Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348. Various
visit has been followed by that of the ablest and most powerful diplomatist in his dominions, the Count Nesselrode, his foreign minister. For this visit, too, a speedy elucidation may be found. The visits of the King of Saxony, and the Princes of Prussia and Holland, also have their importance in this point of view; and the malignant insults of the French journals may have had a very influential share in contributing to the increased closeness of our connexion with the sovereignties of Germany and Russia. The maxim of Fox, that the northern alliances are the true policy of England, is as sound as ever. Still, we deprecate war—all rational men deprecate war; and we speak in a feeling which we fully believe to be universal in England, that nothing would be a higher source of rejoicing in Great Britain, than a safe peace with France, and harmony with all the nations of the world.
POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE
No. II
Goethe’s love for the Fine Arts amounted almost to a passion. In his earlier years, he performed the painter’s customary pilgrimage through Italy, and not merely surveyed, but studied with intense anxiety, the works of the great modern masters. A poet, if he understands the theory of his own calling, may learn much from pictures; for the analogy between the sister arts is very strong. The secret of preserving richness without glare, fulness without pruriency, and strength without exaggeration, must be attained alike by poet and painter, before either of them can take their rank among the chosen children of immortality. It is a common but most erroneous idea, that an artist is more indebted for success to inspiration, than to severe study. Unquestionably he must possess some portion of the former—that is, he must have within him the power to imagine and to create; for if he has not that, the fundamental faculty is wanting. But how different are the crude shapeless fancies, how meagre and uncertain the outlines of the mental sketch, from the warm, vivid, and glowing perfection of the matured and finished work! It is in the strange and indescribable process of moulding the rude idea, of giving due proportion to each individual part, and combining the whole into symmetry, that the test of excellence lies. There inspiration will help but little; and labour, the common doom of man in the loftiest as well as the lowest walks of life, is requisite to consummate the triumph.
No man better understood, or more thoroughly acted upon the knowledge of this analogy, than Goethe. He wrought rigidly by the rule of the artist. Not one poem, however trifling might be the subject, did he suffer to escape from his hands, until it had received the final touches, and undergone the most thorough revision. So far did he carry this principle, that many of his lesser works seem absolutely mere transcripts or descriptions of pictures, where the sentiment is rather inferred than expressed; and in some, for example that which we are about to quote, he even brings before the reader what may be called the process of mental painting.
Cupid As a Landscape Painter
Once I sate upon a mountain,
Gazing on the mist before me;
Like a great grey sheet of canvass,
Shrouding all things in its cover,
Did it float ’twixt earth and heaven.
Then a child appear’d beside me;
Saying, “Friend, it is not seemly,
Thus to gaze in idle wonder,
With that noble breadth before thee.
Hast thou lost thine inspiration?
Hath the spirit of the painter
Died within thee utterly?”
But I turn’d and look’d upon him,
Speaking not, but thinking inly,
“Will he read a lesson now!”
“Folded hands,” pursued the infant,
“Never yet have won a triumph.
Look! I’ll paint for thee a picture
Such as none have seen before.”
And he pointed with his finger,
Which like any rose was ruddy,
And upon the breadth of vapour
With that finger ’gan to draw.
First a glorious sun he painted,
Dazzling when I look’d upon it;
And he made the inner border
Of the clouds around it golden,
With the light rays through the masses
Pouring down in streams of splendour.
Then the tender taper summits
Of the trees, all leaf and glitter,
Started from the sullen void;
And the slopes behind them rising,
Graceful-lined in undulation,
Glided backwards one by one.
Underneath, be sure, was water;
And the stream was drawn so truly
That it seem’d to break and shimmer,
That it seem’d as if cascading
From the lofty rolling wheel.
There were flowers beside the brooklet;
There were colours on the meadow—
Gold and azure, green and purple,
Emerald and bright carbuncle.
Clear and pure he work’d the ether
As with lapis-lazuli,
And the mountains in the distance
Stretching blue and far away—
All so well, that I, in rapture
At this second revelation,
Turn’d to gaze upon the painter
From the picture which he drew.
“Have I not,” he said, “convinced thee
That I know the painter’s secret?
Yet the greatest is to come.”
Then he drew with gentle finger,
Still more delicately pointed,
In the wood, about its margin,
Where the sun within the water
Glanced as from the clearest mirror,
Such a maiden’s form!
Perfect shape in perfect raiment,
Fair young cheeks ’neath glossy ringlets,
And the cheeks were of the colour
Of the finger whence they came.
“Child,” I cried, “what wond’rous master
In his school of art hath form’d thee,
That so deftly and so truly,
From the sketch unto the burnish,
Thou hast finish’d such a gem?”
As I spoke, a breeze arising
Stirr’d the tree-tops in the picture,
Ruffled every pool of water,
Waved the garments of the maiden;
And, what more than all amazed me,
Her small feet took motion also,
And she came towards the station
Where I sat beside the boy.
So, when every thing was moving,
Leaves and water, flowers and raiment,
And the footsteps of the darling—
Think you I remain’d as lifeless
As the rock on which I rested?
No,