rmer Napoleon granted a lengthy
interview. He flattered the aged poet at the outset by the words, "You
are a man": he then talked about several works in a way that Goethe
thought very just; and he criticised one passage of the poet's
youthful work, "Werther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe
agreed. On Voltaire's "Mahomet" he heaped censure, for its unworthy
portraiture of the conqueror of the East and its ineffective fatalism.
"These pieces belong to an obscure age. Besides, what do they mean
with their fatalism? Politics is fatalism." The significance of this
saying was soon to be emphasized, so that misapprehension was
impossible. After witnessing Voltaire's "La Mort de Cesar," Napoleon
suggested that the poet ought to write a tragedy in a grander style
than Voltaire's, so as to show how the world would have benefited if
the great Roman had had time to carry out his vast plans.

Finally, Goethe was invited to come to Paris, where he would find
abundant materials for his poetic creations. Fortunately, Goethe was
able to plead his age in excuse; and the world was therefore spared
the sight of a great genius saddled with an imperial commission and
writing a Napoleonized version of Caesar's exploits and policy. But the
pressing character of the invitation reveals the Emperor's
dissatisfaction with his French poetasters and his intention to
denationalize German literature. He had a dim perception that Teutonic
idealism was a dangerous foe, inasmuch as it kept alive the sense of
nationality which he was determined to obliterate. He was right. The
last and most patriotic of Schiller's works, "Wilhelm Tell," the
impassioned discourses of Fichte, the efforts of the new patriotic
league, the Tugendbund, and last, but not least, the memory of the
murdered Palm, all these were influences that baffled bayonets and
diplomacy. Conquer and bargain as he might, he could not grapple with
the impalpable forces of the era that was now dawning. The younger
generation throbbed responsive to the teachings of Fichte, the appeals
of Stein, and the exploits of the Spaniards; it was blind to the
splendours of Erfurt: and it heard with grief, but with no change of
conviction, that Goethe and Wieland had accepted from Napoleon the
cross of the Legion of Honour, and that too on the anniversary of the
Battle of Jena.

After thus finally belittling the two poets, he shot a parting shaft
at German idealism in his farewell to the academicians