Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/319

 Reviews and Notes 313 he has an almost constant interest in Tacitus, "an unusual thing in the case of the Latin authors " (p. 180). To Napoleon's suggestion (in the interview at Erfurt on October 2, 1808) that he describe the great contemporary events, Goethe replies that that would require the skill of a poet of classical antiquity: "la plume de quelque ecrivain de 1'antiquite" (p. 100). In the Chronological Table (pp. 185-187), Keller enumer- ates, from 1770 year by year, the Greek and Latin writers Goethe was specially interested in at any given year to the end of his life. This Table reveals that the only years with a blank record are: 1783, and the first three years of the French revolution: 1789, 1790, and 1791. Of the seventy-nine treatises on the subject noted in Goe- deke's Grundrisz* (IV, 2, pp. 380-384), nineteen are listed in the bibliography (pp. 188-189) and eleven others added. In the latter the number of pages is left out of each reference. Five of these are also given by Maass (Vorwort, VII). To these should now be added the titles in the latest volume of the Grundrisz (IV, 4, pp. 35-36). The Index of Greek and Latin Authors (pp. 190-191) con- tains one hundred seventy one entries. At the end of the third division (Philosophy) of chapter eleven, after Plotinus and Proclus (pp. 146-148), the reviewer misses lamblichus, a Neoplatonic mystic of the fourth century. This Syrian philosopher in Alexandria is nowhere mentioned by Dr. Keller. Now, ten years ago, Professor Julius Goebel in his article on "Goethes Quelle fur die Erdgeistszene " (JEGPHIL, Vol. VIII, 1909, pp. 1-17) has clearly shown the debt Goethe owes to lamblichus. Professor Goebel proves in detail what suggestions from lamblichus were utilized by Goethe in prepar- ing to conjure up and in the appearance of the earth-spirit, lamblichus' book De Mysteriis had been excellently edited by Thomas Gale who also included in his edition a Latin rendering of it. Goethe knew of Gale's edition of the De Mysteriis from numerous references to it in Joh. Albert Fabricius' Bibliographic, antiquaria (1713), a book that Goethe studied in Straszburg, and probably in Frankfort already, as is proved by two entries in the Ephemerides where Goethe recorded his studies during the year 1770 (See Goethes Werke, Weimar ed., I, 37:83 and 90 f.). These facts are also brought out by Professor Goebel in the above mentioned article. The word "Geography" in the subtitle "A" of chapter XI (p. 130) is scarcely justified and should have been omitted as nothing is said of geography. Chapter IX, little over one page, hardly merits the designa- tion "chapter."