It is, nevertheless, not through the aid of Ben Jonson’s line, “fair and wise and good as she,” that Bettina may be described.  She suggests far rather an electrical, inspired, lyrical nature.  The spokesman of this literary estimate of Bettina was Margaret Fuller, and it is interesting to note that this best of American critics at once instituted a comparison between Bettina and Karoline von Guenderode, in which the former was made to stand for Nature and the latter for Art.  But it appears to have escaped notice that Margaret Fuller, in presenting her example of the artistic type, has, with no express intention, given us a picture of herself.[7] The subtle harmonies, the soft aerial grace, the multiplied traits, the soul delicately appareled, the soft dignity of each look and gesture, the silvery spiritual clearness of an angel’s lyre, drawing from every form of life its eternal meaning—­these are all lineaments of the Countess of Pembroke type, and these characteristics Margaret Fuller herself shared.  How different is her description of Bettina!

“Bettina, hovering from object to object, drawing new tides of vital energy from all, living freshly alike in man and tree, loving the breath of the damp earth as well as the flower which springs from it, bounding over the fences of society as well as over the fences of the field, intoxicated with the apprehension of each new mystery, never hushed into silence by the highest, flying and singing like a bird, sobbing with the hopelessness of an infant, prophetic, yet astonished at the fulfilment of each prophecy, restless, fearless, clinging to love, yet unwearied in experiment—­is not this the pervasive vital force, cause of the effect which we call Nature?”

On the part of both Goethe and Bettina, there was always a recognition of such a natural force operating in her.  As Guenderode once put it, “Bettina seems like clay, which a divine artificer, preparing to fashion it into something rare, is treading with his feet.”  On the 13th of August, 1807, Bettina wrote:  “Farewell, glorious one, thou who dost both dazzle and intimidate me.  From this steep cliff [Goethe] upon which my love has risked the climb, there is no possible path down again.  That is not to be thought of; I should simply break my neck.”  Goethe’s reply, in this as in other cases, was characteristic:  “What can one say or give to thee, which thou hast not after thy own fashion already appropriated?  There is nothing left for me but to keep still, and let thee have thy way.”  In this passage-at-arms, the whole of the Correspondence, though not its charm, is concentrated.  Goethe was intent on keeping the relationship within its first limitations, that is to say, as a friendship in which his mother, Frau Rat, was included as a necessary third party.  The impetuous young confidante was already transmitting to Goethe chapters from the history of his childhood, as seen through the communications of his mother to