Faust: A Tragedy

To a “divine comedy,” indeed, in the large style, which should contain a vindication of the ways of God to man, a second part of Faust was as necessary as Dante’s Paradiso was to his Inferno, or the Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus to the Prometheus Bound, or the last four chapters of the Book of Job to the rest of the poem; and when Goethe wrote this Prologue in Heaven—a piece by no means necessary to Faust as an acting play—it is impossible to imagine that he had not then distinctly purposed and dimly planned the singular poem now known as the second part of Faust. For the sake, therefore, of those readers of the great German tragedy, within the scope of whose vision the second part of Faust is, for various reasons, never likely to come, I will set down here a somewhat detailed panoramic view of that remarkable production. A few remarks, then, will enable any person of common intelligence to understand the exact relation which exists between the two works.

The first act opens with a pleasing landscape scene, in the midst of which Faust is discovered reclining upon a flowery turf, weary, restless, and seeking repose. The hour is twilight, and round the weary one Ariel and other quaint and pleasant Spirits are hovering in airy circles, entertaining his fancy with lovely shows, and lulling him with sweet sounds; quite a piece of Nature’s most voluptuous and luxuriant beauty, such as Goethe’s soul delighted to bathe in. As the Spirits continue their song, accompanying the watches of the night, the dawn approaches to the ear of mortal men calmly and gently, but to the sense of Spirits, the march of the hours is heard as a storm: the gigantic rock-gates of the East creak fearfully; Phœbus rolls his chariot wheels in thunder; and eye and ear are startled at the strong coming of the day. Faust then wakens, and gratefully welcomes the fresh tide of a renewed existence which, after the soothing influences of the magic sleep, seems to stream in upon him. A resolution is strongly stirred in his breast to strive after the highest perfection of which human nature is capable.

The second scene brings us from the fairy into the court atmosphere. The Emperor sits on his throne, surrounded by all sorts of courtiers, ministers, and other appendages of Majesty; the astrologer and the fool, significantly for those times (for we must suppose the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century), occupying not the least conspicuous place. Forthwith begins a somewhat prolix discourse between the Imperial Majesty and his principal ministers—Chancellor, Treasurer, Master of the Household, etc., the burden of which is—a very common one with great people and people in office—that they have no money and are at their wit’s end how to get it. The fool, into whose shoes Mephistopheles has cunningly shuffled himself, is applied to for the aid of his sage counsels, and is not slow with the common resource of German devils and necromancers—hidden treasures. But before the spade and the mattock can be brought into play to unearth this hidden heap, as it happens to be Carnival, there must be a masquerade. The Emperor, too, has just come from Rome, whither he had gone, according to the laudable old custom of the Heinrichs and Ottos and Friedrichs, to get himself dubbed Holy Roman Emperor, and with his crown on his head, he has brought also the fool’s cap. Scene third, accordingly, exhibits a rich show of foolery and masquerading of all sorts. Flower-girls and gardeners; mothers and daughters; fishers, fowlers, and foresters; Pulcinellos, parasites, and drunkards; poets and critics; the three Graces, Aglaia, Hegemone, and Euphrosyne; the three Fates, Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis; the three Furies, Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone; Fear, Hope, and Providence leading in Victory, who stands on the top parapet of a tower—all this moves in motley operatic splendour before the eyes of the spectator; and the various personages, as they pass, festoon themselves, so to speak, with short speeches and moral reflections in the style of the masques of our old English dramatists—points prettily enough curled and frizzled, and agreeable enough, doubtless, to hear with music in an opera, but rather wearisome to read in a long sequence as part of a written play. Then, that Doctor Faust may have something to do in his own peculiar province of magic, for the command of which, as we know, he has sold his soul to the Devil, we have a grand chariot brought upon the stage by four horses; and in this chariot are two allegorical personages, the charioteer boy (Knabenlenker), that is to say, Poetry or intellectual wealth, and Plutus, the god of material wealth, a character fitly sustained by Doctor Faust himself. These two scatter their riches profusely among the mob of masquers—Poetry pearls and spangles, which turn into moths and beetles as soon as snatched; Plutus golden guineas and silver pennies; but they are red hot, and burn the fingers of the appropriators. A general row takes place, which, however, is only the overture to a greater one, with which the masquerade concludes. Preceded and surrounded by dancing groups of fauns and satyrs, giants, nymphs, and gnomes, the Emperor appears in the character of the great Pan, the All of the world (πᾶν). Plutus, i.e. Faustus, is now ready to close the scene with a fire trick, like to that which, on the first start of his magical career, he played off upon Brander, Siebel, Frosch, and the other worthies of Auerbach’s cellar. The little dwarfish gnomes take the mighty Pan by the hand and lead him to a hole in the rock, whence a fountain of fire wells out with many a freakish spurt of subterranean flame. This the universal δαίμων, or mighty Pan, beholds with infinite satisfaction; but lo! as he bends forward to contemplate such miracle more near, his beard unglues itself and catches fire; and the flame begins to play about at a furious rate, cracking like a whip right and left, and with long snaky tongues licking the roof of the welkin. The stage is now one web of confusion and consternation; all hands are at work to clap extinguishment on the earth-born flame; but the more they plash and potter in the wild element, the more it blazes, and the cry is raised—Oh treason!—that the Emperor is burning; whereupon the herald very appropriately lifts up the moral complaint:—

and herewith, and with a conjuration of soft dews and mists convocated by Plutus to lay the flaming devils whom he had raised, ends the spectacle and the scene.

