but it may be allowed us, in the way of caution to those of our readers who may peruse this work, (which we by all means recommend them to do,) to point out some of those passages where an impartial judge would perhaps doubt the justice of Mr. Lewes's conclusions. We take them at random, as they come.

All who feel an interest in German literature are familiar with the story of Goethe's youth-romance at Sesenheim. The brilliant young man, then residing at Strasburg for study, was taken by a fellow-student to visit the pastor of Sesenheim; whom, with his two daughters, he forthwith determined to be an exact revival of the Vicar of Wakefield, Olivia, and Sophia. In a very short time, Frederika, the Sophia of the family, and Goethe felt the tenderest sentiments towards each other, and spent the happy hours to which such feelings, in the undisturbed seclusion of a rural home, may lead. As is common in such histories, the matter was much more serious on the woman's than on the man's side. Goethe, though undoubtedly deeply touched, did not intend to marry. Yet he kept up a correspondence with her after his return to Strasburg; and her mother, probably hoping to revive the dying flame, took her to that city. Vain in such cases the plans of mothers and the charms of daughters! Frederika's picturesque provincial costume, which had made her look like a wood-nymph among the groves of Sesenheim, seemed rustic and vulgar among the fashionable belles of Strasburg.

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She left Strasburg, marriage with Goethe more than ever a vanished vision. But, notwithstanding-who would have wished it otherwise if she did not ?—she was true to him in heart. Eight years afterwards, he again saw both her and another of his youthful loves, Lili. Lili was married to "a worthy, sensible fellow-rich, well placed in the world," and was already a happy mother. But Frederika, though she made not the slightest attempt, he says, to re-kindle in his bosom the cinders of love, and treated him only like an old acquaintance, never became the wife of another. She who had loved Goethe, she said afterwards, could not entertain any inferior affection. It is only justice to Goethe to remark, that he appears to have been much comforted and relieved, as every man of kindly nature must have

been, at this condonation on the part of one whom he knew that he had injured.

But a question which naturally arises is, what we are to think of Goethe, with reference to this passage of his life; or, rather, what Mr. G. H. Lewes would have us think. In his remarks on this subject, (i. p. 144,) he says, in his impetuous way, "I will not suppose the reader a dupe to the cant about falsehood to genius.' And yet his own excuse or explanation of this matter amounts precisely to this: that if Goethe had married Frederika, he would have been false to his genius; which he illustrates further by arguing that "there is an antagonism between domesticity and genius." Happily, we have only, in this country, to enumerate the greatest names of our own times to see how baseless is this plea. What does Mr. Lewes say to the antagonism of domesticity and genius in the cases of Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Crabbe? not to mention the greatest poets, historians, zoologists, chemists, astronomers, mathematicians, now living among us, whose names crowd upon us in rich profusion. Cant, indeed!—the talk of this antagonism of genius and domesticity.

To go on to another of Goethe's relations to women-his connection with Christiane Vulpius, who afterwards became his wife, long after she had borne him a son. He was married to her, as has often been said, during the cannonade of the battle of Jena; a statement which Mr. Lewes, with laudable accuracy, contradicts, seeing that the marriage took place five days after the battle. As to this connection, though Mr. Lewes allows that it gave great offense, and raised a great scandal at Weimar, he still holds that there was, even from the first, a bright side of this dark episode, of which, indeed, we dare not mention all the dark shades. "It gave him the joys of paternity, for which his heart yearned. It gave him a faithful and devoted affection. It gave him one to look after his domestic existence, and it gave him a peace in that existence which hitherto he had sought in vain." And in his title to this chapter, he points out this acccount of the matter as an inquiry, "How far a poet is justified in disregarding the conventional proprieties of his age ?"

Mr. Lewes is very indignant with those who have spoken of Goethe as an immo

blood, which enabled Cuvier to recall into visible form hundreds of extinct animals -no one can doubt that this is a real principle. No one can doubt that we can reason, as in these cases discoverers have reasoned, from the intention of the Creator of the world, in spite of St. Hilaire's exclamation, "I can not ascribe to God any intention." But, on the other hand, if there be, in the structure of animals, much of which we see the use, and can explain the existence of by its use, there is also much of which we see no use; and which we are led, by a large survey of nature, to ascribe to the unity of plan, on which animals are constructed, and not to their special requirements. It was the indication of this unity of plan with which Goethe was especially delighted. Mr. Lewes relates the remarkable anecdote that, in 1830, when some of Goethe's friends went to him, and began to exclaim about the explosion which had taken place in Paris, they found him quite ready with his interest and his sympathy; till getting bewildered by the way in which he expressed this feeling, they at length discovered that the explosion which he meant was not the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, but the decided outbreak of the antagonism between Cuvier and St. Hilaire. To Goethe's speculations in pursuit of this unity of plan, belong his discovery of the intermaxillary sutures in man, it having been previously supposed that the absence of these sutures was a distinction between man and other animals. To the same speculations belong the resolution of the skull into a certain number of vertebræ, which Oken afterwards made the ground of a charge of plagiarism against Goethe; and to the same line of speculation belong the poet's striking ideas concerning the metamorphosis of plants, which he has urged eloquently and effectively, and which are now generally adopted.

