Shall flow; his words, in cadence sweet Yet loudlier thee than many a lavish host

From The Contemporary Review. GOETHE AS A MINISTER OF STATE.

place in the equal community of his fellows, who will listen to his opinions on all serious subjects with the polite indifference with which the doctors of lunatic asylums listen to their patients. It is not merely that the average man feels an Aristophanic distrust of the man of words, for he allows himself to be governed mainly by rhetoric. He is haunted by an uneasy suspicion that a poet is not quite a serviceable person, and that he ought to be spending his time on business of more distinct utility. He is dimly conscious of the same kind of dissatisfaction as prompted the essayist, himself far removed from the common utilitarian position, to write of

obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner." 1

WITHIN the last thirty years or less the criterion by which the value of the poetic life is estimated among people of authority has obviously changed. Our fathers were inclined to decide the merits of a poet's conduct of life by a standard which has become obsolete to us, though in its day it really added a new terror to the poet's existence. There has, indeed, always been abundant cause for poetic lamentations over the slights to which the poet's trade is exposed. But in earlier times the satiric shaft was aimed chiefly at the poet's obscurity and poor estate. His dulness was sometimes hinted at, but it Shakespeare: "The best poet led an was his hunger which appeared most ridiculous. For this century, whose chief glory it is that in it hunger has at last ceased to be a reproach-for this century it was reserved to discover a fresh taunt, hardly less galling than the old. At the time when the formulæ of But, in a leader of modern thought, civic progress and prosperity were how antiquated all such criticism would alinost as dominant in literature as in now appear! Linger as it may, it is economics, this further burden was none the less a thing of past history, to added to the poet's ancient woes, that be remembered only as an inevitable he knew himself to be regarded with and rather disagreeable phase of hususpicion as a being of doubtful utility man thought. The tide of judgment by leaders of thought, whose philan- has set quite the other way, and already thropy was set on improving human has borne us so far that mere useconditions. The poet had often but lessness has almost become a test of little of definite importance to show in excellence, even in conduct. It is its justification of his manner of life; and uselessness which maintains true learnit was obviously absurd for him to plead ing. A society for the diffusion of that his productions, as a member of useless knowledge would find many consociety, contributed to the greatest hap-tributors. Uselessness may be the founpiness of even a considerable number.dation of the next ethical system. Has In the popular mind something of this not its fine uselessness done much to reproach, no doubt, still lingers; for, revive religion itself? And in the having once grasped a philosophic sphere of art also, the Puritanism unformula, we are loth to let it go, and spiritualized which once played the we always hope for finality. The aver-censor in the name of utility, is in realage plain man still smiles when the ity dead. We are now taught to asword "poet" is mentioned. To his sume the artist's uselessness, and to mind the poet evidently still suggests a delight in it. The artist's individuality, useless decorative luxury, or else an not his use, is of sole importance. Let idler of the ditch and gutter. The man him live his own life, careless of laughwho devotes his life to poetry, and ter or reproach. Whether it is a useful spends the margin of his income on the life or not is no concern of ours, nor publication of his poems, is still not even of his, save in so far as that may only an easy mark for tea-table satire, 1 Emerson: Representative Men: Shakespeare, but must be prepared also to lose his or the Poet.

affect his personality.

to pursue
accepted definitions, his admirers will
now have to stand on the defensive.
And, in that case, it will not count a
single point to the poet's credit that he
has worked at charities, or drained a
town, or controlled an empire, or even
elaborated a metaphysical system. The
only possible line of defence must be
internal, must vindicate the growth of
the poet's inmost soul, must establish
individuality; else no justification can
be pleaded.

