duce were all commensurate ends. Moreover, as has
already been said, it was in Strassburg that his genius found its
first adequate expression. And, what is worth noting in the case of
one who was to range over so many fields, it was in lyric poetry that
his genius first expressed itself. The problem with Goethe is to
discover which among his various gifts was nature's special dowry to
him. What, at least, is true is that at different periods of his life
he produced numbers of lyrics which the world has recognised as among
the most perfect things of their kind. And among these perfect things
are the few songs and other pieces inspired by Friederike Brion.
Doubtless his genius would have flowered had he never seen Friederike,
but it was among the many kind offices that fortune did him that he
found the theme for his muse in one whose simple charm, while it
excited his passion, at the same time chastened and purified it, and
compelled a truthful simplicity of expression in keeping with her own
nature. It was to Friederike that Goethe owed the pure inspiration
which gives his verses to her a quality rare in lyric poetry, but to
the writing of them there went all the forces that were then working
in him. In these verses we have the conclusive proof that he now both
understood and felt poetry "in another sense" from that in which he
had hitherto understood and felt it. Through them we feel the breath
of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his
invention to make poetic compliments to Kaethchen Schoenkopf. In the
intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace
all the new poetic influences which he had come under in
Strassburg--Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration
of Herder. What is remarkable in these early lyrics, however, is that
though they vibrate with the emotion of the poet, the emotion is under
strict restraint and never passes into the watery effusiveness which
is the inherent sin of so much German lyrical poetry. That "brevity
and precision" which was the ideal he now put before him he had
attained at one bound, and in none of his later work did he exemplify
it in greater perfection. As his countrymen have frequently pointed
out, these firstfruits of Goethe's genius mark a new departure in
lyrical poetry. In them we have the direct simplicity of the best
lyrics of the past, but combined with this simplicity a depth of
introspection and a fusion of nature w