, as Milton has it:

Joking decides great things
Stronger and better oft than earnest can.

Almost the only change that I have made in my MS. has been the
substitution or addition of an English translation in numerous places
where I had formerly quoted the German original. On some occasions, when
first writing the lectures, I very probably used the English version of
_Faust_ by Bayard Taylor, but I have not the book at present at hand and
cannot feel quite certain whether any of the verse translations are not
my own. The little book makes of course no pretence to be a contribution
to critical or biographical literature. It is meant especially for those
who wish to know something more about the story of Faust and about
Goethe's play, and who, because their knowledge of German does not
suffice or for other reasons, are unable to study the subject in any
more satisfactory way.

H. B. C.

FREIBURG IM BREISGAU
_August 1912_

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE OLD FAUST LEGEND 9

GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (PART I.) 56

GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (PART II.) 109

I

THE OLD FAUST-LEGEND

All of us have probably experienced the fact that it is possible to have
been familiar for a long time with some great work of imagination--some
poem or picture--to have learnt to love it almost as if it were a living
person, to imagine that we understand it and appreciate it fully, even
to fancy that it has a special message, a deeper meaning, for us than
for almost any one else, and then to come across somebody--some
commentator perhaps--who informs us that our uncritical appreciation is
quite worthless, mere shallow sentiment, and that until we can
accurately analyze and formulate the Idea which the artist endeavoured
to incorporate in his work, and classify the diverse manifestations of
this Idea as subjective, objective, symbolical, allegorical,
dramatical-psychological or psychological-dramatical, we are not
entitled to hold, far less to express, any opinion on the subject.

When I realised that I had undertaken to lecture on _Faust_, I thought
it my duty to study Goethe's German commentators--some of them at least;
for to study all would consume a lifetime. A few of the works of these
commentators I already possessed--some, I am sorry to say, with their
pages yet uncut. Others I procured, following th