What next? The fourth scene discovers the Emperor on his holy Roman throne, as in the second. Faust hopes that his Majesty has readily pardoned the frolic of flame-jugglery with which the preceding day’s sport had ended; and the Emperor expresses his high delight with the exhibition of such tricks; for nothing could give him greater pleasure than to imagine himself for a season a king of salamanders. Mephistopheles then comes forward with the finished draught of his new scheme for the replenishing of the Imperial exchequer; and, that his Majesty may not have long to wait for the drudgery of the mattock and spade in bringing to light the hidden treasures before promised, the affair is to be managed in the meantime by paper money; and straightway, upon the faith of the to-be-unearthed gold, the Minister of Finance is relieved from his perplexities, and the whole country rises and swells and billows up in a flux of prosperity. This as a prelude; but the serious work is yet to come. The Emperor requests the great conjuror to produce for his amusement something better than salamanders, and more wonderful even than paper money. He wishes to see the famous beauty, the Spartan Helen who set Troy on fire, and Paris the princely shepherd, whose well-trimmed locks and gold-embroidered mantle had prevailed to seduce her from her fidelity to her royal husband. Faust engages to gratify the Imperial wishes; and Mephistopheles, after a little demurring—the shades of the classical world being not within his proper domain—consents. Whereupon the hero, holding in his hand a magic key which he has received from his comrade, descends through the earth into the empty and bodiless realm of the Mothers; and, having abstracted from their presence a mystical tripod, ascends into the upper air, and appears before the Imperial Court, where, habited as a priest, he instantly invokes the shade of the famous pair, to whom Aphrodite has been so lavish of her gifts. They forthwith appear, and, environed by music and mist, exhibit their classical charms, and repeat their storied loves to the modern eye. The exhibition, of course, after the first surprise is over, produces different effects on the spectators, according to their different tastes; the Court critics, like other brethren of the same carping fraternity, must have something to object, even to the queen of beauties; but Faust is fascinated, and, at the first glance, falls violently in love with the phantom which himself had raised. As before the vanishing form which he had seen in the magic mirror, when in the witches’ kitchen, so here again he stands transfixed with wonder, gazes in ecstasy, glows with passion, and, losing all sense of propriety, raves in jealous indignation at Paris, for venturing to handle too familiarly the object of his adoration. He then rushes insanely to seize the bodiless form; but no sooner has fleshly touch troubled the spiritual essence than an explosion follows. The Doctor falls down in a swoon; the fair apparitions vanish; and Mephistopheles, taking the hero on his back, leaves the scene of the luckless conjuration amid darkness and confusion. Thus ends the first act.

The second act displays the old Gothic, high-vaulted, narrow chamber which we remember to have seen in the first scene of the first act of this strange drama. This chamber formerly belonged to Doctor Faust; it now belongs to his hopeful disciple in the art of alchemy, the learned Doctor Wagner, whom we at once recognise as an old friend. To refresh old memories further, the same young student is introduced, to whom Mephistopheles, masqued in academical cap and gown, had given such admirable instructions on his first entrance to college life. He is now no longer a freshman, but a Bachelor of Arts, well crammed with the customary amount of book lore, notable, also, for a certain heroic dash of scepticism, which has taught him to believe that a large amount of what passes for learning in the world is humbug, and that the professors of learning, generally, are only a more respectable sort of quacks. He stands in no need now of a Faust or a Mephistopheles to instruct him; for he knows more than all the most learned doctors can teach him by the simple omnipotence of his own conceit. He has studied theology under some neologic doctor of the age, is a decided disbeliever in the personality of the Devil, and boasts with the most confident faith in the infallibility of his own Ego—“Unless I will, no devil may exist!” But the principal character in this scene is the learned Doctor Wagner himself, who is exhibited in his laboratory, bending and blowing over the hot coals of his furnace in the act of making a man. And anon, not so much by the chymick wit of Wagner, of course, as by the magic of Mephistopheles, Homunculus does actually come forth, all glowing and eager, enclosed within a glass phial, a brisk little fellow, brimful of elastic energy, and fired with the heroic resolve to be developed into the fulness of the freedom of the perfect man, bursting his vitreous hull with all possible expedition. To his chymick “fatherkin” Wagner he pays little or no respect, but recognises Mephistopheles on the spot as first cousin; in Faust, and the dreams of Spartan Helen that occupy his fancy, being, like the Doctor, of a hot and amorous temperament, he takes a wonderful interest; and, spurred on by that lust of intellectual adventure which is characteristic of his nature, after a few preliminary remarks, proposes to Mephistopheles that they should all three set themselves afloat on the magic mantle, and balloon over to Thessaly, where, amid the haunts of Erichtho and other famous witches, an assembly of old classical ghosts and goblins, heroes and heroines, is that night to be held. On this phantasmal expedition the worthy triad accordingly set out without delay; Homunculus to enlarge his mind and achieve development; Faust to search out Helen; and Mephistopheles from mere curiosity; for, in fact, he is quite a stranger in the classical Hades, and is not, from anything that has come to his ear, inclined to imagine that there is anything in Olympus which will suit his humour half so well as the witches on the Brocken.

