Part 40

Nearly two years elapsed between the publication of my first and the commencement of my second volume. The second and third volumes of the "Decline and Fall" insensibly rose in sale and reputation to a level with the first volume. So flexible is the title of my history that the final era might be fixed at my own choice, and I long hesitated whether I should be content with the three volumes, the "Fall of the Western Empire." The tumult of London and attendance at parliament were now grown irksome, and when I had finished the fourth volume, excepting the last chapter, I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake.

VI.--A Quiet Consummation

My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be effected without interrupting the course of my historical labours, and a full twelvemonth was lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily industry. In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive. It was not till after many designs and many trials that I preferred the method of grouping my picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicacity. I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception; I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the night of June 27, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

The day of publication of my three last volumes coincided with the fifty-first anniversary of my own birthday. The conclusion of my work was generally read and variously judged. Upon the whole, the history of "The Decline and Fall" seems to have struck root both at home and abroad.

When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life. I am endowed with a cheerful temper. The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure; and I am not sensible of any decay of the mental faculties. I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow. My own experience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson. Twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world to which I should not otherwise have been entitled.

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful I shall soon enter into the period which was selected by the judgment and experience of the sage Fontenelle as the most agreeable of his long life. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

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GOETHE

Letters to Zelter

The correspondence of Goethe with his friends, especially his voluminous letters to his friend Zelter, will always be resorted to by readers who wish for intimate knowledge of the innermost processes of the great poet's mind. Zelter was himself an extraordinary man. By trade he was a stonemason, but he became a skilled musical amateur, and a most versatile and entertaining critic. To him fell the remarkable distinction of becoming the tutor of that musical genius, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, while he also acquired the glory of being "the restorer of Bach to the Germans." Like Eckermann, the other beloved friend of Goethe, he possessed the power of eliciting the great poet-philosopher's dicta on all imaginable topics. Zelter wrote to Goethe on anything and everything, trivial and otherwise, but his letters never failed to educe strains of the most illuminating comment. The "Letters to Zelter" were published in Berlin in 1833, and the following epitome is prepared from the German text.

I.--Art Greater than the Beauty of Art

Lauchstadt, September 1, 1805. As we are convinced that he who studies the intellectual world, and perceives the beauty of the true intellect, can also realise the Father of them, who is supreme above all sense, let us therefore seek as best we may to achieve insight into the beauty of the mind and of the world, and to express it for ourselves.

Suppose, then, two blocks of stone, side by side, one rough and unshaped, the other artistically shaped into a statue. To you the stone worked into a beautiful figure appears lovely not because it is stone, but because of the form which art has given it. But the material had not such a form, for this was in the mind of the artist before it reached the stone. Of course, art is greater than that which it produces. Art is greater than the beauty of art. The motive power must be greater than the result. For as the form gains extension by advancing into the material, yet by that very process it becomes weaker than that which remains whole. For that which endures removal from itself steps aside from itself--strength from strength, warmth from warmth, force from force, so also beauty from beauty.

Should anyone disparage the arts because they imitate nature, let him note that nature also imitates much besides; and, further, that the arts do not precisely imitate what we see but go back to that rational element of which nature consists, and according to which she acts.

Carlsbad, June 22, 1808. It is an extraordinary fact that man in himself, so far as he avails himself of his sound mind, is the greatest and most precise physical apparatus that can be. And it is in fact the greatest evil of the newer physics that experiments are, as it were, separated from man himself, so that nature is recognised only in what is ascertained by artificial instruments. It is exactly so with calculation. Much is true which cannot be computed, just as much can never be experimentally demonstrated.

Man, however, stands so high that that which otherwise admits of no representation is represented in him. What, then, is a string and all its mechanical division compared with the ear of the musician? Indeed, it may be said what are the elementary phenomena of nature compared with man, who must first master and modify them all in order to assimilate them to himself?

