Chapter III: Part 3

The Prince issued circular letters for the election of members to a Convention, which met January 22, 1689. It appeared at once, that the House of Commons, agreeably to the prevailing sentiments both of the nation and of those in present authority, was chiefly chosen from among the Whig party. The throne was declared vacant by the following vote:—“That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people; and having, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the fundamental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant.” By the national consent, the vacancy was supplied by his daughter Mary and her husband William conjointly. Anne was nominated the next in succession, to the exclusion of the infant prince. The Bill of Rights was passed at the same time, settling disputed points between king and people, circumscribing and defining the royal prerogative, and affirming the rights of the nation. That “original contract between king and people,” referred to by the vote of Parliament, seemed hitherto to have existed rather as a theory than as a practical and binding engagement; but at this crisis the contract was put into legal form, and duly executed; the general principles of free government were distinctly promulgated; and a precedent was established which fixed the succession to the British monarchy on Protestantism, and on the choice of the nation through its parliamentary organ.

William was thus chosen for the sovereign of a powerful kingdom; but he had little personal knowledge of his new subjects, and party feuds ran high, so that it was more difficult to steer between the opposing factions of the British court than it had been between those of the United Provinces. His reign accordingly was pregnant with events, both domestic and foreign, of the highest historical interest; though we shall mention none but those in which he was immediately and personally concerned.

The Prince of Orange lost no time in apprising the States-General of his accession to the British throne. He assured them of his persevering endeavours to promote the well-being of his native country, which he was so far from abandoning, that he intended to retain his high offices in it. War with France was renewed early in 1689 by the States, supported by the house of Austria and some of the German princes; nor was it difficult for William to procure the concurrence of the English Parliament, when the object was the humiliation of France and her arbitrary sovereign. But the Commission for reforming church discipline threw him into difficulties with his new subjects. The high church party branded the King as an enemy to the hierarchy, because he was inclined to relieve the Dissenters from the oppressions of which they complained. The two Universities declared against all alterations. Dr. Jane, the most violent partisan in the convocation, was chosen prolocutor, and in a speech to the Bishop of London, as president, asserted that the English Liturgy needed no reform, and concluded with the declaration of the barons, “Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari.” The Bishop’s exhortation to charity and indulgence towards the Dissenters was so ill received, that it was necessary to prorogue the convocation, on the plea that the royal commission was invalid from not having been sealed. In the spring of 1689, James landed in Ireland with a French force, and was received by the Catholics with marks of strong attachment. Marshal Schomberg was sent to oppose him, but was able to effect little during the campaign of that year. William, in the mean time, had been successful in suppressing a Jacobite insurrection in Scotland, and embarked for Ireland with a reinforcement in the summer of 1690. He immediately marched against James, who was strongly posted on the river Boyne. Schomberg passed the river in person, and put himself at the head of a corps of French Protestants. Pointing to the enemy, he said, “Gentlemen, behold your persecutors!” With these words he advanced to the attack, but was killed by a random shot from the French regiments. The death of this general was near proving fatal to the English army; but William retrieved the fortune of the day, and totally dispersed the opposite force. In this engagement the Irish lost 1500 men, and the English about one-third of that number.

Disturbances again took place among the Jacobites in the Scotch Highlands. A simultaneous insurrection was planned in both kingdoms, while a descent from the French coast was to have divided the attention of the friends of government; but the defeat of the French fleet near Cape La Hogue, in 1692, frustrated this combined attempt, and relieved the nation from the dread of civil war. In 1691 the King had placed himself at the head of the Grand Alliance against France, of which he had been the prime mover; he was therefore absent on the continent during the dangers to which his new kingdom was exposed. His repeated losses in the first two campaigns rather impaired than enhanced his military renown. He resolved to seize the first opportunity of retrieving his honour by a spirited attempt to surprise Marshal Luxembourg, at Steenkirk, but was again defeated, after having fought with courage and perseverance against unequal numbers. In 1693 he was defeated at Landen by Luxembourg, notwithstanding his brave efforts to retrieve the fortune of the day. The victory was held by the allies to have been gained solely by superior numbers; and though the allies suffered severely, the enemy lost a greater number both of officers and men, and gained no solid advantage by the battle. William charged wherever the danger was greatest: his dress was penetrated by three musket balls. But in this, as in other battles, his arrangements were severely censured. When Luxembourg saw the nature of his position, immediately before the engagement, he is said to have exclaimed, “Now I believe Waldeck is really dead:” in allusion to that general’s acknowledged skill in choosing ground for an encampment. The campaign of 1694 was opened by William with superior forces; but the genius and skilful tactics of Luxembourg prevented the allies from availing themselves, in any considerable degree, of their advantages. The death of Queen Mary, which took place early in 1695, proved a severe calamity, both to the king and the nation. She had been a vigilant guardian of her husband’s interests, which were constantly exposed to hazard by the conflicts of party, and by the disadvantages under which he laboured as a foreigner. In 1696 a congress was opened at Ryswick, to negotiate a general peace; and William was so far cured of ambition as not to interpose any obstacles. In the following year the treaty was concluded.

