the
first attempt on the part of Goethe to reach a certain completeness in
his treatment of the poetic theme. In all his subsequent collections
of poems the same attempt is made, it is true with increasingly rigid
interpretation of the idea of "completeness," and in so far one is
reminded in this connection of the theoretic intentions and
performances of Gottsched.

The "New Songs" (_Neue Lieder_) of 1770 give a lop-sided exhibition of
the style which Leipzig and the times acts. Two great acts follow: in
1773 comes _Goetz_; in 1774, _Werther_. And with _Goetz_ the great
"subjects of humanity" seize possession of Goethe's poetry, as they
had taken possession of the poetry of Germany with Lessing--as shown
by his whole work up to _Nathan_: for Lessing, the strongest adversary
of mere "estheticism," really accomplished what those Anacreontic
poets had merely wished to do--or seemed to wish--and brought
literature into close touch with life. _The Sorrows of Werther_ lays
hold of the subjective problems of the age just as the drama of
liberty lays hold of the objective; in them a typical character of the
times is analyzed not without zealously making use of models--both
innovations of Wieland! But now indeed comes the most important of
all, that which in its greatness represents something completely new,
although in detail Goethe had here all his teachers to teach
him--Lessing who had written _Faust_-scenes, and Wieland who was so
fond of placing the two souls of man side by side, and Herder who had
an absolutely Faust-like nature; so that people have tried, with the
exaggeration of the theorist, to hold up before us the whole _Faust_
as a kind of dramatized portrayal of Herder! And with _Faust_ Goethe
in German literature has reached his own time--"For his century bears
his name!"

But in the period which followed the predominating position of the
classical writers we once more find the same parallelism of
development. Again with Goethe's dilettante beginnings we compare a
school of weak imitators, which unhappily was protected by Goethe
himself (and also by Schiller in his literary organs); again with the
Strassburg period and its Storm and Stress we compare Romanticism,
which is characterized by its German nationalism and its antique
tendencies, which is sentimental and philosophical, critical and
programmatical like the time of _Goetz_, which latter surely must have
had a strong effect on men like Tieck and Arnim. And