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Its : purely classical character put it out of the reach of ihe ardi * nary reader of plays , but that same character brought it , as it tne text of a diffuse declamatory attack updTi the author . " Now I cannot defend Mr . T . against the charge of being some thirty years too old to be best qualified to give an account of the present state of German literature .. . TJbis is , or very lately was , the golden age of that literature . When Mr . Taylor went into Germany , and his mind was most susceptible of new impressions , Leasing was recently dead , and had left a mighty reputation—Wieland was in thWizenith of his
fame—Goethe at the commencement of his glorious career , Mr . T . had the merit of making all these great men known to the English public . He was the author of the very best translations and criticisms of that period . In this he rendered good service to the then rising generation . Nor ought he to be defrauded of the thanks to which he is entitled , for what he actually did , because he has not also done more . It may be admitted that Mr . T . is not a la hauteur , as the French used to say , de la revolution on modern German literature ; but there is not a more idle , pernicious ^ and unjust practice in criticism than the dwelling upon what a writer is not , rather than on what he is . Mr . T . ' s unacquaintance with . Tieck , Novaligj &c . is his loss , not
his crime . And when it is objected that on that account his book has not the completeness it should have , it should be recollected that it is the every-day practice of the writers of literary histories and summaries not to include living authors . The remark made in page 306 on Goethe ' s critical writings is singularly applicable to the reviewer , though written in ignorance of the article . The reviewer , like myself , reverences Goethe on this side idolatry , and may be willing to profit by his excellent characteristic of criticism , which may be * Goethe says , * either destructive or productive . ' ' The destructive criticism is very easy , for you have only to apply a standard different from the author , and he is sure to be found wanting .
Goethe , in the reviewer ' s place , would have taken care to show what Mr . T . had actually done . What he had left undone would have been sufficiently apparent by the reviewer ' s silence , without a rhetorical amplification of defects , or dwelling on what is not . There are , however , more serious charges against the reviewer , which it needed not the singular generosity and tolerant spirit of Goethe to avoid . A mere vulgar sense of justice should have restrained him from bringing a charge of scientific obscenity—a very intelligible word , in relation to which , the English reading public are excessively sensitive . And the added qualification , perhaps intended
retraction of the charge is by no means intelligible . In the popular use of the word we do not believe Mr , T . can have incurred the censure : least of all ought the reviewer to have sought to enlist all the prejudices of the vulgar against a man whom he . professes to love , by insinuating that he is an enemy to Christianity , or , which witn many is the same or worse , ^ Unitarian : the reviewer repeatedly sneers at him for still taking an interest in the Trinitarian question . Be this ridiculous or not , the readers of the Repository will not consider this a proof of folly , though the reviewer may—the injustice lies in suffering [ such peculiarities of taste and distaste to influence and even determine the judgment given of a writer .
After all , had the reviewer thought proper to oppose Individually his personal opinions to Mr . Taylor ' s , though I should have still been offended at the display of unmerited contempt , ill cloaked by incongruous commendation , I must * if compelled to take part in the controversy , have placed myself on the side of the reviewer . What raised more particularly my displeasure has been , that this obloquy is poured upon Mr . Taylor from the Edinburgh Review , the most unfit of all vehicles for displaying the standard of the German nan Res . A Catholic , returning from an auto da fe , at which the faintest attempt at religious instruction has been punished with death , by his own orders , immediately afterwards raising a cry of derision and scorn against half-way reformers , —Anglican Episcopalians , for instance ,
who have merely- corrected practical abuses , and retained the fundamental doctrines of the Roman church , resembles an Edinburgh Reviewer reproaching Mr . Taylor with being the unworthy advocate of German literature . Be it xnuoh or little , Mr , Taylor has , at least , done something to make that literature known and respected in England ; more , we believe , by a great deal , than any other man now living . And , in ttie mean while , no one periodical work has contributed so much to retard the progress of that literature as the Edinburgh Review . Until within a few years * contempt has been as uniformly cast on all the grant men of Germany In the Edinr burghj as in the Quarterly there haa been a » y « tenoatic attack upon North America . I approve , at little as the reviewer does , of Mr . Taylor ' s judgment of the Kantian philosophy ! but it i « e # ro £ ioujly abturd , on that account , te expose him % a oe » -
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518 Goethe ' s Works .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 518, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/14/
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