasis of the Present; thereby are his words in very truth prophetic; what he has spoken shall be done. But the true beginning of change from era to era is oftenest unnoticed, The real new era was when a Wise Man came into the world, with clearness of vision and greatness of Eoul to accomplish this old high enterprise, amid new difficulties, yet again: A Life of Wisdom. Such a man became, by Heaven's pre-appointment, in very deed, the Redeemer of the time; Did he not bear the curse of the time? He was filled full with its skepticism, bitterness; hollowness, atid thousandfold contradictions; till his heart was like to break; but he subdued all this; rose victorious over this; and maiifaldly by word and act showed others that came after; how to do the like; Honour to him who first; "through the impassable, paves a road!" Such indeed is the task of every great and good man, who is ever a martyr, and a " spiritual herb that ventures forward into the gulf for our deliverence." The gulf into which this man ventured, and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly GOETHIE all others lie included: The wlole distracted Existence of man in an age of Unbelief. Whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely in that mad element, knows perhaps, too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the chosen of our time, who could prevail in that same, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as belong to no other. Vor a poor reader were he who discerned not in Goethe's Works the authentic rudiments of that same New Era, whereof we have so often had false warning. He who would learn to reconcile reverence with clearness; to deny and defy what is False, yet believe and worship what is True amid raging factions, bent on what is either altogether empty or has substance in it only for a day, which stormfully convulse and tear hither and thither a distracted expiring system of society, to adjust himself aright; and, working for the world and in the world, keep himself unspotted from the world,--- let him look here& But we will now endeavour to make a more minute survey of hit writings and character in general; for Goethe's literary history apl pears to us a matter beyond most others, of rich, subtle, and mani. fold sig$ificance, Viewed in his merely external relations, Goethe exhibits an appearance such as can seldom occur in the history of letters. A man, who, in early life, rising almost at a single bound into the highest reputation over all the world; by gradual advances, fixing himself more and more firmly in the reverence of his country* men, ascends silently through many vicissitudes to the supreme ihtellectual place among them; and now4 after nearly a century, dise tinguished by convulsions, political, moral, and poetical, still reigns, with a soft undisputed sway t such a man might justly attract out notice, The polity of Literature is called a Republic; oftener it is an Anarchy, where, by strength or fortunef favourite after favourito rises into splendour and authorityý but like Masaniello, while judging the people, is on the third day deposed and shots Certainly there is not, probably there never was, in any country, a writer who, with so cunning a style, and so deep a sensee ever fbue nd so many readers; for men of all degrees and dispositions are afft ectionately familiar with the writings of Goethe S So that whatever we may think of Goethe's ascendency, the existence of it remains a highly curious fact; and to discover by what steps such influence has been attained, and how so long preserved, were no trivial or unprofitable inquiryý In our own view of the case, we reckon that Goethe's fam~ hatl 8 66 THIIE MODERN INTELLECT. to a considerable extent, been deserved; that his influence has been of high benefit to his own country; nay more, that it promises to be of benefit to all other nations. The essential grounds of this opinion we may state without many words. We find, then, in Goethe, an Artist, in the high and ancient meaning of that term; in the meaning which it may have borne long ago among the masters of Italian painting, and the fathers of poetry in England. Or perhaps we come nearer our meaning if we say that Goethe is neither noble nor plebeian, neither liberal nor servile, nor infidel, nor devotee; but the best excellence of all these, joined in pure union; "a clear and universal Man." Goethe's poetry is the voice of the whole harmonious manhood: nay, it is the living and life-giving harmony of that rich manhood which forms his poetry. But Goethe besides appears to us a person of that deep endowment which qualifies him to stand forth, not only as the literary ornament, but in many respects as the Teacher and exemplar of his age. And this in our view is the result: To our minds, in these soft, melodious imaginations of his~ there is embodied the Wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful, the religious Wisdom, which may still, with something of its old impressiveness, speak to the whole soul; still, in these hard, unbelieving, utilitarian days, reveal to us glimpses of the Unseen but not unreal World, that so the Actual and the Ideal may aga in meet together, and clear Knowledge be again wedded to Religion, in the life and business of men, Goethe himself thought that his physiognomy indicated that: Here is a man who has struggled toughly, And Goethe's life, whether' as a writer and thinker, or as a living, active man, has indeed been a life of effort, of earnest toilsome endeavour after all excellence. Accordingly, his intellectual progress, his spiritual and moral history, as it may be gathered from his successive works, furnishes, with us, no small portion of the pleasure and profit we derive from perusing them, Participating deeply in all the influences of his age, he has from the first, at every new epoch, good forth to elucidate the new circumstances of the time: to offer die instruction, the solb aces which that time required6 His literary life divides itself into two portions widely different in character -the products of the first, once so new and original, have long been familiar to us; with the products of the seconds equally original, and, in our day, far more precious, we are yet little acquainted* These two classes of works stand, at first view, in strong contradiction, yet, in truth, connected GOETHE. 67 together by the strictest sequence. Goethe, at one time, we found in darkness, and now, he is in light: le was once an Unbeliever; and now lie is a Believer; and he believes, moreover, not by deny, ing his unbelief, but by following it out; in resolutely prosecuting his inquiries. How has this man, to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and despair, attained to that better vis. ion which now shows it to him, not tolerable only, but full of loveli. ness? How has the belief of a Saint been united in this high and true mind with the clearness of a Skeptic; the devout spirit of a Fen. elon made to blend in soft harmony with the gayety, the sarcasm, the shrewdness of a Voltaire? Concerning Goethe's two earliest works, Gotz von Berlichin gen and The Sorrows of Werter, it would be difficult to name two books which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of the world than these two performances, Werter appeared to seize the hearts of men everywhere, and to utter for them the word which they had long been waiting to hear. As usually happens, too, this same word, once uttered, was soon abundantly repeated in all dialects. Skeptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware. The fortune of Berlichingen, though less sudden, was by no means less exalted. Gotz became the parent of an innumerable progeny of chivalry-plays, feudal delineations and poetico-antiquarian perform. ances. Sir Walter Scott's first literary enterprise was a translation of Gotz; and if genius could be communicated like instruction, we might call this work of Goethe's the prime cause of Miarmion and the Lady of the Lake, with all that has followed from the same creative hand. We may observe of Berlichingen and Werter, that they stand prominent among the causes of a great change in modern literature. The former directed men's attention with new force to the picturesque effects of the Past; and the latter, for the first time, attempted the more accurate delineation of a class of feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our elder poetry offered no exponent, because they are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted into Action, and belong chiefly to an age as indolent, cultivated, and unbelieving as our own. When Werter was first given to the world, Literature no longer held the mirror up to Nature; no longer reflected, in many-coloured expressive symbols, the actual passions, the