(On “Goethe’s Portrait” by Stieler of Munich)

Complete. From Fraser’s Magazine, 1832.

READER! thou here beholdest the Eidolon of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. So looks and lives, now in his eighty-third year, afar in the bright little friendly circle of Weimar, “the clearest, most universal man of his time.” Strange enough is the cunning that resides in the ten fingers, especially what they bring to pass by pencil and pen! Him who never saw England, England now sees: from Fraser’s “Gallery” he looks forth here, wondering, doubtless, how he came into such Lichtstrasse (“light-street,” or galaxy); yet with kind recognition of all neighbors, even as the moon looks kindly on lesser lights, and, were they but fish-oil cressets, or terrestrial Vauxhall stars (of clipped tin), forbids not their shining. Nay, the very soul of the man thou canst likewise behold. Do but look well in those forty volumes of “musical wisdom,” which, under the title of Goethe’s Werke, Cotta of Tübingen, or Black and Young of Covent Garden—once offer them a trifle of drink-money—will cheerfully hand thee: greater sight, or more profitable, thou wilt not meet with in this generation. The German language, it is presumable, thou knowest; if not, shouldst thou undertake the study thereof for that sole end, it were well worth thy while.

  Croquis (a man otherwise of rather satirical turn) surprises us, on this occasion, with a fit of enthusiasm. He declares often, that here is the finest of all living heads; speaks much of blended passion and repose; serene depths of eyes; the brow, the temples, royally arched, a very palace of thought;—and so forth.

  The writer of these Notices is not without decision of character, and can believe what he knows. He answers Brother Croquis, that it is no wonder the head should be royal and a palace; for a most royal work was appointed to be done therein. Reader! within that head the whole world lies mirrored, in such clear, ethereal harmony, as it has done in none since Shakespeare left us: even this Rag-fair of a world, wherein thou painfully strugglest, and (as is like) stumblest—all lies transfigured here, and revealed authentically to be still holy, still divine. What alchemy was that: to find a mad universe full of skepticism, discord, desperation; and transmute it into a wise universe of belief, and melody, and reverence! Was not there an opus magnum, if one ever was? This, then, is he who, heroically doing and enduring, has accomplished it.

  In this distracted time of ours, wherein men have lost their old loadstars, and wandered after night-fires and foolish will-o’-the-wisps; and all things, in that “shaking of the nations,” have been tumbled into chaos, the high made low and the low high, and ever and anon some duke of this, and king of that, is gurgled aloft, to float there for moments; and fancies himself the governor and head-director of it all, and is but the topmost froth-bell, to burst again and mingle with the wild fermenting mass,—in this so despicable time, we say, there were nevertheless—be the bounteous heavens ever thanked for it!—two great men sent among us. The one, in the island of St. Helena now sleeps “dark and lone, amid the ocean’s everlasting lullaby”; the other still rejoices in the blessed sunlight, on the banks of the Ilme.

  Great was the part allotted each, great the talent given him for the same; yet, mark the contrast! Bonaparte walked through the war-convulsed world like an all-devouring earthquake, heaving, thundering, hurling kingdom over kingdom; Goethe was as the mild-shining, inaudible light, which, notwithstanding, can again make that chaos into a creation. Thus, too, we see Napoleon, with his Austerlitzes, Waterloos, and Borodinos, is quite gone—all departed, sunk to silence like a tavern brawl. While this other!—he still shines with his direct radiance; his inspired words are to abide in living hearts, as the life and inspiration of thinkers, born and still unborn. Some fifty years hence, his thinking will be found translated, and ground down, even to the capacity of the diurnal press; acts of parliament will be passed in virtue of him:—this man, if we well consider of it, is appointed to be ruler of the world.

  Reader! to thee thyself, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of his whole poetic alchemy: GEDENKE ZU LEBEN. Yes, “think of living!” Thy life, wert thou the “pitifulest of all the sons of earth,” is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it is all thou hast to front eternity with. Work, then, even as he has done, and does—“LIKE A STAR UNHASTING, YET UNRESTING.”—Sic valeas.