II.--Music and Musicians

Weimar, November 16, 1816. I send you a few words with reference to your proposal to write a cantata for the Reformation Jubilee. It might best be contrived after the method of Handel's "Messiah," into which you have so deeply penetrated.

As the main idea of Lutheranism rests on a very excellent foundation, it affords a fine opportunity both for poetical and also for musical treatment. Now, this basis rests on the decided contrast between the law and the Gospel, and secondly on the accommodation of these two extremes. And now, if in order to attain a higher standpoint we substitute for those two words the terms "necessity" and "freedom," with their synonyms, their remoteness and proximity, you see clearly that everything interesting to mankind is contained in this circle.

And thus Luther perceives in the Old and New Testaments the symbol of the great and ever-recurring world-order. On the one hand, the law, striving after love; on the other, love, striving back towards the law, and fulfilling it, though not of its own power and strength, but through faith; and that, too, by exclusive faith in the all-powerful Messiah proclaimed to all.

Thus, briefly, are we convinced that Lutheranism can never be united with the Papacy, but that it does not contradict pure reason, so soon as reason decides to regard the Bible as the mirror of the world; which certainly should not be difficult. To express these ideas in a poem adapted to music, I should begin with the thunder on Mount Sinai, with the Thou shalt! and conclude with the resurrection of Christ, and the Thou wilt!

This may be the place to add a few words about Catholicism. Soon after its origin and promulgation, the Christian religion, through rational and irrational heresies, lost its original purity. But as it was called on to check barbarous nations, harsh methods were needed for the service, not doctrine. The one Mediator between God and man was not enough, as we all know. Thus arose a species of pagan Judaism, sustained even to this day. This had to be revolutionised entirely in the minds of men, therefore Lutheranism depends solely on the Bible. Luther's behaviour is no secret, and now that we are going to commemorate him, we cannot do so in the right sense unless we acknowledge his merit, and represent what he accomplished for his own age and for posterity. This celebration should be so arranged that every fair-minded Catholic should be able to participate in it. The Weimar friends of art have already prepared their designs for the monument. We make no secret of the matter, and at all events hope to contribute our share.

Jena, February 16, 1818. You know Jena too little for it to mean anything to you when I say that on the right bank of the Saale, near the Camsdorf bridge, above the ice-laden water rushing through the arches, I have occupied a tower which has attracted me and my friends for years. Here I pass the happiest hours of the day, looking out on the river, bridge, gravel walks, meadows, gardens, and hills, famous in war, rising beyond. At sunset I return to town.

In observing atmospheric changes I endeavour to interweave cloud-forms and sky-tints with words and images. But as all this, except for the noise of wind and water, runs off without a sound, I really need some inner harmony to keep my ear in tune; and this is only possible by my confidence in you and in what you do and value. Therefore, I send you only a few fervent prayers as branches from my paradise. If you can but distil them in your hot element, then the beverage can be swallowed comfortably, and the heathen will be made whole. Apocalypse, last chapter, and the second verse.

Vienna, July 27. Pyrotechnical displays seem to me the only pleasure in which the Austrians are willing to dispense with their music, which here persecutes us in every direction. In Carlsbad a musician declared to me that music as a profession was a sour crust. I replied that the musicians were better off than the visitors. "How so?" asked he. Said I, "Surely they can eat without music."

The good man went away ashamed, and I felt sorry for him, though my remark was quite in place, for it is really cruel in this manner to torture patients and convalescents. I can, indeed, endure much, but when, after coming from the opera, I sit down to supper, and am annoyed instantly by the strains of a harp or a singer, jarring with what I have been hearing, it is too much; and, wretch that I am, I am forgetting that this scribble is also too much. So farewell. God bless you!

Vienna, July 29, 1819. Beethoven, whom I should have liked to see once more in this life, lives somewhere in this country, but nobody can tell me where. I wanted to write to him, but I am told he is almost unapproachable, as he is almost without hearing. Perhaps it is better that we should remain as we are, for it might make me cross to find him cross.