The leading object of the English Parliament, when the war no longer pressed on its resources, was the reduction of the military establishment. In this all parties concurred: the friends of liberty, from jealousy of a standing army, as dangerous to the constitution; the friends of the excluded family, from personal dislike of its supplanter, and a desire to thwart him in his favourite pursuit. The King of Spain’s death was the last event of great importance in William’s reign. The powers of Europe had arranged plans to prevent the accumulation of the Spanish possessions in the houses of Bourbon and Austria; but the French King violated all his solemn pledges, by accepting the deceased monarch’s will in favour of his own grandson, the Duke of Anjou. In consequence of this breach of faith, preparations were made by England and Holland for a renewal of war with France; but a fall from his horse prevented William from further pursuing his military career, and the glory of reducing Louis XIV. within the bounds of his own kingdom was left to be earned by the generals of his successor. The King was nearly recovered from the lameness consequent on his fall, when fever supervened. While he lay sick, the Earl of Albemarle arrived from Holland, to confer with him privately on the state of continental affairs; but his information was coldly received, and the King said that he was approaching his end. In the evening he thanked his principal physician for his attention, and said, “I know that you and the other learned physicians have done all that your art can do for my relief; but all means are ineffectual, and I submit.” He died on the 8th of March, 1701–2, in the fifty-second year of his age and thirteenth of his reign.

The character of King William has been drawn with all the exaggeration of panegyric and obloquy by the opposing partisans in a cause, which is still the subject of controversy on general principles, although the personal interest of contending individuals and families has long been extinguished. William therefore can scarcely, even now, be viewed with the cool impartiality of mere history. His personal character was neither amiable nor interesting: but his native country owes him a lasting debt of gratitude, as the second founder of its liberty and independence; and his adopted country is bound to uphold his memory, as its champion and deliverer from civil and religious thraldom. In short, the attachment of the English nation to constitutional rights and liberal government may be measured by its adherence to the principles established at the Revolution of 1688, and its just estimate of that Sovereign and those statesmen who placed the liberties of Great Britain on a solid and lasting foundation.

[Histoire des Provinces Unies, Voltaire, Burnet, Hume, Smollett.]

[From West’s Picture of the Battle of the Boyne.]
]

GOETHE.

If the opinion of his contemporaries become the judgment of posterity, the name of Goethe is destined to occupy, in future ages, that pre-eminent station in the literary history of Germany which is now undisputedly held in their respective nations, by Shakspeare, Dante, and Cervantes. Until this judgment be pronounced by the final tribunal, we may characterize him as the happiest of great poets. He attained a length of years granted to few; and his long life was spent in successful literary labour, not imposed by necessity, but prompted by the suggestions of his own genius and love of art. Nature had endowed him with the much-prized gifts of bodily strength and personal beauty. He indulged freely in the pleasures of society; associated with his superiors in station as their equal; lived in ease and affluence; and, finally, in exception to the general rule, enjoyed, during his life,

“The estate that wits inherit after death.”

The founders of the new theory of poetics in Germany, the Schlegels, have characterized his genius as universal. Its productions, including posthumous writings, will occupy fifty-five volumes of works of imagination and science, and cannot be even named by us individually. A few of these works, which have occasioned volumes of criticism, we shall be constrained to designate in brief sentences, and we shall as briefly advert to the main incidents of the author’s life.

_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

GOETHE.

_From a Picture by George Dawe, Esq^r. R.A.
in the possession of Henry Dawe, Esq^r._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born of affluent parents, August 28, 1749, at Frankfort on the Main. He attended successively the universities of Leipzig and Strasburg; and, in 1771, took a doctor’s degree in jurisprudence; but from his early youth literature was his ruling passion. In his twenty-fourth year he had already acquired unexampled popularity by his original and daring tragedy of ‘Götz von Berlichingen,’ published in 1773. In 1774 he gained a European celebrity by the ‘Sorrows of Werter;’ and he had already rendered himself an object of admiration to the young, and of terror to the timid, by the publication of several pungent satirical writings, when his good genius guided to the vicinity of Frankfort the young Duke of Saxe Weimar, who was about to assume the government on coming of age. In accepting the friendship, and taking up his residence at the court of this prince, Goethe entered on an unvarying career of prosperity. For a few years the young Duke and his friend led a life of gaiety, of which there are many curious anecdotes current in Germany; but, during a joyous and somewhat wild life, the intellectual singularly prevailed over the sensual. Even during that course of dissipation, the most important of Goethe’s works were commenced, though none of them were published until after his return from Italy. That country he visited in 1786, and to the time which he spent in it he ever after recurred with delight. Though Shakspeare was the individual poet he most prized, and Greek the literature which he held up as the rule of all excellence, Italy was the land of his affections. He remained two winters in Rome. Here he cultivated the studies of archaeology and the fine arts, which he had begun to practise in his youth, but now abandoned for poetry and the study of nature.

