true, but also with a multitude of pearl-oysters. Many of the crowded references are directly deducible from the allegory; still more are made clear to us through a knowledge of Goethe’s development, as man and poet; while some few have lost the clew to their existence, and must probably always stand, orphaned and strange, on one side or other of the plain line of development running through the poem.
The early disparagement which the Second Part of Faust received is only in our day beginning to give way to an intelligent recognition of its grand design, its wealth of illustration, and the almost inexhaustible variety and beauty of its rhythmical forms. Although its two chief offences (to the German mind) are not yet, and perhaps never can be wholly, condoned, the period of misconception is over, and the voices of rage or contempt, once so frequently heard, are becoming faint and few. The last twenty-five years have greatly added to our means of elucidation; and much that seemed to be whim or purposed obscurity is now revealed in clear and intelligible outlines. When Vischer compares the work to a picture of the old Titian, wherein the master-hand is still recognized, but trembling with age and stippling in the color with slow, painful touches, he forgets that the design was already drawn, and some of the figures nearly completed, in the Master's best days. I should rather liken it to a great mosaic, which, looked at near at hand, shows us the mixture of precious
