As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial.  A certain weirdness is all they have in common.  The intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they constitute her individuality.  Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped child attached to a strolling circus company, and has rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager.  Thenceforth she clings to him with a passionate devotion, in which gratitude for her deliverance, filial affection, and the love of a maiden for her hero are strangely blended.  Afflicted with a disease of the heart, she is subject to terrible convulsions, which increase the tenderness of her protector for the doomed child.  After one of these attacks, in which she had been suffering frightful pain, we read:—­

“He held her fast.  She wept; and no tongue can express the force of those tears.  Her long hair had become unfastened and hung loose over her shoulders.  Her whole being seemed to be melting away....  At last she raised herself up.  A mild cheerfulness gleamed from her face.  ’My father!’ she cried, ’you will not leave me!  You will be my father!  I will be your child.’  Softly, before the door, a harp began to sound.  The old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening sacrifice to his friend.”

Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, in which the soul of Mignon, with its unconquerable yearnings, is forever embalmed,—­“Kennst du das Land":—­

“Know’st thou the land that bears the citron’s bloom? 
The golden orange glows ’mid verdant gloom,
A gentle wind from heaven’s deep azure blows,
The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows,—­
Know’st thou the land?[9]
Oh, there! oh, there! 
Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair.” ...

[Footnote 9:  Literally, “Know’st thou it well?” But the word “well,” in this case, does not answer to the German wohl.]

The “Elective Affinities” has been strangely misinterpreted as having an immoral tendency, as encouraging conjugal infidelity, and approving “free love.”  That any one who has read the work with attention to the end could so misjudge it seems incredible.  Precisely the reverse of this, its aim is to enforce the sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing the tragic consequences resulting from its violation, though only in thought and feeling....

Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe which seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by even his admirers,—­his loving skill in the delineation of female character; the commanding place he assigns to woman in his writings; his full recognition of the importance of feminine influence in human destiny.  The prophetic utterance, which forms the conclusion of “Faust,”—­“The ever womanly draws us on,”—­is the summing up of Goethe’s own experience of life.