Accordingly, he
stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail,
brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures,
looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness,
and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude, darkens over the human
thought,--and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by
everything he added, and by everything he took away. He found that the
essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the
habitations of men, ever since they were men, was pure intellect,
applied,--as always there is a tendency,--to the service of the senses:
and he flung into literature, in his Mephistopheles, the first organic
figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as
long as the Prometheus. I have no design to enter into any analysis
of his numerous works. They consist of translations, criticisms, dramas,
lyric and every other description of poems, literary journals, and
portraits of distinguished men. Yet I cannot omit to specify the Wilhelm
Meister.
Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind,
called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society,--as if
other novels, those of Scott, for example, dealt with costume and
condition, this with the spirit of life.
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