We are now prepared for what the poet has evidently dressed up with special care, as the imposing spectacle of the second act, intending to overpower the senses of the spectator with a profusion of imaginative wealth, in the same fashion as he managed the Carnival in the first act; with this slight difference, that, whereas there we had a show of masqued realities, here we have a show of real phantoms. To this phantasmal exhibition the poet gives the name of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, or May-Day Night, the counterpart of the Gothic Walpurgis-Night set forth with such power and variety in the first part of the drama. Like the short intermezzo of Oberon and Titania’s golden wedding on the Brocken, the strange motley dance of figures that are here made to pop up before us with significant saws in their mouths, have little or nothing to do with the main action of the piece. Faust and Homunculus and Mephistopheles appear at intervals merely flitting through its luxuriant variety like fire-flies in a forest full of lions and tigers, and camelopards, and every curious wild beast. The scene is in the Pharsalian Plains—Thessaly being the native ground of classical witchcraft and enchantment—the time of course midnight. The prologue is spoken by Erichtho, Lucan’s famous witch, in Iambic trimeters which the poet handles with the fine rhythmical tact so prominent in all his productions. Immediately after her monologue the three magical aeronauts appear; then colossal ants gathering gold grains; with them gigantic griffins, keepers of the gold, and Arimaspi fighting with the griffins for its possession; then Sphynxes, and Sirens, and Stymphalides, and various, to the classical ear familiar, monsters of the bird genus, who hold much talk, but not of much significance, with Faust and his conductor. Suddenly the scene changes to the banks of the Peneus, where the god of the classical flood sits crowned with reeds, surrounded by gracefully sportive groups of Nymphs, and majestically sailing swans. Thereafter a hollow tramp of horses’ hoofs announces the arrival of the Centaur Chiron, wise pedagogue of Achilles and other renowned classical heroes. Him Faust accosts, and requests a clue to the haunt of the fair Helen, the possession of whom still burns in his inordinate desire as the only thing capable of making him happy. To this request the wise bi-form demi-god is not able, from his own resources, to accede; but he takes the Doctor on his back; and off they tramp together to the temple-cave of Manto—the famous prophet-daughter of Æsculapius. With her Faust enters the subterranean regions, the realm of Persephone; and the possession of Helen, as we shall see in the third act, is the reward of his intrepidity. But, though Faust seems now amply provided for, the phantasmal hubbub goes on. The Sirens and the Sphynxes again come to the front, singing and soliloquising as before; likewise the ants and the griffins; and to them presently are associated, Seismos (earthquake), the Pygmies or Lilliputians, and the Idæan Dactyles or Tom Thumbs of antiquity; with them—in honour of Schiller, we may suppose—the cranes of Ibycus; then Empusa the foul ass-footed blood-sucking hag, and troops of hideous Lamias to captivate the Gothic taste of Mephistopheles; but even these are not ugly enough for him; so he wanders on through the Fair, till he encounters the three daughters of Phorcys, who had only one eye and one tooth among them; and from one of these he borrows her hideous mask, that he may perform juggleries behind it in a future part of the play. Meanwhile Homunculus, in prosecution of his eager desire to be developed, has hunted out two philosophers, Anaxagoras and Thales; and under the guidance of the latter, he proceeds through the peopled air to the adjacent bays of the Ægean Sea, where the marine gods and demi-gods are holding their revels. To this water-festival the scene finally changes; and forthwith a new swarm of vocal apparitions begins to buzz around us; among whom (besides the Sirens, whom we had before) Nereus and Proteus, the Telchins of Rhodes, the Cabiri of Samothrace, with troops of shell-blowing Tritons, and Nereids riding on dolphins and hippocampes, are the most remarkable. With these fair apparitions, and the pleasant aquatic sports in which they are engaged, Homunculus, under the appropriate teaching of Thales, the water-philosopher, seems vastly delighted; and mounting on the dolphin-back of Proteus, careers about from creek to creek, seeking anxiously for a just occasion of being fully developed. This desired consummation, accordingly, happens sooner perhaps than the little man had fancied, and in an unexpected fashion; for, as he bounds along from wave to wave gallantly, on the back of the multiform sea-god, the lovely Galatea, the fairest of the daughters of Doris, suddenly presents herself to his view, all radiant with marine beauty, like a sea-Venus, drawn in a shell-car. To stand unmoved at such a spectacle was not possible, as we may remember, even to ponderous Polypheme in the Ovidian ballad, much less to a nimble and highly excitable Homunculus. A commotion is immediately observed in the waters close to Galatea’s car; the silver foam becomes red and glowing; the spark of Homunculus dilates itself into a blaze; a breaking of glass and a plashing of water is heard; and a bright illumination spreads itself widely over the festal waves. Hereupon breaks in full and symphonious the song of the Sirens.

And with this erotic explosion the Classical Walpurgis-Night ends, and the third act of the drama commences. This third act is entirely made up of another fanciful piece, exhibiting the phantasmal loves of Faust and Helen. The famous Lacedæmonian beauty appears surrounded by a chorus of Trojan captive maids in the palace of Menelaus, at Sparta. Her husband, on the way back from the weary capture of Troy, is still on the broad seas, Helen having been sent before to prepare a sacrifice in honour of his expected arrival. For this sacrifice everything had been prescribed by Menelaus, only not the victim; and, while Helen is wondering with herself what might be the cause of this omission, Mephistopheles suddenly appears in the mask of one of the Phorcyades, and, giving himself out for the old housekeeper of the palace, succeeds in filling the mind of Helen with no unreasonable fears, that she is, in fact, herself the victim destined by her death to atone for the decennial toils and troubles of the Greeks before Ilium. From the imminent danger thus impending there is no safety for the fair but to throw herself under the guidance of Mephistopheles, into the arms of Faust, who, by his accustomed magical machinery, has established himself in a grand Gothic castle, hard by, among the ridges of Taygetus. No sooner is this resolution taken, than the scene suddenly changes from a classical palace a thousand years before Christ, to a Gothic castle a thousand years after Christ, where, in the midst of knights and squires, courtiers, cavaliers, and other appropriate supernumeraries, marshalled plentifully around, the thaumaturgic Doctor appears as a German prince of the Middle Ages, with dignity and loyal regard, coming forward to pay his homage to the paragon of classical beauty. After a few gallant speeches gracefully made and gracefully responded to, Helen, of course, surrenders at discretion; and the scene changes to a lovely Arcadian district, with wood and water, mountain and mead, richly variegating the pastoral solitude, the abode of love. What is there enacted you may guess partly, but not altogether; you may well imagine that Faust and Helen are there depicted as enjoying all the raptures that, to transcendental lovers, in such a place, naturally belong; but you will not guess that from their phantasmal embrace a son is born, and that this son, under the name of Euphorion, is neither more nor less than impersonated Poetry, the same, or a similar allegorial character, that we were already introduced to in the first act, under the name of the Boy-charioteer. Here, in this third act, he appears brisk and nimble, tricksy as a Mercury, lovely as a Cupid, precocious, impetuous, and elastic as a Chatterton. And, like a Chatterton, he will not run and leap only in the fashion of common boys, but he bounds and skips, right and left, above and below, without reason or measure. Light and agile in every motion, more like a bird than a boy, he is tempted to believe that the air, not the earth, is his proper element, and, notwithstanding the importunate warnings of his parents, assays, like Icarus, to bestride the air, and, like Icarus, falls and perishes. This mournful catastrophe the poet gladly makes use of to dissolve the spell of Helen’s phantasmal existence, and to put a finale on the unsubstantial classical courtship of Doctor Faust. The mother precipitates herself after the son, a second time to find her home in the dim halls of Proserpine; and the hero, by the direction of Mephistopheles, seizes the dropped mantle of Helen, and, wrapping himself in it, is straightway enveloped in clouds and borne aloft through far space, even back to honest Deutschland, in quest of new adventures.

