believe that, in the first conception of Faust, any allegories of any kind were before the poet's mind : I have not, therefore, perplexed myself or my readers with those which have been suggested. Of what trifling use in ascertaining even the literal meaning of any disputed passage, the German commentators can be, may be at once learned by looking at Mr. Hayward's extracts from Falk, Schubart, &c. It is a pleasant thing to see the natives of the poet's own land-nay, his familiar friends-guessing pretty much after our own fashion at the same passages which we find difficult. Shakspeare is easier than his commentators, and so is Goethe. The difficulties which have interrupted commentators and translators are not difficulties of language. The answer to some of the questions, which a perusal of Faust suggests, must be found in the depths of the mind itself, in self-reflection, and those habits of thought which are not the growth of the moment. Some difficulties also arise from the anxiety of the author to keep in his own possession the secret of the intended continuation of Faust, and yet give such obscure intimations of it as, when that "secret tale of wonder" should be revealed, would make the former and the latter parts of the work unite, and give the intended sequel the appearance of a necessary part of the original design. The First Part is in this way

not only darkened at times with the shadows of coming events, but of events themselves unfixed and wavering. A feeling of mystery upon the subject was sought to be kept awake in the reader's mind. Thus, in Maturin's drama of "Bertram," the figure of the demon knight in the original conception of the piece, though he never mingles in the action, yet remains in the back-ground, and, as the horrors of the scene darken, seems not unlikely at any moment to take his place among the dramatis personæ.*

I dwell with the more anxiety on this subject, because, although in Germany commentaries have been written and lectures delivered on the subject— although in England and France the work has been often translated—yet I am by no means sure that in any one passage which has puzzled a reader possessing such knowledge of the original as to be fairly entitled to express any opinion on the subject, the difficulties which suggest themselves on a first reading have been altogether removed. The language is now and then intentionally enigmatical; and I have had in some cases to adopt language less expressive than I might have readily found, if it

* The printed drama omits the passages to which I allude. They will be found in Sir Walter Scott's review of Bertram in the Edinburgh Review.

was not necessary to select words which, while they are intended to suggest one signification, are such as not to exclude a different and sometimes even an opposed meaning - nay, which latter meaning, if I have been skilful enough in conveying what I believe my author to have meant, will, when attention is directed to it, but not till then, appear to have been from the beginning such as ought to have awakened suspicion to more being meant than at first met the ear. In the temptation scene, for instance :-

Sights shalt thou see, that man hath never seen.

It is clear that words might be easily selected which would better express the thought which Mephistopheles wishes Faustus to receive from this very ambiguous promise; yet I think such a translation would exclude somewhat of the half-aside meaning of the passage, from which we seem to learn that the promise was from the first intentionally deceptive that from something either in the nature of the gifts themselves, or else in the nature or character of the being to whom they are offered, the result will be a mockery of the hopes excited. I have chosen an instance that does not very perfectly illustrate what I mean; but I cannot, without destroying the effect of the passages to which I more particularly allude, distinctly point them out. I

would only say, that I have observed in the disquisitions of those writers who have endeavoured to exhibit "the infinite matter of Faust *," something

"The various attempts to continue the infinite matter of Faust where Goethe drops it, although in themselves fruitless and unsuccessful, at least show in what manifold ways this great poem may be conceived, and how it presents a different side to every individuality. As the sunbeam breaks itself differently in every eye, and the starred heaven and nature are different for every soul-mirror, so it is with this immeasurable and exhaustless poem. We have seen illustrators and continuers of Faust, who, captivated by the practical wisdom which pervades it, considered the whole poem as one great collection of maxims of life: we have met with others who saw nothing else in it but a pantheistical solution of the enigma of existence; others, again, more alive to the genius of poetry, admired only the poetical clothing of the ideas, which otherwise seemed to them to have little significance; and others, again, saw nothing peculiar but the felicitous exposition of a philosophical theory, and the specification of certain errors of practical life. All these are right; for from all these points of view Faust is great and significant: but whilst it appears to follow these several directions as radiations from a focus, at the same time it contains (but for the most part concealed) its peculiar, truly great, and principal direction; and this is the reconcilement of the great contradiction of the world, the establishment of peace between the Real and the Ideal. No one who loses sight of this, the great foundation of Faust, will find himself in a condition-we do not say to explain or continue, but even to read and comprehend the poem. This principal basis underlies all its particular tendencies the religious, the philosophical, the scientific, the practical; and for this very reason is it, that the theologian, the scholar, the man of the world, and the student of philosophy, to what

of an unreasonable desire to exact from the translator, in each particular passage, more than what a due consideration of the relation of those passages to the entire drama would warrant. Something of this fault pervades the whole of a very able article on the subject of Faust, by a native of Germany, in Curry's Dublin University Magazine. In the manifold varieties of purpose more or less obscurely manifested in Faust, this writer sees but one; and that which he every where sees and demands a translator to exhibit, is yet, like the Achilles of the Iliad, allowed to be absent even from the reader's thoughts through the greater part of the work, and is so imperfectly suggested, that I am not sure in what way the solution of the problem, the reconcilement of the Ideal with the Real - for such we are told is the object of the poet, is at last effected. I would not willingly be supposed to undervalue the paper of which I speak on the contrary, I have derived much instruction from it; and the conductors of the publication in which it appeared will be doing some service to the students of Goethe's works, if they are enabled to procure

ever school he may belong, are all sure of finding something to interest them in this all-embracing production." "* HAYWARD, pp. vi.—viii.

* From a German Review.