to own these remarks about the Meister. As to the genius of Goethe, the statement, though so much better than others, is too imperfect to be true. He requires to be minutely painted in his own style of hard finish. As he never gave his soul in a glance, so he cannot be painted at a glance. I wish this ‘Kosmos Beauty’ was not here over again. One does not like their friend to have any way, anything peculiar; he must be too individual to be known by a cough or a phrase. And is this costly true to the sense of kostliche; that means ‘worthy a high price,’ the other ‘obtained at a high price,’ n'est-ce pas? I cannot like that illustration of the humors of the eye. I wish the word whipped was never used at all, and here it is twice in nearest neighborhood.
“At this place I was obliged to take to my bed, — my poor head reminding me that I was in no state for criticism.”
On comparing these criticisms with the paper under discussion,[1] it will be found that while Emerson has retained the words “humors” and, in one case “whipped,” in spite of criticism, he has dropped the other causes of offense. The fine paragraph on Goethe now closes as follows: —
“Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician still, at the side of the road, and confess as this man goes out that they have served it better who assured it out of the innocent hope in their hearts that a physician will come, than this majestic artist, with all the treasures of wit, of science, and of power at his command.”
It is easy to see that if this last clause originally
- ↑ Dial, i. pp. 136-158.
