 Section 19 of Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Kay Hand. John Milton, Poet and Patriot, Part 3. Traces indeed of the peculiar character of Milton may be found in all his works, but it is most strongly displayed in the sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple, but majestic records of the feelings of the poet, as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exaltation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream for which a short time restored him to that beautiful face over which the grave had closed forever, led him to musings, which without effort shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterize these little pieces remind us of the Greek anthology, or perhaps still more of the collects of English liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse. The sonnets are more or less striking according as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would indeed be scarcely safe to draw any decided inference as to the character of a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his work which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and in part to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness. His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromocides and Aramanis, liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have aroused Greece from the slavery and degradation of 2,000 years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwanted fear. Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need not say how much we admire his public conduct, but we cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war indeed has been more discussed and is less understood than any event in English history. The Friends of Liberty labored under the disadvantage of which the lion and the fable complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters. As a body the roundheads had done their utmost to decry and ruin literature, and literature was even with them, as in the long run it always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's history of the parliament is good, but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent, and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine McCallay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candor or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon and that of Hume. The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity, which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting the impartiality of a judge. The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according as the resistance of the people to Charles I shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. Every man who approves of the revolution of 1688, which dethroned James II, son of Charles I, on the grounds that he had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom and enthroned William of Orange in his stead, must hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question then is this, had Charles I broken the fundamental laws of England? No person can answer in the negative unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest royalists, and to the confessions of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the long parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud the revolution and condemn the rebellion mention one act of James II, to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of Right, presented by the two houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate. The right of petition was grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, exorbitant defines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the revolution was treason. If they do, the great rebellion was laudable. But it is said why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the king had consented to so many reforms and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship money had been given up, the star chamber had been abolished, provision had been made for the frequent convocation and secure deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur again to the analogy of the revolution. Why was James driven from the throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to call a free parliament and to submit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried improved tyrant. The long parliament acted on the same principle and is entitled to the same praise. They could not trust the king. He had no doubt passed salutary laws, but what assurance was there that he would not break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives, but where was the security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honor had been a hundred times pawned and never redeemed. Here indeed the long parliament stands on still stronger ground than the convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the conduct of Charles with respect to the petition of right. The lords and commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates. He evades. At last he bargains to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent. The subsidies are voted, but no sooner is the tyrant relieved than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very act which he had been paid to pass. For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognized them. At length circumstances compelled Charles to summon another parliament. Another chance was given to our fathers. Were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former? Were they again to be co-zoned by Leroy Levout? Were they again to advance their money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second petition of right at the foot of the throne to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till after ten years more of fraud and oppression their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malfactors against tomb overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues, and had James II to know private virtues, was Oliver Cromwell his bitterest enemies themselves being judges destitute of private virtues, and what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles, a religious zeal not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father, a good husband, ample apologies indeed for 15 years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood. We charge him with having broken his coronation oath, and we are told that he kept his marriage vow. We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflections of the most hot-headed and hard- hearted of prelates, and the defense is that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him. We censure him for having violated the articles of the petition of right after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them, and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning. It is to such considerations as these, together with van Dyke's dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations. And if, in that relation, we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table and all his regularity at chapel. We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If they say he governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because their privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the tutors. This point Hume has labored with an art which is as discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the petition of right. He had renounced the oppressive power said to have been exercised by his predecessors and he had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own recent release. These arguments are so obvious that it may seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the strongest. The enemies of the parliament indeed rarely choose to take issue on the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Stratford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major generals fleecing their districts, soldiers reveling on the spoils of ruined peasantry, upstarts enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry, boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals, Quakers riding naked through the marketplace, fifth monarchy man shouting for King Jesus, agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of a gag. All these they tell us were the offspring of the great rebellion. Be it so, we are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges were they infinitely more important would not alter our opinion of an event which alone has made us differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the Civil War. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism? If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people. And the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the impression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was an hour civil war. The heads of the church and state reaped only that which they had sown. The government had prohibited free discussion. It had done its best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just unnatural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance it was because they themselves had taken away the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury it was because they hadn't exacted an equally blind submission. It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them first. Till man have been some time free they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity in temperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Zuris. It is said that when soldiers in such a situation find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon however plenty teaches discretion and after wine has been for a few months their daily fare they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half finished edifice. They point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance. And then ask in scorn where the promised blunder and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good government in the world. Arias Dau tells a pretty story of a fairy who by some mysterious law of her nature was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were forever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her. Accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who, in disgust, shall venture to crush her. And happier are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory. There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day. He is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half-blind in the house of bondage, but let them gaze on and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learned a reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth ceased to contend and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice in order is reduced out of the chaos. Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery they may indeed wait forever. