be wasting time. A resolution must be taken sooner or later, and who should take it but the person whom it most concerns?" I was moved, and so was she; and we had an excited scene, which I cut short by ordering my servant to engage a post-coach. In vain I begged my hostess to calm herself, and to turn the mock-departure which I took of the company the evening before into a real one; to consider that it was only a temporary visit, a postponement for a short time; that my Italian journey was not given up, and my return that way was not precluded. She would listen to nothing, and she disquieted her friend, already deeply excited, still more. The coach was at the door; everything was packed, and the postilion gave the usual signs of impatience; I tore myself away; she would not let me go, and with so much art brought up all the argu. ments of the present, that finally, impassioned and inspired, I shouted out the words of Egmont: "Child! child! no more! The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny, and all that we can do is in cool self-possession to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to the left, now to the right, avoiding a stone here, or a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? and who, indeed, can remember the point from which it started?” END OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Or the circumstances in which 'The Annals' originated and assumed its final shape, Goethe gives the following account, under date 1823, in his 'Biographische Einzelnheiten ': "Cellini says, 'A man having reached his fortieth year, and convinced that he has accomplished something considerable, and lived an important life, should begin a biography of himself, faithfully writing down the eventful period of his youth, and the subsequent epochs as he advances in life.' "Cellini is quite right, for undoubtedly the quick capacious memory requisite for the comprehension of those early times grows gradually dim, and the charm of earthly sense disappears, a charm not to be replaced by the clearness of a cultivated understanding. "Another important circumstance, however, in the case well deserves consideration. It is necessary not to stand too far aloof from our errors and faults, but, on the contrary, to feel so nearly related to them as to cherish a certain tenderness for them, to recall vividly the situations in which they came to pass, and not to feel ashamed of depicting them to their full extent. In later years all this assumes a different complexion, and at last in reference to such things one falls almost into the attitude of that geometrician who, at the end of a play, called out, 'But what, then, does all this demonstrate?' “And as activity alone can deliver one from hypochondriac views, whether based on facts or fancies, a man must exert all his powers to transplant himself again into sympathy with the past, to recover that position whence he will look on a defect as a want he can afterwards supply, on errors as things to be avoided for the future, on his precipitancy as a rashness to be curbed, on neglected opportunities as resources he can yet overtake. 66 What, with a view to the purpose above indicated, we have ourselves essayed and effected, what a junior pupil has accomplished in the same direction, is, more particularly, as follows: "More than once, in the course of my life, I set before me the thirty neat volumes of Lessing's works, regretted the excellent man especially in that he had lived to see the publication of only the first volume, and rejoiced in the faithfully devoted brother who, being an active man of letters himself, could not better express his attachment to the departed than by unweariedly collecting and unintermittently expediting to press the works, writings, smaller productions, and whatever else had been left by the unique man which might serve to preserve his memory in its integrity. "The man contemplating all this, and sensible of being in a somewhat similar predicament himself, will not be deemed presumptuous if he take himself to task and institute a comparison as to how far he has succeeded or failed; what has been done by and for him, and what in it is yet incumbent on him to do. any case "And. accordingly, then, I have to rejoice in a special favour of the Guiding Spirit. I see twenty volumes of æsthetic works in regulated order before me, so many others attaching themselves immediately to these, next several to a certain degree out of harmony with my poetic activity, so that I must fear the reproach of scattered and disjointed labours. If indeed the man is to be blamed who, while obeying the native impulse of his mind, yet at the same time also urged by the demands of the world, has made endeavours now in this direction, now in that, and imposed manifold tasks on himself at a time usually allowed for repose. "There has been, no doubt, this misfortune in such a case, that important plans were not so much as entered upon, and many a praiseworthy undertaking was left to perish in its inception. I refrained from executing a great deal |