III.—­Literary Dicta

January 10, 1825.  In accordance with his deep interest in the English, Goethe requested me to introduce to him the young Englishmen staying here.  I took this afternoon Mr. H., a young English officer, who, in the course of the conversation, mentioned that he was reading “Faust,” but found it somewhat difficult.

Said Goethe, laughing, “Really, I should not have recommended you to undertake ‘Faust.’  It is mad stuff, and goes beyond all usual feeling.  But as you have done it of your own accord, without asking me, you will see how you get through.  Faust is so strange an individual that only a few persons can sympathise with his inner condition.  Then the character of Mephistopheles is also very difficult, because of his irony, and also because he is the living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world.  But you will see what light comes to you.

“‘Tasso,’ on the other hand, lies far nearer to the common feeling of mankind, and the elaboration of its form is favourable to an easier understanding of it.  What is chiefly needed for reading ‘Tasso’ is that one should be no longer a child, and should not have been deprived of good society.”

October 15, 1825.  I found Goethe this evening in a very elevated mood, and had the happiness of hearing from him many significant observations.  Concerning the state of the newest literature, he said, “Want of character in individual investigators and writers is the source of all the evils in our most recent literature.  Till now the world believed in the heroism of Lucretia and of Mucius Scaevola, and allowed itself thus to be stimulated and inspired.  But now comes historical criticism, and says that those persons never lived, but are to be regarded as fables and fictions, imagined by the great mind of the Romans.  What are we to do with so pitiful a truth?  And if the Romans were great enough to invent such stories, we should at least be great enough to believe them.”

December 25, 1825.  I found Goethe alone this evening, and passed with him some delightful hours.  The conversation at one time turned on Byron, especially on the disadvantage at which he appears when compared with the innocent cheerfulness of Shakespeare, and on the frequent and usually not unmerited blame which he drew on himself by his manifold works of negation.  Said Goethe, “If Byron had had the opportunity of working off all the opposition that was in him, by delivering many strong speeches in parliament, he would have been far purer as a poet.  But as he scarcely ever spoke in parliament, he kept in his heart all that he felt against his nation, and no other means than poetical expression of his sentiments remained to him.  I could therefore style a great part of his works of negation suppressed parliamentary speeches, and I think the characterisation would suit them well.”

IV.—­“Faust” and Victor Hugo