refuses to credit him with any moral worth accordant with his bodily and
mental gifts. It figures him a libertine,--heartless, loveless, bad. I
do not envy the mental condition of those who can rest in the belief
that a really great poet can be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits of
genius have never grown, and will never grow, in such a soil. Of all
great poets Byron might seem at first glance to constitute an exception
to this--I venture to call it--law of Nature. Yet hear what Walter
Scott, a sufficient judge, said of Byron:--

"The errors of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of heart--for
nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary
talents an imperfect moral sense--nor from feelings dead to the
admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a
more open hand for the relief of distress; and no mind was ever more
formed for enthusiastic admiration of noble actions."

The case of Goethe requires no appeal to general principles. It only
requires that the charges against him be fairly investigated; that he be
tried by documentary evidence, and by the testimony of competent
witnesses. The mistake is made of confusing breaches of conventional
decorum with essential depravity.

That Goethe was faulty in many ways may be freely conceded. But surely
there is a wide difference between not being faultless and being
definitely bad. To call a man bad is to say that the evil in him
preponderates over the good. In the case of Goethe the balance was
greatly the other way. It has been said that he abused the confidence
reposed in him by women; that he encouraged affection which he did not
reciprocate for artistic purposes. The charge is utterly groundless; and
in the case of Bettine has been refuted by irrefragable proof. To say
that he was wanting in love, heartless, cold, is ridiculously false. Yet
the charge is constantly reiterated in the face of facts,--reiterated
with undoubting assurance and a certain complacency which seems to say,
"Thank God! we are not as this man was." There is a satisfaction which
some people feel in _spotting_ their man,--Burns drank; Coleridge took
opium; Byron was a rake; Goethe was cold: by these marks we know them.
The poet found it necessary, as I have said, in later years, under
social pressure, for the sake of the work which was given him to do, to
fortify himself with a mail of reserve. And this, indeed, contrasted
strangely with his form