The fourth act is very short, merely a stepping-stone to the fifth, it would appear. In the first scene Faust is exhibited in a new character. Pleasures both real and fantastical having been exhausted, he now girds his loins to work, and that neither in the Moon nor in any extra-terrene sphere, but even on this sorry planet, which his high-soaring spirit had so long despised:—

This is a great improvement, no doubt; but, as Faust never does anything to the end of his career without magic and the fellowship of the Devil, the activity into which he immediately dashes has no effect in exciting the admiration of the spectator. The Emperor, it seems—the same with whom we made acquaintance in the first act—notwithstanding the unexpected aid of hidden treasures and paper money, being a lover of pleasure rather than of governing, has fallen into discredit with his subjects; and a counter-Kaiser—according to the not uncommon practice of Popes and Kaisers in the Middle Ages—is set up. Faust, though he professes himself no great admirer of the special sphere of activity which is opened up by war, nevertheless, for the love he bears to the Emperor, who is a good fellow with a thousand foibles, allows himself to be persuaded by Mephistopheles to take part in the war against the counter-Kaiser. This war, as was to be expected with Mephistopheles behind scenes, is brought speedily to a glorious conclusion, and that specially by the intervention of the three mighty men of David (2 Sam. xxiii. 8), and a host of Undenes with water juggleries, whom Mephistopheles calls to the rescue: and the Doctor, like Bellerophon in Homer, is rewarded for his heroic soldiership by an extensive grant of land along the sea-coast, great part of which, however, has yet to be redeemed from the waves. So ends act the fourth.

Act fifth exhibits our hero, now in extreme old age—exactly one hundred years, we learn from Eckermann—after some seven or eight decades of mortal life spent first in all sorts of vain speculation, and then in all sorts of idle dissipation and lawless indulgence, at length settled down as a landed proprietor, a great agricultural improver, a redeemer of waste lands from the sea, a builder of harbours, and a promoter of trade. But in the midst of engrossing business and continued occupation, as much, at least, as axe and spade, ditch and dyke can furnish him withal, he is the old man still, discontented and unhappy. The lord of a vast tract of sea-coast, and of uncounted acres, he is miserable, because an old peasant and his old wife—Baucis and Philemon—are the owners of a little cottage near his house, and a few lime trees, which deform his lawn and obstruct his view. ’Tis the old story of Ahab, King of Israel, and Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings xxi.), as Mephistopheles, who is well versed in Scripture, takes occasion to inform us. Well, what is to be done? The attendant fiend of course undertakes (like certain Highland proprietors whom we hear of) to expel the good old people from their old dwelling; and Faust, like the same Caledonian aristocracy, solaces his conscience with the salve that he will provide the good people a far more valuable and more convenient lodging in some remote corner of his estate. Meanwhile Mephistopheles, not over scrupulous about means, and not being able to persuade the stiff-necked and timid old snails to creep out of their shell, settles the matter—as has been practised also in the Scottish Highlands—by applying fire to habitation and habitant at once; the pious old pair fall a sacrifice to the greed of the master and the violence of the man; and with this blood on his hands, Faustus now prepares, with all possible heroic confidence, to meet death and to mount up to Heaven.

We are now arrived at the closing scene of this eventful history. ’Tis midnight: the scene is Faust’s castle; before the door of his chamber four grey old hags appear. “I,” says the one, “am called Want.” “I,” says the second, “Guilt.” “I,” says the third, “Care.” “I,” quoth the fourth, “am called Need.” Of these four, however, only one can do, or attempt to do, any harm to the magical Doctor, for he is now a rich man; and rich men can know nothing of Want or Need, nor of Guilt, either, we are told; but Care leaps in through the keyhole, and annoys him a little before his dismissal. The Doctor, however, is heroically determined not to yield to this demon; and he finds his sure remedy for all unpleasant cogitations in unremitted work. The great pioneers of land improvement, canals and ditches, must be proceeded with; and the indefatigable Doctor, even after pestilential Care had blown a blinding blast into his eyes, marches into the grave with the spade and the pick-axe in his hand. Then commences a scene of a most singular character. The terrible jaws of Hell yawn wide on the left side of the stage, and a contest commences between Mephistopheles on the one hand, and the descending angels on the other, for the possession of the soul of Faust. At first the Evil Spirit seems confident of success, strengthened as he is by a numerous host of multiform imps and devils, who come up in swarms from the steaming mouth of the abyss; but the fury of this malignant host is soon disarmed in a very simple way, by a band of young blooming boy-angels scattering a shower of celestial blossoms over the heads of the infernals. Beneath the fire of these apparently innocent weapons, the legion of horned, and dumpy, and wizened devils fall head foremost into the pit whence they had issued; while their mighty master, Mephistopheles, stands so captivated by the bright bloom and the pretty looks of the rosy cherubs, that in the very moment when heroism is most necessary, he loses all his manhood, and a few beardless boys, with psalms and flosculosities, cheat him of the immortal soul which was his by the signature of blood, and by the seal of a lifetime spent in giving free rein to all sorts of foolish fancies and unprincipled iniquities.

