know
how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound
of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial
fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from
the gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were distinguished from
the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They
are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we
envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great
poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime
works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal
with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he
endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked
down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to
bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his
country and with his fame.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE.[5]

1749-1832.

GERMANY'S GREATEST WRITER.

BY FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE.

I. THE MAN.

Genius of the supreme order presupposes a nature of equal scope as the
prime condition of its being. The Gardens of Adonis require little
earth, but the oak will not flourish in a tub; and the wine of Tokay is
the product of no green-house, nor gotten of sour grapes. Given a
genuine great poet, you will find a greater man behind, in whom, among
others, these virtues predominate,--courage, generosity, truth.

[Footnote 5: From "Hours with the German Classics," by FREDERIC HENRY
HEDGE (copyright by him in 1886). With permission of Messrs. LITTLE,
BROWN, & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass.]

Pre-eminent among the poets of the modern world stands Goethe, chief of
his own generation, challenging comparison with the greatest of all
time. His literary activity embraces a span of nigh seventy years in a
life of more than fourscore, beginning, significantly enough, with a
poem on "Christ's Descent into Hell" (his earliest extant composition),
and ending with Faust's--that is, Man's--ascent into heaven. The rank
of a writer--his spiritual import to human kind--may be inferred from
the number and worth of the writings of which he has furnished the topic
and occasion. "When kings build," says Schiller, speaking of Kant's
commentators, "the draymen have plenty to do." Dante and Shakspeare have
created whole librar