[685]. P. 143.
[686]. P. 178.
[687]. Pp. 165-169.
[688]. Schönste, which, with Geist, is a little difficult to translate adequately. But it coincides interestingly with Lamb’s, “one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing,” of Hazlitt.
[689]. We all laugh with Dickens when Lord Frederick Verisopht sums up Shakespeare as “a clayver man.” Yet it may be doubted whether Goethe had not in effect anticipated his lordship. It is almost always as the “clever” man, not as the Prospero of the poetic moment, that he considers Shakespeare.
[691]. xxvii. and xxviii. The former is devoted to “German,” the latter (in part) to “Foreign” literature. This last contains much of interest, especially on French and English books of the last decade of Goethe’s life, and on Folk-Verse.
[692]. Who probably meant “panoptic.” A work can be panoramic; an intellect hardly.
[693]. xxvii. 25.
[694]. xxviii. 60.