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and the otherwise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates stood by the cause of public liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been charged with personal participation in any of the blameable excesses of that time. The favorite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard to the execution of the king. Of that celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say injustice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it and injustice more particularly to the eminent person who defended it that nothing can be more absurd than the imputations which for the last 160 years it has been the fashion to cast upon the regicides. We disapprove we repeat of the execution of Charles not because the constitution exempts the king from responsibility for we know that all such maxims however excellent have their exceptions. Nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his character for we think that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy. But because we are convinced that the measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom he whom it removed was a coptive and a hostage. His heir to whom the allegiance of every royalist was instantly transferred was at large. The Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father. They had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of people also contemplated that proceeding with feelings which however unreasonable no government could safely venture to outrage. But though we think the conduct of the regicides blameable that of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred and the object was to render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would have restrained us from committing the act would have led us after it had been committed to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the sake of public liberty we wish that the thing had not been done while the people disapproved of it. But for the sake of public liberty we should also have wished the people approve of it when it was done. We wish to add a few words relative to another subject on which the enemies of Milton delight to dwell. His conduct during the administration of the protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office under a military usurper seems no doubt at first sight extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seemed to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the parliament and never deserted it till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force it was not till he found that few members who remained after so many deaths, successions and expulsions were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stat holder or an American president. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers and left to it the whole legislative authority not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments. And he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far we think if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly considered he will not lose by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corresponding moderation there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they met that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety then it must be acknowledged he adopted a more arbitrary policy. Yet though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances though we admire in common with all men of all parties the ability and energy of his splendid administration we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot but we suspect that at the time of which we speak the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay not between Cromwell and Liberty but between Cromwell and the stewards. That Milton chose well no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the 30 years which succeeded it. The darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying though in an irregular manner the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious Liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honor been better upheld abroad where the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established as set down in the instrument of government and the humble petition and advice were excellent. His practice at his true too often departed from the theory of these institutions but had he lived a few years longer it is probable that his institutions would have survived him and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little therefore was to be dreaded from a second protector unless he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his disease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the parliament, the different core of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect, party plotted against party, the Presbyterians in their eagerness to be revenged on the independence sacrificed their own liberty and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. End of section 19. Section 20 of Beacon Lights of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. John Milton, poet and patriot, part four. Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier and the anathema-maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch, and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime and disgrace to disgrace. To the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations. Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise that our observations are attended to apply only to those who adhered from a sincere preference to one side or the other side. In the days of public commotion, every faction like an oriental army is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and heartless rabble who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection but desert it in the day of battle and often joined to exterminate it after defeat. England at the time of which we are treating abounded with fickle and selfish politicians who transferred their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640 and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated at Westminster Hall and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves' heads or stuck up oak branches as circumstances altered without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the account. We take our estimate of the parties from those who really deserve to be called partisans. We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men perhaps which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them, nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the revolution they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage. At the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters. They were as a body unpopular. They could not defend themselves and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned without reserve to the tender mercies of the satirists and the dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the scriptural phrases which they introduce on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers. Echo il fonte dei riso ed echo il rio. C'è mortale, perigli, in se contiene. Or chi tenere a fren nostro desio, ed e ser, cauti molto, a noi conviene. Those who roused the people to resistance who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years who formed out of the most unpromising materials the finest army that Europe had ever seen who trampled down king, church, and aristocracy who in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents mankind has owned in estimable obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles I or the easy good breeding for which the court of Charles II was celebrated. But if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the death's head and the fool's head and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms and overruling providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the great being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the book of life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions administering angels had charged over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands, their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt, for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure and eloquent in a more sublime language. Nobles by the right of an earlier creation and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action, the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined before heaven and earth were created to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake, empires had risen and flourished and decayed. For his sake, the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist in the harp of the prophet. He had been rested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuttered at the sufferings of her expiring God. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men. One, all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude and passion. The other, proud, calm and flexible sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his maker, but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions and groans and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the liars of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the beatific vision or woke screaming from the dreams of everlasting fire. Like vain, he thought himself entrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council or Gertz on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or on the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers thought inconsistent with their religious zeal. But which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had been subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure, its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world like sir articles iron, man, talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. And we know that in spite of their hatred of popery, they too often fell into the worst devices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstins and their Demolphors, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise and honest and a useful body. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was another party by no means numerous but distinguished by learning and ability which acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the heathens, men who were in the phraseology of that time doubting Thomases or careless Galleos with regard to religious subjects but passionate worshipers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissettines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect and sometimes it is probable imperceptibly adopted. We now come to the royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them as we have spoken of their antagonists with perfect candor. