origin to some real incident in human life. Euhemerus would have said that Tsui-goab was really a sorcerer who limped or had a wounded knee, and who, for the marvels he wrought as a sorcerer, came to be worshipped after his death as a divinity. This is quite possible; but perhaps the most probable theory of all is that Tsuigoab never had any real existence at all, but was the gradual product of the Hottentot mind exercised on speculative matters, just as Manabozho was the product of Red Indian imagination, or Zeus of the Greek. That as the story grew some incident was added which so strongly associated the legendary hero with a wounded knee as to fix that as his permanent name would be likely enough, but that the incident itself is discoverable or worth discovering there is not the smallest reason for supposing.

This hypothesis of the essential irrationality of all mythology, without any resort to the depraving influence of language over thought, except as a subsidiary cause, meets all cases, the Greek myths no less than the African, inasmuch as the most irrational explanations or stories have an inherent power of surviving into more civilised times. That it was only the higher minds of Greece to whom the stories of Hesiod and Homer did not afford the most complete satisfaction is amply proved by the indirect attack upon them made by Plato in his imaginary Republic. That a philosopher at that time should have found it necessary to protest, and that only on behalf of a fictitious, and not a real, community, against such tales as the flinging of Hephaestus out of heaven for trying to take his mother's part when his father was beating her, or as the chaining of Hera by her son, is a proof of the extreme vitality of myths of the sort. Our own European traditions are quite as objectionable and absurd, and the immense amount of learning and ingenuity that has been devoted to their study, with a view to connect them with originally rational and sound philosophy contained in metaphorical allusions to natural phenomena, will probably before long be recognised as little better than wasted. They are merely old wives' tales handed down through the ages; the offspring of idleness and ignorance, and only of interest at all as illustrations of the state of the human mind in the days before science had dawned.

J. A. FARRER.

THE SECOND PART OF GOETHE'S

“FAUST.”

ΤΗ
THERE is no

HERE is probably no great modern work on which opinions are more divided than on the Second Part of Goethe's "Faust." Even Goethe's most ardent admirers are not at one regarding it. Two hostile camps, indeed, may be said to have been formed, round which has raged almost as much noisy contest as marked the war of Troy. It, too, has had its Achilles and Hector, its Agamemnon and Ulysses; and some would perhaps add that it had its [Zoilo-]Thersites in Börne. There were Tieck, and Schlegel, and Heine; there were Gutzkow and Laube; there were Hegel and Menzel, and Hettner, Schäfer, Leyser, and Stieglitz; Loeper, Düntzer, Hermann Grimm, and Fischer in Germany. At the present moment the words of Karl Grün, Braun, and Rosenkranz are perhaps most listened to; while in our own country Mr. Carlyle, Mr. G. H. Lewes, Professor Blackie, Mr. Hayward, Mr. Schütz Wilson, and Mr. Coupland represent the conflicting points of view. Nor should M. Scherer's name in this connection be forgotten, for he has spoken on the subject with no uncertain sound. Here are some very decisive words of his :

"The two parts of 'Faust' do not proceed from one and the same source. Goethe was like Defoe, like Milton, like so many others, who, after producing a masterpiece, have been bent on giving it a successor. Unhappily, while the First 'Faust' is of Goethe's fairest time, of his most vigorous manhood, the Second is the last fruit of his old age. Science in the one has not chilled poetic genius; in the other, reflection rules and produces all kinds of symbols and abstractions. The beauty of the First comes in some sort from its very imperfection; I mean from the incessant tendency of the sentiment of reality, of the creative power, the poetry of passion and nature to prevail over the philosophic intention, and make us forget it. . . . . In the Second Part it is just the contrary. The idea is everything: allegory reigns there. The poetry is devoid of that simple and natural realism without which art cannot exist."

Mr. G. H. Lewes, whose memoir of Goethe is marked by the

most reverential attitude, and who received so fully the suffrages of Germany for his work, cannot regard with patience either the Second Part of "Faust," or the "Wanderjahre" of Wilhelm Meister. He detests the abstract symbolisms with which they are crowded. He mourns their lack of flesh and blood. He desiderates healthy human emotion. He deprecates the mysticism which is, as he holds, their pervading characteristic. He will not try by any exercise of subtlety to bridge over the great gap, as he conceives it, between the earlier works and these. In the most decided and uncompromising manner he delivers himself.

"The Second Part of 'Faust' is a failure because it fails in the primary requisite of a poem. Whatever else it may be, no one will say it is interesting. The scenes, incidents, and characters do not in themselves carry that overpowering charm which masters us in the First Part. They borrow their interest from the meanings they are supposed to symbolise. Only in proportion to Only in proportion to our ingenuity in guessing the riddle is interest excited by this means. Mephisto, formerly so marvellous a creation, has become a mere mouthpiece. Faust has lost all traces of individuality, every pulse of emotion."