ing the very name of Idea, Goethe tried to convince Schiller, who dwelt in a region of ideas, and regarded facts as worth nothing, except so far as they could be reduced to the dominion of Ideas. "I expounded to him," says Goethe, "the metamorphosis of plants, drawing on paper for him, as I proceeded, a diagram, to represent that general form of a plant which shows itself in so many and so various transformations. Schiller attended and understood; and accepting the explanation, he said, 'this is not Observation, but an Idea.' I replied," adds Goethe, "with some degree of irritation, for the point which separated us was most luminously marked by this expression; but I smothered my vexation, and merely said, 'I was happy to find that I had got ideas without knowing it; nay, that I saw them before my eyes.' Mr. Lewes appears hardly to have caught the point of this ironical retort of Goethe. He translates-" answered that I had ideas without knowing it, and to be able to contemplate them with my own eyes." But the absurdity which Goethe implied was, that ideas, purely mental forms, had turned out to be certain visible marks on paper; that he saw them with his eyes, and not with his mind, as Plato would say; not that he saw them with his own eyes rather than another's. The conclusion of the narrative is delightful. They went on with mutual explanations, and became intimate and lasting friends. "And thus," adds the poet, "by means of that mighty and interminable controversy between subject and object, we two concluded an alliance which remained unbroken, and produced much benefit to ourselves and others."

mental culture and refined manners, as well as the lofty spirit, of the captive Iphigenia obtains over the barbarian sovereign Thoas, so that he looks up to her as a superior being. The development of this feeling in a most skillful and poetical manner gives an inexpressible charm to this play. In the same way the Torquato Tasso, which Mr. Lewes describes as "a series of faultless lines, but no drama," has really a wonderful power of depiction, exhibited in the manner in which Tasso's madness gains gradually upon him, producing, not incoherent images and thoughts, but a vehement, continuous yearning after the scenes of his youth, which gathers nutriment from all present facts and fancies. We are, however, very ready to add that Mr. Lewes's criticism on these, as on other of Goethe's works, is very able and discriminating; though perhaps many readers, who will enjoy the biography, may think that these critical excursuses occupy too much space in the book.

There is one such excursus introduced apropos of Faust, which certainly does appear to us somewhat too fine-drawn. The object is to prove the inadequacy of all translation of poetry; but what Mr. Lewes really does prove is, what no one will contest, that no translation can be identical with the original. To illustrate this, he takes several passages of English poetry, and altering them for the worse, says that, so altered, they are still as near to the genuine form as the best translations are to the original. Thus he takes a verse of an old ballad which "haunted" Scott.

this it may be replied, that we must suppose a translator with sufficient feeling for poetry to see the difference between the two forms of the passage. If such a translator-for example, Mr. Lewes himself-had translated an original into the second form, he would certainly try to improve his translation; and would, if he were happy in his attempts, approach to or hit upon the first, the genuine form.

Certainly it must appear that a survey of modern German literature, like Mr. Lewes's, is an odd place to maintain the inadequacy of translations of poetry. Schiller almost entirely, and Goethe in a great measure, derived their knowledge of the classical writers from translations. Schiller could barely stumble through the Iphigenia of Euripides with the aid of a translation. Were, then, Schiller and Goethe ignorant-we do not say of the meaning, but of the spirit and beauty of the masterpieces of Greek poetry? Their admirers say no-we say no-what does Mr. Lewes say?

Mr. Lewes speaks with just admiration of Goethe's beautiful hexameter poemsthe Roman Elegies, the Alexis and Dora, above all the Herman and Dorothea; which he justly regards as the finest poem of modern times, and not unworthy to be compared with any poem of any time. With regard to these poems, Mr. Lewes appears to have labored under a very unnecessary embarrassment. He dares hardly translate them into the measure of the original; being awed, apparently, by the tone of depreciation in which several modern critics have spoken of English hexameters. This condemnation has often been founded in ignorance; for instance, when the critics have spoken of the folly of reviving the attempts of Sydney and others. For in truth, these old attempts were made on the false principle of attending to Latin rules of quantity: the differently, and exactly in conformity with recent attempts have been made quite the German practice, which has so completely taken root in the language. Nor do English hexameters need to be at all less rhythmical than German ones; nor in the best specimens, are they. Sir John Herschel's translation of Schiller's Walk, Archdeacon Hare's translation of the Alexis and Dora, if not equal in versification to Schiller and Goethe, are, at least, very much smoother and more melodious than much English verse in other measures