To these pursuits, on his return to Germany, he applied as the chief business of his life; and the insignificance of the patron as a sovereign tended to render the poet more conspicuous, and to increase his power over the minds of the Germans. The Duke was a general in the Prussian service, and, as a minor power, followed the course of policy pursued by the head of his house, the Elector of Saxony. He could not indulge in ambition, and spent his small revenue more like a private nobleman than a sovereign prince. He was desirous to collect a library for the use of himself and the inhabitants of Weimar. He had mines on one portion of his small territory. With the other Dukes of Saxony he was jointly the possessor of a university, Jena. He wished to found a school of drawing; and the creation of a German theatre, and the collecting eminent men of all kinds at Weimar and Jena, were the especial objects of his ambition. In all these things Goethe was the right-hand to execute, if his, in fact, was not the mind to design. In the matters which most governments make their prime concern, such as finances, military affairs, and courts of justice, Goethe had certainly no inclination to take any part; he was what, in France, would be called a minister of public instruction. Scarcely was he settled in his new office when the French Revolution broke out. This led to one famous exception to the life he was pursuing. He has recorded it in the volume of his ‘Memoirs,’ relating his participation in the too famous campaign of 1792, when he, as a non-combatant, accompanied the Duke of Saxe Weimar, who served under the Duke of Brunswick in his famous march which did _not_ reach to Paris. The early retirement of Prussia from the league against France restored peace to the North of Germany, and Goethe was at liberty to return to his favourite pursuits. In the prosecution of these he had the happiness soon to connect himself with Schiller, a man ten years younger than himself, of a genius totally opposite to his own, and therefore perhaps best adapted to act in concert with him.

Goethe has, with delightful frankness, related how, exceedingly disliking the ‘Robbers,’ Schiller’s first, worst, and most famous play, and feeling a strong aversion towards the Kantian philosophy, to which Schiller was attached, he had conceived an antipathy towards the offending poet, whom he resolutely shunned. But having once met, the passionate zeal of Schiller in pursuit of their common objects was irresistible. Dislike subsided into tolerance, and was at last converted into warm admiration and love. Memorable consequences followed from their union, and their literary correspondence remains an instructive example of what may be effected by the collision of powerful minds of opposite character. Schiller died in 1804. During the time allotted to their joint exertions, Goethe produced many of his greatest works, and Schiller all the best of his. During the same period, Goethe pursued his philosophical studies with the eminent men who then filled professors’ chairs at Jena. The metaphysical systems of Fichte, and afterwards of Schelling, which succeeded that of Kant, met with some favour in his eyes. At least, though he kept aloof from the controversies of the day, he laboured to connect with philosophical speculations his own particular studies in various branches of natural history and science.

It was after Schiller’s death, and when Goethe was approaching his sixtieth year, that the storm of war unexpectedly burst upon Weimar and Jena. He did not leave Weimar; but aware of the peril to which he with every one was exposed, on the very day of the battle of Jena, the 14th of October, 1806, he married a lady with whom he had lived for many years, and at the same time legitimated his only child, a son. During the short period of extreme degradation into which Prussia and Saxony sunk, from 1806 till the fall of Bonaparte in 1813, he withdrew, as much as possible, from political life; he would not suffer newspapers to be brought him, or politics to be discussed in his presence, but fled to the arts and sciences as an asylum against the miserable realities of life. Such had always been his practice. He has said of himself that he never had a disease of the mind which he did not cure by turning it into a poem. In his early youth, having lost a mistress through foolish petulance of temper, he, as a penance, made his own folly the subject of a comedy. And, in after life, while Europe was convulsed, he was absorbed in studies independent of the incidents of the day. Thus varying his pursuits, he kept on his serene course with no other interruptions than such as inevitably befall those who attain old age. It was his lot to survive the associates of his youth. In 1827, he lost his early friend, from whom he had never been estranged, the Grand Duke of Weimar. In 1830, he met with a severer privation, in the death of his son at Rome. It was feared that this calamity would prove fatal to Goethe, whose strength was sensibly declining; but he survived the blow, and enjoyed the best consolation which could be afforded to him in the exemplary care of his amiable and gifted daughter-in-law, and in his two young grand-children, to whom he was tenderly attached. His last years were spent in cheerful retirement. He possessed an elegant and spacious house in Weimar, but he also had a cottage in the park, where he dwelt alone, receiving his friends _tête-à-tête_; and, on particular occasions, going into the town to entertain company. He retained his faculties to the last, and made a very precise disposition of his property. His extensive collections in natural history and art were directed to be preserved as a museum for twenty years. These were among the objects of his latest solicitude. He died March 24, 1832, in the eighty-third year of his age.

Goethe’s figure was commanding, and his countenance severely handsome. He appears to have acquired a great ascendency over his fellow-students at the universities, and to have kept the professors in awe. In after life he was reproached by Bürger and others with haughtiness, and was accused of making his inferiors in station and in genius too sensible of their inferiority; but his powers of captivation were irresistible when he pleased to exert them. His social talents were of the highest order. Such was Goethe for his own generation and country. To posterity he will live chiefly as a poet. Of his most remarkable works we will now speak, not chronologically, but according to the classes which are recognised by systematic writers.

In epic poetry, his pretensions will be derided by those who adhere to the theory of M. Bossu, adopted by Pope. According to this, the common opinion, the ‘Epos’ requires supernatural machinery, illustrious actors, and heroic incident. The German critics, on the contrary, maintain that the essential character of the Homeric poetry lies in the epic style, not in the subject of the narrative; a style analogous to that of Herodotus, whom they place at the head of the epic historians, and to be found in a very large proportion of our own ancient ballads, such as relate to Robin Hood, Chevy Chase, &c. Goethe on this idea began a continuation of the Iliad in his ‘Achilleis,’ and he threw the graces of his own style over the old epic fable of ‘Reynard the Fox.’ But it was in ‘Herman and Dorothea’ that he displayed all his powers: this is both a patriotic and domestic tale; the characters in humble life; the incident, a flight over the Rhine on the invasion of the French. It abounds in maxims of moral wisdom, and in pathos; but it is too national to bear translating.

