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to sound philosophy and pure reason, and with even these secondary guides, her steps might well be steadied from the fearful lapses of the sister community; but there is more than these, she bears within herself, "the lamp unto her feet, the light unto her paths." Every question now becomes submitted to the great principle of revealed truth. Even were her guides to fail, the people would not; but her guides cannot fail, for the power of their system works effectually within them.

A Church that derives its power from the divine oracles, and consults them for its course and way, that seeks to obtain of them the great truth, will never want that aid and assistance that is promised to honest endeavour and manly purpose. But a Church that derives her power from other and questionable sources, that has bound herself up in an iron bond of infallibility, that quietly permits the acts of demons to be termed her acts, must be prepared to abide the fearful demands of an enlightened age, the inquisition of the sons of knowledge. If she be found wanting in the constituents of a true Church,-if she be found unequal to describe her own true power,-if she be detected assuming false elements of it, and making a totally wrong estimate of its extent,if she be arrested with a lie in her right hand, she must be prepared to meet the brunt of a shock that has been concentrating its force for many an age, and powerful indeed must she stand, if she can abide the issue, and not sink from the earth as Smyrna and Laodicea.

CRITICAL SKETCHES

OF RECENT CONTINENTAL PUBLICATIONS.

ART. X.-1. F. W. Reimer, Mittheilungen von und über Goethe, aus mündlichen und schriftlichen Quellen. (F. W. Reimer, Communications of and concerning Goethe, from oral and written Sources.) Berlin. 1840.

2. Johann Heinrich Merck, ein Denkmal herausgegeben von Dr. Adolf Stahr. (Memoir of J. H. Merck. By Dr. A. Stabr.) Oldenburg. 1840.

We have classed these two books together, as the intentions of their authors in publishing them were similar: Dr. Reimer, entering the lists highly indignant at the violent and often unjust accusations of the younger German writers against Goethe; Dr. Stahr, to rescue from oblivion the memory of a remarkable man, supposed to be the original from whom Goethe took many features of his Mephistopheles. We think the latter has been more successful in his attempts, and it is not a little singular that a man like Merck, who exercised considerable influence over the illustrious men who shed such lustre upon the city of Weimar, should have remained unknown amidst such a book-writing people as the Germans. This ignorance is such, that we have sought his name in vain amongst the novelty-loving volumes of the numerous Conversations-Lexicons.

Another volume on Goethe, we think we hear some of our readers exclaim. Yes, gentle reader, and a goodly octavo of five hundred pages, marked moreover, Vol. I., and how many are to follow, deponent knoweth not. The author was intimately acquainted with Goethe, lived in his house for several years, and was consulted by the poet in the composition or publication of most of his works during this long period. When we add that he bears the character of an honest and truth-loving man, we have said quite sufficient to account for the interest with which we opened the work. It is with reluctance that we feel ourselves compelled to state, that it has hardly equalled our expectations. Goethe was a great man as well as a distinguished poet, and the best proof of this is, the magical influence which he exercised upon all who came within his sphere. To this many of the most eminent men of Germany will willingly bear witness. Among the most enthusiastic of his admirers is Dr. Eckerman, whose interesting conversations with Goethe need no recommendation from us, as they are doubtless in the hands of all German scholars.

The work before us is of a different nature. Dr. Riemer, instead of giving us his own reminiscences of Goethe (which however we hope he will do on a future occasion), has unfortunately adopted a polemical tone of no ordinary severity. We say unfortunately, not that we would blame him for the feelings which he entertains on this subject; on the

contrary, they are highly honourable to him; but it was incumbent upon him to maintain the position which he had taken up by other arguments than by quotations from Goethe's works, for it is in these that its chief merit consists, and the student who is not deeply read in some of the less known works of the poet, will find in the volume before us an interesting collection of table talk.

