The effect on Margaret was complete.  She was perfectly timed to it.  She found her moods met, her topics treated, the liberty of thought she loved, the same climate of mind.  Of course, this book superseded all others, for the time, and tinged deeply all her thoughts.  The religion, the science, the Catholicism, the worship of art, the mysticism and daemonology, and withal the clear recognition of moral distinctions as final and eternal, all charmed her; and Faust, and Tasso, and Mignon, and Makaria, and Iphigenia, became irresistible names.  It was one of those agreeable historical coincidences, perhaps invariable, though not yet registered, the simultaneous appearance of a teacher and of pupils, between whom exists a strict affinity.  Nowhere did Goethe find a braver, more intelligent, or more sympathetic reader.  About the time I knew her, she was meditating a biography of Goethe, and did set herself to the task in 1837.  She spent much time on it, and has left heaps of manuscripts, which are notes, transcripts, and studies in that direction.  But she wanted leisure and health to finish it, amid the multitude of projected works with which her brain teemed.  She used great discretion on this point, and made no promises.  In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann, a book which makes the basis of the translation of Eckermann since published in London, by Mr. Oxenford.  In the Dial, in July, 1841, she wrote an article on Goethe, which is, on many accounts, her best paper.

CRITICISM.

Margaret was in the habit of sending to her correspondents, in lieu of letters, sheets of criticism on her recent readings.  From such quite private folios, never intended for the press, and, indeed, containing here and there names and allusions, which it is now necessary to veil or suppress, I select the following notices, chiefly of French books.  Most of these were addressed to me, but the three first to an earlier friend.

’Reading Schiller’s introduction to the Wars of the League, I have been led back to my old friend, the Duke of Sully, and his charming king.  He was a man, that Henri!  How gay and graceful seems his unflinching frankness!  He wore life as lightly as the feather in his cap.  I have become much interested, too, in the two Guises, who had seemed to me mere intriguers, and not of so splendid abilities, when I was less able to appreciate the difficulties they daily and hourly combated.  I want to read some more books about them.  Do you know whether I could get Matthieu, or de Thou, or the Memoirs of the House of Nevers?

    ’I do not think this is a respectable way of passing my
    summer, but I cannot help it.