It is in this serene ether of a divine intelligence that we seem most truly to meet the undying part (the unsterbliches) of Goethe. Here he is himself; elsewhere he is but striving to become himself. Next in value we should place perhaps the poems, such as those occurring in Wilhelm Meister, brief, condensed, and telling more than meets the ear, of suffering, oppression, and long endurance. To these, strange as it may seem at first reading, belongs the famous "Know'st thou the land" Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blühn, the perfect effect of which has not been given in any translation, though Mr. Martin's is careful and accurate. Another is Retribution, one of the Harper's fragments in the novel: RETRIBUTION. He that with tears did never eat his bread, He that hath never lain through night's long hours, Weeping in bitter anguish on his bed He knows ye not, ye dread celestial powers. Ye lead us onwards into life. Ye leave The wretch to fall; then yield him up, in woe, Remorse, and pain, unceasingly to grieve; For every sin is punished here below. Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein," Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden; Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden. It is curious, as a matter of the mechanics of translation, to notice what little diversities, in languages so nearly akin as English and German, make a literal version impracticable, and send the translators off in different directions. The original words can almost be exactly given; but mächte, mights, which would rhyme to nights, nächte, must in English be turned into powers-nights must therefore in some way be paraphrased to introduce the word hours. There is a reluctance to force sate into a rhyming relation with ate, and an evident unwillingness to render himmlischen simply and without any This also, with the labor of a year or addition by heavenly. two, might be better done.* * Wer nie sein Brot mit Thränen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte Auf seinem Bette wienend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen is thus translated by Mr. Carlyle Who ne'er his bread with tears hath ate, Who never through the sad night hours Weeping upon his bed hath sate, He knows not you, you heavenly powers. Forth into life you bid us go, And into guilt you let us fall, Then leave us to endure the woe It brings unfailingly to all. Come ye so early, Days of delight, (p. 225,) has quite the feeling of Goethe; and so has the following: What stirs in my heart so? 'Tis there I must go. But 'Yestre'en at gloaming, was I with my dear,' and 'Ah! there is the bower where my lady doth bide,' are surely repugnant to the taste that has been disciplined in Goethe's style. Tanquam scopulum, insolens verbum. His words and his phrases are always those of a living language. But in the love-poems in general, we are haunted by a sense of the restricted character of the passion. "Secret fatal! il n'aimait pas." He was too far-seeing, too transcendently intelligent, to be blind ly in love.* The imagination was enchanted, the soul was agitated, the heart also suffered; but the Mind which was the man, revolved upon its center. There is tenderness, there is passion-there are longings, regrets, and desolations: Oh! wherefore shouldst thou try For didst thou only know, To those who have not tears enough Thou'dst rather bid them weep, and seek their comfort so. Infinite longings, overpowering regrets, and profound desolations. Yet after all, "The Sun ariseth, and they get them away together." The mists they are scattered, The blue sky looks brightly, The wearisome chain! Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh'! As, with a slight variation, another poet has said or sung— * Let it be also said that he was too grave to be lightly in love. With a little levity and mockery the love-verses would have been more acceptable with less of serious purpose he would have seemed more really human. Indeed, we think the present translators have admitted rather too many of the love-poems. Too many also of the mere ballads, which neither are very valuable in themselves nor to any great degree illustrate the character of the author. Mr. Aytoun has had the skill to give to many of these latter pieces a thoroughly native (English or Scotch) effect. Who'll buy a Cupid? (p. 190,) is really very pretty. The Page and Maid of Honor is ingenious. But the latter is certainly not is at best but a jeu d'esprit. Better than much like the original; and the original these are the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, and The Wanderer, (p. 145,) which belong to a different class. Yet among the mere ballads, too, there are some which rise into a higher region. Goethe, when he wrote them, knew not what he was thinking of, and they come not from a divine theory but from a human instinct. Such are perhaps, The Erl King, The Fisher, is something simple and beautiful: and The King in Thule. And here, too, THE WILD ROSE. A boy espied, in morning light, I will gather thee-he cried- But he plucked it from the plain, Homewards with it going. Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red, The portion of the volume that appears to us least satisfactory is that between pages 8 and 22, containing the poems in the manner of the antique, written in the original in hexameters or in hexameters and pentameters. These meters, even in the German, are, perhaps, after all said and done, not quite three quarters naturalized. The late Archdeacon Hare translated the Alexis and Dora into English longs and shorts; but it certainly is as yet difficult for the English ear to like them. But without saying that the translators were not perfectly right in selecting other meters in the place of the modern classical, we must say that in those which they have adopted they fail to give the rounded grace and epigrammatic neatness by which Goethe has made the rough Teutonic almost worthy of Propertius or the Anthologia. Blank verse, which Mr. Martin has used most frequently, is, perhaps unavoidably, diffuse and explanatory. Mr. Aytoun's trochaics, on the other hand, are turgid, and indeed bombastic. The most successful piece is one which Mr. Martin has written in Mr. Aytoun's measure: PHEBUS AND HERMES. The deep-browed lord of Delos once, and Maia's nimble-witted son, Contended eagerly by whom the prize of glory should be won; Hermes longed to grasp the lyre the lyre yet the hopes of both were vain. For Ares, to decide the strife, between them rudely dashed in ire, And waving high his falchion keen, he cleft in twain the golden lyre. Loud Hermes laughed maliciously, but at the direful deed did fall The deepest grief upon the heart of Phoebus and the Muses all. But Goethe would not have said "his falchion keen." Here is an epigram which we have seen praised. EXCULPATION. Wilt thou dare to blame the woman for her seeming sudden changes, Swaying east and swaying westward, as the breezes shake the tree? Fool! thy selfish thought misguides thee-find the man that never ranges; Woman wavers but to seek him-Is not then the fault in thee? But will the admiring reader believe that the entire original, which has been inflated into this capacious balloon, is contained, as in a nut, in a brief distich, of which a very nearly literal transcript will stand as follows? with silver snow, Which the stormy night hath shaken from its robes upon thy brow; And I know that youth and age are bound with such mysterious meaning, As the days are linked together, one short dream but intervening. Add but a few Bon Gaultier touches here, and could we not believe we were reading the highly successful parody of some highly meretricious or spasmodic modern English composition? Is it conceivable that (by a strange Nemesis) a parodist may become his own original? Can type and anti-type, parody and antiparody, be thus combined in one person and one poem? It seems strange; yet we could really think that the author of some of these English epigrams from Goethe had written them with the express object of proving it possible. The best of Mr Aytoun's is THE BROTHERS. Slumber, Sleep-they were two brothers, servants to the Gods above; Kind Prometheus lured them downwards, ever filled with earthly love; But what Gods could bear so lightly, pressed too hard on men beneath; Slumber did his brother's duty - Sleep was deepened into Death. Let the reader judge by the following rough version of the letter of the text: Slumber and Sleep, two brothers, appointed to serve the immortals, By Prometheus were brought hither to comfort mankind; But what in heaven was light, to human creatures was heavy, Slumber became our Sleep, Sleep unto mortals was Death. The lines entitled Holy Family on page 22, we think should rather bear as their heading Suggested by, than Translated from HOLY FAMILY. O child of beauty rare! O mother chaste and fair! Diogenes by his tub contenting himself with the sunshine, And Calanus with joy mounting his funeral pyre, How happy seem they both, so far be- Great examples were these for the eager off yond compare! She, in her infant blest, And he in conscious rest, Nestling within the soft warm cradle of What joy that sight might bear eye, To him who sees them there, spring of Philip, But for the conqueror of earth were, as the earth was, too small. It is easy, however, to find fault, and very hard to avoid committing it. The translators say well in their preface: It was with no small reluctance that they abandoned the classical measures in the case of the series of poems, In the Manner of the An The original (in the same rude style of tique. But believing the idea of these exquisite rendering) is as follows: Oh! the beautiful child, and oh! the most happy mother; She in her infant blest, and in its mother the babe. What sweet longing within me this picture might not occasion, Were I not, Joseph, like you, calmly condemned to stand by! pieces to be more important than the form, and to be separable from the form without serious detriment, they decided on adopting the meters which in their opinion would best commend them to the taste of English readers. For, after all, it is for them, and not for German scholars, that this volume has