ember how wide was the range of his knowledge, how full and complete
his existence, to set the utmost value on his reflections at the end of
it. But that he knew nothing of the pinch of poverty and was spared the
horrors of disease, that he suffered no great misfortune, and basked in
the bright side of the world, free from the ills that come to most men,
there was no page of the book of life that was not thrown open to him.
The things of the mind, the things of art, the things of nature--in
their theory and in their practice he had worked at them all; regarding
them as so many varied manifestations of an eternal Idea in itself
inscrutable and here unattainable. There was no kind of literature with
which he was unfamiliar, whether it was ancient or modern, of the East
or of the West; and the great spiritual influences of the world,
Hebraism, Hellenism, Christianity, Mediaevalism,--at one or another time
in his life he was in touch with them all, and found his account in them
all. In matters of learning he was occupied with nothing but what was
actual and concrete; it was only to abstract studies, to logic,
metaphysics, mathematics, that he was indifferent; in his own phrase, he
never thought about thinking. There was hardly any branch of the natural
science of his day that he did not cultivate, that he did not himself
practise; geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, anatomy, meteorology,
optics; and he made some remarkable discoveries and the strangest
prophecies. To Art he gave a life-long devotion. While still a youth, he
wrote an important essay on Gothic architecture; he engraved, drew,
painted, and for a time took up sculpture. In all the higher forms of
Art, with the single exception of music, he had so much practical
interest that he often doubted whether in following Literature he had
not mistaken, or at least unduly narrowed, the sphere of his activity.
He was little abroad, but no one ever profited more by his travels than
Goethe. Twice he went to Italy, and what a change of mind was produced
by that change of sky! Rome was to him a new birth, a new conception of
life. And besides Literature, Science, and Art, he busied himself with
Administration, with the duties of the Court, with the practical details
of the Theatre; but out of them all he learned something himself and
taught something to others. He lived the fullest life granted to man. He
had a youth of the wildest enthusiasm and romance; a prime of a classic