ere obtained and mounted upon the
poet's bookcase. During the next few years, Scott continued to make
translations of German ballads, romances, and chivalry dramas. These
remained for the present in manuscript; and some of them, indeed, such as
his versions of Babo's "Otto von Wittelsbach" (1796-97) and Meier's
"Wolfred von Dromberg" (1797) were never permitted to see the light. His
second publication (February, 1799) was a free translation of Goethe's
tragedy, "Goetz von Berlichingen mit der Eisernen Hand." The original was
a most influential work in Germany. It had been already twenty-six years
before the public and had produced countless imitations, with some of
which Scott had been busy before he encountered this, the fountain head
of the whole flood of _Ritterschauspiele_.[28] Goetz was an historical
character, a robber knight of Franconia in the fifteenth century, who had
championed the rights of the free knights to carry on private warfare and
had been put under the ban of the empire for engaging in feuds. "It
would be difficult," wrote Carlyle, "to name two books which have
exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of
Europe"--than "The Sorrows of Werther" and "Gotz." "The fortune of
'Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,' though less sudden"--than
Werther's--"was by no means less exalted. In his own country 'Goetz,'
though he now stands solitary and childless, became the parent of an
innumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal delineations, and
poetico-antiquarian performances; which, though long ago deceased, made
noise enough in their day and generation; and with ourselves his
influence has been perhaps still more remarkable. Sir Walter Scott's
first literary enterprise was a translation of 'Goetz von Berlichingen';
and if genius could be communicated, like instruction, we might call this
work of Goethe's the prime cause of 'Marmion' and 'The Lady of the Lake,'
with all that has since followed from the same creative hand. . . How
far 'Goetz von Berlichingen' actually affected Scott's literary
destination, and whether without it the rhymed romances, and then the
prose romances of the author of Waverly, would not have followed as they
did, must remain a very obscure question; obscure and not important. Of
the fact, however, there is no doubt, that these two tendencies, which
may be named Goetzism and Wertherism, of the former of which Scott was
representative with us, have made and are st