ART. IV.-GOETHE AND BETTINA. 1. Wahrheit und Dichtung. Von J. W. VON GOETHE. 2 Bde. Stuttgart und Tübingen: 1840. 2. Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde. 2 Bde. Berlin: 1835. 3. Gespräche mit Goethe. Von JOHANN PETER ECKERMANN. 3 Bde. Leipzig: 1876. IN the belief that coming events cast their shadows before, we turn with an eager interest to the early life of the great. We study the bright sayings and sportive ways of childhood that in their kaleidoscopic variety we may find the tint and texture of the fabric of the after-life. In the boy Napoleon assuming a dictatorial sway among his companions and awing his elders into submission by his daring precocity, we recognize the ruler of kings and the terror of Europe. So likewise we search with a hungry avidity through the dull little town on the Avon for some word or deed of the child, in which we may catch a glimmering of the dazzling genius that created Ariel and Hamlet. And as we stand in the shabby dwelling where he was born and lived, we inwardly implore the stones of the old worn pavement in the familyroom to cry out and tell us the ways of the boy Shakespeare. But if it is the world's regret that so little is known of Shakespeare's early life, it is also its grateful satisfaction that both history and tradition have been so kind regarding that of Goethe. As his own historian, he has described the youthful years at Frankfort with that simple directness and lively grace of narrative which constitute the chief charm of his style. In the varied, joyous life passed amid the refining influences of a cultured, plentiful home, and the mental stimulus afforded by the contact and influence of minds distinguished in every profession and walk of life, are seen the unfolding of that rich nature and the complex activity of that wondrous intellect which, viewed in full maturity, affect the beholder not unlike and it does not seem an ignoble comparison-one of those vast Oriental tapestries, wherein the marvel of daring design, together with the wealth of coloring, astonish and charm us as we contemplate the soft, glowing magnificence of the whole. In the eager zeal with which the boy explores the halls and towers of the old Teutonic city, and in the calm, wondering delight with which he lingers among its antiquities, we discover that love for the antique—that classic spirit which breathes a serene, lofty repose over the genius of Goethe. In the keen zest with which the child lays open the heart of flower and fruit, and the unflagging interest with which he watches the growth and change of living things, we find that spirit of inquiry and love for the investigation of nature which were ever his. There also we find that untiring patience and cheerful faith which, together with his deep insight into human nature, enabled the author of Götz and Faust to await the noble development of human character from the most untoward beginnings. It was by the happy union of these seemingly antagonistic elements that so mighty a change was wrought upon German literature through the works of Goethe. Under the magic of his genius the cold marble forms of antiquity are aglow with life, and the chill glitter of a remote past is become as the warm radiance of noonday. The heroes and heroines, who in all their pomp of power and glory of achievement seemed, through the dim distance of the ages, as phantom beings apart from our humanity, are become real men and women whose hearts beat with hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, closely akin to our own. In Iphigenie we no longer behold a pallid chiselled divinity enduring her fate with stony submission, but a radiant, sensitive woman, whom a calm, noble spirit raises above the horrors of her situation. Amid the war and clamor, the strife and discord that made hideous the night of his time, the simple, noble nature of Götz arises like a lily against a background of gore;-a knight, indeed, but devoid of the glamour in which the characters of a chivalrous age usually appear to us. Brave and true-hearted, he of the iron hand battles to save men from the evils that beset them and struggles to wrest his own soul from the thraldom of an evil time. As by Goethe's largeness of vision and true insight he found a human heart throbbing beneath the sculptured stone, and a warm, gentle spirit within the cold, clanking steel, so, also, he seized those vague dreams and fleeting fancies that haunt the deep recesses of the human mind, and embodied them in forms of such chaste, simple grandeur, that we bow in awe before the divine humanity which they reveal. For the real lover of nature the common flowers of the wayside have, in their rank luxuriance, an interest of fact and sentiment of which the cultivated ornaments of the garden cannot boast. Goethe was a born naturalist; the small dull concerns of life were noble and full of interest to him, for he felt and told us that they are the main-springs of all great activity. Through his words, as under a spell, the homely trifles—the common things of every-day life-are invested with their proper significance. Herein lies the secret of his power over the hearts of the people, especially of women, whose life for the most part