Goethe’s ballads have an undying popularity; they have been translated, and most of them are familiar to English readers....

In the Elegies written after his return from Italy, the author figures as a classic poet inspired by the Latin Muse.  The choicest of these elegies—­the “Alexis and Dora”—­is not so much an imitation of the ancients as it is the manifestation of a side of the poet’s nature which he had in common with the ancients.  He wrote as a Greek or Roman might write, because he felt his subject as a Greek or Roman might feel it.

“Hermann und Dorothea,” which Schiller pronounced the acme not only of Goethean but of all modern art, was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric[7] style, motived by Wolf’s “Prolegomena” and Voss’s “Luise.”  It is Homeric only in its circumstantiality, in the repetition of the same epithets applied to the same persons, and in the Greek realism of Goethe’s nature.  The theme is very un-Homeric; it is thoroughly modern and German,—­
     “Germans themselves I present, to the humbler dwelling I lead you,
      Where with Nature as guide man is natural still.” [8]

[Footnote 7:  “Doch Homeride zu sein, auch noch als letzter, ist schoen.”]

[Footnote 8:  From the Elegy entitled “Hermann und Dorothea.”]

This exquisite poem has been translated into English hexameters with great fidelity by Miss Ellen Frothingham.

“Iphigenie auf Tauris” handles a Greek theme, exhibits Greek characters, and was hailed on its first appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek drama.  Mr. Lewes denies it that character; and certainly it is not Greek, but Christian, in sentiment.  It differs from the extant drama of Euripides, who treats the same subject, in the Christian feeling which determines its denouement....

A large portion of Goethe’s productions have taken the dramatic form; yet he cannot be said, theatrically speaking, to have been, like Schiller, a successful dramatist.  His plays, with the exception of “Egmont” and the First Part of “Faust,” have not commanded the stage; they form no part, I believe, of the stock of any German theatre.  The characterizations are striking, but the positions are not dramatic.  Single scenes in some of them are exceptions,—­like that in “Egmont,” where Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue of the Count, while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her, and several of the scenes in the First Part of “Faust.”  But, on the whole, the interest of Goethe’s dramas is psychological rather than scenic.  Especially is this the case with “Tasso,” one of the author’s noblest works, where the characters are not so much actors as metaphysical portraitures.  Schiller, in his plays, had always the stage in view.  Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for readers, or cultivated, reflective hearers, not spectators.....

When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller, failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not lie in the line of plays adapted to the stage as it is; or if the talent was not wanting, his taste did not incline to such performance.  He was no playwright.