objective and exoteric form, that invariable and critical characteristic of all works of genius, by virtue of which they become interfused with, and reciprocated by, the various idiosyncrasies, mental and moral, to which they gain access, in such manner that, imparting and deriving, informing and informed, generating and acquiring new life, their assimilation with the receptive soul and intellect becomes so complete, that the mutual agencies and relations of these with them are thenceforth and evermore indissoluble and indiscriminable.
Hence it is that the esoteric interpretations of Faust are almost as numerous as its readers; each one giving that of which his own mind is the unconscious factor. In this way, one student has held that the poet merely intended to convey a body of practical lessons on the wisdom of life; another, that his object was a delineation of the eternal struggle between the component elements, corporeal and psychical, of the human dualism; a third, that the poem is to be regarded as an ἐιρήνευσις, a striving to reconcile the great contradictions of the world, and establish peace between the real and the ideal; a fourth, that the leading idea,—as in the Apuleian fable of Cupid and Psyche,—is the redemption of the soul, polluted by sensual passion, through the purifying influence of a childlike and innocent love; a fifth,—and this, if my memory does not lead me astray, was the opinion of our own Coleridge, who thought, in this view, that the book was a failure,[1]—that the dramatic action was intended to evolve the consequences of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of learning, caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge baffled, like that which in Cornelius Agrippa produced his ever memorable diatribe on the Vanity of the Arts and Sciences;[2] while others, lastly, have regarded the piece as nothing more nor less than a daring attempt to afford a pantheistic solution of the great enigma of the universe.
Now there is an entire absence of evidence, external as well as internal, as to the truth and value of either, or any, of these fanciful hypotheses. The student is therefore free to adopt which he pleases, to evolve a new one for himself if he thinks fit, or simply luxuriate sensuously in the objective beauties of language and rhythm. But in any case, the theory formed must be regarded and pursued as a radiating path from a common central standpoint,—the exhibition and illustration of the nursery story, suggested emphatically to the mind of the poet by the similarity of his own feelings, with regard to the acquisition of knowledge and the conviction of its vanity and ineptitude, to those of the hero of the old familiar tradition.
Faust is, I repeat, a work of supreme genius; worthy to take its place, as it undoubtedly will through the ages, in succession to the four or five sublime cardinal productions of the human intellect,—to the Œdipus of Sophocles, to what time has left us of the divine trilogy of Æschylus, to the Divine Comedy of Dante, and to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. But if it is thus grand in conception, it is no less perfect in mechanical execution. In this aspect it is perfect. It has none of the affected ruggedness and the studied obscurity, which seems now-a-days necessary to tickle a palate cloyed with the vapid graces and luscious
