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And yet the case seems to us a very different one. In Jean Paul's book, though there is occasional grossness and want of delicacy, as in what German novel is there not?— yet there is nothing impure. The whole breathes a healthy air. The unpleasing details are subordinate to the general high tone of sentiment and thought. But in Goethe's work it is otherwise. There seems to us to be an air of voluptuousness about the whole book, whilst there are passages which surely no modest woman can, without a blush, confess to have read. If now it should be asked what is the moral of this book, we should hardly be able to point out any one truth which it is its purpose to illustrate, nor judged by certain critical rules, can it be said to have any moral at all. And yet it is full of instruction. It is the moral of a life -the life of a man full of all the best feelings of humanity, pure, generous, sensitive, suffering under one of the sorest trials which man is called to bear. The story is a painful one throughout. The fate of Lenette is a tragedy

a tragedy such as meets us on every hand in our everyday experience; a history beginning with joy and innocence, and going on through knowledge won by suffering to disappointment and death. We commend the book to our readers as worthy their notice, and we mistake if they can finish the yet forthcoming volume without finding their hearts deep-moved within them.

The "Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe " will probably be to many the most interesting of the three publications, whose titles we prefix to this article. It gives the letters which passed between these two remarkable men at the most busy and fertile period of their lives. As we read on, we are filled with amazement at the literary activity of which we here see the proof. We seem, as it were, to be admitted behind the scenes, and though we are no nearer the secret of how the wonders are wrought, we at least see the actors in their moments of preparation and rest. Few persons, we think, will read these letters without having their sympathies strongly awakened for Schiller. It is evident, almost from the first, that the spirit is struggling with the infirmities of the body. Almost every letter says something of ill-health and suffering. Yet with all this, he bears the heavier burden. He has the responsibility of the Horen, the periodical, with the publication of

1845.]

Correspondence of Schiller and Goethe.

409

which this friendship seems to have begun; at the same time he is engaged on those great works of his, now immortal; and yet with what an ever ready sympathy he enters into the labors of his friend; criticises his works at full length, and sometimes, it would almost seem, finds in them. more than the author himself thought of!

But we by no means wish to institute any comparison here between the two friends. There has been only too much of that already. We fully agree with Mr. Weiss in his remarks prefixed to the translation of the "Aesthetic Letters." The two are to be considered rather as the complement of each other, than compared. "Neither was Goethe the whole man, nor was Schiller the less complete one, he has been represented. But it is in the very distinctness with which they developed respectively the two elements of Humanity, the Real and the Ideal, that we ought to discern, not only the special mission of each, but the still higher mission of both united."

we should

The translation of the "Correspondence judge to be extremely well done. We have not the original by us to compare, but the book sounds like English, and the metaphysical parts are well-nigh intelligible. We are sorry that the translator should have thought it necessary in his preface to assail with quite so much vehemence the discourse delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August last. By foul language the best cause is injured, and a bad cause not advanced. Such expressions as "pages reeking with calumny," "monstrous brood begotten by presumption upon a pharisaical morality," "nauseating insipidity," "puerile incompetence," are hardly decent in such a case. A difference of opinion will excuse some degree of warmth, but such violence as this is apt to inspire a doubt whether the judgment may not be somewhat blinded by passion. For our own part, we are not prepared to justify all that was said in the discourse alluded to; there are some things there affirmed of Goethe of which we never heard; but we have always supposed that nobody at all familiar with his private history, would think of setting him up for a saint, and even his admirers have not always been blind to certain defects in his character. We do not deny no one can who reads his works - the versatility of his genius; we find in him much that is great VOL. XXXVIII. -4TH S. VOL. III. NO. III.

35

and admirable; but the general impression left on our mind by all that we have read, seen or heard of Goethe, is of an intense selfishness. Nay! take this very book, the "Correspondence" between him and Schiller, and let any plain man who knows nothing else of the two read it, and we are much mistaken if he does not get the impression, that whilst Schiller is full of admiration and love for his friend, Goethe seems to receive the incense of adulation as his due. Schiller pours forth his friendship and confidence, and Goethe replies, in a passage which has been purposely rendered word for word, as almost the only utterance of even so much : "Farewell. Retain for me your so wellgrounded friendship, and your so beautifully felt love, and be assured of the like from me."

