lectual tastes, and was ten years younger than Göthe. When he was a boy, the two would ride like the wind over hill and plain, and build a hut in a defile to sleep in, and cook their game-supper in the open air; and the Grand Duke fell into his companion’s habit of inquiring into the why and wherefore of everything he saw or heard of. This habit was strong in death; for, when he was dying at Potsdam, with Humboldt beside him,—when so feeble and suffering as to be drowsy and restless, he poured out incessant questions about the substance of comets, the effects of spots on the sun, the heating of mineral springs, &c. Through life he had thus asked questions; and both Göthe and Humboldt took this for science, in a way which they never would have done in any case but that of a prince. They were so far right, that it is a proof of great superiority for a prince to take habitual pleasure in such subjects. As Göthe himself said, “A prince must take notice of everything; he must know a bit of this, and a bit of that. Under such circumstances, nothing can take root; and it requires a strong natural foundation not to end in smoke, in the face of such constant demands.” He fancied his particular prince to be an exception to this, even ranking him as his own coadjutor in philosophy and literature. “We worked together for fifty years,” he said. Yet no one else dreams of assigning to the Grand Duke any portion of Göthe’s achievements. It was a blessing that the ruler of a state, small or large, should be a man who had some sense of his own ignorance (the great reward of scientific study, after all), and a decided taste for intellectual pursuits: but, to set against this, we have the injury done to Göthe by the connection.
No one will undertake to say how far Göthe would have been different if he had lived as a citizen of Frankfort, instead of a courtier at Weimar: but it may be safely assumed that he would not have devoted so much precious faculty and time to the concerns of the theatre; that he would not, to the close of his life, have made Napoleon his idol; that he would have had some of the feelings of a German citizen; that he would have lost sight sometimes of his purpose of self-culture in emotions of a more generous origin, and have been less consciously a king in his own domain for not having to play the courtier in another. Amidst all the beauty of his manners,—his polished and simple courtesy of mind and speech,—everybody feels that a part of his great heart was withered within him; and reason and experience warrant the belief that court life was the chief reason of it. It is repugnant to our feelings of admiration, and keeps that admiration from rising into enthusiasm, to think of him as putting off his studies to put on his decorations, and as investing all the solemnity he was capable of in court-observances, and as spending hundreds upon hundreds of precious evenings in the dulness of the palace circle. In his estimates of men we see the harm done him. Every individual belonging to the family of his patron was, in his view, so exalted, that each one of them, man or woman, would have been great and distinguished in any rank of life: yet no one of them has left any proof of extraordinary qualifications: and, to say all in a word, Napoleon was his idol. “Napoleon was the man!” he said. Light and clearness being in his view the supreme gifts, he described Napoleon as “always enlightened, always clear and decided, and endowed with sufficient energy to carry into effect whatever he considered advantageous and necessary. His life was the stride of a demi-god. He was found in a state of continual enlightenment. On this account his destiny was more brilliant than any the world had seen before him, or perhaps will ever see after him.”
Such a judgment, proceeding from a German of (what would be in our country) middle-class birth, after having witnessed the humiliation of his country under the heel of the aggressor, is evidence enough of that heartlessness in one important direction which we are accustomed to ascribe to the courtly, rather than the philosophical habit of mind and life. Possibly Göthe might not have written much more if he had lived elsewhere than at Weimar; but we cannot but believe that his life and works would have had a higher vitality. His adorers appeal to time and posterity for evidence of what he was. We, who strongly admire, but do not adore him, are quite willing to refer to the same test; and the more, because time and a new generation have shown what his estimate of Napoleon,—his favourite admiration,—was worth.
As Humboldt delighted Göthe with praises of his prince-friend, so Göthe delighted Humboldt in his turn. He was certain that the then Crown Prince of Prussia was “a very distinguished man.” What Göthe was at Weimar, Humboldt was at Potsdam. The difference to us is that we think of Humboldt as the natural philosopher, and of Göthe as less of a natural philosopher than a poet, and therefore more able perhaps to spare time and attention to court intercourses than his Prussian friend. Another wide difference is that Göthe has left us only solemn and decorous homage of the Grand-Ducal family and household, whereas Humboldt committed to paper his natural feelings under the yoke which he submitted to wear.
His early travels were necessarily under the patronage of his own and other governments. They could not otherwise have been achieved. But one wishes that when he and Bonpland were ranging at will the wild tropical regions of the New World, some of Nature’s voices there had warned him to beware of surrendering his life to the fetters of any conventional restraint which should cramp his powers, and hurt his temper, and destroy his sincere and reverential habit of mind. If he had taken such a warning in the wild woods, and under the tropical midnight sky, he would not have bowed his neck to the yoke the moment he settled at Berlin. He let himself be made a Councillor of State, and undertook tasks in diplomacy which another man could have done as well or better. The world had but one Humboldt; and Prussia could have supplied men enough for all her diplomatic work.
From that time forward, his connection with the Court was the snare, the vexation, and the humiliation of Humboldt’s life. The wise always knew it must be so: the world now knows that it