It is as a lyric poet that Goethe is popular in the fullest sense of the word, and may challenge comparison with the greatest masters of all ages. In the song, he abounds in master-pieces, passionate and gay. His elegy has sometimes the erotic character of Propertius, (as in the famous ‘Roman Elegies,’) and sometimes emulates the refinement and purity of Petrarch: his ballads are as wild and tender as any that Spain or Scotland have produced. His very numerous epigrams bear more resemblance to the Greek Anthology than to the pointed style of the Latin writers. Besides these he has produced a number of allegorical and enigmatical poems on art and philosophy, which cannot be placed under any known class.

Goethe’s dramatic works are about twenty in number. There is this peculiarity in his career as a dramatic poet, that though the drama is essentially the most popular branch of poetry, he never wrote for the people; his plays are all experiments, and no two resemble each other. He seems to have been unaffectedly indifferent to their reception on the stage. His first juvenile play, ‘Götz von Berlichingen,’ was in prose, and unlike any thing that had appeared on the German boards. It exhibited, in a strong light, the manners of the Germans at a romantic period when the petty barons and knights were a sort of privileged freebooters, sometimes generously resisting the oppressions of the emperor and the higher nobility, and sometimes plundering the citizens of the free towns. The style was in harmony with the subject, daring in its originality, and all but licentious in its freedom. By audiences accustomed only to pedantic imitations of the French, it was received with tumultuous applause; but the admiration of the more cultivated classes was given to the ‘Iphigenia in Tauris,’ an echo, as Schlegel expresses it, of the Greek, yet neither a translation nor a copy. Christian purity of morals harmoniously blending with pagan incident, not a line disturbs the exquisite symmetry of this the most generally admired of Goethe’s dramas.

Not less perfect in style is the anomalous ‘Torquato Tasso,’ which deserves especial notice, though not as a play adapted to the stage: it is rather a didactic poem in dialogue than a drama. Tasso and the warrior statesman Antonio exhibit in contrast the poetical character and that of the man of the world. It could secure the attention of an audience only when performed on the Duke’s private theatre, where the members of the Ducal family usually represented the princes of the House of Este, and Goethe himself acted the part of Tasso; and when it was performed as a sort of funeral obsequies on the death of the poet himself.

‘Egmont’ is an historical play in prose, founded on the _real_ tragedy perpetrated by the bloody Alba, in Belgium. Its most remarkable feature is the unheroic character of Egmont himself. While William of Orange is the common stage hero, patriotic and wise, destined to save his country, Count Egmont is the warm-hearted, sensual, and munificent nobleman, a patriot not from reflection but impulse, whose love for the humble Clara is much more prominent than his patriotism, and who is therefore doomed to perish. The pathos lies in the dissonance between the man and the necessities of his position. Goethe, in drawing such a character, probably thought of Hamlet, of whom he makes an analogous remark.

We pass over a number of dramas, all original, all experiments in furtherance of his own studies, and name only ‘Faustus,’ the unique, the undefinable. Begun in youth, continued at intervals during a long life, and finally left unfinished, it has been called a grotesque tragedy. Who knows not the popular legend of the learned magician who sold his soul to the devil? This coarse tale of vulgar superstition is here used as a vehicle into which the adventurous poet has cast all that

“Perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.”

The erring philosopher is attended on the wrong road by a laughing devil, Mephistophiles, who leads him through scenes of the wildest frolic and the most appalling wretchedness. All that is most deplorable, most frightful in human life, is here displayed with the running comment of the dæmon whom Omnipotence does not confound; and the most awful problems of divinity and moral philosophy are treated with pathetic sadness by the wretched victim, or with infernal satire by his master-slave. These repulsive elements are nevertheless combined with the soothing, not to say sanctifying, influence of a Margaret, a confiding, loving, innocent woman, whose very destruction works on the heart like an act of grace, and prepares the spectator for the promised salvation of her lover.

In the romance, as in the drama, Goethe commenced a career which he immediately abandoned. His Werter breathes a spirit of dissatisfaction with the world and its institutions. But by writing that book, which infected the rising generation with the same spirit, he cured himself of the disease; and he then became the declared foe of the sentimental, which he attacked in his romantic comedy, ‘The Triumph of Sentimentality.’

In later years, when he was become the meditating philosopher, and, at the same time, indulged in more cheerful contemplations of life, he produced ‘Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,’ intended to elucidate problems of psychology. The stage being the symbol of life, his hero is thrown among players, and both the real drama, and the drama of life are analyzed, with perpetual illustrations of the one by the other. After an interval of some years, Goethe, in a second part, exhibited his pupil advanced as on a sort of journey. Conscious that his problem, like that of Faustus, was insoluble, he has not dared to exhibit either Faustus in heaven or Wilhelm as a master. Like the Faustus, Wilhelm Meister is still ‘caviare to the million.’