hopes, sorrows, joys of living men. Even consider our leading writer of the period, Sam THlE MODERNN NTELLECT. itel Johnson, Prudence is the highest Virtue he can inculcato; and tor that finer portion of our nature, that portion of it which belongs essentially to Literature; where our highest feelings, our best joys and keenest sorrows, our Doubt, our Love, our Religion reside, he has no word to utter; no remedy, no counsel to give us in our straits; or at most, if, like poor Boswell, the patient is importunate, will answer; " My dear Sir, endeavour to clear your mind of Cant." In such a state of painfil obstruction lay the general mind, when Goethe first appeared in literature. Whatever belonged to the finer nature of man had withered under the noxious breath of Doubt, or passed away in the conflagration of open infidelity; and now, where the Tree of Life once bloomed and brought forth fruit of goodliest savour, there was only barrenness and desolation. But to men afflicted with the "malady of Thought," some devoutness of temper was an inevitable heritage. That nameless Unrest, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing Discontent, which was agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. And here lies the secret of his popularity. In his deep, susceptive heart, he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative gift which belonged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible shape, and gave it a local habitation and a name. Wlerter is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint. True, it prescribes no remedy, for that was a far different, far harder enterprise, to which other years and a higher culture were required. But if Byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad, stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a heart; we may judge with what vehement acceptance this [Werter must have been welcomed, coming as it did like a voice from unknown regions, the first thrilling peal of an impassioned dirge. But what good is it to " whine, put finger i' the eye, and sob," in such a case? Still more, to snarl and snap in malignant wise, ' like a dog distract, or a monkey sick?" What shapest thou here at the World? 'Tis shapen long ago; The Maker shaped it, he thought it were best even so. Thy lot is appointed, go follow its hest; Thy journey's begun, thou must move and not rest; For sorrow and care cannot alter thy case, And running, not raging, will win thee the race. GOETHE, 69 A wide, and every way most important interval divides Wertler from Goethe's next novel, 1Wilhelm Mcister's App renitices]hip, publishiv ed some twenty years afterwards Thils work belongs, in all senses, to the second and sounder period of Goethe's life, and may indeed serve as the fullest, if perhaps not the purest, impress of it; being written with due forethought during a period of no less than ten years. We will here look at this work chiefly as a document for the writer's history; and in this point of view it certainly seems to deserve our best attention; for the problem which had been stated in Werter is here solved. The lofty enthusiasm, which, wandering wildly over the universe, found no resting place, has here reached its appointed home; and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten it with annihilation. The once gloomy and agitated spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good fruits. Neither, which is most important of all, has this Peace been attained by a surrender to Necessity, or any compact with Delusion, For he has conquered his unbelief; the Ideal has been built on the Actual; no longer floats vaguely in darkuess and regions of dreams, but rests in light, on the firm ground of human interest and business, as in its true scene, on its true basis. It is wonderful to see with what softness the skepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay, animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, in his proper form; and how, as Wilhelm himself, the mild-hearted, all-hoping, all-believing Wilhelm, struggles forward towards his world of Art through these curiously complicated influences, all this unites itself into a multifarious, yet so harmonious Whole, as into a clear poetic mirror, where man's life and business in this age, his passions and purposes, the highest equally with the lowest, are imaged back to us in beautiful significance. Such is the temper of mind we trace in Goethe's ieister, and, more or less expressly exhibited, in all his later works. How has such a temper been attained in this so lofty and impetuous mind, more than in any other? How may we, each of us in his several sphere, attain it, or strengthen it for ourselves? To answer these questions would lead us far beyond our limits. Meanwhile, as regards Goethe, there is one feature of the business which, to us, thr 70 THE MODERN INTELLECT. ows considerable light on his moral persuasions. We allude to the spirit in which he cultivates his Art; the noble, disinterqsted, alnost religious love with which he looks on Art in general, and strives towards it as towards the sure, highest, nay only good. We extract one passage from Wilhelm Meister. Strange, unaccountable as the thing may seem, we have actual evidence before our mind that Goethe believes in such doctrines, nay has in some sort lived and endeaToured to direct his conduct by them. '" Look at men,' continues Wilhelm, 'how they struggle after happiness and satisfaction! Their wishes, their toil, their gold, are ever hunting restlessly; and after what? After that which the Poet has received from nature; the right enjoyment of the world; the feeling of himself in others; the harmonious conjunction of many things that will seldom go together. '"What is it that keeps men in continual discontent and agitation? It is that they cannot make realities correspond with their conceptions, tlat enjoyment steals away from among their hands, that the wished-for comes too late, and nothing reached and acquired produces on the heart the effect which their longing for it at a distance led them to anticipate. Now fate has exalted the Poet above all this, as if he were a god. He views the conflicting tumult of the passions; sees families and kingdoms raging in aimless commotion; sees those perplexed enigmas of misunderstanding. which often a single syllable would explain, occasioning convulsions unutterably balefil. He has a fellow-feeling of the mournful and the joyful in the fate of all mortals. When the man of the world is devoting his days to wasting melancholy for some deep disappointment: or, in the fhlness of joy, is going out to meet his happy destiny, the lightlymoved and all-conceiving spirit of the Poet steps forth, like the sun from night to day, and with soft transition, tunes his harp to joy or wo. From his heart, its native soil, springs the fair flower of Wisdom; and if others while waking dream, and are pained with faintas. tic delusions from their every sense, lie passes.the dream of life like one awake, and the strangest event is to him nothing, save a part of the past and of the fiture. And thus the Poet is a teacher, a prophet, a friend of gods and men. How! Thou wouldst have him descend from his height to some paltry occupation? HIe who is fashioned, like a bird, to hover round the world, to nestle on the lofty summits, to feed on flowers and fruits, exchanging gaily one bough for another, he ought also to work at the plough like an ox; GOETIHE. 