# Blackwood's Magazine/Volume 45/Issue 280/A Discourse on Goethe and the Germans

A DISCOURSE ON GOETHE AND THE GERMANS.
How glad I am, my dear Mr North, to have found you at home!—charming snuggery!—famous fire!—and I declare there's a second tumbler on the table, as if you expected me. Your health, my dear friend!—good heavens, what intense Glenlivat!—I must add a little water; and now, that at last we are cozy and comfortable feet on fender, glass in hand—I beg to say a few words to you on the subject of German morals and German literature.
Sir, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I must crave your indulgence—more sugar, did you say?—while I dilate a little upon the many trumpet-blowings and drum-beatings we have heard on these two subjects for the last fifteen or twenty years. Morals!—oh the good, honest, simple, primitive, Germans! Literature!—oh the deep-thinking, learned, grand, original-minded Germans! Now, the fact is, sir, that the Germans have neither morals nor literature. But, as I intend, with your permission—your bland countenance shows your acquiescence—to demonstrate by the thing they call literature, the notion they entertain of the thing they call morals, I need not trouble you with a double disquisition on these two points, as in fact they are, like the French Republic, one and indivisible. Fifty years ago, they themselves confess, they had no literature. The capabilities of their noble language were yet undiscovered; their scholars wrote in Latin; their wits wrote in French. Poetry was defunct, or rather uncreated; for, on the top of the German Parnassus, such as it was, sat in smoke and grandeur the weakest of mortals, the poorest of versifiers, the most miserable of pedants, John Christoph Gottshed. Was he kicked down from his proud eminence by the indignation of his countrymen?—hooted to death by their derision?—and finally hung in chains as a terror to evil doers? My dear sir, the man was almost worshipped—yes—he, this awful example of human fatuity—a decoction of Hayley and Nathan Drake—was looked up to by the whole German nation, as an honour to the human race. It will not do for them to deny the soft impeachment now, and tell us that they look down upon that worthy. I dare say they do ; but whom do they look up to between the days of Gottshed, and the first appearances of a better order of things in the persons of Wieland, Klopstock, and Gesner? To the other members of the Leipsic school, Gellert, Rabener, and Zacharia!—pretty men for a nation to be proud of!—No sir, you need not shake your head. I am not in a passion, I assure ​you, but only a little nettled; for can any thing be more provoking than to have one's ears tormented incessantly with praises of every thing German, by a set of blockheads, male and female, who know nothing of the subject, and take all that the Germans themselves advance for gospel? Depend upon it, sir, hundreds of young ladies can repeat stanzas of Gleim and Utss, who never read a line of Spencer in their lives. So let us go back to Gottshed. Did you ever meet with his collection of plays called the German Theatre? A lucky man if you haven't, for such a load of trash was never before brought together in one heap since the days of Augeus. Translation, or more properly, as they themselves call it, "oversetting," is the loftiest of their flights. And such translations! Corneille, Racine, Germanized, and by the hand of John Christoph himself; hand more fit to stuff sausages than translate the Cid or Iphiginie. And even in this cabbaging and pilfering how limited was their range! The Danish and French seem to be the only tongues they had the command of English was a fountain sealed, and a well shut up from them, till some French depredator had first melted the wax and picked the padlock. But, gracious heaven, Mr North, how they dirtied the water! And who was it, after all, whom they translated or imitated? Not Johnson not Shakspeare nor even glorious John. Who then? Addison!—The Drummer, which even in English is a wonderfully stupid performance for the creator of Sir Roger de Coverly, is tortured into more Teutonic dulness in a close translation; and Gottshed founds his claim to supremacy as an original author on his tragedy of Cato. Stars and Garters! bob-wigs and shoe-buckles! what a Cato! Addison's is poor enough, and spouts like a village schoolmaster in his fifth tumbler; and virtuous Marcia towers above her sex like a matron of the Penitentiary; but Gottshed's Cato is a cut above all this. Shall I give you the Dramatis Personæ? Here they are in my note-book.
"Cato. Arseme or Porcia. Porcis, Cato's Son. Phænice, Arsene's Confidante. Phocus, Cato's Attendant. Pharnaces, King out of Pontus. Felix, his Attendant. Cæsar. Domitius, his Attendant. Artabanus, a Parthian. Cato's suite. Cæsar's suite. "The scene is in a hall of a strong castle in Utica, a considerable city in Africa. The story or incident of the whole tragedy extends from mid-day till towards sunset."
