CRITERIA OF TRUTH; BY DR. McCоSH.*-This is the first number of a "Philosophic Series," to be issued quarterly and to consist of five numbers, each being complete in itself as the exposition of a particular theme. The author's high reputation as a philosophical writer will call attention to the volume and insure its circulation among readers of philosophy.

PROF. RIDDLE ON LUKE.-This is the third volume of the series of commentaries on the revised version of the New Testament edited by Dr. Schaff, and already favorably noticed in a former number of the New Englander.

LOVE FOR SOULS.-This is a plea for deeper interest and more strenuous effort for the conversion of men, and breathes throughout a devout, earnest, and evangelical spirit.

MAGAZINE OF ART.-The December number has as its frontispiece, a full page etching by Lalauze, from an original drawing by G. L. Seymour. The first article contains an account of the work which is being done by American artists in Europe, illustrated with six engravings from pictures exhibited by American artists at the Paris Salon in 1882. A very amusing and instructive article follows, with an outline of two Japanese romances, which is illustrated with six engravings. Other articles are "Sculpture in Pictland," by G. F. Browne, with twenty-two engravings; "Giovanni Costa, Patriot and Painter," by Julia Cartwright, with portrait and three engravings; "Vallauris and its allies," by Cosmo Monkhouse, with five engravings; "The Graphic Arts," with eight engravings, by Sidney Colvin. This number commences a new volume. Yearly subscription, $3.50. Single number, 35 cents. Cassell, Petter & Galpin, New York.

* Criteria of diverse kinds of Truth as opposed to Agnosticism; being a Treatise on Applied Logic. By JAMES MCCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1882. Paper covers, 60 pages, price 50 cents.

The Gospel according to Luke explained. By MATTHEW B. RIDDLE, D.D., Professor of N. T. Exegesis in the Theological Seminary in Hartford. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1882. xiii. and 369 pages.

Love for Souls. By the Rev. WILLIAM SCRIBNER, author of "Pray for the Holy Spirit," "The Saviour's Converts," etc. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. vii. and 103 pages.

1882.

THE ART AMATEUR for December contains an article on Hubert Herkomer, with numerous illustrations of his chief paintings, including a particularly fine full-page drawing of his famous "Last Muster"- Greenwich veterans attending chapel. The exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is illustrated and reviewed at length. There are also illustrated articles on "Fans and Fan Painting," "Haviland Faience," "Art in Common Things," and "Curious Bonnets." Miss Louise McLaughlin of Cincinnati begins a series of practical papers on china decoration, and there are fifteen pages devoted to an almost endless variety of useful and beautiful designs for china painting, South Kensington needlework, ecclesiastical embroidery, furniture, and color-sketching on linen. "My Note-Book" bristles with points about art and artists, and in every detail this number fully justifies THE ART AMATEUR'S claim to be "the best practical art magazine" of the day. Price, $4 per year; single copies, 35 cents. Montague Marks, publisher, 23 Union Square, New York.

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. CLXXIII.

MARCH, 1883.

ARTICLE I.-GOETHE'S ETHICAL SAYINGS IN PROSE.

IN all complete editions of Goethe's works there appears a collection of more than one thousand detached thoughts under the title, "Sayings in Prose,"* of which more than six hundred are set down under the subordinate title "Ethical," while another group is marked "On Art," and a third, "On Natural Science."

It need hardly be said that the first of these groups is of most general interest; for while judgments on art and science interest, for the most part, only specialists, and are apt to grow obsolete, a good ethical judgment interests everybody, and is always good. These ethical sayings are the subject of this Article.

Any one who proposes to add to the vast amount already said about Goethe must be ready with his apology. An apology for this Article may be found in the remarkable fact that very little has been said about these sayings. In the lives of *Sprüche in Prosa. 10

VOL. VI.

Goethe parts of them are barely mentioned. In most editions of his works they stand without a word of comment. However much they may have been enjoyed, they could hardly be said to have attained celebrity when it was possible for Von Loeper to give as a title to his commentary on them published in 1870, "Goethe's Prose Sayings for the first time Elucidated and Traced to their Sources."*

Several hundred of them were translated into English in 1852, along with much other matter taken mostly from Goethe's letters, under the title "Opinions of Goethe on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art, by Otto Wenckstern." The translator in his meagre preface seems unable to give an intelligible account of where he found the Sayings. He represents his selections as all taken not from Goethe's "works," but from his "correspondence." This translation, though it contains the cream of the Sayings, is so faulty as to make Goethe say in many places quite a different thing† from what he actually said, in some places quite the opposite.

Fraser's Magazine for March, 1876, published in a good translation without a word of comment, the first two of the seven sections into which the ethical sayings are usually divided. This was deemed worthy of an insertion in the Eclectic Magazine of the same year. About a year ago Blackwood's Magazine published from time to time portions of them mixed with other selections from Goethe under the title, "Words of Wisdom from Goethe." These found republication in various news

papers.

From this synopsis it appears that though the Sayings may have found admirers, excepting the work of Von Loeper, very little has been written about them.

With all his minute historical investigation, the results of which come in like a skirmishing fire all through the volume, Von Loeper gives nothing worthy of being called a historical introduction. And yet a connected account of the birth of these sayings makes an interesting story and a remarkable *Now constituting vol. xix. of Hempel's edition of Goethe's Works.

The saying, "Man darf nur alt werden um milder zu sein; ich sehe keinen Fehler begehen, den ich nicht auch begangen hätte," is distorted into, "I see no fault committed which I too have not committed." Goethe of all men in the world posing as 'chief of sinners"!

chapter in Goethe's life. This story has to be put together from scattered items furnished indirectly by Goethe himself in his writings and by Eckermann; though Goethe appears not to have told even Eckermann much about his designs in the

matter.

The Sayings belong to Goethe's later years, that period in which Eckermann describes him as "speaking in a slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch," a description which tallies admirably with Jean Paul's, "An Olympian enthroned above the world."

At this time he appears to have had his mind and his writing desk so full of didactic matter that even the very didactic "Wanderjahre" on which he worked for more than ten years could not furnish a legitimate market for it all.

It was all this while an article in his creed that a true work of art in prose or poetry should not aim to teach morals. In "Wahrheit und Dichtung" he speaks of the popular judgment of "Werther" as coming from an "old prejudice that it must have a didactic end." Speaking to Soret of Sophocles, he says he values mainly the poet's faculty for delineation, and puts in as a sort of concession, "I do not object to a dramatic poet having a moral end in view." And yet the didactic stream, long kept back, seemed to demand free course at last, carrying away the floodgates which he had set up.

As early as 1809, in the "Wahlverwandschaften," the gates were lifted a little and two large installments of sayings poured out, entitled, "Ottilie's Journal." To regard these as the mere fragments of a feast which the author was unwilling to throw away would be forming a very inadequate idea of the value which he set upon them. In the following words introducing them he gives a hint that they are but a specimen of a larger stock in hand. "But since most of these indeed could not have sprung from her own reflection, it is probable that some one gave her some sheets from which she copied off what was agreeable to her."

Probably the work of collecting began at least ten or fifteen years before this, as far back as the time when he speaks of Wilhelm Meister in the "Lehrjahre" as writing down "his own and others' opinions and ideas . . . which were interesting