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 followed from the same creative hand.  Truly, a grain of seed that has lighted on the right soil!  For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit.

’But overlooking these spiritual genealogies, which bring little certainty and little profit, it may be sufficient to observe of Berlichingen and Werter, that they stand prominent among the causes, or, at the very least, among the signals of a great change in modern literature.  The former directed men’s attention with a new force to the picturesque effects of the Past; and the latter, for the first time, attempted the more accurate delineation of a class of feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our elder poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted into Action, and belong chiefly to an age as indolent, cultivated and unbelieving as our own.  This, notwithstanding the dash of falsehood which may exist in Werter itself, and the boundless delirium of extravagance which it called forth in others, is a high praise which cannot justly be denied it.’

To the same dark wayward mood, which, in Werter, pours itself forth in bitter wailings over human life; and, in Berlichingen, appears as a fond and sad looking back into the Past, belong various other productions of Goethe’s; for example, the Mitschuldigen, and the first idea of Faust, which, however, was not realized in actual composition till a calmer period of his history.  Of this early harsh and crude, yet fervid and genial period, Werter may stand here as the representative; and, viewed in its external and internal relation, will help to illustrate both the writer and the public he was writing for.

At the present day, it would be difficult for us, satisfied, nay sated to nausea, as we have been with the doctrines of Sentimentality, to estimate the boundless interest which Werter must have excited when first given to the world.  It was then new in all senses; it was wonderful, yet wished for, both in its own country and in every other.  The Literature of Germany had as yet but partially awakened from its long torpor:  deep learning, deep reflection, have at no time been wanting there; but the creative spirit