consists of a round of small duties; and to those whose higher powers seem stifled in a narrow bustling activity, and who long for the rise that would give them a freer scope, with what effect must come his words: "Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast, Aber ohne Rast, Drehe sich jeder Um die eigne Last." "Like as a Star, That maketh not haste, His God-given hest." Goethe did much for women and he received much from them. The warm, yet delicate color of sentiment that pervades his works, though born of woman, was his by inheritance. Through all his writings is easily perceived the influence of those women who, he tells us, made an impress upon his character. The pure, placid nature of Gretchen; the thoughtful vivacity and touching naïveté of Frederica; the deep spirituality of Fräulein Von Klettenburg, are there; and the reproachful criticism caused by the doubtful moral tone that sometimes tinges his pages fades out in a wider and truer estimate before the splendid inspiration of the leading female characters of his works. We can readily believe his statement to Eckermann, that all the feelings and mental states described by him were the result of his own experience, for it was a feature of Goethe's many-sided nature that he could feel not only for, but with, others; hence the startling truth, the wonderful minuteness with which he could alike portray the most frenzied passions and the finest, deepest feelings of which mankind is capable. The grief that he caused another, and which he himself deeply felt, Goethe could depict with a touch so firm and unerring, and in a style so vivid, that his most rapt admirers must feel a regretful pleasure that he could select for analysis the flowers which he had caused to bloom and fade in a human heart, and could expose to the world's gaze their delicate quivering filaments. With all his many-sidedness of character, Goethe's power of musical comprehension was imperfect, or rather we might say one-sided. His ear was exquisitely attuned to the sounds of nature. In the low rippling of the brooklet, the loud roar of the cataract, the faint sighing of the breeze, the mad fury of the tempest, he found a melody and harmony which so touched his senses that they became, we might almost say, glorified. He could sing with taste and feeling-his voice was music itself; but a musical composition unaccompanied with words was to him almost without meaning; a symphony with its varying tone and movement told him nothing of nature and human feeling. He could find music in nature, but not nature in music. He held communion with music but did not possess its revelation. It was not until after his powers were at their zenith and his genius was brought face to face with that of Beethoven, that he felt most keenly this deficiency of faculty; and he hailed with joy a new star that arose in his mental heaven in the character of Bettina Brentano, the young gifted friend of Beethoven, who interpreted the great master to him, and who is known as the "child" of the celebrated "correspondence." The remarkable intercourse between the "poetical artist" and the "child" was of a nature that could happen nowhere but in Germany, where "philosophy is half sister to romance, and romance appears half the time in the garb of philosophy." Of a distinguished literary ancestry, Bettina was virtually born with an adoration for the great poet of nature and passion. Both her parents and her grandparents had been enthusiastic admirers and devoted friends of Goethe, so that from her earliest remembrance the child had heard the praises of the poet, and it was only left for his mother to complete the infatuation. Genial, gifted Frau Rath found in her little favorite an eager listener to her vivid, glowing account of her absent, renowned son, for whom her love was little short of idolatry; and as she possessed in a very marked degree that power of narration which in him was so inimitable, it is not surprising that her wonder-pictures wrought an effect upon the highly imaginative mind of Bettina; nor that the child's rapt fancy should eventually break forth into exuberances of expression which, aside from its rare literary merit, is exquisitely beautiful in the simple vernacular, but becomes almost wildly fantastic when conveyed into cold, exacting English. Upon her ardent temperament the name of Wolfgang Goethe acted as a spell of power to awaken her genius and to develop the sentiment of love, in a manner which seems so allied to passion that it is scarcely possible to read her burning expressions without a regret that Goethe could encourage her enthusiastic idolatry, and play upon her heart-strings to make him music. The letters which Bettina wrote to Goethe, at Weimar, were highly valued by him. He praised them in unmeasured terms. The purity and freshness of her thoughts, and the childlike innocence of expression, in which the maiden of fifteen addressed him, were like the very breath of spring to the man of sixty-two, when he, in the full glory of his fame, was passing a splendid existence amid the stifling atmosphere of a brilliant court. These letters, too, were veritable "songs from home," for it was in the old home at Frankfort-in his |