creative, to which he habitually turns. To this general rule one startling exception must be made. If there is one work of Goethe's which stands out of relation to the moral, and even the intellectual, problems of man's life, it is the Helena, the third Act of the second part of Faust. Yet this is just the work to which Carlyle has given a closer study than to any other. And his Essay—which includes a short account of the first part, all, in fact, that had hitherto been published—still remains one of the best things yet written upon this baffling subject. The reason for this departure from his general practice is clearly that Helena had but just appeared (1827), and that the Foreign Review was bound to take notice of it.
This, however, is the only exception. And in the Essay on Goethe—which belongs to the same year (1828) no reader can have failed to notice that the whole space is given to a survey of the novels—Werther, the Lehrjahre, and the Wanderjahre; that the dramas—Faust, Tasso, Iphigenie—are only mentioned incidentally; and that the lyrics, save the few included in the Lehrjahre, are altogether neglected. Of the few lyrics which seem to have printed themselves indelibly on Carlyle's spirit, one is Loge—'Des Maurer's Wesen gleicht dem Menschen'—and that, apart from its personal appeal to the mason's son, is among the most directly ethical poems which sprang from the genius of Goethe. Another is the song of the Earth-spirit in Faust;[1] and, considering that nowhere else could Carlyle have found so exact an expression of his own religious creed, it would have been strange indeed had it been otherwise. There are other moral and religious lyrics for instance, Das Gottliche and Gott und Welt—of which one might have expected to find mention. But, save for a probable allusion to the opening lines of the latter,[2] it is doubtful whether any reference to