What do you think of that, sir? And what do you think of Arscne who has been brought up by Arsaces, and by him been made Queen of the Parthians, turning out in the third act to be Cato's daughter, and shockingly in love with Cæsar? Think of all this, sir, and of the prodigious orations between the two heroes in rhyming Alexandrines, and you will rejoice as I did that the long-winded old patriot put himself to death. It is the only consolation one has all through the play to know that in the fifth act justice will be executed on all and sundry; for Gottshed does not spare an inch of the cold steel.
But why do I lay such stress on poor old buried and forgotten John Christoph?—I'll trouble you for the kettle—The reason is very plain; I want to find out some excuse for the Germans having formed such an exaggerated estimate of their present school—and I think I have found it in the profundity of the abyss they were sunk in before it made its appearance. People in a coal-pit see the smaller stars at mid day as plain as if each of them were of the first magnitude. The deeper they go down, the brighter shines the twinkler; so that when the Leipsic public had fallen into the depths of Gottshedism, no wonder that, on the first rising of Wieland, they considered him the sun in heaven. Then shone Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe forming—as seen from that subterranean level—a whole planetary system. But for us English, sir, to look up to such lights—to talk of them in the same century with our own—or to think they are fitted to be classed with those glorious constellations that illumine the British sky, and shed their glory over all lands—the thing is beyond joke—'tis monstrous. Contrast them, Klopstock—Milton; Schiller—Shakspeare; Lessing—Dryden; Goethe—Walter Scott; and as to their small fry, Sam Johnson would have ​swallowed them all. Let me turn the cock, sir; I admire your hospitable plan of the cask and spigot, it saves so much trouble in drawing corks—is the water boiling?—So let us hear no more talk of the vast treasures of German literature. There are not six of them authors worth reading, in what is properly called literature. Learning and antiquities I leave out of the question—they are industrious moles, and grub excellently well—and yet it will take many millions of moles to make a Bentley. In history they have but one name worth mentioning John Von Müller and he is one of the sons of Anak, and will sit in the opposite scale to Gibbon, and move not an inch towards the beam—their tribe of gentlemen who write with ease—their story-tellers, romancers, parlour poets, and so forth, are utterly below contempt. Our annual bards and authors are worth them all put together; and as to our novelists, properly so called, taking them as painters of life and manners, who would think of comparing our second, third, or even our fourth-rates with the miserable Tromlitsses and Van der Veldes, or Haufts and Spindlers, who rule the roast in their own country, and tempt good-natured young lords to introduce them here? Did any human being ever succeed in getting to the end of a German novel of ordinary life, without a weariness of the flesh that suggested indistinct thoughts of suicide? Not one: I have tried it a hundred times—and this is what I have been aiming at—their books, my dear sir, are not only stupid but disgusting—I have met with very few that were not positively shocking from the insight they gave me into the depravity of a whole people. The French, heaven knows, are bad enough; but with them it is a paroxysm, a fever of impropriety, that is limited to a certain set and will pass. Besides, the French abominations are intended to be abominable; an unnatural state of manners is chosen as the subject of representation, and accordingly it is treated in as unnatural a way as possible. For the horrors and iniquities, f a kind that shock and disgust us so much in their performances, are limited to the romantic school—the insane men of perverted genius, like Victor Hugo, who, instead of exhausting old worlds and then imagining new, begin the process by imagining a new world, and peopling it with the creations of their distempered fancies. But nobody meets such things in the novels purporting to be stories of real life. Paul de Kock himself is a humorist, gross, coarse, and "improper," but he sets out with the intention of decribing gross, coarse, and improper people. There are thieves, drunkards, dissolute men, and naughty women, in all countries; we may wonder at people's taste in painting such manners and modes of thinking, but we are not to blame any one but the individual who chooses to bedaub his pallet with such colours. The Germans, on the other hand, are more revolting in their novels of common life than in their more ambitious imaginings. The light is let in upon us through chinks and crannies of the story, enabling us to see the horrible state of manners into which the whole nation is sunk; for observe, my dear sir, I don't allude to the scenes brought forward in their books to be looked at, shuddered at, and admired as pieces of sublime painting; what I mean is the unconscious air with which such revelations are made,—the author seeing nothing strange in the incident he is describing; and