Even Mr. Bayard Taylor, than whom no English-speaking writer has done more to throw light on the puzzles and riddles of Goethe's life and writings, deplores the lack of poetic unity in the Second Part of "Faust," and this while he is leaving no stone unturned to recommend it to general favour in the most exhaustive and careful notes he has appended to his translation, and confesses :

"It would have been better, undoubtedly, if the completion of the work had not been so long delayed, and Goethe had thereby been enabled to give us with more limited stores of knowledge a greater poetic unity. It is hardly the feebleness of the octogenarian which we perceive. The acquisitions of the foregoing thirty years seem to have gradually formed a crust over the lambent poetical element in his nature; but the native force of the latter is nowhere so wonderfully revealed as here, since it is still able to crack and shiver the erudite surface of his mind and to flame out clearly and joyously. Wherever it thus displays itself it is still the same pure, illuminating, solving, and blending power as in his earlier years."

Professor Blackie, in a more discriminating if also a less decided manner, comes practically to the same conclusion, and, moreover, traces the defects up to moral defects in the character of Goethe. He writes in the Nineteenth Century for April last, when reviewing Sir Theodore Martin's translation :

"That the hero of the piece is meant to be a real human being,

and the emperor a real German emperor, and Mephistopheles a real scoffing devil, is plain enough to start with; but, as we proceed, we suddenly lose all firm footing, and find ourselves in an enchanted region, borne along on a drift of mythological and historical figures, plainly the creation of a fantastic juggle; but so usurping the stage and so interwoven with the solid reality of the action that, like persons in a middle state between sleeping and waking, we find ourselves at every shifting of the scene rubbing our eyes and asking where we are? This is bad art. Bad art also it is, even supposing the lines of demarcation between the real and the fantastic were sufficiently well marked to give such a breadth and amplitude to what on the face of the structure is only the accessory of a human story, that the story is virtually overwhelmed, as the bodies of ladies' gowns have sometimes been seen buried under range after range of supererogatory flounces."

On the other hand, critics like Rosenkranz find a positive attraction in the mysticism and symbolism, the incessant disguise from each other, which the actors seem to seek. Rosenkranz thus sums up his side of the question, more especially with reference to the piquant charm of the court scenes :

"Very lively is the manner in which the company is represented. No one really is what he seems to be; each one has drawn over himself a mask or concealing garment; what each does know of the other is not what his appearance or his language indicates. This effort to conceal his own being, to set apart, or even to dream himself into something different from himself (that he may the better behold himself from different angles in the eyes of others)—to make himself, in a word, a riddle to others, in all frankness, is the deepest and most piquant charm of social interests here."

Professor Seeley, though he does not commit himself to definite opinions on the separate elements in the Second "Faust," thus celebrates the remarkable versatility which the whole work displays :

"Perhaps no work in literature exhibits a mastery of so many literary styles as 'Faust.' From the sublime lyric of the prologue, which astonished Shelley, we pass through scenes in which the problems of human character are dealt with-scenes in which the supernatural is brought surprisingly near to real life, scenes of human life startlingly vivid, grotesque scenes of devilry, scenes of overwhelming pathos; then, in the Second Part, we find an incomparable revival of the Greek drama, and, at the close, a Dantesque vision of the Christian heaven. Such versatility in a single work is unrivalled."

Sir Theodore Martin, in the introduction to his valuable version of the Second Part, admits the necessity for culture and knowledge in the reader for ends of enjoyment, and goes on to say:

"To enjoy it thoroughly, the reader must bring both cultivated intelligence and sympathy with the poetic faculty in its highest development. Those who want strong human interest must go elsewhere. They will not find it here. The whole action lies within the limits of the 'sphere of dream.' Even Faust and Mephistopheles are but as phantoms moving among phantoms. The pulses of the fatal passion which resulted in the tragic ending of poor Margaret are but poorly compensated by the fine frenzy of Faust for the Helen of antiquity. It is his imagination, not his heart, that is on fire. Ours also kindles before the exquisite painting of the poet, which sets every figure in the drama before us as vividly as could have been done by the chisel of Phidias or the pencil of Titian. Again, for those who seek in the 'Faust' a solution of the great problems of life, the result at which Goethe seems to arrive is, we venture to think, neither very startling nor very novel. It is no more than the truth, which wise men of all ages have preached, that by those who aspire beyond the enjoyment of selfish tastes, intellectual or sensual, happiness is only to be reached through active beneficence, through the application of the knowledge and power to the welfare of mankind. While Faust pored in his study over musty volumes of medicine, jurisprudence, and theology, the accumulation of such knowledge as they taught brought only bitterness of heart and a feeling that it satisfied none of the higher aspirations of his nature. When Faust, in his old age, takes to reclaiming land from the sea, to building harbours, and making hundreds of his fellow-creatures happy, then the cravings of his heart are for the first time satisfied. . . . . It is not Mephistopheles, but Faust's own internal development, that has worked this result, and thus the condition is never fulfilled which entitles Mephistopheles to claim his soul."

The assumption that the First and Second Parts of "Faust" are absolutely separated from each other, that they spring from a different conception and inspiration, that the First can consistently be regarded as a drama in itself, and the Second as a mere afterthought, will not for a moment stand consideration. Goethe had the salient lines of the old Legend in his mind from the first, and that required the presentation of Faust to Helen of Troy. Goethe, indeed, from the first saw here the centre point of his performance, however he might end it. It has been well said that Helen is the Beatrice of this strange new Divina Commedia, and that, in a merely dramatic sense, she