shadows, reminding us of our Christian Profession, leading us, let us trust, at the last to the Feet of JESUS, where are the Blessed Virgin Mary and the true Singers of the Sanctuary, and the minstrels and the damsels, even the harpers and their harps of gold, and the Blessed Apostles and Holy Martyrs, and Confessors, Holy Bishops and Priests, Holy Virgins and Matrons, and ordinary Saints, who have finished their pilgrimage, true pilgrims of JESUS, at the golden sands of the narrow, and swift flowing River, and are entered in to God's City bright, made Kings, and Priests, and Princes, and citizens and fellowheirs, and companions of GOD and the LAMB for ever and ever.

Oh, how happily and proudly will you rejoice there. Oh, how gladly will you hang up your staff and wallet in that Happy Land. Oh, how you will rejoice to see really and indeed your Saviour Jesus CHRIST OUR LORD, once the GOD-man on earth, in His true Beauty, eye to eye, and face to face, surrounded by the Seraphic Choirs, the King, the Great King, going in His Sanctuary. Oh, with what rapture will you eye and closely scan that most glorious Procession. Then you will have well said your last earthly NUNC DIMITTIS. Then you will have departed in Peace and the wings of the Angel legions have borne you to your Eternal Rest.

And the while on earth, the Priest of GOD with his white-robed choristers, our LORD's singers in the Sanctuary here, will have sung these most happy words:

66 Brother, rest, thy toils are o'er,

Fought the battle, won the Crown;
On life's rough and rugged shore
Thou hast laid thy burden down.

"Through Death's valley dim and dark,
JESUS guides thee through the gloom,
Shows thee where His Footprints mark
Tracks of glory through the tomb.

"Angels bear thee to the Land

Where the towers of Sion rise,

Safely lead thee by the hand

To the fields of Paradise."

And ever and anon from earthly voices there will go up the refrain, as the verses one by one rise and fall in solemn cadence,

"Grant him, LORD, eternal Rest,

With the spirits of the Blest."

1 Dr. Neale.

And now concluding, dear brethren, with such holy words and the thought of our latter ending, let us ever now give praise to GOD, to Whom with the only Begotten and the Blessed Spirit, be ascribed by men and angels and the Church on earth, all honour, laud, and blessing for ever and ever. Amen.

G. C. CAFFIN.

“THEY RECEIVED HIM NOT.”

Of old He came unto His own, and they received Him not,
They spurned the meek and lowly One, His deeds of love forgot,
Too pure and holy far for them, they mocked His power to save,
And followed Him with hate and scorn e'en to the silent grave.

Of old He came unto His own—and comes He not again,
Concealing all His glory from the eyes and sight of men?
In very mercy doth He veil the brightness of His Brow,
And as of old men owned Him not, they will not own Him now.

Hush'd is each sound of earthly toil, it is the holy morn,

And sweetly to the ear the sound of distant bells is borne ;

The world may sleep, but not so those who fain their LORD would meet,

They pass into the quiet Church to worship at His Feet.

There in the early morning the sacred words are spoken,

The Cup of Blessing is poured forth, the Bread of Life is broken,
And there our LORD is present, as once in Judah's land,

As surely may we feel the touch of His Almighty Hand.

Oh, strange, most strange it is that they who bear upon their brow
The Cross which was His grief and shame, which is our glory now,
When thus He comes amongst them should coldly turn away,
He comes unto His own, and they receive Him not-to-day!

O SAVIOUR! mighty SAVIOUR! how hard our hearts must be,
If when Thou call'st thus lovingly, we will not come to Thee!
Thy Presence is too holy and too pure for us to bear!

And so, because men love Thee not, they say, Thou art not there!
E. M. B.

107

GOETHE'S PLACE IN LITERATURE.

ANOTHER translation of "Faust" has just appeared! The author this time is a Mr. Birds, hailing, we believe, from London University; and the vehicle of the translation is blank verse, far from musical, with some attempt at a metrical rendering of the songs and choruses, which are undoubtedly the poet's chef-d'œuvre. The multiplicity of translations it seems to us has now become so great, in prose and various kinds of verse, and the criticisms and memoirs of the poet so numerous, that the time has arrived for asking the question which is placed at the head of this article. Enough, and more than enough, has been written on the subject, and we do not desire to add to the mass of writing that has appeared on Goethe, but rather to try and estimate something of its results.

The reputation of Goethe in his own country has been subject to great fluctuations. At one time he was generally placed below Schiller, but latterly an attempt has been made to elevate him above all poets and philosophers. Mr. Matthew Arnold acutely accounts for this phase of popular opinion by the desire in Germany, now that they have gained an empire, to acquire also some one great national poet, who shall be to the Fatherland what Homer confessedly was to Greece, and Shakspeare is to England.

