Retzsch' s Outlines from Shakspeare. 



and springs of pathos. And the consequence is, that, whatever we may 

 think or feel in regard to any one of his characters individually (we are 

 now speaking of the play of Hamlet) the effect produced by the whole 

 work is that of a gentle, and even a genial melancholy, gliding through 

 and pervading the whole spirit, and inducing a general love for and 

 yearning towards our kind, which even all the true philosophy in the 

 world (much less the false) is incapable of calling forth incapable, 

 simply because, according to the fine line of Wordsworth quoted above, 

 it is by the human heart that we live, and not the human mind that is 

 to say, the affections and the sympathies, not the thoughts and the 

 understanding. 



But, perhaps, we are delaying too long from the examination of our 

 immediate subject. It must be evident, on consideration, that a mind 

 deeply imbued with the spirit of Goethe, and having eminently suc- 

 ceeded in illustrating and reflecting that spirit by means of tangible 

 forms, is not, therefore, the best in the world calculated to perform the 

 same office for Shakspeare. Admitting, however, as we willingly do, 

 that it is the very best and purest portions of Goethe which Retzsch has 

 for the most part given us in his outlines from the Faust, we still profess 

 ourselves disappointed with his new work : and there most disappointed 

 where we most looked and hoped to have been pleased and satisfied. In 

 the outlines from Goethe, the Margaret is that pervading and redeeming 

 spirit which she ought to have been in the Faust, but is not. Therefore 

 it was that we looked for more of a human interest in these illustrations 

 of Hamlet that play which is humanity itself even to the very ghost, 

 that glides through it, like a sad thought gliding through the brain. 

 But, we repeat, the disappointment we have experienced in this par- 

 ticular is not fairly to be attributed to Retzsch, but .to ourselves ; for 

 Margaret, pure, beautiful, and touching as she is, is but an abstraction after 

 all. In truth, all that is really fine in Goethe is abstraction : that is to say, 

 all is the result of moral and intellectual subtilites, acting and reacting 

 among themselves exclusively, and working out a world for themselves : 

 which is true, to a certain extent, even to the real world about us ; but 

 only so far true as fine sculpture is true to the nature which it professes 

 and seems to represent. There is the form and outline, and even the 

 lights and shades that depend on and grow out of these. We may even 

 fancy (so fine is the skill of the artist) that the vital spirit is there. But 

 the vital blood is not there ; and we cannot (as we can in painting) even 

 fancy it to be there : and without that beautiful, and pure, and even true 

 as all may be all is, at the same time, cold, colourless, and dead. In 

 short, without wishing to push a supposed resemblance too far, we will 

 say that Goethe is to Shakspeare what Canova (we are almost tempted to 

 say Phidias himself) is to Raphael or Titian. His creations are poetry ; 

 but they are the poetry of thought only, not of sentiment, or passion 

 not, in a word, of human life. They are true, to a certain extent true, as 

 far as they go ; but they are not the whole truth. That vital spark is 

 wanting, which the passionate yearnings of Pygmalion gave at last to the 

 statue ; but which all the divine art of his chisel could not give. 



Turning at once to the <e Outlines to Shakspeare," as they are some- 

 times affectedly entitled, they form the first series of a work which 

 promises to go through the whole of Shakspeare's dramatic productions 

 a series, of similar size and form, being intended to be elicited from each 

 of the great plays. The undertaking is a bold and even a vast one, con- 



