Mocking a little while the coming bloom,---
Still soils with showers of sharp and bitter sleet,
In anger impotent the earth's green robe;
But the sun suffers not the lingering snow-
Everywhere life-everywhere vegetation-
All nature animate with glowing hues-
Or, if one spot be touched not by the spirit
Of the sweet season, there, in colours rich
As trees or flowers, are sparkling human dresses!
Turn round, and from this height look back upon
The town from its black dungeon gate forth pours,
In thousand parties, the gay multitude,
All happy, all indulging in the sunshine!
All celebrating the Lord's resurrection,
And in themselves exhibiting as 'twere
A resurrection too-so changed are they,
So raised above themselves. . .

How the wide water, far as we can see,
Is joyous with innumerable boats!

See, there, one almost sinking with its load
Parts from the shore; yonder the hill-top paths
Are sparkling in the distance with gay dresses!
And hark! the sounds of joy from the far village!
Oh! happiness like this is real heaven!

The high, the low, in pleasure all uniting-
Here may I feel that I too am a man.'

In the second passage Mr. Martin shows his decided superiority. Anster shrinks back from the withering sarcasm of the original, whilst Martin gives us the true ring of Goethe's sneer:'O yes! as far as from the earth to heaven! To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals: That which you call the spirit of ages past Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors In which those ages are beheld reflected, With what distortions strange Heaven only knows. Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is

This study of thine, at the first glance we fly it.
A mass of things confusedly heaped together;
A lumber-room of dusty documents,

Furnished with all-approved court-precedents,
And old traditional maxims! History!
Facts dramatized say rather--action-plot-
Sentiment, everything the writer's own,
As it best fits the web-work of his story,
With here and there a solitary fact
Of consequence by those great chroniclers,
Pointed with many a moral apophthegm,

And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows.'

That Mephistopheles gave wholesome advice to the student to hold on by mere words, is proved also by a comparison of these translations

For from a word no jot or tittle

Can be abstracted, much or little.'

In the nonsensical formulæ of incantations, all have acquitted themselves creditably of their task.

If Anster deviates from the metre of the original when the conplets are short, Blackie does so occasionally when they appear to him too long, and that with considerable effect. The scene in which Faust signs the compact, is rendered by Blackie in a spirited manner, and the concluding lines appear to us superior to those of Mr. Martin :—

When to the moment I shall say,

Stay, thou art so lovely, stay!

Then with thy fetters bind me round,
Then perish I with cheerful glee!'

With Mr. Martin's guidance, we will go now carefully through the poem, making clear to ourselves the meaning of every scene, and its connexion with the preceding and following ones.

Faust and his Study.-All poets seem to have felt instinctively that the whole subsequent career of Faust arose from his doubt. They all therefore open their plays with a study-scene, in which we see the great scholar surrounded by his books and alchemical apparatus, complaining that, with all his academic learning, he has remained a mere dabbler in idle words. The sight of the rising moon awakens in his breast a deep longing after nature, -to be away from this litter of instruments and books, from this dungeon of a study, into which even the precious light of heaven falls dimmed by the stained glass. How different is this opening from a classical tragedy! In the latter we see man in his relation to the gods and to fate; here we see a man in his relation to the world. This is in fact the distinction between a classical and a romantic tragedy. Faust is in all its aspects a romantic poem, and in judging of it as a work of art, we must beware of the serious blunder of measuring it by the

standard of classical art. Taking down a volume of Nostradamus, Faust hopes by the aid of cabalistic science to enter into the mysteries of the spirit-world. On opening the book, his hopes are elated by the sight of the sign of the macrocosm'Not barr'd to man the world of spirits is; Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead! Up, student, lave-nor dread the blissThy earthly breast in the morning red!'

Gazing intently at the sign, he recalls to himself the fundamental doctrines of the Cabala

'How all things in one whole do blend,
One in the other working, living!

What powers celestial, lo! ascend, descend,
Each unto each the golden pitchers giving!
And, wafting blessings from their wings,
From heaven through farthest earth career.
While through the universal sphere

One universal concord rings.'

