"He then took up his weapons, and reached me his hand to say good-by. I am sure I shall never see him again.
"Scarcely was he gone, when a knock came to the door, and old Bopp came in. It was still dark in the room, but I knew by his voice he was in good-humour. He held out a broken glass to me; with great solemnity, and said—'The Crown-prince sends you this, and bids me tell you that he drank the health of those you take under your protection out of it; and here he sends you his cockade, as a pledge of honour that he will keep his word to you, and prevent all cruelty and injustice.'"
The fate of Hofer comes unfortunately to our memory to mar the pleasantness of this little dramatic incident; but the whole story gives a favourable impression of the Crown-prince, who is now the poetical Louis of Bavaria—the dullest and stupidest of whose works (we may observe in a parenthesis) makes a poor figure in its Greek dress, and had better be retranslated as quickly as possible into its original Teutsch.
It is curious to see the sort of society that Bettina moves in—crown-princes, and prince-bishops, and ambassadors-extraordinary—and all treating her with the greatest regard. There must have been something very taking in the bright black eyes and rosy lips of the correspondent of Goethe, and friend, apparently, of all the German magnificoes; for she uses them with very little ceremony, and holds her head as high among them as if she knew there was more in it than was contained under all their crowns and mitres. But it was not with the magnates of the land alone that she was on such terms. The literary potentates were equally pleased with her attention. If a rising artist wants encouragement, he applies to Bettina. Sculptors, painters, musicians, all lay their claims before her; and we find her constantly using her influence on their behalf with the literary dictator of Weimar. If a scholar or philosopher is sick, she sits at his bedside; and in the midst of all the playfulness, wildness, eccentricity, (and perhaps affectation,) we meet with in the letters, we see enough of right spirit and good heart to counterbalance them all; and such a malicious little minx! and such a despiser of prudery, and contemner of humbug in all its branches! It is delightful to reflect on the torment she must have been to all the silly stiff-backed old maids within reach of tongue and eye. And therefore—and for many reasons besides—we maintain that Bettina, from fifteen to seventeen, is an exquisite creature, fiery and impassioned as Juliet, and witty as Beatrix. We will also maintain till our dying day, that neither her Romeo nor Benedict was near sixty years old.
The information given by the Frau Rath about her son has already been incorporated in the thousand and one memoirs and recollections supplied by the love and admiration of his friends;—we will therefore not follow Bettina in her record of his boyish days, as gathered from his mother and reported to himself, further than to remark, that vanity seems from the very first to have been his prevailing characteristic—even to so low a pitch as the "sumptuousness of apparel." Think of a little snob in the Lawnmarket—son of a baillie—dressing himself two or three times a-day—once plainly—once half-and-half—and finally in hat and feather—silks and satins—a caricature of a courtier of Louis XIV.; and all this at the age of eight or nine!
We have said that our love for Bettina only extends to the three years of her life from 1807 to 1810. At that period it dies a natural death. She assumed at fourteen the feelings of a love-inspired, heart-devoted "character"—as fictitious, we are persuaded, as any created by dramatist or poet; and it was pleasant to see with what art and eloquence she acted up to it. It seemed a wonderful effort of histrionic skill, and superior, in an infinite degree, to the mere representation on the stage of an Ophelia or Miranda. But when years passed on, and she still continued the same "character," she strikes us with the same feelings that would be excited by some actress who should grow so enamoured of her favourite part, as to go on Opheliaizing or Desdemonaing off the stage—singing snatches of unchristian ballads, with the hair dishevelled, during prayers in church; or perpetually smothering herself with pillows on the drawing-room sofa. It is as if General Tom Thumb were to grow to a decent size, and still go on imitating Napoleon, and insisting on people paying a shilling to see his smallness. Bettina should have stopped before she grew womanly; for though we have not the least suspicion of her having had any meaning in what she did—further than to show her cleverness—still, the attitudes that are graceful and becoming in a children's dance, take a very different expression in an Indian nautch. And therefore we return to our belief at the commencement of this paper, that the "child" of Goethe's correspondence died, and was buried in a garden of roses, in the year 1810—De mortuis nil nisi bonum.