His "Daily and Yearly Journal," his "Italian Travels,"
his "Campaign in France" and the historical part of his "Theory of
Colors," have the same interest. In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler,
Roger Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Voltaire, etc.; and the charm of this
portion of the book consists in the simplest statement of the relation
betwixt these grandees of European scientific history and himself; the
mere drawing of the lines from Goethe to Kepler, from Goethe to Bacon,
from Goethe to Newton. The drawing of the line is for the time and
person, a solution of the formidable problem, and gives pleasure when
Iphigenia and Faust do not, without any cost of invention comparable
to that of Iphigenia and Faust. This law giver of art is not an artist.
Was it that he knew too much, that his sight was microscopic, and
interfered with the just perspective, the seeing of the whole? He is
fragmentary; a writer of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of
sentences. When he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he collects
and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and combines them
into the body as fitly as he can.
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