In a third romance, ‘Elective Affinities,’ Goethe treats subtilely of that passion to which Lord Bacon says “the stage is more beholden than the life of man.” As the chemical title suggests, he shows how the felicity of a married couple is marred by the intrusion of other minds, with which each consort has more affinity than with the companion previously chosen.

When ‘Wilhelm Meister’ first appeared, the narrative of Wilhelm’s childhood was related with such spirit and air of truth, that it was believed to be the author’s own personal history; and, in truth, the resemblance between the feigned and real history was soon made manifest by the appearance of Goethe’s own memoirs, under the puzzling title ‘From my Life: Fiction and Truth;’ so entitled, to allow for the unconscious illusions to which we are exposed, when, in advanced life, we try to recollect the occurrences of childhood, and unintentionally confound memory with imagination. These memoirs, including his foreign travels, amount already to nine volumes, and others are to follow; but these earlier volumes treat solely of the author’s intellectual life. Concerning much that men are inquisitive about, he says nothing. Not a hint is dropped concerning the fortune of his father, or the amount of profit which he himself derived from his writings. His being ennobled was an incident which he thought too unimportant for notice; and of honours and distinctions conferred on him he seldom condescends to speak.

Among the studies which partook of Goethe’s attention were antiquities and the fine arts. This led to the composition of a masterpiece, his critical characteristic of Winkelman, and an account of Hackert, the landscape painter. The same course of study led him to translate that delightful work, the auto-biography of Benvenuto Cellini, which was first made known to the European public by the Earl of Bristol, late Bishop of Derry, and which is now in the hands of all lovers of the fine arts. On art, in its various branches, Goethe’s prose writings are very numerous. As a critic also he has written much, and his criticism is remarkably indulgent and generous.

Such being the variety of works in which he has recorded his speculations on man, his powers, his actions, and his productions, it will be naturally asked, what were the main features of his philosophy, and to what results did they lead on those great points which unhappily disunite mankind, religion and politics?

Hume has well designated the great varieties of intellect and moral character by the significant scholastic names of the Platonist, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. According to this classification, it may be said that Goethe was too devotedly attached to the study of nature and actual life to be a Platonist; he loved contemplation too intensely, and was too indolent and self-indulgent to be a stoic; he was too intellectual to be a gross sensualist, or, in the worst sense, an Epicurean; and he had too much imagination to be able to tolerate the modern rational philosophy, a mere system of negatives. In so far, therefore, he was an enemy of vulgar scepticism; yet, blended with the refinement which the poetic mind presupposes, he had a large portion of scepticism and Epicureanism in his nature. Towards the positive religion which he found established in his own country he manifested respect, though he never made any distinct profession of faith upon doctrinal matters; he conformed however to the Lutheran church. On two occasions only do we recollect the expression of any strong feeling as to religion. He early betrayed great contempt towards the German Rationalists, whom he rather despised for their shallowness than reproached with being mischievous. His love of Rome by no means reconciled him to the Church of Rome, against which he would inveigh with a warmth unusual in him. He maintained that Catholic superstition had deeply injured the poetic character of Calderon, and considered the Protestantism of Shakspeare as a happy accident in the life of that incomparable man. It appears from his memoirs, that Judaism and Christianity had occupied his mind very seriously from his childhood. He delighted in portraying the Christian enthusiast in a tone of kindred enthusiasm, as in his ‘Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,’ of which the original was a Moravian lady, his friend; and it was only in incidental bursts of sarcasm, especially in his gayer poems, that he alarmed the timid and the scrupulous. In spite of occasional ebullitions of spleen or rash speculation, he was habitually hostile towards the French anti-religious party. He makes his devil in Faustus describe himself as the “spirit that always denies,” in the same way that Alfieri scornfully terms Voltaire “Disinventor ed Inventor di nulla.” It was this negative, this merely destructive character, to which Goethe was in all things most resolutely opposed.

This sentiment extended to politics. Long before the words “Conservative” and “Destructive” were applied to English parties, Goethe had made frequent use of them. It was the tendency of his mind to look with indulgence, if not with favour, on whatever he found in the exercise of productive power. _Laudo manentem_ might have been his motto. He saw in the French revolutionists, as in their philosophers, the spirit of destruction, and he clung with affection to institutions under which so many fine arts and rapidly advancing sciences had flourished. With reference to public life, Goethe has been severely reproached on two grounds. He has been accused of wanting patriotism; but before a passion can be generated, an object must be presented. What country had Goethe to love in his youth? A walled city, which he could run round before breakfast. The first great political event which he witnessed, was the Seven years’ war. His native city was in the possession of the French, whom one party considered as allies and the other as enemies. Goethe’s father adhered to Frederick, his grandfather was attached to the Imperial House: at the best he could love but half a nation. Hence Wieland said, “I have no fellow-countrymen; I have only _sprach-genossen_,”—speech-mates. Thus German patriotism could be but a sort of corporation spirit; like the affections of a liveryman, confined to the members of his company. It was not till the close of the last war that the common oppression exercised by Bonaparte generated a common hatred towards France, and with it something like patriotism on a great scale. Yet so anomalous is the condition of Germany, that at this moment this sentiment, or the loud avowal of it, is looked on as akin to disloyalty; and, at the universities, students are forbidden to frequent clubs, or to assume denominations, which have a reference to one general national character. There are few appeals among Goethe’s writings to national feeling; and, in truth, his studies led him to be, in sentiment, the fellow-citizen of the great poets and artists of all nations, the contemporary of the great men of all ages. The other reproach is, that, being admitted to familiarity with princes, he lost his love of the people, as such. Now, it must be owned, that in this respect he felt pretty much as Milton did, in whom attachment to the aristocracy of talent was a marked quality. Of the people, as such, he seems to have thought lowly; his affections were exercised on the select few,—the nobles of nature, not of the herald’s office. That he had no vulgar reverence for persons in authority, or for the privileged orders, is amply proved by all he wrote. It may finally be remarked, as the most characteristic feature of his moral speculations, that he had habitually contemplated mankind, not as a moralist, but as a naturalist. There are some thinkers who never consider men but as objects of praise or blame; others, who only study men with a view of making them different from what they are. Such are reformers, the leaders of institutions, philanthropists, who think only in order to act. To neither of these classes did Goethe belong. He took men as he found them; he was content to take society as he found it, with all its complex institutions. He was disposed to make the best of what he found, but seemed reluctant to waste his powers in the vain attempt to make men materially different from what they were before; hence arose an inert, or indolent acquiescence in what he found existing.

