GOETHE'S PORTRAIT.1 [1832.] READER thou here beholdest the Eidolon of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. So looks and lives, now in his eighty-third year, afar in the bright little friendly circle of Weimar, the clearest, most universal man of his time.' Strange enough is the cunning that resides in the ten fingers, e-pecially what they bring to pass by pencil and pen! Him who never saw England, England now sees: from Fraser's Gallery' he looks forth here, wondering, doubtless, how he came into such a Lichtstrasse, lightstreet,' or galaxy; yet with kind recognition of all neighbours, even as the moon looks kindly on lesser lights, and, were they but fish-oil cressets, or terrestrial Vauxhall stars (of clipped tin), forbids not their shining. Nay, the very soul of the man thou canst likewise behold. Do but look well in those forty volumes of ⚫ musical wisdom,' which, under the title of Goethe's Werke, Cotta of Tübingen, or Black and Young of Covent Garden, —once offer them a trifle of drink-money, — will cheerfully hand thee: greater sight, or more profitable, thou wilt not meet with in this generation. The German language, it is presumable, thou knowest; if not, shouldst thou undertake the study thereof for that sole end, it were well worth thy while. 1 FRASER'S Magazine, No. 26. By Stieler of Munich: the copy in Fraser's Magazine proved a total failure and involuntary caricature, resembling, as was said at the time, a wretched old-clothesman carrying behind his back a hat which he seemed to have stolen. Croquis, a man otherwise of rather satirical turn, surprises us, on this occasion, with a fit of enthusiasm. He declares often, that here is the finest of all living heads; speaks much of blended passion and repose; serene depths of eyes; the brow, the temples, royally arched, a very palace of thought; - and so forth. The Writer of these Notices is not without decision of character, and can believe what he knows. He answers Brother Croquis, that it is no wonder the head should be royal and a palace; for a most royal work was appointed to be done therein. Reader! within that head the whole world lies mirrored, in such clear ethereal harmony as it has done in none since Shakspeare left us: even this rag-fair of a world, wherein thou painfully strugglest, and (as is like) stumblest, all lies transfigured here, and revealed authentically to be still holy, still divine. What alchemy was that: to find a mad universe full of scepticism, discord, desperation; and transmute it into a wise universe of belief, and melody, and reverence! Was not there an opus magnum, if one ever was? This, then, is he who, heroically doing and enduring, has accomplished it. In this distracted Time of ours, wherein men have lost their old loadstars, and wandered after night-fires and foolish will-o'-wisps; and all things, in that shaking of the nations,' have been tumbled into chaos, the high made low, and the low high; and ever and anon some duke of this, and king of that, is gurgled aloft, to float there for moments; and fancies himself the governor and head-director of it all, and is but the topmost froth-bell, to burst again and mingle with the wild fermenting mass: in this so despicable Time, we say, there were nevertheless (be the bounteous heavens ever thanked for it!) two great men sent among us. The one, in the island of St. Helena now sleeps 'dark and lone, amid the Ocean's everlasting lullaby;' the other still rejoices in the blessed sunlight, on the banks of the Ilme. Great was the part allotted each, great the talent given him for the same; yet, mark the contrast! Bonaparte walked through the war-convulsed world like an all-devouring earthquake, heaving, thundering, hurling kingdom over kingdom; Goethe was as the mild-shining, inaudible Light, which, notwithstanding, can again make that Chaos into a creation. Thus, too, we see Napoleon, with his Austerlitzes, Waterloos and Borodinos, is quite gone; all departed, sunk to silence like a tavern-brawl. While this other! - he still shines with his direct radiance; his inspired words are to abide in living hearts, as the life and inspiration of thinkers, born and still unborn. Some fifty years hence, his thinking will be found translated, and ground down, even to the capacity of the diurnal press; acts of parliament will be passed in virtue of him: this man, if we will consider of it, is appointed to be ruler of the world. Reader! to thee thyself, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy: GEDENKE ZU LEBEN. Yes, think of living!' Thy life, wert thou the *pitifullest of all the sons of earth,' is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it is all thou hast to front eternity with. Work, then, even as he has done, and does — LIKE A STAR, UNHASTING, YET UNRESTING.' — Sic valeas. BIOGRAPHY.1 MAN'S sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is written, The proper study of mankind is man; to which study, let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies himself, nothing loth. Man is perennially interesting to man; nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing else interesting.' How inexpressibly comfortable to know our fellow-creature; to see into him, understand his goings-forth, decipher the whole heart of his mystery: nay, not only to see into him, but even to see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it; so that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practically personate him; and do now thoroughly discern both what manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to work on and live on! A scientific interest and a poetic one alike inspire us in this matter. A scientific: because every mortal has a Problem of Existence set before him, which, were it only, what for the most it is, the Problem of keeping soul and body together, must be to a certain extent original, unlike every other; and yet, at the same time, so like every other; like our own, therefore; instructive, moreover, since we also are 1 FRASER'S MAGAZINE, No. 27 (for April).—The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.; including a Tour to the Hebrides: By James Boswell, Esq. A new Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes: By John Wilson Croker, LL. D., F. R. S. 5 vols. London, 1831. indentured to live. A poetic interest still more: for precisely this same struggle of human Freewill against material Necessity, which every man's Life, by the mere circumstance that the man continues alive, will more or less victoriously exhibit, - is that which above all else, or rather inclusive of all else, calls the Sympathy of mortal hearts into action; and whether as acted, or as represented and written of, not only is Poetry, but is the sole Poetry possible. Borne onwards by which two all-embracing interests, may the earnest Lover of Biography expand himself on all sides, and indefinitely enrich himself. Looking with the eyes of every new neighbour, he can discern a new world different for each feeling with the heart of every neighbour, he lives with every neighbour's life, even as with his own. Of these millions of living men, each individual is a mirror to us; a mirror both scientific and poetic; or, if you will, both natural and magical;from which one would so gladly draw aside the gauze veil; and, peering therein, discern the image of his own natural face and the supernatural secrets that prophetically lie under the same! Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the actual course of things, this business of Biography is practised and relished. Define to thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these phenomena, named Gossip, Egoism, Personal Narrative (miraculous or not), Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and such like; the sum-total of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand phenomenon still called Conversation.' Do they not mean wholly: Biography and Autobiography? Not only in the common Speech of men; but in all Art too, which is or should be the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak and -how, Biography is almost the one thing needful. Even in the highest works of Art, our interest, as the erities complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly of a Biographic sort. In the Art, we can nowise forget the |