then extant in England did not understand “Faust,” and were inclined to condemn it,—­as, for instance, Coleridge, who, as we see from his “Table-Talk,” misconceived the whole idea of the poem, and found fault with the execution, because it was different from what he fancied he himself would have made of this legend, had he taken it in hand.  The first English translation was published in the same year as the first French version, that is, in 1825; both were exceedingly imperfect.  Since then several other translations in prose and verse have appeared in both languages, especially in English,—­though the “twenty or thirty metrical ones” of which Mr. C.T.  Brooks speaks in his preface are probably to be taken as a mere mode of speech,—­and lately one by this gentleman himself, in our very midst.  This latter comes, perhaps, as near to perfection as it is possible for the reproduction of all idiomatic poetical composition in another language to do.  All this indicates that the time for the just appreciation of German literature in general and of Goethe in particular is drawing near at last; that its influence has for some time been felt is proved, among other things, by that paraphrastic imitation of “Faust,” Bailey’s “Festus.”

That a poem like “Faust” could not at first be generally understood is not unnatural.  Various interpretations of its seeming riddles have been attempted; and if the volumes of German “Goethe-Literature” are numerous enough to form a small library, those of the “Faust-Literature” may be computed to form the fourth part of it.  To the English reader we cannot recommend highly enough, for the full comprehension of “Faust,” the commentary on this poem which Mr. Lewes gives in his “Life of Goethe,” as perhaps the most excellent portion of that excellent work.  Goethe himself has given many a hint on his own conception, and as to how far it was the reflex of his own soul.  “The puppet-show-fable of ‘Faust,’” he says, “murmured with many voices in my soul.  I, too, had wandered into every department of knowledge, and had returned disgusted, and convinced of the vanity of science.  And life, too, I had tried under various aspects, and had always come back sorrowing and unsatisfied.”  “Faust’s character,” he says in another place, “at the height to which the modern elaboration (Ausbildung) of the old, crude, popular tale has raised it, represents a man, who, feeling impatient and uncomfortable within the general limits of earth, esteems the possession of the highest knowledge, the enjoyment of the fairest worldly goods, inadequate to satisfy his longings even in the least degree, a mind which, turning to every side in search of this satisfaction, ever recedes into itself with increased unhappiness.”—­He remarks, too, that “the approbation which this poem has met with, far and near, may be owing to the rare peculiarity, that it fixes permanently the developing process of a human mind, which by everything that torments humanity is also pained, by all that troubles it is also agitated, by what it condemns is likewise enthralled, and by what it desires is also made happy."[8]