He had early in life laboured to catch a new point of view from which nature might be contemplated on all sides; or a law in conformity with which the manifold operations of nature might be seen as if they were one. He first made this idea known in his ‘Metamorphosis of Plants.’ His botanical studies were continued for many years of his life. He afterwards busied himself with the minute and experimental study of chromatics. He edited a journal of science, and wrote more or less on mineralogy, geology, comparative anatomy, optics, and meteorology. A metaphysical spirit runs through all these writings, so alien from the mode of study pursued in other countries, that we do not recollect any notice of them by any English writer, except Professor Lindley, in his ‘Introduction to Botany,’ who confines his remarks to Goethe’s botanical works. The Professor represents Goethe as having revived a nearly-forgotten doctrine, first promulgated by Linnæus. But, for thirty years after the first appearance of the ‘Metamorphosis,’ it produced little or no effect even in Germany. Now, indeed, “it has come to be considered the basis of all scientific knowledge of vegetable structure.” Whether, in the revolutions of opinion, the bold polemical writings of Goethe against the Newtonian theory of light and colours will ever be looked upon as more than the extravagances of a great genius wandering out of his own sphere, time will show. For the present this is the view taken of the great poet’s scientific writings, both by Italians and Frenchmen. But, whatever dreams he may have mixed up with his investigations, Goethe was no mere dreamer: to the last hour of his life, he made it his business to inform himself concerning the progress of the sciences in foreign countries. All new books were brought to him, even to the end of his life; he composed elaborate poems at the age of seventy; and when beyond sixty years of age, entered with zeal upon the study of Oriental poetry, to apply the spirit of which, to Western notions and feelings, he composed his ‘West-Eastern Divan.’ In this the infinite variety of his studies and pursuits lay that ‘all-sidedness’ (if we may be pardoned for adopting such a word from the German) for which he was so remarkable. From the same quality proceeded that unusual toleration of novelties which he could reconcile to the love of what is established. He would not permit a clever farce to be acted on the stage, when he was manager, written in derision of Gall’s cranioscopy. Instead of joining in the ridicule of animal magnetism, he would fairly investigate its pretensions. When a book on the Clouds was published by Howard, in England, Goethe instantly wrote an account of it, inventing appropriate German words to designate the forms pointed out. In his hunger and thirst after knowledge, he was omnivorous. This was the ruling passion strong in death. Only the evening before his decease he received some new books from Paris, by which he was greatly excited. It is said that a volume, by Salvandy, was grasped in his hand when he died; and his last words were singularly appropriate to his temper, and might be received by his admirers as almost prophetic. He ordered the window-shutters to be opened, exclaiming, “More light! More light!”

_Engraved by H. Meyer._

CORREGGIO.

_After a head by himself in the Cathedral of Parma._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

CORREGGIO.

