This strange moral theory could not but have strange consequences. Love, as Goethe knows it, is very tender, and has a lyric note as fresh as that of a song-bird; but it passes away like the songs of spring. In his Autobiography, one love-passage succeeds another, each is charmingly described, but each comes speedily to an end. How far in each case he was to blame is matter of controversy. But he seems to betray a way of thinking about women such as might be natural to an Oriental Sultan. I was in that agreeable phase, he writes, when a new passion had begun to spring up in me before the old one had quite disappeared. About Friederika he blames himself without reserve, and uses strong expressions of contrition; but he forgets the matter strangely soon. In his distress of mind he says he found riding, and especially skating, bring much relief. This reminds us of the famous letter to the Frau von Stein about coffee. He is always ready in a moment to shake off the deepest impressions and to receive new ones; and he never looks back. A curious insensibility, which seems imitated from the apparent insensibility of Nature herself, shows itself in his works by the side of the deepest pathos. Faust never once mentions Gretchen again, after that terrible prison scene; her remembrance does not seem to trouble him; she seems entirely forgotten, until, just at the end, among the penitents who surround the Mater Gloriosa, there appears one who has borne the name of Gretchen. In like manner this shocked Schiller when Mignon dies she seems instantly forgotten, and the business of the novel scarcely pauses for a moment.
We are also to remember that Goethe was a man of the old régime. If he who had such an instinctive comprehension of feminine character, at the same time treats women in this Oriental fashion, we are to remember that he lived in a country of despotic Courts, and also that he was entirely outside the movement of reform. Had he entered into the reforming movement of his age, he might have striven to elevate women, as he might have heralded and welcomed some of the ideas of 1789, and the nationality movements of 1808 and 1813. He certainly felt at times that all was not right in the status of women (Der Frauen Schicksal ist beklagenswerth), and how narrowly confined was their happiness (Wie enggebunden ist des Weibes Glück,), as he certainly felt how miserable was the political conditions of Germany. Nevertheless he did not take the path either of social or of political reform. He worked in another region, a deeper region. He was a reformer on the great scale in literature, art, education, that is, in culture, but he was not a reformer of institutions. And as he did not look forward to a change in institutions, his views and his very morality rested on the assumption of a state of society in many respects miserably bad.
But the effect of this aberration upon Goethes character as a teacher and upon his influence has been most disastrous. And inevitably, for as it has been the practice in the Christian world to lay all the stress of morality upon that very virtue which Goethe almost entirely repudiates, he appears not only to be no moralist but an enemy of morality. And as he once brought a devil upon the stage, we identify him with his own Mephistopheles, though, in fact, the tone of cold irony is not by any means congenial to him. He has the reputation of a being awfully wise, who has experienced all feelings good and bad, but has survived them, and from whose writings there rises a cold unwholesome exhalation, the odor of moral decay. It is thought that he offers culture, art, manifold intellectual enjoyment, but at the price of virtue, faith, patriotism.
If I have taken a just view, the good and bad characteristics of his writings stand in a different relation. It is not morality itself that he regards with indifference, but one important section of morality. And he is an indifferentist here, partly because he is a man formed in the last years of the old régime, partly because he is borne too far on the tide of reaction against Catholic and monastic ideas. Nevertheless, he remains a moralist; and in his positive teaching he is one of the greatest moral teachers the world has ever seen. In his life he displayed some of the greatest and most precious virtues, a nobly conscientious use of great powers, a firm disregard of popularity, an admirable capacity for the highest kind of friendship. His view of life and literature is, in general, not ironical and not enervating, but sincere, manly, and hopeful. And his view of morality and religion, if we consider it calmly and not in that spirit of agonized timidity which reigns in the religious world, will perhaps appear to be not now very dangerous where it is wrong, and full of fresh instruction where it is right. The drift of the nineteenth century, the progress of those reforms in which Goethe took so little interest, have tended uniformly to the elevation of woman, so that it seems now scarcely credible that at the end of the last century great thinkers can seriously have preferred to contemplate her in the half servile condition in which classical poetry exhibits her. On this point at least the world is not likely to become pagan again. On the other hand Carlyle himself scarcely exaggerated the greatness of Goethe as a prophet of new truth alike in morals and in religion. Just at the moment when the supernaturalist theory, standing alone, seemed to have exhausted its influence, and to be involving religion in its own decline, Goethe stood forth as a rapt adorer of the God in Nature.39 Naturalism in his hands appeared to be no dull system of platitudes, no empty delusive survival of an exploded belief, but a system as definite and important as Science, as rich and glorious as Art. Morality in his hands appeared no longer morbid, unnaturally solemn, unwholesomely pathetic, but robust, cheerful, healthy, a twin-sister of happiness. In his hands also morality and religion appeared inseparably united, different aspects of that free energy, which in him was genius, and in every one who is capable of it resembles genius. Lastly, his bearing towards Christianity, when he had receded from the exaggerations of his second period, was better, so long as it seemed hopeless to purge Christianity of its other-worldliness, than that of the zealots on either side. He entered into no clerical or anti-clerical controversies; but, while he spoke his mind with great frankness, did not forget to distinguish between clericalism and true Christianity, cherished no insane ambition of destroying the Church or founding a new religion,40 and counselled us in founding our future society to make Christianity a principal element in its religion, and not to neglect the excellent collection of sacred books left us by the Hebrews. Contemporary Review.
BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS
BY CHARLES MACKAYI. Daniel OConnell Serjeant Talfourd Robert Carruthers
The three gentlemen whose names appear at the head of this chapter of my reminiscences, breakfasted together at the table of Mr. Rogers, along with our host and myself, in the summer of 1845. They were all remarkable and agreeable men, and played a part more or less distinguished in the social life of the time. Mr. OConnell called himself, and was called by his friends, the Liberator, but was virtually the Dictator, or uncrowned king, of the Irish people. Serjeant, afterwards Judge, Talfourd, was an eminent lawyer a very eloquent speaker, and a poet of some renown. Mr. Robert Carruthers was the editor of the Inverness Courier, a paper of much literary influence; a man of varied acquirements and extensive reading, particularly familiar with the literature and history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and more especially with the writings of Pope, his contemporaries and predecessors. Whenever Mr. Macaulay, while engaged on the History of England, which, unfortunately, he did not live to complete, was in doubt about an incident, personal or national, that occurred during the reigns of James II., William and Mary, or Queen Anne, and was too busy to investigate for himself, he had only to appeal for information to Mr. Carruthers, and the information was at once supplied from the abundant stores of that gentlemans memory. I was well acquainted with all of these notables, but had never before met the three together.
Mr. OConnell had long passed his prime in 1845 being then in his 70th year but appeared to be in full bodily and mental vigor, and in the height of his power, popularity, and influence. He had for years been extravagantly praised by one half of the nation and as extravagantly blamed and denounced by the other, and his support had been so absolutely necessary to the existence of the Whig and Liberal Ministry in England, that when this support seemed to be of doubtful continuance, or any indications of his present lukewarmness or future opposition were apparent, the baits of power, place, or high professional promotion were constantly dangled before his eyes, to keep him true to the cause to which he had never promised allegiance, but to which he had always adhered with more or less of zeal and consistency. For upwards of a quarter of a century his name figured more frequently in the leading columns of all the most prominent journals of London and the provinces than that of any statesman or public character of the time. As he jocularly but truly said of himself, he was the best abused man in the country; but though he did not choose to confess it, he was, at the same time, the most belauded. He was a man of a fine personal presence, of a burly and stalwart build, with quick glancing eyes full of wit, humor and of what may be called rollicking fun; and of a homely, persuasive, and telling eloquence, that no man of his day could be truly said to have equalled. The speeches of his great contemporary and countryman, Richard Lalor Shiel, were more elegant, scholarly, and ambitious; but they were above the heads of the commonalty, and often failed of their effect by being caviare to the general, and sometimes tired or bored those who could understand and even appreciate them, by their great length and too obvious straining after effect. No exception of the kind could be taken to the speeches of Daniel or, as he was affectionately called, Dan OConnell. They were all clear as day, logical as a mathematical demonstration, and warm as midsummer. If he had many of the faults he had all the virtues of his Celtic countrymen, and even in his strongest denunciations of his political opponents there was always a touch of humor that forced a laugh or a smile from the persons he attacked. He once, in Parliament, spoke of the great Duke of Wellington as a stunted corporal with two left legs, and the Duke of Wellington, who was said to be proud of his legs, remarking to Lucas, the artist who had painted his portrait, pointing to his legs without taking notice of the facial likeness those are my legs, had sense enough to laugh. The description, however, was not quite original, inasmuch as Pope, more than a hundred years previously, had applied the same epithet to Lintot the bookseller. Daniel OConnell could excite at will the laughter or the indignation of the multitude, and was not in reality an ill-tempered or an ill-conditioned man, though he often appeared to be so when it suited his purpose. But though choleric he was never malicious.