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacies and baseness of the horse boys, gamblers and bravos, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from the dens of white friars to the standard of Charles and who disgrace their associates by excesses which under the stricter discipline of the parliamentary armies were never tolerated. We will select a more favorable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ with the mute tooth wrong their answer chambers and the Janissaries who mount their guard at the gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers bowing at every step and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill intoxicated into valor, defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency and nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the prejudices of childhood and the venerable names of history threw over them a spell potent as that of Duesa. And like the Red Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an injured beauty while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed in a far greater degree than their adversaries those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices at the round table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness and respect for women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant and their households more cheerful. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a free thinker. He was not a royalist. In his character, the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the parliament and from the court, from the conventical and from the gothic cloister, from the gloomy and separical circles of the round heads and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived as ever in his great taskmaster's eye. Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on the almighty judge and an eternal reward and hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquility, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest skeptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement or more chivalrous delicacy of honor and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as best harmonized with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings, he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination, but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the sirens, yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe, but he bore about him a sure antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against splendor, the solemnity and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on prelacy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the penceroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which more than anything else raises his character in our estimation because it shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is a very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents, but his hand is firm. He does not in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her. That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendor still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a foresworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable and which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised their voices against ship money and the star chamber. But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery and the benefits which would result from liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves and should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who with the best intentions overlooked these schemes of reform and contented themselves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the malignants acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem who in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer neglected the means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they should have thought of disenchanting. Oh, ye mistook, you should have snatched his wand and bound him fast without the rod reversed and backward mutters of deceivering power. We cannot free the lady that sits here bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless. To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians. For this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle but he turned away with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the independents and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same great object he attacked the licensing system and that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were in general directed less against particular abuses than against those deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation. That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more effectually he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He never came up in the rear when the outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes he wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But when his opinions seemed likely to prevail he passed on to other subjects and abandoned policy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shown. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapors and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardyhood with which he maintained them. He in general left to others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the God of light and fertility. Nitor in adversum. Necme qui caitera. Vincent impetus et rapidu contrarius. Evehor obi. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should in our time be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into significance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of The Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyrical rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies. We had intended to look more closely at these performances to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagetica, and the nervous rhetoric of the iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the treatise of the Reformation and the animate versions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this impossible. We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject, the days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart and consecrated to his memory. And we shall be scarcely censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine. How worthless, so ever, may be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported 150 years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging, that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the fainted green hangings, that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day, that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We imagine to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console him if indeed such a spirit could need consolation. For the neglect of an age unworthy of his talent and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips. These are perhaps foolish feelings, yet we cannot be ashamed of them, nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead and we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than the propensity which, for one of a better name, we will venture to question Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest attests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind and which are visibly stamped with the image and the superscription of the most high. These great men, we trust that we know how to prize, and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the virgin martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of paradise to the earth and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate. Not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame. End of section 20. Section 21 of Beacon Lines of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Mord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Johann Wolfgang von Gerta, heart one. 1749 to 1832, Germany's greatest writer by Friedrich Henry Hedge. One, the man. Genius of the supreme order presupposes a nature of equal scope as the prime condition of its being. The gardens of Adonis require little earth, but the oak will not flourish in a tub. And the wine of Toque is the product of no greenhouse, nor gotten of sour grapes. Given a genuine great poet, you will find a greater man behind in whom among others these virtues predominate. Courage, generosity, truth. Preeminent among the poets of the modern world stands Gerta, chief of his own generation, challenging comparison with the greatest of all time. His literary activity embraces a span of nigh 70 years and a life of more than four score, beginning significantly enough with a poem on Christ's descent into hell, his earliest extant composition, and ending with Faust's, that is man's, ascent into heaven. The rank of a writer, his spiritual imports to humankind may be inferred from the number and worth of the writings of which he has furnished the topic and occasion. When King's build says Schiller, speaking of Kant's commentators, the Dremen have plenty to do. Dante and Shakespeare have created whole libraries through the interests inspired by their writings. The Gerta literature, so called, those scarce 50 years have elapsed since the poet's death, already numbers is hundreds of volumes. I note in this man, first of all, as a literary phenomenon, the unexampled fact of supreme excellence in several quite distinct provinces of literary action. Had we only his minor poems, he would rank as the first of lyricists. Had he written only Faust, he would have been the first of philosophic poets. Had he written only Ehrman and Dorothea, the sweetest idolist, if only the Margin, the subtlest of allegorists. Had he written never a verse but only prose, he would hold the highest place among the prose writers of Germany. And lastly, had he written only on scientific subjects, in that line also, in the field of science, he would be as he is an acknowledged leader. Noticeable in him also is the combination of extraordinary genius with extraordinary fortune. A magnificent person, a sound physique, inherited wealth, high social position, official dignity, with 83 years of earthly existence, composed the framework of this illustrious life. Behind the author, behind the poet, behind the world renowned genius, a not unreasonable curiosity seeks the original man, the human individual, as he walked among men, his manner of being, his characteristics, as shown in the converse of life, in what soil grew the flowers and ripened the fruits, which have been the delight in the ailment of nations. In proportion, of course, to the eminence attained by a writer, in proportion to the worth of his works, to their hold on the world, is the interest felt in his personality and behavior in the incidents of his life. