"both her fine eyes" we need not say, "filled with tears." Such is the scene; and thus it is wound up. "Theresa spoke not; she laid her hand upon her new friend's hands; he kissed it with emotion; she dried her tears and rose. 'Let us return, and see that all is right,' said she.". All right! Chevalier, as tu donné au cochon à manger?

Aurelia. This lady is not, like Theresa, a "German maiden," for indeed she is not a maiden at all: neither has she a "German tree" to stand under: but, for all that, she is quite as well disposed to tell her German story in a German way. Let her speak for herself: "My friend," says she to "our friend,' it is but a few minutes since we saw each other first, and already you are going to become my confidant." (P. 78.) Not as though he has offered to be so: nothing of the sort: but she is resolved he shall be so. What determinate kindness! What resolute liberality! For this time however her liberality is balked: for in bounces the philanthropic Philina; interrupts Aurelia; and, upon that lady's leaving the room, tells her story for her in the following elegant (though not quite accurate) terms: "Pretty things are going on here, just of the sort I like. Aurelia has had a hapless love-affair with some nobleman, who seems to be a very stately person, one that I myself could like to see some day. He has left her a memorial, or I much mistake. There is a boy running over the house, of three years old or thereby; (i. e. thereabouts;) the papa must be a very pretty fellow. Commonly I cannot suffer children, but this brat quite delights me. I have calculated Aurelia's business. The death of her husband, the new acquaintance, the child's age, all things agree. But now her spark has gone his ways; for a year she has not seen a glimpse of him. She is beside herself and inconsolable for this. The more fool she!" From Aurelia she passes to Aurelia's brother: and, though it is digressing a little, we must communicate her little memoir of this gentleman's passions;" for naturally he has his passions as well as other people; every gentleman has a right

to his passions; say, a couple of passions-or "thereby' to use the translator's phrase: but Mr. Serlo, the gentleman in question, is really unreasonable, as the muster-roll will show; the reader will be so good as to keep count. "Her brother," proceeds the frank-hearted Philina, "has a dancing girl among his troop, with whom he stands on pretty terms," (one); "an actress to whom he is betrothed," (two); "in the town some other women whom he courts," (women, observe, accusative plural; that must at least make three, four, five); "I too am on his list (six). "The more fool he! Of the rest thou shalt hear to-morrow." Verily, this Mr. Serlo has laid in a pretty fair winter's provision for his "passions!" The loving speaker concludes with informing Wilhelm that she, Philina, has for her part fallen in love with himself; begs him however to fall in love with Aurelia, because in that case "the chase would be worth beholding. She (that is, Aurelia) pursues her faithless swain, thou her, I thee, her brother me." Certainly an ingenious design for a reel of eight even in merry England: but what would it be then in Germany, where each man might (as we know by Wilhelm, &c.) pursue all the four women at once, and be pursued by as many of the four as thought fit. Our English brains whirl at the thought of the cycles and epicycles,-the vortices-the osculating curves, they would describe: what a practical commentary on the doctrine of combinations and permutations! What a lesson to English bell-ringers on the art of ringing changes! what "triple bobs" and "bob majors" would result! What a kaleidoscope to look into!-Oh ye deities, that preside over men's Sides, protect all Christian ones from the siege of inextinguishable laughter which threatens them at this spectacle of eight heavy highGerman lovers engaged in this amorous 66 barley-break!"†

To recover our gravity, we must return to Aurelia's story which she tells herself to Wilhelm. Not having, like a Theresa, any family adulteries to record in the lineal ascent, she seeks them in the collateral branches; and instead of her mo

