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world of thought and feeling. It enabled him to estimate the comparative value of ancient and modern ideals, and thus to

is survey human effort as a whole and in its highest manifestaettions.'

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It was also by far the happiest period of his life. On his return, after two years' absence, he looked at his old home with very different eyes. From the Eternal City to the toy capital was a far cry; and he soon discovered that his old friends were visibly bored by his enthusiasm for classical art.

'From Italy rich in form,' he complains, I was flung. back into formless Germany, to exchange a cheerful for a gloomy sky. My friends, instead of offering me comfort, drove me to despair. My ecstasies over objects, distant and hardly known, my complaints over what I had lost appeared to offend them. I missed all sympathy; no one understood my language.'

Worst of all, the most precious friendship of his life was at an end. Frau von Stein had concluded from his sudden flight that she had lost her place in his heart, and she wrote to tell him so. He denied it; but Rome and Naples were to prove formidable rivals. When they met again both knew that their friendship hung by a thread; and within a few months he took a step which turned coolness into angry resentment, and made her exclaim in the bitterness of her heart that a beautiful star had fallen from heaven.

In the opening days of 1789, Christiane Vulpius, the daughter of a drunken advocate, visited Goethe to solicit his support for a brother. She worked in a flower factory, and the poet had noticed her before his Italian journey. In Italy he had renewed the dissipation of his youth, and on seeing her again he succumbed to the voluptuous charms of twenty-three. In November she was installed in his household, and on Christmas Day she bore him a son. The Duke stood godfather, and Herder baptised him; but the society of Weimar never forgave its most celebrated citizen, and Frau von Stein was foremost in her denunciation. The Professor writes with wisdom and feeling on the most distressing episode in the poet's life.

'As the years passed, Christiane gradually settled down i her unnatural situation; but her life was a long sacrifie which excites our warmest sympathy. Naturally cheerfu and affectionate, she was debarred from all society in whic she could have found herself at home. For the ladies Weimar she was a jest, and with the exception of her siste and an aunt, domiciled in the back of the house with Goethe' permission, she does not appear to have had a single femal acquaintance. And her feelings for Goethe were mixed wit an awe which made impossible the full effusion of the heart Though he constantly treated her with considerate kindnes she was never allowed to forget her position.'

In 1806, in gratitude for her devotion during dangerous illness, he made her his wife; but the tragedy inherent in the situation remained. It was the nemesi of his shrinking from the marriage bond that the mai who fled from Friederike and Lili found himself fettered to Christiane; and his latest biographer is amply justified: when he observes that nothing has so damaged his fame in the eyes of posterity. On the other hand, he refuses to join in the condemnation of the poet for his neglect to visit his delightful mother except at long intervals.

·

If the years following the Italian journey were darkened by the sundering of friendships and loss of respect, a new period of happiness and creative effort opened in 1794 when Goethe suddenly discovered that Schiller, then Professor of History at Jena, could supply him with the stimulus and comradeship of which he wa sorely in need. The story of that historic friendship i enshrined in the correspondence published by the sur vivor, and its quickening influence led to what Goethe aptly described as his second spring. Schiller had already sown his Romantic wild oats, and the demagogue of 'The Robbers' had grown into the philosopher of the 'Letters on Esthetic Education.' While Herder, the only other, commanding intellect of the Weimar circle, was estranged from his old friend by his own difficult temper Schiller's attractive nature made an irresistible appeal 'I lose in him the half of my existence,' wrote Goethe on hearing the news of his death in 1805. The Professor does not question the sincerity of his regrets, but he ask a question which will come to some of his readers with something of a shock.

'Was it fortunate for their relations that Schiller died when edde did? There are some indications that there were possibilities of estrangement between them in the near future. Goethe was sometimes impatient at the insistency of Schiller's uggestions regarding his work, and this impatience would almost certainly have increased. It was significant, too, that be during the later years he was showing a sympathy for certain youthful men of letters whom Schiller held in detestation. Moreover, as his past life had shown, it was a peculiarity of his temperament that new relations became sooner or later a necessity for him. From Merck, Lavater, Jacobi, and Frau Ton Stein he had in turn become alienated, and, though Schiller was far more to him than any of these, it is not improbable that even Schiller would have ceased to be to him drwhat he had been. On Schiller's part we have clear evidence that latterly his position in Weimar and his relations to

1.

e Goethe were not all he could have wished. If they had become estranged, the world would have been robbed of one of the noblest spectacles in literary history-genius and friendship working in perfect harmony towards the highest

ends.'

