Helen (the Grecian idea of artistic beauty) being in danger of death from the jealousy of her husband (the classical school), seeks refuge with a new lover in entirely new surroundings. All this is puzzling enough, but the confusion is confounded by the fact that the "familiar form" which " you think you recognise" in "the beautiful youth" who " falls at his parent's feet was, beyond all doubt, intended to be that of Lord Byron, so that Euphorion represents, among other things, the English poet. Which of these readings is the true one? Much may be urged in support of each, and it is probable they all hovered before Goethe's mind when he was writing and correcting these scenes. He was certainly in the right when he wrote to Zelter with respect to this work, on the twenty-sixth of July, 1828, "As far as I have gone I fancy a man of good intelligence will find enough to do if he attempts to master all the mysteries I have hidden in it." Whether the result was worth the pains is another matter. In poetry the "one and something" is almost always preferable to the "nothing and all."

It is clear, however, that such a poem must present insuperable diffi

culties to the translator. Words that not only have, but are intended to have, half a dozen different bearings cannot be rendered into a foreign language, and what is true of single passages holds good of whole scenes. That which Sir Theodore Martin numbers Act i. Scene v. is open to very different explanations. Is it a mere piece of persiflage on what were, when it was written, the newest developments of the transcendental school, or does it contain the secret of Goethe's inmost conviction as to the world and the possible birth of a new artistic period? We cannot tell, but this is the question on which the translator had to decide. Emerson thought that here Goethe had achieved what no other modern poet had ventured to attempt; that, in the Mothers, he had

created true mythological forms in which even the nineteenth century could believe. The present writer is inclined to agree with the American essayist, and to think that here the demand made upon Mephistopheles is so great, and so different from all that could be expected of him, that he is, so to say, frightened out of his individual character, and for once speaks the very words of truth and soberness. Sir Theodore Martin evidently takes a different view of this episode, and he is at least as likely to be right. We do not refer to such obvious misprints as the line

"Unknown to me, whom we to name are loath,"

which of course should run

"Unknown to you, whom we to name are loath,"

since the German insists even more

strongly on the implied contrast be

tween the human soul and the evil spirit, but to the tendency with which the scene is translated. The lines"Canst thou conceive and fully comprehend A void and isolation without end?"

may perhaps be the best possible rendering if only a sharp cut at Fichte or Hegel was intended; but they utterly fail to convey the intention of the German, if the words are to be taken seriously.

"Von Einsamkeiten wirst umhergetrieben.

Hast du Begriff von Oed' und Einsamkeit?' ("By solitudes thou shalt be cast to and fro. Canst thou conceive of waste and solitude?")

perhaps the most searching question that can be put to any human being. As here, we should be sorry to endorse the translator's conception of many passages. He has his idea and explanation of them, we have ours. In one respect, however, we believe that no careful student of Goethe will think us in the wrong. All through the poem, from the first line to the last, it was the poet's intention to keep up a certain mystery. We see the

figures by a half-light; we have to do with a magic which is neither entirely serious nor entirely ridiculous. It would require a space far larger than could be allowed to the present article to show the reasons that induced the poet to adopt this method, or the means by which he attained his end; but most readers will confess that the position which is assigned to sorcery in the First Part is occupied by religion in the Second. The author is carefully dubious; he employs words that may be accepted either in a theological or a general sense. In all such cases Sir Theodore Martin seizes on the religious significance. We cannot quarrel with his single renderings, the sense he gives to each separate passage is really contained in it; but to most readers his version of the Second Part of Faust' will seem more distinctively Christian than the original.

In his youth Goethe wrote an article which he entitled Shakespeare and no End,' and probably no one has written of his own Faust' without feeling that he had left unsaid what it was best and most important to say. This Second Part abounds with suggestions that might be followed out to almost any length. If the opinion the author expresses in one of his smaller pieces, "only that which is fruitful is true," be adopted, this is certainly the most truthful of all modern poems, if only because it constantly incites the mind to a new effort, and places a mass of material before it in such a way that even the most thoughtless cannot entirely disregard it. As a mere poem, too, with the exception of the fourth act, it possesses a merit which is rare in modern works of the imagination. The deepest and most abstract ideas are placed before the reader in a form that is always concrete and generally attractive. The very references to subjects of momentary interest possess a certain piquancy. It was thus that the "eternal thought" appeared in the "spiritual vesture" of the poet's own day. We may think the greatest