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the person is not always proportioned to the luster of the name. Of the two great poets to whom the world's unrepealable verdict has assigned the foremost place and their several kinds, we know in one case, absolutely nothing, and next to nothing in the other. To the question, who sung the wrath of Achilles and the wanderings of the much versed Odysseus? Tradition answers with a name to which no faintest shadow of a person corresponds. To the question, who composed Hamlet and Othello? History answers with a person so indistinct that recent speculation has dared to question the agency of Shakespeare in those creations. What would not the old Scaliests have given for satisfactory proofs of the existence of a Homer identical with the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey? What would not the Shakespeare clubs give for one more authentic antidote of the world's greatest dramatist? Of Gertow we know more, I mean of his externals, than of any other writer of equal note. This is due in part to his wide relations, official and other, with his contemporaries, to his large correspondence with people of note of which the documents have been preserved by the parties addressed. To the interest felt in him by curious observers living in the day of his greatness. It is due in part also to the fact that unlike the greatest of his predecessors, he flourished in an all-communicating, all-recording age, and partly it is due to autobiographical notices embracing important portions of his history. Two seemingly opposite factors, limiting and qualifying the one, the other, determined the course and topics of his life. One was the aim which he proposed to himself as the governing principle and purpose of his being, to perfect himself to make the most of the nature which God had given him. The other was a constitutional tendency to come out of himself, to lose himself in objects, especially in natural objects, so that in the study of nature to which he devoted a large part of his life, he seems not so much a scientific observer as a chosen confidant to whom the discerning mother revealed her secrets. In no greatest genius are all talents self-derived. Countless influences mold our intellect and mold our heart. One of these and often one of the most potent is heredity, consciously or unconsciously, for good or for evil, physically and mentally, the father and the mother are in the child, as indeed all his ancestors are in every man. Of Gerta's father, we only know what the son himself has told us in his memoirs, a man of austere presence, from whom Gerta, as he tells us, inherited his bodily stature and his serious treatment of life. Von Vater habe ich die Statue, des Liebens ernst des Vieren. By profession a lawyer but without practice, living in grim seclusion amid his books and collections, a man of solid acquirements and large culture who had traveled in Italy and first awakened in Wolfgang the longing for that land, a man of ample means inhabiting a stately mansion. For the rest, a stiff, narrow-minded, fussy pedant with small toleration for any methods or aims but his own, who, while he appreciated the superior gifts of his son, was obstinately bent on guiding them in strict professional grooves and teased him with the friction of opposing wills. The opposite, in most respects, of this stately and pedantic worthy was the frail Rothen, his youthful wife, young enough to have been his daughter, a jockened, exuberant nature, a woman to be loved, one who blessed society with her presence and possessed uncommon gifts of discourse. She was but 18 when Wolfgang was born, a companion to him and his sister Cornelia, one in whom they were sure to find sympathy and ready indulgence. Gerta was indebted to her, as he tells us, for his joyous spirit and his narrative talent. Von Mutterken, the Fronateur. Und Lust zu Fabulrien. Outside of the poet's household, the most important figure in the circle of his childish acquaintance was his mother's father, from whom he had his name, Johann Wolfgang Textor, the Schulteis, or Chief Magistrate of the city. From him, Gerta seemed so have inherited the superstition of which some curious examples are recorded in his life. He shared with Napoleon another remarkable man, says Von Mueller, that conceits that little mischances are prophetic of greater evils. On a journey to Baden-Baden with a friend, his carriage was upset and his companion slightly injured. He thought it a bad omen, and instead of proceeding to Baden-Baden, chose another watering place for his summer resort. If in his omen act there happened to be a blot on any date, he feared to undertake anything important on the day so marked. He had noted certain fatal days. One of these was the 22nd of March. On that day, he had lost a valued friend. On that day, the theater to which he had devoted so much time and labor was burned, and on that day, curiously enough, he died. He believed in oracles, and as Rousseau threw stones at a tree to learn whether or no he was to be saved, the hitting or not hitting the tree was to be the sign. So Gerta tossed a valuable pocket knife into the river lawn to ascertain whether he would succeed as a painter. If behind the bushes, which bordered the stream, he saw the knife plunge, it should signify success. If not, he would take it as an omen of failure. Rousseau was careful, he tells us, to choose a stout tree and to stand very near. Gerta, more honest with himself, adopted no such precaution. The plunge of the knife was not seen, and the painter's career was abandoned. Words worth saying, the child is the father of the man, a saying which owes its vitality more to its form than its substance, is not always verified, where its truth is not always apparent in the lives of distinguished men. I find not much in Gerta, the child prophetic, of Gerta the man, but the singer and the seeker, the two main tendencies of his being, are already apparent in early life. Of moral traits, the most conspicuous in the child is a power of self-control, a moral heroism, which secured to him in afterlife a natural leadership unattainable by mere intellectual supremacy. An instance of this self-control is recorded among the anecdotes of his boyhood. At one of the lessons which he shared with other boys, the teacher failed to appear. The young people awaited his coming for a while, but toward the close of the hour, most of them departed, leaving behind three who were especially hostile to Gerta. These, he says, thought to torment, to mortify, and to drive me away. They left me a moment and returned with rods taken from a broom which they had cut to pieces. I perceived their intention and supposing the expiration of the hour to be near, I immediately determined to make no resistance until the clock should strike. Unmercifully thereupon, they began to scourge in the cruelest manner my legs and calves. I did that stir, but soon felt that I had miscalculated the time and that such pain greatly lengthened the minutes. When the hour expired, his superior activity enabled him to master all three and to pin them to the ground. In later years, the same zeal of self-discipline, which prompted the child to exercise himself in bearing pain, impelled the man to resist and overcome constitutional weaknesses by force of will. A student of architecture, he conquered a tendency to giddiness by standing on pinnacles and walking on narrow rafters over perilous abysses. In like manner, he overcame the ghostly terrors instilled in the nursery by midnight visits to churchards and uncanny places. To real peril, to fear of death, he seems to have had that native insensibility so notable always in men of genius in whom the conviction of a higher destiny begets the feeling of a charmed life, such as Plutarch records of the first Caesar in peril of shipwreck on the river Anio, in the French campaign, 1793, in which Gerta accompanied the Duke of Weimar against the armies of the Republic, a sudden impulse of scientific curiosity prompted him in spite of warnings and remonstrances to experiment on what is called the cannon fever. For this purpose, he rode to a place in which he was exposed to a crossfire of the two armies and coolly watched the sensations experienced in that place of peril. Command of himself, acquired by long and systematic discipline, gave him that command over others which he exercised in several memorable instances. Coming from a ball one night, a young man fresh from the university, he saw that a fire had broken out in the Houdengasse and that people were standing about helpless and confused without a leader. He immediately jumped from his carriage and, full dressed as he was, in silk stockings and pumps, organized on the spot a fire brigade which averted a dangerous conflagration. On another occasion, voyaging in the Mediterranean, he quelled a mutiny on board an Italian ship when captain and mates were powerless and the vessel drifting on the rocks by commanding sailors and passengers to fall on their knees and pray to the Virgin, adopting the idiom of their religion as well as their speech of which he was the master. As a student, first at Leipzig, then at Strasburg, including the years from 1766 to 1771, he seems not to have been a very diligent attendant on the lectures in either university and to have profited little by professional instruction. In compliance with the wishes of his father, who intended him for a jurist, he gave some time to the study of law, but on the whole, the principal gain of those years was derived from intercourse with the distinguished intellectual men and women whose acquaintance he cultivated and the large opportunities of social life. In Strasburg occurred the famous love passage with Friderique Breon which terminated so unhappily at the time and so fortunately in the end for both. Gerta has been blamed for not marrying Friderique. His real blame consists in the heedlessness with which in the beginning of their acquaintance, he surrendered himself to the charms of her presence, thereby engaging her affection with all they thought of the consequences to either. Besides the dissolution, which showed him when he came fairly to face the question that he did not love her sufficiently to justify marriage, there were circumstances, material, economical, which made it practically impossible. Her suffering in the separation, great as it was, so great indeed as to cause a dangerous attack of bodily disease, could not outweigh the pangs which he endured in his penitent contemplation of the consequences of his falling. The next five years were spent partly in Frankfurt and partly in Wetzler, partly in the forced exercise of his profession but chiefly in literary labors and the use of the pencil, which for a time disputed with the pen, the devotion of the poet artist. They may be regarded as perhaps the most fruitful, certainly the most growing years of his life. They gave birth to Goetz von Berlichengen and the Sorrows of Werther to the first inception of Faust and to many of his sweetest lyrics. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of Charlotte Buff, the heroine of the Sorrows of Werther from whom he finally tore himself away, leaving Wetzler when he discovered that their growing interest in each other was endangering her relationship with Kessner, her betrothed. In those years also, he formed a matrimonial engagement with Elizabeth Shoneman, Leely, the rupture of which I must think was a real misfortune for the poet. It came about by no fault of his. Her family had from the first opposed themselves to the match on the ground of social disparity. For even in the mercantile Frankfurt, rank was strongly marked and the Geertes, the respectable people, were beneath the Shonemans in the social scale. Geertes genius went for nothing with Madame Shoneman. She wanted for her daughter and aristocratic husband, not a literary one, one who had wealth and possession and not merely as Geertes had in prospect. How far Leely was influenced by her mothers and brothers' representations, it is impossible to say. However, she showed herself capricious, was sometimes cold, or seemed so to him, while favoring the advances of others. Geertes was convinced that she did not entertain for him that devoted love without which he felt that their union could not be a happy one. They separated, but on her deathbed she confessed to a friend that all she was, intellectually and morally, she owed to him. In 1775, our poet was invited by the young Duke of Saxe Weimar, Carl August, whose acquaintance he had made at Frankfurt and at Metz, his junior by two or three years, to establish himself in civil service at the Grand Ducal Court. The father, who had other views for his son and was not much inclined to trust in princes, objected. Many wondered, some blamed. Geertes himself appears to have wavered with painful indecision and at last to have followed a mysterious impulse rather than a clear conviction or deliberate choice. His Heidelberg friend and hostess sought still to detain him when the last express from Weimar drove up to the door. To her he replied in the words of his own Egmont, say no more, goaded by invisible spirits, the sun's steeds of time run away with the light chariot of our destiny. There is nothing for it but to keep our courage, hold tight the reins and guide the wheels now right, now left, avoiding a stone here, a fall there, wither away, who knows, scarcely one remembers once he came. It does not appear that he ever repented this most decisive step of his life journey, nor does there appear to have been any reason why he should, a position, an office of some kind he needs must have. Even now the life of a writer by profession with no function but that of literary composition is seldom a prosperous one. In Gerta's day when literature was far less remunerative than it is in ours, it was seldom practicable. Unless he had chosen to be maintained by his father, some employment besides that of bookmaking was an imperative necessity. The alternative of that which was offered, the one his father would have chosen was that of a plotting jurist in a country where forensic pleading was unknown and where the lawyer's profession offered no scope for any of the higher talents with which Gerta was in doubt. On the whole it was a happy chance that called him to the little capital of the little grand duchy of Saxe Weimar. If the state was one of the petty dimensions, a kind of pocket kingdom, like so many of the principalities of Germany, it nevertheless included some of the fairest localities in one at least of the most memorable in Europe, the Wurzburg, where Luther translated the Bible, where St. Elizabeth dispensed the blessings of her life, where the men of singers are said to have held their poetic tournament. Heinrich von Offerdingen, Wolfram von Eisenbach. It also included the University of Gena, which at that time numbered some of the foremost men of Germany among its professors. It was a miniature state and a miniature town when wonders that Gerta, who would have shown the far most star in Berlin or Vienna, could content himself with so narrow a field. But Vienna and Berlin did not call him until it was too late, until patronage was needless and Weimar did. A miniature state, but so much the greater his power and freedom and the opportunity of beneficent action. No prince was ever more concerned to promote in every way the welfare of his subjects than Carl August. And in all his works undertaken for his purpose, Gerta was his foremost counselor and aide. The most important were either suggested by him or executed under his direction. Had he never written a poem or given the world a single literary composition, he would still have led as a Weimar official, a useful and beneficial to life. But the knowledge of the world and of business, the social and other experience gained in this way was precisely the training which he needed and which every poet needs for the broadening and deepening and perfection of his art. Friedrich von Müller in his valuable treatise of Gerta as a man of affairs, tells us how he traversed every portion of the country to learn what advantage might be taken of topographical peculiarities, what provision made for local necessities. Everywhere on hilltops crowned with primeval forests in the depths of gorgeous and shafts, nature met her favorite with friendly advances and revealed to him many a desired secret. Whatever was privately gained in this way was applied to public uses. He endeavored to infuse new life into the mining business and to make himself familiar with all its technical requirements. For that end, he revived his chemical experiments. New roads were built, hydraulic operations were conducted on more scientific principles. Fertile meadows were one from the river Saal by systematic drainage and in many a struggle with nature an intelligently persistent will obtained the victory. End of section 21. Section 22 of Beacon Length of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand, Johann Wolfgang von Gerta, part two. Nor was it with material obstacles only that the poet minister had to contend. In the exercise of the powers entrusted to him, he often encountered the fierce opposition of party interest and stubborn prejudice and was sometimes driven to heroic and despotic measures in order to accomplish a desired result. As when he foiled the machinations of the gen of professors and his determination to save the university library. And when in spite of the opposition of the leading burgers, he demolished the city wall. In 1786, Gerta was enabled to realize his cherished dream of a journey to Italy. There he spent a year and a half in the diligent study and admiring enjoyment of the treasures of art which made that country then, even more than now, the mark and desire of the civilized world. He came back and altered man. Intellectually and morally, he had made in that brief space under new influences a prodigious stride. His sudden advance while they had remained stationary separated him from his contemporaries. The old associations of the Weimar world which still revolved its little round the much enlightened traveler had outgrown. People thought him cold and reserved. It was only that the gay impulsive youth had ripened into an earnest sedate man. He found Germany jubilant over Schiller's robbers and other writings representative of the Storm and Distress School over which his maturity had left far behind. His own contributions to which he had come to hate. Schiller, who first made his acquaintance at this time, writes to Korner, I doubt that we shall ever become intimate. Much that to me is still of great interest he has already outlived. He is so far beyond me, not so much in years as in experience and culture and we can never come together in one course. How greatly Schiller erred in the supposition that they never could become intimate. How close the intimacy which grew up between them what harmony of sentiment, how friendly and mutually helpful their co-operation is sufficiently notorious. But such was the first aspect which Gerter presented to strangers at this period of his life. He rather repelled than attracted until nearer acquaintance learned rightly to interpret the man and intellectual or moral affinity bridged the chasm which seemed to divide him from his kind. In part to the distance and reserve of which people complained was a necessary measure of self-defense against the disturbing importunities of social life. From Rome, says Friedrich von Müller, from the midst of the richest and grandest life dates the stern maxim of renunciation which governed his subsequent being and doing and which furnished his only guarantee of mental equipoise and peace. His literary works hitherto had been spasmodic and lawless effusions, the escapes of a gushing turbulent youth. In Rome he had learned the sacred significance of art. The consciousness of his true vocation had been awakened in him. And to that, on the eve of his 40th year, he thenceforth solemnly devoted the remainder of his life. He obtained release from the more onerous of his official engagements, retaining only such functions as accorded with his proper calling as a man of letters and of science. He renounced his daily intercourse with Frau Von Steen, though still retaining and manifesting his unabated friendship for the woman to whom in former years he had devoted so large a portion of his time, and employed himself in giving forth those immortal words which have settled forever his place among the stars of first magnitude in the intellectual world. Noticeable and often noted was the charm and, when arrived to maturity, the grand effect of his personal presence. Physical beauty is not the stated accompaniment, nor even the presumable adjunct of intellectual greatness. In Ghirta, as perhaps in no other, the two were combined. A wondrous presence. On this point, the voices are one and the witnesses many. Ghirta was with us, so write Hainzi to one of his friends. A beautiful youth of 25, full of genius and force from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. A heart full of feeling, a spirit full of fire, who with eagle wings, ruid imensus ore profundo. Jacobi writes, the more I think of it, the more impossible it seems to me to communicate to anyone who has not seen Ghirta any conception of this extraordinary creature of God. Levator says, unspeakably sweet and indescribable appearance, the most terrible and lovable of men. Hufeland, the chief medical celebrity of Germany, describes his appearance in early manhood. Never shall I forget the impression which he made as Orestes in Greek costume. You thought you beheld in Apollo. Never more was seen in any man such union of physical and spiritual perfection and beauty as at that time in Ghirta. More remarkable still is the testimony of Violand who had reason to be offended, having been before their acquaintance, the subject of Ghirta's sharp satire. But immediately at their first meeting, sitting at the table by the side, he says, of this glorious youth, I was radically cured of all my vexation. Since this morning, he wrote to