rtunity; and he grasps and uses them both to the best of his
peculiar capacity. It is diversity of temperament dealing with partial
knowledge that makes so many and such various doctrines. A man's views
of life are, in short, those which he deserves to have, and his writings
are cast in the mould of his character. It is no more strange that the
authors of books should give us such varied pictures of the humanity
around us, than that painters should conceive natural objects so
differently. Literature, too, is like a gallery of landscape and
portrait: it is the same world which is presented, the same men and
things; but the way of looking at it varies with the artist; who,
whatever his training may have been, will see in Nature what he brings
to it himself. _Ars est homo additus naturae_. If this be truly to define
the essence and method of Art, it is equally true to say that Literature
is man added to life; and, here as there, everything depends on the
character and capacity of the man.

No one has as yet said that he doubts Goethe's capacity, although there
are many who have solemnly pronounced him uninteresting. The critic who
can read Goethe's works with real attention, and then venture to call
them dull, is simply showing that he has no call to the office he
assumes, or no interest in literature of the highest class. What is
true, of course, is that Goethe is profoundly serious, and he is,
therefore, not always entertaining; but that is enough to make him pass
for dull in the eyes of those who take literature only as a pastime,--a
substitute for a cigar, or something to lull them to sleep when they are
tired. But another and more formidable accusation is made against Goethe
which affects his character, and would go far to destroy the value of
his writings if it were true; but to many it is curiously inconsistent
with the other charge of being dull. It is that he is immoral. Now of
all the great writers of the world, Goethe is admittedly the greatest
teacher. He is essentially and frankly didactic; and nowhere is there so
large and worthy a body of literature from a single pen which is
informed with so high and so serious a purpose. Roundly to call its
author immoral is a charge which sufficiently refutes itself by its own
ignorance and absurdity. The charge comes, as a rule, from those who
judge life by the needs and duties of a young girl, and they confound
the whole of morality--character and conduct in all relation