71 like a dog to train himself to the harness and draught; or, perhaps, tied up in a chain, to guard a farm-yard by hi' barking?' "Werner, it may well be supposed had listened with the greatest surprise, 'All true,' he rejoined, ' if men were but. made like birds; and though they neither spun nor weaved, could spend peaceful days in perpetual enjoymept; if, at the approach of winter they could as easily betake themselves to distant regions; could retire before scarcity, and fortify themselves against frost.' " Poets have lived so,' exclaimed Wilhelm, 'in times when true nobleness was better reverenced; and so should they ever live. Sufficiently provided for within, they have need of little from without; the gift of imparting lofty emotions, and glorious images to men, in melodies and words that charmed the ear, and fixed themI selves inseparably on whatever they might touch, of old enraptured the world, and served the gifted as a rich inheritance. At the courts of' kings, at the tables of the great, under the windows of the fair, the sound of them was heard, while the ear and the soul were shut for all beside; and men felt, as we do when delight comes over us, and we pause with rapture if, among the dingles we are crossing, the voice of the nightingale starts out, touching and strong. They found a home in every habitation of the world, and the lowliness of their condition but exalted them the more. The hero listened to their songs, and the Conquerer of the Earth did reverence to a Poet; for he felt that, without poets, his own wild and vast ex. istence would pass away like a whirlwind, and be forgotten forever, The lover wished that he could feel his longings and his joys so variedly and so harmoniously as the Poet's inspired lips had skill to show them forth; and even the rich man could not of himself discern such costliness in his idol grandeurs, as when they were presented to him shining in the splendour of the Poet's spirit, sensible to all worth, and ennobling alL Nay, if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet was it that first formed gods for us; that exalted us to them, and brought them down to us?'" For Goethe to adopt these sentiments into his sober practical perv suasion; in any measure to feel and believe that such was still, und must always ie, the high vocation of the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of ancient and now almost forgotten nobleness to take his stands even in these trivial, jeeringý withered, unbelievt ing days; and through all their complex, dispiriting, mean~ yet tumn ultuous influences, to '-make his light shine before men," that it 72 VIT, MODERNI INTELLRCT. might beautify even our "rag-gathering age" with some beams of that mild, divine splendour, which had long left us; heartily and in earnest to meditate all this, was no common proceeding; to bring it into practice, especially in such a life as his has been, was among the highest and hardest enterprises, which any man whatever could engage in. If such is the state of the case with regard to Goethe, he deserves not merely approval, but deep, grateful study, observance, imitation, as a Moralist and Philosopher. By way of sequel to the Apprenticeship, Goethe has also written Wilhelm Meister's Travels, which in our view is one of the most perfect pieces of composition that he has ever produced, There is, in truth, a singular gracefulness in it; for the purest spirit of all Art rest over it and breathes through it I mild Wisdom is wedded in living union to Harmony divine. It is an allegory of this, our nineteenth century; a picture full of expressiveness, of what men are striving for, and ought to strive for in these actual days. The scene is not laid on this firm earth; but in a fair Utopia of Art and Scie ence and free Activity; the figures come unlooked for and melt away abruptly, like the pageants of Prospero, in his Enchanted Island, We venture to add, that, like Prospero's Island, this too is drawn from the inward depths, the purest sphere of poetic inspirata ion t ever, as we read it, the images of old Italian Art flit before us; the gay tints of Titian; the quaint grace of Domenicheno; someo times the clear, yet unfathomable depth of Raphael. Goethe's moral sentiments, and culture as a man, are also in this Work, traced in their last degree of clearness and completeness, Therein will be found a sketch of the nature, object, and present ground of Religious Belief, worthy of deep consideration: for Goethe's maxims come from the depths of his mind, and are not in their place till they have reached the depths of ours& The wisest man, we believe, may see in them a reflex of his own wisdom: but to him who is still learning, they become as seeds of knowledge, which take root in the mind, and ramify, as we meditate them into a whole garden of thought: To our own judgment, at least, there is a fine and pure significance in the whole delineation of Religion, which has deep wisdom for us; as indeed a tone of devoutness, of mild, priestlike dignity pervades the wholei By means of the above remarks$ we meant to make it visible that a great change had taken place in the moral disposition of the man; such a change asy in our opinion must take place, more or less con GOETHE. 78 sciously, in every character that, especially in these times, attains to spiritual maunhood; and in characters possessing any thoughtfilness and sensibility, will seldom take place without bitter conflicts, in which the character itself is too often maimed and impoverished, and which end too often not in victory, but in defeat, or fatal compromise with the enemy. To often, we may well say; for though many gird on the harness, few bear it warrior-like; still fewer put it off with triumph. For the rest, what sort of mind it is that has passed through this change, that has gained this victory; how rich and high a mind; how learned by study in all that is wisest, by experience in all that is most complex, the brighest as well as the blackest, in man's existence; gifted with what insight, with what grace and power of utterance, we shall not attempt discussing. Two circumstances, however, we have remarked, which to us throw light on the nature of his original faculty for Poetry, and go far to convince us of the Mastery he has attained in that art. The first is, his singularly emblematic intellect; his perpetual never-failing tendency to transform into sha)e, into life. the opinion, the feeling that may dwell in him, which we reckon to be essentially the grand problem of the Poet. We find this faculty of his in the very essence of his intellect, and trace it alike in the Faausts, the Tas'sos, the Mignons, which in their pure and genuine personality, may almost remind us of the Ariels and Hamlets of Shakspeare. The other characteristic of his mind, is his wonderful variety, nay, universality; his entire freedom Irom Mannerism. It seems quite a simple style that of his; remarkable chiefly for its commonness; and yet it is the most uncommon of all styles: quite inimitable. As hard is it to discover in his writings, what sort of spiritual construction he has, what are his temper, his affections, his individual specialities. For all minds live freely within hin; are alike indifferent, or alike dear to him; he is of no ast or caste. We reckon this to be the characteristic of a Master in Art of any sort; and true especially of all great Poets. How true is it of Shakspeare and Homer! Who knows, or can figure what the Man Shakspeare was, by the first, by the twentieth perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: yet is to us the most inexplicable enigma. And what is Homer in the ilias? HE IS THE WITNESS; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but 9 74 TUIE MODERU INTELLEZCT, do not behold him. Thus, it would seem, we consider Goethe to be a richly educated Poet, no less than a richly educated Man; one to whom Experience has given true wisdom, and the "Melodies Eternal" a perfect utterance for his wisdom4 And indeed, in Goethe's mind the first aspect that strikes us is its calmness, then its beauty; a deeper inspection reveals to us its vastness and unmeasured strength. The stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of its being; a trembling sensibility has been enured to stand, without flin, ching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing outward, nothing inward, shall agitate or control him. The brightest and most cap" ricious fancy, the most piercing and inquisitive intellects the wildest and deepest imagination; the highest thrills of joy, the bitterest pangs of sorrow: all these are hiss he is not theirs. While he moves every heart from its steadfastness, his own is firm and still: the words that search into the inmost recesses of our nature, he pronounces with a tone of coldness and equanimity, His faculties and feelings are not fettered or prostrated under the iron sway of Pass* ion, but led and guided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reaý son. Such a mind as Gbethe's is the fruit not only of a royal endows ment by nature, but also of a culture proportionate to her bounty, Of his culture as a writers his resources have been accumulated from nearly all the provinces of human intellect and activity; and he has trained himself to use these complicated instruments, with a light expertness which we might have admired in the professor of a solitary department. But Goethe's culture as a writer is perhaps less remarkable than his culture as a man; for h has learned not in head only, but also in hearts If asked what was the grand characteristic of his writings, we should not say knowledge, but wisdom, A gay delineation will give us notice of dark and toilsome experiences, of business done in the great deep of the spirit; a maxim, trivial to thle careless eye, will rise with light ad solution over long perplexed periods of our own history. It is thus that heart speaks to heart, that the life of one man becomes a possession to all. Iere is a mind of the most subtle and tumultuous elements; but its impetuous and ethereal faculties work softly together for good and noble ends, Nor is there any whining over human woes t it is understood that we must simply all strive to alleviate or remove them. There is no noisy battling for opinions; but a persevering effort to make GOETHr. 