Complete. From the New Monthly Magazine, 1832.

IN the obituary of these days stands one article of quite peculiar import; the time, the place, and particulars of which will have to be often repeated, and re-written, and continue in remembrance many centuries: this, namely, that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar, on the twenty-second of March, 1832. It was about eleven in the morning. “He expired,” says the record, “without any apparent suffering, having a few minutes previously called for paper for the purpose of writing, and expressed his delight at the arrival of spring.” A beautiful death; like that of a soldier found faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his arms still grasped! The Poet’s last words are a greeting of the new-awakened earth; his last movement is to work at his appointed task. Beautiful: what we might call a Classic, sacred death; if it were not rather an Elijah-translation,—in a chariot, not of fire and terror, but of hope and soft vernal sunbeams! It was at Frankfort on the Main, on the twenty-eighth of August, 1749, that this man entered the world—and now, gently welcoming the birthday of his eighty-second spring, he closes his eyes, and takes farewell.

  So, then, our greatest has departed. The melody of life, with its cunning tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone silent; the heavenly force that dwelt here victorious over so much, is here no longer; thus far, not farther, by speech and by act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. The End! What solemn meaning lies in that sound, as it peals mournfully through the soul, when a living friend has passed away! All now is closed, irrevocable; the changeful life-picture, growing daily into new coherence, under new touches and hues, has suddenly become completed and unchangeable; there, as it lay, it is dipped, from this moment, in the ether of the Heavens, and shines transfigured, to endure even so—forever, Time and Time’s Empire; stern, wide devouring, yet not without their grandeur! The weekday man, who was one of us, has put on the garment of Eternity, and become radiant and triumphant; the present is all at once the past; Hope is suddenly cut away, and only the backward vistas of Memory remain, shone on by a light that proceeds not from this earthly sun.

  The death of Goethe, even for the many hearts that personally loved him, is not a thing to be lamented over; is to be viewed, in his own spirit, as a thing full of greatness and sacredness. “For all men it is appointed once to die.” To this man the full measure of a man’s life had been granted, and a course and task such as to only a few in the whole generations of the world; what else could we hope or require but that now he should be called hence and have leave to depart, “having finished the work that was given him to do?” If his course, as we may say of him more justly than of any other, was like the Sun’s, so also was his going down. For, indeed, as the material Sun is the eye and revealer of all things, so is Poetry, so is the World-Poet in a spiritual sense. Goethe’s life, too, if we examine it, is well represented in that emblem of a solar Day. Beautifully rose our summer sun, gorgeous in the red fervid East, scattering the spectres and sickly damps (of both of which there were enough to scatter)—strong, benignant in his noon-day clearness, walking triumphant through the upper realms; and now, mark also how he sets! So Stirbt ein Held: anbetungsvoll! “So dies a hero; sight to be worshiped!”

  And yet, when the inanimate, material sun has sunk and disappeared, it will happen that we stand to gaze into the still glowing West; and here rise great, pale, motionless clouds, like coulisses or curtains, to close the flame-theatre within; and then, in that death-pause of the Day, an unspeakable feeling will come over us; it is as if the poor sounds of Time, those hammerings of tired Labor on his anvils, those voices of simple men, had become awful and supernatural; as if in listening, we could hear them “mingle with the ever-pealing tones of old Eternity.” In such moments the secrets of Life lie opener to us; mysterious things flit over the soul; Life itself seems holier, wonderful, and fearful. How much more when our sunset was of a living sun; and its bright countenance and shining return to us, not on the morrow, but “no more again, at all, forever!” In such a scene, silence, as over the mysterious great, is for him that has some feeling thereof, the fittest mood. Nevertheless, by silence the distant is not brought into communion: the feeling of each is without response from the bosom of his brother. There are now, what some years ago there were not, English hearts that know something of what those three words, “Death of Goethe,” mean; to such men, among their many thoughts on the event, which are not to be translated into speech, may these few, through that imperfect medium, prove acceptable.

