At the first reading, "Wilhelm Meister," as a whole, was quite opaque to
me, while some of the details were unpleasing, and the coolness of tone
seemed to betoken coldness of heart; and it was only the observations
and aphorisms, scattered like a profusion of pearls through the work,
that drew me to it a second time. On a second reading, a year later, I
began to see that the characters were representative of permanent
classes,--that they were not only "samples to judge of," as Carlyle
says, but samples by which to judge of human nature. At a third reading,
after another interval, I began to get some glimpse of a total
significance. And when, a year later, I took the book with me to the
coast of Maine, and _lived_ with it, in-doors and out, for a solid
month, this significance came forth clearly, and made that month's
reading almost equivalent to a great experience.

It is now nearly ten years, since, chiefly for my own behoof, but also
not without an ultimate eye to publication, I drew up a formal statement
of that which the book stood for to my mind. Time has added much to that
material; for the work steadily grew upon me, and now and then extorted,
as it were, notes, special dissertations, word-clutches at the meaning
of the whole. And now, taking a hint from the handsome new edition, I
propose to smelt this rough ore and send it forth, to fare as it may
with the readers of the "Atlantic." The liberal editor allows me two
papers of not far from ten pages each, in which to make this
statement,--not, one sees, without some tolerant wish that a smaller
space had sufficed. But even now I cast aside half my material, and
double my labor in seeking brevity for the rest.

The typical history of growth in a human spirit,--"Wilhelm Meister" is
that. Can you conceive of a theme more enticing? And this, too, treated
by one of the master minds of the world. Why do not we shut up our
shops, and leave the streets deserted, till the import of this has been
exhausted? Who can _afford_ to pass it by? Precious, indeed, must be his
time, who for this has none!

The history, I said, is typical. Botanists picture for us a plant which
represents the _idea_ of all vegetable form. Goethe, who led botanists
to this central treatment, here takes up growth in a human soul, and
proceeds with it in a similar way. He recognizes those spiritual forces
which, obscurely or visibly, work in all; he recognizes equally the
conditions, inward and outw