talking of it as a matter perhaps of daily occurrence. And these are the people that have written and roared about themselves, till they have persuaded all Europe, or, at least, the rising generation in England, that they are an honest, and pure, and innocent people; simple in all their habits; and, in fact, only a better specimen of what was once the character of our Saxon ancestors. German integrity, German truth, are the constant parrot song of every national author. They have even made a substantive out of the word German; and with them Germanism or Deutscheit, means every virtue under heaven—modesty, I have no doubt, included. You nod, my dear sir, as if you approved of that—and in itself any thing that gives a strong national feeling, a pride in one's own country, a zeal to maintain its honour—is an admirable thing. I have not forgotten the thunders of applause that followed the clap-traps at our theatres about British courage —British power—hearts of oak, and things of that kind: admirable clap-traps they were—but they had their effect sir. There wasn't a god in the gallery that wouldn't have licked three ​Frenchmen the moment he had done clapping the aforesaid magnanimous declaration; for who would have cared a halfpenny for a million of Bonapartes after shouting in chorus, till their throats were dry, "Britons never, never, never will be slaves?" But the records of the last war will let us see the patriotism of the Germans. Every little principality and power seemed to run a race who should first truckle to the invader. The Confederation of the Rhine is a death-blow to their boasts; and, to go back to their literature, is their a single man among all their authors, except poor young Korner, that showed a spark of Tyrtsean fire? What said Goethe? He made the campaign against France in 1792, and wrote an account of it—are there any spirit-stirring appeals in it against oppression? Not a word—but a great deal about the comfort of a blanket with which he kept himself warm on the march; and throughout the whole reign of Napoleon his muse was mute, or admitted to a place at court. And yet Thomas Carlyle,—let me propose his health, sir, hip, hip, hurra!—almost worships that cold-blooded, selfish, sensual old man; and this idolatry before such a shrine, the reputation of the Laird of Craigenputtoek goes a great way to perpetuate.
Such clouds of word praises, in which, I feel sure, the heart has no place, have been spread around this idol, that it positively needs a man to have very good eyes to see the paste and pasteboard it is composed of. Faust! Faust!—every human being, from about eighteen up to five-and-twenty, and some, even, who have come to years of discretion, have got into a perpetual sing-song of wonder and awe about the depth, grandeur, sublimity, and all the rest of it, of this inimitable performance. Did they ever think of extending their enumeration of its merits, so as to include its profanity, coarseness, vulgarity, and unintelligibleness? What are we to think of a work, sir, that, in the life-time of the author, needed commentaries on almost every passage,—on its general scope and tendency,—on its occult significations,—while, all the time, the author himself seemed to gape with as total an unconsciousness of its secret meanings as any one else. I will answer for it, at all events, he would have found as much difficulty as either Carus, or Enk, or Duentzor, in explaining its "einheit and ganzheit," its oneness and allness. Read his own continuation of it—never was proof so complete of a man's ignorance of what he had meant in the former part of the work; that is to say, if you give him credit for having had any meaning in it at all. Recollect I don't deny that the man was clever. He was as clever a fellow as the world will often see; for, do you know, Mr North, I have a prodigious respect for the abilities of successful quacks. Success, itself, is the only proof I require. The less a priori grounds there were for expecting their triumphs, the greater credit they are entitled to. Therefore a bumper once more, if you please, sir, to the immortal Goethe.
With no one element of the poetic character in his whole composition; without enthusiasm, without high sentiment,—with no great power of imagination, the man has persuaded his countrymen, and they have persuaded all Europe, that he was one of nature's denizens—the God-inspired—in short, a Poet. Then, again, with no knowledge of life, abstracted from German life, without even the power of entering into a pure or lofty feeling, much less of giving birth to one, he has persuaded his countrymen that he was an imaginative life-describer, bareing the human soul, and tracing every thought to its parent source. Oh! paltry, foul, and most unnoble thoughts which Goethe had the power of tracing. Oh! fallen and sinful human soul which Goethe had the power to lay bare! No, no, my dear Mr North, there is but one light in which that old man purulant can be seen in the colours his countrymen have bedaubed him with. As a shrewd note-taker of their habits, as a relater of their every-day modes of thought, he is entitled to all the praise they give him,—but, oh German innocence!—oh pittas!—oh prisca fides!—what habits of life are these—what modes of thought!
