“I have tried to read Goethe. I never could succeed. Mr.---- refers me
to his ‘Iphigenia,’ but I there recognise none of the dignified
simplicity, none of the health and vigour which the heroes and heroines
of antiquity possess in the writings of Homer. The lines of Lucretius
describing the immolation of Iphigenia are worth the whole of Goethe’s
long poem. Again there is a profligacy, an inhuman sensuality, in his
works, which is utterly revolting. I am not intimately acquainted with
them generally. But I take up my ground on the first canto of ‘Wilhelm
Meister;’ and as the attorney-general of human nature, I there indict
him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Theologians tell
us of the degraded nature of man; and they tell us what is true. Yet man
is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and
unextinguishable yearning for something pure and spiritual which will
plead against these poetical sensualists as long as man remains what he
is.”