Jacobi, my soul is as full of Ghirta as a dewdrop is of the morning sun. And to Zimmerman, he is in every respect the greatest, best, most splendid human being that ever God created. Ghirta was then 26. Henry Crabb Robinson, who saw him at the age of 52, reports him one of the most oppressively handsome men he had ever seen and speaks particularly as all who have described him speak of his wonderfully brilliant eyes. Those eyes we are told had lost nothing of their luster nor his head its natural covering at the age of 80. Among the heroic qualities notable in Ghirta, I reckon his faithful and unflagging industry. Here was a man who took pain with himself, Lich sicht sauer Verden and made the most of himself. He speaks of wasting while at a student in Leipzig, the beautiful time. Certainly neither at Leipzig nor afterward at Strasburg did he toil as his Wagner in Faust would have done. But he was always learning in the lecture room or out of it, with pens and books or gay companions, he was taking in to give forth again in dramatic or philosophic form the world of his experience. A Frollox of Muth may leave something to regret in the way of time misspent, but Ghirta the man was no dawdbler, no easygoing epicurean. On the whole he made the most of himself and stands before the world a notable instance of a complete life. He would do the work which was given to him to do. He would not die till the second part of Faust was brought to its predetermined close. By sheer force of will he lived till that work was done. Smith net forescore by the death of his son and by deaths all around he kept to his task. The idea of duty alone sustains me, the spirit is willing, the flesh must. When Faust was finished the strain relaxed. My remaining days he said I may consider a free gift, it matters little what I do now or whether I do anything. And six months later he died. A complete life, a life of strenuous toil, at home and abroad in Italy and Sicily, at Il Mano and Carlsbad, as in his study at Weimar, with eye or pen or speech he was always at work. A man of rigid habits no walling or lounging. He showed me, says Ekerman, an elegant easy chair which he had bought today at an auction. But said he I shall never or rarely use it, all indolent habits are against my nature. You see in my chamber no sofa, I sit always in my old wooden chair and never till a few weeks ago have permitted even a leaning place for my head to be added. If surrounded by tasteful furniture, my thoughts are arrested. I am placed in an agreeable but passive state. Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth splendid chambers and elegant furniture had better be left to people without thoughts. This in his 82nd year. A widely diffused prejudice regarding the personal character of Gerter refuses to credit him with any moral worth in accordance with his bodily and mental gifts. It figures him a libertine heartless, loveless, bad. I do not envy the mental condition of those who can rest in the belief that a really great poet can be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits of genius have never grown and will never grow in such a soil. Of all great poets Byron might seem at first glance to constitute an exception to this. I venture to call it law of nature. You hear what Walter Scott, a sufficient judge, said of Byron. The errors of Byron arose neither from depravity of heart, for nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talents and imperfect moral sense, nor from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy or a more open hand for the relief of distress. No mind was ever more formed for enthusiastic admiration of noble actions. The case of Gerter requires no appeal to general principles. It only requires that the charges against him be fairly investigated, that he be tried by documentary evidence and by the testimony of competent witnesses. The mistake is made of confusing breaches of conventional decorum with the central depravity. That Gerter was faulty in many ways may be freely conceited, but surely there is a wide difference between not being faultless and being definitely bad. To call a man bad is to say that the evil in him preponderates over the good. In the case of Gerter, the balance was greatly the other way. It has been said that he abused the confidence reposed in him by women, that he encouraged affection which he did not reciprocate for artistic purposes. The charge is utterly groundless, and in the case of Bateen, has been refuted by irrefragable proof. To say that he was wanting in love, heartless, cold, is ridiculously false. Yet the charge is constantly reiterated in the face of facts, reiterated with undoubting assurance and a certain complacency which seems to say, thank God we are not as this man was. There's a satisfaction which some people feel in spotting their man. Burns drank, Coleridge took opium, Byron was a rake, Gerter was cold. By these marks we know them. The poet found it necessary, as I have said, in later years, under social pressure and for the sake of the work which was given him to do, to fortify himself with a mail of reserve. And this indeed contrasted strangely with his former abandon and with a customary gush of German sentimentality. It was common then for Germans who had known each other by report and were mutually attracted when they first met to fall on each other's necks and kiss and weep. Gerter, as a young man, had indulged such fervors but in old age he had lost this effusiveness or saw fit to restrain himself outwardly while his kindly nature still glowed with its pristine fires. He wrote to Frau von Steen, I may truly say that my innermost condition does not correspond to my outward behavior, hence the charge of coldness. Say that Mount Edna is cold. Do we not see the snow on its sides? But he was unpatriotic. He occupied himself with poetry and did not cry out while his country was in the death throes, so it seemed, of the struggle with France. But what should he have done? What could he have done? What would his single arm or declamation have availed? No man more than Gerter longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own way he wrought for that end. He could work effectually in no other. And that enigmatic composition, the Marchion, according to the latest interpretation indicates how, in Gerter's view, that end was to be accomplished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to events, it will not seem extravagant when I say that to Gerter, more than to any one individual, Germany is indebted for her emancipation, independence and present political regeneration. In the summer of 1795, Gerter composed for Schiller's new magazine, D. Horan, a prose poem known in German literature as Das Marchion, The Tale, as if it were the only one, or the one which more than another deserves that appellation. Gerter gave this essay to the public as a riddle, which would probably be unintelligible at the time, but which might perhaps find an interpreter after many days when the hints contained in it should be verified. Since its first appearance, commentators have exercised their ingenuity upon it, perceiving it to be allegorical, but until recently without success. I follow Dr. Herman Bumgard's lead in the exposition which I now offer. The tale is a prophetic vision of the destinies of Germany, an allegorical foreshowing at the close of the 18th century of what Germany was yet to become and has in great part already become. A position is predicted for her like that which she occupied from the time of Charles the Great to the time of Charles the Fifth, a period during which the Holy Roman Empire of Germany was the leading secular power in Western Europe. That time had gone by. Since the middle of the 16th century, Germany had declined and at the date of this writing, 1795, had nearly reached her darkest day. Disintegrated, torn by conflicting interests, pecked by petty rival princes, despairing of her own future, it seemed impossible that she should ever again become a power among the nations. Gear to felt this, he felt it as profoundly as any German of his day and he characteristically went into himself and studied the situation. The result was this wonderful composition, Das Marchen. He perceived that Germany must die to be born again. She did die and is born again. He had the sagacity to foresee the disillusion of the Holy Roman Empire, an event which took place 11 years later in 1806. The empires figured by the composite statue of the fourth king in the subterranean temple which crumbles to pieces when that temple, representing Germany's past, emerges and stands above ground by the river. The resurrection of the temple and its stand by the river is the denouement of the tale and that signifies allegorically the rehabilitation of Germany. It is true, his writings contain no declamations against tyrants and no tirades in favor of liberty. He believed that oppression existed only through ignorance and blindness and these he was all his lifelong seeking to remove. He believed that true liberty is attainable only through mental elimination and that he was all his lifelong seeking to promote. He was no agitator, no revolutionist. He had no faith in violent measures. Human welfare, he judged, is not to be advanced in that way, is less dependent on forms of polity than on the life within. But if the test of patriotism is a service rendered to one's country, who more patriotic than him? Lucky for us and the world that he persisted to serve her in his own way and not as the agitators claimed that he should. It was clear to him then and must be clear to us now that he could not have been what they demanded and at the same time have given to his country and the world what he did. As a courtier and favorite of fortune, it was inevitable that Guerta should have enemies. They have done what they could to blacken his name and to this day the shadow they have cast upon it in part remains. But of this be sure that no selfish, loveless, egoist could have had and retained such friends. The man whom the saintly frown line von Klettenberg chose for her friend, whom clear-sighted, stern, judging, herder, declared that he loved as he did his own soul. The man whose thoughtful kindness is celebrated by herder's incomparable wife, whom Carl August and the Duchess Louise cherished as a brother, the man whom children everywhere welcomed as their ready play fellow and sure ally, of whom Pius Young Stilling lamented that admirers of Guerta's genius knew so little of the goodness of his heart, can this have been a bad man, heartless, cold? Two, the writer. I have said that to Guerta, above all writers, belongs to the distinction of having excelled, not experimented merely, that others have also done, but excelled in many distinct kinds. To the learest he added the dramatist, to the dramatist, the novelist, to the novelist, the mystic, seer, and to all these, the naturalist and scientific