Take thou thy stand among the chosen few.
Thus hath it been of old; in solitude
The artist shaped what thing to him seemed good,
The wise man hearkened to his own soul's voice.
Thus also shalt thou find thy greatest bliss;
To lead where the elect shall follow--this
And this alone is worth a hero's choice.



INTRODUCTION TO HERMANN AND DOROTHEA

Hermann and Dorothea is universally known and prized in Germany as no
other work of the classical period of German literature except
Goethe's _Faust_ and Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, and, although
distinctively German in subject and spirit, it early became and is
still a precious possession of all the modern world. It marks the
culmination of the renaissance in the literary art of Germany and
perhaps of Europe.

Schiller hailed it as the pinnacle of Goethe's and of all modern art.
A. W. Schlegel in 1797 judged it to be a finished work of art in the
grand style, and at the same time intelligible, sympathetic,
patriotic, popular, a book full of golden teachings of wisdom and
virtue. Two generations later one of the leading historians of German
literature declared that there is no other poem that comes so near to
the father of all poetry (Homer) as this, none in which Greek form and
German content are so intimately blended, and that this is perhaps the
only poem which without explanation and without embarrassment all the
modern centuries could offer to an ancient Greek to enjoy. In the view