question, in which no one is unconcerned.

To answer these questions, to begin the answer of them, would lead us
very far beyond our present limits. It is not, as we believe, without
long, sedulous study, without learning much and unlearning much, that,
for any man, the answer of such questions is even to be hoped.
Meanwhile, as regards Goethe, there is one feature of the business,
which, to us, throws considerable light on his moral persuasions, and
will not, in investigating the secret of them, be overlooked. We allude
to the spirit in which he cultivates his Art; the noble, disinterested,
almost religious love with which he looks on Art in general, and strives
towards it as towards the sure, highest, nay only good.

For a man of Goethe's talent to write many such pieces of rhetoric,
setting forth the dignity of poets, and their innate independence on
external circumstances, could be no very hard task; accordingly, we find
such sentiments again and again expressed, sometimes with still more
gracefulness, still clearer emphasis, in his various writings. But to
adopt these sentiments into his sober practical persuasion; in any
measure to feel and believe that such was still, and must always be, the
high vocation of the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of
ancient and now almost forgotten nobleness, to take his stand, even in
these trivial, jeering, withered, unbelieving days; and through all
their complex, dispiriting, mean, yet tumultuous influences, to 'make
his light shine before them,' that it might beautify even our 'rag-
gathering age' with some beams of that mild, divine splendour, which had
long left us, the very possibility of which was denied; heartily and in
earnest to meditate all this, was no common proceeding; to bring it into
practice, especially in such a life as his has been, was among the
highest and hardest enterprises which any man whatever could engage in.