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Untitled Article
as they affect Goethe , are recorded m a volume entitled the fifth of his life , but no longer termed a Dichtung , with the motto , * I too in Champaigne , ' as in bitter parody of the well-known * I too in Arcadia / It is written with great spirit , but is by no means confined to a narrative of personal events . He accompanied hia Duke into France on the memorable march of the Duke of
Brunswick , who did not reach Paris . Subsequent events have shown that it was only because he had not the courage : subsequent events have , however , also shown a more important truth , the impolicy , as former events had shewn the mischief , of interfering in the concerns of a nation . The first French revolution was consolidated by the league formed to destroy it ; and Philip Augustus is now , after the second , tottering on his throne merely because he is let alone .
This is the last volume of what may be termed autobiography ; but in the last edition of his works , there are two volumes ( 31 and 32 ) which bear the title of * Tag-und Jahreshefte , " * -&c ., —that is , * Day and Year Sheets , ' or , as we should say , ? Diary and Annual Register in completion of my other Confessions . ' They are brief notes of great value , as companions to the great works of the author . We know not why , but he calls strange ( wunderlieh )
those who solicited a chronological edition of his writings : he , on the contrary , has classified them methodically . This Diary reaches to the end of 1822 , and excites astonishment by pointing out the infinite variety of his pursuits . It records the books he read , as well as those he wrote ; his journeys , and the distinguished persons he saw ; his labours for the theatre and public library at
Weimar ; and for the botanic garden , museum , and other institutions at Jena ; his own philosophical experiments in optics ; the remarkable objects in natural history ; the works of art , the antiquities , &c , which were presented to him , and which we rejoice to hear are to be preserved in the ducal Library at Weimar . We shall hastily mn over those volumes , with a reference to the few circumstances that appertain more to his life than his works .
: 1 he French revolution had now burst upon the world , —had filled the young and confident with hope , and the more advanced in life , and the apprehensive , with terror . It might have been expected that Goethe would have been found among the hopeful and the enthusiastic , for such certainly is the character of his mind ; but it was far otherwise : he had already taken bo lively an interest in that wretched incident ofthe necklace , thrown into oblivion by
the more momentous subsequent events , that , as his friends afterwards assured him , they thought he was going mad . The character of Cagliostro , that most illustrious of vagabonds and impostors , became a subject of curious investigation to him , and , ag usual , he discharged himself of his accumulated feelings by the pomposition of his opera , th& Great Cophtat ~~ in his own opinion , pnd wo believe , that of all other * , one of the least agreeable and successful of his works .
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302 Goethe .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 302, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/14/
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