menced his pacifying song, the repetition of which we also cannot forbear: Before the entrance of the hollow-way which | tisfied eyes, the lion after him, but slowly, and opened their access to the Castle, they found as it seemed, with difficulty. He showed here the hunters busy heaping up dry brushwood, and there desire to lie down; yet the boy led to have, in any case, a large fire ready for him in a half-circle through the few disleaved, kindling. "There is no need," said the woman: many-tinted trees, till at length, in the last "it will all go well and peaceably, without rays of the sun which poured in through a that." hole in the ruins, he set him down, as if transFarther on, sitting on a wall, his double-figured in the bright red light; and again combarrel resting in his lap, Honorio appeared; at his post, as if ready for every occurrence. However, he seemed hardly to notice our party; he sat as if sunk in deep thoughts, he looked round like one whose mind was not there. The woman addressed him with a prayer not to let the fire be lit; he appeared not to heed her words; she spoke on with vivacity, and cried: "Handsome young man, thou hast killed my tiger, I do not curse thee; spare my lion, good young man, I will bless thee." From the Dens, I, in a deeper, Prophet's song of praise can hear; Mildly pressing round him came; Meanwhile the lion had laid itself down quite close to the child, and lifted its heavy right fore-paw into his bosom; the boy as he sung gracefully stroked it; but was not long in observing that a sharp thorn had stuck itself between the balls. He carefully pulled it Honorio was looking straight out before him, to where the sun on his course began to sink. "Thou lookest to the west," cried the woman; "thou dost well, there is much to do there; hasten, delay not, thou wilt conquer. But first conquer thyself." At this he appeared to give a smile; the woman stept on; could not, how-out; with a smile, took the party-coloured silk ever, but look back once more at him: a ruddy sun was overshining his face; she thought she had never seen a handsomer youth, "If your child," said the warder now, "with his fluting and singing, can, as you are persuaded, entice and pacify the lion, we shall soon get mastery of him after, for the creature has lain down quite close to the perforated vaults through which, as the main passage was blocked up with ruins, we had to bore ourselves an entrance into the Castle-Court. If the child entice him into this latter, I can close the opening with little difficulty; then the boy, if he like, can glide out by one of the little spiral stairs he will find in the corner. We must conceal ourselves; but I shall so take my place that a rifle-ball can, at any moment, help the poor child in case of extremity." handkerchief from his neck, and bound up the frightful paw of the monster; so that his mother for joy bent herself back with outstretched arms, and perhaps, according to custom, would have shouted and clapped applause, had not a hard hand gripe of the warder reminded her that the danger was not yet over. Triumphantly the child sang on, having with a few tones preluded: For th' Eternal rules above us, Lands and oceans rules his will; And the proudest waves be still. Whetted sword to scabbard cleaving, Were it possible to fancy that in the counte woods, the despot of the animal kingdom, an expression of friendliness, of thankful contentment could be traced, then here was such traceable; and truly the child in his illustrated look had the air as of a mighty triumphant victor; the other figure, indeed, not of that one vanquished, for his strength lay concealed in him; but yet of one tamed, of one given up to his own peaceful will. The child fluted and sang on, changing the lines according to his way, and adding new: "All these precautions are unnecessary; God and skill, piety and a blessing, must do the work."-" May be," replied the warder, "how-nance of so grim a creature, the tyrant of the ever, I know my duties. First, I must lead you, by a difficult path to the top of the wall, right opposite the vaults and opening I have mentioned: the child may then go down, as into the arena of the show, and lead away the animal, if it will follow him." This was done warder and mother looked down in concealment as the child, descending the screwstairs, showed himself in the open space of the Court, and disappeared opposite them in the gloomy opening; but forth with gave his flute voice, which by and by grew weaker, and at last sank dumb. The pause was bodefal enough; the old Hunter, familiar with danger, felt heart-sick at the singular conjuncture; the mother, however, with cheerful face, bending over to listen, showed not the smallest discomposure. At last the flute was again heard; the child stept forth from the cavern with glittering sa And so to