I agreed entirely with Goethe, and then mentioned the peculiar situations in this elegy, where, with so few strokes and in so narrow a space, all is so well delineated that we think we see the whole life and domestic environment of the persons engaged in the action.  “What you have described,” said I, “appears as true as if you had worked from actual experience.”

“I am glad it seems so to you,” said Goethe.  “There are, however, few men who have imagination for the truth of reality; most prefer strange countries and circumstances, of which they know nothing, and by which their imagination may be cultivated, oddly enough.

“Then there are others who cling altogether to reality, and, as they wholly want the poetic spirit, are too severe in their requisitions.  For instance, in this elegy, some would have had me give Alexis a servant to carry his bundle, never thinking that all that was poetic and idyllic in the situation would thus have been destroyed.”

From Alexis and Dora, the conversation then turned to Wilhelm Meister.  “There are odd critics in this world,” said Goethe; “they blamed me for letting the hero of this novel live so much in bad company; but by this very circumstance that I considered this so-called bad company as a vase into which I could put everything I had to say about good society, I gained a poetical body, and a varied one into the bargain.  Had I, on the contrary, delineated good society by the so-called good society, nobody would have read the book.

“In the seeming trivialities of Wilhelm Meister, there is always something higher at bottom, and nothing is required but eyes, knowledge of the world, and power of comprehension to perceive the great in the small.  For those who are without such qualities, let it suffice to receive the picture of life as real life.”

Goethe then showed me a very interesting English work, which illustrated all Shakespeare in copper plates.  Each page embraced, in six small designs, one piece with some verses written beneath, so that the leading idea and the most important situations of each work were brought before the eyes.  All these immortal tragedies and comedies thus passed before the mind like processions of masks.

“It is even terrifying,” said Goethe, “to look through these little pictures.  Thus are we first made to feel the infinite wealth and grandeur of Shakespeare.  There is no motive in human life which he has not exhibited and expressed!  And all with what ease and freedom!

“But we cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate.  I have touched upon the subject in my Wilhelm Meister but that is not saying much.  He is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the stage; it was far too narrow for his great mind:  nay, the whole visible world was too narrow.

“He is even too rich and too powerful.  A productive nature[17] ought not to read more than one of his dramas in a year if it would not be wrecked entirely.  I did well to get rid of him by writing Goetz, and Egmont,[18] and Byron did well by not having too much respect and admiration for him, but going his own way.  How many excellent Germans have been ruined by him and Calderon!