ESSAYS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL. SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE. IF there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, they are the portraits of Shakespeare and Goethe. There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius. It contains rough gods and smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety each master of a household will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class; one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of their inferior rank, or by * BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW: November 1852. 1.-Shakspeare and His Times. By M. GUIZOT. 1852. 2.-Shakspeare's Dramatic Art; and his Relation to Calderon and Goethe. Translated from the German of Dr. HERMANN ULRICI. 1846. 3.-Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. Trans lated from the German by JOHN OXENFORD. 2 Vols. 1850. B |