good children bringeth So have tamed, and firmly iron'd THE TALE. BY GOETHE. [FRASER'S MAGazine, 1832.] THAT Goethe, many years ago, wrote a piece | merciful) comes out from us in the way of named Das Mührchen, (The Tale ;) which the publication. Of the Translation we cannot admiring critics of Germany contrived to cri- say much; by the colour of the paper, it may ticise by a stroke of the pen; declaring that it be some seven years old, and have lain perwas indeed The Tale, and worthy to be called haps in smoky repositories: it is not a good the Tale of Tales, (das Mährchen aller Mührchen,) Translation; yet also not wholly bad; faithful -may appear certain to most English readers, to the original, (as we can vouch, after strict for they have repeatedly seen as much in trial;) conveys the real meaning, though with print. To some English readers it may ap- an effort: here and there our pen has striven pear certain, furthermore, that they personally to help it, but could not do much. The poor know this Tale of Tales; and can even pro-Translator, who signs himself "D. T.," and nounce it to deserve no such epithet, and the admiring critics of Germany to be little other than blockheads. affects to carry matters with a high hand, though, as we have ground to surmise, he is probably in straits for the necessaries of life, English readers! the first certainty is alto-has, at a more recent date, appended nugether indubitable; the second certainty is not worth a rush. That same Mührchen aller Mährchen you may see with your own eyes, at this hour, in the Fifteenth Volume of Goethe's Werke; and see ing is believing. On the other hand, that English "Tale of Tales," put forth some years ago as the Translation thereof, by an individual connected with the Periodical Press of London, (his Periodical vehicle, if we remember, broke down soon after, and was rebuilt, and still runs, under the name of Court Journal,)-was a Translation, miserable enough, of a quite different thing; a thing, not a Mährchen (Fabulous Tale) at all, but an Erzählung or common fictitious Narrative; having no manner of relation to the real piece, (beyond standing in the same volume;) not so much as Milton's Tetrachordon of Divorce has to his Allegro and Penseroso! In this way do individuals connected with the Periodical Press of London play their part, and commodiously befool thee, O Public of English readers, and can serve thee with a mass of roasted grass, and name it stewed venison; and will continue to do so, till thou-open thy eyes, and from a blind monster become a seeing one. This mistake we did not publicly note at the time of its occurrence; for two good reasons: first, that while mistakes are increasing, like Population, at the rate of Twelve Hundred a day, the benefit of seizing one, and throttling it, would be perfectly inconsiderable: second, that we were not then in existence. The highly composite, astonishing Entity, which here as "O. Y." addresses mankind for a season, still slumbered (his elements scattered over Infinitude, and working under other shapes) in the womb of Nothing! Meditate on us a little, O Reader: if thou wilt consider who and what we are; what Powers, of Cash, Esurience, Intelligence, Stupidity, and Mystery created us, and what work we do and will do, there shall be no end to thy amazement. This mistake, however, we do now note; induced thereto by occasion. By the fact, namely, that a genuine English Translation of that Mährchen has been handed in to us for judgment; and now (such judgment having proved merous Notes; wherein he will convince himself that more meaning lies in his Mährchen "than in all the Literature of our century:" some of these we have retained, now and then with an explanatory or exculpatory word of our own; the most we have cut away, as superfluous and even absurd. Superfluous and even absurd, we say: D. T. can take this of us as he likes; we know him, and what is in him, and what is not in him; believe that he will prove reasonable; can do either way. At all events, let one of the notablest Performances produced for the last thousand years, be now, through his organs, (since no other, in this elapsed half-century, have offered themselves,) set before an undiscerning public. We too will premise our conviction that this Mährchen presents a phantasmagoric Adumbration, pregnant with deepest significance; though nowise that D. T. has so accurately evolved the same. Listen notwithstanding to a remark or two, extracted from his immeasurable Proem: "Dull men of this country," says he, "who pretend to admire Goethe, smiled on me when I first asked the meaning of this Tale. Meaning answered they: 'it is a wild arabesque, without meaning or purpose at all, except to dash together, copiously enough, confused hues of Imagination, and see what will come of them.' Such is still the persuasion of several heads; which nevertheless would perhaps grudge to be considered wigblocks.”