Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/185

 struggles for spiritual freedom rather than his compact with the devil, on which the imagination is throughout fastened. In the case of the other two plays, it might be harder to justify the critic, did not the poet, by subtle suggestion, make it clear that each in its several way is a reflection of his own actual experience, an imaginative symbol of the storm through which he, and others like him, had passed before entering into calm. Yet, even with this allowance, it remains doubtful whether Carlyle indeed saves his consistency; still more doubtful whether he does not make loopholes for Goethe which he denies to Coleridge or Keats.

But it is time to ask: What were the ideas which, in his view, inspired the imaginative creations of Goethe, and through the imagination struck home to the heart and spirit of the reader? They were, it would seem, partly moral and partly religious. In either case, they are ultimately involved in what has already been said about Goethe's attitude towards life and experience, as that attitude presented itself to the mind of his Scottish disciple.

The 'mild wisdom' with which Goethe accepts the facts of life, the tolerance with which he not only accepts but welcomes all forms of human character—the 'scepticism of Jarno' as well as the 'polished manhood of Lothario', the 'gay animal vivacity of Philine' no less than the 'mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon' —this, in itself, implied a whole range of ideas which Carlyle, almost in spite of himself, had schooled himself to admire, and strove hard to make his own. To the human tolerance of Goethe, at least in his more serious moments, he doubtless never attained. Even in the first fervour of his homage, nature and early training were too strong for him. And in later years, when the spell of Goethe had largely lost its hold, he must be admitted to have abandoned the struggle altogether. But in his lighter vein and when he was willing to surrender