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without memory of the past. 'A son is born to Faust and her, but the boy, impatient of the limitations of human existence, springs into space and vanishes. This boy-Euphorion— has been said to represent Lord Byron. The mother in despair follows her child, and Faust is alone again.

Then we see him once more at the emperor's court. In return for his services he receives from the emperor land to reclaim from the sea, to render fruitful for mankind. The good of humanity is now his sole aim and wish. He grows old and is struck blind, but his will remains as strong as ever. All his energies are set on draining the marshland whence pestiferous vapours infect the surrounding country. The sound of spades digging in the ground rejoices his heart-but it is not the work he has ordered— it is his grave that they are digging. In imagination he sees the good arising from the completion of this great work. If it were once finished, he says, he could bid the moment tarry; and as his mind dwells on the good to come, the happiness, the satisfaction which was to terminate his compact with the Evil One, fills his soul:

"Im Vorgefühl von solchem hohen Glück

Geniefs ich jetzt den höchsten Augenblick.”

So the end has come-the bond to Mephistopheles is due, Faust falls back and dies. But angels driving back the evil spirits carry his soul away, with the words:

"Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,

Den können wir erlösen."

Gretchen, purified and redeemed, receives the spirit in heaven, and Faust, the seeker after truth, is saved, because he has worked and striven for the good of his fellow-men. So the trickster Mephistopheles, has lost his prey, and the guter Mensch" has found the "rechten Weg" spoken of in the Prologue in Heaven. The innate nobility of soul has not deserted him through all his errors and temptations.

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Nor does Mephistopheles, the indefatigable agitator in mischief, the common, vile jester, the low and slanderous spirit of gross passions, without enough grandeur to make him terrible, ever vary from his native baseness. The fallen archangel has no part in Mephistopheles; he is much more the comic devil of the old Mysteries, whose discomfiture was a subject of mirth. Perhaps a more thoroughly diabolic nature could not be conceived. No shadow of the despairing defiance of Milton's Satan is left to him; all sense of loss and shame has vanished from Mephistopheles, sorrow and sin, and the destruction of the higher nature are sport to him; not for one instant is he moved by other than the lowest and vilest impulses; the vain endeavour, the broken heart, the lost soul, are to him no more than a jest. Of Gretchen's sorrow and shame he only says: "Sie ist die erste nicht." Lower than Mephistopheles no spirit could fall.

The workmanship of the wonderful poem is very unequal. This could not be otherwise, for Goethe projected the play in early youth and completed it in old age. Scenes which he had schemed remained unwritten, so that the connection between the different episodes is, in many cases, left to the imagination, not only in the second but also, though less visibly, in the first part. The "Walpurgisnacht" scene was first left unfinished, then patched up with literary satire very much out of place in such connection. But, with all its imperfections of construction, Faust is a great and immortal work and the brightest glory of its author.

Die natürliche Tochter, a drama in five acts had been produced at the Weimar Theatre in 1803. Goethe intended it to form the first part of a trilogy, but the succeeding parts were never added, and the play, notwithstanding the grandeur and power of its eloquent language, failed to attain wide popularity.

Shortly after the completion of Part I. of "Faust" the novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, the story of love which found.

the beloved object too late-ending in tragic death in one case, and in noble renunciation in the other—was published; and, 1811-1831,

Aus meinem Leben, Wahrheit und Dichtung, which is the author's autobiography from childhood, but extends only to the year 1775. The half-title," Dichtung," prepares us for idealism as well as plain fact, so that the incidents may sometimes be fairly considered to have received a certain poetic glamour in the telling. Like all Goethe's prose, these books are masterpieces of style.

Lyrics. The greatest Dramatist of Germany was also the greatest Lyric Poet. Numberless short poems are simply perfection, which one word more or less would spoil. Known to everyone are the "Erlkönig," "Der Sänger," "Der Fischer," "Des Schäfers Klagelied;" and "Wandrers Nachtlied," ("Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh,") the peacefulness in deep sadness of the last being beyond praise.

It is impossible to enumerate here all the works of a writer so voluminous as Goethe, but the most celebrated have been touched on. It was on March 22nd, 1832, that the busy hand fell idle at last, and the far-seeing eye closed for ever. We know the cry, "Mehr Licht," which was among the last murmurs of the aged poet. May not the words addressed to his own creation, "Faust" have been uttered also to him:

"Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,

Den können wir erlösen?"

The strife and the search after truth were over forever: he was laid to rest at Weimar, near his friend Schiller, who had preceded him to the tomb, in the prime of manhood, twentyseven years before. The words were fulfilled at last which he had written to his own heart in earlier

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CHAPTER XI.

SCHILLER.

In the square of Weimar they stand side by side, Goethe and Schiller, the two greatest poets of Germany; and, as symbolized in the bronze statue, they lived in the harmony of perfect friendship from 1779, when Schiller went to Weimar, till 1805, when death struck him down in the midst of his labours. The influence of the one was beneficial to the other: in many ways they represented different schools of thought, and the one was the complement of the other. Goethe was the realist, Schiller the idealist; but they never clashed, and the death of the younger man was a severe blow to Goethe.

Schiller's first fervour and heat of imagination had found vent in "Die Räuber," and in "Kabale und Liebe." He moderated his style, and the crudities of his first crusade against tyranny were refined away by a more perfected taste, but he remained the apostle of liberty till the last, and this is the mainspring of the power he exercises over his countrymen.

Don Carlos was the next tragedy, in polished iambic verse, full of noble thoughts in noble speech, but still a young man's work, and displeasing to the older and riper man, Goethe.

The titular hero-for the Marquis Posa is the actual hero-Don Carlos, son of Philip II. of Spain, has an unhappy attachment to his stepmother, Elisabeth of Valois,

who had first been betrothed to him, before his father took her for his own bride.

This unfortunate passion is suspected, and the prince accused of treasonable designs, and in spite of the devotion of his friend, the Marquis Posa, one of those ideally perfect dreamers whom Schiller painted with such love— for he himself was of the same stamp-Carlos is ruined, and Posa dies for him in vain. They are both victims of the Inquisition, and the whole poem is a polemic against its cruel tyranny and the despotic power of the king; but the crude scene-painting of "Die Räuber" has disappeared, there is no exaggerated declamatory eloquence; Posa's harangues are long indeed, but his ideal of freedom and humane government for the persecuted Netherlands is just and right, though impractible by a Philip II. or an Alba. Elisabeth, in her difficult position, is dignified and calm without being callous. She pities Carlos, though she does not return his passion. If she could be swayed from her duty to her husband and to her own dignity, it would be by her admiration of Posa, not of Carlos. One glimpse only of this is shown us in the scene where, as he persists in the sacrifice of himself for the prince, she cries: "Ich schätze keinen Mann mehr!" and Posa-until then without regret in his self-abnegation-murmurs: "Das Leben ist doch schön!"

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"Don Carlos was published in 1787, the same year as "Iphigenie," and during the twelve succeeding years Schiller finished no drama. He began the

Geisterseher, but that was left uncompleted. Meanwhile he was seeking higher culture, learning to reverence new models, and perfecting his own productive faculty. Like Goethe, he studied the Greek drama. He was at this time Professor at Jena, and in 1794 became intimately associated with Goethe. In 1799 he removed to Weimar. The same year another dramatic work appeared at last, "Wallensteins

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