—Not impossible: the first Sin in our Universe was Lucifer's, that of Self-conceit. But hear again; what is more to the point: "The difficulties of interpretation are exceedingly enhanced by one circumstance, not unusual in other such writings of Goethe's; namely, that this is no Allegory; which, as in the Pilgrim's Progress, you have only once for all to find the key of, and so go on unlocking: it is a Phantasmagory, rather; wherein things the most heterogeneous are, with homogeneity of figure, emblemed forth; which would require not one key to unlock it, but, at different stages of the business, a dozen successive keys." Here you have epochs of time shadowed forth, there Qualities of the Human Soul; now it is Institutions, Historical Events, | human Insight, Cultivation, in one sort or now Doctrines, Philosophic Truths: thus are other. As for the Snake, I know not well what all manner of entities and quiddities and name to call it by; nay perhaps, in our scanty ghosts of defunct bodies' set flying; you have vocabularies, there is no name for it, though the whole Four Elements chaotico-creatively that does not hinder its being a thing, genuine jumbled together, and spirits enough imbody- enough. Meditation; Intellectual Research; ing themselves, and roguishly peering through, Understanding; in the most general accepta in the confused wild-working mass!" tion, Thought: all these come near designating it; none actually designates it. Were I bound, under legal penalties, to give the crea ture a name, I should say THOUGHT rather than another. "So much, however, I will stake my whole money capital and literary character_upon: that here is a wonderful EMBLEM OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY set forth; more especially a wonderful Emblem of this our wonderful and woful Age of Transition;' what men have been and done, what they are to be and do, is, in this Tale of Tales, poetico-prophetically typified, in such a style of grandeur and celestial brilliancy and life, as the Western Imagination has not elsewhere reached; as only the Oriental Imagination, and in the primeval ages, was wont to attempt."-Here surely is good wine, with a big bush! Study the Tale of Tales, O reader: even in the bald version of D. T., there will be meaning found. He continues in this triumphant style: "Can any mortal head (not a wigblock) doubt that the Giant of this Poem means SUPERSTITION? That the Ferryman has something to do with the PRIESTHOOD; his Hut with the CHURCH? "But what if our Snake, and so much else that works here beside it, were neither a quali ty, nor a reality, nor a state, nor an action, in any kind; none of these things purely and alone, but something intermediate and partak ing of them all! In which case, to name it, in vulgar speech, were a still more frantic at tempt: it is unnameable in speech; and remains only the allegorical Figure known in this Tale by the name of Snake, and more or less resembling and shadowing forth somewhat that speech has named, or might name. It is this heterogeneity of nature, pitching your solidest Predicables heels over head, throwing you half a dozen Categories into the melting pot at once,-that so unspeakably bewilders a Commentator, and for moments is nigh reducing him to delirium saltans. "Again, might it not be presumed that the "The Will-o'-wisps, that laugh and jig, and River were TIME; and that it flowed (as Time compliment the ladies, and eat gold and shake does) between two worlds? Call the world, it from them, I for my own share take the li or country on this side, where the fair Lily berty of viewing as some shadow of ELEGANT dwells, the world of SUPERNATURALISM; the CULTURE, or modern Fine Literature; which country on that side, NATURALISM, the work- by and by became so skeptical-destructive; ing week-day world where we all dwell and and did, as French Philosophy, eat Gold (or toil: whosoever or whatsoever introduces it-Wisdom) enough, and shake it out again. In self, and appears in the firm earth of human business, or as we well say, comes into Existence, must proceed from Lily's supernatural country; whatsoever of a material sort deceases and disappears might be expected to go thither. Let the reader consider this, and note what comes of it. which sense, their coming (into Existence) by the old Ferryman's (by the Priesthood's) assistance, and almost oversetting his boat, and then laughing at him, and trying to skip off from him, yet being obliged to stop till they had satisfied him: all this, to the discerning eye, has its significance. "To get a free solid communication esta- "As to the Man with the Lamp, in him and blished over this same wondrous River of his gold-giving, jewel-forming, and otherwise Time, so that the