75 Truth lovely, and recommend her, by a thousand avenues, to the hearts of all men. For actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of our Shakspeare, and perhaps of every great dramatic poet. Shakspeare is no sectarian; to all he deals with equity and mercy; because he knows all, and his heart is wide enough for all. In his mind the world is a whole;'he 'figures it as Providence governs it; and to him it is not strange that the sun should be caused to shine on the evil and the good, Goethe has been called the ~ German Voltaire," but it is a name which does him wrong and describes him ill. To say nothing of his dignified and truthful character as a man, he belongs, as a thinker and a writer, to a far higher class than Voltaire, who may be said to have been the cleverest of all men; but a great man is something more, and this he surely was not. In fact, the popular man, and the man of true originality, are seldom one and the same, Reasons are obvious enough. The popular man stands on our own level; he shows us a truth which we can see without shifting our present intellectual position. This is a highly convenient arrangement. The original man, again, stands above us; he wishes to wrench us from our old fixtures, and elevate us to a higher and clearer level: but to quit our old fixtures is no such easy business; accordingly we demur, we resist, we even give battle; we still suspect that he is above us, but try to persuade ourselves (Laziness and Vanity earnestly assenting) that he is below. For is it not the very essence of such a man that he be new? And who will warrant us that, at the same time, he shall only be an intensation and continuation of the old, which, in general, is what we long and look for? No one can warrant us. And, granting him to be a man of real genius, real depth, and that speaks not till after earnest meditation, what sort of a philosophy were his, could we estimate the length, breadth, and thickness of it at a single glance? But now let a speaker of the other class come forward; one of those men that "have more than any one, the opinion which all men have!" No sooner does lie speak, than all and sundry of us feel as if we had been wishing to speak that very thing, as if we ourselves might have spoken it; and forthwith resounds from the united universe a celebration of that surprising feat. What clearness, brilliancy, justness, penetration! Who can doubt that this man is right, when so many thousand votes are 76 THE MOD)ERN IN'fELLIS:CT. ready to back him? Doubtless, he is rigyht; doubtless, he is a clever mnan anbd his praise will long be in all the Magrazines. In such spirit, and with an eve that takes in all provinces of hulmau Thought, Feeling, and Activity, does the Poet stand forth as the true prophet of his time; victorious over its contradiction, possessor of its wealth; embodying the nobleness of the past into a new whole, into a new vital nobleness for the present and the future. This, we are aware, is a high saying:' applicable to no other man that has lived for some two centuries; ranks Goethe, not only as the highost man of his time, but as a man of universal Time, important for all generations,- one of the landmarks in the History of Men. Thus, from our point of view, does Goethe rise on us as theUlniter, and victorious Reconciler, of the distracted clashing elements of the most distracted and divided age, that the world has witnessed since the Introduction of the Christian Religion. To the faithful heart let no era be a desperate one! It is ever the nature of Darkness to be followed by a new nobler Light; nay, to produce such. The woes and contradictions of a world sunk in wickeduess and baseness and unbelief, wherein also physical wretchedness, the disorganization and broken-heartedness of whole classes struggling in ignorance and pain will not fail: all this, the view of all this, falis like a Sphinx-question on every new-born earniest heart, a life-anddeath entanglement for every earnest heart to deliver itself from, and the world from. Of W isdom cometh Strength: only when there is '"no vision" do the people perish. We have had our Mirabeaus, and Byrous, and Napoleons, and innumerable red-fJlami'g meteors, shaking pestilence from their hair; but may the clear Star, day's harbinger, now be recognised. That in Goethe ithere lay Force to educe reconcilement out of suh contradiction as man is now born into, marks him as the Strong One of his time. For the thing that was given this man to reconcila was the inward spiritual chaos: he was to close the Abys0 o1t or which such manifold destruction, moral, inipliectual, sociwl, wSI proceeding. The greatness of his EnLdowinent, manifesfted in ýý-ch a work, belongs to the highlest class of human endowments:, etilin the wearer thereof,v who so nobly used it, to the name in its stri;Ctest iense, of Great Man. A giant strength of Character ih to de trind. here. "He appeared to aim at pushing away from him everyt that di1d hang 1 upon his individual will. In his own immovable iirmueC 5f c(Iaracter, he uad grown into the habit of never contradiitinj G OETHI-TE. 77 any one. On the contrary, he listened1 with i, frjendiy air to ever> one's opinion, andl would himseclf cllucidate and sirengthen it by insr1 -ances and reasons of his own." Beloved brlethren, who wisl to be strong! consider what strength actually is, and where you arc to try for it. A certain strong man, of' former time, fought stoutly at Le. panto; worked stoutly as Algerine slave; stoutly delivered himself fromn such working; with stout cheerfulneiss endured famine and nakedness and the world's ingratitude; and sitting in jail, with the one arm left him, wrote our joyfullo t, and all but our deepest, Inodern book, and named it Don Quixote: this was a genuine strong ma. A i strong man, of' recent time, fights little for any good cause, anywhere; works weakly as an English lord, weakly delivers hirnself' fromn such.working; with w eak despondency endures the cackling of plucked geese in London, anid, sitting in sunny Italy, writes, over many reams of paper, the following sentence, with variations: Saw ever the world one greater or unthappier?. This was a sham strong man. Choose ye.Oftx'oethe's spiritual Endowment, looked at on the Intellectual side, we have to pronounce a similar opinion; that it is great among the very greatest. A nobler power of insight than this of Goethe, you in vain look f'or, since Shakspeare passed away. Shakspeaire too does not look at a thingy but into it, through it; so that he consti-ructively comprehends it, can take it asunder, and put it. together again. For Goethe, as for Shakspeare, tie world lies all transparent, allfJsible, (wve might call it,) encircled with WONiDEiR; the Nat~ural in reality tle Supernatural, for to the seer's eyes both become one. Waht are the Hamlets and Templilests, the -Fausts and Mi11.gnons, but glimpses accorded us into this transparent, woncdi~encircled world: revelations of the mystery of all mysteries, Mali's Lifb as it actually is? Aga in, it is the sameý tiaeulty in hig her exercise, that encables the poet to construct a CLara-c-Ler. I-ieee too Shakspeare and Goethe are vital; iheir conistruction becrins at the hear~t a flows outward aLs the ljihe-strealus do: la:hioninfg the s'fleli"e, as it wlre, spontaneoaslyr. Those: MNacbeths and Faistatis, accordingly, these Fausis and Philnae iihave a prob-abilitv and life that separa-tes themn from all otheir ficuois oi' late agrez. All others, in comparison, have more or less the l ".auture of' hollow vizardes, constructed frow without inwards, I J itlce, and deceptively pt in Imotion. a u y, aY as hiakspeare is to be considered as the grewhmer nature THIE MOD)ERN INTELLECT. )I the, two, on the other hand, we tmust admit hini to have been the less cultivated, and muchli the mniore careless. What Shakspeare 1o0ld have (lone we nowhere discover, A careless mortal, open to the Universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himelf; who, 1Pronietlhoeus-like, will scale Heaven, (if it so must be,);nd is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London Playhouse: an unparalleled mortal. In the great Goethe, again, we see A man through life at his utmost strain; a man that laid hold of all things, under all aspects, scientific or poetic. What Shakspeare's fhoughta on " God, Nature, Art," would have been, especially had be lived to number fourscore years, were curious to know; Goethe's, delivered in many-toned melody, as the apocalypse of