tioned in Goethe's works; but
doubt has recently been cast on its authorship. The account hitherto
given rests upon the excellent ground of Goethe's own declaration. The
essay, it appears, was written about the year 1780, and offered to the
Duchess Amalia. Some time after her death it was found amongst her
papers, and sent to Goethe in May, 1828, when, as he wrote to his friend
the Chancellor von Mueller, he could not remember having composed it;
although he recognised the writing as that of a person of whose services
he used to avail himself some forty years previously. That at so great a
distance of time a prolific author could not recall the composition of
so short a piece is not, indeed, improbable; but Goethe proceeded to say
that it agreed very well with the pantheistic ideas which occupied him
at the age of thirty, and that his insight then might be called a
comparative, which was thus forced to express its strife towards an as
yet unattained superlative. Notwithstanding this declaration, the essay
is now claimed as the production of a certain Swiss friend of Goethe's,
by name Tobler, on external evidence which need not be examined here,
and on the internal evidence afforded by the style, which is certainly
more pointed and antithetic than is usual with Goethe. But a master of
language who attempted every kind of composition may well have attempted
this; and even those who credit an otherwise unknown person with the
actual writing of the essay candidly admit that it is based upon
conversations with Goethe. It is so clearly inspired with his genius
that he can hardly be forced to yield the credit of it to another.

III

It is no wish or business of mine to introduce these maxims by adding
one more to the innumerable essays, some of them admirable, which have
been written on Goethe. I have found the translation of one of his works
a harder and certainly a more profitable task than a general discourse
on them all; and I profoundly believe that, rather than read what has
been written on Goethe, it is very much better to read Goethe himself.
It is in this belief that I hope the present translation may help in a
small way to increase the direct knowledge of him in this country. But
there are some remarks which I may be allowed to make on the nature and
use of maxims, and the peculiar value of those of Goethe; so far, at
least, as they deal with life and character and with literature. If
Professor Huxley could