certainly the very droop and bewilderment of youth's
first passion. It is good to plunge one's hands, when one has grown
cynical and old, into that innocent, if somewhat turbid, fountain.
When we pass to "Wilhelm Meister," we are in quite a different
world. The earlier part of this book has the very stamp of the
Goethean "truth and poetry." One can read it side by side with the
great "Autobiography" and find the shrewd insight and oracular
wisdom quite equally convincing in the invention and the reality.
What an unmistakable and unique character all these imaginary
persons of Goethe's stories have! They are so different from any
other persons in fiction! Wherein does the difference lie? It is hard
to say. In a sense, they are more life-like and real. In another sense,
they are more fantastic. Sometimes they seem mere dolls--like the
figures in his own puppet-show--and we can literally "see the
puppets dallying."

Jarno is a queer companion for a man to have. And what of the lady
who, when she was asked whether she had ever loved, answered,
"never or always"? Phillina is a very loving and an extremely
vivacious wench. Goethe's sublime unconsciousness of ordinary
moral qualms is never better observed than in the story of this
extravagant young minx. Then, in the midst of it all, the arresting,
ambiguous little figure of poor Mignon! What does she do--a child
of pure lyrical poetry--a thing out of the old ballads--in this queer,
grave, indecent company? That elaborate description of Mignon's
funeral so carefully arranged by the Aesthetic "Uncle," has it not all
the curious qualities of the Goethean vein--its clairvoyant insight
into the under-truth of Nature--its cold-blooded pre-occupation with
"Art"--its gentle irony--its mania for exact detail? The "gentle irony"
of which I speak has its opportunity in the account of the "Beautiful
Soul" or "Fair Saint." It reads, in places, like the tender dissection of
a lovely corpse by a genial, elderly Doctor.

But the passage which, for me, is most precious is that Apprentice's
"Indenture." I suppose in no other single paragraph of human prose
is there so much concentrated wisdom. "To act is easy--to think is
hard!" How extraordinarily true that is! But it is not the precise tune
of the strenuous preachers of our time! The whole idea of the
"Pedagogic Province," ruled over by that admirable Abbe, is so
exquisitely in Goethe's most wise and yet most simple manner! The
passage ab