Natural and Supernatural so miraculous Light, which 'casts no shadow,' may stand in friendliest neighbourhood and and 'cannot illuminate what is wholly other union, forms the grand action of this Phantas-wise in darkness,'-I see what you might magoric Poem: is not such also, let me ask | name the celestial REASON of Man, (Reason as thee, the grand action and summary of Uni- contrasted with Understanding, and superordiversal History; the one problem of Human nated to it,) the purest essence of his seeing Culture; the thing which Mankind (once the Faculty; which manifests itself as the Spirit three daily meals of victual were moderately of Poetry, of Prophecy, or whatever else of secured) has ever striven after, and must ever highest in the intellectual sort man's mind can strive after?-Alas! we observe very soon, do. We behold this respectable, venerable matters stand on a most distressful footing, in Lamp-bearer everywhere present in time of this of Natural and Supernatural: there are need; directing, accomplishing, working, wonthree conveyances across, and all bad, all in-der-working, finally victorious;-as, in strict cidental, temporary, uncertain: the worst of reality, it is ever (if we will study it) the Pothe three, one would think, and the worst con-etic Vision that lies at the bottom of all other ceivable, were the Giant's Shadow, at sunrise Knowledge or Action; and is the source and and sunset; the best that Snake-bridge at noon, yet still only a bad best. Consider again our trustless, rotten, revolutionary age of transition,' and see whether this too does not fit it! "If you ask next, Who these other strange characters are, the Snake, the Will-o'-Wisps, the Man with the Lamp? I will answer, in general and afar off, that Light must signify creative fountain of whatsoever mortal ken or can, and mystically and miraculously guides them forward whither they are to go. Be the Man with the Lamp, then, named REASON; mankind's noblest inspired Insight and Light; whereof all the other lights are but effluences, and more or less discoloured emanations. "His Wife, poor old woman, we shall call Fancy, however, that these two HALVES of Man's Soul and Being are separated, in pain and enchanted obstruction, from one another. The better, fairer Half sits in the Supernatural country, deadening and killing; alas, not percountry, and there make all blessed and alive! The rugged stronger Half, in such separation, is quite lamed and paralytic; wretched, forlorn, in a state of death-life, must he wander to and fro over the River of Time; all that is dear and essential to him, imprisoned there; which if he look at he grows still weaker, which if he touch, he dies. Poor Prince! And let the judicious reader, who had read the Era he lives in, or even spelt the alphabet thereof, say whether, with the paralytic-lamed Activity of man (hampered and hamstrung in a transitionary age' of Skepticism, Methodism; atheistic Sarcasm, hysteric Orgasm; brazen-faced Delusion, Puffery, Hypocrisy, Stupidity, and the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill,) it is not even so? Must not poor man's Activity (like this poor Prince) wander from Natural to Supernatural, and back again, disconsolate enough; unable to do any thing, except merely wring its hands, and, whimpering and blubbering, lamentably inquire: What shall I do? PRACTICAL ENDEAVOUR ; which as married to | diction with itself: what good were it to know Reason, to spiritual Vision and Belief, first farther in what direction the rift (as our Poet makes up man's being here below. Unhappi- here pleased to represent it) had taken effect? ly the ancient couple, we find, are but in a decayed condition: the better emblems are they of Reason and Endeavour in this our "transitionary age!" The Man presents himself in the garb of a peasant, the Woman has grown old, garrulous, querulous; both live neverthe-mitted to come across into the Natural visible less in their ancient cottage,' better or worse, the roof-tree of which still holds together over them. And then those mischievous Will-o'wisps, who pay the old lady such court, and eat all the old gold (all that was wise and beautiful and desirable) off her walls; and show the old stones, quite ugly and bare, as they had not been for ages! Besides, they have killed poor Mops, the plaything, and joy and fondling of the house; as has not that same Elegant Culture, or French Philosophy done, wheresoever it has arrived? Mark, notwithstanding, how the Man with the Lamp puts it all right again, reconciles every thing, and makes the finest business out of what seemed the worst. "With regard to the Four Kings, and the Temple which lies fashioned under ground, please to consider all this as the Future lying prepared and certain under the Present: you observe, not only inspired Reason (or the Man with the