With the help of a first-rate style, full, clear, and satisfying, both to ear and understanding; and with a perfect mastery over the most flexible and graphic of all modern languages, it will be strange if, amidst all the unencumbered writings of this most laborious of the paper-stainers of his laborious and paper-staining country, ​some one or other may not be worthy of a sensible man's approbation. But, by heavens, sir! there is not one that has not something or other so revolting to all good taste as to destroy the pleasure you might otherwise have in the performance. And over all is spread such a dung-heap of vile sensualism and immorality, that you fear for the health of the surrounding inhabitants; for such nauseous exhalations must bear "pestilence in every breath. There, sir, is a novel of his from which I intend to substantiate every one of these assertions,—and, by way of keeping my assertions more easily in mind, I will reduce them to these:—Goethe is a coarse-minded sensualist, and the laxity of German manners is most revolting. The Wahlverwandtschaften, or, as it may be translated, the affinities of choice (as opposed to the affinities of blood), is a novel of common life. A certain baron, who is presented to us by no other name than Edward, in the prime of life (which other circumstances make us fix at about forty-three), rich, polished, and happy, is the hero of the tale. Married within a year to a certain Charlotte, and retired to his estate, no two people apparently can be happier. Building bowers, laying out plantations, and getting up duets on the flute and harpsichord, with books and other appliances, make time glide pleasantly enough; but, in an evil hour, Edward determines to have a spectator of his happiness, and launches out on the comfort they would derive from the society of an anonymous gentleman, who flourishes all through the book under the convenient designation of "The Captain." Charlotte, like a sensible woman, objects a little at first; probably as she is aware that all captains are dangerous inmates; and she has also some little regard for the morals of a young girl of the name of Ottilie, who is at present at school, but whom she intends to send for and make a sort of assistant housekeeper. You will observe, sir, both our friends —Baron Edward and the sensible Charlotte—were no chickens, and had had considerable experience of the married life before. Like certain communicative personages on the stage, who generally relate the whole story of their lives, either to themselves or to some person who knows every incident as well as they do, Charlotte takes an early opportunity of informing her husband of various events which it is highly probable he was not altogether ignorant of. "We loved each other"—she says to him—"when we were young, with all our hearts. We were separated;—you from me, because your father, out of an insatiable love of riches, married you to a wealthy old woman; I from you, because I had to give my hand, without any particular view, to a very respectable old man that I never loved. We were again free you sooner than I was, your old lady leaving you a very handsome estate. I a little later, just when you returned from abroad. We met again—our recollections were delightful we loved them—there was no impediment to our living together. You urged me to marry. I hesitated at first, because, though we are about the same age, I am older as a woman than you as a man. At last I could not refuse you what you considered your greatest happiness. You wished to refresh yourself at my side after all the troubles you had gone through in the court, the camp, and on your travels;—to recall your recollections—to enjoy life—but all, with me alone. I sent my only daughter to a boarding-school, where, indeed, she learns more than she could in the country; and not only her, but Ottilie also, my favourite niece, who would, perhaps, have been better as my assistant in household concerns under my own eye. All this was done with your perfect approval, solely that we might live to ourselves, and enjoy our long-wished and late-gained happiness undisturbed."
Isn't this a charming mother, sir, and careful aunt?—Why, Mr North, you've filled up my tumbler without my seeing it!—you see how affectionate she is to her only daughter; how tenderly she talks of the respectable old man she could never love, and what purity of mind there is in the whole description of the double wedding and double widowhood. But a bit of private history comes to light, a little after, viz., that the Captain and she had intended to hook Edward, the rich widower, into a marriage with the aforesaid Ottilie, Charlotte modestly supposing that she was now too old to attract his observation. Now, suppose Edward was two-and-twenty when he St Albansed himself; Charlotte ​married her "respectable old man" "without any particular view," say in a year after she was deserted; her daughter is now seventeen, so that we can guess pretty nearly how old is our inflammable friend Edward. He ought to be ashamed of himself! But I am hurrying on too fast; I haven't told you what a middle-aged Don Giovanni the rascal turns out.