of problems either into, or out of, the figures that glide so gracefully across the stage. No one has exhausted the intellectual treasures of the work, or fathomed the depth of its significance; but few have hitherto felt the whole varying sweetness of its charm. But when the critic is asked if he is inclined to consider it a perfect work of art, and to rank it among the few great poems of the world, he feels a certain hesitation. In grandeur of conception it surpasses every modern book except the Divine Comedy.' In a far deeper sense than Milton or Pope dreamed of, it "justifies the ways of God to man." Goethe, too, stands far nearer to us than Dante. It is the problems of our own life that he treats, and his lessons have a direct and immediate significance for all of us. And yet and yet-is Faust' the greatest work of the greatest poet of our century-a poem that we can regard with unlimited admiration, and fearlessly adopt as a model?

It possesses in an almost unequalled degree many of the highest qualities of the highest art, and yet it is hardly possible that such a place should be assigned to it. Grand as the conception on which it is based is, and vividly as it has been realised in a few of the greater scenes, it is almost overclouded by the episodes. The treatment, too, is unequal, not SO much through any failure in the author's powers, as through a constant change in his methods. In different passages he aims at a different kind of perfection, and even when he attains his end the effect of the whole

is incongruous. The sublime unity, the single key-note that rings clearly through all the changing melodies of the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of the Italian, is wanting here. As the writer himself felt, when he resumed his task, "the painter had acquired a different touch, and made use of another brush," or rather of a number of brushes, that differed almost as widely from each other as from that which he had used in the First Part.

Thus,

the most suggestive of modern poems is the worst of literary models.

A transcendental critic might perhaps discover a certain, quite unconscious, propriety in the very faults of the work. In an often-cited passage in 'Kunst und Alterthum,' Goethe says-we quote Carlyle's translation—

"Faust's character, in the elevation to which latter refinement, working on the old rude tradition, has raised it, represents a man who, feeling impatient and imprisoned within the limits of mere earthly existence, regards the possession of the highest knowledge, the enjoyment of the fairest blessings, as insufficient even in the slightest degree to satisfy his longing: a spirit accordingly, which struggling out on all sides, ever returns the more unhappy."

The dramatist, it might be argued, seems to have shared the spiritual idiosyncrasy of his hero, for he, too, feels "impatient and imprisoned," when confined within the necessary limits of his art. He endeavours to reach beyond it, and to compel the form that he has chosen to perform a task that is neither dramatic nor poetical. It would not be difficult to find passages that might be quoted in support of this view of the matter. What, for instance, is the true significance of the bitter revulsion of feeling with which Faust turns from sorcery, in one of the most impressive scenes that even Goethe ever wrote? Why should this man, who owes not only all his power, but also the whole of his higher culture to supernatural agency, exclaim

"Could I sweep magic from my path, unlearn

The spells of sorcery one and all, and turn Thy face, O Nature, reverently to scan, Then were it worth the while to be a man"?

The words "reverently to scan," it must be remarked, are the translator's, and they lend the passage a triviality which it does not possess in the original. But why should this sentiment be introduced at all, except to give expression to the insight to which. the aged poet had attained-that all that furthers at the same time fetters

us? Our very successes, and the means by which we attain to them, weigh as a load upon the infinity of our nature, and narrow the range of its possibilities. As we gain one point of view, we lose sight of another as important; our very culture, while opening our eyes to one set of truths, closes them to the rest. Could we sweep all these obstructions away, and with the power that has been gained by a long course of literary or scientific training, stand before the world in the unbiassed intellectual freedom of our childhood, its inmost secret might perhaps be revealed; at least

In some such way the transcendental critic might argue; but it would perhaps be considering too curiously if we were to follow his speculations further; and even if on this and all minor points we were to assent to his reasoning, we should find in it only an explanation and not a justification of the incongruities of the Second Part of Faust.' In a work of

art, an intention cannot be taken as equivalent to a performance; no suggestiveness can make amends for a want of unity in execution, nor can a concrete discord be solved by an abstract harmony. That 'Faust' is an unequal work, that its various parts not only do not form a consistent whole, but that they frequently jar against each other, hardly any one will deny. The poem, it must be confessed, is in many respects faulty, yet how easy it were to name many more faultless ones which do not contain an appreciable fraction of its vitality! For in spite of all its defects, it remains the greatest work of the greatest German poet, the vessel into which the wisest of modern men poured the ripest and choicest wine of his wisdom. Its very faults have something characteristic about them. They are those of our own age, of our own way of thinking. The great poet at timescasts poetry aside, the consummate

artist becomes impatient of the limitations of his art. He strives to make verse and the drama a vehicle for thoughts they cannot fully express. Hence the hinted meanings, and the persons that at times fade into mere allegories.

