contemplation of our modern lyric poetry, our novels, dramas, epic and
didactic poetry, does not allow himself to be blinded by prejudice or
offended vanity. A great literature such as we possessed about 1800 we
of a certainty do not have to-day. A more hopeful chaos or one more
rich in fertile seeds we have not possessed since the days of
Romanticism. It is surely worth while to study this literature, and in
all its twists and turns to admire the heliotropism of the German
ideal and the importance which our German literature has won as a
mediator, an experimenter, and a model for that world-literature, the
outline of which the prophetic eye of the greatest German poet was the
first to discern, and his hand, equally expert in scientific and
poetic creation, the first to describe.



THE LIFE OF GOETHE

BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University

Goethe, the illustrious poet-sage whom Matthew Arnold called the
"clearest, largest, and most helpful thinker of modern times," was
born August 28, 1749, at Frankfurt on the Main.[2] He was christened
Johann Wolfgang. In his early years his familiar name was Wolfgang, or
simply Wolf, never Johann. His family was of the middle class, the
aristocratic _von_ which sometimes appears in his name, in accordance
with German custom, having come to him with a patent of nobility which
he received in the year 1782.