The Captain came; the Captain did this, the Captain did that—was so deep, so learned, so witty, so genteel, he might have passed for Captain O'Doherty. Ottilie also comes, "fair as the first that fell of womankind," that is, according to Goethe's notions of fairness; full and round as a Hebe, very young, very innocent, and a little stupid—planting, building, digging lakes, and creating scenery, go on more charmingly than ever, and in the course of a very short time, the Captain and the sensible Charlotte are burning like a couple of phcenixes, and Edward and Ottilie are over head and ears in love. To trace the windings and effects of those two passions is the task the delicate-minded author has chosen his readers' sympathies are enlisted as strongly as possible on the side of Ottilie and Edward —their walks, their conversations, mingled with much crying and kissing, according to the German recipe for love-making, occupy the greater part of the book. But not the whole of it.—Bless you, my dear sir! there are very few subjects that do not receive a moderate share of notice in the course of the story, particularly the proper mode of educating young ladies; with hints to mistresses of boarding-schools, and the masters engaged for the various accomplishments. But you seem to look incredulous. True as gospel, I assure you; for I beg you to observe—and that was the thing I started with, two tumblers ago—that the monster has not the remotest idea that the personages of his story are vicious or immortal. They are all four held up to us as paragons of perfection. Their modes of going on are spoken of as nothing out of the common way, indeed they are rather pointed out to us as miracles of chastity and decorum; for Ottilie and Edward, resolving to be united according to law, confess their attachment to Charlotte, and beg her to separate from her husband, and by so doing make the Captain and Edward happy at the same time! With an effort of virtue almost super-human —at all events super-German—she refuses and Edward, not to be outdone, determines to exile himself from his own house, on condition that Ottilie and Charlotte remain in it as friends. There's a sacrifice, sir!—What have the Romans to show that can compare to this? His domus et placens uxor, and his children—for the hero is a father as well as a husband are all left behind. But, though we hear of his children, we are only made acquainted with one of them; and a history more full of horror and debauchery never disgraced any of the French novels that the world has united in condemning. As near as I can tell you the details, without making your venerable cheeks purple with shame, I will trace out the fate of the poor child.
The four lovers—the Captain and Charlotte; Edward and Ottilie—are interrupted in their quiet enjoyments, by the visit of a certain Graf or Count, and a certain Baroness. On the arrival of the letter announcing their approach, the Captain enquires who they are? Listen to the answer, and then talk of Goethe's prolific imagination. 'Tis Edward's story over again.
"They had for some time, both of them being married, been passionately in love. A double marriage was not to be broken without trouble; a separation was thought of. The Baroness succeeded in obtaining one, the Count failed. They were therefore forced to appear to live apart, but their connexion still continued; and, though they could not live together in the capital in the winter, they made up for it in summer at the baths, and in pleasure excursions. They were both a little older than Edward and Charlotte, who had never cooled towards them in affection, though they did not quite approve of their proceedings. It was only now that their visit was disagreeable; and if Charlotte had examined into the cause of her dissatisfaction, she would have found that it was on Ottilie's account. The innocent darling child should not so early have such an example set before her."
Not so early?—quaere, at what age are such examples thought useful?—But you will find, sir, that the "innocent darling child" was very forward ​of her age, and derived as much benefit from the pattern as if she had been ten years older. So this then, is a picture of German manners. I fit is not, where is Goethe's fame as a painter of life? If it is, what is the meaning of the word Deutscheit? What the devil are you grunting at, Mr North? Do you think I don't know that what are called our own fashionable novels depict a state of manners not much more pure? In the first place, the novels so called are lies and libels—in the next place, where do you find adultery held up even in them as any thing but ruinous to reputation and entailing banishment from society,?—In Germany,—sir if we are to believe this book—written, you will remember, not by some footman out of place, or discarded waiting-maid, as our tales of high life generally are, but by the first author of his country, the great arbiter in arts and literature, himself a courtier and mixing in the highest circles—if, I say, we are to believe this book, the marriage tie is of much easier solution than the gordian knot, and acts, even while people condescend to submit to it, as no restraint on the wildest passions, but rather as an argument for falling in love with other men. No loss of station attends detection ladies and their paramours are received as honoured guests ; and our friend Edward, who is the beau-idéal of a German hero, thinks it no degradation to enact the part of Sir Pandarus of Troy!
