and yielding temperament, unimaginative, and gifted with little
penetration, but with a keen sense of the beautiful in others, he
opened to his fellow countrymen with unremitting diligence the
literary treasures of foreign nations, ancient classical poetry, that,
hitherto unknown, of the East, and rescued from obscurity the old
popular poetry of Germany. In his "Ideas of a Philosophical History of
Mankind," he attempted to display in rich and manifold variety the
moral character of every nation and of every age, and, while thus
creating and improving the taste for poetry and history, ever, with
childlike piety, sought for and revered God in all his works.

Goethe, with a far richer imagination, possessed the elegance but not
the independence of Lessing, all the softness, pathos, and
universality of Herder, without his faith. In the treatment and choice
of his subjects he is indubitably the greatest poet of Germany, but he
was never inspired with enthusiasm except for himself. His personal
vanity was excessive. His works, like the lights in his apartment at
Weimar, which were skilfully disposed so as to present him in the most
favorable manner to his visitors, but artfully reflect upon self. The
manner in which he palliated the weaknesses of the heart, the vain
inclinations, shared by his contemporaries in common with himself,
rendered him the most amiable and popular author of the day. French
frivolity and license had long been practiced, but they had also been
rebuked. Goethe was the first who gravely justified adultery, rendered
the sentimental voluptuary an object of enthusiastic admiration, and
deified the heroes of the stage, in whose imaginary fortunes the
German forgot sad reality and the wretched fate of his country. His
_fade_ assumption of dignity, the art with which he threw the veil of
mystery over his frivolous tendencies and made his commonplace ideas
pass for something incredibly sublime, naturally met with astonishing