ther's intrigues, recites her aunt's-who resigned herself headlong to every impulse." There is a description of this lady's paramours, retiring from her society, which it is absolutely impossible to quote. Quitting her aunt's intrigues, she comes to one of her own. But we have had too much of such matter; and of this we shall notice only one circumstance of horrible aggravation-viz. the particular situation in which it commenced: this we state in the words of the translation: "My husband grew sick, his strength was visibly decaying; anxiety for him interrupted my general indifference. It was at this time that I formed an acquaintance (viz. with Lothario) which opened up a new life for me; a new and quicker one, for it will soon be done." -One other part of this lady's conduct merits notice for its exquisite Germanity: most strikingly and cuttingly, it shows what difference a few score leagues will make in the moral quality of actions: that, which in Germany is but the characteristic act of a highminded sentimentalist, would in England bring the party within the cutting and maiming act. The case is this. Mr. Meister, at the close of her story, volunteers a vow-for no reason that we can see but that he may have the pleasure of breaking it; which he does. "Accept a vow, says he, as if it had been a peach. "I accept it, said she, and made a movement with her right hand-as if meaning to take hold of his, but instantly she darted it into her pocket, pulled out her dagger as quick as lightning, and scored with the edge and point of it across his hand. He hastily drew back his arm" (Meister, German Meister even, does not like this); "but the blood was already running down.-One must mark you men rather sharply, if one means you to take heed, cried she.""She ran to her drawer; brought lint with other apparatus; stanched the blood; and viewed the wound attentively. It went across the palm, close under the thumb, dividing the life-lines, and running towards the little finger. She bound it up in silence with a significant reflective look."

Mignon.-The situation or character, one or both, of this young person is relied upon by all the admirers of Goethe as the most bril

liant achievement of his poetic powers. We on our part are no less ready to take our stand on this as the most unequivocal evidence of depraved taste and defective sensibility. The reader might in this instance judge for himself with very little waste of time, if he were to mark the margin of those paragraphs in which the name of Mignon occurs, and to read them detached from all the rest. An odd way, we admit, of examining a work of any art, if it were really composed on just principles of art: and the inference is pretty plain, where such an insulation is possible; which, in the case of Mignon, it is. The translator, indeed, is bound to think not: for, with a peculiar infelicity of judgment natural enough to a critic who writes in the character of a eulogist, he says of this person-that "her history runs like a thread of gold through the tissue of the narrative, connecting with the heart much that were else addressed only to the head." But a glittering metaphor is always suspicious in criticism: in this case it should naturally imply that Mignon in some way or other modifies the action and actors of the piece. Now it is certain that never was there a character in any drama or novel on which any stress was laid

which so little influenced the movement of the story. Nothing is either hastened or retarded by Mignon: she neither acts nor is acted upon: and we challenge the critic to point to any incident or situation of interest which would not remain uninjured though Mignon were wholly removed from the story. So removeable a person can hardly be a connecting thread of gold-unless indeed under the notion of a thread which every where betrays, by difference of colour or substance, its refusal to blend with the surrounding tissue; a notion which is far from the meaning of the critic. However, we are not disposed to insist on this objection: the relation of Mignon to the other characters and the series of the incidents is none at all: but, waiving this, let us examine her character and her situation each for itself-and not as any part of a novel. The character in this case, if Mignon can be said to have one, arises out of the situation. And what is that? For the information

of the reader, we shall state it as accurately as possible. First of all, Mignon is the offspring of an incestuous connexion between a brother and sister. Here, let us pause one moment to point the reader's attention to Mr. Goethe-who is now at his old tricks; never relying on the grand high road sensibilities of human nature, but always travelling into byepaths of unnatural or unhallowed interest. Suicide, adultery, incest, monstrous situations, or manifestations of supernatural power, are the stimulants to which he constantly resorts in order to rouse his own feelings-originally feeble, and long before the date of this work grown torpid from artificial excitement. In the case before us, what purpose is answered by the use of an expedient -the very name of which is terrific and appalling to men of all nations, habits, and religions? What comes of it? What use, what result can be pleaded to justify the tampering with such tremendous agencies? The father of Mignon, it may be answered, goes mad. He does: but is a madness, such as his, a justifying occasion for such an adjuration; is this a dignus vindice nodus? a madnesswhich is mere senile dotage and fatuity, pure childish imbecility, without passion, without dignity, and characterized by no one feeling but such as is base and selfish-viz. a clinging to life, and an inexplicable dread of little boys? A state so mean might surely have arisen from some cause less awful: and we must add that a state so capriciously and fantastically conceived, so little arising out of any determinate case of passion, or capable of expressing any case of passion as its natural language, is to be justified only by a downright affidavit to the factsand is not a proper object for the contemplation of a poet. Madhouses doubtless furnish many cases of fatuity, no less eccentric and apparently arbitrary: as facts, as known realities, they do not on this account cease to be affecting: but as poetic creations, which must include their own law, they become unintelligible and monstrous. Besides we are conceding too much to Mr. Goethe: the fatuity of the old man is no where connected with the unhappy circumstances of his previous life; on the whole it seems to be the product of

