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Untitled Article
rejoice in her equipment . But there they stand mournfully . The modern iviiiged torn cat is growling every where ; and he is the patron of Venice . * This winged torn cat our readers will of course understand to be the winged lion of St . Mark , which once as a trophy adorned
the Ecole Militaire at Paris , but now stands in its old place in St . Mark ' s square at Venice , a most ugly though very famous symbol of that celebrated and odious republic , which Goethe seems to have contemplated with more dislike than any other part of Italy .
We have not withheld from the reader the most objectionable of Goethe ' s poetical works . We hope that our readers will be willing to accept , as an atonement , the humane effusion of the following epigram , the seventy-second . " Oh that I was but a wife , in a house of my own , how happy should I be , and how I would caress my husband ! " —So I heard an unhappy girl singing , with other common songs , in the streets of Venice , and never have I heard a more pious prayer !'
We add the judgment of a friend , who has resided some years in Italy , that he found a more faithful picture of the country , and a deeper insight into the character of the people in Goethe ' s verse and prose , than in all the volumes which , as a qualification for his journey , he was condemned to read , —one single pentameter expresses the main phenomenon .
* X ^ eben Weben hier , aber nicht Ordnung noch ZxxchL [ Life and motion ( literally , weaving ) are here , but not order or discipline . ] The Weissagungen des JBakis —( The Prophecies of Bakis )—• mystical proverbial sayings , —our neighbours the French would say , mystifying , and we could not contradict them . Yet , who will deny the significant sense of the motto— Strange is the prophet ' s song , but doubly strange what takes place . ' More than a hundred epigrams follow , under the title of the ' Four Seasons , ' which conclude the first volume . We have a vast number
hereafter , under various titles . The following remarks are applicable to all : ^ r-G ; oethe has in these , like Shakspeare , furnished his countrymen with quotable sentences by thousands ; and of what importance these are to the sense of a country , they may judge who have observed what it is that ninety-nine out of a hundred Westminster boys carry across the road with them from the school , to St . Stephen ' s Chapel , or the other room—what , but
pits from Horace , and , not so frequently , from Virgil ? In the facility of quotation lies the learning of many a statesman and M . P ., who , immersed in business , lives on this stock brought from college ; and if he have luckily read Shakspeare in addition , he may with discretion go through life , and his utter ignorance of literature pass unobserved . The German may , in like manner , live on the epigrams and songs of Goethe . There is more sense in many a one of his innumerable proverbial rhymes and epigrams
Untitled Article
368 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 368, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/8/
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