aust more industriously than the
drama of that name. And when Buerger declared that "people would write
learned disquisitions on the question, Who Leonora really was," we
find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case; for we now possess a
great many learned disquisitions on Faust and the legend attaching to
him. Study of this kind is, and remains, devoted to the material of
the drama alone. To give such preference to the matter over the form,
is as though a man were to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to admire
its shape or coloring, but to make a chemical analysis of the clay and
paint of which it is composed.

The attempt to produce an effect by means of the material employed--an
attempt which panders to this evil tendency of the public--is most to
be condemned in branches of literature where any merit there may be
lies expressly in the form; I mean, in poetical work. For all that, it
is not rare to find bad dramatists trying to fill the house by means
of the matter about which they write. For example, authors of this
kind do not shrink from putting on the stage any man who is in any way
celebrated, no matter whether his life may have been entirely devoid
of dramatic incident; and sometimes, even, they do not wait until the
persons immediately connected with him are dead.

The distinction between matter and form to which I am here alluding
also holds good of conversation. The chief qualities which enable a
man to converse well are intelligence, discernment, wit and vivacity:
these supply the form of conversation. But it is not long before
attention has to be paid to the matter of which he speaks; in other
words, the subjects about which it is possible to converse with
him--his knowledge. If this is very small, his conversation will
not be worth anything, unless he possesses the above-named formal
qualities in a very exceptional degree; for he will have nothing to
talk about but those facts of life and nature which everybody knows.
It will be just the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in these
formal qualities, but has an amount of knowledge which lends value to
what he says. This value will then depend entirely upon the matter of
his conversation; for, as the Spanish proverb has it, _mas sabe el
necio en su casa, que el sabio en la agena_--a fool knows more of his
own business than a wise man does of others.

ON STYLE.

Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character
than the fa