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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,
Who in his briery circle champs vexation,

While all around him, north, south, west, and east,
These fair green meadows mock the sage's feast!'

or why should the scene which represents the citizens rejoicing
in the fields on Easter Sunday be deprived of its best song?
"The shepherd deck'd him for the green,

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,
Forth from thy shelf thy brittle frame I draw,

In thee I venerate the art of man.

Essence

Essence of painless rest, untortured death,*
Extract of powers that check the human breath;
Now show your healing influence, for ye can;
I view ye, and the sight relieves my pain;
I hold ye, and my phrenzy cools again.
Here where it mixes with unbounded seas,
The stream of life runs calmer by degrees;
Smooth at my feet blue ocean sleeps in light,

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.
Oft at my father's feast, the rosy wine

In thy transparent brightness learnt to shine,
And add a lustre to the good man's cheer.

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
cup to his lips, and at that instant the church bells begin to ring.
It is Easter morning, and the anthem is heard in the distance.-
The sequel is skilfully rendered:

'What thrilling sounds, what music's choral swell
Arrests the hand which death but now defied?
Dost thou proclaim, thou ever pealing bell,
The solemn hour of Easter's holy tide?

Say, you do wake for Him who came to save
The strain which angels pour'd around his grave,
When the new covenant was ratified?'.....

'I hear your tidings, would that I believed!
I could be happy, though deceived.

I dare not lift my thoughts towards the spheres,
From whence that heavenly sound salutes mine ears;
And yet that anthem's long-remember'd strain
Revives the scenes of sinless youth again,

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,
Heaven in that peal seem'd pouring from above,
And I look'd upward for its kiss of love,

Whilst saints might wish with joy like mine to pray.
An undefined aspiration

Impell'd me from the haunts of man;
I form'd myself a new creation,

While tears of christian fervour ran.
This very song proclaim'd to childhood's ear
The solemn tide for joys for ever past,
And memory, waking while the song I hear,
Arrests my strides, and checks me at the last.
Sound on,
blest strain, your task almost is done;
Tears force their way, and earth regains her son.'

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,
Back to the town direct thy sight.

See, from the jaws of yonder gate,
How thick the insects congregate;

They celebrate, in guise so gay,
Our Saviour's resurrection day.
From lowly roof, and stifling cell,

Where labour's murky children dwell

From chamber close, and garret high,
From many an alley's dismal sty,
And from the venerable night,

Shed by the church's shadowy height,

They wander forth, and court the light.-
See how the myriads buzz and throng
The garden and the field along;

See, on the stream, how thick they float,
The steadier barge and heeling boat.
How yonder skiff, o'erladen, laves
Its gunwale in the rippling waves.
Yon distant mountain-path no less
Is gleaming with the tints of dress.

I hail, in yonder rout and coil,

The short-lived heaven of those who toil;
I almost shout, like them, for glee,
And am the man I seem to be.'-vol. i.

-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
More perfect in her innocence.

Such are beyond my mischief's sphere.
FAUST. Yet she has reach'd her fifteenth year.
MEPH. You speak in Mr. Wilfull's tone;

Who, as he walk'd the garden, thought
The flowers were made for him alone.

And so much mischief there he wrought-
But check the speed with which you run.
FAUST. Pray, Mr. Check-my-speed, have done,
Quoting your saws and maxims clever;
And more to tell you I make bold,
Unless, ere midnight's bell has toll'd,
That beauty in my arms I hold,

We part at twelve-and part for ever.
MEPH. Think of the nature of the case:
I ask, at least, a fortnight's space,
The slightest opening to secure.
FAUST. Had I seven hours to seek the maid,
I should not want the devil's aid,
Her simple virtue to allure.

MEPH. You talk this like a Frenchman born!-
Let not my hints awake your scorn.
Why seek to gain what you affect
By paths so simple and direct?
The joy is not so great by far
As when, in spite of bolt and bar,
Above, around her, and below,
By practice you have learnt to go:

Have sometimes stoop'd, and sometimes mounted,
As in Italian tales recounted.

FAUST. Without all this I crave and would obtain.

MEPH. My warning must be clear and plain.

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