  “Death,” says the Philosopher, “is a commingling of Eternity with Time; in the death of a good man, Eternity is seen looking through Time.” With such a sublimity here offered to eye and heart, it is not unnatural to look with new earnestness before and behind, and ask, what space in those years and eons of computed Time this man with his activity may influence; what relation to the world of change and mortality, which the earthly name Life, he who is even now called to the Immortals has borne and may bear.

  Goethe, it is commonly said, made a new era in Literature; a Poetic era began with him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet nowise generally visible. This common saying is a true one, and true with a far deeper meaning than, to the most, it conveys. Were the Poet but a sweet sound and singer, solacing the ear of the idle with pleasant songs, and the new Poet one who could sing his idle, pleasant song, to a new air, we should account him a small matter, and his performance small. But this man, it is not unknown to many, was a Poet in such a sense as the late generations have witnessed no other; as it is, in this generation, a kind of distinction to believe in the existence of, in the possibility of. The true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose eye has been gifted to discern the godlike mystery of God’s universe, and decipher some new lines of its celestial writing; we can still call him a Vates and Seer; for he sees into this greatest of secrets, “the open secret”; hidden things become clear; how the future (both resting on Eternity) is but another phasis of the present; thereby are his words in very truth prophetic; what he has spoken shall be done.

  It begins now to be everywhere surmised that the real Force, which in this world all things must obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision, and Determination. The Thought is parent of the Deed, nay, is living soul of it, and last and continual, as well as first mover of it; is the foundation, and beginning, and essence, therefore, of man’s whole existence here below. In this sense, it has been said, the word of man (the uttered thoughts of man) is still a magic formula, whereby he rules the world. Do not the winds and waters, and all tumultuous powers, inanimate and animate, obey him? A poor, quite mechanical, magician speaks—and fire-winged ships cross the ocean at his bidding. Or mark, above all, that “raging of the nations,” wholly in contention, desperation, and dark chaotic fury; how the meek voice of a Hebrew Martyr and Redeemer stills it into order, and a savage Earth becomes kind and beautiful, and the “habitation of horrid cruelty” a temple of peace. The true sovereign of the world, who molds the world like soft wax, according to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees into the world; the “inspired Thinker,” whom in these days we name Poet. The true sovereign is the Wise Man.

  However, as the Moon, which can heave up the Atlantic, sends not in her obedient billows at once, but gradually; and, for example, the Tide, which swells to-day on our shores, and washes every creek, rose in the bosom of the great ocean (astronomers assure us) eight and forty hours ago; and indeed all world-movements, by nature deep, are by nature calm, and flow and swell onwards with a certain majestic slowness—so, too, with the impulse of a Great Man, and the effect he has to manifest on other men. To such an one we may grant some generation or two before the celestial impulse he impressed on the world will universally proclaim itself, and become (like the working of the moon) if still not intelligible, yet palpable, to all men; some generation or two more, wherein it has to grow, and expand, and envelop all things, before it can reach its acme; and thereafter mingling with other movements and new impulses, at length cease to require a specific observation or designation. Longer or shorter such period may be, according to the nature of the impulse itself, and of the elements it works in; according, above all, as the impulse was intrinsically great and deep-reaching, or only widespread, superficial, and transient. Thus, if David Hume is at this hour pontiff of the world, and rules most hearts, and guides most tongues (the hearts and tongues even in those that in vain rebel against him), there are, nevertheless, symptoms that his task draws towards completion; and now in the distance his successor becomes visible. On the other hand, we have seen a Napoleon, like some gunpowder force (with which sort he, indeed, was appointed chiefly to work) explode his whole virtue suddenly, and thunder himself out and silent, in a space of five and twenty years. While again, for a man of true greatness, working with spiritual implements, two centuries is no uncommon period; nay, on this Earth of ours, there have been men, whose impulse had not completed its development till after fifteen hundred years, and might, perhaps, be seen still individually subsistent after two thousand.