On this occasion the conversation was almost entirely literary. OConnells voice was peculiarly sweet and musical, and in the recitation of poetry, of which he had a keen and critical appreciation, it was impossible to excel, and difficult to equal him, in either comic or pathetic passages. The manner in which he declaimed The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone, The Last Rose of Summer, and other favorite songs of Thomas Moore was perfect, and had almost as pleasant an effect upon the hearers mind as if they had been sung by a well-trained singer. He was, in short, a delightful companion, and fascinated every society in which he felt himself sufficiently at ease to be induced to give free play to his wit, his humor, his imagination, and his wonderful power of mimicry.
Though seemingly at this time in the full high noon of his power and popularity, his influence was in reality on the wane, and circumstances over which he had no control, and which he had done nothing to produce, were at work to divert from his person and his cause the attention and the love of the Irish people. The first symptoms of the mysterious disease in the potato, which was unfortunately the chief food of the Irish millions, began to make themselves apparent, and to divert the attention of the Irish from political to more urgent questions of life and death. The too probable consequences of this great calamity tended necessarily to diminish the rent or tribute collected from the needy as well as the prosperous to recompense the Liberator for the sacrifices he had made in relinquishing the practice of his profession to devote his time, talent, and energies entirely to the parliamentary service of the people. Added to this, a race of younger and more impulsive men, fired by his example, had arisen to agitate the question of the Repeal of the Union on which he had set his heart, and scorning, in their impatience, the peaceful and legal methods which he employed, did their best to goad the impulsive people into open rebellion. Foremost among these were Mr. Smith OBrien, whose futile treason came to an inglorious collapse in a cabbage garden; and next, the members of the party of Young Ireland, and the gifted poets of the Nation, among whom were Mr. DArcy McGee, and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, whose tuneful violence was far more agreeable to the youthful agitators of the new generation than the more prudent strategy of OConnell. The potato disease and the fearful famine that followed on its devastating track, which sent at least a million of people to the United States and two millions into untimely graves in Ireland, preyed upon the spirit of the great agitator, impaired his health, and ultimately led to his death of a broken heart, at Genoa, in 1847, in the 72nd year of his age. He was, at the time, on a pilgrimage to Rome to crave the blessing of the Pope, but was not destined to reach the, to him, holy city, the capital of his faith. His heart, however, was embalmed and taken to Rome, and his corpse conveyed to his native country for interment. I little thought on that joyous morning of 1845, when we sat seriously merry and intellectually sportive at the social board of Mr. Rogers in St. Jamess Place, that the end was so near, and that the light which shone so brilliantly was so speedily to be extinguished, and the sceptre of democratic authority to be so shattered that none could take it up when it fell from the hands which had so long wielded it.
The second of the guests this morning was also an orator, not celebrated for his power over crowds, but highly distinguished in the Senate and the Forum. Serjeant Talfourd did not speak often in Parliament or at public meetings, but when he did he was listened to with pleasure and attention. The scenes of his triumphs were the law courts, and especially the Court of Common Pleas, where he was the leading practitioner. He was noted among the members of the Bar and the attorneys for his power over the minds of jurymen, and his winning ways of extorting a favorable verdict for the client who was fortunate enough to have him for an advocate. He had room enough in his head both for law and literature the law for his profit and his worldly advancement, and literature for the charm and consolation of his life. He was well known too, and highly esteemed by the leading literary men of his time, and took especial interest in the laws affecting artistic, musical, and literary copyright. He was largely instrumental in extending the previously allotted term of twenty-eight years to forty-two years, and for seven years after the death of the artist, composer, or author. This measure put considerable and well-deserved profits into the pockets of the heirs of Sir Walter Scott, and was said at the time to have been specially devised and enacted for that purpose and for that only. This, however, was an error which Serjeant Talfourd emphatically contradicted whenever it was hinted or asserted. It had, incidentally, that effect, which no one was churlish and ungrateful enough to grudge or lament, but was advocated in the interest of all men of letters, and of literature itself in its widest extent, and if it erred at all, only erred on the side of undue restriction to so short a period as forty-two years. It ought to have been extended to the third generation of the benefactors of their country, and probably will be so extended at a future time, when the rights of authors will be as strictly protected and will be thought of at least as much importance as the right of landlords to their acres; of butchers, bakers, and tailors to be paid for their commodities; or those of doctors and lawyers to be paid for their time and talents.