That there has been a growing spirit of opposition to Goethe, which has not hesitated to attack his character in a manner which must give pain to every well-wisher to the Germans, we are compelled to admit. Yet we think it would have been wiser in Dr. Riemer not to have taken up the cudgels on behalf of his friend and patron, but to have left it to time and the influence of his own best defence, his works. For the manner in which he has conducted his cause will convince no one, and excite still more violently the passions of party spirit. As we do not recollect to have seen this reaction against Goethe taken notice of by our critics, we shall say a few words upon the subject.

We believe that the higher and more philosophical writers among the Germans still look upon Goethe with the veneration which during his lifetime he universally commanded. The Berlin Academy held a special sitting this year in honour of the poet's birth-day, a fact which may deserve mention, should Dr. Riemer's ominous chapter on the faults of his countrymen reach a second edition. But the periodical literature is mostly in the hands of younger men, with the exception of Wolfgang Menzel, whose antipathy to Goethe almost equals in violence his patriotic hatred of the French. The light and frivolous tone in which many of these spurned the dead lion, was well calculated to excite the indignation of Dr. Riemer, and he prefixed to his volume the following words from Bidpai, "For it is said, that he who withholdeth a testimony for the dead, shall be scourged with scourges of fire at the day of the resurrection." We turned eagerly to the chapter on Patriotism, (Deutschheit), and regretted not to find it more satisfactory, for this we suspect to be the chief reason for the violent opposition, the insulting remarks heaped upon Goethe's memory, that, living at a period during which the French Revolution and Buonaparte's usurpation reduced Germany to the lowest depth of degradation, he has no where exhibited a feeling such as was to be expected from a leader among the people. True, he was a poet and not a man of action, but Dr. Riemer has not given us any proof of Goethe's feelings on this subject, even in private conversation. If he be in possession of any such, we would respectfully submit that it is his imperative duty to make them public. although it cannot be doubted that an event which changed the condition of the continent must have deeply affected a mind like Goethe's, yet with the exception of a few secondary works, it does not seem to have produced such an impression as might have been expected. Fichte was a man of science, and the courage with which he delivered his "Speeches to the German Nation," at a time when his voice was drowned by the noise of French drums in the streets of Berlin, will render his name immortal, when little or nothing of his philosophical system will be remembered. Since the battle of Waterloo, the German

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mind has taken a more practical direction, and the literature of the day, although trammelled by the fetters of the censorship, becomes more and more mixed up with politics. It is not therefore surprising that the restless longing spirit, the political complexion of the younger writers, should feel discontented with the plastic repose that pervades the works of Goethe. As party spirit is seldom just, so we find a host of scribblers, and some writers of note too, denying him the place to which he is unquestionably entitled. But we doubt not that in time the fierce attacks will subside, and that when he shall have been longer numbered with the dead, the clouds of party vision will disperse, and he will again enjoy the undivided admiration of his countrymen. It is no small proof of a noble character that in his voluminous works and the numerous collections of letters to and from him, nothing mean or ungenerous, nothing positive, has been advanced against him. The charges are merely negative; his antagonists and deprecators can only assert that he did not express such sentiments as might have been expected. We hear not a word of a want of patriotism proved against him.

Man can only work in the sphere allotted to him, and the more clearly defined that sphere is, the less right we have to require that he shall be equally great in those regions which his tutelary genius warns him not to enter. Goethe has over and over again told us, and we believe it was a peculiarity which he inherited from his mother, that it was his custom to put aside whatever was disagreeable or intolerable to him, and we think this remark more serviceable to him than the vague observations by which Dr. Riemer excuses his silence by alleging his delicate position as a minister, &c.

One of the most successful chapters of the work is that relating to Bettina von Arnim, the celebrated heroine of Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. This lady had encouraged and doubtless entertained the belief that many of Goethe's sonnets, and of the most interesting compositions of his later years, were inspired by her letters; and we well recollect the astonishment which we felt, that a young lady should thus step in between Goethe and his high renown. Dr. Riemer somewhat rudely destroys the halo which had surrounded the Child.