In this respect do we not all share his weakness, though we can claim no part in his strength? Are we not constantly endeavouring to solve philosophical problems by poetical methods, or to extend the results of our scientific investigations to spheres of human experience on which they can, in the present state of our knowledge, have no true bearing? The mastering thought of the nineteenth century is scientific, and it affects our poetry as balefully as the artistic tendencies of the fifteenth century affected its scientific specula

tions.

Such poems as the Second Part of

'Faust' are the result. Whether the reticence and stern self-restraint of early periods were not more admirable, and in the end more effective, is a question that may remain open. A period which endeavours to make music do the work of painting, and painting that of music, while to verse it assigns the task of either rather than its own, has hardly a right to blame a poet because he crowds a quantity of heterogeneous matter into a single work. The masterpiece of the great German stands before us, a thing the world may either accept or reject, but which it cannot alter. It is, and will always remain one of the chief monuments of the highest culture of the age; and for those who are not intimately acquainted with the German language Sir Theodore Martin has rendered the study of the poem not only an easy but a pleasant task.

THE labours of the great minds which have long been engaged in establishing the Baconian authorship of the plays vulgarly attributed to Shakespeare are now drawing to a close, and a gentleman is shortly to arrive from America with a history of the whole transaction, deciphered from the printer's errors in the First Folio.1 It is a happy time, therefore, to inform the British public of a new sect which has arisen in America under the name of "Spencerians," whose cardinal doctrine it is that the novels of Dickens were in fact written by Mr. Herbert Spencer. What we owe to that ingenious people! Having identified the two English writers who were the glory of the Elizabethan age, they proceed to identify the two English writers who are not only the glory of ours, but who have attained the widest popularity in that hemisphere of plausible hypotheses. About a priori objections, we shall follow the later "Baconians" in saying as little as possible. But the strong prima facie evidence in both cases can now be re-stated with advantage.

Does anything, we would ask objectors, that is actually known of the late Mr. Dickens lead us to suppose him capable of the great intellectual achievements that range from 'Sketches by Boz' to 'Edwin Drood'? It is true that when Landor addressed him as the purest and loftiest spirit that, since Milton,

"Hath Heavenly Genius from her throne Deputed on the banks of Thames

To speak his voice and urge his claims," he knew the man as well as his books. But then Ben Jonson was blinded in precisely the same way

See the Nineteenth Century' Magazine for May, 1886.

about Shakespeare. He addressed to him a lofty panegyric, though from daily intercourse he must have begun to suspect that the bluff, genial, popular manager could not really be the author of such high imaginings as we find in Hamlet or Prospero. What we look at are facts and probabilities. We have nothing to do with the casual impressions produced on such people as the authors of the 'Underwoods' and the Hellenica.' Dickens had only the scantiest education. He was kept during two years of his childhood to menial work. He began in the humblest ante-chambers of journalism, as a reporter in the House of Commons. Does the reporters' gallery, we would ask, usually turn out these " marvellous boys" who are able at their first start to run close upon the heels of Cervantes, to outdo Le Sage and Smollett? The truth is that there was at that time in Derby a truly "marvellous boy," who at the ages of twelve and thirteen regularly supplied the young reporter with those 'Sketches by Boz' which he forwarded under his own name to the Monthly Magazine.'

Several childish explanations have been offered by Mr. Forster and others of the name of "Boz." It was really a conventional sign agreed on by the two conspirators, and is arrived at by pronouncing "Herbert Spencer" very fast. The "B" and "S" (most inspiring combination!) are the prominent letters, and a sort of "buz

or

"boz" is the result. When the name was retained for the 'Pickwick Papers' there was, no doubt, also a side glance at the biographer of Johnson.

It is now time that we gave our readers some hints of the esoteric meaning of that famous book, which has hitherto but served to while