Ulrike was the last of the long series of passions which left scars on the poet's heart and inspired him to his noblest verse.

The closing pages of the second volume contain the biographer's verdict on the character and personality of Goethe.

"Those who knew him best were most attracted to him. The devotion of his mother and sister went beyond the devotion of ordinary mothers and sisters, and throughout life he had an exceptional power of attracting friends. Jung Stilling said that his heart was as great as his intellect. Knebel, his friend for over fifty years, described him as the best of men, the most lovable of mankind. Children delighted in him and he in them-the most evident proof that he could have been neither cold-hearted nor a pedant. Sincerity, candour and plain dealing were eminent characteristics of his nature. He was singularly free from all pettiness of spirit, and envy of the gifts and reputations of others was a sentiment which he did not know. Devoid of vanity as of envy, he was fully aware of his own endowments and of the value of the work he had given to the world; but it was his habitual attitude to regard himself as simply an organ of Nature through which she communicated certain truths to the world. Yet in his character and genius there is an elusiveness which struck every observer. "In some respects I am a chameleon," he wrote in his fifteenth year; and Felix Mendelssohn declared that the world would one day come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes. What strikes us most forcibly is the lack of controlling will when he comes into conflict with the instincts implanted in him. Susceptibility was the dominating characteristic of his nature; but along with susceptibility went the instinct to know and create, which asserted itself even when passion raged highest in him, and to which he confessed he owed his mental balance.'

The accusation of an overmastering egotism is dismissed, and Goethe's contention is accepted that a man best serves the world by cultivating the powers which he possesses.

While the main interest of this biography is the personality of its subject, the student will turn with eagerness to the author's judgments on Goethe's writings. The four years at Frankfurt between the departure from Strassburg in 1771 and the migration to Weimar in 1775

are without a parallel in literary history; for they witnessed not only 'Götz' and 'Werther,' 'Clavigo' and some lesser works, but, as we now know, the original form of 'Faust' and 'Egmont.' 'Had Goethe died at the age of twenty-six,' observes the Professor, his legacy would have assured him a place with the great creative minds of all time.' The years of administration at Weimar were unfavourable to production; but the newly-discovered 'Theatralische Sendung,' the chief work of this decade, bears the same relation to the 'Lehrjahre' as the 'Urfaust' to the completed drama, and is indeed its superior in vivacity and interest.

'Begun in his twenty-seventh year and engaging him till his thirty-seventh, it is the product of the period when the inspiration of youth passes into maturity, which shows itself in the wide outlook on life and the world. It may be questioned whether in any of his subsequent efforts in prose fiction we find the same equipoise of reflexion and inspiration.'

The poems of the same decade include not a few of his title-deeds to immortality, among them 'Kennst du das Land,' 'Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,' 'Der Erlkönig,' and 'Das Göttliche.'

Goethe took with him to Italy four uncompleted manuscripts, Egmont,' 'Iphigenie,' 'Tasso,' and 'Faust,' and finished the first two before his return. The Professor is a little severe on the works of the post-Roman period. 'Egmont,' he complains, is undramatic, 'Iphigenie' stiff, and 'Tasso' intrinsically unfitted for the stage. Had he seen Moissi act the part of the neurotic poet under Reinhardt's direction at Berlin he might have revised his judgment of the latter play. He is obviously out of sympathy with the attempt to follow classical models; but he does full justice to the beauties which sparkle in these finely-chiselled dramas. Even the exquisite 'Hermann und Dorothea' is described as a little artificial, though he allows it to be one of the permanently interesting things in literature and unmatched as a tour de force. The plays on the French Revolution, finished and unfinished, are interesting rather as politics than as literature; while the brilliant and sometimes cruel Xenien'-a joint declaration of war against the

enemies of Goethe and Schiller-are dismissed as a regrettable incident.

Apart from his fascinating autobiography the main works of Goethe's later life are the Theory of Light,' the Elective Affinities,' 'Wilhelm Meister,' the WestOestlicher Divan,' and 'Faust.' The attempt to overthrow Newton was all the more audacious since it rested on a misunderstanding of his theory; but his investigations into the nature of colours founded physiological optics, while his discovery of the intermaxillary bone and the metamorphosis of plants secure him honourable mention in the history of biology and botany among the pioneers of the doctrine of evolution. Of the Wahlverwandschaften' (Elective Affinities) its author remarked that there was not a line in it which he had not himself experienced; and, though the end is inferior to the beginning, it presents far greater human interest than 'Wilhelm Meister.' The Professor's verdict on the longest of Goethe's three great novels is unexpectedly favourable. He admits that it has never been popular; that it lacks unity; that the hero is, as Carlyle called him, a milksop, and that Mignon alone grips the imagination.

