Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/182

 drawn from those writings which were avowedly composed, to a great extent, under Goethe's influence. Of these the most important are the Essays contained in the first volume of the Miscellanies, and, on a more imposing scale, Sartor Resartus.

Firstly, then, Goethe appeared to him, rightly or wrongly, to be the one modern poet who had seriously set himself to render the outward life of his own day. Again and again he recurs to this thought; and it is manifest that, in doing so, he has in mind the prose writings rather than the dramas or lyrics; Werther and the Lehrjahre, perhaps even Dichtung und Wahrheit, sooner than Faust, Iphigenie, or Erlkonig. That he never mentions Die Wahlverwandschaften in this connexion, may seem strange. For nowhere did Goethe paint contemporary life so vividly; and nowhere did he deal so trenchantly with the kind of problem which that life has let loose. The probable reason for this silence is that the critic himself was repelled by the relentless candour of the portraiture; or, if this be an unkind suspicion, that he thought it impolitic to arouse the hue and cry of British respectability.

Yet, in spite of this significant omission, it remains true that Carlyle believed it to be the first and most obvious task of the poet to represent, though in representing to idealize, the outward life and conditions of his own time; and that in the work of Goethe he saw a more resolute endeavour to fulfil this task than in that of any contemporary poet. That he was just to other poets, that he made any serious attempt to recognize the great work that Wordsworth, for instance, had accomplished in this matter, is not to be maintained. But that the task is high, that it is among the highest which the poet can set before him, is surely true. And it is true