There was never such a miscellany of facts.
The world extends itself like American trade. We conceive Greek or
Roman life,--life in the middle ages--to be a simple and comprehensive
affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things, which is
distracting.
Goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity; hundred-handed,
Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of
facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, to dispose of them
with ease; a manly mind, unembarrassed by the variety of coats of
convention with which life had got encrusted, easily able by his
subtlety to pierce these, and to draw his strength from nature, with
which he lived in full communion. What is strange, too, he lived in
a small town, in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a time
when Germany played no such leading part in the world's affairs as to
swell the bosom of her sons with any metropolitan pride, such as might
have cheered a French, or English, or, once, a Roman or Attic genius.
Yet there is no trace of provincial limitation in his muse. He is not
a debtor to his position, but was born with a free and controlling
genius.
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