war; and the grand duke of Weimar was drawn into the very vortex of commotion. On Oct. H 1806, the battle of Jena was fought, and Goethe heard in his calm home the reports of the cannonades. Soon that home was invaded; the French troops entered his house, ransacked his cellars, penetrated even to his bedchamber, and though they treated him with respect, filled his soul with indignation and wrath. Goethe had all his life been averse to the disturbing influence of politics. His impassiveness under the tempestuous influences of the time had brought upon him the reproach of want of patriotism and of indifference to the welfare of humanity. But when the French approached Weimar, and Napoleon exhibited his spite against Charles Augustus for his active sympathy with his countrymen and allies, the long-pent feeling of the poet burst forth. “Misfortune!” he exclaimed to Falk; “what is misfortune? This is misfortune, that a prince should be compelled to endure such things from foreigners. And if it came to the same pass with him as with his ancestor, Duke John, if his ruin were certain and irretrievable, let not this dismay us; we will take our staff in our hand and accompany our master in adversity as old Lucas Cranach did; we will never forsuke him. The women and the children, when they meet us in the villages, will cast down their eyes and weep, and say to one another, ‘That is old Goethe and the former duke of Weimar, whom the French emperor drove from his throne because he was so true to his friends in misfortune; because he visited his uncle on his deathbed; because he would not let his old comrades and brothers in arms starve.’ ” “At this,” adds Falk, “the tears rolled in streams down his cheeks. After a pause, having recovered himself a little, he continued: ‘I will sing for bread! I will turn strolling ballad-singer, and put our misfortunes into verse! I will wander into every village and every school wherever the name of Goethe is known; I will chant the dishonor of Germany, and the children shall learn the song of our shame till they are men; and thus they shall sing my master on to his throne again, and yours off his!’ ” But as the noise of the French cannon withdrew from Weimar, he began to pipe once more in his old peaceful strain. All through the revolutionary tumult, in fact, he took refuge in his studies and scientific experiments. On occasion of an interview with Napoleon he scarcely remembered the enthusiasm with which he had spoken to Falk. Napoleon is reported to have said, Vous êtes un homme, and fell to criticising his works, especially Werther, which he had read, he said, seven times. Goethe was flattered by the appreciative words of the emperor, was invited to Paris, and afterward was decorated with the cross of the legion of honor. In 1809 Goethe printed the most exceptionable of his novels, the Wahlverwandschaften (“Elective Affinities”), in which the charms and graces of his style are employed in the description of the impulses which spring from the collision of passion and duty in the relations of marriage. By the title of the book, and in the whole spirit of it, he would represent that sexual affinities follow the same inevitable law as chemical affinities, and that humanity struggles impotently against the dictates of nature. Like all his productions, this was suggested by circumstances in his own experience. The work shocked the moral world, in spite of the beauty with which it was written, and to this day tasks the ingenuity of those of his admirers who seek to defend it from attack. His next volumes were of a less doubtful kind: the ballads Der Todtenkranz, Der getreue Eckart, and Die wandelnde Glocke, the Dichtung und Wahrheit, an autobiography, and the Westöstlicher Divan, a collection of oriental songs and poems. His studies of science and contemporary literature were meantime never remitted. In 1816 he published an art journal, Kunst und Alterthum, to which he contributed largely; and in 1818 the second part of Wilhelm Meister, the Wanderjahre. In 1825 the jubilee or 50th year of his residence in Weimar was celebrated in a grand public festival. In 1831 the second part of Faust appeared, a continuation of the first part, obscure and mystical, but full of passages of rare splendor, profound thought, grotesque humor, and bewitching melody. He supposed himself, and many critics supposed, that under the motley garb of the poem there is a deep significance, although few have succeeded in detecting it, while Goethe's own explanations are arid and unsatisfactory to the last degree. As a dramatic poem it cannot be denied that it was a failure, even if we admit that as an enigma, covering some recondite philosophy, it deserves the closest study. The songs at least, and the lyrical parts, are excellent. The old man had lost vigor, but his feelings were still exuberant, and the singer remained. “If Goethe,” said an admirer of his, “everywhere great, is anywhere greatest, it is in his songs and ballads. They are the spontaneous outgushings of his mind in all its moods; a melodious diary of his daily and almost hourly fluctuations of feeling; the breathings of his inward life; the sparkling perennial jets of his momentary affections and thoughts. There is the perpetual freshness and bloom about them of new spring flowers. Even when they seem most trivial, they ring through us like snatches of music. So perfect is the correspondence of form and substance that their charm as a whole defies analysis. It is felt, but cannot be detected. Then, again, how diversified they are! Some as simple as the whimperings of a child; others wild, grotesque, weird, and unearthly; and others again lofty, proud, defiant, like the words of a Titan heaping his scorn upon the gods.” One year after the completion of Faust Goethe was taken ill of a cold, which turned into a fatal fever. Tip to the hour of his death, however, ho prosecuted his intellectual pursuits. His last writing was