The presump-|a poet take upon himself the trivial tion, indeed, is that if a poet has chosen labors of privy councillor, minister of a useful life, according to war, of finance, of education, chief commissioner of mines and of roads, and amateur fireman ? And all for the sake of a State which may be estimated by the size of its standing army, amounting to one small battalion of foot and one small troop of hussars. It was not such a country that Milton served; and yet, to some critics, even Milton's political life seems one long mistake of powers misapplied. When it is remembered further that Goethe performed all these diverse functions with such minute exA remarkable instance of this com- actness that some of his friends admired plete alteration in the basis of our judg-him more for his business capacity than ment on men and things is afforded by for his poetry, it is only natural for the the gradual change of tone in all the modern critic to assert that the poet many hostile criticisms which have ap-sold his birthright for a mess of political peared upon Goethe during the sixty philanthropy. years since his death. It used to be a And, indeed, Goethe himself recogcommonplace to accuse him of a refined nized his danger, and in certain moods egoism, a narrow and selfish devotion was tempted to chafe against the limits to his own culture, as though such of his position. In the mid activity of things were criminal. Many used to his public life, when he was on the point sympathize with Emerson's indignation of undertaking large new duties, he when he wrote that, if he had been uttered many complaints about the stress Duke of Weimar, he would have cut the of his official work. And as an old poet's head off rather than let him con- man he looked back with a regret very tinue to lead that "velvet life," and rare in his reminiscences to his labors retire to arrange his coins.1 Our fathers in the petty fields of State. "How were irritated by the story of such a grievously," he cries, was my creative career, for they regarded it as inactive power disturbed, limited, and hemmed and perhaps immoral - a story convey-in by my external position! If only I ing no lesson in conduct, no stimulus to had held back from public affairs and the formation of upright character. It business matters, and been able to live was against such charges that Carlyle had to defend him, and in his defence he drew that great picture of his ideal poet, which he presented to the English people under the name of Goethe. But to us the reproaches against which Carlyle had to contend have an unreal and antiquated sound, like the dimly remembered outcries of an enemy long ago silenced. The attack has lately come from a very different side. We now hear that Goethe frittered away his time and powers on political and social occupations - parochial services, as, in the case of little Weimar, they must be called. By what right, it is asked, did 1 Carlyle and Emerson: Correspondence, Nov. 20, 1834.

66

more in solitude, I should have been happier, and have produced more as a poct." 8 It is the saddest of lamentations. Like the tyrants under the Roman poet's curse, he seems blighted by the vision of a virtue he had lost. Had he been a born reformer as well as a poet the case might have been different. But he had an artist's natural horror of reformers, whose zeal destroys so much to which association has given beauty. He had studied the processes of nature too closely to believe in the likelihood of rapid transformation or in the efficacy of tender methods. One of his fears for the future of the world was that it

Letters to Frau von Stein, early in 1779.

3 Conversations with Eckermann, Jan. 27, 1824.

would become a great hospital in which | and prosaic side was emphasized by every one would be engaged in nursing public duties which often choked the his neighbors.1 He warmed the re- true poetic spirit. Hence, it may be former against the stimulating illusion said, come those dreary lengths of that the world had been waiting for him" privy councillor language," as Gerto save it. He was not carried along man critics themselves call it, in which by that rush of confident and energetic the sudden jewels of thought are set at emotion which now and again has trans- such wide intervals. Worse than all, formed a philanthropist into an almost it might be maintained that his position poetic figure. In the midst of the in Weimar tempted him to sink to the Revolutionary outcries about universal level of an amateur in literature, and to rights and brotherhood, he was one of write, as in fact he confesses that he the very few to remain unmoved. Evi- wrote, not for a great public, nor even dently he was not of the stuff of which for audience fit, but for a narrow circle active reformers are made; nor was he of three or four intimate friends. A possessed by Dante's passion for his starving poet, struggling in the spume country. It seems hard for a modern and surge of our cities, has obviously, in critic to avoid the inference that all this spite of drink and journalism, a better public energy was but another instance chance of poetry than the prime minisof the deadliest of artistic sins, the sin ter of a German State. And this may against the individual spirit. be what Tieck meant when he said that Goethe's best work was done before he left Frankfurt. Perhaps this is what the French critic means in calling Goethe "the sublime Philistine." 5

66

And, indeed, to some mistake of this kind the obvious inequality of his works may, no doubt, be partly attributed. No great poet requires a more rigid selection. In many of his works only And yet there is to all this another the literary scavenger can find a fair side, which seems to escape the notice and useful field of labor. Inequality of the critics. Action," "said that Sewas, it is true, part of his nature, for cret Society which watched Meister's there are strange instances of it before career, and often irritated him with its he entered public life at all, and in his wisdom ; "action animates, but narold age his secretary thus describes the rows." 6 The sentence is weighty, and outward evidence of a deep-lying divi- English history is a commentary on sion of spirit: "At times he would be it. But in Germany, during Goethe's occupied with some great idea, and his youth, it was exactly animation that was speech would be rich and inexhaustible needed, and not breadth. Germany was in its flow. Then again he would be still, for the most part, peacefully taciturn and laconic, as though a cloud submerged in what Goethe called the lay upon his soul. There were days Watery Period. Only professors now when he seemed to be filled with icy know or care about the writers of that coldness, as if a keen wind were sweep- dreary time. But to the humorist ing over plains of ice and snow; and a pathos hangs around their fading next day he would be like a smiling names, like the weeping cherubs on summer morning.” 8 It must also be monuments of emblazoned and forgotremembered that, after all, he came of ten glory. Poor stepsons of the Muses, a race which endures tedium with pa- creeping through life in slippers and thetic meekness, and that he inherited dressing-gown, they were still the sole from his father a certain stiffness and representatives of the higher literature pedantry of mind. But even when to a prosaic nation on its way through allowance has been made for the double its most prosaic age. Destitute of nature remaining in him so strangely nationality, members of an impotent unfused, it may be argued that the cold collection of paltry States, inactive, 4 Letters to Frau von Stein, Aug. 13, 1784. Paul Bourget: Mensonges, p. 328.