The beginning of the sixteenth century, a period remarkable for the general developement of Italian genius, was peculiarly distinguished by the appearance of four great painters, who attained a perfection, since unequalled, in different departments of their art. Form and sublimity of conception were the attributes of M. Angelo; expression and propriety of invention were among the prominent excellencies of Raffaelle; colour was the strength of Titian; and harmony, founded on light and shade, chiefly characterised Correggio. Antonio Allegri was born in 1493, or 1494; the name of his birth-place superseded that of his family, and he has been celebrated under the name of Antonio da Correggio. He was the son of Pellegrino Allegri, a merchant of some property, and his lineage, which was long doubtful, has been traced with sufficient accuracy by his latest biographer, Pungileoni. The family name was sometimes Latinised to Lætus and de Allegris, and again Italianised to Lieto, which accounts for the various inscriptions on Correggio’s pictures. Till the researches of the author above-named, who supplied, as far as possible, what Mengs had left imperfect, the most contradictory accounts were repeated respecting the family, the fortunes, and even the precise time of the birth and death of Correggio. The story of his extreme poverty, in particular, has been often copied without examination from Vasari; but, as Fuseli observes, “considering the public works in which Correggio was employed, the prices he was paid for them, compared with the metropolitan prices of Raffaelle himself, it is probable that his circumstances kept pace with his fame, and that he was nearer to opulence than want.” It is still doubtful under whom he studied; but, as his uncle Lorenzo was a painter, it is probable that Antonio learned the rudiments of art from him; and a single specimen extant of one Antonio Bartolotto, a contemporary master, is so much in the style of Correggio, as to justify the conjecture that the example, at least, of the elder painter was not without its effect. The residence of Andrea Mantegna at no greater distance than Mantua, has perhaps led some writers to rank Correggio among his scholars; but his death, when Correggio was only thirteen years of age, renders the supposition improbable. That Correggio studied the works of Mantegna is most certain: his fondness for foreshortening was probably derived from that master; nor should it be forgotten, that the school of Andrea was celebrated after his death, and was still continued by his sons Francesco and Lodovico. Vedriani mentions another master, Francesco Bianchi, of Modena, but with as little certainty as the rest. The peculiar _impasto_[3] which distinguishes the pictures of Correggio, a mode of execution which he carried to sudden perfection, and which has never since been surpassed, is less to be recognised, as Lanzi supposes, in the manner of Mantegna than in that of Lionardo da Vinci; and even the chiaro-scuro of Correggio, however enlarged and improved, is manifestly derived from the same source. The art of foreshortening on ceilings, called by the Italians “_il di sotto in su_,” was also practised in the Mantuan school before Correggio; whether in imitation of the celebrated ceiling of Melozzo da Forlì, the first known effort of the kind, painted in Rome in 1472, it is impossible to say.

Footnote 3:

_Impasto_ is literally an impasting or thick application of the
colour. The peculiarity of Correggio’s method is, that this impasto is
solid without roughness of surface, and blended without heaviness or
opacity. Sir Joshua Reynolds says, “His (Correggio’s) colour and mode
of finishing approach nearer to perfection than those of any other
painter.”

Among the earliest works of Correggio, Lanzi mentions some frescoes at Mantua, supposed to have been done while the artist was in the school of the sons of Mantegna; but a very feeble tradition is the only ground for this supposition. The same author speaks of more than one Madonna in the Ducal Gallery at Modena, as belonging to this early period. A considerable picture, painted by Correggio when eighteen years of age, and the undoubted work of his hand, is preserved at Dresden; it was originally done for the church of S. Niccola, at Carpi. It represents the Virgin seated on a throne, surrounded by various saints; the inscription is, “Antonio de Allegris.” The colouring of this picture, as Mengs observes, is in a style between that of Perugino and Lionardo da Vinci. The head of the Virgin, he adds, greatly resembles the manner of Lionardo; the folds of the drapery appear as if done by Mantegna, that is, in the mode of encircling the limbs, but they are less hard, and are in a larger style. Two pictures painted about the same time are mentioned, and somewhat differently described, by Tiraboschi and Lanzi. One was an altar-piece for a church at Correggio, representing various saints; it was blackened and injured by a varnish, and removed from the altar as useless, a copy being substituted in its place. The original has been since cleaned, and according to Lanzi is recognised as an early work of the master. The other was an altar-piece, in three compartments, the centre subject of which was a repose of the Holy Family. The two wings, representing two saints, are lost; but the Holy Family is probably the picture now in the Florence Gallery, attributed by Barry to Correggio, and only doubtful, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, from its dryness of manner, as compared with the later works of the master. A picture belonging to the Duke of Sutherland, and formerly in the Orleans gallery, representing a muleteer and other figures, is supposed by some to be an early work of Correggio, but it has none of the hardness of the Carpi altar-piece to warrant this conjecture.

In the picture in the Florence Gallery of the Madonna adoring her Infant, and in the _Noli me tangere_ of the Escurial, to which Lanzi adds a Marsyas, in the possession of the Marchese Litta of Milan, the artist already approached that excellent style, which has been designated by the epithet ‘Correggiesque.’ The Marsyas is mentioned in the catalogue of Charles I. The two small pictures of the marriage of St. Catherine, one in the gallery at St. Petersburgh, the other in that of Naples, belong to the same period. In that preserved at St. Petersburgh, the name of Allegri is translated to Lieto; the date is 1517. The larger, and probably later picture of this subject, with the addition of the figure of St. Sebastian, is in the Louvre. The celebrated picture of S. Giorgio, now at Dresden, has been considered to belong to this period. It was painted for the confraternity of S. Pietro Martire, at Modena. This work, containing many figures, and among the rest some children, in the peculiarly graceful manner of Correggio, which were afterwards the admiration of Guido, has all the excellencies of the master, except that magic of chiaro-scuro for which he was subsequently so celebrated. It may be remarked, that the sweetness of expression in Correggio’s children and women was probably derived from Lionardo da Vinci, as certain peculiarities of resemblance are to be traced between them.

In 1519, Correggio married Girolama Merlini, from whom Pungileoni supposes the Madonna, called the Zingarella, to have been painted. She was a lady of birth and condition, and brought him a sufficient dowry; and this is an additional proof of the incorrectness of the assertions of Vasari, respecting the extreme poverty of the painter. It must be remembered too, that from this time, when he was about twenty-five years of age, his employment constantly increased; and from the nature of the works he was engaged in, it is quite evident that he was reckoned the best painter in Lombardy.

