project of a biography. But though the efforts of Britis scholars were of no mean value, the bulk of the work wa naturally carried out by Germans; and the student, t whatever country he belongs, must live laborious day with the Goethe Jahrbuch' and the 'Schriften de Goethe Gesellschaft.' In 1887, Erich Schmidt discovere the pre-Weimar draft of Faust'; and only a year o two before the war the Theatralische Sendung,' o original form of 'Wilhelm Meister,' was recovered and published. An immense advance was rendered possible by the Weimar edition of Goethe's works, which began to appear in 1887, and, in addition to his literary and scientific writings, included thirteen volumes of diaries and fifty of correspondence. By the end of the century the time had arrived for a full-length portrait; and Biel schowsky's biography, the first volume of which appeared in 1896, and the second after his death in 1904, surpassed all previous attempts. The book ranks with Haym's 'Herder,' Erich Schmidt's' Lessing,' and Justi's 'Winckelmann' among the classics of German literary biography; and it is hardly likely that it will be superseded within our lifetime. The briefer work of Georg Brandes, published in 1915, is unfortunately only available to readers of Danish.

Though Bielschowsky may be read in an American translation, there was abundant room for an English biography which should incorporate the discoveries and test the conclusions of two generations of scholarship; and no one could have trained himself more carefully for his formidable task than the late Prof. Hume Brown, the author of the standard History of Scotland' and of scholarly biographies of Knox and Buchanan. While Scottish history was the occupation of his official life, his leisure was dedicated to Goethe. 'Goethe was his favourite teacher as well as his favourite poet,' writes Lord Haldane in a Prefatory Note, and his ambition was to try to make the greatness of the man clear to the Anglo-Saxon world. It was our practice to go to Germany annually to collect materials, and this we did each year from 1898 to 1912 inclusive. We spent our time mainly in Weimar, Ilmenau, Jena, Wetzlar, and Göttingen. There was hardly a book or an article which the Professor did not possess, and we spent much time

each autumn in Scotland going over his manuscript as it grew in his hands.' The first part was published in 1913 as 'The Youth of Goethe,' and the whole work was finished before the author's death in the winter of 1918, except for a chapter on the Second Part of Faust.' The missing link has been supplied by Lord Haldane himself, to whom and to his sister Miss Haldane the biographer entrusted the publication of his book. The Early Life' now forms the first part of the completed work; and in these well-printed volumes we at last possess a maturely considered biography, fully abreast of the scholarship of the age and not unworthy of its majestic theme.

The Professor brought to his task the spirit of caution for which Scotsmen are renowned; and the first impression which the book makes on the reader is one of critical detachment. To pass from the eloquence and enthusiasm of Bielschowsky to the frank censures and measured eulogies of the Edinburgh scholar is like a douche of cold water. But though we may sometimes sigh for a little more warmth and colour in the picture, we gradually gain such confidence in our guide that his praises, when they come, seem charged with special authority. For readers who know Goethe's early life through the golden haze of 'Dichtung und Wahrheit' it must be something of a shock to read the unvarnished narrative based, among other sources, on the recently published correspondence with Behrisch. The young student set out for Leipsic at the age of sixteen, and returned to Frankfurt three years later prematurely aged by dissipation. He had been wounded in a duel, he had drunk more than was good for him, and with Käthchen Schönkopf he had entered on a series of enslavements to passing passions from which he was never for long to escape. It was with the feelings of a shipwrecked seaman, he tells us, that he found himself under his father's roof; but he characteristically adds that he had nothing specially with which to reproach himself. The 'Sesenheim idyll' of the Strassburg period gave birth to some immortal poetry and to the most touching pages in his autobiography; but the story of Friederike leaves none the less an unpleasant taste in the mouth. From the first he never intended marriage. That he had

pangs of self-reproach for the part he had played may be accepted on his own evidence; but alike from temperament and deliberate consideration of the facts of life he was incapable of the contrition which troubles human life to its depths. Yet it is well to remember the ideas then current in Germany regarding the relations between love and marriage. In his seventy-fourth year Goethe himself said, 'Love is something ideal, marriage is something real, and never with impunity do we exchange the ideal for the real.' The severest of moralists, Kant, was of the same opinion. The word conjugium itself implies that two married people are yoked together, and to be thus yoked cannot be called bliss.' It was in a world where such opinions were entertained by men of the highest character and intelligence that Goethe made his irresponsible addresses to the successive objects of his passion. That the Lotte episode did not develop into tragedy was due to the self-control of the lady and her betrothed, not to the hot-blooded young law student in sleepy old Wetzlar. In Lili Schönemann he found for the first time a woman of his own rank-indeed his social superior. In the eyes of the world there was nothing to prevent the engagement ripening into marriage; but no sooner had he given his pledge than his instinctive repugnance to binding ties reasserted itself, and he broke off the relationship without formal leavetaking.

