A wide and everyway most important interval divides /Werter/, with
its sceptical philosophy and 'hypochondriacal crotchets,' from Goethe's
next Novel, /Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship/, published some
twenty years afterwards. This work belongs, in all senses, to the second
and sounder period of Goethe's life, and may indeed serve as the
fullest, if perhaps not the purest, impress of it; being written with
due forethought, at various times, during a period of no less than ten
years. Considered as a piece of Art, there were much to be said on
/Meister/; all which, however, lies beyond our present purpose. We
are here looking at the work chiefly as a document for the writer's
history; and in this point of view, it certainly seems, as contrasted
with its more popular precursor, to deserve our best attention: for the
problem which had been stated in /Werter/, with despair of its
solution, is here solved. The lofty enthusiasm, which, wandering wildly
over the universe, found no resting-place, has here reached its
appointed home; and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten
it with annihilation. Anarchy has now become Peace; the once gloomy and
perturbed spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good
fruits. Neither, which is most important of all, has this Peace been
attained by a surrender to Necessity, or any compact with Delusion; a
seeming blessing, such as years and dispiritment will of themselves
bring to most men, and which is indeed no blessing, since even continued
battle is better than destruction or captivity; and peace of this sort
is like that of Galgacus's Romans, who 'called it peace when they had
made a desert.' Here the ardent high-aspiring youth has grown into the
calmest man, yet with increase and not loss of ardour, and with
aspirations higher as well as clearer. For he has conquered his
unbelief; the Ideal has been built on the Actual; no longer floats
vaguely in darkness and regions of dreams, but rests in light, on the