You start, my dear sir—I hope you are not turning sick? The facts, I assure you, are as I have stated. Let me read you a part of the eleventh chapter.
"Edward accompanied the Count to his chamber, and was easily tempted to spend some time with him in conversation. The Count lost himself in the memory of former times, and raved of Charlotte's beauty, which he dwelt on with the eloquence of a connoisseur. 'A handsome foot is among nature's best gifts—years leave it untouched. I observed her to-day in walking. One might even yet kiss her shoe, and renew the barbarous but deep-feeling mode of doing honour among the Sarmatims, who used to drink out of the shoe of any one they loved or honoured.'"
But their observations did not continue limited to the foot. They passed on to old adventures, and recalled the difficulties that had long ago hindered the meetings between Edward and Charlotte. The Count reminded him how he had assisted him in finding out Charlotte's bed-room, when they had all accompanied their royal master on a visit he paid to his uncle; and how they had nearly ruined all by stumbling over some of the bodyguard who lay in the ante-chamber. But while they are deep in this highly edifying recollection, the clock strikes twelve. "Tis midnight,' said the Count, smiling, 'and just the proper time. I must beg a favour of you, my dear Baron, guide me now as I guided you then; I have promised the Baroness to visit her to-night. We have not spoken together all day, and 'tis so long since we have seen each other! Nothing is more natural than to sigh for a confidential hour or two."
"'I will be hospitable enough to show you this favour with much pleasure,' answered Edward; 'only the three women are together in that wing who knows but what we may find them with each other?'
"'Never fear,' replied the Count, 'the Baroness expects me. By this time she is in her chamber and alone.'
"'Then 'tis easily managed,' said Edward, and, taking a light, conducted his friend down some secret steps which led to a long passage. They mounted a winding stair. Edward pointed to a door on the right of the landing-place, and gave the Count the light. At the slightest touch the door opened, and received the Count. Edward was left in the dark."
And a more pitiful scoundrel than this hero of the great Goethe, I'll bet a trifle, never was left in the dark before, whether by putting out the candle or being hanged on a gallows-tree. Don't grasp your crutch so convulsively, my dear sir. The philosopher of Weimar would have had his skull cracked on an infinite number of occasions if he had been within your reach. But there are no Christopher Norths in Germany. If there were, would the scene that succeeds this have been suffered to exist? Yet, shocking as it is, I must give you some idea of it, to support my main assertion, that the author was the coarsest-minded of men, and the nation the most flagitious of nations, ​"Another door on the left led into Charlotte's bedroom. He heard voices within, and listened. Charlotte spoke to her waiting-maid. 'Is Ottilie gone to bed yet?'
"'No,' replied the other, 'she is down-stairs writing.'
"'Light the night lamp, then,' said Charlotte, ' and retire. 'Tis late I will put out the candle myself and go to bed.'
"Edward was transported with joy to find that Ottilie was still writing. She is busy on my account, he thought, triumphantly. He thought of going to her, to gaze on her, to see how she would turn round to him. He felt an invincible desire to be near her once more. But, alas ! there was no way of getting from where he was to the quarter she lived in. He found himself close to his wife's door. An extraordinary change took place in his soul; he tried to push open the door; he found it bolted, and tapped lightly. Charlotte did not hear.
"She walked quickly to and fro in the large adjoining room. She thought again and again over the unexpected offer of a situation that the Count had made to the Captain. The Captain seemed to stand before her! Now he seemed to fill the house—to enliven the whole scene—and to think that he must go!—how empty would all things be! She said all to herself that is usually said on such occasions. Yes, she anticipated, as people generally do, the miserable consolation that time would mitigate her sorrows. She cursed the time that it needs to mitigate them—she cursed the deathful time when they would be mitigated. She wept at last, and, throwing herself on the sofa, gave way to her grief.
"Edward, on his side, could not tear himself from the door. He knocked again and again. Charlotte heard at last, and stood up alarmed. Her first thought was, it must be the Captain. Her second, that that was impossible. She went into the bedroom and slipt noiselessly to the bolted door.
"'Is any one there?' she asked.
"A low voice answered, ''Tis I.'
"'Who?' she enquired, for she had not recognised the tone. She fancied she saw the Captain's figure at the door.