About this period Correggio began his career in Parma, and his first paintings there were the admirable frescoes in the monastery of S. Paolo. A particular and most satisfactory account of these has been published by Padre Affò. The reputation which this performance gained him, induced the monks of S. Giovanni to employ him in the decoration of their church. The works executed by Correggio on this occasion are in his grandest manner: the Cupola represents the ascension of Christ; the figures of the Apostles, of gigantic size, occupy the lower part. The subject in the Tribune was the Coronation of the Virgin. It was so esteemed, that when that part of the church was demolished to enlarge the choir, the design was repainted for the new Tribune by Cesare Aretusi, according to some, from a copy by Annibale Caracci. The principal group of the original was fortunately saved, and is still to be seen in the Library at Parma; its grandeur of invention and treatment classes it among the highest productions of the art. Round the central group were some figures and heads of angels. The fragments of these were dispersed when the Tribune was destroyed; and the portions of frescoes by Correggio, which exist in various collections, are probably a part of these ruins.

Those who contend that Correggio had visited Rome, suppose that he may have caught some inspiration from the works of M. Angelo; and Ratti imagines, that the Last Judgment was seen and imitated by him; but this work was not begun till after the death of Correggio. Lanzi smiles at the mistake of the author just mentioned; but if Correggio visited Rome, which, on the whole, does not appear probable, he may have seen the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, painted in 1511; and this is more likely to have inspired him than the Last Judgment, even supposing that he could have seen both. There is, however, a remarkable difference between the treatment of the cupolas of Correggio and that of the ceiling of M. Angelo (even setting aside the well-known distinctions of their taste in design), and the execution in both the examples alluded to, is exactly analogous to the styles of the two painters. M. Angelo, though a master of foreshortening, has not supposed his figures to be _above_ the eye, but _opposite_ to it, so that they are still intelligible when seen in any other situation, as for instance, when copied in an engraving. Correggio, on the other hand, always aimed at giving the perspective appearance of figures above the eye; and the violent foreshortening, which was the consequence, renders his figures unintelligible, because improbable, except in their original situation, where their effect, aided by his light and shade, must undoubtedly have been astonishing. Nevertheless, if the end and perfection of the art is to meet the impressions of nature by corresponding representation, and to embody the remembered appearances of things, it is quite evident that foreshortening on ceilings, as it necessarily presents the human figure, and indeed all objects, in a mode absolutely foreign to our experience, must in the same degree depart from the legitimate end of imitation, and can only excite wonder at the artist’s skill. The difference of treatment alluded to belongs in other respects to two distinct views of the art. M. Angelo aimed at the real and permanent qualities of whatever he represented; a taste derived from his knowledge of sculpture, and certainly, as producing a most intelligible style of art, more nearly allied to the principles of the Greeks. Correggio, on the contrary, loved all the attributes of appearance and illusion; his skill in the management of aërial perspective, and the magic of his chiaro-scuro, by which he secured space, relief, and gradation, are qualities less allied to the reality and perspicuity which characterise the grandest style of the formative arts in general, (as opposed to the vagueness of poetical description,) than to the specific excellencies which distinguish painting from sculpture. Even his colour, true as it is, is still subordinate to his light and shade. It is with reference to the uniting and blending principle of light and shade, which presents differences of degree, but not of kind, that the term harmony has been so often employed as describing the characteristic style of Correggio, and the expression is quite distinct from that harmony (the commoner acceptation) which is often applied to the balance and opposition of colours. In the same church of S. Giovanni were the pictures of the Deposition from the Cross, and the Martyrdom of S. Placido and Sta. Flavia, which were taken to Paris; and on the outside of a chapel are the remains of a grand figure of St. John, in fresco. The well-known Madonna della Scodella, and a fresco of a Virgin and Child, in the Capella della Scala, were perhaps painted about this time. The frescoes of S. Giovanni occupied Correggio from 1520 to 1523. The celebrated picture of the Nativity, generally called the Notte, now at Dresden, appears to have been begun in the interval, as the agreement respecting it bears the date of 1522; but it was not placed in the church of S. Prospero at Reggio, for which it was destined, till 1530. The Notte is the picture most frequently referred to as a specimen of that harmony, founded on the skilful management of light and shade, in which Correggio is unrivalled. The source of the picturesque in this work, the emanation of the light from the infant Christ, is at the same time sublime as an invention. “The idea,” as Opie observes, “has been seized with such avidity, and produced so many imitations, that no one is accused of plagiarism. The real author is forgotten, and the public, accustomed to consider this incident as naturally a part of the subject, have long ceased to inquire when, or by whom, it was invented.” Even the angels in the upper part of the picture still receive light from the infant, and the attention is thus constantly directed to the principal subject. The same end is very happily answered by a shepherdess, shading her eyes with her hand, as if dazzled by the light: this figure is particularly mentioned by Vasari. It is remarkable that the same feeling for gradation in the mutable effects of light and shade, displays itself in this composition in the rapid perspective diminution of the figures. The shepherd in the foreground is quite gigantic, compared with the more distant figures; and the effect of proximity and distance, and the space of the picture, is greatly aided by this contrivance. The same principle is observable in Correggio’s cupolas.