Real
sorrows are uncomfortable things, but purely aesthetic ones are by no
means unpleasant, and I have always fancied the handsome young Wolfgang
writing those distracted letters to Auguste Stolberg with a looking-glass
in front of him to give back an image of his desolation, and finding it
rather pleasant than otherwise to shed the tear of sympathy with self
that would seem so bitter to his fair correspondent. The tears that have
real salt in them will keep; they are the difficult, manly tears that are
shed in secret; but the pathos soon evaporates from that fresh-water with
which a man can bedew a dead donkey in public, while his wife is having a
good cry over his neglect of her at home. We do not think the worse of
Goethe for hypothetically desolating himself in the fashion aforesaid,
for with many constitutions it is as purely natural a crisis as
dentition, which the stronger worry through, and turn out very sensible,
agreeable fellows. But where there is an arrest of development, and the
heartbreak of the patient is audibly prolonged through life, we have a
spectacle which the toughest heart would wish to get as far away from as
possible.
We would not be supposed to overlook the distinction, too often lost
sight of, between sentimentalism and sentiment, the latter being a very
excellent thing in its way, as genuine things are apt to be.
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