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forts, with such unfailing thoughtfulness as is evinced, not only in the frequency of his letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her use, redounds assuredly in no ordinary degree to his honour; and was even the most strikingly meritorious from the absence of that affection which renders kindness to a beloved object little more than an indulgence of self.

"But however estranged from her his feelings must be allowed to have been while she lived, her death seems to have restored them into their natural channel. Whether from a return of early fondness, and the all-atoning power of the grave, or from the prospect of that void in his future life which this loss of his only link with the past would leave, it is certain that Byron felt the death of his mother acutely, if not deeply. . . .

"That, notwithstanding her injudicious and coarse treatment of him, Mrs. Byron loved her son with that sort of fitful fondness of which alone such a nature is capable, there can be little doubt, and still less that she was ambitiously proud of him. Her anxiety for the success of his first literary essays may be collected from the pains which he so considerately took to tranquillize her on the appearance of the hostile article in the Review. As his fame began to brighten, that notion of his future greatness and glory, which, by a singular forecast of superstition, she had entertained from his very childhood, became proportionately confirmed. Every mention of him in print was watched by her with eagerness; and she had got bound together in a volume a collection of all the literary notices that had then appeared of his early poems and satires, written over

on the margin with observations of her own, which to my informant appeared indicative of much more sense and ability than, from her general character, we should be inclined to attribute to her."

It is but just to mention these simple but still extenuating traits in the character of this most injudicious and unfortunate mother, unfortunate, because she had committed to her charge an eccentric, impassioned, but yet noble nature, which she knew not how to preserve from the most melancholy fate or genius -that of being a warning instead of a blessing to mar.

kind.

XIII.

MOTHERS OF GOETHE AND RICHTER.

AMONGST the many German mothers who might be described as influential in forming to some extent the characters of men of eminence,-some by their virtues, others by their talents, and not a few by both,-I have selected only the mothers of Goethe and Richter, as illustrating, though each in a manner differing widely from the other, a certain amount of influence over the extraordinary men in connection with whom their names have become known to us.

The mother of Goethe, or Frau Aja, as she was generally called, might not inappropriately serve the purpose of showing the effect of hereditary transmission of certain properties or tendencies of character. Lewes, in his Life of Goethe, says, in comparing the mother with the father, that " she was more like what we conceive as the parent of a poet. She is one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one standing out with greater vividness than almost any other. Her simple, hearty, joyous, and affectionate nature endeared her to all. She was the delight of children, the favourite of poets and princes. To the last retaining her enthu

siasm and simplicity, mingled with great shrewdness and knowledge of character, Frau Aja was at once grave and hearty, dignified and simple. She had read most of the best German and Italian authors, had picked up considerable desultory information, and had that 'mother-wit' which so often seems to render culture superfluous in women, their rapid intuitions anticipating the tardy conclusions of experience-a characteristic also of the poetic mind. Her letters are full of spirit. . . .

"After a lengthened interview with her, an enthusiastic traveller exclaimed-'Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is!'. . . She was married at seventeen to a man for whom she had no love, and was only eighteen when the poet was born. This, instead of making her prematurely old, seems to have perpetuated her girlhood. 'I and my Wolfgang,' she said, 'have always held fast to each other, because we were both young together.' To him she transmitted her love of story-telling, her animal spirits, her love of everything which bore the stamp of distinctive individuality, and her love of seeing happy faces around her. Order and quiet,' she says in one of her charming letters, are my principal characteristics. Hence I despatch at once whatever I have to do, the most disagreeable always first. . . . When all has returned to its proper state, then I defy any one to surpass me in good humour.' Her heartiness and tolerance she thinks are the causes why every one likes her. 'I ain fond of people, and that every one feels directly, young and old. I pass without presumption through the world, and that gratifies men. I never bemoralize any one, always seek out the good that is in them,

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