of art in the
grand style, and at the same time intelligible, sympathetic,
patriotic, popular, a book full of golden teachings of wisdom and
virtue. Two generations later one of the leading historians of German
literature declared that there is no other poem that comes so near to
the father of all poetry (Homer) as this, none in which Greek form and
German content are so intimately blended, and that this is perhaps the
only poem which without explanation and without embarrassment all the
modern centuries could offer to an ancient Greek to enjoy. In the view
of the end of the nineteenth century, expressed by a distinguished
philosopher-critic, this work is a unique amalgam of the artistic
spirit, objectivity, and contemplative clearness of Homer with the
soul-life of the present, the heart-beat of the German people, the
characteristic traits which mark the German nature.

As Longfellow's _Evangeline_, treating in the same verse-form of the
dactylic hexameter and in a way partly epic and partly idyllic a story
of love and domestic interests in a contrasting setting of war and
exile, was modeled on _Hermann and Dorothea_, so the latter poem was
suggested by J. H. Voss' idyl _Luise_, published first in parts in
1783 and 1784 and as a whole revised in 1795. Of his delight in
_Luise_ Goethe wrote to Schiller in February, 1798: "This proved to be
much to my advantage, for this joy finally became productive in me, it
drew me into this form (the epic), begot my _Hermann_, and who knows
what may yet come of it." But _Luise_ is not really epic; it is
without action, without unity, without any large historical outlook,--a
series of minutely pictured, pleasing idyllic scenes.

In contrast herewith Goethe's purpose was in his own words, "in an
epic crucible to free from its dross the purely human existence of a
small German town, and at the same time mirror in a small glass the
great movements and changes of the world's stage." This purpose he
achieved in the writing of _Hermann and Dorothea_ at intervals from
September, 1796, through the summer of 1797, in the autumn of which
year the poem was published.

The main sources from which the poet drew his material are four. In
the first place the theme was invented by him out of an anecdote of
the flight of Protestant refugees from the Archbishopric of Salzburg
in 1731-1732. On the basis of this anecdote he drew the original
outlines of the meeting and union of the lovers. Secondly, a