Lamp) but scientific Thought (or the Snake) can discern it lying there: nevertheless much work must be done, innumerable difficulties fronted and conquered, before it can rise out of the depths, (of the Future,) and realize itself as the actual worshipping-place of man, and 'the most frequented Temple in the whole Earth.' "As for the fair Lily and her ambulatory necessitous Prince, these are objects that I shall admit myself incapable of naming; yet nowise admit myself incapable of attaching meaning to. Consider them as the two disjointed Halves of this singular Dualistic Being of ours; a Being, I must say, the most utterly Dualistic; fashioned, from the very heart of it, out of Positive and Negative, (what we happily call Light and Darkness, necessity and Freewill, Good and Evil, and the like;) everywhere out of two mortally opposed things, which yet must be united in vital love, if there is to be any Life;—a being, I repeat, Dualistic beyond expressing; which will split in two, strike it in any direction, on any of its six sides; and does of itself split in two, (into Contradiction,) every hour of the day, were not Life perpetually there, perpetually knitting it together again! But as to that cutting up, and parcelling, and labelling of the indivisible Human Soul into what are called "Faculties," it is a thing I have from of old eschewed, and even hated. A thing which you must sometimes do, (or you cannot speak;) yet which is never done without Error hovering near you; for most part, without her pouncing on you, and quite blindfolding you. "But Courage! Courage! The Temple is built, (though under-ground;) the Bridge shall arch itself, the divided Two shall clasp each other as flames do, rushing into one; and all that ends well shall be well! Mark only how, in this imitable Poem, worthy an Olympic crown, or prize of the Literary Society, it is represented as proceeding!" So far D. T.; a commentator who at least does not want confidence in himself; whom we shall only caution not to be too confident; to remember always that, as he once says, "Phantasmagory is not Allegory" that much exists, under our very noses, which has no "name," and can get none; that the "River of Time" and so forth may be one thing, or more than one, or none; that, in short, there is risk of the too valiant D. T.'s bamboozling himself in this matter; being led from puddle to pool; and so left standing at last, like a foolish mystified nose-of-wax, wondering where the devil he is. To the simpler sort of readers we shall also extend an advice; or be it rather, proffer a petition. It is to fancy themselves, for the time being, delivered altogether from D. T.'s company; and to read this Mährchen, as if it were there only for its own sake, and those tag-rag Notes of his were so much blank paper. Let the simpler sort of readers say now how they like it! If unhappily on looking back, some spasm of "the malady of thought," begin afflicting them, let such Notes be then inquired of, but not till then, and then also with distrust. Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve; hast thou not two eyes of thy own? "Let not us, therefore, in looking at Lily and her Prince be tempted to that practice: why should we try to name them at all? Enough if we do feel that man's whole Being is riven The Commentator himself cannot, it is to be asunder every way (in this 'transitionary age,') hoped, imagine that he has exhausted the matand yawning in hostile, irreconcilable contra-ter. To decipher and represent the genesis of this extraordinary Production, and what was | voices awoke him; he heard that it was travelthe Author's state of mind in producing it; to lers wishing to be carried over. see, with dim, common eyes, what the great Goethe, with inspired poetic eyes, then saw; and paint to oneself the thick-coming shapes and many-coloured splendours of his "Prospero's Grotto," at that hour: this were what we could call complete criticism and commentary; what D. T. is far from having done, and ought to fall on his face, and confess that he can never do. We shall conclude with remarking two things. First, that D. T. does not appear to have set eye on any of those German Commentaries on this Tale of Tales; or even to have heard, credently, that such exist: an omission, in a professed Translator, which he himself may answer for. Secondly, that with all his boundless preluding, he has forgot to insert the Author's own prelude; the passage, namely, by which this Mährchen is especially ushered in, and the key-note of it struck by the Composer himself, and the tone of the whole prescribed! This latter altogether glaring omission we now charitably supply; and then let D. T., and his illustrious Original, and the Readers of this Magazine take it among them. Turn to the latter part of the Deutschen Ausgewanderten (page 208, Volume