Faust feels that he has been sitting in his study like an abstract spectre of medieval spiritualism, and finds now that he has within himself another nature, which with clutching organs holds to the world, and insists on being no longer suppressed for the benefit of the mind. The mind itself has derived little satisfaction from this procedure, but the resolve is made; he will take notice of the suppressed claims of his other nature, and turn to action. But as always those who spin out magnificent systems find the greatest difficulty in passing from meditation to action, so it will also fare ill with Faust ere he restores the equilibrium between his intellectual and sensual nature, ere he unites the enjoyment of his physical and spiritual pleasures. The courage with which he calls upon the spirit of the earth to appear, is soon damped by the rebuke of the spirit. Before he can recover from his surprise he is interrupted by his famulus Wagner. This episode is admirable. Wagner considers knowledge merely as a kind of coin, in exchange for which he may get a living. He is satisfied with mere wordlearning, with a knowledge of the outside of things, the possession of which causes Faust's unhappiness. Characteristically he appears in dressing-gown and night-cap, the lamp in his hand.' He thinks Faust must have been reading Greek tragedies. All the knowledge Wagner has of the emotions of the soul is derived from a study of the classics, and from the passionate cry of despair of his master he means to take a lesson in rhetoric. Had Faust been a man at peace with himself and the world, then this transition would have been humorous, but as he despises it, the transition could only be satirical. From those

deep sentimental tones of the first monologue, Faust rises at once to the height of the bitterest satire. The answer which he returns to Wagner, who thinks it a sublime joy to realize. the spirit of a time, and to see to what high pass we have brought things now-a-days, is withering :-

'High pass! Oh yes! as the welkin high!

My friend, to us they are, these times gone by,
A book with seven seals, and what you call
The spirit of the times, I've long suspected,
Is but the spirit of the men-that's all,
In which the times they prate of are reflected.
And that's a sight, God wot, so poor, so mean,
We run away from it as soon as seen;
Mere scraps of odds and ends, old crazy lumber,
In dust-bins only fit to rot and slumber;
At best a play on stilts, all strut and glare,
Gewgaws and glitter, fustian and pretence,
With maxims strewn of sage pragmatic air,

That, mouth'd by puppets, pass with fools for sense.
Wagner. Ay, but the world! The heart and soul of man,
Something of these, may sure be learned by all.

Faust.

As men call learning, yes, no doubt it can!
But who the child by its right name will call?
The few who something of that knowledge learn'd,
And were not wise enough a guard to keep
On their full hearts, but to the people show'd
The reaches of their soaring thoughts, the deep
Emotions that within them glow'd,

Men at all times have crucified and burn'd.'

With his heart nearly bursting within him, the sight of this man cannot but drive Faust to despair. He courteously dismisses him; and being once more left alone, feels doubly wretched at the sight of books from which he can only learn that mortals have been wretched everywhere.

Ye instruments, at me ye surely mock

With cog and wheel, and coil and cylinder!
I at the door of knowledge stood, ye were
The key which should that door for me unlock;
Your wards, I ween, have many a cunning maze,
But yet the bolts ye cannot, cannot raise.

Inscrutable in noon-day's blaze,

Nature lets no one tear the veil away,

And what herself she does not choose

Unask'd before your soul to lay,

You shall not wrest from her by levers or by screws.'

In all his perplexity he can find no other way of deliverance than that of violently putting an end to himself. The sight of

a phial of poison, and the prospect of a speedy death, bring an unearthly calm to his breast:

:

I see thee, and my anguish finds a balm,

I touch thee, and the turmoil turns to calm!
My soul's flood-tide is ebbing by degrees.
A viewless finger beckons me to fleet
To shoreless seas, where never tempest roars,
The glassy flood is shining at my feet,
Another day invites to other shores.

Then come thou down, pure goblet crystalline,
Out from that time-stained covering of thine,
Where I unmark'd for years have let thee rest.
Thou sparkled'st, when my grandsire's feasts were crown'd,
Lit'st up the smiles of many a sad-brow'd guest,
As each man to his neighbour pass'd thee round.
Thy figures, marvels of the artist's craft,
The drinker's task, to tell their tale in rhyme,
And drain thy huge circumference at a draught,
Bring many a night back of my youthful prime.
I shall not pass thee now to comrade boon,
Nor torture my invention to explain
The quaint devices of thy graver's brain.
Here is a juice intoxicates full soon;

Its current brown brims up thy ample bowl.

Now be this draught, the last I shall prepare,

In festive greeting quaff'd, with all my soul,

Unto the morn, that soon shall dawn on me elsewhere!'

But whilst raising the cup to his lips, he suddenly hears the chorus of the angels :

'Christ is ascended!

Hail the glad token,
True was it spoken,
Sin's fetters are broken,
Men's bondage is ended!'

The sweet remembrance of his youthful days, first called up by the sight of the ancient goblet, now comes upon him with overwhelming force at the sound of the Easter Hymn, and keeps him yet back on this earth. This beautiful transition shows how even in this life the energies of mind and body may work undividedly, as in childhood, to which the pure claims of our sensual nature are not denied, and in which the deepest wants of the soul are satisfied by faith. To restore this state of childish innocence in a peaceable manner, Faust seems to exert himself after having eaten the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Whilst casting back a lingering look on Divine love and revelation, he