mere constitutional weakness of brain, or probably a liver case: for he is put under the care of a mad doctor; and, by the help chiefly of a course of newspapers, he begins to recover; and finally he recovers altogether by one of the oddest prescriptions in the world: he puts a glass of laudanum into a "firm, little, ground-glass vial:" of this however, he never drinks, but simply keeps it in his pocket; and the consciousness that he carries suicide in his waistcoat-pocket reconciles him to life, and puts the finishing hand to the "recovery of his reason" (p. 274). With such a pocket companion about him, the reader would swear now that this old gentleman, if he must absolutely commit suicide for the good of the novel, will die by laudanum. Why else have we so circumstantial an account of the "ground-glass vial," drawn up as if by some great auctioneer-Christie, or Squibb-for some great catalogue ("No. so and so, one firm, little, ground-glass vial"). But no: he, who is born to be hanged will never be drowned: and the latter end of the old half-wit is as follows:-being discharged as cured (or incurable) he one day enters a nobleman's house, where by the way he had no sort of introduction; in this house, as it happens, Wilhelm Meister is a visitor; and has some difficulty in recognizing his former friend " an old harper with a long beard" in a young gentleman, who (to use a Yankee expression) is 66 pretty considerable of" a dandy. Goethe has an irresistible propensity to freeze his own attempts at the pathetic by a blighting air of the ludicrous. Accordingly in the present case he introduces his man of woe as "cleanly and genteelly dressed;" (cossacks, or how?) "beard vanished; hair dressed with some attention to the mode; and in his countenance the look of age no longer to be seen." This last item certainly is as wondrous as Mr. Coleridge's reading fly: and we suspect that the old son, who had thus recovered his juvenility, deceived himself when he fancied that he carried his laudanum as a mere reversionary friend who held a sinecure in his waistcoat pocket-that in fact he must have drunk of it " pretty considerably." Be that as it may, at his first debût he behaves decently; rather dull or so, but rational,

"cleanly," genteel, and (we are happy to state) able to face any little boy, the most determined that ever carried pop-gun. But such heroism could not be expected to last for ever: soon after he finds a MS. which contains an account of his own life; and upon reading it he prepares for suicide. And let us prepare also, as shorthand writers to a genuine GERMAN SUICIDE! In such a case now, if the novel were an English novel, supposing for instance, of our composition, who are English reviewers, or of our reader's composition (who are probably English readers)-if then we were reduced to the painful necessity of inflicting capital punishment upon one of our characters (as surely in our own novel, where all the people are our own creatures, we have the clearest right to put all of them to death-much more one or two)-if we say, matters came to that pass that we were called on to make an example of somebody or other, and it were fully agreed that the thing must be,-we should cause him to take his laudanum, or his pistols, as the case might be, and die "sans phrase"-die (as our friend "the Dramatist" says)

Die nobly, die like demigods.

Not so our German: he takes the matter more coolly; and dies transcendentally; " by cold gradation, and well-balanced form." First of all, he became convinced that it was now "impossible for him to live:" that is, the idea struck him, in the way of a theory: it was a new idea, a German idea, and he was pleased