  But, as was once written, “though our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour, no hammer in the horologe of time peals through the universe to proclaim that there is a change from era to era.” The true beginning is oftenest unnoticed, and unnoticeable. Thus do men go wrong in their reckoning; and grope hither and thither, not knowing where they are, in what course their history runs. Within this last century, for instance, with its wild doings and destroyings, what hope, grounded in miscalculation, ending in disappointment! How many world-famous victories were gained and lost, dynasties founded and subverted, revolutions accomplished, constitutions sworn to; and ever the “new era” was come, was coming, yet still it came not, but the time continued sick! Alas, all these were but spasmodic convulsions of the death-sick time; the crisis of cure and regeneration to the time was not there indicated. The real new era was when a Wise Man came into the world, with clearness of vision and greatness of soul to accomplish this old high enterprise, amid these new difficulties, yet again: A Life of Wisdom. Such a man became, by Heaven’s pre-appointment, in very deed, the Redeemer of the time. Did he not bear the curse of the time? He was filled full with its skepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions, till his heart was like to break; but he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly by word and act showed others that come after, how to do the like. Honor to him who first, “through the impassable, paves a road”! Such indeed is the task of every great man; nay, of every good man in one or the other sphere, since goodness is greatness, and the good man, high or humble, is ever a martyr, and a “spiritual hero that ventures forward into the gulf for our deliverance.” The gulf into which this man ventured, which he tamed and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly all others lie included: The whole distracted Existence of man in an age of unbelief. Whoso lives, whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely in that mad element, may yet know, perhaps, too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the chosen of our time, who could prevail in that same, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as belong to no other.

  How far he prevailed in it, and by what means, with what endurances and achievements, will in due season be estimated; those volumes called Goethe’s “Works,” will receive no further addition or alteration; and the record of his whole spiritual Endeavor lies written there,—were the man or men but ready who could read it rightly! A glorious record; wherein he that would understand himself and his environment, and struggles for escape out of darkness into light, as for the one thing needful, will long thankfully study. For the whole chaotic time, what it has suffered, attained, and striven after, stands imaged there; interpreted, ennobled into poetic clearness. From the passionate longings and wailings of “Werther” spoken as from the heart of all Europe; onwards through the wild unearthly melody of “Faust” (like the spirit song of falling worlds); to that serenely smiling wisdom of “Meisters Lehrjahre,” and the “German Hafiz,”—what an interval; and all enfolded in an ethereal music, as from unknown spheres, harmoniously uniting all! A long interval; and wide as well as long; for this was a universal man. History, Science, Art, human Activity under every aspect; the laws of light in his “Farbenlehre”; the laws of wild Italian life in his “Benvenuto Cellini”;—nothing escaped him, nothing that he did not look into, that he did not see into. Consider too the genuineness of whatsoever he did; his hearty, idiomatic way; simplicity with loftiness, and nobleness, and aërial grace. Pure works of art, completed with an antique Grecian polish as “Torquato Tasso,” as “Iphigenie,” Proverbs; “Xenien”; Patriarchal Sayings, which, since the Hebrew Scriptures were closed, we know not where to match; in whose homely depths lie often the materials for volumes.

  To measure and estimate all this, as we said, the time is not come; a century hence will be the fitter time. He who investigates it best will find its meaning greatest, and be the readiest to acknowledge that it transcends him. Let the reader have seen, before he attempts to oversee. A poor reader, in the meanwhile were he who discerned not here the authentic rudiments of that same New Era whereof we have so often had false warning. Wondrously, the wrecks and pulverized rubbish of ancient things, institutions, religions, forgotten noblenesses, made alive again by the breath of Genius, lie here in new coherence and incipient union, the spirit of Art working creative through the mass: that chaos, into which the eighteenth century with its wild war of hypocrites and skeptics had reduced the Past, begins here to be once more a world. This, the highest that can be said of written books, is to be said of these; there is in them a new time, the prophecy and beginning of a new time. The corner stone of a new social edifice for mankind is laid there; firmly, as before, on the natural rock, far extending traces of a ground plan we can also see, which future centuries may go on to enlarge, amend, and work into reality. These sayings seem strange to some; nevertheless, they are not empty exaggerations, but expressions, in their way, of a belief, which is not now of yesterday; perhaps when Goethe has been read and meditated for another generation, they will not seem so strange.

