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Untitled Article
in this we may deem him happy , that from the pinnacle of earthly felicity he ascended to the blessed—that a brief terror , a momentary pain sufficed to bear him from the living . The infirmities of age , the decline of his intellectual powers he did not feel . The dispersion of the treasures of art ( which he prophesied in a differ-r ent sense ) he did not survive to witness . He lived as a man ,
and as a complete man he departed from us . And now he enjoys in the memory of posterity , the advantage of appearing ever active and powerful ; for in the shape in which man leaves the earth , he wanders in the shades below . And thus Achilles remains present with us still , as ever young and vigorous . That Winkelmann departed early is our gain ; from his grave we are invigorated by the breath of his power , which excites in us the lively impulse to go on pursuing , with love and zeal , what he left unfinished . '
Philip Hackert . This book hardly merits a place among the works of Goethe , since he is rather the editor than the author of it : though it is not without marks of his peculiar taste and opinions . Hackert was a Prussian landscape painter , who , like many of his countrymen , going early into Italy , the second home of all artists , fixed his abode there , and never returned to the land of his birth .
He entered into the service of the King of Naples ; and when driven away by the invasion of the French , which followed those atrocious proceedings that have so deeply disgraced the otherwise glorious name of Lord Nelson , he never retreated further from that delicious country , the Neapolitan territory , than North-Italy , and died in Tuscany in 1807 , in his seventieth year . On
his death , his papers were sent to his friend Goethe , from which he compiled the present biographical work . Hackert has not , like Winkelmann , a European reputation , nor do we read of any English patron ,, except Lord Exeter . We shall not , therefore , further enlarge on this book , but merely mention , that it contains , besides a short biographical memoir , a critical account of his works , and
brief notices on kindred topics . The longest article is a translation from the journal of a tour in Sicily , by Hackert ' s companion , Mr . Payne Knight . The journey was made in 1775 , when Mr . Knight was still a young man , but this journal shows that he had already well prepared himself for the journey , by his studies of the classics—ancient history and archeology . Though a collection of
mere notes , the journal may still be read with profit . The translation appears to have been made from the manuscript , but whether by Hackert himself , or the editor , is not stated ; nor does it appear whether it was published with the approbation or knowledge of Mr . Knight , who was living in 1811 , when the book was first published .
Goethe has also introduced a short memoir of Mr . Gore , the other travelling companion of Hackert , an English gentleman , whose house at Weimar was for many years hospitably open to all foreigners , till his death in 1807 . Mr . Gore was a Yorkshire
Untitled Article
874 Goethe ' s TForks .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 274, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/58/
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