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means . Goethe has written many similar poems , but would never have condescended to put the title , which Mr . C . has affixed , * To an unfortunate woman , whom the author had known in th ^ fel ays of her innocence , ' by which the poem is spoiled as much as it was possible to be . Poetry consists , in a great measure , in exhibiting the world of nature in the world of
mindor vice versa ; and the analogies are so universal , and the applications of such analogies are so infinite , that it may well happen that the poet himself does not perceive all of them at first—hence the origin of an often repeated truth , though it sounds paradoxically , that the reader may find , and that there may actually be in an idea , more than the author himself was aware of , or contemplated ; and hence the reason why the works of great poets , who are also profound thinkers , such as Goethe and Wordsworth ,
grow on the reader and never tire , because new beauties , that is , new combinations and relations of thought , are perpetually springing up . There is , on the contrary , another class of works which are immediately attractive by popular qualities , but all is on the surface , there is an utter want of depth and significance . Hence , while the Waverley novels have already acquired a universal popularity , the earlier metrical romances , instead of giving to , take all their fame from their admired author . —Whoever read twice the
* Lady of the Lake ? ' A poet may , it is true , sometimes keep himself too much aloof from the public , and when his poem is the expression of feelings arising out of a particular incident , and not from those general relations of life into which we all enter , an explication is necessary ; hence Goethe has done well to explain , at length , in his life , the very fine poetical enigma , the c Winter journey in the Harz Mountains . " *
The first series consists of songs ; and among these there is an infinite variety , as announced by the author in the prefatory verses , addressed An die Gunstiqen , —( To the friendly)—* Poets do not chuse to be silent , and will show themselves to the multitude . There must be praise and blame : no one will confess himself willingly in prose , but we are confidential , sub rosa , in the ? u iet grove of the Muses . How I erred , and how I strove ; how suffered , how I lived ; are here but flowers in the nosegay : and age as well as youth , and faults as well as virtues appear , well in song . ' A large proportion of these are amatory , and we have no love-songs in our language that so closel y resemble them as those - of Burns ;—they have not the air of fictions—there is a character of reality about them , which indeed applies to all Goethe ' s poems .
It is not a sham-Petrarchian passion , but a sturdy healthy feeling—in the expression , kept within the sphere of beauty and decorum by a purifying imagination . With these are blended jovial humour , airy conceits , and even dreamy contemplations On human life , as if from an unimpassioned observer . The second series , Gesellige Luder , —( convivial songs )—differ
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364 Goethe ' s Works .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 364, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/4/
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