In this country the claims of Goethe to a high place in literature are due less to acquaintance with his works than to a supposed indebtedness to him on the part of two of those great writers who shone as a galaxy in England about the beginning of the present century.

Scott is said to have gained the idea of the historical novel from "Götz von Berlichingen," the first of Goethe's dramas; and Byron in the same way is said by Goethe himself to have "assimilated ‘Faust,' for the production of Manfred,' and to have sucked out of it the strongest nutriment to his hypochondria." Scott no doubt was to a certain degree indebted to "Götz von Berlichingen," which he translated into English, and in his own tales infinitely surpassed his master. But with regard to Byron, Matthew Arnold quotes the judgment of Tieck, which we entirely endorse. "Everything which in the Englishman's poems might remind one of Faust,' is in my opinion far above 'Faust;' and the Englishman's feeling, and his incomparably more

beautiful diction, are so entirely his own, that I cannot possibly believe him to have had 'Faust' for his model."

The causes which have rendered Goethe so popular in Germany were chiefly local and temporary. There is no doubt that he more than any one else contrived to mould the somewhat unmanageable Teutonic language into something of pliability; and 2ndly, in Faust, along with the diablerie inseparable from the story, and by help of it, he has brought on the stage as it were the feelings and experience of modern life, which no writer before him had attempted to grapple with. In an estimate such as an Englishman of the present day would make of Goethe these circumstances have no weight. In the Republic of Letters what will Goethe's place be for all time? This is the question we have to answer,—not so much as a matter of abstract criticism, as for the guidance of those of our readers who may desire to be helped in their choice of a German author. In our judgment the first of Goethe's works was really his best. "Götz von Berlichingen” is undoubtedly stiff, for the dramatist had not yet broken through the traditions of his literary predecessors, but the story is interesting, and the language is sustained throughout at a fitting elevation. Others of his dramas are more polished, but they are wanting in simplicity and pathos, and several are cramped by certain rules of construction which he imposed upon himself.

In “Faust" Goethe was free to write altogether as the spirit moved him from time to time, at distant intervals through an unusually long life. Here therefore all the peculiarities of his personal temperament and character come out in strong relief, and knowing from his own confession what kind of man he was, we cannot be surprised to find a total absence of anything ennobling or instructive in it. We read "Faust" through quite recently for the express purpose of seeing if we could discover any single sentiment that could make for good in it, and we could find none. How could it be otherwise? His life was a series of illicit amours with women, married and single, and all intellectually low in character. Moreover to those on whom he made himself dependent he was nothing but a fawning sycophant.

As regards religion, his life appears to have been a perfect blank. He was brought up a Lutheran, and in his autobiography he gives a mocking account of his first Confession, as practised among the Lutherans, and of his first Communion. Also in another place he regrets the absence of grandeur and solemnity in Protestant worship. But

his mind was essentially irreverent; he had no appreciation for mediæval works of art, although they were within his reach in his journey to Italy; and we fear that his own absence of belief is but too faithfully expressed in the words which he puts into the mouth of Faust, in the well-known scene in Martha's garden. It is in answer to Margaret's inquiry as to his faith.

"Faust. My love, who dare say, 'I believe in God?' You may ask priests and philosophers, and their answer will appear but a mockery of the question. "Margaret. You don't believe then?

"Faust. Mistake me not, thou lovely one. Who dare name Him, and avow 'I believe in Him?' Who feels, and dares to say, 'I believe in Him not?' The All-embracer, the All-sustainer, does He not embrace and sustain thee, me, Himself? .. Is not all thronging to this head and heart, and weaving an eternal mystery invisibly-visibly about thee? With it fill thy heart, big as it is, and when thou art wholly blest in the feeling, then call it what thou wilt! Call it, bliss! heart! love! GOD! I have no name for it. Feeling is all in all. Name it, sound, smoke, clouding heaven in glow."

Against this meaningless, sceptical, pantheistic rhodomontade, however, it is right to add what his biographers tell us was his last prayer, which seems to indicate a grain at least of sincerity, "More light! more light!" But, alas, he had quenched his light. "The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single thy whole body also is full of light: but when thine eye is evil, thy whole body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness."

On the mere literary merits of "Faust" we prefer quoting a higher and certainly unprejudiced authority rather than our own verdict. "In Faust," says Coleridge, "there is neither causation nor progress. .. Mephistopheles and Margaret are excellent-but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. . . . . There is no whole in the poem: the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat."

It is unfortunate for Goethe that he has been so bespattered with indiscriminate praise by his friends-not only in Germany, but even still more by our own Carlyle and by the American Bayard-Taylor. A recent writer in France (M. Scherer) has arrived at a much more just estimate of his merits; and the view is endorsed by Mr. Matthew Arnold in a review of M. Scherer, which he has re-published in his "Mixed Essays." These writers, however, regard it simply as a