rder will
observe that as time went on, the lyric which is a spontaneous jet of
feeling is replaced by the lyric in which there is constructive art and
considerate evolution. In the poems of the 'West-Oestlicher Divan' Goethe
returns to the lyric of spontaneity, but their inspiration is rather
that of a gracious wisdom, at once serious and playful, than of passion.

His period of romance and sentiment is best represented by 'The Sorrows
of Werther.' His adult wisdom of life is found most abundantly in
'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.' The world has long since agreed that
if Goethe is to be represented by a single work, it shall be by 'Faust.'
And even those who perceive that 'Faust' is best understood by being
taken along with Goethe's other writings--his early 'Prometheus,' his
autobiography, his travels in Italy, his classical dramas, his
scientific studies, his work as a critic, his vast correspondence, his
conversations in old age--cannot quarrel with the judgment of the world.

'Faust,' if we include under that name the First and the Second Parts,
is the work of Goethe's whole life. Begun and even far advanced in early
manhood, it was taken up again in his midmost years, and was completed
with a faltering hand in the closing season of his old age. What it
loses in unity, or at least in harmonious development as a piece of art,
it gains in autobiographical interest. All his works, Goethe said,
constituted a great confession. More than any other of his writings,
'Faust' is the confession of his life.

There are two ways in which a reader may deal with 'Faust.' He may
choose for his own delight a fragment, detach it and disregard the rest;
he may view this fragment, if he pleases, as a whole, as a rounded work
of art. Such a reader will refuse to pass beyond the First Part of the
vast encyclopaedic poem. To do this is legitimate. The earliest form in
which we possess the drama, that of the transcript made by Fraeulein von
Goechhausen, is a tragedy which might be named 'The Tragedy of Margaret.'
Possibilities of further development lay in the subject, were indeed
required by the subject, and Goethe had probably already conceived
certain of them; yet the stadium in the progress of Faust's history
included in 'The Tragedy of Margaret' had a unity in itself. But a
reader may approach 'Faust' otherwise; he may view it as expressing the
complete mind of Goethe on some of the deepest problems of human life.
Viewing it th