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Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
Thus hindrance after hindrance to our regarding Goethe as a great prophet of the higher life and of the true religion disappears. There remains one which is not so easily removed. What surprises the English reader in “Wilhelm Meister” is not merely the prominence given to Art, or the serious devotion to things present and to the present life, but also the extraordinary levity with which it treats the relations of men and women. The book might, in fact, be called thoroughly immoral, if the use of that word which is common among us were justifiable. More correctly speaking, it is immoral throughout on one point; immoral, in Goethe’s peculiar, inimitable, good-natured manner. The levity is the more startling in a book otherwise so remarkably grave. Every subject but one is discussed with seriousness; in parts the solemnity of the writer’s wisdom becomes quite oppressive; but on the relations of men and women he speaks in a thoroughly worldly tone. Just where most moralists grow serious, he becomes wholly libertine, indifferent, and secular. There is nothing in this novel of the homely domestic morality of the Teutonic races; a French tone pervades it, and this tone is more or less perceptible in the other writings of Goethe, especially those of the second period, with the exception of “Hermann und Dorothea.” On this subject, the great and wise thinker descends to a lower level; he seems incapable of regarding it with seriousness; or if he does treat it seriously, as in the Elective Affinities, he startles us still more by a certain crude audacity.
It seems possible to trace how Goethe fell into this extraordinary moral heresy. Starting from the idea of the satisfaction of desire, and with a strong prejudice against all systems of self-denial, he perceived, further, that chastity is the favorite virtue of mediævalism, that it is peculiarly Catholic and monastic. Then, as his mind turned more and more to the antique, he found himself in a world of primitive morals, where the woman is half a slave. He found that in the ancient world friendship is more and love less than in the modern – to this point, too, Winckelmann had called his attention – and, since he had adopted it as a principle that the ancients were healthy-minded and that the moderns are morbid, he jumped to the conclusion that the sentimental view of love is but a modern illusion. He accustomed his imagination to the lower kind of love which we meet with in classical poetry, the love of Achilles for Briseis, of Ajax for Tecmessa. In his early pamphlet against Wieland (“Götter, Helden und Wieland,” 1773), we find him already upon this train of reasoning, and his conclusions are announced with the most unceremonious plainness. How seriously they were adopted may be seen from the “Roman Elegies,” written fifteen years later. Among the many reactions which the eighteenth century witnessed against the spirit of Christianity, scarcely any is so startling and remarkable as that which comes to light in these poems. Here the woman has sunk again to her ancient level, and we find ourselves once more among the Hetaeræ of old Greek cities. After reading these wonderful poems, if we go through the list of Goethe’s female characters we shall note how many among them belong to the class of Hetaeræ – Clärchen. Marianne, Philine, Gretchen, the Bayadere. And if we turn to his life, we find the man, who shrank more than once from a worthy marriage, taking a Tecmessa to his tent. The woman who became at last his wife was spoken of by him in a letter to the Frau von Stein, as “that poor creature.” She is the very beauty celebrated in the “Roman Elegies.”
This strange moral theory could not but have strange consequences. Love, as Goethe knows it, is very tender, and has a lyric note as fresh as that of a song-bird; but it passes away like the songs of spring. In his Autobiography, one love-passage succeeds another, each is charmingly described, but each comes speedily to an end. How far in each case he was to blame is matter of controversy. But he seems to betray a way of thinking about women such as might be natural to an Oriental Sultan. “I was in that agreeable phase,” he writes, “when a new passion had begun to spring up in me before the old one had quite disappeared.” About Friederika he blames himself without reserve, and uses strong expressions of contrition; but he forgets the matter strangely soon. In his distress of mind he says he found riding, and especially skating, bring much relief. This reminds us of the famous letter to the Frau von Stein about coffee. He is always ready in a moment to shake off the deepest impressions and to receive new ones; and he never looks back. A curious insensibility, which seems imitated from the apparent insensibility of Nature herself, shows itself in his works by the side of the deepest pathos. Faust never once mentions Gretchen again, after that terrible prison scene; her remembrance does not seem to trouble him; she seems entirely forgotten, until, just at the end, among the penitents who surround the Mater Gloriosa, there appears one who has borne the name of Gretchen. In like manner – this shocked Schiller – when Mignon dies she seems instantly forgotten, and the business of the novel scarcely pauses for a moment.