discoverer. The history of literature exhibits no other instance in which a great poet has supplemented his proper orbit with so wide an epicycle. In poetry, as in science, the ground of his activity was a passionate love of nature, which dates from his boyhood. At the age of 15, recovering from a sickness caused by disappointment in a boyish affair of the heart, he betook himself with his sketchbook to the woods. In the farthest depth of the forest, he says, I sought out a solemn spot where ancient oaks and beaches formed a shady retreat. A slight declivity of the soil made the merit of the ancient bowls more conspicuous. This space was enclosed by a thicket of bushes between which peeped moss-covered rocks, mighty and venerable, affording a rapid fall to an affluent brook. The sketches made of these objects at that early age could have had no artistic value, although the methodical father was careful to mount and preserve them. But what the pencil, had it been the pencil of the greatest master, could never glean from scenes like these, what art could never grasp, what words can never formulate, the heart of the boy then imbibed, assimilated, resolved in his innermost being. There awoke in him then those mysterious feelings, those unutterable yearnings, that pensive joy and the contemplation of nature, which leavened all his subsequent life and the influence of which is so perceptible in his poetry, especially in his lyrics. The first literary venture by which Gerta became widely known was Gott's von Berlinken, a dramatic picture of the 16th century in which the principal figure is a predatory noble of that name. A dramatic picture, but not in any true sense of play, it owed its popularity at the time, partly to the truth of its portraitures, partly to its choice of a native subject and the truly German feeling which pervades it. It was a new departure in German literature and perplexed the critics as much as it delighted the general public. It anticipated by a quarter of a century what is technically called the romantic school. Gott's von Berlinken was soon followed by the Sorrows of Werther, one of those books which on their first appearance have taken the world by storm, and of which Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is the latest example. It is a curious circumstance that a great poet should have won his first laurels by prose composition. Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his poems by the popularity of the Waverly novels. Gerta eclipsed the worldwide popularity of his Werther by the splendor of his poems. Of one who was so great in many kinds, it may seem difficult to decide in what department he most excelled. Without undertaking to measure and compare what is incommesurable, I hold that Gerta's genius is essentially lyrical. Whatever else may be claimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly a singer. Deepest in his nature, the most innate of all his faculties was the faculty of song of rhythmical utterance. The first to manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age of four score. The lyrical portions of the second part of Faust, some of which were written a short time before his death, are as spirited, the versification as easy, the rhythm as perfect as the songs of his youth. As a lyrist, he is unsurpassed. I venture to say unequaled if we take into view the whole wide range of his performance in this kind. From the ballads, the best known of his smaller poems and those light fugitive pieces, those bursts of song on which came to him without effort, and with such a rush that in order to arrest and preserve them, he seized, as he tells us, the first scrap of paper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally. If it happened so to lie on his table, lest through the delay of selecting and placing, the inspiration should be checked and the poem evaporate. From these to such stately compositions as the Zueninggang, or dedication of his poems, the Weltseel, and the Orphic sayings. In short, from poetry that writes itself that springs spontaneously in the mind to poetry that is written with elaborate art. There is this distinction, and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse. Compare English poetry by way of illustration, the snatches of song in Shakespeare's plays with Shakespeare's sonnets. Compare Burns with Gray. Compare Jean Engelot with Browning. End of section 22. Section 23 of Beacon Lines of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Johann Wolfgang von Gerta, part three. Gerta's ballads have an undying popularity. They have been translated, and most of them are familiar to English readers. In the elegies written after his return from Italy, the author figures as a classic poet inspired by the Latin muse. The choices of these elegies, the Alexis and Dora, is not so much an imitation of the ancients as it is the manifestation of a side of the poet's nature which he had in common with the ancients. He wrote as a Greek or Roman might write because he felt his subject as a Greek or Roman might feel it. Hermann und Dorothea, which Schiller pronounced the acme not only of Gertian but of all modern art was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric style motivated by Wolf's proglomania and Voss's Louis. It is Homeric only in its circumstantiality in the repetition of the same epithets applied to the same persons and in the Greek realism of Gerta's nature. The theme is very un-Homeric. It is thoroughly modern and German. Germans themselves I present to the humbler dwelling I lead you where with nature as guide man is naturally still. This exquisite poem has been translated into English hexameters with great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham. If ingenie of Tarris handles a Greek theme exhibits Greek characters and was hailed on its first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek drama. Mr. Luce denies it's that character and certainly it is not Greek but Christian in sentiment. It differs from the extant drama of Euripides who treats the same subject in the Christian feeling which determines its denouement. A large portion of Gerta's productions have taken the dramatic form yet he cannot be said theatrically speaking to have been like Schiller a successful dramatist. His plays with the exception of Egmont and the first part of Faust have not commanded the stage. They form no part I believe of the stock of any German theater. The characterizations are striking but the positions are not dramatic. Single scenes in some of them are exceptions like in Egmont where Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow citizens to the rescue of the Count while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her and several of the scenes in the first part of Faust. But on the whole the interest of Gerta's dramas is psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this the case with Tasso one of the author's noblest works where the characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures. Schiller in his plays always had the stage in view. Gerta on the contrary wrote for readers or cultivated reflective hearers, not spectators. When I say then that Gerta compared with Schiller failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not lie in the line of plays adapted to the stage as it is. Or if the talent was not wanting his taste did not incline to such performance. He was no playwright. But there is another and higher sense of the word dramatic where Gerta is supreme. The sense in which Dante's great poem is called a comedia, a play. There is a drama whose scope is beyond the compass of any earthly stage. A drama not for theater goers to be seen on the boards but for intellectual contemplation of men and angels. Such a drama is Faust of which I shall speak hereafter. Of Gerta's prose works, I mean works of prose fiction the most considerable are two philosophical novels Wilhelm Meister and the elective affinities. In the first of these the various and complex motives which have shaped the composition may be comprehended in the one word education. The education of life for the business of life. The main thread of the narrative traces through a labyrinth of loosely connected scenes and events the growth of the hero's character. A progressive training by various influence passion, intellectual, social, moral and religious. These are represented by the personnel of the story. In accordance with this design the hero himself if so he may be called has no pronounced traits is more negative than positive but is brought into contact with many very positive characters. His life is the stage on which these characters perform. A ground is thus provided for the numerous portraits of which the author's large experience furnished the originals and for lessons of practical wisdom derived from his close observation of men and things and his lifelong reflection thereon. Philhelm Meister if not the most artistic is the most instructive and in that view next to Faust the most important of Gertrude's work. In it he has embodied his philosophy of life. A philosophy far enough removed from the Epicurean views which ignorance has ascribed to him. A philosophy which is best described by the term aesthetic. Its keynote is renunciation. With renunciation begins the true life was the author's favorite maxim and the second part of Wilhelm Meister the Wanderjar bears the collateral title die and stingenen. That is the renouncing or the self denying. The characters that figure in this second part most of whom have had their training in the first form a society whose principle of union is self renunciation and a life of beneficent activity. The most fascinating character in Wilhelm Meister the wonder and delight of the reader is Mignon a child woman, a pure creation of Gertrude's genius without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will remember Fanella the elfish maiden in Peverell of the Peak. Scott says in his preface to that novel the character of Fanella which from its peculiarity made a favorable impression on the public was far from being original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister's Laerjar a celebrated work for the pen of Gerta gave the idea of such a being but the copy will be found to be greatly different from my great prototype nor can I be accused of barring anything save the general idea. As I remember Fanella the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial. A certain weirdness is all they have in common the intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing the cry of the unsatisfied heart the devout aspiration, the pre-sentiment of the heavenly life which characterized Mignon are peculiar to her. They constitute her individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a strolling circus company and has rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager. Thenceforth she clings to him with a