our era, are here for us to know. We have looked at GCoethe with the eyes of " this generation;" fhat is to say, chiefly as a world-changer, and benignant spiritual tevolutionist; for in our present so astonishing condition of prog11ess of the species." such is the category under which we must try,ill things, wisdom itself. Here, moreover, another word of explan-,ation is perhaps worth adding; we mean in regard to his Political ereed and practice. Let the political admirer of Goethe be at ease: ( oethe belonged to bothi IParties, and also neither 1 The "rotten 'White-washed condition of' society" was plainer to few eyes than to Iiis, sadder to few hearts than to his. Listen to the following Epiframs by Goethe: To this stithy I liken the land, the hairmmer its ruler, And the people that plate, beaten between them that writhes Woe to the plate, when nothing but wilful bruises on bruises Hit it at random; and made, coumeth no Kettle to view JBRut, alas, what is to be lone? No Apostle-of-Liberty nuich to my heart >per found I Iicense, each for hiimself, this was at bott6m their want. Liberator of many first dare to be Servant of many: nWhat a businessL is that. wouldst thou know it, go try Let t"he followinug also re c recomnnenled to all inordinate worshipp prs of political Reforms, and the Shamnneful Parts of the Constitution anTi let each be a little toleraat of his neighbour's ' festoon, aoI01 H, 7 f and rejoice that he has himself found out Freedotm,-- a thing mInu. wanted: Walls I see tumbled down, walls I see also a-building; Here sit prisoners, there likewise do prisoners sit: Is the world then itself a huge prison? Free only the madmanal His chains knitting still up into some graceful festoon? So that, for the Poet, what remains but to leave Coucervative and Destructive pulling one another's locks and ears off, as they will and can; and, for his own part, strive day and night to forward thlt small suffering remnant of Productives; of those who, in true niantfu endeavour9 create somewhatl,-with whom alone, in the end, does the hope of the world lie, Go thou and do likewise I Art thou called to politics; understand well then, that to no man is his political constitution "a life, but only a house wherein his life is led t" and hast thou a nobler task than.such house wall-plastering and pulling down of rotten rat-inhabited walls, leave such to the properl craftsman; honour the higher Artiet, and good-humouredly say with him: All this is neither my coat nbr my cake, Why fill my hand With other men's charges? The fishes swim at ease in the lake, And take no thought of the barges, To us, meanwhile, to all that wander in darkness and seek lighth as the one thing needful, be this experience of the most complexly4 situated, deep-searching, every way far-experienced man reckoned among our choicest blessings and distinctionsi Learn of him, imitate, emulate him I So did he catch the music of the Universei and unfold it into clearness, and in authentic celestial tones bring it home to the hearts of men, from amid that soul-confusing Babylonish hub, bub of this our new Tower-of-Babel era For now, too, as in that old time, had men said to themselves: Come, II us build a tower which shall reach to heaven; and by our steamiengines, and logic: engines, and skilful mechanism and manipulation, vanquish not only Physical Nature, but the divine Spirit of Natures and scale the eml pyrean itself. Wherefore they must needs again be stricken with confusion of tongues (or of printing-presses) and dispersed, -- r. other work; wherein also let us hope, their harnmers and trowels 80O THE MODERN INTELLECT. shall better avail them.-- Here, however, we must close. For furthering the increase of knowledge on Goethe. may we beg the reader to accept a small piece of advice, which we ourselves have found to be of use in studying him. It is, nowise to suppose that Poetry is a superficial, cursory buesi-ess, which may be seen through to the very bottom, so soon as one inclines to cast his eye on it. We reckon it the falsest of all maxims that a true Poem can be adequately tasted; can be judged of "as men judge of a dinner," by some internal tongue, that shall decide on the matter at once and for ever. We speak of that Poetry which Masters write, which aims not " at furnishing a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions," but at incorporating the everlasting Reason of man in forms visible to his Sense, and suitable to it: and of this we say that to know it is no slight task; but rather that being the essence of all science, it requires the purest of all study for knowing it. What!" cries the reader, " are we to study Poetry?"-" Happy contractedness of youth," says Goethe, " nay, of men in general; that at all moments of existence they can look upon themselves as complete; and inquire neither after the True nor the False, nor the High nor the Deep; but simply after what is proportioned to themselves." Everywhere in life, the true question is, not what we gain, but what we do: so also in intellectual matters, it is not what we receive, but what we are made to give, that chiefly contents and profits us. True, it is but the smaller number of books that become more instructive by a second perusal: the great majority are as perfectly plain as perfect triteness can make them. Yet, if time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all. And were there an artist of a right spirit, of whom we could know beforehand that he had not written without purpose and earnest meditation, and had embodied in it, more or less, the creations of a deep and noble soul, -should we not draw near to him reverently, as disciples to a master, and study him even to his minutest meanings? For were not this to think as he had thought, to see with his gifted eyes, to make the very mood and feeling of his great and rich nmid the mood also of our poor and little one? Thus must we believe that, in recommending Goethe, we are doing our part to recommend a truer study of Poetry itself: and happy were we to fancy that any efforts of ours could promote such an object. Promoted, attained it will be, as we believe, by one means GOETHI.. 81 and another. A deeper feeling for Art is abroad; a purer, more earnest purpose in the study, in the practice of it; in which all nations must participate. In the meanwhile, all that we mean by the higher Literature of Germany, which is the higher Literature of Europe, already gathers round this man, as its creator; of which grand object, dawning mysterious on a world that hoped not for it, who is there that can assume the significance and far-reaching influences? The Literature of Europe, of the World, will pass away; Europe itself, the World itself will pass away; this little life-boat of an Earth with its noisy crew of Mankind, and all their troubled History, will one day have vanished, faded like a cloud-speck from the azure of the All! What then is man? What then is man? He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains not to this wild death-element of TIME; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more. Reader! will you not then here vow to do your little task, even as Goethe did his great one;-" LIKE A STAR, UNHASTING, YET UNRESTING" -in the manner of a true man, not for a Day, but for Eternity! To thee thyself, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchymy: " THINK OF LIVING!" To live, as he counselled and commanded, not commodiously in the Reputable, the Plausible, the Half; but resolutely in the Whole, the Good, the True. 010 THR MOBDERN NTELLEOT. BURNS. IN the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler, "ask for bread and receive a stone;" for, in spite of our grand maxim of supply and demand. it is by no means the highest excellence that men are most forward to recognise. The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like the apostie of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggravation of the injustice' that there is generally a posthumous retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of nature, might have lived the alloted period of threescore-and-ten; but his short life was spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his manhood, miserable and neglected; and yet already a brave mausoleum shines over his dust, and many splendid monuments have been reared in other places to his fame; the street where he languished in poverty is called by his name; the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his commentators and admirers, and at least nine, if not more, narratives of his Life, have been given to the world! The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either trite or exhausted; and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet; and this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that too the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay, perhaps, painfully feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of existence, cau be made of finer clay than themselves. But with respect to Burns. now that the companions of his pilgrimage, the Honourable Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, and the BURNS. Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Lawyers, and the New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with, have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from his juxtaposition, it will not be so difficult to measure him by his true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. To throw light on this subject, his Biographers have done something, no doubt, but by no means a great deal, to assist us. So that we are far fi-om thinking that the problem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents, as to the limited and imperfect applioation of them to the great end of Biography. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion, that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did coexisting circumstances modify him from without; how did lie modify these from within? With what endeavours and what etiiicacy rule over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them? In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society? He who should answer these questions in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in Biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and many lives will be written, and read, and forgotten, which are not in this sense biographies. But Burns, if we mistake not, is one of these few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good-will, and trust they may meet with acceptance. Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy; and was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into censure and neglect; till his early and most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even to our own 84 THE MODERN INTELLECT. time. It is true, the ' nine days" have long since elapsed; and the very continuance of this clamour proves that Burns was no vulgar wondor. Accordingly, even in sober judgments, he has come ot rest more and more exclusively on his own intrinsic merits, and now quite shorn of that casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, bnt as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he did little: He did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may almost say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without help, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the meanest sort. An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain forever shut against him? His means are the commonest and rudest; the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam.engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with the pick-axe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad with his arms. It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it miner the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, of penury and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsey for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments: through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his eagle eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the irrepressible movement of his inward spirit, he struggles forward into the general view, and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudgiug BURNS. childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask if it be strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun shone as thro. ugh a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapours, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure splendour, enlightening the world: but some beams from it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient colours into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears! We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it is exposition rather than admiration that our readers require of us here; and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him; and love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should be a cold business; we are not so sure of this; but, at all events, our concern with Burns is not excl. usively that of critics. True and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was often advised to write a tragedy: time and means were not lent him for this; but through life he enacted a tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe, and perish on his rock, " amid the melancholy main," presented to the reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity and feir," as did this intrinsically nobler, gentler, and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements, which coiled closer and closer round him, till only death opened him an outlet. Conquerers are a race with whom the world could well dispense; nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness, and high but selfish enthusiasm of such persons, inspire us in general with any affection; at best it may excite amazement; and their fall, like that of a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. But a true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some effulgence of Wisdom, some tone of the "Eternal Melodies," is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a generation: we see in him a freer, purer, development of whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life is a rich lesson to us, and we mourn his death, as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us. Such a gift had Nature in her bounty bestowed on us in Robert Burns; but with queenlike indifference she cast it from her hand, THE MODERN INTELLECT. like a thing of no moment; and it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recognised it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own was not given. Destiny,-for so in our ignorance. we must speak,-his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him; and that spirit, which might have soared, could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom, and died, we may almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul; so full of in. born riches, of love to all living and lifeless things! How his heart flows out in sympathy over universal Nature; and in her bleakest provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy" falls not, unheeded under his ploughshare; nor the ruined nest of that Swee, cowering, timorous beastie," cast forth, after all its provident pains, to "thole the sleety dribble, and cranreuch cauld." The "hoar visage" of Winter delights him; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for "it raises his thoughts to Him that walk. eth on the wings of the wind," A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music! But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. What warm, allcomprehending feilow-feeling, what trustful, boundless love, what generous exaggeration of the object loved I His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden. are no longer mean and homelj, but a hero and a queen, whom lie prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the noble. ness, that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his heart; and thus over the lowest provinces of man's existence ha pours the glory of his own soul; and they rise, in shadow and suun shine, softened and brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest. He has ajust self-consciousness, which too often degenerates into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for defence, not for otience; no cold, suspicious feeling, but a frank and social one. The peasant Poet bears himself, we might say, like a King in exile: he i cast among thi low, and feels himself equal to the highest; yet ie clauim no rank, that none may be disputed to him. Tue forward BURIIS. 