crease of light and of knowledge may be easily imagined without any correspondent effect on character; and the most fearful enigma of our mysterious nature is the possibility of sinning against the light. If what Goethe means be this,— that, while the principle of conscience still survives, there is hope for man; that every undirected aspiration is evidence not alone of his fitness for something better, but also of this, — that what we call moral evil is only the evil of surrounding circumstances, and that the ultimate rescue for which man is to hope, is not a change of nature and heart, but a removal of all that is inconvenient in his circumstances, and the provision of a heaven fitted for his unchanged nature; and if the poem is to be regarded as seriously teaching this doctrine, or any doctrine that involves the admission of these principles; - I have nothing more to say, than that among "the shapings of the unregenerate heart," no wilder theory has been before suggested; that in my view, the most dreary infidelity would be almost better than such a hopeless faith. A belief, that regards as indifferent every thing but vague sentiment, is worse than any scepticism.

The

After all, a poem will be judged as a poem. "Faust" of Goethe will have as little effect on mo

b

rality or theology, as the "Faustus" of Marlowe. It will be read with but little reference to any distinct purpose. It is impossible that a work which was the object of the author's repeated attention through his whole life-for the first scenes were published in 1787, and the continuation was among his very last writings should not have undergone as many alterations of plan as ever were projected for Richardson's Romance, when, during the interval in which the successive volumes of Clarissa appeared, he and his fair correspondents were engaged in planning a suitable termination to the story. And as far as the drama may be supposed seriously to embody the author's philosophical speculations, it must represent opinions, which, if with the German critics, we suppose to be unchanged from the time of the conception of the plot to its final completion, we must at the same time regard the author's mind as the only thing on earth unaffected by the strange revolutions both of opinion and of fortune which it was its destiny to witness. In fact, it is the fashion one learned from the German critics rate the claims of the poem in these respects; and no one was more amused than Goethe himself at the seriousness of the disputes on the subject.

- to over

Retzch's outlines are the only comments on Faust

of the slightest value; and their great excellence tends to suggest, in some things, an exaggerated estimate of the merits of the original. Between the works of Retzch and Shelley, a finer Walpurgis Night than the original is given to us.

To recur, however, to the subject which in this desultory preface must be supposed to be chiefly before my mind, I would add, that to exhibit the character of Mephistopheles is, perhaps, the greatest of the difficulties with which a translator of Goethe has to contend. The flexibility of the German language is such, that transitions from the most solemn feelings to the lowest and most offensive familiarity scarcely disturb the reader with a sense of abruptness. Both are in Faust: both almost in every page. To disguise or colour this would be a manifest violation of the translator's duty; and if in the translation they appear in strong or startling contrast, the translator has failed. The contrasts are not violent. Nothing can be less so. Mephistopheles's falsehoods are, if we think of man only as an intellectual being, always true: where they are met by Faustus in argument, Mephistopheles is sure to be in the right. In some noble passages, the dominion of a better principle in our nature than the mere intellect, is asserted by Faustus in the spirit of the fine reply in Joanna Baillie:

"I am not skilled in nice distinctions, father;"

but the danger which in most of these scenes a translator incurs, is, in the effort of vindicating Faustus, the hazard of his marking the contrasts too strongly calling too earnestly for the reader's sympathy with Faustus- and suggesting, even in the neutral passages of the poem, something of more abhorrence for Mephistopheles than is consistent with the puppet-show sort of existence given to him by Goethe-making him the actual devil, rather than the demon of the stage and the nursery. In the German language, which seems to run at once into any moulds, there is no difficulty in giving expression in verse to any thing, however remote from

* Tragedy of Orra. On looking for the passage, which I ventured to quote from memory, I find the line is somewhat different.

URSTON.

Gentle daughter,

So pressed thou mayest feign, and yet be blameless,

A trusty guardian's faith with thee he holds not,
And therefore thou art free to meet his wrongs

With what defence thou hast.

ORRA (proudly).

Nay pardon me; I, with an unshorn crown,
Must hold the truth in plain simplicity,
And am in nice distinctions most unskilful.

Plays on the Passions, vol. iii. p. 33.

poetical feeling. Dialogue, therefore, which with us would certainly be clothed in prose, does not claim any thing of a higher character by being in

verse.

The form of Poetry may thus be preserved throughout, with all its obvious advantages, and without any of the inconveniences to which it subjects an English writer. In our language it is scarcely possible to preserve the form without somewhat of the colouring, or at least of the conventional language of poetry. Scarcely any skill will enable a writer of verse to preserve the colloquial diction throughout and I fear, that were he perfectly successful, the effect would be in a little time that of tediousness. With all his mastery of words, and with his unequalled humour, Swift is surely tedious

Butler, if still read, is felt to be a weary study -and more than the name of Byrom, who is certainly more readable than either, is probably little known. Blank verse in its very lowest forms, or the prose of some of Shakspeare's least prominent passages, could it be successfully imitated by a writer of our day, would probably give the best chance of repeating the effect produced by the original in some of the scenes. Still this would seem to be evading the difficulty; and while I have, as I best could, sought to avoid tediousness by what will perhaps be regarded as capricious changes of versification, I