one that has so succeeded. On this ground, were it on no other, we have
ventured to say that his spiritual history and procedure must deserve
attention; that his opinions, his creations, his mode of thought, his
whole picture of the world as it dwells within him, must to his
contemporaries be an inquiry of no common interest; of an interest
altogether peculiar, and not in this degree exampled in existing
literature. These things can be but imperfectly stated here, and must be
left, not in a state of demonstration, but at the utmost, of loose
fluctuating probability; nevertheless, if inquired into, they will be
found to have a precise enough meaning, and, as we believe, a highly
important one.

For the rest, what sort of mind it is that has passed through this
change, that has gained this victory; how rich and high a mind; how
learned by study in all that is wisest, by experience in all that is
most complex, the brightest as well as the blackest, in man's existence;
gifted with what insight, with what grace and power of utterance, we
shall not for the present attempt discussing. All these the reader will
learn, who studies his writings with such attention as they merit; and
by no other means. Of Goethe's dramatic, lyrical, didactic poems, in
their thousandfold expressiveness, for they are full of expressiveness,
we can here say nothing. But in every department of Literature, of Art
ancient and modern, in many provinces of Science, we shall often meet
him; and hope to have other occasions of estimating what, in these
respects, we and all men owe him.

Two circumstances, meanwhile, we have remarked, which to us throw light
on the nature of his original faculty for Poetry, and go far to convince
us of the Mastery he has attained in that art: these we may here state
briefly, for the judgment of such as already know his writings, or the