never excuse your indolence in not learning languages upon any substitute you can get for knowing them by borrowing the knowledge of others; but above all, never depreciate nor disparage the untasted fruits, but suppress your envy when those who can taste, boast of them.
The most remarkable poem of the present age, beyond all doubt or competition, is Gœthe's Faust. There is but one voice on this matter among those who know it; but between these and those who do not know it, there is a gulph fixed, so that those who would pass into the class of the initiated cannot, except by an earnest application to the German; for I take it for granted few are ignorant of that work, who are not also ignorant of the language in which it is written. I would fain say something by way of insisting on the inducements to this study, and with this view shall attempt to give an account of some of the most striking passages in Faust, with occasional English versions of some stanzas, for which versions I claim the indulgence I have claimed for translators in general, to wit, that of being considered to have failed in an impossible undertaking. The ground work of the poem is the old superstition of Dr. Faust; that matters little, for in the progress of thinking in the present age no one cares much for the mere story, the canvas or skeleton of a work. We look for the author—for the poet—for opinions—allusions—satiric-reflections—originality of remark not incident—for beautiful expressions, lively conversations, and play of fancy—and where these are, we care not whether the story be one handed down from Boccaccio or the Queen of Navarre, and a hundred times repeated, or a new fiction just born of the author's brain—indeed the last seems more like being introduced to strangers, and the chances are that it will therefore interest us less. The nature and character, truth and application of the sentiments and incidents strike us more forcibly when the parties concerned are our old familiar friends, than they can among new faces, and we require too that there should be a keeping and harmony in what we are told, with what we know already, and that our new ideas, should we be so fortunate as to get any, shall mix readily and kindly with the old. Faust is a pleasant book in this respect—the episode of Margaret it is true is Gœthe's own, but the principal characters of the doctor and his tempter are faithful to the ancient letter. The devil is "proportioned as one's heart could wish a" devil—his cloven foot is not forgotten, and the superstitions of the
