Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/757

Rh Madame dc Stael. Schiller’s death. GOETHE days of the new century he suffered a dangerous attack of scarlatina. His friends feared for his life. Frau von Stein recalled her forgotten friendship, and showed kindness to his son. After his recovery he sketched o11t what was the most important work of these years, a trilogy on the subject of the French Revolution ; of this only the ﬁrst part, the Natiirliclze T067116)‘, was completed. The story was a true one of a princess of the French house of Conti. The play is written with the full beauty of Goetl1e’s style, and some passages and eff'ects are worthy of his highest genius. But as a whole it fails. It has the quality, which in a drama must be a fault, so characteristic of Goethe’s later writing, of too great universality of treatment. The char- acters are not living beings but abstractions, and the language is vague and general rather than clear and deﬁned. The play was performed at Weimar 011 April 2, 1803. Two masterpieces of Schiller—tl1e Brant von 2|/essina and the J un_r7_frau von 0rle(ms~—preceded and followed it by a few weeks. At the end of this year Madame de Stael arrived in Weimar accompanied by Benjamin Constant. She had heard of the fame of this new Parnassus, and she was bent on proclaiming the intellectual superiority of. Germany to the world. Goethe at first ﬂed from her, as Byron did at a later period. He hid himself in Jena, but was recalled by order of the duke. The result of the con- versations in the salons of Weimar is contained in her book De l’-fllema_r/ne. In March she was suddenly recalled by the death of her father, the minister Necker. Goethe was a.t this time the centre to which the most distinguished men of all kinds in Germany naturally turned. He was most intimate with Zelter the musician, with whom he main- tained a full correspondence ; with Wilhelm von Humboldt, the statesman-scholar ; with F. A. Volf, the founder of the science of philology ; with Gottfried Hermann, the best authority on Greek metres. But the friendship which was worth all these was soon to be severed. In the beginning of 1805 Goethe was convinced that either he or Schiller would die in that year. In January they were both seized with illness ; Schiller had ﬁnished his Plu.'idm and begun to work at his I)emet7'ius. Goethe was translating the Neveu de I-Br.unc(m of Diderot. Schiller was the ﬁrst to recover, and visiting loethe in his sick room, fell on his neck and kissed him with intense emotion. On April 29 they saw each other for the last time. Schiller was on his way to the theatre whither Goethe was too ill to accompany him. They parted at the door of Schiller’s house. Schiller died on the evening of the 9th of May. N 0 one dared to tell Goethe the sad news, but he saw in the faces of those who surrounded him thatSchiller mustbe veryill. On the morrowof Scl1iller’s death, when his wife entered his room, he said, “ Is it not true that Schiller was very ill yesterday?” She began to sob. He then cried, “ He is dead !” “ Thou hast spoken it thyself,” she answered. Once more he cried, “He is dead!” and turning aside covered his weeping eyes with his hands. He at ﬁrst intended to have completed I)emetrz'us as a memorial of his friend, but a happier inspiration was to arrange a performance of Schiller’s great poem of The Bell, and to crown it by an epilogue. Since that time Schiller anl Goethe have been inseparable in the minds of their coux.":-ynien, and have reigned as twin stars in the literary ﬁrmament. If Schiller does not hold the ﬁrst place, it is at least true that he is more beloved, although Goethe may be more admired. It would be i11vidious to separate them. But it is evident that the best fruits of Schiller’s muse were produced when he was most closely under Goethe’s inﬂuence, and the foreign student of German culture l1as ground for believing that at some future time the glory of the lesser luminary will be absorbed in that of the greater, and the name of Goethe will represent alone and unrivalled the literature of his age and country. 733 Schiller was happy in the occasion of his death. not see the troubles which immediately afterwards burst upon Thuringia. On October 14, 1806, the battle of Jena was fought. The court had ﬂed from Weimar; only the duchess Louise remained. In the evening of the defeat Veimar was plundered by the conquering troops. Many of Goethe’s friends lost everything they possessed. His property and perhaps his life was saved by the ﬁrmness of Christiane, and afterwards by the billeting of Marshal Augereau in his house. On the 15th Napoleon entered the town, but Goethe did not go to see him. The duchess obtained her husband’s pardon by her entreaties. It was not till the autumn of 1808 that Napoleon and Goethe, perhaps the two greatest men then living in Europe, met and conversed. It was at the congress of Erfurt, where the sovereigns and princes of Europe were assembled. Goethe’s presence was commanded by the duke. He was attracted at least as much by the prospect of seeing Talma as of meeting Napoleon. He was invited to an audience on October 2 ; Talleyrand, Berthier, and Savary were present. The emperor sat at a large round table eating his breakfast. lle beckoned Goethe to approach him, and said to him, “ Vous étes un homme !” He asked how old he was, ex- pressed his wonder at the freshness of his appearance, said that he had read lVerther through seven times, and made some acute remarks on the management of the plot. Then, after an interruption, he said that tragedy ought to be the school of kings and peoples; that there was no subject worthier of treatment than the death of Caesar, which Voltaire had treated insufficiently. A great poet would have given prominence to Caesar’s plans for the regeneration of the world, and shown what a loss mankind had suffered by his murder. He invited Goethe to Paris, that was the centre of great movements; there he would ﬁnd subjects worthy of his skill. They parted with mutual admiration. The bust of Napoleon was a prominent ornament in Goethe’s study. In the same year, 1808, an edition of Goethe’s works 1"u1I.s!. in thirteen volumes was published by Cotta at Tiibingen. It is remarkable as containing the ﬁrst part of Faust in its complete forn1. The principal portions of the drama had already been published as a fragment in 1790. It had then attracted but little attention. Heyne wrote of it——“ There are fine passages in it, but with them there are such things as only he could give to the world who takes other men to be blockheads.” Wieland and Schiller were apparently dissatisﬁed with it. It had perhaps the appear- ance of patchwork, as it was made up of fragments which had been written at Very different periods of his life. The idea of writing Faust seems to l1ave come to Goethe in his earliest manhood. He was brooding over it at the same time with Got: van BeI'lz'c/n'n{/en, but at Strasburg he spoke to Herder of neither. He apparently began to write it down at the same time as Wertlzer in 1774, and we ﬁnd mention of its progress in the two following years ; indeed, all the important parts of the fragment which appeared in 1790 were known to Jacobi before 1776. He took the work with him to Italy, where he added little to it except the scene in the witches’ kitchen. The dedication, the “Prologue in Heaven,” which presents to the reader the idea of the whole work, the prelude on the stage copied from the Indian drama, the lyrical intermezzo, the scene with Wagner before the city gate, and the scene with Mephistopheles in the study were written before 1800. In that year he was busy with Helena for the second part, and he added nothing afterwards to the ﬁrst except the “ Walpurgis Night ” and the scene of Valentine’s death. Faust justly stands at the head of all Goethe’s works, and it deserves a very high place among the best works of every age. F ou11de:l on a well-known popular tale, indebted for its interest and 116 Napoloors