The author himself is not called upon to explain what he designed.

An allegory is a personation of distinct and definite things,--virtues or qualities,--and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveys typical meanings, may express them in myriads.

He cannot disentangle all the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth; and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,--Fairyland of Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,--wisely leave to each mind to guess at such truths as best please or instruct it.

To have asked Goethe to explain the "Faust" would have entailed as complex and puzzling an answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the earth we tread on.

The stores beneath may differ for every passenger; each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the geologist may be rubbish to the miner.