On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    were , within the ken of the professed critic . Goethe , in hia Divan , excuses Sir W . Jones for having recommended the oriental poets to the notice of his countrymen , by a continued comparison of them with the Greek and Roman classics , because , he remarks , the English , in their bigoted attachment to the only literature they studied in their youth , were in that way made , and by no other means could be made , to notice foreign poetry .

    It is more or less the same in other countries . The French literati have indeed satisfied themselves that the Greek drama has very little merit beyond that of having given rise to the French ; and Wilhelm Schlegel , in his attempt to show the superiority of Euripides over Racine , was , in their eyes , a lunatic or a blasphemer . But in France , as well as England , the Iphigenia was

    at least honoured with being read . However our Oxonians and Cambridgemen might look down with contempt on any poem in high Dutch , yet a tragedy on the Greek model had a right to have its pretensions examined . We believe the adjudication has been as equitable as could be expected , in a case in which all the prepossessions have been on one side * . Mr . Taylor ' s translation

    sure in the Edinburgh Rev iew ; since that judgment is in perfect harmony with the avowed opinion of all the writers in , and almost all the readers of the Edinburgh Review . I should not in the least have disapproved of the reviewer ' s call ing-Mr . Taylor a Philistine , according to the explanation of that word in page 297 , provided the reviewer had taken care to \ e % his gentle readers understand that each . and every of them are also Philistines : this being the received denomination by which each little knot of partisans characterises all the rest of the world , and by which , as every body has a right to use it , no one is ever offended . Till very lately .

    Mr . Taylor was the only person in England who had done justice and honor to Goethe . Nevertheless , I own that I have long thought Mr . Taylor by no means duly aware of his transcendent excellence ; and I have no doubt that this is the secret cause of liis reviewer's ill-will towards him , but that ill-will might , with more propriety , have been shown anywhere than in the Edinburgh Review , in which the great man has been treated with more contempt than in any other . English book , until the ass ' s kick was recently given by Mr . Jeffrey's worthy compeer , Mr . Professor TViJscpi , the Editor of Blackwood , according to whom , Goethe is little better than a contemptible buffoon , hardly worthy to write melodramas for the Cobourg or Sadler's Wells .

    Thanks , I believe , to the reviewer of Mr . Taylor , this ha * now ceased in the Edinburgh : I rejoice at it ; for , as Goethe says , 'in this world there are so few voices , and so many echoes / And the quarterly voice from the North has more echoes than any of those which are periodically heard ; but for the sake of decorum I should have been quite as well pleased had the change been less violent and abrupt . Hyperbolical eulogy needed not to have followed so immediately on unmeasured contempt ; and I was sorry to witness , as it were , a sort of compromise , in the sacrifice of Mr . Taylor : that the Edinburgh Review could not , at length , make the amende honorable to the genius of German literature , to whom it was

    about at last to d 6 justice , after a long-continued habit of contumely , without persisting ' in that contumely towards the earliest and oldest friend of that literature . * We recollect hearing , nearly twenty years ago , Mrs . Barbauld declare her preference of Goethe ' s Jphig-enie over every one of the Greek tragedies—a higher authority could not easily be found . The taste of lUra . Barbauld was only too exquisite and fastidious . It interfered with the exercise of her own productive powers . Her prose writings , especially , are gems in literature ; and , therefore , it would be unreasonable to repine at their being few and small . Rich as we are in didactic and controversial writings , we should find it difficult to point out worlds of e ^ uai perfection with the Thoughts on Devotional Ta » te ( the spirit of J * ri « atley will pardon us ) the * Sins of the Government , Sins of the Nation / the Defence of Social Worshi p / and that golden tract , the 'Essay on inconsistent E * p £ Cmion * *

    Untitled Article

    Goethe ' s Works , « W

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 519, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/15/