We are also to remember that Goethe was a man of the old régime. If he who had such an instinctive comprehension of feminine character, at the same time treats women in this Oriental fashion, we are to remember that he lived in a country of despotic Courts, and also that he was entirely outside the movement of reform. Had he entered into the reforming movement of his age, he might have striven to elevate women, as he might have heralded and welcomed some of the ideas of 1789, and the nationality movements of 1808 and 1813. He certainly felt at times that all was not right in the status of women (“Der Frauen Schicksal ist beklagenswerth”), and how narrowly confined was their happiness (“Wie enggebunden ist des Weibes Glück,”), as he certainly felt how miserable was the political conditions of Germany. Nevertheless he did not take the path either of social or of political reform. He worked in another region, a deeper region. He was a reformer on the great scale in literature, art, education, that is, in culture, but he was not a reformer of institutions. And as he did not look forward to a change in institutions, his views and his very morality rested on the assumption of a state of society in many respects miserably bad.
But the effect of this aberration upon Goethe’s character as a teacher and upon his influence has been most disastrous. And inevitably, for as it has been the practice in the Christian world to lay all the stress of morality upon that very virtue which Goethe almost entirely repudiates, he appears not only to be no moralist but an enemy of morality. And as he once brought a devil upon the stage, we identify him with his own Mephistopheles, though, in fact, the tone of cold irony is not by any means congenial to him. He has the reputation of a being awfully wise, who has experienced all feelings good and bad, but has survived them, and from whose writings there rises a cold unwholesome exhalation, the odor of moral decay. It is thought that he offers culture, art, manifold intellectual enjoyment, but at the price of virtue, faith, patriotism.
If I have taken a just view, the good and bad characteristics of his writings stand in a different relation. It is not morality itself that he regards with indifference, but one important section of morality. And he is an indifferentist here, partly because he is a man formed in the last years of the old régime, partly because he is borne too far on the tide of reaction against Catholic and monastic ideas. Nevertheless, he remains a moralist; and in his positive teaching he is one of the greatest moral teachers the world has ever seen. In his life he displayed some of the greatest and most precious virtues, a nobly conscientious use of great powers, a firm disregard of popularity, an admirable capacity for the highest kind of friendship. His view of life and literature is, in general, not ironical and not enervating, but sincere, manly, and hopeful. And his view of morality and religion, if we consider it calmly and not in that spirit of agonized timidity which reigns in the religious world, will perhaps appear to be not now very dangerous where it is wrong, and full of fresh instruction where it is right. The drift of the nineteenth century, the progress of those reforms in which Goethe took so little interest, have tended uniformly to the elevation of woman, so that it seems now scarcely credible that at the end of the last century great thinkers can seriously have preferred to contemplate her in the half servile condition in which classical poetry exhibits her. On this point at least the world is not likely to become pagan again. On the other hand Carlyle himself scarcely exaggerated the greatness of Goethe as a prophet of new truth alike in morals and in religion. Just at the moment when the supernaturalist theory, standing alone, seemed to have exhausted its influence, and to be involving religion in its own decline, Goethe stood forth as a rapt adorer of the God in Nature.39 Naturalism in his hands appeared to be no dull system of platitudes, no empty delusive survival of an exploded belief, but a system as definite and important as Science, as rich and glorious as Art. Morality in his hands appeared no longer morbid, unnaturally solemn, unwholesomely pathetic, but robust, cheerful, healthy, a twin-sister of happiness. In his hands also morality and religion appeared inseparably united, different aspects of that free energy, which in him was genius, and in every one who is capable of it resembles genius. Lastly, his bearing towards Christianity, when he had receded from the exaggerations of his second period, was better, so long as it seemed hopeless to purge Christianity of its other-worldliness, than that of the zealots on either side. He entered into no clerical or anti-clerical controversies; but, while he spoke his mind with great frankness, did not forget to distinguish between clericalism and true Christianity, cherished no insane ambition of destroying the Church or founding a new religion,40 and counselled us in founding our future society to make Christianity a principal element in its religion, and not to neglect the “excellent collection of sacred books” left us by the Hebrews. —Contemporary Review.
BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
I. Daniel O’Connell – Serjeant Talfourd – Robert Carruthers
The three gentlemen whose names appear at the head of this chapter of my reminiscences, breakfasted together at the table of Mr. Rogers, along with our host and myself, in the summer of 1845. They were all remarkable and agreeable men, and played a part more or less distinguished in the social life of the time. Mr. O’Connell called himself, and was called by his friends, the Liberator, but was virtually the Dictator, or uncrowned king, of the Irish people. Serjeant, afterwards Judge, Talfourd, was an eminent lawyer – a very eloquent speaker, and a poet of some renown. Mr. Robert Carruthers was the editor of the Inverness Courier, a paper of much literary influence; a man of varied acquirements and extensive reading, particularly familiar with the literature and history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and more especially with the writings of Pope, his contemporaries and predecessors. Whenever Mr. Macaulay, while engaged on the “History of England,” which, unfortunately, he did not live to complete, was in doubt about an incident, personal or national, that occurred during the reigns of James II., William and Mary, or Queen Anne, and was too busy to investigate for himself, he had only to appeal for information to Mr. Carruthers, and the information was at once supplied from the abundant stores of that gentleman’s memory. I was well acquainted with all of these notables, but had never before met the three together.
Mr. O’Connell had long passed his prime in 1845 – being then in his 70th year – but appeared to be in full bodily and mental vigor, and in the height of his power, popularity, and influence. He had for years been extravagantly praised by one half of the nation and as extravagantly blamed and denounced by the other, and his support had been so absolutely necessary to the existence of the Whig and Liberal Ministry in England, that when this support seemed to be of doubtful continuance, or any indications of his present lukewarmness or future opposition were apparent, the baits of power, place, or high professional promotion were constantly dangled before his eyes, to keep him true to the cause to which he had never promised allegiance, but to which he had always adhered with more or less of zeal and consistency. For upwards of a quarter of a century his name figured more frequently in the leading columns of all the most prominent journals of London and the provinces than that of any statesman or public character of the time. As he jocularly but truly said of himself, he was the best abused man in the country; but though he did not choose to confess it, he was, at the same time, the most belauded. He was a man of a fine personal presence, of a burly and stalwart build, with quick glancing eyes full of wit, humor and of what may be called “rollicking” fun; and of a homely, persuasive, and telling eloquence, that no man of his day could be truly said to have equalled. The speeches of his great contemporary and countryman, Richard Lalor Shiel, were more elegant, scholarly, and ambitious; but they were above the heads of the commonalty, and often failed of their effect by being “caviare to the general,” and sometimes tired or “bored” those who could understand and even appreciate them, by their great length and too obvious straining after effect. No exception of the kind could be taken to the speeches of Daniel – or, as he was affectionately called, “Dan” O’Connell. They were all clear as day, logical as a mathematical demonstration, and warm as midsummer. If he had many of the faults he had all the virtues of his Celtic countrymen, and even in his strongest denunciations of his political opponents there was always a touch of humor that forced a laugh or a smile from the persons he attacked. He once, in Parliament, spoke of the great Duke of Wellington as “a stunted corporal with two left legs,” and the Duke of Wellington, who was said to be proud of his legs, remarking to Lucas, the artist who had painted his portrait, pointing to his legs – without taking notice of the facial likeness – “those are my legs,” had sense enough to laugh. The description, however, was not quite original, inasmuch as Pope, more than a hundred years previously, had applied the same epithet to Lintot the bookseller. Daniel O’Connell could excite at will the laughter or the indignation of the multitude, and was not in reality an ill-tempered or an ill-conditioned man, though he often appeared to be so when it suited his purpose. But though choleric he was never malicious.