After this catastrophe there remains nothing but the formal introduction of Faust to Heaven, for which the closing scene is appropriated. The Virgin Mary, surrounded by pious Anchorites and fair Penitents, with Fathers seraphic and ecstatic, is revealed in the heavenly glory, awaiting the arrival of redeemed souls from earth; and immediately the band of angels that had worsted Mephistopheles appear aloft in triumph, bearing the immortal part of Faust, and singing a hymn, the words of which are intended to convey the moral of the piece:—

Among the throng of redeemed Penitents one appears conspicuous, whose name, while she lived on earth, was Margaret; she is close by the Virgin, interceding for Faust, and ever as she mounts with the Queen of Heaven to higher stages of glory, draws the newcomer after her to share in her sempiternal blessedness. The curtain then falls; the redeemed throngs ascend; and the scene resounds with the mystical chorus:—

After so detailed an account of this rich and various exhibition of imaginative power, the student of this great world-drama, to use a German phrase, can have no difficulty in understanding the theology and the theodicy of the great Teutonic poet. The promise of the Prologue in Heaven is fulfilled; there is no such thing as everlasting punishment; and the Evil Spirit is sure to be cheated even of the souls for whom he has most surely bargained, if that soul, after staining itself with any number of sins, only perseveres at last in some course of honourable and useful activity. This is not according to the common Protestant conception in such cases; for Protestantism, having abolished Purgatory, lies under a necessity of peopling Tartarus more largely; and besides, after such a solemn compact with the Evil One, and twenty-four years (for that is the number given in the legend) spent in unrepented indulgence of all sensualities and vanities, it was dramatically as well as theologically inconsistent to redeem such a deliberate and persistent sinner from the damnation for which he had bargained. But the hell of the mediæval Catholic Church, though terrible enough in its pictorial presentation (as many an Italian cloister testifies) was more accommodating in its adaptation to the many forms of human weakness; and so, to magnify the grace of God, and make Christ all in all, after a fashion which the severe Protestant Calvinist is forced to condemn, the mediæval form of the Faust legend could afford to save Faust, notwithstanding his blood-sealed transaction with the Devil; and no one has a right to blame Goethe, morally and theologically, for having adopted this view of the matter. But, though the salvation of Faust, according to the feeling of orthodox mediæval Christianity, is permissible, and even desirable, the manner in which, and the process by which, his salvation is achieved by the German Protestant poet differs very much from the treatment it receives at the hand of the Catholic Church. In Christian theology—and in any healthy system of human Ethics too, I imagine—the forgiveness of a great sinner always implies confession of guilt, and a process, sometimes painful and protracted, of repentance and amendment; but of this not a hint occurs in the second part of Faust; and so the moral instincts of man, which had been so strongly appealed to in the first part, are ignored, with a feeling of great moral dissatisfaction as the unavoidable result. So much for the ethico-theological aspect of the case. Æsthetically, and viewed as a dramatic continuation of the first part, the second part of the poem is much more at fault, and must be pronounced, with all its wealth of imaginative reproduction, and all its luxuriance of rhythmical form, a magnificent failure. If this judgment appears severe, it must be remembered that the very excellence of the first part, considered morally and dramatically, rendered a satisfactory continuation of it, even to the genius of a Goethe, both impolitic and impossible. Who would ever dream of a continuation of Hamlet? Had it pleased our great dramatic master to keep Hamlet alive amid the general catastrophe of the play, as he might lightly have done, the future fate of his hero would only have been a matter of historical curiosity. For dramatic purposes his course was finished. So with Faust. Though he remains on the stage in the pathetic closing scene, dramatically his part is played out. The “Hither to me!” of his fiendish companion is quite enough for the satisfaction of the moral feeling which the catastrophe has excited; all beyond this is a matter, no doubt, for metaphysical speculation and theological solution, but with which the dramatist has nothing to do. But even if there were any feeling in the breast of the spectator, causing him to look for some terrestrial continuation of the sad story which he has been witnessing, by the manner in which he has conducted this continuation the poet has altogether cut himself off from the moral sympathy which so spontaneously flowed as a tribute to his art in the first part. The history of Faust and Margaret, notwithstanding the magical or diabolic background on which it figures, is a simple story of flesh and blood, a story which would remain equally true and equally affecting were the demon and the witches removed altogether from the scene. But now, in this second part, we are charmed by the wand of the fiendish harlequin into a region of mere fancy and phantasmagoria, into a swarming Fair, so to speak, of multitudinous phantasmal figures, through the midst of which the real actors flit to and fro like a few idle civilians amid the ordered files and motley groups of some gigantic host. The primary here is buried in the secondary; the actors are lost in their environment; and the real throughout, in a most unreal fashion, confounded with the ideal. Faust, of course, and Mephistopheles, and even Wagner, peering with glittering eye through the smoke of his alchymical kitchen, are the same creatures of flesh and blood that we were made acquainted with in part one; only all perhaps a little enfeebled in character; Mephistopheles a little more of the conjuror, and a little less of the Devil; Faust much less of a thinker, and not a whit less of a sensualist; Wagner much less modest, and much more besotted in the disnatured studies and fanciful operations of his chemical kitchen. All this is real. But this real Faust becomes enamoured of a phantom Helen; and of this monstrous embrace an ideal poetic child, incarnating, we presume, the contrary beauties of the Classical and the Romantic schools, is the product. Of such a strange jumble we may say truly, as Jeffrey said falsely of Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” “This will never do.” Such a violation of all the principles of common sense and of good taste cannot be pardoned even to Goethe. The faults of men of genius, it has been said, are the consolation of the dunces; but whether the dunces choose to console themselves in this way or not, the fact is certain, that on the stern battlefield of public life, and no less in the flowery realms of imaginative construction, a great genius is precisely the man to make occasionally a great blunder. There may be some few great things, and some wonderful things, and not a few wise things (as who could expect otherwise from Goethe) in the second part of Faust; but it is certainly neither a great drama nor the just sequence of a great drama. I am inclined to compare it with the rich fanciful work familiar to the students of art, in the so-called Loggie, or galleries of Raphael, in the Vatican. In the first part of Faust, Goethe is a great dramatist; in the second part he is an arabesque painter. It is no small matter to compose poetical arabesques, as our poet has done so luxuriantly in the Classical Walpurgis Night, and other parts of this piece; and a very natural affair, too, one may remark, in the circumstances of the present composition. It is rare, perhaps impossible, in the history of literary manifestation, that a poet should commence a great poem in the fervour of youth, continue it through the firmness of middle life, and finish it in the serenity of an advanced old age, with a homogeneousness of inspiration, and a perfectly consistent handling throughout. Goethe, in particular, was a man who grew, as he advanced, into many new shapes, and, of course, grew out of the old ones; and, though he was to the end a consummate artist, and there was no question of decayed powers, much less of dotage, in the grand old octogenarian, it was an artistic blunder in him to weave the fantastic tissue of fair forms, which amused his later years, into a common web with the tale of strong human passion, which had grown into a well-rounded dramatic shape under the influence of his most fervid youthful inspirations. The error lay in the name and the connection perhaps more than in the matter. A classical Walpurgis Night, or a love adventure with a resuscitated Helen of Troy, might have formed a very pleasing exhibition as a masque or show for an academical celebration—as at Oxford, for instance, in Commemoration season—while, as a second part of Faust, it falls flat. Let it contain as many allegories as the wise old poet-philosopher may have meant to smuggle into it, and as many mysteries as the mystery-loving race of German commentators may have strained themselves to draw out of it; as it stands, and where it stands, and with the claims which it necessarily makes, it remains a brilliant blunder and a magnificent mistake; and with this we must be content. Those whose organ of reverence is stronger than their love of truth, will, of course, think otherwise; and this is no doubt the most suitable excuse for any nonsense that may have been thought or written on the subject; but, if it be a part of the wisdom of life to learn to look calmly on plain facts, even when most disagreeable, it belongs no less to an educated literary judgment to admit honestly the special shortcomings of a great genius, without prejudice to his general merits. An ignorant worship is a poor substitute for a just appreciation.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