87 he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the "insolence of condescension" caitiot thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; nay, throws himself into their arins: aad as it were, entreats them to love him. It is moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeks relief from friendship; unbosoms himself, often to the unworthy; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn;" a man of keen vision, before whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among us; "a soul like an JEolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody." And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and tavern-keepers, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale-barrels! In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass on, before another such is given us to waste, All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure, true effort, nay, even length of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional effusionsý poured forth with little premeditation, expressing, by such mieans as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subjei" with the full colection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect frag= ments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the iost fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality they must have; for after nearly a hundred years of the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they stil 88 THE MODERN INTELLECT. continue to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more and more extensively; and this not only by literary virtuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the most hard, unlettered, and truly natural class, who read little, and especially no poetry, except because they find pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is spoken, are well worth enquiring into. After every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these works. What is that excellence? To answer this question, will not lead us far. The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recognised: his Sincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling; the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes he has lived and laboured amidst, that he describes: those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it, too, with such melody and modulation as he can; " in homely rustic jingle;" but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself. To every poet, to every writer, we might say: Be true, if you would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition, of his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to him. In culture, in extent- view, we may stand above the speaker, or below him; but in either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, will find some response within us; for in spite of all casual varieties in outward rank, or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart of man to man. This may appear a very simple principle, and one which Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery is easy enough: but the practical appliance is not easy; is indeed the fundamental 1ififculty which all pdets have to strive with, atidt which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dali to discriminate the true from the false; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all temnptations, are alike ftt*l to a writer, With eithlier or, as more conmnonly happens, with both, of these deficiencies, combine a love of distinction, a Wvish to be original, which is seldom wanting, and we have Affectatiosh, tlle bane of literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is sf noorals. ioHW often does the one and the other front usa, in poetry, as in lifet Great poets themselves are not alweys free of this vice; nay, it i'ý precisely on a certain sort and degree of greatness that it is indst commonly ingrafted. A strong effort after excellencO \Will so me: times solace itself w ith a mere shadow of success, and he who haO much to unfoldj will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, fof instance, was no conunon man: yet if we examine his poetry witi' this view, we shall find it far enough from fitultlessc Generall speaking, we shouild say the t it is not true. HIe refreshes us, no& With the divine fountailn but too often with vulngr strong vatcrs' stimulating indleed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike oir even aunusea; Are his H arolds and Ginours, we would ask, real menwe meall, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Dob nOt these characters, does not the character of their author, whi ch more oriless shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for thl occasion; nro natural or possible mode of being, but something intcen tied to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these sttornfidl agonies this volcanic heroism, superhaman contempt, and nmood desperation- with so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humours, is more like the brawling of a player in sonme paltry tragedy, which to last three hours, than the bearing of a lmao in the business of life, which is to last threescore-and-ten.years. To our minds, there is a taint Yof this sort, something whi'Ch we should call theatricalb false, and affected, in every one of theso otherwise powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, especiallyct t e latter parts of it, is the only thing approaching to a sincere work, he ever wrote the only work where he showed himself in any measture, as he was and seemed so intent on his subject, as, for inoments, to forget himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, heartily detested it nIlay, hlie had declared formal hwar against it in words; So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this primary attainmneut, which, might seeim the simplest of' all: to 'read vs oiwn conscioUsniess 'without 11 wrtr roDtr ~ lib,~ti~ mistakes, without errors involuntary or wilfll! We recole1ct no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with us to the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and an honest writer. In his successes and hiis failures, in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever clears simple, true, and glitters with no lustre but his own, We reckon this to be a great virtue; to be, in fact, the root of most other virtues, literary as well ae moral, It is nietessary$ however, to mention, that it is to the poetry of Burns that we now allude; to those writings Which he had time to meditate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical feeling, or obstruct his etldeavour to fulfil it. Certain of his Letterse and other fractions of prose composition, by no means deserve this praise, Here$ doubtless, there is not the same natural truth of style; but on the contrary, something not only stiff, but strained and twisted; a certain highfnlown inflated tone; the stilting emphasis of Which contrasts ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses" Thus no man, it would appeari is altogether unaffected; Does not Shakspeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest bombast! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first Was his comparative deficiency in language. Burnsx though for most part he writes with singular force, and even gracefulness, is not master of English prose, as he is of Scottish verse; not master of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehemence of his mattein These Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressingC But a second and weightier excuse is to be found in the peculiarity of Burns's social rank; His correspondents are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascertained; whom therefore he is either forec arming himself against, or else unconsciously flattering; by adopting the style he thinks will please them. At all events; we should rem' ember that these faults, even in his Letters,.ne not the rule; but the exception: Whenever he writes, as one would ever wish to do, to trusted frietds and on real interests; his style becomes simple, vigorous; expressive; sometimes even beautifuL His Letters to Mrs. Dunlop are uniformly excellent. But wd return to his poetry; In addition to its Sincerityl it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing. It displays itself in his choice of subjects, BURNS, 91 or rather in his indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of making all subjects interesting. The ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is for ever seeking, in external circumstances, the help which can be found only in himself, In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or comeliness home is not poetical but prosaic; it is in some past, distant, conventional world, that poetry resides for him; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, it would be well with him, Hence our innumerable host of rose-coloured novels and iron-mailed epics, with their locality not on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, and copper-coloured Chiefs in wampum, and eo many other ferocious figures from the heroic times or the heroic climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace be with them! But yet, as a great moralist proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain preach to the poets, " a sermon on the duty of staying at home," Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates can do little for them. That form of life has attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than our own, than