conventional criticism, or profligate novels; or, at any rate, write
without thought, and without recurrence, by day and night, to the
sources of inspiration?

Some reply to these questions may be furnished by looking over the
list of men of literary genius in our age. Among these, no more
instructive name occurs than that of Goethe, to represent the power
and duties of the scholar or writer.

I described Bonaparte as a representative of the popular external life
and aims of the nineteenth century. Its other half, its poet, is Goethe,
a man quite domesticated in the century, breathing its air, enjoying
its fruits, impossible at any earlier time, and taking away, by his
colossal parts, the reproach of weakness, which, but for him, would
lie on the intellectual works of the period. He appears at a time when
a general culture has spread itself, and has smoothed down all sharp
individual traits; when, in the absence of heroic characters, a social
comfort and cooperation have come in. There is no poet, but scores of
poetic writers; no Columbus, but hundreds of post-captains, with
transit-telescope, barometer, and concentrated soup and pemmican; no
Demosthenes, no Chatham, but any number of clever parliamentary and
forensic debaters; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divinity; no
learned man, but learned societies, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and
book-clubs, without number. There was never such a miscellany of facts.
The world extends itself like American trade. We conceive Greek or
Roman life,--life in the middle ages--to be a simple and comprehensive
affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things, which is
distracting.

Goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity; hundred-handed,