Dr. Henry Faust, a scholar.

Wagner, Faust’s servant.

Mephistopheles, a Devil.

Margaret, Faust’s love. Also called Gretchen.

Martha, Margaret’s neighbour.

Eliza, an acquaintance of Margaret’s.

Valentin, Margaret’s brother.

Altmayer, Brander, Frosch, Siebel, patrons of Auerbach’s Wine Cellar.

Students, Spirits, Women, Angels, Servants, Beggars, Soldiers, Peasants, Cat-Apes, Witches, Director of the Theatre, Leader of the Orchestra, Idealist, Realist, Sceptic, etc.

DEDICATION.

Prefixed to the Later Editions of Faust.

Ye hover nigh, dim-floating shapes again,

That erst the misty eye of Fancy knew!

Shall I once more your shadowy flight detain,

And the fond dreamings of my youth pursue?

Ye press around!—resume your ancient reign,—

As from the hazy past ye rise to view;

The magic breath that wafts your airy train

Stirs in my breast long-slumbering chords again.

Ye raise the pictured forms of happy days,

And many a dear loved shade comes up with you;

Like the far echo of old-memoried lays,

First love and early friendship ye renew.

Old pangs return; life’s labyrinthine maze

Again the plaint of sorrow wanders through,

And names the loved ones who from Fate received

A bitter call, and left my heart bereaved.

They hear no more the sequel of my song,

Who heard my early chant with open ear;

Dispersed for ever is the favouring throng,

Dumb the response from friend to friend so dear.

My sorrow floats an unknown crowd among,

Whose very praise comes mingled with strange fear;

And they who once were pleased to hear my lay,

If yet they live, have drifted far away.

And I recall with long-unfelt desire

The realm of spirits, solemn, still, serene;

My faltering lay, like the Æolian lyre,

Gives wavering tones with many a pause between;

The stern heart glows with youth’s rekindled fire,

Tear follows tear, where long no tear hath been;

The thing I am fades into distance grey;

And the pale Past stands out a clear to-day.

PRELUDE AT THE THEATRE.

Manager of a Strolling Company.—Stage-poet—Merryfellow.

Manager.

Ye twain, in good and evil day

So oft my solace and my stay,

Say, have ye heard sure word, or wandering rumour

How our new scheme affects the public humour?

Without the multitude we cannot thrive,

Their maxim is to live and to let live.

The posts are up, the planks are fastened, and

Each man’s agog for something gay and grand.

With arched eyebrows they sit already there,

Gaping for something new to make them stare.

I know the public taste, and profit by it;

But still to-day I’ve fears of our succeeding:

’Tis true they’re customed to no dainty diet,

But they’ve gone through an awful breadth of reading.

How shall we make our pieces fresh and new,

And with some meaning in them, pleasing too?

In sooth, I like to see the people pouring

Into our booth, like storm and tempest roaring,

While, as the waving impulse onward heaves them,

The narrow gate of grace at length receives them,

When, long ere it be dark, with lusty knocks

They fight their way on to the money-box,

And like a starving crowd around a baker’s door,

For tickets as for bread they roar.

So wonder-working is the poet’s sway

O’er every heart—so may it work to-day!

Poet.

O mention not that motley throng to me,

Which only seen makes frighted genius pause;

Hide from my view that wild and whirling sea

That sucks me in, and deep and downward draws.

