ar upon the stage. One of their
latest poets has indeed ventured upon a Philoctetes, but would he have
dared to exhibit the true one?

Even a Laocoon is found among the lost plays of Sophocles. Would that
fate had spared it to us! The slight mention which some old
grammarians have made of it affords us no ground for concluding how
the poet had handled his subject; but of this I feel certain, that
Laocoon would not have been drawn more stoically than Philoctetes and
Hercules. All stoicism is undramatical; and our sympathy is always
proportioned to the suffering exprest by the object which interests
us. It is true if we see him bear his misery with a great soul, this
grandeur of soul excites our admiration; but admiration is only a cold
emotion, and its inactive astonishment excludes every warmer passion
as well as every distinct idea.

I now come to my inference; if it be true that a cry at the sensation
of bodily pain, particularly according to the old Greek way of
thinking, is quite compatible with greatness of soul, it can not have
been for the sake of expressing such greatness that the artist avoided
imitating this shriek in marble. Another reason therefore must be
found for his here deviating from his rival, the poet, who expresses
it with the highest purpose.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Born in Frankfurt in 1749, died in Weimar in 1832; the
greatest name in German literature; his father an imperial
councilor; studied jurisprudence at Leipsic; settled in
Weimar in 1775, where he became privy councilor, and in 1782
was ennobled and made President of the Ducal Chamber;
traveled in Italy in 1786-88; served in the war against
France in 1792-93; began his friendship with Schiller in
1794; published "The Sorrows of Werther" in 1774, "Hermann
and Dorothea" in 1797, "Faust" first part, in 1808, his
"Italian Journey" in 1817, "Wilhelm Meister," the several
parts in 1778, 1796, 1821, and 1829; the second part of
"Faust" in 1831.

I

ON FIRST READING SHAKESPEARE[16]

"Have you never," said Jarno, taking him aside, "read one of
Shakespeare's plays?"

[Footnote 16: From "Wilhelm Meister." Translated by Thomas Carlyle.
This translation by Carlyle was published in Edinburgh in 1824 and was
contemporary with Carlyle's translation of "Legendre" and his "Life of
Schiller."]

"No," replied Wilhelm: "since the time when they became more known in
G