The translation of Schiller's "Aesthetic Prose" is not a work to which justice may be done in so cursory a notice as must here be taken of it. It is a book which demands and deserves study. Either to translate or to appreciate it, requires a somewhat peculiar turn of mind. Not that anybody could read it without profit, but to gain from it all that it is capable of yielding, there must be some aptitude for such studies and some training in them too. The word aesthetic* is almost new in English literature, but is only a new designation for a class of subjects with which we were not wholly unacquainted. The "Aesthetic Prose" is a collection of essays upon subjects connected with Art, as understood in its highest sense. The longest of these, and no doubt the most important, is the "Letters on the Aesthetic Culture of Man." These were written, it seems, at the instance of a friend and kindred spirit, the Duke of Holstein Augustenberg, who had invited Schiller to state in an essay his views on Beauty and Art. With us they gain a new interest, just at this moment, from their chancing to appear almost simultaneously with the "Correspondence" which we have just been noticing. We find here, more fully developed, ideas which occur continually in Schiller's letters to Goethe. Schiller was eminently speculative in the turn of his mind. He could do nothing without analysing and reasoning upon it. In this there was a marked contrast

* From alsavouar, to feel. Applied also to the other senses, so as to signify to perceive, see, hear, understand.'-Schneider.

between him and Goethe, who could often do that of which he neither cared to, nor perhaps could, give an account. The drift of the "Aesthetic Letters" is, to show the great importance to mankind of the perception of the Beautiful. In doing this Schiller is obliged to admit the fact, often observed, that experience shows nations to have declined in greatness in proportion to their advance in art, or perception of beauty. But, he says, "it remains to be proved, that the beauty against which all historical examples testify, is the same beauty concerning which he intends to speak." He then proceeds to develop an abstract conception of beauty, on which he founds his argument in favor of art.

These Letters, though the longest, and no doubt, taken singly, the most important essay in the book, will yet hardly be as attractive to the general reader as some of the shorter ones. Of these the essay on the Sublime, beginning with the striking position, "no men must must," will be read with interest and profit, we think, even by those least in love with German metaphysics.

We must forego extracting the passages we had marked in this and some of the other Essays. This is scarcely a book to extract from, even if we had the space. To be appreciated it must be studied, and the study will be well repaid. The translation is good, and the whole made as intelligible to English readers as German metaphysics can well be made. Mr. Weiss has done good service to our thinkers and speakers in this, as he tells us, "labor of love." We especially commend to our readers the preface, both as an introduction to the work itself, and for the just and temperate views it takes of certain controverted subjects to which we have made allusion. What is there said of the comparison, so frequently instituted, between Schiller and Goethe, seems to us altogether just and well stated. "Where Goethe was deficient, Schiller abounded; where the latter yearned to express that which is absolute, the former fulfilled definite and ascertained limits. Both were earnest seekers after truth; it was for both the very condition of their existence, a demand of their consciousness which they never once evaded. But we attain a steadfast form of truth, and a harmonious development of human faculties, only by combining the results of both."

F. C.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

A Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church, being a new Inquiry into the true Dates of the Birth and Death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and containing an original Harmony of the four Gospels, now first arranged in the order of time. By the Rev. SAMUEL FARMER JARVIS, D. D., L. L. D., Historiographer of the Church. New York. 8vo. pp. 618.

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We have here, in an octavo volume of over six hundred pages, the first fruits of Dr. Jarvis's labors as 66 Historiographer of the Church," (a title which, however he came by it, he seems somewhat fond of parading,) being only an "Introduction" occupied chiefly with settling disputed points of chronology. We by no means wish to speak lightly of the volume. It is evidently the result of much labor, though we cannot say that we think the writer has altogether succeeded in his object, or that the work will preclude all future controversy on the questions of chronology to which it relates. Some of his dates he undertakes to fix with a great deal more precision than the state of the evidence warrants. The task of determining the exact day of the Saviour's birth, for example, is perfectly hopeless, nor has the "Historiographer" adduced one particle of new evidence on the subject. He relies almost exclusively on the Roman census or enrolment mentioned by Luke, a record of which was supposed by several of the fathers to have been preserved in the public archives at Rome. We say supposed, for the fathers who refer to it, do it in a very general way, as to something the existence of which was to be taken for granted because the Romans were accustomed to preserve in their archives of State documents of this kind, and not as a record which any of them had ever seen. Dr. Jarvis quotes a long passage from a homily of the celebrated Chrysostom, delivered at Antioch, A. D. 386, and entitled "Homily for the birth-day of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which day was unknown until a few years since, when some persons coming from the West made it known, and publicly announced it." Chrysostom uses three arguments or proofs, as he calls them, by which it might be known that the true day of the Saviour's birth had been ascertained. We had prepared a brief abstract of these arguments for insertion in that part of our article on the festivals of the ancient Christians, which relates to the time of keeping Christmas, in our January number, but afterwards cancelled it from a conviction of the utter worthlessness of the "proofs" adduced. Let us see what

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