MEDON.
Do you know what you mean?
ALDA.
I think I do, though I am afraid I can but ill-explain myself. By the world, I mean that system of social life in all its complicate bearings by which we are surrounded; which was, I suppose, devised at first with a reference to the wants, the happiness, and the benefit of men, but for which no man was specifically created; his being has a high and individual purpose beyond the world. Now, it seems to me one reason of the low average of what we call character, that we judge a human soul, not as it is abstractedly, but simply in relation to others, and to the circumstances around it. If it be in harmony with the world, and worldly, we praise it—it is a very respectable soul; if so constituted, that it is in discord with a world, (which, observe, all our philosophers, our pastors, and our masters, unite to assure us, is a sad wicked place, and must be reformed or renounced forthwith,) then—I pray your attention to this point—then the fault, the bitter penalty, lies not upon this said wicked world,—O no!—but on that unlucky "piece of nature," which in its power, its goodness, its purity, its truth, its faith, and its tenderness, stands aloof from it. Is it not so?
MEDON.
Do you apply this personally?
ALDA.
No, generally; but I return to her who suggested the thought, and whom I ought not, perhaps, to have made the subject of such a conversation as this: it is against all my principles, contrary to my custom; and, in truth, I speak of one in whom there is so much to love, that we cannot praise without being accused of partiality; and so much to admire, that we could not censure without being suspected of envy. I might as well be silent therefore. Yet shall such a woman bear such a name, and hold such a position as the mother of Goethe's posterity;[ 25]—shall she be rendered by both a mark for observation, from one end of Europe to the other;—shall she be "condemned to celebrity," and shall it be allowed to ignorance, or ill-nature, or vanity, to prate of her;—and shall it be forbidden to friendship even to speak?—that were hardly just. Of those effusions of her creative and poetical talents, which charm her friends, I say nothing, because in all probability neither you nor the public will ever benefit by them. I met with several other women in Germany who possessed striking poetical genius, and whose compositions were equally destined to remain unknown, except to the circle of their immediate friends and relatives.
MEDON.
Mr. Hayward, in his notes to his translation of Faust, remarks on the strong prejudice against female authorship, which still exists in Germany; but he has hopes that it will not endure, and that something may be done "to unlock the stores of fancy and feeling which the Ottilies and the Adèles have hived up." Tell me—did you find this prejudice entertained by the women themselves, or existing chiefly on the part of the men?