On this occasion the conversation was almost entirely literary. O’Connell’s voice was peculiarly sweet and musical, and in the recitation of poetry, of which he had a keen and critical appreciation, it was impossible to excel, and difficult to equal him, in either comic or pathetic passages. The manner in which he declaimed “The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and other favorite songs of Thomas Moore was perfect, and had almost as pleasant an effect upon the hearer’s mind as if they had been sung by a well-trained singer. He was, in short, a delightful companion, and fascinated every society in which he felt himself sufficiently at ease to be induced to give free play to his wit, his humor, his imagination, and his wonderful power of mimicry.
Though seemingly at this time in the full high noon of his power and popularity, his influence was in reality on the wane, and circumstances over which he had no control, and which he had done nothing to produce, were at work to divert from his person and his cause the attention and the love of the Irish people. The first symptoms of the mysterious disease in the potato, which was unfortunately the chief food of the Irish millions, began to make themselves apparent, and to divert the attention of the Irish from political to more urgent questions of life and death. The too probable consequences of this great calamity tended necessarily to diminish the rent or tribute collected from the needy as well as the prosperous to recompense the “Liberator” for the sacrifices he had made in relinquishing the practice of his profession to devote his time, talent, and energies entirely to the parliamentary service of the people. Added to this, a race of younger and more impulsive men, fired by his example, had arisen to agitate the question of the Repeal of the Union on which he had set his heart, and scorning, in their impatience, the peaceful and legal methods which he employed, did their best to goad the impulsive people into open rebellion. Foremost among these were Mr. Smith O’Brien, whose futile treason came to an inglorious collapse in a cabbage garden; and next, the members of the party of Young Ireland, and the gifted poets of the “Nation,” among whom were Mr. D’Arcy McGee, and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, whose tuneful violence was far more agreeable to the youthful agitators of the new generation than the more prudent strategy of O’Connell. The potato disease and the fearful famine that followed on its devastating track, which sent at least a million of people to the United States and two millions into untimely graves in Ireland, preyed upon the spirit of the great agitator, impaired his health, and ultimately led to his death of a broken heart, at Genoa, in 1847, in the 72nd year of his age. He was, at the time, on a pilgrimage to Rome to crave the blessing of the Pope, but was not destined to reach the, to him, “holy city,” the capital of his faith. His heart, however, was embalmed and taken to Rome, and his corpse conveyed to his native country for interment. I little thought on that joyous morning of 1845, when we sat seriously merry and intellectually sportive at the social board of Mr. Rogers in St. James’s Place, that the end was so near, and that the light which shone so brilliantly was so speedily to be extinguished, and the sceptre of democratic authority to be so shattered that none could take it up when it fell from the hands which had so long wielded it.
The second of the guests this morning was also an orator, not celebrated for his power over crowds, but highly distinguished in the Senate and the Forum. Serjeant Talfourd did not speak often in Parliament or at public meetings, but when he did he was listened to with pleasure and attention. The scenes of his triumphs were the law courts, and especially the Court of Common Pleas, where he was the leading practitioner. He was noted among the members of the Bar and the attorneys for his power over the minds of jurymen, and his winning ways of extorting a favorable verdict for the client who was fortunate enough to have him for an advocate. He had room enough in his head both for law and literature – the law for his profit and his worldly advancement, and literature for the charm and consolation of his life. He was well known too, and highly esteemed by the leading literary men of his time, and took especial interest in the laws affecting artistic, musical, and literary copyright. He was largely instrumental in extending the previously allotted term of twenty-eight years to forty-two years, and for seven years after the death of the artist, composer, or author. This measure put considerable and well-deserved profits into the pockets of the heirs of Sir Walter Scott, and was said at the time to have been specially devised and enacted for that purpose and for that only. This, however, was an error which Serjeant Talfourd emphatically contradicted whenever it was hinted or asserted. It had, incidentally, that effect, which no one was churlish and ungrateful enough to grudge or lament, but was advocated in the interest of all men of letters, and of literature itself in its widest extent, and if it erred at all, only erred on the side of undue restriction to so short a period as forty-two years. It ought to have been extended to the third generation of the benefactors of their country, and probably will be so extended at a future time, when the rights of authors will be as strictly protected – and will be thought of at least as much importance – as the right of landlords to their acres; of butchers, bakers, and tailors to be paid for their commodities; or those of doctors and lawyers to be paid for their time and talents.
