repeated; spoken in all dialects, and chaunted through all notes of the
gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a
pleasure. Sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship,
suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and though
the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in Germany, it
reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere
abundant traces of its good and bad effects are still to be discerned.
The fortune of /Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,/ though less
sudden, was by no means less exalted. In his own county, /Goetz,/
though he now stands solitary and childless, became the parent of an
innumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal delineations, and poetico-
antiquarian performances; which, though long ago deceased, made noise
enough in their day and generation: and with ourselves, his influence
has been perhaps still more remarkable. Sir Walter Scott's first
literary enterprise was a translation of /Goetz von Berlichingen/;
and, if genius could be communicated like instruction, we might call
this work of Goethe's the prime cause of /Marmion/ and the /Lady
of the Lake/, with all that has followed from the same creative hand.
Truly, a grain of seed that has lighted on the right soil! For if not
firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other
tree; and all the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its
fruit.

'But overlooking these spiritual genealogies, which bring little
certainty and little profit, it may be sufficient to observe of
/Berlichingen/ and /Werter/, that they stand prominent among
the causes, or, at the very least, among the signals of a great change
in modern literature. The former directed men's attention with a new
force to the picturesque effects of the Past; and the latter, for the
first time, attempted the more accurate delineation of a class of