simply because it is different; and even this attraction must be of the most transient sort, For will not our own age, one (ay, be an ancient one; and have as quaint a costume as the rest; not con. trasted with the rest therefore, but ranked along with them, in respect of quaintnees? Does Homer interest us now, because he wrote of what passed out of his native Greece, and two centuries before he was born: or because he wrote of what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, which is the same after thirty centuries? Let our poets look to this: is their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision deeper than that of other men, they have nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject; is it not so, - they have nothing to hope, but a short-lived favour, even from the highest. The poet, we cannot but think, can never have far to seek for a subject: the elements of his art are in him, and around him on every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote from the Actual, but under it and within it: nay, he is a poet, precisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its everthwarted, ever-renewed endeavours; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through Eternity: and all the mystery THE MODEiN INTELLECT, of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of a tragedy in every death.bed, though it were a peasant's and a bed of heath? And are wooings and weddings obsolete, that there can he Comedy no longer? Or are mon suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce? Man's life and nature is, as it was, and as it will over be. But the poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand them; or they come and pass away before him in vain, He is a prophet, a seer; a gift of vision has been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which another cannot equally decipher? then he is no poet, and never will be one. In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the truth of his genius, than ifi he had, by his own strength, kept the whole Minerva Press going, to tie end of his literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of Nature's own making; and Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets. We often hear of this and the other external condition being requisite fbr the existence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training; lie must lhave studied certain tlings, studied for instance '"the elder dramatists," and so learned ii poetic language; as if poetry lay in the tongue, not in tie heart. At other times we are told, he must be bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential footing with the higher classes; because. above all other tlhings, lie must see the world. As to seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little difficulty, if he have but an eye to see it with. Without eyes, indeed, the task might be hard. But happily every poet is born in the world, and sees it, with or against his will, every day and every hour lie lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true light and thle inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded salons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have their abode. Nay, do not the elements of all humlan virtues, and all human vices; thle passions at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, in stronger ot fainter lines, in the consciousness of every individual bosom, that has practised honest self-examination? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel and Tarboiton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came to light in any S"Exclusive" Clubhouse, or the Tuileries itself. But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor aspir BURNS. 93 ant to poetry for it is hinted that he should have been born two cen, turies ago; inasmuch as poetry, about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by men! Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, overhung the field of literature; but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there: the Shakspeare or the Burns, unconciously, and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he appear? Why do we call him new and original, if we saw where his marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it? It is not the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye, A Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till Burns becme a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a man's life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battle-fields remain unsung; but the Wl'ouided H-are has not perished without its memorial; a balm of mercy yet breathes on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there, Our Halloween had passed and repassed, in rude awe and laughter, since the era of the Druids; but no poet of it, till Burns discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl: neither was the Holy Fair any Couzncil of Trent or Roman Jubilee; but nevertheless, Superstition, and Hypocrisy, and F1'n having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it became a poem instinct with satire, and genuine comic life. Let but the true poet be given us, We repeat it, place him where and how you will, and true poetry will not be wanting. Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as we have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written; a virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry; it is redolent of natural life, and hardy, natural men. There is a decisive strength in him; and yet a sweet native gracefulness: he is tender, he is vehement, yet without constraint or too visible effort; he melts the heart, or inflanies it, with a power which seems habitual and ftamiliar to him. We see in him the gentleness, the trembling pity "bo a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as lightning' lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. -He has an echo in his bosom for every note of human feeling; the high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns to his "lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit." And observe with what a prompt and eager force he grasps his subject, be it what it may! How he fixes, as it were, THE MODERN INTELLECT. the full image of the matter in his eye; full and clear in every line. ament; and catches the real type and essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of which misleads him! Is it of reason; some truth to be discovered? No sophistry. no vain surface-logic detains him; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierres through into the marrow of the question; and speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten, Is it of description; some visual object to be represented? No poet of any age or nation is more graphic than 1urns the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance; three lines from his hand, and wo have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear and definite a likeness! It seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the engraving tool of R Retzsch is not more expressive or exact. This clearness of sight we may call the foundation of all talent: for in fact, unless we see our object, how shall we know how to place or prize it, in our understanding, our imagination, our affections? Yet it is not in itself perhaps a very high excellence; but capable of being united indifferently with the strongest, or with ord. inary powers. Homer surpasses all men in this quality: but strangely enough, at no great distance below him are Richardson and D)efoe. It belongs, in truth, to what is called a lively mind; and gives no sure indication of the higher endowments that may exist dlong with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, it is combiined with great garrulity; their descriptions are detailed, ample, ind lovingly exact; Homer's fire bursts through, from'time to time, zis if by accident; but Defoe and Richardson have no fire. Burns, atgain, is not more distinguished by the clearness than by the impetious force of his conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of expression may give an humble but the readiest proof. Who ever uttered sharper sayings ltan his; words more memorable, now by their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigour and laconic pith? A ingle phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole scene. Our Scottish forefathers in the battle-field struggled forward, lie says, "red-wat-shod:" giving, in this one word, a full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too frig-,htfully accurate for Art! In fact, one of the leading features in tlhe mind of Burns is this,vigour ot' his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute force is,