Review. Meanwhile, our present endeavour limits itself within far
narrower bounds. We cannot aim to make Goethe known, but only to prove
that he is worthy of being known; at most, to point out, as it were afar
off, the path by which some knowledge of him may be obtained. A slight
glance at his general literary character and procedure, and one or two
of his chief productions which throw light on these, must for the
present suffice. A French diplomatic personage, contemplating Goethe's
physiognomy, is said to have observed: /Voila un homme qui a eu
beaucoup de chagrins./ A truer version of the matter, Goethe himself
seems to think, would have been: Here is a man who has struggled
toughly; who has /es sich recht sauer werden lassen./ Goethe's
life, whether as a writer and thinker, or as a living active man, has
indeed been a life of effort, of earnest toilsome endeavour after all
excellence. Accordingly, his intellectual progress, his spiritual and
moral history, as it may be gathered from his successive Works,
furnishes, with us, no small portion of the pleasure and profit we
derive from perusing them. Participating deeply in all the influences of
his age, he has from the first, at every new epoch, stood forth to
elucidate the new circumstances of the time; to offer the instruction,
the solace, which that time required. His literary life divides itself
into two portions widely different in character: the products of the
first, once so new and original, have long either directly or through
the thousand thousand imitations of them, been familiar to us; with the
products of the second, equally original, and in our day far more
precious, we are yet little acquainted. These two classes of works stand
curiously related with each other; at first view, in strong
contradiction, yet, in truth, connected together by the strictest
sequence. For Goethe has not only suffered and mourned in bitter agony
under the spiritual perplexities of his time; but he has also mastered
these, he is above them, and has shown others how to rise above them. At