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INTRODUCTION.
IN a work which has been the subject of such extensive and continual comment, the passages which seem to require elucidation have, for the most part, been already determined. At every point where the reader is supposed to be doubtful in regard to the true path, not one, but a score of tracks has been prepared for him, From the exhaustive and somewhat wearisome work of Düntzer to the latest critical essay which has issued from the German press, the references in the text to contemporary events or fashions of thought have been detected; the words of old or new coinage have been tested and classified; and the obscure passages have received such a variety of interpretation, that they finally grow clear again by the force of contrast.
My first intention was, to give the substance of German criticism concerning both parts of Faust; but the further I advanced, the more unprofitable appeared such a plan. The work itself grew in clearness and coherence in proportion as I withdrew from the cloudy atmosphere of its interpreters. I have examined every commentary of importance, from Schubarth (1820) and Hinrichs (1825) to Kreyssig (1866), with this advantage, at least,—that each and all have led me back to find in the author of Faust his own best commentator. After making acquaintance, sometimes at the
