lliant eyes. Those eyes, we are told, had lost nothing of their
lustre, nor his head its natural covering, at the age of eighty.

Among the heroic qualities notable in Goethe, I reckon his faithful and
unflagging industry. Here was a man who took pains with himself,--_liess
sich's sauer werden,_--and made the most of himself. He speaks of
wasting, while a student in Leipsic, "the beautiful time;" and certainly
neither at Leipsic nor afterward at Strasburg did he toil as his Wagner
in "Faust" would have done. But he was always learning. In the
lecture-room or out of it, with pen and books or gay companions, he was
taking in, to give forth again in dramatic or philosophic form the world
of his experience.

A frolicsome youth may leave something to regret in the way of time
misspent; but Goethe the man was no dawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On
the whole, he made the most of himself, and stands before the world a
notable instance of a complete life. He would do the work which was
given him to do. He would not die till the second part of "Faust" was
brought to its predetermined close. By sheer force of will he lived till
that work was done. Smitten at fourscore by the death of his son, and by
deaths all around, he kept to his task. "The idea of duty alone sustains
me; the spirit is willing, the flesh must." When "Faust" was finished,
the strain relaxed. "My remaining days," he said, "I may consider a free
gift; it matters little what I do now, or whether I do anything." And
six months later he died.

A complete life! A life of strenuous toil! At home and abroad,--in
Italy and Sicily, at Ilmenau and Carlsbad, as in his study at
Weimar,--with eye or pen or speech, he was always at work. A man of
rigid habits; no lolling or lounging. "He showed me," says Eckermann,
"an elegant easy-chair which he had bought to-day at auction. 'But,'
said he, 'I shall never or rarely use it; all indolent habits are
against my nature. You see in my chamber no sofa; I sit always in my old
wooden chair, and never, till a few weeks ago, have permitted even a
leaning place for my head to be added. If surrounded by tasteful
furniture, my thoughts are arrested; I am placed in an agreeable but
passive state. Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth,
splendid chambers and elegant furniture had better be left to people
without thoughts.'" This in his eighty-second year!

A widely diffused prejudice regarding the personal character of Goethe