No! let some noiseless nook of refuge be

My heaven, remote from boisterous rude applause,

Where Love and Friendship, as a God inspires,

Create and fan the pure heart’s chastened fires.

Alas! what there the shaping thought did rear,

And scarce the trembling lip might lisping say,

To Nature’s rounded type not always near,

The greedy moment rudely sweeps away.

Oft-times a work, through many a patient year

Must toil to reach its finished fair display;

The glittering gaud may fix the passing gaze,

But the pure gem gains Time’s enduring praise.

Merryfellow.

Pshaw! Time will reap his own; but in our power

The moment lies, and we must use the hour.

The Future, no doubt, is the Present’s heir,

But we who live must first enjoy our share.

Methinks the present of a goodly boy

Has something that the wisest might enjoy.

Whose ready lips with easy lightness brim,

The people’s humour need not trouble him;

He courts a crowd the surer to impart

The quickening word that stirs the kindred heart.

Quit ye like men, be honest bards and true,

Let Fancy with her many-sounding chorus,

Reason, Sense, Feeling, Passion, move before us,

But, mark me well—a spice of folly too!

Manager.

Give what you please, so that you give but plenty;

They come to see, and you must feed their eyes;

Scene upon scene, each act may have its twenty,

To keep them gaping still in fresh surprise:

This is the royal road to public favour;

You snatch it thus, and it is yours for ever.

A mass of things alone the mass secures;

Each comes at last and culls his own from yours.

Bring much, and every one is sure to find,

In your rich nosegay, something to his mind.

You give a piece, give it at once in pieces;

Such a ragout each taste and temper pleases,

And spares, if only they were wise to know it,

Much fruitless toil to player and to poet.

In vain into an artful whole you glue it;

The public in the long run will undo it.

Poet.

What? feel you not the vileness of this trade?

How much the genuine artist ye degrade?

The bungling practice of our hasty school

You raise into a maxim and a rule.

Manager.

All very well!—but when a man

Has forged a scheme, and sketched a plan

He must have sense to use the tool

The best that for the job is fit.

Consider what soft wood you have to split,

And who the people are for whom you write.

One comes to kill a few hours o’ the night;

Another, with his drowsy wits oppressed,

An over-sated banquet to digest;

And not a few, whom least of all we choose,

Come to the play from reading the Reviews.

They drift to us as to a masquerade;

Mere curiosity wings their paces;

The ladies show themselves, and show their silks and laces,

And play their parts well, though they are not paid.

What dream you of, on your poetic height?

A crowded house, forsooth, gives you delight!

Look at your patrons as you should,

You’ll find them one half cold, and one half crude.

One leaves the play to spend the night

Upon a wench’s breast in wild delight;

Another sets him down to cards, or calls

For rattling dice, or clicking billiard balls.

For such like hearers, and for ends like these

Why should a bard the gentle Muses tease?

I tell you, give them more, and ever more, and still

A little more, if you would prove your skill.

And since they can’t discern the finer quality,

Confound them with broad sweep of triviality—

But what’s the matter?—pain or ravishment?

Poet.

If such your service, you must be content

With other servants who will take your pay!

Shall then the bard his noblest right betray?

The right of man, which Nature’s gift imparts,

For brainless plaudits basely jest away?

What gives him power to move all hearts,

Each stubborn element to sway,

What but the harmony, his being’s inmost tone,

That charms all feelings back into his own?

Where listless Nature, her eternal thread,

The unwilling spindle twists around,

And hostile shocks of things that will not wed

With jarring dissonance resound,

Who guides with living pulse the rhythmic flow

Of powers that make sweet music as they go?

Who consecrates each separate limb and soul

To beat in glorious concert with the whole?

Who makes the surgy-swelling billow

Heave with the wildly heaving breast,

And on the evening’s rosy pillow,

Invites the brooding heart to rest?

Who scatters spring’s most lovely blooms upon

The path of the belovèd one?

Who plaits the leaves that unregarded grow

Into a crown to deck the honoured brow?

Who charms the gods? who makes Olympus yield?

The power of man in poet’s art revealed.

Merryfellow.

Then learn such subtle powers to wield,

And on the poet’s business enter

As one does on a love-adventure.

They meet by chance, are pleased, and stay

On being pressed, just for a day;

Then hours to hours are sweetly linked in chain,

Till net-caught by degrees, they find retreat is vain.

At first the sky is bright, then darkly lowers;

To-day, fine thrilling rapture wings the hours,

To-morrow, doubts and anguish have their chance,

And, ere one knows, they’re deep in a romance.

A play like this both praise and profit brings.

Plunge yourself boldly in the stream of things—

What’s lived by all, but known to few—

And bring up something fresh and new,

No matter what; just use your eyes,

And all will praise what all can prize;

Strange motley pictures in a misty mirror,

A spark of truth in a thick cloud of error;

’Tis thus we brew the genuine beverage,

To edify and to refresh the age.

The bloom of youth in eager expectation,

With gaping ears drinks in your revelation;

Each tender sentimental disposition

Sucks from your art sweet woe-be-gone nutrition;

Each hears a part of what his own heart says,

While over all your quickening sceptre sways.

These younglings follow where you bid them go.

Lightly to laughter stirred, or turned to woe,

They love the show, and with an easy swing,

Follow the lordly wafture of your wing;

Your made-up man looks cold on everything,

But growing minds take in what makes them grow.

Poet.

Then give me back the years again,

When mine own spirit too was growing,

When my whole being was a vein

Of thronging songs within me flowing!

Then slept the world in misty blue,

Each bud the nascent wonder cherished,

And all for me the flowerets grew,

That on each meadow richly flourished.

Though I had nothing then, I had a treasure,

The thirst for truth, and in illusion pleasure.

Give me the free, unshackled pinion,

The height of joy, the depth of pain,

Strong hate, and stronger love’s dominion;

O give me back my youth again!

Merryfellow.

