uch a view is merely sentimental
and subversive of all true art. But, once more, what if he had bravely
stood by Gretchen, or had even shared her fate when she refused to be
saved by him?

Anyhow, Goethe did not choose any of these methods; and if he had done
so we should have had no second Part of _Faust_--nor indeed our next
scene, the _Walpurgisnacht_.

Pursued not only by the avengers of blood but by the avenging furies of
his own conscience, Faust has plunged into a reckless life and
experiences those after-dreams of intellectual and aesthetic extravagance
which so often follow such riotous living. This period--that of sensual
riot and aesthetic dalliance--Goethe has, I think, symbolized by two wild
and curious scenes, the _Walpurgisnacht_ and Oberon's Wedding, a kind of
'after-dream' of the _Walpurgisnacht_.

The connexion of these scenes with the main action of the play has
puzzled many critics, especially the curious Intermezzo which follows
the _Walpurgisnacht_, the 'Golden Wedding of Oberon and Titania,' a kind
of dream-vision, or rather nightmare, in which besides the fairies of
Shakespeare's fairyland, besides will-o'-the-wisps and weather-cocks and
shooting stars, numerous authors, philosophers and artists and other
characters appear, including Goethe himself as the 'Welt-kind.' This
scene was not originally written for _Faust_, but Goethe inserted it (I
imagine) as an allegorical picture of over-indulgence in aestheticism and
intellectualism (the 'opiate of the brain,' as Tennyson calls it)--a
vice into which one is apt to be seduced by the hope of deadening pain
of heart. Although not written for the play, this Intermezzo cannot be
said to be superfluous, for the subject of _Faust_ is one that admits of
almost any imaginative conception that is descriptive of the experiences
of human nature in its quest of truth.

But let us return to the _Walpurgisnacht_. On the 1st of May a great
festival was held by the ancient Druids, who on the preceding night used
to perform on the mountains their terrible sacrifices, setting ablaze
huge wickerwork figures filled with human beings. Hence in later times
the superstition arose that on this night witches ghouls and fiends held
their revels on the Brocken, or Blocksberg, in the Harz mountains. The
name of Saint Walpurga (an English nun, who came to Germany in the
eighth century) became associated with this Witches' Sabbath, as the 1st
of May was sacred to her. To th