The later years of Goethe's life, despite the everincreasing stream of celebrities and humbler pilgrims to Weimar, were in a sense lonely. Though his friendship with Zelter, far away at Berlin, was a perpetual comfort, and Ottilie, his daughter-in-law, brought sunshine and grandchildren into his home, his worthless son was a sore trial, and he never again experienced such enduring and fruitful association as with Schiller or Frau von Stein. He remained susceptible to the last, falling in love with Minna Herzlieb at fifty-seven, and with Frau von Willemer at sixty-five. Poor Christiane passed away in 1816 having earned her husband's love by long years of devoted service.

'That her loss went to his heart we cannot doubt, though it is difficult to imagine a more ill-assorted pair. That he was sorely tried at times by her unfitness to fill the place he had given her we know; and his uniform tenderness and consideration for her proved his essential goodness of heart.' Seven years later, at the age of seventy-four, he fell in love with Ulrike von Levetzow, a girl of nineteen, and informed his family of his approaching marriage; but to his intense regret her mother refused her consent.

Ulrike was the last of the long series of passions whic left scars on the poet's heart and inspired him to hi noblest verse.

The closing pages of the second volume contain th biographer's verdict on the character and personality o Goethe.

'Those who knew him best were most attracted to him I The devotion of his mother and sister went beyond th devotion of ordinary mothers and sisters, and throughou. Tha life he had an exceptional power of attracting friends. Jun Stilling said that his heart was as great as his intellect Knebel, his friend for over fifty years, described him an the best of men, the most lovable of mankind. Childrer delighted in him and he in them-the most evident proofi that he could have been neither cold-hearted nor a pedant Sincerity, candour and plain dealing were eminent character istics of his nature. He was singularly free from all pettiness of spirit, and envy of the gifts and reputations of others was rig a sentiment which he did not know. Devoid of vanity as of envy, he was fully aware of his own endowments and of the value of the work he had given to the world; but it was his habitual attitude to regard himself as simply an organ of f Nature through which she communicated certain truths to to the world. Yet in his character and genius there is an elusiveness which struck every observer. "In some respects I am a chameleon," he wrote in his fifteenth year; and Felix Mendelssohn declared that the world would one day come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes. What strikes us most forcibly is the lack of controlling will when he comes into conflict with the instincts implanted in him. Susceptibility was the dominating characteristic of his nature;he but along with susceptibility went the instinct to know and create, which asserted itself even when passion raged highestin him, and to which he confessed he owed his mental balance.'

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The accusation of an overmastering egotism is dismissed, and Goethe's contention is accepted that a man best serves the world by cultivating the powers which he i

possesses.

While the main interest of this biography is the he personality of its subject, the student will turn with eagerness to the author's judgments on Goethe's writings. The four years at Frankfurt between the departure from Strassburg in 1771 and the migration to Weimar in 1775

are without a parallel in literary history; for they iwitnessed not only 'Götz' and 'Werther,' 'Clavigo' and some lesser works, but, as we now know, the original form of Faust' and 'Egmont.' 'Had Goethe died at the age of twenty-six,' observes the Professor, 'his legacy would have assured him a place with the great creative minds of all time. The years of administration at Weimar were unfavourable to production; but the newly-discovered Theatralische Sendung,' the chief work of this decade, bears the same relation to the 'Lehrjahre' as the 'Urfaust' to the completed drama, and is indeed its superior in vivacity and interest.

'Begun in his twenty-seventh year and engaging him till his thirty-seventh, it is the product of the period when the inspiration of youth passes into maturity, which shows itself in the wide outlook on life and the world. It may be questioned whether in any of his subsequent efforts in prose fiction we find the same equipoise of reflexion and inspiration.'

The poems of the same decade include not a few of his title-deeds to immortality, among them Kennst du das Land,' Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,' 'Der Erlkönig,' and 'Das Göttliche.'

Goethe took with him to Italy four uncompleted manuscripts, Egmont,' 'Iphigenie,' 'Tasso,' and 'Faust,' and finished the first two before his return. The Professor is a little severe on the works of the post-Roman period. 'Egmont,' he complains, is undramatic, 'Iphigenie' stiff, and 'Tasso' intrinsically unfitted for the stage. Had he seen Moissi act the part of the neurotic poet under Reinhardt's direction at Berlin he might have revised his judgment of the latter play. He is obviously out of sympathy with the attempt to follow classical models; but he does full justice to the beauties which sparkle in these finely-chiselled dramas. Even the exquisite 'Hermann und Dorothea' is described as a little artificial, though he allows it to be one of the permanently interesting things in literature and unmatched as a tour de force. The plays on the French Revolution, finished and unfinished, are interesting rather as politics than as literature; while the brilliant and sometimes cruel 'Xenien'—a joint declaration of war against the