The first Part of _Faust_ was acclaimed by the world almost as soon as it appeared, but the second Part met a very cold reception. Everyone knows and reads the first Part; the second Part has few readers, and these chiefly poets and dramatists. No doubt it has more effect on the stage than when it is read, but this is due to subsidiary features in which it resembles a fine ballet. There is general agreement that the real meaning of the second Part is obscure, complex and difficult to interpret. Many literary critics have racked their brains in the effort to discover the author’s central idea. When Eckermann, who persuaded Goethe to revise and finish the second Part, asked what was the meaning of some of the scenes in it, Goethe evaded the question and played the sphinx. Thus, with regard to the famous “mothers” Goethe answered, with a mysterious air:—“You have the manuscript; study it, and see what you can make of it” (January 10, 1830). G. H. Lewes, although one of Goethe’s most resolute admirers, admitted the impossibility of grasping the sense of the second Part. The Wanderjahre and the second Part of _Faust_ were arsenals of symbols, and it pleased the old poet to see acute critics labouring to interpret them whilst he was silent and refused to help them. Lewes thought that Goethe, so far from showing the smallest wish to clear up their difficulties, took a pleasure in giving them new problems to puzzle over. Lewes himself thought that the second Part was poor in idea and execution, and admitted that he had failed after repeatedly trying to get a conception of it that would reveal its beauties. In writing about it, he contented himself with giving a summary of it. Now this second Part, although its general lines had been laid down for long, was actually written during several years in the last period of the poet’s life. The fact that it was composed out of the regular sequence of the Acts and Scenes gives us an important clue. The third Act and then the second Part of the fifth Act were put on paper first. Next followed the first Act and part of the second; the classical Walpurgis night was written in 1830, the fourth Act in 1831, and last of all the beginning of the fifth Act.