place with the most powerful efforts of his genius. [Footnote 173: By Felix Mendelssohn.] [Footnote 174: See above, p. 65.] Yet, as originally conceived, _Der Ewige Jude_ was apparently to have been worked out along other lines. What this original conception was, Goethe tells in some detail in his Autobiography; and, as it is there expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken its place with _Faust_ among the great imaginative works of human genius. The theme of the poem was to be the Wandering Jew, with whose legend Goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood. The poem was to open with an account of the circumstances in which the curse of Cain was incurred by Ahasuerus, the name assigned in the legend to the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was to be represented as a shoemaker of the type of Hans Sachs--a kind of Jewish Socrates who freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual passers-by. Recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and opinions, even the Sadducees and Pharisees, would stop by the way and engage in talk with him. He was to be specially interested in Jesus, with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding. When, in the teeth of his protestations, Jesus pursued his mission and was finally condemned to death, Ahasuerus would only have hard words for his folly. Judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force Jesus to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but Judas receives no comfort from Ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own life. Then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--Jesus fainting at Ahasuerus's door on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history of Christianity--one incident in the experience of the Wanderer marked for treatment being an interview with Spinoza.