help of such as are beginning to know them. The first is his singularly
emblematic intellect; his perpetual never-failing tendency to transform
into /shape/, into /life/, the opinion, the feeling that may dwell
in him; which, in its widest sense, we reckon to be essentially the grand
problem of the Poet. We do not mean mere metaphor and rhetorical trope:
these are but the exterior concern, often but the scaffolding of the
edifice, which is to be built up (within our thoughts) by means of them.
In allusions, in similitudes, though no one known to us is happier, many
are more copious than Goethe. But we find this faculty of his in the
very essence of his intellect; and trace it alike in the quiet cunning
epigram, the allegory, the quaint device, reminding us of some Quarles
or Bunyan; and in the /Fausts/, the /Tassos/, the
/Mignons/, which in their pure and genuine personality, may almost
remind us of the /Ariels/ and /Hamlets/ of Shakespeare.
Everything has form, everything has visual existence; the poet's
imagination /bodies forth/ the forms of things unseen, his pen
turns them to /shape/. This, as a natural endowment, exists in
Goethe, we conceive, to a very high degree.

The other characteristic of his mind, which proves to us his acquired
mastery in art, as this shows us the extent of his original capacity for
it, is his wonderful variety, nay universality; his entire freedom from
the Mannerism. We read Goethe for years, before we come to see wherein
the distinguishing peculiarity of his understanding, of his disposition,
even of his way of writing, consists. It seems quite a simple style that
of his; remarkable chiefly for its calmness, its perspicuity, in short
its commonness; and yet it is the most uncommon of all styles: we feel
as if every one might imitate it, and yet it is inimitable. As hard is
it to discover in his writings,--though there also, as in every man's
writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded,--what sort of