been written. Wherever, as in the case of the poems in irregular unrhymed meters, it seemed possible to preserve the form without injury, and indeed with advantage to the enjoyment of the poem, the translators have endeavored to illustrate the rythmical capabilities of our English speech, which We will end with an example of Mr. they believe to be far greater than is generally Martin's blank verse. supposed. THE TEACHERS. What time Diogenes, unmoved and still, This is by no means the most diffuse of these pieces; less has been added here than in several other instances. Yet it is surely tame, and unfaithful to the spirit of the original, which is very nearly as follows: They may be assured, however, that German scholars will read their book with interest and pleasure. And, let it be remembered, how large an intermediate class there is of imperfect German scholars, able to work their way, more or less successfully, through the original text, who will yet be extremely glad to have the assistance of a volume like this to guide them to the poetic purpose and significance of what they read, to correct and confirm their uncertain interpretations and constructions, and to give them the power of viewing readily, as a whole, a poem, every part of which, to them, it costs time and trouble, and the consultation of a dictionary, to make out. "I AM glad you like the style of the setting, my love; it certainly is old fashioned; but the taste is very good, and the stones are particularly beautiful. Directly you become my son's wife, I shall give them up to you. "You wonder I should like to part with them at my time of life! The truth is, for all their beauty, they afford me very little pleasure; their sparkling brilliancy recalls the saddest events of my life. It wants half an hour to dinner. I shall just have time to tell you the story." DIAMONDS. When my aunt purchased these diamonds, Josiah and myself were taken as a great treat to the shop-a very old established jeweler's in town. I was too young at the time to know any thing about the value of diamonds, but I perfectly recollect seeing the man in the shop show this very set to my aunt for her approval. After some demur at the price, she gave a check for the money, and took the diamonds home with her in the carriage. I suppose this early recollection would never have come to mind, but for its connection with subsequent events. It happened on that day my aunt was in excellent humor with me; and while Josiah and myself were playing in her dressing-room, she called me to her, and put the diamond necklace on my neck, in These diamonds were a gift from my order, as she said, to see how it looked on Aunt Janet, my mother's sister. I was another person. I was delighted at the left an orphan at an early age, and went glitter, and ran off to survey myself in to live with Aunt Janet. She had a the glass. My aunt promised me, in revery pleasant house on Clapham Common, ply to my expressions of admiration, that with a large garden; and she possessed an if I grew up a good girl, those diamonds excellent income, arising from various one day would be mine. Thereupon, sources. Aunt Janet was a widow, and Josiah began to cry furiously; and he deher property had been left her by her hus-clared, with childish vehemence, that he band in her sole control. She had no chil-would have the diamonds. dren, and she had brought me up as her daughter not that I was by any means spoiled: in truth, I was by no means as great a favorite as a little cousin of mine, Josiah Wilson, a child of my own age, who used to come and stay occasionally with us. On the plea of little Josiah being a visitor, I was always forced to give way to his whims and fancies, and let him be first in every thing. Even at that early age, I am sorry to say, I began to dislike my cousin; and my dislike was increased to positive hatred by his being constantly held up to me as a pattern-child. I believe that Josiah was naturally better behaved than I was; but even at that early age, I could perceive that he was particularly sly, and always took care to put on his best behavior in my aunt's presence. I can recollect, too, I was constantly punished for his faults: he used stoutly to deny every thing; it was useless for me to speak; he was always believed, and I received the punishment. As we grew older, Josiah was sent to school, and we only met during his holidays. At these periods, he was always spoiled by my aunt, and his chief amusement was plaguing and teasing me: any appeal to my aunt was useless, for she always took his part. When Josiah's education was finished, he was placed in a stock-broker's office to learn the business; and to my dismay, it was arranged that he should reside with us. However, matters did not turn out so unpleasantly as I had anticipated. Josiah, whenever we were thrown together, was civil and courteous; and though I could never tolerate his sly manner, and the false way in which he always treated my aunt, yet we contrived, on the whole, to live harmoniously togetger. At last Josiah came of age. I recollect how surprised I was, on the morning of |