At the very moment when the breach with Lili made it desirable for Goethe to leave Frankfurt came the invitation from the young Karl August to visit him at Weimar. The two young men had attracted each other at first sight, and the burgher's son was flattered by the invitation of a Duke to become his friend and guest. Little did either the ruler or the poet imagine that their co-operation was to endure for half a century and to carry the name of the little Thuringian capital all over the world. Goethe's coming,' declares Prof. Hume Brown, was an event in the annals of human culture. For Germany it marks an epoch in her national development, and for humanity at large it was to make Weimar one of the intellectual shrines at which it will continue to pay homage for all time.' At a time when many of the German Courts were sunk in sloth and immorality,

the little Duchy could boast not only of its energetic and healthy-minded young ruler, but of its high-souled Duchess Luise, with the miniature Court of the cultivated Anna Amalia close by at Tiefurt. With Wieland and Knebel in command, intellectual life could hardly stagnate; and when Goethe persuaded his master a few months after his arrival to appoint Herder, his revered friend and teacher of Strassburg days, to the vacant post of Court preacher, the character of Weimar as a centre of enlightenment was assured.

For a year or two Karl August, intoxicated with animal spirits, shocked his sedater subjects by his madcap pranks, in which Goethe joined with full zest. 'We were all young and merry then,' declared the poet long after, as he looked back on the joyous revels of Ilmenau. The veteran Klopstock was moved to a letter of reproachful warning, which provoked a curt request to mind his own business; for graver matters were not neglected. I am now immersed in Court and political business,' wrote Goethe two months after his arrival; and his responsibilities increased with the lapse of years. The story of his administrative career was first pieced together by Schöll, and is fully described in the present work. Beginning as Legationsrat, with a seat and vote in Council, he was named a Privy Councillor in 1779, after which business became his chief care. He devoted himself to his duties with an ardour which told on his health and spirits, and the strain grew still greater in 1782, when he was made President of the Council. He was now able to carry through a number of financial and agrarian reforms; but his success was limited by the extravagance of his master. He admonished the Duke both in prose and verse; but Karl August none the less ranks with Karl Friedrich of Baden, Ferdinand of Brunswick, and one or two other minor potentates among the best German princes of his time. Not long before his death Goethe remarked to Eckermann that in the fifty years of his reign there was not a day in which his master had not given thought to the welfare of his subjects.

Goethe's ten years' activity in the service of the State form an honourable chapter in his life; but the work was never congenial, and as the responsibilities Vol. 235.-No. 467.

accumulated the drudgery became intolerable. He could hardly have borne the burden but for the love of Frau von Stein, whose life is inseparable from his ow for eleven years and to whom he sometimes wrote twice or thrice a day. After the breach she demanded he own letters back and destroyed them; and the Professo hints a doubt whether the poet's letters, meant only for her, ought ever to have been given to the world. Be that as it may, without them we should not know Goethe as we do. With the verdict that there is no more remarkable record of a man's relations to a woman we may all agree; but why are their relations 'described as a liaison? Frau von Stein was seven years his senior, the wife of an unloved husband, the mother of seven children, of delicate health and high moral principle; while Goethe remained throughout not only the intellectual comrade but the passionate lover.

'The course of their love did not run smooth, and, as it is presented to us from his side, we may doubt whether pain or pleasure was the predominant ingredient in it. Their relation to each other, as they both recognised, was an unnatural one, and neither was of a temperament that makes it easier. Frau von Stein paid the penalty of her own indiscretion. Worldly good sense might have counselled her as to the imprudence of a relation which could not run a natural course. She intermittently endeavoured to restrain the ardour of her youthful devotee, but, flattered by his worship of her, she came under a spell. Her conduct after their quarrel shows that she was not the "perfect woman nobly planned" Goethe's adoration represents her.'

Goethe set off for Italy in 1786. The principal object of my journey,' he subsequently told the Duke, 'was to cure myself of the physical and moral maladies which tortured me in Germany and ultimately made me useless, and to quench my ardent thirst after true art.' Next to the migration to Weimar, in 1775, the Italian journey is the most important event in his life. It closed his political activities and restored him to the creative sphere for which he was best fitted. It renewed his youth, introduced him to classical art, and furnished him with a wider perspective.

'What he saw and felt in Italy opened up to him a new