passionate devotion in which gratitude for her deliverance, filial affection and the love of a maiden for her hero are strangely blended. Afflicted with a disease of the heart she is subject to terrible convulsions which increase the tenderness of her protector for the doomed child. After one of these attacks in which she had been suffering frightful pain we read. He held her fast. She wept and no tongue can express the force of those tears. Her long hair had become unfastened and hung loose over her shoulders. Her whole being seemed to be melting away. At last she raced herself up. A mild cheerfulness gleaned from her face. My father she cried, you will not leave me. You will be my father, I will be your child. Softly before the door a harp began to sound. The old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to his friends. Then burst on the reader that world-famed song in which the soul of Mignon with its unconquerable yearnings is forever embalmed. Ken stu das land. Knowest thou the land that bears the citron's bloom? The golden orange glows mid verdant gloom. A gentle wind from heaven's deep azure blows. The myrtle low and high the laurel grows. Knowest thou the land? Oh there, oh there, would I with thee my best beloved repair. The elective affinities has been strangely misinterpreted as having an immoral tendency as encouraging conjugal infidelity and approving free love. That anyone who has read the work with attention to the end could so misjudge it seems incredible. Precisely the reverse of this, the aim is to enforce the sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing the tragic consequences resulting from its violation, though only in thought and feeling. Here, a word concerning one merit of Guerta which seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers, his loving skill and the delineation of female character, the commanding place he assigns to women in his writings, his full recognitions of the importance of feminine influence in human destiny. The prophetic utterance which forms a conclusion of fouls, the ever womanly draws us on, is the summing up of Guerta's own experience of life. Few men ever had such wide opportunities of acquaintance with women. If, on the one hand, his loves had revealed to him the passional side of feminine nature, he had enjoyed on the other the friendship of some of the purest and noblest of womankind. Conspicuous among these are Frowline von Klettenberg and the Duchess Louise, whom no one, says Luz, ever speaks of but in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakespeare, and scarcely Shakespeare, has set before the world so rich a gallery of female portraits. They range from the lowest to the highest, from the wanton to the saint. They are drawn in firm lines and limbed in imperishable colors, each bearing the stamp of our own individuality and each confessing a master's hand. These may be considered as representing different phases of the poet's experience, different stadia in his view of life. The ever womanly draws us on. So Gerrit of all men most susceptible of feminine influence was led by it from weakness to strength, from dissipation to concentration, from doubt to clearness, from tumult to repose, from the earthly to the heavenly. Faust. Gerrit appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend, partly from the work of Wiedmann, published in 1599, partly from another more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the puppet plays exhibited in Frankfurt and other cities of Germany, of which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer of that day who made use of it. Some 30 of his contemporaries had produced their Fausts during the interval which elapsed between the inception and publication of his great work. Oblivion overtook them all, with the exception of lessings, of which a few fragments are left. The manuscript of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher between Dresden and Leipzig. The composition of Faust, as we learned from Gerrit's biography, proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the inception and the conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age of 20, it was not completed till the year 1831 at the age of 82. But the effect of the long arrest, which after Gerrit's removal to Weimar delayed the completion of the Faust, is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates as to character and style, the second part from the first. So great indeed is the distance between the two that without external historical proofs for identity, it would seem from internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one and the same author. And really the author was not the same. The change which had come over Gerrit on his return from Italy had gone down to the very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain. Romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first Faust. But we may confidentially assert that he could not, after the age of 40, have originated the poem any more than before his Italian tour, he could have written the second Faust, purporting to be a continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous. As to the question, which of the two is the greater production, it is like asking which is the greater, Dante's Commedia or Shakespeare's Macbeth. They are incommensurable. As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise, there are thousands who enjoy and admire the first part to one who even reads the second. The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human. The interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific. The symbolic old character of Faust is assumed by all the critics and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motivating the whole, a symbolism of human destiny. And here and there, a shadowing fourth of the poet's private experience. There are special illusions, local, personal, enigmatic conceits, which have furnished topics of the learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties, but little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work. The key to the plot is given in the prologue in heaven. The devil and the character of Mephistopheles asks permission to tempt Faust. He boasts his ability to get an entire possession of his soul and drag him down to hell. The Lord grants the permission and prophesies the failure of the attempt. Be it allowed, draw this spirit from its source if you can lay hold of him, bear him with you on your downward path and stand ashamed when you are forced to confess that a good man in his dark strivings has a consciousness of the right way. Here we have a hint of the author's design. He does not intend that the devil shall succeed. He does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see and he meant to show that the notion implied in the old popular superstition of selling one's soul to the devil, the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul is a fallacy, that the soul is not man's to dispose of and cannot be so traded away. We are the souls, not the soul, ours. Evil is self-limited. The good in man must finally prevail. So long as he strives, he is not lost. Heaven will come to the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy of Faust. In the first part, stung by disappointment in his search of knowledge by failure to lay hold of the superhuman and urged on by his baser propensities, personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to sensual pleasure, seduces innocence, burdens his soul with heavy guilt and seems to be entirely given over to evil. This part ends with Mephistopheles' imperious call, hair zoo mirror, as if secure of his victim. Before the appearance of the second part, the reader was at liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the second part, Faust gradually wakes from the intoxication of passion, outgrows the dominion of appetite, plans great and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses more and more his hold of him, and after his death is baffled in his attempt to appropriate Faust's mortal part, to which the heavenly powers assert their right. The character of Margaret is unique. Its duplicate is not to be found in all the picture galleries of fiction. Shakespeare, in the wide range of his feminine personnel, has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth and vulgar circumstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her class, speaking the language of that class, from which she never for a moment deviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting, to the excess of that which is in itself no fault, but beautiful and good, her fall and ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As Schlegel said of the Prometheus Bound, it is not a single tragedy, but tragedy itself. The first part ends with the prison scene where poor Margaret escaping by death ascends to heaven while Mephistopheles, shouting an appearious hither to me, disappears with founced. The reader is allowed to suppose, and most readers did suppose, that the author meant it should be inferred that the devil had secured his victim, and that foust, according to the legend, had paid the forfeit of his soul to the powers of hell. But foust reappears in a new poem, the second part. He is there introduced sleeping, as if burying in torpor the lusts and crimes and sorrows of his past career. Pitying spirits are about him, and to heal his woes and promote his return to a better life. At the end of his hundred years of earthly life, Mephistopheles bails to secure the immortal part of foust, which the angels appropriate and bear aloft. This member of the upper spheres we rescue from the devil, for whoso strives and perseveres, may be redeemed from evil. The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author's justification of Mephistopheles' defeat and foust's salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns the place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public utility, he is beyond the power of Satan, he may be redeemed from evil. One could wish indeed that more decisive marks of moral development had been exhibited in the latter stages of foust's career. But here comes a Christian doctrine of grace, which Gerta applies to the problem of man's destiny. Foust is represented as saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility of a heavenly life. And so the newborn ascending spirit is committed by the Matur Gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen, Margaret, Unapoententium, now purified from all the stains of her earthly life to whom is given the injunction, lift thyself up to higher spheres when he divines he'll follow thee. And the mystic choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of the play. All that is perishing types the ideal, dream of our cherishing thus becomes real. Superhumanly here it is done, the ever womanly draweth us on. End of section 23.