"The voice added in a louder key, 'Tis I, Edward.'
"She opened the door and her husband stood before her."
I can't go on, sir—one other tumbler, but this must be the last—for the horrors related by the pure-souled Goethe, and published for the edification of boys and virgins, must be left in the fitting incognito of a German dress. I must just give you to understand as delicately as I can, that by a certain process of ratiocination known only to the thinking nation, each of these unhappy persons is persuaded that the object of their passion is before them; Charlotte sees nothing but the Captain, and Edward clasps Ottilie in his arms; and the effect of this strong effort of the imagination will be best shown by going on in the story till Charlotte is again a mother. Recollect, my dear sir, that the whole house has, in the mean-time, been turned topsy-turvy; Edward has gone off to the wars, the Captain has taken possession of his new office, and Charlotte and Ottilie— each being conscious of the other's inclinations—have remained alone. The ceremony of the baptism was therefore shorn a little of its proportions, but still it was got up in a style worthy of the rank of the parents. "The party was collected, the old clergyman, supported by the clerk, stept slowly forward, the prayer was uttered, and the child placed in Ottilie's arms. When she stooped down to kiss it, she started no little at sight of its open eyes, for she thought she was looking into her own! the resemblance was so perfectly amazing. Mittler, the godfather, who took the infant next, started equally on perceiving in its features an extraordinary likeness to the Captain! Such a resemblance he had never seen before."
This, sir, is one of the touches of a supernatural sagacity for which Goethe has credit among his countrymen, and will, no doubt, be quoted in medical books as an instance of the power of imagination, as if it were a real event. But, seriously speaking, can you recollect any scene in a French novel or opera so utterly revolting as this? If you can, your acquaintance with unnatural literature is more extensive than mine; but I am ready to bet you a pipe of Bell and Rannie, you never met with any thing to equal the denouement of this poor infant's story. What do you think of a man trying to gain his reader's sympathy to Ottilie's love-​distresses, by painting her kindness to Charlotte's child, and by describing a meeting between Edward and Ottilie, filled with all manner of erabracings and declarations, with that child sleeping on the grass beside her. But worse remains behind. Edward has persuaded the Captain to make another effort to obtain Charlotte's consent to a divorce. That highly honourable specimen of the military profession has gone on to the castle, leaving Edward lurking about his own domain, waiting impatiently for his answer. On that particular occasion, Ottilie has carried out the child to the side of a lake, and is engaged in reading. And, as we are told it is "one of those works from which gentle natures find it impossible to tear themselves away," I conclude it was some book of a moral and religious tendency, like this one—probably the Sorrows of Werther. Edward, prowling about, sees her; she sees him. He seizes her in his arms—she points to his child;—he gazes at it, and sees the aforesaid likenesses, and makes sundry remarks on the occasion, worthy of his refinement and honourable feelings.
"Hark!" at last cries Edward, springing up, "I heard a gun, which was the signal agreed on with the Captain———'twas nothing but a gamekeeper." So the conversation is renewed. It begins to grow dark. Ottilie springs up, alarmed, but the "hope (of a divorce) shines out of heaven upon their heads. She clasps him in the tenderest manner to her breast. They fancied—they believed that they belonged to each other; they exchanged, for the first time, decided—free kisses, and separated with agonies of grief."
For the first time, the old goat?—why, there is not a page of his book where they are notkissing and hugging —but, perhaps, he has some peculiar meaning in the epithets—decided and free. What is a decided kiss, Mr North?—what is a free kiss?—Perhaps he intends to state, that her conduct was on this occasion decidedly free, and, there can be no doubt, it was a good deal freer than would have been allowable in the vestal virgins But whether free or not, Edward has retired without casting another look on his own child, and Ottilie hurries off, as she is afraid of alarming Charlotte by being absent at such an hour. The way round the lake is long—she is a perfect Ellen Douglas in her management of a boat, and steps into a skiff to cross the water—"She grasps the oar and pushes off. She uses all her force and repeats the push; the boat reels a little, and moves from shore. The child is in her left arm, the book in her left hand, the oar in her right, she reels also, and falls in the boat. The oar leaves her hand on one side; and, in spite of all her efforts, the child and book fall from her hand on the other—and all into the water! She siezes the child's frock; but in her position she finds it impossible to rise. Her unoccupied right hand is insufficient to turn her round and raise her up. At last, she succeeds in drawing the child from the water; but its eyes are closed it has ceased to breathe!"
