The Press.
London, England, 1853-09-10 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

was as Vt,rsatile as it was prolific. A fairy tale
for children was as much in his line as the
most abstruse metaphysics ; a mad drinking
song flowed as naturally from his pea as the
elegant criticisms of art, or the Most desperate
passions and the darkest terrors of tragedy.
He introduces you into the heart of the sui
tide, and treats of the elementary constituents
of light. with the Sallie busy anti officious but
serene intelligence. The author of " Faust "
is the author not only of comedies but of bur-
lesque opens.
And what is the sum of the result of so
many labours ? If he be judged by what are
esteemed his best produetions, he has left
nothing whatever behind him which is not
immeastintbly surpassed, in its kind, by hun-
dreds of well-known works, in some one 1110-
dent language, or in several. There are novels
infinitely better than his " Wilhelm Miester "
orhis "Werther" odes, ballads, songs, compared
with which the best he ever wrote, are valueless ;
letters, essays, narratives, biographies, histori-
cal comments, with which it would make men
of judgment and taste smile to put his in
juxtaposition ; and, finally, tragedies with
which, it is to be hoped, the world, if driven
to a choice, would not part for the sake of
"Faust."
This is his opus magnum, the work with which
he took more pains than with all his other in-
numerable worksvia together. The hero
is a man of sublime learning and ineom-
parable genius, with aspirations after whatever
is above or beyond humanity. His attain-
ments and ability reduce at. length a part of
the invisible universe beneath his email)) ;
and he immediately uses this tenifie power, as
we might anticipate from so exalted a charac-
ter. He moves earth and hell to obtain some
witches who dance undraped around him, and
to enable him to seduce a happy village girl.
For this end, for this grand consummation,
the noblest mental toil, and the supposed ac-
quirements of the profoundest science, are
seen in il•eration. The incidents are worthy
of the design. The innocent girl poisons her
mother, occasions the slaughter of her lover,
flings awayherown virtue, murders her infant,
goes raving mad, is executed, soars to heaven
by a supernal award, and leaves Faust to
death and damnation, in the power of his ac-
commodating but now importunate ally, Me-
phistopheles, the devil. It cannot he denied
rt is an exceedingly deep tragedy. Black
magic, seduction, duelling, matricide, infitnti
side, suicide, church bells, the hymn of the
last day, the familiar proceedings of demons,
and eternal perdition, are robust materials.
But such materials are in the reach of all per-
sons. Any cursing drover who knew how to
write might collect the elements of as dark a
drama. How would he use them ? 11,. would
use them as Shakspeare would not.
There is a great instrument of popukrity in
" Faust," an instrument which Goethe never
forgot to employ in any of his imaginative pro-
ductions : it is the exposure of the littleness
of great characters ; it consists in exhibiting
extntordinary persons to the mass in those
lights in which they not only resemble the
mass, but in which they flatter, by example,
the vilest instincts of fallen humanity. The
real poet's mission is different : he sees the
bright and the noble parts of the meanest
things, and shows the spirit that is in the
clay. Goethe had an eye for the earthy en-
cumbrances which clog the spirit.
Here for the present we must close, reserving
until next week sonic remarks on Goethe's
other works.

The Story of Mont Wane. IV Albert Smith

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London : Bogue.
HALE the world already knows " The S'ory of
Mont Blanc " as told by Albert Smith at the
panorama in the Egyptian-hall, and for the
accommodation of the other half he has pub-
lished this book ; and really we should say
the bitter method of making public his exploits
must be much more agreeable to him ; for to
go on indefinitely—he has repeated it already
five hundred times we believe—as he promises
to do, telling the same story by word of mouth,
must be rather tiresome. This little volume,
however, does more than repeat the account of
his own ascent : it gives a bistory of the Valley