The fire of youth, good friend, you need, of course,

Into the hostile ranks to break,

Or, when the loveliest damsels hang by force,

With amorous clinging, from your neck,

When swift your wingèd steps advance

To where the racer’s prize invites you,

Or, after hours of wheeling dance,

The nightly deep carouse invites you.

But to awake the well-known lyre

With graceful touch that tempers fire,

And to a self-appointed goal,

With tuneful rambling on to roll,

Such are your duties, aged sirs; nor we

Less honour pay for this, nor stint your fee;

Old age, not childish, makes the old; but they

Are genuine children of a mellower day.

Manager.

Enough of words: ’tis time that we

Were come to deeds; while you are spinning

Fine airy phrases, fancy-free,

We might have made some good beginning.

What stuff you talk of being in the vein!

A lazy man is never in the vein.

If once your names are on the poet’s roll,

The Muses should be under your control.

You know our want; a good stiff liquor

To make their creeping blood flow quicker;

Then brew the brewst without delay;

What was not done to-day, to-morrow

Will leave undone for greater sorrow.

Don’t stand, and stare, and block the way,

But with a firm, set purpose lay

Hold of your bright thoughts as they rise to view,

And bid them stay;

Once caught, they will not lightly run away,

Till they have done what in them lies to do.

Among the sons of German play,

Each tries his hand at what he may;

Therefore be brilliant in your scenery,

And spare no cost on your machinery.

Let sun and moon be at your call,

And scatter stars on stars around;

Let water, fire, and rocky wall,

And bird and beast and fish abound.

Thus in your narrow booth mete forth

The wide creation’s flaming girth,

And wing your progress, pondered well,

From heaven to earth, from earth to hell.

PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN.

The Lord—The Heavenly Hosts: afterwards Mephistopheles.

Raphael.

The Sun doth chime his ancient music

’Mid brothered spheres’ contending song.

And on his fore-appointed journey

With pace of thunder rolls along.

Strength drink the angels from his glory,

Though none may throughly search his way:

God’s works rehearse their wondrous story

As bright as on Creation’s day.

Gabriel.

And swift and swift beyond conceiving

The pomp of earth is wheeled around,

Alternating Elysian brightness

With awful gloom of night profound.

Up foams the sea, a surging river,

And smites the steep rock’s echoing base,

And rock and sea, unwearied ever,

Spin their eternal circling race.

Michael.

And storm meets storm with rival greeting,

From sea to land, from land to sea,

While from their war a virtue floweth,

That thrills with life all things that be.

The lightning darts his fury, blazing

Before the thunder’s sounding way;

But still thy servants, Lord, are praising

The gentle going of thy day.

All the Three.

Strength drink the angels from thy glory,

Though none may search thy wondrous way;

Thy works repeat their radiant story,

As bright as on Creation’s day.

Mephistopheles.

Sith thou, O Lord, approachest near,

And how we fare would’st fain have information,

And thou of old wert glad to see me here,

I stand to-day amid the courtly nation.

Pardon; no words of fine address I know,

Nor could, though all should hoot me down with sneers;

My pathos would move laughter, and not tears,

Wert thou not weaned from laughter long ago.

Of suns and worlds I’ve nought to say,

I only see how men must fret their lives away.

The little god o’ the world jogs and jogs on, the same

As when from ruddy clay he took his name;

And, sooth to say, remains a riddle, just

As much as when you shaped him from the dust.

Perhaps a little better he had thriven,

Had he not got the show of glimmering light from heaven:

He calls it reason, and it makes him free

To be more brutish than a brute can be;

He is, methinks, with reverence of your grace,

Like one of the long-leggèd race

Of grasshoppers that leap in the air, and spring,

And straightway in the grass the same old song they sing;

’Twere well that from the grass he never rose,

On every stubble he must break his nose!

The Lord.

Hast thou then nothing more to say?

And art thou here again to-day

To vent thy grudge in peevish spite

Against the earth, still finding nothing right?

Mephistopheles.

True, Lord; I find things there no better than before;

I must confess I do deplore

Man’s hopeless case, and scarce have heart myself

To torture the poor miserable elf.

The Lord.

Dost thou know Faust?

Mephistopheles.

The Doctor?

The Lord.

Ay: my servant.

Mephistopheles.

Indeed! and of his master’s will observant,

In fashion quite peculiar to himself;

His food and drink are of no earthly taste,

A restless fever drives him to the waste.

Himself half seems to understand

How his poor wits have run astrand;

From heaven he asks each loveliest star,

Earth’s chiefest joy must jump to his demand,

And all that’s near, and all that’s far,

Soothes not his deep-moved spirit’s war.

The Lord.

Though for a time he blindly grope his way,

Soon will I lead him into open day;

Well knows the gardener, when green shoots appear,

That bloom and fruit await the ripening year.

Mephistopheles.

What wager you? you yet shall lose that soul!

Only give me full license, and you’ll see

How I shall lead him softly to my goal.

The Lord.

As long as on the earth he lives

Thou hast my license full and free;

Man still must stumble while he strives.

Mephistopheles.

My thanks for that! the dead for me

Have little charm; my humour seeks

The bloom of lusty life, with plump and rosy cheeks;

For a vile corpse my tooth is far too nice,

I do just as the cat does with the mice.

The Lord.

So be it; meanwhile, to tempt him thou art free;

Go, drag this spirit from his native fount,

And lead him on, canst thou his will surmount,

Into perdition down with thee;

But stand ashamed at last, when thou shalt see

An honest man, ’mid all his strivings dark,

Finds the right way, though lit but by a spark.

Mephistopheles.

Well, well; short time will show; into my net

I’ll draw the fish, and then I’ve won my bet;

And when I’ve carried through my measure

Loud blast of trump shall blaze my glory;

Dust shall he eat, and that with pleasure,

Like my cousin the snake in the rare old story.