The Press.
London, England, 1853-09-10 00:00:00

SEPTEMBER 10, 1853.

ments were more limited also ; the circle
which they were to irradiate was not too ex-
tensive for the light which they could emit.
At their head. moreover, stood at least two
great mother towns ; for it must be remem-
bered that the system operated not in super.
veiling, but in emulating, the office ufa London
or a Paris in Germany. not in having a multi-
tude of small lyceums. galleries, universities,
academies, and courts scattered over the
country, instead of one vast stationary collee
tion, bat in having both kinds of organisation
ut once. The effect of this was twofold first,
it created for I ioezhe a reading public who un
derstood the language in which ho wrote, be-
yond coilliparison more numerous than an
author could have obtained in any other Euro-
pean state. In the second place, it secured to
his works from the living generation an impar-
tial and cordial reception, such as ordinarily is
received only from posterity. Madame do
Staff l termed foreigners " a contemporary pus-
" terity." Nineteen twentieths of those whom
Goethe directly addressed were foreigners in
their absence of jealousy, with the important
modification that they spoke the same lan
guage, and that they were as proud to call him
a German author as the remaining twentieth
were to boast respectively that he was born at
Frankfort, that he was educated at Leipsig, or
that he dwelt at Saxe Weimar. People are en
vious only of those who struggle with them
for the honours or the prizes of the same circle,
whether that circle be large or small.
The second cause of Goethe's rapid
aseendancy is also described by himself.
The French, said he, are, by temperament, bad
admirers ; the Germans, good. The political
and social peenliarities to which we have ad-
verted go far to explain this fact. Of all the
eminent writers of his day, Goethe was the
best fitted to take advantage of it:

A celebrated preacher tits invited to exer-
cise his eloquenee in the principal church of a
German town which contained all the educa-
tional establishments for which many such
towns are famous, and at least the usual num
bar of pallid, cut husiastic, and bearded students.
At the conclusion of an able and vigorous dis-
course a stranger asked one of a group of in
telligent atulitors what he thought of the
preacher,—whether. in fact, the latter justified
his extensive reputation? "He seems," added
the stranger, " to have produced no very great
impression upon the congregation."
" I should think not," was the reply. "He
is an overrated man. There wits not one per-
son in church who could not comprehend
every word he uttered."
Goethe took care to give these "good ad
wirers" a great deal which they could more
cordially appreciate'.
The third eireumstanee which facilitated
his career was, that there was at that moment
a general upheaving of mind in Germany, a
reaction against French literature., a weariness
of translated 111111 vieltrions education, and a
determination to supply the intellectual wants
of the nation from the ample fallow ground of
its own intellectual resources. Goethe was
admired, not so much because he was a great
writer, hut because he was a great native
writer, of whom Germany was proud. We
need not add that, when once a whole nation
identifies a portion of its glory with one
writer, the rest of the world takes much of his
fame upon trust, as awarded by the must coup
potent authority, by those who best under-
stand his language and his spirit, and whose
interest and honour it is not to nominate a
literary representative of their powers, if be
he not the best of his kind within the range of
their choice. For nearly seventy years that
he wrote and published unintermittedly, forty
millions of people hung upon his words. In
this prolonged and measureless outpouring of
sentiment, opinion, and conjecture, he em-
ployed all recognised and some hitherto un-
known, or then obsolete, modes of writing
all literary means and resources, every species
of poetry, every form and variety of prose.
The paper he consumed would alone outweigh
one of the smaller pyramids of Egypt. He
produced forty or fifty dramas, thirty five thou
sand verses, and a greater number of prose
works than could have proceeded from a tole-
rably large association or club of ordinary
.writers during a whole generation. His mind