character, a robber knight of Franconia in the fifteenth century, who had
championed the rights of the free knights to carry on private warfare and
had been put under the ban of the empire for engaging in feuds. "It
would be difficult," wrote Carlyle, "to name two books which have
exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of
Europe"--than "The Sorrows of Werther" and "Gotz." "The fortune of
'Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,' though less sudden"--than
Werther's--"was by no means less exalted. In his own country 'Götz,'
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 'Götz 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 since followed from the same creative hand. . . How
far 'Götz von Berlichingen' actually affected Scott's literary
destination, and whether without it the rhymed romances, and then the
prose romances of the author of Waverly, would not have followed as they
did, must remain a very obscure question; obscure and not important. Of
the fact, however, there is no doubt, that these two tendencies, which
may be named Götzism and Wertherism, of the former of which Scott was
representative with us, have made and are still in some quarters making
the tour of all Europe. In Germany, too, there was this affectionate,
half-regretful looking-back into the past: Germany had its buff-belted,
watch-tower period in literature, and had even got done with it before
Scott began."[29]

Elsewhere Carlyle protests against the common English notion that German