propriety of prayer in a religious drama would have been enforced
upon the mind of a classicist like Goethe by his admiration for the
antique, but it was the fact that Rossini's opera showed the
Israelites upon their knees in supplication to God that set the
great German poet against "Mose." In a conversation recorded by
Eckermann as taking place in 1828, we hear him uttering his
objection to the work: "I do not understand how you can separate
and enjoy separately the subject and the music. You pretend here
that the subject is worthless, but you are consoled for it by a
feast of excellent music. I wonder that your nature is thus
organized that your ear can listen to charming sounds while your
sight, the most perfect of your senses, is tormented by absurd
objects. You will not deny that your 'Moses' is in effect very
absurd. The curtain is raised and people are praying. This is all
wrong. The Bible says that when you pray you should go into your
chamber and close the door. Therefore, there should be no praying
in the theatre. As for me, I should have arranged a wholly
different 'Moses.' At first I should have shown the children of
Israel bowed down by countless odious burdens and suffering from
the tyranny of the Egyptian rulers. Then you would have appreciated
more easily what Moses deserved from his race, which he had
delivered from a shameful oppression." "Then," says Mr. Philip
Hale, who directed my attention to this interesting passage,
"Goethe went on to reconstruct the whole opera. He introduced, for
instance, a dance of the Egyptians after the plague of darkness was
dispelled."

May not one criticise Goethe? If he so greatly reverenced prayer,
according to its institution under the New Dispensation, why did he
not show regard also for the Old and respect the verities of