The Sun.
London, England, 1853-09-22 00:00:00

JOHN WOLFGANG GOETHE.

Goethe, besides his masterpiece of "Faust," which is
as little designed to produce a beneficial impression as
his other works, has left us that equally great specimen
of his powers in prose, "The Sorrows of Werther,"
which exercised a marked influence on the rising gene-
ration. The young men of Germany began to talk like
Werther—to write like Werther—to dress like Werther
—and to shoot themselves like Werther. It was the
highest compliment these good judges and good "ad-
mirers" could pay to the author. It is now seventy-
nine years since "Werther" appeared ; and for the last
half-century it has steadily declined in public favour.
It is whining in spirit—crooked and perverted in ten-
dency—unhealthy and unsound to the core. It could
not last, with all the fostering assistance of panegyric ;
it wanted intrinsic vitality, and it is now withering like
a dead tree. It will long continue to figure in cata-
logues of its author's labours or prolusions after it
ceases to win readers. Goethe 'confesses that he wrote

it to get rid of " the perilous stuff," as Bulwer Lytton
expressively translates it, which he felt within him. He
committed thus a prepense suicide on the dangerous
part of his own mind ; but when he perceived that the
glowing story of Jerusalem's self-murder obtained so
many practical imitators among the romantic youth of
Germany, that all good people were shocked at this
hideous scandal, and horrified at the moral consequences
of the new novel, he composed a clever comedy called
"The Triumph of Sentimentalism," to arrest the mis-
chief.

His works, if they add little that is real to human en-
lightment—if they conduce but little that is fairly appre-
ciable towards human progress—contain, at least, the
contribution of a word to the vocabulary of transcen-
dentalism, and to the jargon of a certain school of critics,
—a word which Goethe, indeed, did not invent, but
which he raised into mysterious importance—the word
" msthetics.” He found this word obscure, and be left
it famous. Lucidity was not Goethe's chief care. He
defines msthetics to mean the science of taste ; and, as
he freely applies msthetics to religion, it follows that he
considered religion a matter of taste. Life, death, and
immortality, are questions of more and less elegance.
The early Christian martyrs were all out of the pale of
hope ; Caisar remembered the main thing, and died
msthetically with his mantle flowing gracefully around
him. Goethe, with the aid of a Mlle. von Klettenberg,
founded a new religion ; but unluckily it died before
himself. If his own works show that taste was not the
province in which, by pre-eminence, we would invite
him to legislate for mankind, a diminutive book, called
"Goethe's Opinions," by Otto Wenckstern—one of
Goethe's most idolatrous admirers—is amply sufficient
to prove how deficient was the judgment of this emi-
nent author—how self-repugnant were his views—
how incessantly he contradicts himself—how interest-
ing a guesser— and how weak and helpless a rea-
soner he was. We have already seen what is his
proper rank in literature, whether his poetry or
his prose be considered ; and yet this is the
man who surpassed—according to E. A. Bowring, and
Otto Wenckstern, and a hundred other questionable
authorities—all writers, ancient or modern. He was at
once a second Plato, and a second Shakspeare—
a second Plato without a system, without the
" golden style ! " Pedestrian and " salop"— it is
his countrymen who say it—in his language, con
fused and eternally self-convicted of contradiction
in his theories, he who, in the midst of the light
of Christianity, groped about for what alchemy, Mist
Klettenberg, and mythology could teach, is the revived
impersonation of that divine and immortal Greek who,
deprived indeed of the advantage of revelation, hap
yet, for thousands of years, excited the wonder of
the wisest by his philosophy, and the despair
of the most eloquent by his words. And Shakspeare !
If nine-tenths of what Shakspeare wrote were destroyed,
the remaining tenth would be cheaply preserved to the
world at the cost of all Goethe's works together, and of
all that such a mind could have produced, had it laboured
not for seventy, but for seventy times seventy years.
When we read that " Goethe was the embodiment of all

human progress ;" when we read of "rigidly adhering
to the Goethian language, for the sake of preserv-
ing the Goethian meaning, and being worthy of the
Gotheian era," we recognise in such expressions the
most helpless form of literary imbecility—the very hys
terics of criticism—the sobbings and idiotcy of admirers
quite incapable of comparison or judgment, and far be-
yond the reach of calm reasoning.
Goethe, though not the founder, was among the
founders of modern German literature. Gottsched,
Hegel, Schelling, Herder, Ernesti, Gellert, and Klop-
stock, were before him in their labours ; and do such
names count for nothing ? Among his contemporaries,
besides those mentioned, were Schiller (a far higher
genius), the Schlegels, Richter, Musaeus, Griesbach,
Paulus, Fichte, and Humboldt—all his countrymen.
During the same long era, Montesqui, Voltaire, Rous-
seau, Diderot, D'Alembert, Cuvier, Mme. de Stael,
Chateaubriand, and others, figured in France. In these
islands the principal names recal two very defferent gene-
rations of our literature. For—take them at random—
David Hume, Richardson, Smollett, Fielding, Johnson,
Warburton, Collins, Akenside, Gray, Chesterfield,
Dyer, Warton, Mason, and Young; Crabbe, Burke.
Junius, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Scott, Miss Edge- 1
worth, the Banims, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore and
Byron, Campbell and Rogers, and the illustrious
name of Bulwer Lytton brings us to our own
day. Goethe, Cuvier, and Sir Walter Scott, died
in the same year ; all three holding renowned
names among those of the celebrated men we
have mentioned. The stupendous amount of what
Goethe has left written ; the fact that ho was
one of the earliest labourers in that literary vineyard
which had but just been re-opened in his country ; and
then a merit, which is certainly his, of having re-
garded literature with great reverence, and of having
given conscientious and scrupulous pains to the
discharge of what he deemed his mission (though
we think he viewed that mission too " testlieti-
I tally," held it as too independent, too much apart from
the great ends and duties of life), ensure him deservedly
a high place in the remembrance of posterity. In an
artistic sense, he had more circumspection, more regard
for a certain predominating propriety of place, and
time, and manners, in his conception, than most writers
whom we can call to mind. His " Herman and
Dorothea" is destined to be pastoral, and it has
an eminently pastoral character ; " Iphigenia and
Tauris" is integrally classic ; " Gotz" is of a Go-
thic spirit which cannot be mistaken ; and all
that he meant for Oriental poetry is, we are
told, Oriental, undeniably, in its entire temper
and tendency. None but a singularly placid, re-
collected mind could have successfully attempted under-
takings so versatile. And Goethe was cautious in main-
taining this artistic serenity undisturbed. The troubled
water reflects nothing. The mirror of his soul was not
to be dimmed by any event. When his friend Schiller
had breathed his last, Goethe refused to look on the
face of the dead—he would not be agitated. When his