with it. Next he considered that, as he designed to depart this life " se offendendo," "Argal" if the water would not come to him he must look out for the water; so he pulls out the "ground-glass” vial, and pours out his laudanum into a glass of "almond milk." Almond milk! Was there ever such a German blunder! But to proceed: having mixed his potion, à potion unknown to all the pharmacopoeias in Christendom, "he raised it to his mouth; but he shuddered when it reached his lips; he set it down untasted; went out to walk once more across the garden," -&c. (p. 284.) Oh! fie, fie! Mr. Mignonette! this is sad work: "walking across the garden," and shuddering" and "doing nothing," as Macmorris (Henry V.) says, "when by Chrish there is work to be done, and throats to be cut." He returns from the garden, and is balked in his purpose by a scene too ludicrous to mention amongst such tender and affecting matter; and thus for one day he gets a reprieve. Now this is what we call false mercy: well knowing that his man was to die, why should Mr. G. keep him lingering in this absurd way! y? Such a line of conduct shall have no countenance in any novel that we may write. Once let a man of ours be condemned, and, if he won't drink off his laudanum then (as Bernardine says-Measure for Measure) we will "beat out his brains with billets" but he shall die that same day, without further trouble to ourselves or our readers. Now, on the contrary, Mr. Mignonette takes three days in dying: within which

term we are bold to say that any reasonable man would have been sat upon by the coroner-buried-unburied by the resurrection-man-and demonstrated upon by the Professor. Well, to proceed with this long concern of Mr. Mignonette's suicide, which travels as slowly as a Chancery suit or as the York coach in Charles II.'s reign (note: this coach took fourteen days between York and London, vid. Eden's State of the Poor). To proceed, we say on the second day, Mr. Mignonette cut his throat with a razor: and that, you will say, was doing something towards the object we all have in view. It was; at least it might seem so: but there's no trusting to appearances; it's not every man that will die because his throat is cut: a Cambridge man of this day ("Diary of an Invalid") saw a man at Rome-who, or whose head rather, continued to express various sentiments through his eyes after he (or his head) had been entirely amputated from him (or his body). By the way, this man might have some little head-ache perhaps: but he must have been charmingly free from indigestion. But this is digressing to return to Mr. Mignonette. In conversing with a friend upon his case, we took a bet thatfor all his throat was cut-he would talk again, and talk very well too. Our friend conceived the thing to be impossible: but he knew nothing of German. "It cannot be," said he, "for when the larynx "Aye; bless your heart," we interrupted him, “but in this case the larynx of the party was a German larynx." However, to go on with Mr. Mignonette's suicide. His throat is cut; and still, as Macmorris would be confounded to hear, " by Chrish there is nothing done:" for a doctor mends it again (p. 283); and at p. 284 we win our bet: for he talks as well as ever he did in his life; only we are concerned to say that his fear of little boys returns. But still he talks down to the very last line of p. 284; in which line by the way is the very last word he is known to have uttered; and that is "glass;" not however that well-known unexceptionable

"

"firm little ground-glass vial"-but another which had less right to his dying recollections. Now then, having heard the "last word of dying Mignonette," the reader fondly conceives that certainly Mignonette is dead. Mit nichten, as they say in Germany, by no means: Mignonette is not dead, nor like to be for one day: nor perhaps would he have been dead at this moment if he had not been a German Mignonette: being so, however, the whole benefit of a German throat is defeated. His throat is mended by the surgeon: but having once conceived a German theory that it was impossible for him to live, although he is so composed as to relate his own theory and the incident which caused it, he undoes all that the doctor has done, tears away the bandages, and bleeds to death. This event is ascertained on the morning after he had uttered his last word "glass" the brittle glass of Mignonette's life is at length broken past even a German skill to repair it: and Mignonette is dead,-dead as a door nail, we believe: though we have still some doubts whether he will not again be mended and reappear in some future novel: our reason for which is not merely his extreme tenacity of life, which is like that of a tortoise; but also because we observe that though he is said to be dead, he is not buried; nor does any body take any further notice of him or ever mention his name; but all about him fall to marrying and giving in marriage; and a few pages wind up the whole novel in a grand bravura of kissing and catch-matchmaking: we have Mr. Göthe's word for it however that Mignonette is dead; and he ought to know. But, be that as it may, nothing is so remarkable as the extreme length of time which it took to do the trick: not until "the third rosy-fingered morn appears" (to speak Homerically) is the suicide accomplished; three days it took to kill this old-young man-this flower-this Mignonette: which we take to be-if not the boldest-the longest suicide on record. And so much for Mr. Mignonette; and so much for a German suicide.'

SEPT. 1824.

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