upon Carlyle, but also because his own estimate of Goethe had changed. At all events there is a remarkable change of tone in his biography of Goethe written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.1 The spirit of this paper is more earnest and subdued; there is some attempt to give a disinterested account of Goethe's life; there is respect and even honor towards the man. But the essay has no final value. De Quincey wrote here also from slight and often second-hand knowledge. He had read Wilhelm Meister, Dichtung und Wahrheit, and probably Werther and Die Natürliche Tochter. He also quotes correctly from the Farbenlehre and refers to the Morphologie." He was of course familiar with Carlyle; he refers to opinions of the Humboldts and the Schlegels, and to Mrs. Sarah Austin's Characteristics of Goethe; but although he passes judgment upon most of Goethe's works, it is questionable if his study had gone much further.

Nowhere does the weak side of De Quincey as a critic appear more clearly. Goethe is at best a highly interesting phenomenon, to be explained by circumstances of time and fortune. De Quincey is impressed with the spectacle of Goethe's dictatorship over German literature, but Goethe is in his opinion only the professional poet of good fortune. His work is judged by the conventional standards of realism and idealism, the classical tendency, fidelity to history in the dramas, and the other measures which the professional critic applies to the professional

1 Reprinted by De Quincey. cf. Works IV, 395 ff. Written in 1837 or earlier.

2 Posth. Works II, 91; Works XI, 271, note.

3 Full title: Characteristics of Goethe, from the German of Falk, von Müller, etc. With notes original and translated, illustrative of German literature. 3 Vols. London 1833.

man of letters. The events chosen by De Quincey from Dichtung und Wahrheit show a strange capriciousness; the inferences he draws from them reveal the swift and facile ingenuity of his mind, but no less his ignorance of facts, his lack of insight into the real character of Goethe. He emphasizes the description of Frankfort and Frankfort society, in which his fancy sees a resemblance to an English cathedral town, a subject which in turn gives rise to a short excursion into Political Economy. He says much of Goethe's education. He lingers characteristically on the experiment of Goethe's parents to eradicate fear from the minds of their children. He dwells on the Lisbon earthquake, Goethe's consequent skepticism, and the general shallowness of German piety. The apparently capricious choice of studies in Goethe's early education and its general desultory character lead De Quincey to remark that, of all Goethe's attainments in language, he possessed none of them to a degree which made them practically useful at the time when he went to the university. Goethe states clearly that he could converse easily in French, that, while at the university, he wrote verses in the foreign languages, and that he had no difficulty with the Latin in his graduating dissertation. But De Quincey's skill in inference reaches its perfection in his notice of the coronation which took place in Frankfort in Goethe's fifteenth year. Having explained the unimpassioned manner in which the description is given by saying that "the mind of Goethe was not contemplative enough to create a value for common occurrences through any particular impressions, which he had derived from

1 Goethe's Werke, herausgeg. v. Ludw. Geiger, Berlin 1893. 10 Bde. IX, 277.

them", he goes on to remark: "Probably the prevailing sentiment, on looking back at least to this transitory splendour of dress, processions and ceremonial forms, was one of cynical contempt. But this he could not express, as a person closely connected with a German court, without giving much and various offence. It is with some timidity that he hazards a criticism upon single parts of Had Goethe felt himself at liberty

the costume.

can it be doubted that he would have taken his retrospect from the station of that stern revolution, which within his own time had shattered the whole imperial system of thrones". At any rate the laugh of the queen "on surveying the departing pomps of Charlemagne, must, in any contemplative car, have rung with a sound of deep significance". In this one incident De Quincey errs in three particulars: as regards Goethe's real feelings at the time, the influence of the court upon his freedom of speech, and his feeling towards the French Revolution. But De Quincey can go even farther. These pageants of 1763-64 occupy a considerable space in Goethe's Memoirs Perhaps he might feel a sort

of narrow local patriotism in recalling these scenes to public notice". De Quincey might have felt such a local pride, but scarcely Goethe.

De Quincey writes at length of the sojourn of Count Thorane in the Goethe house during the invasion of the French army. He dwells on the details, the humorous. picture of Goethe's father preparing his congratulations for the Prussians before a battle which the French won; the delight of the Count which overflows in sweetmeats for the children, the surliness of Herr Goethe and his subsequent arrest, the dialogue between the Count and the interpreter who pleads for the old man's forgiveness,

a dialogue "of length and dulness absolutely incredible"; we are assured therefore that probably "no such dialogue ever took place". De Quincey mentions further, Goethe's acquaintance with Gretchen; to his whole university life only a few lines are given. A few lines more describe the publication of Goetz and Werther. In connection with Goetz De Quincey notices the facts that it was translated by Scott, and that Goethe had difficulty in paying for the paper. With his connection with the House of Weimar all elaboration ends. Of the rest of Goethe's long life De Quincey has no detailed knowledge. It is dismissed with a few pages in which his relation to the Duke is sketched truly; the only thing described at any length is Napoleon's meeting with the Duchess after the battle of Jena, given such prominence apparently because De Quincey knew a description of that event by an Englishman well acquainted with Weimar and its court.

It will be seen that De Quincey grasps only the event, the scene, the humorous or the peculiar. The really valuable part of Aus meinem Leben, namely, the development of Goethe's mind and taste, the influence which these experiences had upon his own culture, the things which Goethe valued most in his growth, his friends, his mental and moral tendencies, his inner experiences of these De Quincey is silent. The journey to Italy is hardly mentioned; nothing is said of the friendship with Schiller. Yet these were the greatest events of Goethe's life. The truth is that De Quincey knew nothing of Goethe's real interests during that time.

After dismissing Goethe's Songs and Occasional Poems1

1 De Quincey refers (Posth. Works I, 15) to the Erlkönig and quotes a few lines, but not exactly.

De Quincey reiterates in a calmer way his first judgment of Wilhelm Meister. He recognizes now the genius of the translator; but his opinion of the book has not changed. Its purpose is not clear; the comments of the Humboldts and the Schlegels have made it more cloudy still. Although it may arouse some sincere feeling in the German mind, it can gain no attention in England, for it is often "at war, not only with decorum and good taste merely, but with moral purity and the dignity of human nature". The Wahlverwandtschaften De Quincey merely mentions. To the dramatic works the critic is better disposed. The Iphigenie might stand after Samson Agonistes as the most faithful modern transcript from the antique. From one phrase, "if we are to believe. a Schlegel, it is in beauty and effect a mere echo from the finest strains of the old Grecian music", we are doubtful whether De Quincey had really read the poem. Clavigo "too openly renounces the grandeur of the ideal"; a criticism which is certainly vague enough. "The Tasso has been supposed to realize an Italian beauty of genial warmth and sunny repose." The words "is supposed to" make it seem probable that De Quincey had also not read Tasso. Egmont violates "historic truth of character".

Die natürliche Tochter De Quincey in all probability knew. He describes its action as slow; the situations have no scenical distress, but they are not unexciting, as most of the critics would have it; on the contrary they are "too powerfully affecting". In this criticism De Quincey is certainly correct as regards the action of the piece. But we do not understand him when he says that the scenes are powerfully affecting. Except in the final scenes the characters seem to lack free dramatic action.