The first literary venture by which Goethe became widely known was “Goetz von Berlichingen,” a dramatic picture of the sixteenth century, in which the principal figure is a predatory noble of that name.  A dramatic picture, but not in any true sense a play, it owed its popularity at the time partly to the truth of its portraitures, partly to its choice of a native subject and the truly German feeling which pervades it.  It was a new departure in German literature, and perplexed the critics as much as it delighted the general public.  It anticipated by a quarter of a century what is technically called the Romantic School.

“Goetz von Berlichingen” was soon followed by the “Sorrows of Werther,”—­one of those books which, on their first appearance have taken the world by storm, and of which Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is the latest example.  It is a curious circumstance that a great poet should have won his first laurels by prose composition.  Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his poems by the popularity of the Waverley novels.  Goethe eclipsed the world-wide popularity of his “Werther” by the splendor of his poems.

Of one who was great in so many kinds, it may seem difficult to decide in what department he most excelled.  Without undertaking to measure and compare what is incommensurable, I hold that Goethe’s genius is essentially lyrical.  Whatever else may be claimed for him, he is, first of all, and chiefly, a singer.  Deepest in his nature, the most innate of all his faculties, was the faculty of song, of rhythmical utterance.  The first to manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age of fourscore.  The lyrical portions of the second part of “Faust,” some of which were written a short time before his death, are as spirited, the versification as easy, the rhythm as perfect, as the songs of his youth.

As a lyrist he is unsurpassed, I venture to say unequalled, if we take into view the whole wide range of his performance in this kind,—­from the ballads, the best-known of his smaller poems, and those light fugitive pieces, those bursts of song which came to him without effort, and with such a rush that in order to arrest and preserve them he seized, as he tells us, the first scrap of paper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally, if it happened so to lie on his table, lest, through the delay of selecting and placing, the inspiration should be checked and the poem evaporate,—­from these to such stately compositions as the “Zueignung,” or dedication of his poems, the “Weltseele” and the “Orphic Sayings,”—­in short, from poetry that writes itself, that springs spontaneously in the mind, to poetry that is written with elaborate art.  There is this distinction, and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse.  Compare in English poetry, by way of illustration, the snatches of song in Shakspeare’s plays with Shakspeare’s sonnets; compare Burns with Gray; compare Jean Ingelow with Browning.