  Precious is the new light of knowledge which our teacher conquers for us; yet small to the new light of Love which also we derive from him; the most important element of any man’s performance is the life he has accomplished. Under the intellectual union of man and man, which works by precept, lies a holier union of affection, working by example: the influences of which latter, mystic, deep-reaching, all-embracing, can still less be computed. For Love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light; works also more in the manner of fire. That Goethe was a great teacher of men means already that he was a good man; that he himself learned; in the school of experience had striven and proved victorious. To how many hearers languishing, nigh dead, in the airless dungeon of Unbelief (a true vacuum and nonentity) has the assurance that there was such a man, that such a man was still possible, come like tidings of great joy! He who would learn to reconcile Reverence with clearness, to deny and defy what is false, yet believe and worship what is true; amid raging factions, bent on what is either altogether empty or has substance in it only for a day, which stormfully convulse and tear hither and thither a distracted, expiring system of society, to adjust himself aright; and, working for the world, and in the world, keep himself unspotted from the world,—let him look here. This man, we may say, became morally great, by being in his own age what in some other ages many might have been—a genuine man. His grand excellency was this, that he was genuine. As his primary faculty, the foundation of all others, was Intellect, depth and force of Vision, so his primary virtue was Justice, was the courage to be just. A giant’s strength we admired in him; yet, strength ennobled into softest mildness; even like that “silent rock-bound strength of a world,” on whose bosom, that rests on the adamant, grow flowers. The greatest of hearts was also the bravest: fearless, unwearied, peacefully invincible. A completed man; the trembling sensibility, the wild enthusiasm of a Mignon, can assort with the scornful world-mockery of a Mephistophiles; and each side of many sided life receives its due from him.

  Goethe reckoned Schiller happy that he died young, in the full vigor of his days: that he could “figure him as a youth forever.” To himself a different, higher destiny was appointed. Through all the changes of man’s life, onwards to its extreme verge, he was to go; and through them all nobly. In youth, flatterings of fortune, uninterrupted outward prosperity cannot corrupt him; a wise observer must remark, “only a Goethe, at the sum of earthly happiness, can keep his Phœnix wings unsinged.” Through manhood, in the most complex relation, as poet, courtier, politician, man of business, man of speculation; in the middle of revolutions and counter-revolutions, outward and spiritual; with the world loudly for him, with the world loudly or silently against him; in all seasons and situations, he holds equally on his way. Old age itself, which is called dark and feeble, he was to render lovely: who that looked upon him there, venerable in himself, and in the world’s reverence, ever the clearer, the purer, but could have prayed that he too were such an old man? And did not the kind Heavens continue kind, and grant to a career so glorious the worthiest end?

  Such was Goethe’s life; such has his departure been—he sleeps now beside his Schiller and his Carl August: so had the Prince willed it, that between these two should be his own final rest. In life they were united, in death they are not divided. The unwearied Workman now rests from his labors; the fruit of these is left growing, and to grow. His earthly years have been numbered and ended: but of his activity (for it stood rooted in the Eternal) there is no end. All that we mean by the higher Literature of Germany, which is the higher Literature of Europe, already gathers round this man, as its creator; of which grand object, dawning mysterious on a world that hoped not for it, who is there that can assume the significance and far-reaching influences? The Literature of Europe will pass away; Europe itself, the Earth itself will pass away; this little lifeboat of an Earth, with its noisy crew of Mankind, and all their troubled History, will one day have vanished, faded like a cloud-speck from the azure of the All! What then is man? What then is man? He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains not to this wild death-element of TIME; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more.

  And now we turn back into the world, withdrawing from this new-made grave. The man whom we love lies there: but glorious, worthy; and his spirit yet lives in us with an authentic life. Could each here vow to do his little task, even as the Departed did his great one; in the manner of a true man, not for a Day, but for Eternity! To live, as he counseled and commanded, not commodiously in the Reputable, the Plausible, the Half, but resolutely in the Whole, the Good, the True:—