as yet scarcely become historic. I can here merely refer in passing to
my own efforts and to those of Bartels, Biese, Riemann, and
Soergel--to name only these; for in compliance with the purpose of
this introduction we must confine ourselves to giving a general
comprehensive outline--although it would be easy to improve upon it if
one went more into detail.

It seems to me under these conditions that the groundlines of the
development of our literature from 1700-1900 would be best impressed
upon us by comparing the order of its evolution with that of the most
"normal" poetic genius who ever lived--namely, with that of Goethe;
and thereby we should prove its development to be an essentially
normal one.

Like all "natural geniuses" Goethe begins as an imitator, dependent
upon others; for the poet also must first learn to speak and to walk.
The earliest literary effort of his which we possess is the poem _On
Christ's Descent into Hell_, which naturally seemed strange enough to
Goethe when this long forgotten first printed specimen of his literary
productiveness was laid before him again after he had grown old. In
this poem traditional phrases are repeated without the addition of
anything new and original; conventional feelings are expressed, usual
methods are employed; all this, however, not without a certain
moderation of expression constituting a first sign of the otherwise
still completely concealed poetic individuality.

Such is the character that the world of virtuosos also bears about the
year 1700. The poems of Rudolf von Canitz and Johann von Besser are,
though in entirely different spheres, just the same kind of first
attempts of an imperfect art anxiously following foreign models as