"Another work" (in the preceding chapter he had cautioned the reader against considering Falk's little volume as authentic) "has, in the eyes of the ignorant, injured him whom it was intended to exalt, inasmuch as it not only exposed him to ungrounded reproaches of coldness and hardness of heart, but threatened to diminish or destroy his claim to genius, the originality of the finest compositions of his later years, the Sonnets and the Divan. This was Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. . . . .

"When Goethe published his autobiography, under the title of Fiction and Truth (Dichtung und Wahrheit), he meant to say, it was the veil of fiction in the hand of truth. Truth was the body, fiction the dress, the frame that inclosed a real picture. In the correspondence, fiction is the principal subject, round which the authoress has occasionally hung a frame. The whole is in one word a romance which borrows from reality time, place, and circumstances; but the heroine is in imaginary, more in fantastic than real, love with Goethe; sometimes scolds and quizzes him, sometimes plays at love with him, and feigns nocturnal visits, promenades and cloak-scenes with him. . . . He

bears with her as with a child, as it was his wont, out of common gratitude to bear with inconvenient people, if they did not go too far, and then hastily to break off such a connexion."-(Works, p. 47).- pp. 31, 32.

It must be confessed, in the exposition which follows, Dr. Riemer does not treat the lady with great politeness, although he does justice to her extraordinary talents. Already, in 1807, in Goethe's house, she complained to Riemer of the coldness of Goethe's behaviour to her. Our author then proves by those stubborn things, dates, that many of the sonnets were not addressed to nor written under the inspiration of her magic pen. How then could Bettina delude herself into such a

strange supposition?

"As to the sonnets which Bettina bona fide assumes to have been composed and addressed to her, they were neither written for her nor to her; it is possible that Goethe may have sent her some of them, as he willingly communicated his newest compositions to his friends. He even writes once to Bettina and tells her that she may consider the enclosed sonnet as addressed to herself, because he has nothing better to say. But he neither took nor borrowed his subject from her, to restore it to her in poetic forms. Goethe's fancy and heart could not be so poor in his sixtieth year that he was obliged to borrow his feelings from Bettina, to put them into verse, as the Greek Hypophetes did the inspired natural sounds of the somnambulant Pythian priestess. The subject is taken elsewhere, and many of the circumstances mentioned in the sonnets cannot, from time and place, as well as other circumstances, refer at all to Bettina."-pp. 34, 35.

"The numerous admirers and worshippers of the immortal child will of course consider my confessions as mere blasphemies, but mindful of my motto, I could only write as and what I know. Others may think of them as they please, I say only, dixi et salvavi animam meam.”—p. 38.

"Out of gratitude for Bettina's attachment to his mother, for the communications which she received from her respecting his childhood and the history of his youth, without which Goethe could not have begun his Autobiography, but certainly likewise in memory of Bettina's beautiful mother, in whose company he had passed many happy hours, in the house of Madame de la Roche, from all these motives he allowed her to follow her own humours, whether natural or studied, found pleasure in her genial, although odd, clever and fantastic character; bore with equanimity her caresses and whims, and as it could only be question of a paternal, not passionate return, what could he do for so much mirth and attention, but occasionally give her some pleasure with such poetic sweetmeats as he happened to have at hand, a fresh flower, a juicy piece of fruit from his poetic garden, as if they were made and grown for her. But this was all. If she required more or went so far as to be troublesome to him, he could not, as he himself confesses, do otherwise than break off the connexion, and that she was troublesome to him with her passionateness, Bettina herself allows."-pp. 39, 40.

We doubt not that this is the true state of the case, and fortunately Bettina's genius can bear the blow, although a few blossoms may fall from the wreath of glory with which her blind admirers have crowned her.

Dr. Riemer has devoted a long chapter to Goethe's personal appearance; we need not dwell upon it, all who have seen him will acknowledge the justice of Napoleon's observation, c'est un homme.

The

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