Yes, Mr North, this, I assure you, is considered a highly affecting incident, and the death of the innocent little creature is approved of by certain judges, as raising a new obstacle to the course of Edward's true love, and therefore exciting the reader's sympathy to a still tenderer point with the love-lorn Ottilie. In this country, I am happy to say, the "Shirra" would have held a precognition, which would not very materially have enhanced the reputation of that delicate-minded young lady.—An English coroner would have levied a deodand on the boat, presenting a bill, at the same time, against Ottilie for manslaughter at least. But in Germany things are much more comfortably managed. The Captain arrives at this very time on his embassy from Edward. This embassy, you recollect, was to persuade Charlotte to consent to a separation from her husband, and thus open the way for a marriage with Ottilie; the Captain at the same time succeeding Edward, and the "respectable old gentleman she had never loved," in the possession of Charlotte. He is shown to a room where he finds a single waxlight burning. In the gloom he perceives Ottilie senseless, or asleep, resting on Charlotte's lap, and the poor little dead child in grave-clothes, on a sofa at her side. It is in this state of affairs that he pleads his cause. And he succeeds!!! Charlotte consents to the separation, on the rather anti-Malthusian plea that she is called upon to ​do so to afford Ottilie an opportunity of supplying the place of the child she has been the means of losing, with another of whom Edward may be fond. And with this answer the Captain betakes himself to his principal.
Ottilie, however, has some conscience left, and objects to marry Edward, though her love to him is great as ever. Many pages, and much fine writing are bestowed on the heroism of her behaviour. She has a meeting with Edward at an inn, where she stops, on her way back to the boarding-school, where she had resolved to devote herself to the education of young ladies on what principles it is needless to enquire. The consequence of this interview, which consisted of vows and protestations on one side, and of absolute silence on the other, is, that she gets into the carriage in which she came, and returns to the castle, Edward following her on horseback; and so, after an absence of more than a year, the dramatis personæ are reunited in the scene of their first appearance.
And now comes the death scene; a subject which seems peculiarly agreeable to Goethe, and which he therefore describes with all his heart. Think, Mr North, of the eloquence of Charlotte and the Captain conjoined to the prayers and entreaties of Edward himself, being of no avail against the inflexible resolution of the pure and innocent Ottilie! She persists, in spite of all they can say, in maintaining a profound silence; and in eating in her own room; the mention of which peculiarity suggests dim images of coming evil to the attentive reader. In fact, she starves herself to death, except that the finishing blow is struck by a meddling old gentleman delivering in her presence a very inopportune lecture on the sanctity of the seventh commandment. The whole neighbourhood is struck dumb with grief at the death of the youthful saint, and great care is required to hinder the common people from worshipping her relics. A dark cloud of sorrow and regret settles heavily over the castle; and at last Edward is found dead. To the very last, sir, the diseased moral sense of Goethe and his admirers sees no impropriety in the whole transaction. The lovers are lamented as if their attachment had been as innocent as that of Paul and Virginia, and the strange eventful history concludes, after describing the burial of Edward, next to his beloved in these words: "So the lovers rest near each other! Peace hovers over the scene of their repose. Bright-clothed angel forms look down on them from the vault, and oh! what a blessed moment will that be when they shall awaken together!"
What do you think now, of what I began with, Mr North? But, before you decide, remember, my dear sir, that the state of manners described here is the same exactly as we trace in all the works of the same author. His Willielm Meister—his Young Werther—all agree in representing the most appalling laxity of morals as universal in the land. In heaven's name, is the man a libeller of his father-land as well a corrupter of youth? But no, sir, the universal popularity of his novels, the herd of imitators he has given rise to, the silence of his own countrymen on the subject of his false representations of life and manners, are too convincing proofs that he holds the mirror up to nature.
On this occasion- I have said nothing of the absurdly exaggerated claims which are made every day on behalf of German originality. What I have limited myself to, has been the character of the people, as seen in their every-day literature.—And, what a view we have had!—Phaugh!—I must have an "eke" just to put the taste out of my mouth. Sugar, if you please;—hold—hold—and now, Mr North, I will favour you with a song.—Hear, hear, hear!