XV. of the last Edition of Goethe's Werke;) it is written there as we render it: "The Imagination,' said Karl, 'is a fine faculty; yet I like not when she works on what has actually happened: the airy forms she creates are welcome as things of their own kind; but uniting with Truth she produces oftenest nothing but monsters; and seems to me, in such cases, to fly into direct variance with Reason and Common sense. She ought, you might say, to hang upon no object, to force no object on us; she must, if she is to produce Works of Art, play like a sort of music upon us; move us within ourselves, and this in such a way that we forget there is any thing without us producing the movement.' Stepping out, he saw two large Will-o'-wisps, hovering to and fro on his boat, which lay moored; they said, they were in violent haste, and should have been already on the other side. The old Ferryman made no loitering; pushed off, and steered with his usual skill obliquely through the stream: while the two strangers whiffled and hissed together, in an unknown very rapid tongue, and every now and then broke out in loud laughter, hopping about, at one time on the gunwale and the seats, at another on the bottom of the boat. "The boat is heeling!" cried the old man "if you don't be quiet, it will overset; be seated, gentlemen of the wisp!" At this advice they burst into a fit of laughter, mocked the old man, and were more un quiet than ever. He bore their mischief with patience, and soon reached the farther shore. "Here is for your labour!" cried the travellers, and as they shook themselves, a heap of glit. tering gold-pieces jingled down into the wet boat. "For Heaven's sake, what are you about?" cried the old man; "you will ruin me for ever! Had a single piece of gold got into the water, the stream which cannot suffer gold, would have risen in horrid waves, and swallowed both my skiff and me; and who knows how it might have fared with you in that case: here, take back your gold." "We can take nothing back, which we have once shaken from us," said the Lights. "Then you give me the trouble," said the old man, stooping down, and gathering the pieces into his cap, "of raking them together, and carrying them ashore, and burying them." The Lights had leaped from the boat, but the old man cried: "Stay; where is my fare?" "If you take no gold, you may work for nothing," cried the Will-o'-wisps.-"You must know that I am only to be paid with fruits of the earth."-"Fruits of the earth? we despise them and have never tasted them."-" And yet I cannot let you go, till you have promised that you will deliver me three Cabbages, three Arti "Proceed no farther,' said the old man, 'with your conditionings! To enjoy a pro-chokes, and three large Onions." duct of Imagination this also is a condition, that we enjoy it unconditionally; for Imagination herself cannot condition and bargain; she must wait what shall be given her. She forms no plans, prescribes for herself no path; but is borue and guided by her own pinions; and hovering hither and thither, marks out the strangest courses; which in their direction are ever altering. Let me but, on my evening walk, call up again to life within me, some wondrous figures I was wont to play with in earlier years. This night I promise you a Tale, which shall remind you of Nothing and of All." And now for it! O. Y. THE TALE. In his little Hut, by the great River, which a heavy rain had swoln to overflowing, lay the ancient Ferryman, asleep, wearied by the toil of the day. In the middle of the night, loud * In the middle of the night truly! In the middle of the Dark Ages, when what with Mohammedan Conquests, The Lights were making off with jests; but they felt themselves, in some inexplicable manner, fastened to the ground: it was the unpleasantest feeling they had ever had. They engaged to pay him his demand as soon as possible: he let them go, and pushed away. He was gone a good distance, when they called to him: "Old Man! Holla, old man! the main point is forgotten!" He was off, however, and did not hear them. He had fallen quietly down that side of the River, where, in a rocky spot, which the water never reached, he meant to bury the pernicious gold. Here, between two high crags, he found a monstrous chasm; shook what with Christian Crusadings, Destructions of Constantinople, Discoveries of America, the TIME-RIVER was indeed swoln to overflowing; and the Ignes Fatui haste to get over into Existence, being much wanted; (of Elegant Culture, of Literature,) must needs feel in and apply to the Priesthood, (respectable old Ferryman, roused out of sleep thereby!) who willingly introduced them, mischievous, ungrateful imps as they were.-D. T. What could this be? To ask whither their next road lay? It was useless to ask there: the respectable old Priesthood "did not hear them."-D. T. |