walk of seduction, sinning grievously, and giving occasion not only to sin and sorrow, but to all the horrors of blood and remorse, remains, throughout his career, within the reach of our human sympathies. Nor can any one, who weighs well the last scene of the poem, doubt that, if the author had ever completed it, the repentance of the seducer would have come forth and been rewarded as fully as that of his victim, Margaret. The omission we have noticed is, moreover, attended with a disadvantageous effect of quite a different kind. The Faust, though it be called a tragedy on its title-page, is in fact, and was designed to be, a Mystery; and the reader loses a great deal in not being compelled to recognize, from the very outset, this-the peculiar character of the piece. The audacious dialogue in the prologue does not stand alone; there are numberless passages scattered over the performance, the effect of which must be miserably impaired, if not distorted, if we do not recollect that the poet has in his hands the Gothic license of that essentially Gothic form of composition. In one page we have Raphael and Gabriel uttering strains of Miltonic harmony and grandeur, in the hearing of all the host of Heaven. In another, the jabber of fiends and sorcerers in their witch-sabbath presents an unearthly mixture, in which it is impossible to draw any definite line between the grotesque and the ghastly, the sadness of immortal degradation, and the buffoonery of diabolical despair. In the midst of all this, human passions-love, hatred, revenge, repentance, remorse-clothe themselves alternately in the severest simplicity of idiomatic dialogue, and the softest or noblest strains of lyric poetry. Even mere satire-the satire of literature, of manners, of politics, above all, of philosophy, finds its place. The effect of so strange a medley of elements must have been abundantly considered by so learned an artist as Goethe; and no translator can have any right to interfere with him by diminishing their number or variety. By far the greater number of Lord F. Gower's faults are of this kind-sins of omission; and they occur most frequently in the most fanciful and airy parts of the poem. Thus the scene in which the philosopher Faust conjures up the elemental spirits, and endures the mortification of being rejected by them as unworthy of any participation in their society, is reduced, most unhappily, to not more than two thirds of its proper dimensions; and of the little snatches of songs in which various subordinate demons mysteriously, and as it were in whispers, communicate with Mephistopheles, while he is playing on his victim's perplexities ere the final surrender is ratified, scarcely a trace can be perceived in the translation. translation. The wild vagaries of the Mayday-night's scene are also sadly curtailed; and the interlude of Oberon and Titania's bridal is entirely left out. This last omission is particularly injudicious, because the crowd and tumult of contradictory images, of which so large a portion is thus struck from the page, must have been expressly designed and congregated by the poet, in order to deceive the reader's fancy, and bewilder so thoroughly all sense of the lapse of time as to render tolerable the otherwise abrupt transition from the commencement of poor Margaret's errors to the consummation of all her earthly woes. Even in the plainest and most perspicuous parts of the main action and dialogue, however, we could point out many instances where his lordship has retrenched, in the total absence, according to our notion, of any sufficient reason for retrenchment. For example: why should we lose the savage sarcasm of the fiend, when, deriding all intellectual pursuits, and extolling the substantial, as he chooses to represent them, pleasures of the senses, he exclaims to the sorely puzzled Doctor-? 'Yes-in my mind your man of speculation Is wise-and wise too is yon elfstruck beast, While all around him, north, south, west, and east, or why should the scene which represents the citizens rejoicing And gaily deck'd was he ; A merrier meeting ne'er was seen Beneath our linden tree,' &c. In our opinion a careful revision is all that is wanted to make Lord F.'s version as satisfactory as a whole, as the specimens we are about to quote will prove it to be happy in parts; and we trust that, in the favour with which his work, in its present state, has been received, the author will permit himself to find not only the reward of the talent he has already exerted, but a stimulus for his industry. As all the world is acquainted with Madame de Staël's Germany, and Schlegel's Lectures on the Literature of the Drama, we may, we presume, take it for granted, that anything in the shape of a regular analysis of the 'Faust' would be superfluous in this place. Our readers cannot have forgotten the fine art with which Goethe interrupts his hero, when the vexed man of speculation' is about to seek refuge from all his troubles in a voluntary death. Thou lonely flask, with reverential awe, In thee I venerate the art of man. Essence Essence of painless rest, untortured death,* And the broad sun's last rays to distant shores invite.' Faust then takes down a goblet-and is checked for a moment by the train of recollections which the sight of that old domestic ornament' calls up. 'I have not thought on thee this many a year. In thy transparent brightness learnt to shine, Well I remember the accustomed rite When the blithe comrades pledged thee through the night,' &c. But he recovers his resolution-and pouring the poison out of the cup exclaims 'In thee the troubles of my soul I cast, Hail the blest drops and drain them to the last.'† At this moment the effective interruption occurs: Faust sets the 'What thrilling sounds, what music's choral swell Say, you do wake for Him who came to save 'I hear your tidings, would that I believed! I dare not lift my thoughts towards the spheres, Lord F. Gower would improve his version by transposing these two lines. The original runs literally, Thou essence of all that is soft in slumber, thou extract of all that is delicately deadly.' The translator does not observe that this takes place just as the first rays of the dawn touch the window-whence the propriety of the original, Be this my last draught with my whole soul dedicated as a high festival-offering to the morning.' When, When, on the stillness of the sabbath-day, Whilst saints might wish with joy like mine to pray. Impell'd me from the haunts of man; While tears of christian fervour ran. vol. i. p. 43. Faust, having escaped this temptation, wanders forth into the fields with his pupil Wagner, and contemplates the universal festival. This also is spiritedly given; Turn round, and, from this hillock's height, See, from the jaws of yonder gate, They celebrate, in guise so gay, Where labour's murky children dwell From chamber close, and garret high, Shed by the church's shadowy height, They wander forth, and court the light.- See, on the stream, how thick they float, I hail, in yonder rout and coil, The short-lived heaven of those who toil; -vol. i. p. 54. We cannot afford room for the scenes in which Mephistopheles, in the shape of a hound, gains admission to Faust's chamber; at length assumes a human form; and, after a variety of conversation, induces the unhappy victim to seal the compact with his blood blood-the compact which renders him, in so far as his own act can do so, the slave of the juggling fiend. We pass over also the debauchery of the drinking cellar, and come to the scene with which the main interest of the drama opens. Faust, now reinvested by magic art with all the graces of youth, sees, and is enamoured of Margaret-the most charming of all the creations of the poet's genius. He speaks to her she repels him like a modest maiden, and passes on. At that instant Mephistopheles enters. 'FAUST. Hear:-you must win her; no delay! MEPH. Win whom? FAUST. But now she past this way. MEPH. Oh! her. The priest to whom she came to pray Absolved her free from sin and guile; I listen'd by his chair the while. The monk could scarcely send her thence Such are beyond my mischief's sphere. Who, as he walk'd the garden, thought And so much mischief there he wrought- We part at twelve-and part for ever. MEPH. You talk this like a Frenchman born!- Have sometimes stoop'd, and sometimes mounted, FAUST. Without all this I crave and would obtain. MEPH. My warning must be clear and plain. |