the mediæval Catholic Church, though terrible enough in its pictorial presentation (as many an Italian cloister testifies) was more accommodating in its adaptation to the many forms of human weakness; and so, to magnify the grace of God, and make Christ all in all, after a fashion which the severe Protestant Calvinist is forced to condemn, the mediæval form of the Faust legend could afford to save Faust, notwithstanding his blood-sealed transaction with the Devil; and no one has a right to blame Goethe, morally and theologically, for having adopted this view of the matter. But, though the salvation of Faust, according to the feeling of orthodox mediæval Christianity, is permissible, and even desirable, the manner in which, and the process by which, his salvation is achieved by the German Protestant poet differs very much from the treatment it receives at the hand of the Catholic Church. In Christian theology—and in any healthy system of human Ethics too, I imagine—the forgiveness of a great sinner always implies confession of guilt, and a process, sometimes painful and protracted, of repentance and amendment; but of this not a hint occurs in the second part of Faust; and so the moral instincts of man, which had been so strongly appealed to in the first part, are ignored, with a feeling of great moral dissatisfaction as the unavoidable result. So much for the ethico-theological aspect of the case. Æsthetically, and viewed as a dramatic continuation of the first part, the second part of the poem is much more at fault, and must be pronounced, with all its wealth of imaginative reproduction, and all its luxuriance of rhythmical form, a magnificent failure. If this judgment appears severe, it must be remembered that the very excellence of the first part, considered morally and dramatically, rendered a satisfactory continuation of it, even to the genius of a Goethe, both impolitic and impossible. Who would ever dream of a continuation of Hamlet? Had it pleased our great dramatic master to keep Hamlet alive amid the general catastrophe of the play, as he might lightly have done, the future fate of his hero would only have been a matter of historical curiosity. For dramatic purposes his course was finished. So with Faust. Though he remains on the stage in the pathetic closing scene, dramatically his part is played out. The “Hither to me!” of his fiendish companion is quite enough for the satisfaction of the moral feeling which the catastrophe has excited; all beyond this is a matter, no doubt, for metaphysical speculation and theological solution, but with which the dramatist has nothing to do. But even if there were any feeling in the breast of the spectator, causing him to look for some terrestrial continuation of the sad story which he has been
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