Is more than empty echo of a call, Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides; To views in Alpine thought are they helped on. V. WOMAN (Youth in Memory.) Closely connected with Meredith's faith in democracy is his desire for the emancipation of woman. He has suggested this obliquely in some of his novels-in Rhoda Fleming, in Diana of the Crossways, and above all in the great trilogy: One of our Conquerors, Lord Ormont and his Aminta, and The Amazing Marriage. In each of these we have a woman who is the victim of unequal laws, of outworn conventions, of the brutality of man, or of her own weak nature and deficient education; but one wonders how many novel readers perceive the thought which underlies the story. In the poems Meredith's teaching is direct and unmistakable, whether the theme is treated lightly and humorously, as in A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt, or seriously, indeed, almost tragically, as in The Sage Enamoured and the Honest Lady, which forms such a significant companion piece to Modern Love. Meredith's appeal, on this question as on others, is to Nature and Reason; he has no sympathy with those who in the great name of Nature would break all the bonds of law. The Puritan is, in his view, nearer the reading of Nature than the Libertine, for Nature condemns and punishes inexorably Sin against immaturity, the sin Of ravenous excess, what deed divides (The Sage Enamoured.) On the other hand, the culprit who, in obedience to Nature's law, has broken the law of man, is dubiously blamed by his own conscience. He feels the whip of general condemnation, but he bewails only his isolation from his fellows and the loss of their esteem. Man must build on the foundations of Nature if the structure of human society is to last, and must be moved by higher and deeper considerations than those of immediate advantage. Marriage must be a troth of equal hands, mate and mate, a soul's embrace upon an upper plane, and not the mere exchange of a pious token, by which both man and woman feel themselves cheated. Meredith's outspoken sympathy for what he regards as the wrongs of woman, both in this poem and in A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt, is in striking contrast with the hesitating conventionality of Tennyson's Princess, which was written, it is true, a generation earlier. Browning, influenced perhaps by his own ideal union, did not step much farther than Tennyson beyond the lines of romantic tradition as to the relations of the sexes; but in his insistence on the sacredness of passion he opened the way for Meredith's wider view. He would have accepted Meredith's definition of passion as "noble strength on fire," and in The Statue and the Bust, In a Balcony, Respectability, and The Inn Album he displays a wider sympathy than can have been altogether approved by conventional Victorian morality, which was sorely puzzled by the dialectic of Fifine at the Fair. But these are merely incidental outbursts of an intensely vigorous and independent mind, which in the main accepted the prevailing view as to sex-relations, just as, in spite of a genuine independence of spirit in religious matters, Browning accepted, in the main, the orthodox religious position of his time. The remarkable thing about Meredith is that a generation after his poems were published, they still present radical ideas which have not yet been absorbed by many of his readers, although these are drawn from the classes most likely to be in sympathy with his opinions. The day may, of course, come when Meredith's philosophy will seem as much out of date as the compromises of Browning and Tennyson appear to the advanced thinkers of our own time; but he must at least be recognized as one who was in the van of contemporary thought in science and philosophy--a leader, not merely a follower and interpreter of the ideas of his time. J. W. CUNLIFFE. II. THE LETTERS OF CHARLOTTE-AN ANTIDOTE TO DIE LEIDEN DES JUNGEN WERTHERS I The Letters of Charlotte was first published in London in 1786, seven years after Goethe's The Sorrows of Werter had been translated by W. Render.' My acquaintance with this book was made the other day, when I discovered a copy of it, published in New York in 1797,2 among some volumes which had belonged to my great-grandfather. 3 Dr. Goodnight quotes Wilkens (Americana Germanica, III, 8) who records that the first American edition of The Sorrows of Werter appeared five years after the first English translation, of which it was a reprint; he further says* that this translation was by Daniel Malthus. 1 1 Leipziger Bücher-Auktion den 25. Oktober 1886: Verzeichnis der nachgelassenen Bibliothek des Herrn Verlagsbuchhändler Dr. Salomon Hirzel; no. 29-an English edition of The Sorrows of Werter translated by W. Render, 2 vols. Litchfield, 1779. See also Hiersemann's catalogue 42 (p. 12, no. 269) for an edition, translated by W. Render, Litchfield, 1789. Appell: Werther und seine Zeit (Oldenburg, 1882) does not mention any Litchfield edition, but notes the first English translation, as London, 1779 (p. 12f., also p. 286 f.). This comes through the French (see below, p. 27, n. 5). He does not mention Render's name before the 1801 edition (p. 288). 2 The Letters of Charlotte during her connexion with Werter (Engraving of Charlotte at the Tomb of Werter, frontispiece) Grazia sola di su ne vaglia, inanti Che piu' desio d'amore al cor s'invecchi. Newyork: Printed by William A. Davis for E. Duyckinck & Co., T. Allen, T. & J. Swords, T. Greenleaf and J. Tiebout. 1797. 2 vols. (bound together) 240 pp. 3S. H. Goodnight: German Literature in American Magazines Prior to 1846. Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 188. (Madison, 1907.) P. 23 f. * Idem, p. 24. Two years after the English translation of Werther had appeared in America,—namely in 1786,-there was published in London The Letters of Charlotte, the author of which remains unknown. It is this book that made its appearance at New York, eleven years later. 2 4 "To Carlyle the merit is due of making Goethe popular in England," says Miss Carr in an article on Goethe in his Connection with English Literature.1 Mr. Alford points out that "the first beginnings of the study of Goethe in England came fifty years before Carlyle," and notes that "in the year 1780 a translation of Werther first introduced Goethe to the notice of Englishmen. This became popular and passed through several editions." Miss Bateson 1 calls attention to the fact that "for many years after its [Werther's] appearance in Germany, it was only known in England in the form of indirect translation through the French, incorrect in that language, and further mutilated in the English version 5. In addition to these facts it must not be forgotten that, at the close of the last century, England was, as a nation, almost incapable of appreciating foreign literature, particularly when it was of an impassioned and sentimental character." The interest in Werther aroused a curiosity regarding its author; Mr. Alford says that Coleridge once came near 6 1 Pub. of English Goethe Society, No. iv, p. 56. (London, 1888.) 2R. G. Alford, Goethe's Earliest Critics in England. Idem, No. vii, p. 8 f. (London, 1893.) 3 This should be 1779. (See above, note 1, p. 26.) See the abstract of her paper on Werther, Publications of the English Goethe Society, ii, p. 29 (London, 1886.) 5 Appell remarks, p. 12, that the first English translation is nothing like the original. "Dieser ganze englische Werther ist nach einer französischen Übersetzung wiedergegeben." He quotes from Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 1, 341. • Goethe's Earliest Critics in England, p. 13. |