1 Italienische Reise, May 27, 1787. Sprüche in Prosa.

3 Conversations with Eckermann. Preface.

• Meisters Lehrjahre, bk. viii., chap. 5.

4

isolated, unvisited by universal emo- | had even the milk-mild Klopstock ; tions, devoid of subject, they still strove overshadowing them all stood the great to maintain a certain standard of excel-name of Rousseau. Under such influlence, if only by the handicraft of imita- ences Germany had seemed to renew tion. Shut up in the close studies of her youth. Fortune favored me," bleak northern towns, professors and said Goethe, "in that when I was eighprivate tutors produced those lengths of teen, all my country was just eighteen pastoral idyl, erotic ode, and anacreontic too." 3 The extravagances of the time eulogy of wine and roses, which occupy have been made familiar to us by the an unturned page in the necrology of poet himself, and by other satirists; but literature. Their less creative moments in spite of all absurdity, it will always were spent in frivolous but bitter lit-be an attractive passage to the young in erary controversies and theoretic criti- mind. The young will readily forgive cisms, which often severed friendships, the anarchy of the time; for the nation and left a lifelong rankling. But the was alive and awake, and for once its day is long, and so is the night; a man life seemed touched by true emotion. cannot always be writing poetry and As was observed by a shrewd critic in criticism, as Goethe sighs in speaking the midst of the confusion, all mistakes of them. And so, being deprived of a arose because, whilst it was Goethe's sphere for their activity, they exagger- mission to give poetic form to reality, ated into importance the little events the others attempted to give reality to and harmless jests of every day, and poetic forms, whence came the whims poured out their mutual admiration and humors so startling to the quiet with feminine endearments in those dwellers in the grandmother-land-the volumes of inane correspondence, which revival of Arcadian costumes, the Ossiare indeed an astonishment to a mod- anic rhapsodies poured out with copious ern reader. "And yet," says Goethe, tears to the German moon, which has "they are worth preserving, if only as always done so much service. a warning that the most distinguished temper of the time is summed up in man lives from but day to day, and has Lavater's admiring words on Fuseli, a poor time of it if he turns in upon him- then an unknown Swiss artist: "His self, and refuses to thrust his hand out look is lightning, his word storm, his into the fulness of external life, in which jest death, his vengeance hell." No alone he can find the nurture and the wonder that spirits of such essence felt measure for his growth." Vacant and ill at ease in the confines of this poor diffuse, regarded by the common people world, where civilization produces the as a freak of nature, and by the aristoc- fruit of commonplace after its kind. racy as something between a tedious The long peace following on the Seven jester and a nursery governess, how Years' War did not afford them the many a so-called poet of the time fell outlet which would have been most a victim in middle age to the moral wholesome for their pent-up emotions. leprosy of hypochondria, and trod the Indignant at reality's pettiness, generremainder of the road to death, melan- ous rebels against all limit, they took choly, querulous, and forlorn ! "For genius for their watchword; and by all melancholy," Goethe said, "is the genius they meant, not the power which child and nursling of solitude." 2 creates rules, but the power which defies them. Perhaps the most fortunate were those who, by suicide, released the cramped soul into the inane. such as stayed at their posts worse things than death often remained — disillusion, estrangement, fading love, offiHerder had a hand in it; social appointments, a comfortable middle

But, as is well known, by the time Goethe reached early manhood, a new epoch had already arrived. It had its origin in the activity and enthusiasm of the Seven Years' War, in the keen words of Lessing, in many subordinate

causes.

1 Aus meinem Leben, bk, x.

2 Ibid., bk. xiii.

The

For to

3 Conversations with Eckermann, Feb. 15, 1824. 4 Aus meinem Leben, bk. xviii.