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Untitled Article
Among the earliest developments of his mind , was a love of the imitative arts . He indeed , as he himself tells us in one of his epigrams , exercised himself in all of them , * but brought near to mastery only one— -the writing of German . And so , wretched
poet , lost my time and my art on the worst of materials ! ' Recently , —now that a lively interest is excited by everything that appertains to him , and a sort of religion , perhaps we should say idolatry , is springing up , —a collection of his Sketches has been announced ; but we have not seen them . With such a turn of
mind , a visit to Italy became an object of his intense desire . Thisr the most important event of his life , he ever after spoke of with triumph . His ' Hegira from Carlsbad' commenced on the 5 th of September , 1786 ; and , passing through the Tyrol , he reached Rome on the 1 st of November ; and ., after spending the winter there , proceeded , in the spring , according to the custom of
travellers , to Naples , and from thence passed over to Sicily . He returned to Rome the following June , and spent a second winter there . It was not till within a few years that he published , in two volumes , a detailed account of this journey , which includes a discussion of a large proportion of the most important subjects of enquiry which could interest a man of such varied attainments , and so universal a sympathy with all that concerns mankind .
These two volumes have been since succeeded by one entitled Second Residence in Rome from June 1787 to April 1788 . No man could be a more passionate admirer of all that Rome in particular presents to our attention , as far as respects antiquity and the fine arts ; but , with respect to the Church of Rome , unlike many of his countrymen who have been seduced by the splendour
of its rites , he availed himself readily of every occasion to express his opinion of its disastrous influence on society . He especially felicitates the world on Shakspeare ' s having been a Protestant , and remarks on the disastrous influence of the religious bigotry of the great Calderon upon his dramatic works , of which , notwithstanding , he speaks ( in terms of the highest admiration . He writes
from Rome , —Here I cannot find even a trace of Christianity ; and certainly if Jesus Christ were to appear there in order to see what his representative is doing , they would crucify him again . ' By the wise advice of Herder , Goethe had postponed the
publication of the second part of his collected works , vols . 5—8 , including Iphigenia , Tasso , Egmont , and the first part of Faust . These were published on his return , having received their last touches from his hand in Italy . The history of the period immediately following his return from Italy , which was to have formed the fourth volume of his life , was left incomplete , and
remains unpublished . In the year 1790 , he made a journey to Silesia on public business . The year 1791 , on the contrary , was devoted to the theatre , to literature , vmt \ to science . The awful events of , the year 1793 ,
Untitled Article
Grdethe . 301
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 301, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/13/
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