appeared), some of my German friends blamed me for not putting in the plea of age for the author. I have done this most effectually now; and the pleas of sickness and sorrow might also be supported if necessary. Indeed, after reading the above extracts, the wonder is, not that symptoms of decaying power are here and there discernible, but that the poem, under such circumstances, should have been completed at all; and we may well say of Faust and its author (as Longinus said of Homer and the Odyssey), though the work of an old man, it is yet the work of an old Goethe.

Another set have censured me for my sceptical and superficial notions of the plot, which is said to hide a host of meanings. My only answer is that I cannot see them and have never yet met with any one who could, though I studied the poem under circumstances peculiarly favourable to the discovery. None of the German critics, to the best of my information, have yet dived deeper than myself; the boldest merely venture to suggest that Faust's salvation or justification, without any apparent merit of his own, is in strict accordance with the purest doctrines of our faith; and that, though he suffered himself to be seduced into wickedness, his mind and heart remained untainted by the Mephistophelian philosophy to the last. This view of the poetical justice of the catastrophe was eloquently expounded by Dr. Franz Horn in a long conversation which I had with him on this subject in August last (1833).

Tasso tells us in a letter to a friend on the Jerusalem Delivered, that when he was beyond the middle of the poem and began to consider the strictness of the times, he began also to think of an allegory, as a thing which ought to smooth every difficulty. The allegory which he thought of, and subsequently gave out as the key to the more recondite beauties of the poem, was this:-"The Christian army, composed of various princes and soldiers, signified the natural man, consisting of soul and body, and of a soul not simple, but divided into many and various faculties. Jerusalem, a strong city, placed on a rough and mountainous tract, and to which the chief aim of the army

is directed, figures civil or public felicity, while Godfrey himself represents the ruling intellect; Rinaldo, Tancred, and others being the inferior powers of the mind, and the soldiers, or bulk of the army, the body. The conquest, again, with which the poem concludes, is an emblem of political felicity; but as this ought not to be the final object of a Christian man, the poem ends with the adoration of Godfrey, it being thereby signified that the intellect, fatigued in public exertions, should finally seek repose in prayer, and in contemplating the blessings of a happy and eternal life."

What Tasso did for the Jerusalem Delivered in this matter, I can conceive it quite possible the commentators may do for the Second Part of Faust; but that they will thereby greatly elevate its poetical character, connect it with the First Part, or prove it an apt solution of the problem, I doubt. As the Prologue in Heaven was not added until 1807 or 1808, my own opinion is that Goethe's plot had no more original existence than Tasso's allegory. Mr. Coleridge is reported to have expressed himself as follows:

"The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge, caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for pure ends, would never produce such a misology, but only a love of it for base and unworthy purposes. There is neither causation nor progression in the Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the incredulus odi is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are beautiful. But there is no whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magiclantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat. The German is very pure and fine."-Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 114.

APPENDIX, No. II.

BEING AN HISTORICAL NOTICE OF THE STORY OF FAUST, AND THE VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS IN ART AND LITERATURE THAT HAVE GROWN OUT OF IT.

DURING a late visit to Germany (1833), it was one of my amusements to inquire at all the libraries to which I could procure access, for books relating to Faust or Faustus; and though the number was far from trifling, it cost me no great labour to acquire a general notion of the contents of most of them, and write down what bore upon my own peculiar study or seemed any way striking or new. I had made considerable progress in the arrangement of the materials thus collected, when Brockhaus' Historisches Taschenbuch (Historical Pocket-book) for 1834 arrived, containing an article entitled Die Sage vom Doctor Faust, by Dr. Stieglitz (already known for an instructive article on the same subject *), in which, after a brief history of the hero himself, all the compositions of every sort, that (to the writer's knowledge) have grown out of the fable, are enumerated. The narrow limits of a Taschenbuch restricted Dr. Stieglitz to giving little more than a bare list of title-pages; but this list has proved so extremely useful in indicating where almost every sort of informa tion was to be had, that I think it right to avow beforehand the extent of obligation he has laid me under.

Before beginning the life of Faust, some of his biogra

*The article in F. Schlegel's Deutsches Museum referred to in my First Edition.

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phers have thought it necessary to determine whether he ever lived at all; and, were we to adopt the mode of reasoning so admirably illustrated in Dr. Whately's Historic Doubts concerning the existence of Napoleon, we must unavoidably believe that there never was such a person, but that the fable was invented by the monks to revenge themselves on the memory of Faust, the printer, who had destroyed their trade in manuscripts. But if we are content with that sort of evidence by which the vast majority of historical incidents are established, we shall arrive at a much more satisfactory conclusion concerning him. Melancthon knew him personally; † and he is spoken of by other immediate cotemporaries.

Johann (or John) Faust (or Faustus), then, according, to the better opinion, was born at Kundlingen, within the territory of Wurtemberg, of parents low of stock (as Marlow expresses it), some time towards the end of the fifteenth century. He must not be confounded with Faust (or Fust) the printer, who flourished more than half a century before. He was bred a physician, and graduated in medicine, but soon betook himself to magic. In this pursuit he is said to have spent a rich inheritance left him by an uncle. The study of magic naturally led to an acquaintance with the devil, with whom he entered into a compact substantially the same as that cited (ante, p. 182) in a note. In company with an imp or spirit, given him by his friend Satan and attending on him in the guise of a black dog, he ranged freely through the world, playing off many singular pranks upon the way. No doubt, however, he enjoys the credit of a great deal of mischief he had no hand in, just as wits like Jekyl or Sheridan have all the

*It has been contended that the very name is an invented one; the notion being that it was given to a magician-ob faustum in rebus peractu difficillimis successum.

So says the Conversations-Lexicon ; but Dr. Stieglitz is silent on the point.

Anhalt and Brandenburg also claim the honour of his birth. § A distinct title is assigned to each in the ConversationsLexicon. The printer is supposed to have died of the plague in 1466.