Mr. Charles Dickens dedicated to Serjeant Talfourd the “Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” – the early work by which his great fame was established – in grateful acknowledgment of the Serjeant’s services to the cause of all men of genius, in the enactment of the new law of copyright. “Many a fevered head,” he said, “and palsied hand will gather new vigor in the hour of sickness and distress, from your exalted exertions; many a widowed mother and orphaned child, who would otherwise reap nothing from the fame of departed genius but its too pregnant legacy of sorrow and suffering, will bear in their altered condition higher testimony to the value of your labors than the most lavish encomiums from lip or pen could ever afford.”
Serjeant Talfourd was raised to the Bench in 1848, being then in his fifty-third year. This promotion had the natural consequence of removing him from the House of Commons. He was a singularly amiable man – of gentle, almost feminine character – of delicate health and fragile form. He possessed little or none of the staid or stern gravity popularly associated with the idea of a judge, and looked more like the poet that he undoubtedly was, than the busy lawyer or magistrate. He died suddenly in the year 1854, under circumstances peculiarly sad and pathetic. After attending Divine Service on Sunday, the 11th March, in the Assize town of Stafford, apparently in his usual health, he took his seat on the bench on the following morning, and proceeded to address the grand jury on the state of the calendar. It contained a list of more than one hundred prisoners, an unusually large number of whom were charged with atrocious offences, many of which were to be directly traced to intemperance. He took occasion, in the course of his remarks, to comment upon the growing estrangement in England between the upper and lower classes of society, and the want of interest and sympathy exhibited between the former and the latter, which he regarded as of evil augury for the future peace and prosperity of the country. While uttering these words he became flushed and excited – his speech became thick and incoherent, and he suddenly fell forward with his face on the desk at which he was sitting. He was removed at once to his lodgings in the immediate vicinity of the court, but life was found to be extinct on his arrival. Thus perished a singularly able and estimable man, universally beloved by his contemporaries.
Mr. Carruthers, who resided in the little town of Inverness, sometimes called by its inhabitants the “Capital of the Highlands,” was often blamed by his intimate friends for hiding his great abilities in so small a sphere, and not launching boldly forth upon the great sea of London, which they considered a more suitable arena for the exercise of his talents and the acquirement of fame and fortune by the pursuits of literature. But he was not to be persuaded. He loved quiet; he loved the grand and solemn scenery of his beautiful native country, and perhaps if all the truth were told, he preferred to be a great man in a provincial town, than a comparatively small one in a mighty metropolis. In Inverness he shone as a star of the first magnitude. In London, though his light might have been as great, it might have failed to attract equal recognition. In addition to all these considerations, the atmosphere of great cities did not agree with his health, and the fine, free, fresh invigorating air of the sea and the mountains was necessary to his physical well-being. This he enjoyed to the full in Inverness. The editing of the weekly journal, which supplied him with even greater pecuniary results than were necessary to supply the moderate wants of himself and his household, left him abundant leisure for other and congenial work. He soon made his mark in literature, and became noted not only for the vigor and elegance of his style, but for his remarkable accuracy of statement, even in the minutest details of his literary and historical work. He edited, with copious and accurate notes, an edition of Pope, and of Johnson and Boswell’s “Tour to the Hebrides,” and greatly added to the value of those interesting books by notes descriptive and anecdotical of all the places and persons mentioned in them. He also contributed largely to the valuable “Cyclopædia of English Literature” edited by Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh; besides contributing essays and criticisms to many popular serials and reviews, published in London and Edinburgh. He was one of the most admirable story tellers of his time, or indeed of any time, had a most retentive and abundantly furnished memory, and never missed the point of a joke, or overlaid it with inappropriate or unnecessary words or phrases. His fund of Scottish anecdotes – brimful of wit and humor – was apparently inexhaustible, and his stories followed each other with such rapidity as to suggest to the mind of the listener the beautiful lines of Samuel Rogers:
