s--of the Storm and Stress, of the
Romantic School, of the period of Goethe's old age, of the epigonean
or naturalistic criticism, or by the dazzling phenomena of foreign
countries,--nevertheless in the essentials it obeys its own inner
laws. That in spite of all which in the present stage of our
literature may create a painful or confusing impression, _we have no
cause to doubt that a new and powerful upward development will take
place, and no cause either to underrate the literature of our own
day_! It is richer in great, and what is perhaps more important, in
serious talents than any other contemporary literature. No other can
show such wealth of material, no other such abundance of interesting
and, in part, entirely new productions. We do not say this in order to
disparage others who in some ways were, only a short time ago, so far
superior to us--as were the French in surety of form, the
Scandinavians in greatness of talents, the Russians in originality,
the English in cultivation of the general public; but we are inspired
to utter it by the hopeful joy which every one must feel who, in the
contemplation of our modern lyric poetry, our novels, dramas, epic and
didactic poetry, does not allow himself to be blinded by prejudice or
offended vanity. A great literature such as we possessed about 1800 we
of a certainty do not have to-day. A more hopeful chaos or one more
rich in fertile seeds we have not possessed since the days of
Romanticism. It is surely worth while to study this literature, and in
all its twists and turns to admire the heliotropism of the German
ideal and the importance which our German literature has won as a
mediator, an experimenter, and a model for that world-literature, the
outline of which the prophetic eye of the greatest German poet was the
first to discern, and his hand, equally expert in scientific and
poetic creation, the first to describe.

THE LIFE OF GOETHE

BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University

Goethe, the illustrious poet-sage whom Matthew Arnold called the
"clearest, largest, and most helpful thinker of modern times," was
born August 28, 1749, at Frankfurt on the Main.[2] He was christened
Johann Wolfgang. In his early years his familiar name was Wolfgang, or
simply Wolf, never Johann. His family was of the middle class, the
aristocratic _von_ which sometimes appears in his name, in accordance
with German custom, havin