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different schools of infidel philosophy with which Germany has been infested jingle into rhyme. I have not thought myself at liberty to abridge any part of the work. In this strange scene, omission or alteration would seem to me even less allowable than in any other passage, as it is manifest that the crowd of images has been whirled together, with intended reference to the purpose of distracting Faustus from the recollection of Margaret, and thus preparing for the catastrophe which immediately follows: and- so consummate are the artifices of arrangement in this elaborate poem the object is at the same time attained, and was, we know, designed by the poet, of deceiving, by the multiplicity and variety of the matter thus flung before it, the reader's mind into the belief of a considerable interval having passed between the time when we left Margaret fainting in the cathedral, and that in which we meet her in the prison. But it is fit to say that any deep meaning is not to be sought in rubbish of the kind; a playful turn of expression, a droll rhyme, a trifling pun, any thing and every thing were welcome in what Goethe

called his Walpurgis sack. "For thirty years," said he to Falk, "the critics have been sorely vexed and tormented in spirit by the broomsticks on the Blocksberg, and the Cat's dialogue in the Witch's

kitchen, which occurs in Faust.

And all the interpreting and allegorizing of this dramatic humoristic extravaganza have never thoroughly prospered. Really people should learn, when they are young, to make and to take a joke, and to throw away scraps as scraps." s." The critics supplied keys enough for every sentence which was given a hundred meanings, and Goethe appears to have regarded their notes and comments as the principal part of the

amusement.

*

I have given in my notes but few extracts from the German commentaries on Faust: no one who has looked into the sources of information open to the English reader, can be ignorant of the spirit in which they are written, and of the feeling with which Goethe regarded the hierophants who could "tell him his dream and the interpretation thereof." Every word is made a mystery of. The poet, whom his admirers of the higher forms regard as little less than inspired, has revealed something which has been a secret from all others of mankind; or in his very silence and forbearance from speech, there is mystery; and all this in the passages which, to the unassisted reader, are seemingly of no other importance than as they carry on the story.

Mr.

* Mrs. Austin's Characteristics of Goethe, vol. i. p. 114.

Landor has, after three centuries, revealed the hidden purpose of Don Quixote, and the Italian poets have yet more lately found interpreters to allegorize what seemed to be love-sonnets into dreams of imaginary republics. Of such fancyings there is no end: and unhappily it has so often happened that the vanity of the poet has listened to those who would spiritualize his songs, that such interpretations are not absolutely devoid of plausibility-nay, of something like authority. I own I should with great hesitation listen to a poet, some years after the publication of his work, endeavouring to persuade himself or others that what we had admired as some joyous creation of romance was, in serious truth, nothing but the phantom of a dead theology. I am ill disposed to listen to such theories, and I am quite sure that they have seldom been of much use to the poet. Tasso had fortunately completed his poem before he began to invent the justifying allegory; and his second poem on the same subject, in which he was, with full consciousness of the double purpose, relating a story of chivalrous adventure, and at the same time evolving a system of philosophy, "in which should be exhibited, under the mask of various princes and soldiers, the natural man, consisting of soul and body," could scarcely have been other than the failure which it turned out to be. I do not

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. 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

Some

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 subjectalthough 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.

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