feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our elder
poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they
are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted into
Action, and belong chiefly to an age as indolent, cultivated and
unbelieving as our own. This, notwithstanding the dash of falsehood
which may exist in /Werter/ itself, and the boundless delirium of
extravagance which it called forth in others, is a high praise which
cannot justly be denied it.'

To the same dark wayward mood, which, in /Werter/, pours itself
forth in bitter wailings over human life; and, in /Berlichingen/,
appears as a fond and sad looking back into the Past, belong various
other productions of Goethe's; for example, the /Mitschuldigen/,
and the first idea of Faust, which, however, was not realized in actual
composition till a calmer period of his history. Of this early harsh and
crude, yet fervid and genial period, /Werter/ may stand here as the
representative; and, viewed in its external and internal relation, will
help to illustrate both the writer and the public he was writing for.

At the present day, it would be difficult for us, satisfied, nay sated
to nausea, as we have been with the doctrines of Sentimentality, to
estimate the boundless interest which /Werter/ must have excited
when first given to the world. It was then new in all senses; it was
wonderful, yet wished for, both in its own country and in every other.
The Literature of Germany had as yet but partially awakened from its
long torpor: deep learning, deep reflection, have at no time been
wanting there; but the creative spirit had for above a century been
almost extinct. Of late, however, the Ramlers, Rabeners, Gellerts, had
attained to no inconsiderable polish of style; Klopstock's
/Messias/ had called forth the admiration, and perhaps still more