'Yet, in spite of its imperfections as a work of art, in spite of the grossness of many of its themes and the faded sentimentalism of others, "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" is among the great books of European literature. hardly any other book can there be found such a wealth of thought on so many subjects of living and permanent interest.'

Goethe's writings are as subjective as Shakespeare's are impersonal; and the West-Oestlicher Divan,' suggested by a German translation of Hafiz and inspired by his passion for Marianne Willemer, is not only evidence of the poet's attraction to orientalism but a kind of poetical diary of the years 1814-18. If among the three hundred pieces there are traces of an obscurity unknown in the works of his prime, its wealth of reflexion will always command the attention of readers who care even more for the substance of a poem than the form. The chapters on 'Faust' are worthy of their transcendant theme. The Urfaust' was written between

1773 and 1775, and the finishing touches to the Second Part were only completed a few months before the poet's death in 1832. Even the First Part did not appear till 1808, though a fragment-different from the Urfaust' -had been published in 1790. Its emotional core was the tragedy of Gretchen, which the Professor associates with his desertion of Friederike.

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'It was written with his heart's blood, which cannot be said of anything else that came from his hand. These scenes are Goethe's supreme triumph as a poet, and of all parts of the poem they make the widest human appeal; but they do not constitute its essential greatness. Its real greatness is found in its intellectual interest for the modern world. What the "Divine Comedy" and "Paradise Lost" did for their respective ages, "Faust" did for Goethe's. Dante and Milton gave poetic expression to the deposit of thought in which they were born, and which they accepted with personal conviction. Unshackled by any authority, Goethe presents no systematic body of doctrine, but in its hero he symbolises the human spirit in its limitless quest after satisfaction for soul and sense.'

The chapter on the Second Part has been supplied by Lord Haldane, who not only provides a skilful analysis of its somewhat miscellaneous fare but manfully vindicates its claim to be regarded as one of the supreme examples of reflective poetry. He does not mention that among the many triumphs of Reinhardt's art was its successful presentation at Berlin shortly before the war.

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The foregoing summary of the Professor's literary verdicts shows that he is no uncritical admirer of a writer who damaged so many of his works by padding and irrelevances. But in his judgment of Goethe's position as a thinker there are no apologetic half-tones. Scattered through these volumes is a string of resounding tributes, 'as great a thinker as he was a poet,' 'one of the most comprehensive minds the world has known,' one of humanity's enduring counsellors,' 'the first of modern independent thinkers.' For philosophy in the technical sense he had no inclination, and it was rather the attitude than the system of his favourite Spinoza that appealed to him. The sphere in which he has no rival but Shakespeare is the philosophy of life. 'His

spirit works and searches in all directions,' wrote Schiller, and strives to construct a whole-and for me that makes him a great man.' If we possessed nothing but the conversations with Eckermann-at once most restful and most stimulating-we should know we were in the company of a master mind. We owe indeed scarcely less to the old age of Goethe than to his youth.

'A peculiarly characteristic section of his work belongs for the most part to his closing years. Many and varied as were the works in prose and verse which he had given to the world, there was in his mind an overflow of reflexions for which he had not been able to find a place. The habit of meditating on all the experience that it presented to him, and condensing in aphoristic form the results of his thinking, became the prevailing tendency among his mental activities. The most abundant harvest was brought forth in the last decade of his life. He put many of them to a singular use; regardless of all artistic propriety, he emptied them into "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre" simply to extend that work to its desired length. But he was unwilling that any of his words should be lost to the world, and he instructed Eckermann to publish the remaining maxims. We have many similar collections by men of the world, by men of action, and by pure thinkers; but for range, depth and suggestiveness none of these are comparable to those of Goethe. Of all men he, perhaps, lived the fullest life of intellect, soul and sense; there was virtually no field of human experience closed to him.'

Matthew Arnold described Goethe as the clearest, largest, and most helpful thinker of modern times, and Byron hailed him as the undisputed sovereign of European literature for fifty years. Lord Haldane expresses a hope that Germany, confronted with the unexpected summons to build her life anew, will turn more closely to the greatest of her teachers; and English readers, though their need is less and they are not ill supplied with counsellors of their own, will be grateful to Prof. Hume Brown for retracing the career and reinterpreting the message of the most imposing figure in the republic of letters since Shakespeare.