Of his culture we have often spoken already;
and it deserves again to be held up to praise and imitation. This, as
he himself unostentatiously confesses, has been the soul of all his
conduct, the great enterprise of his life; and few that understand him
will be apt to deny that he has prospered. As a writer, his resources
have been accumulated from nearly all the provinces of human intellect
and activity; and he has trained himself to use these complicated
instruments with a light expertness which we might have admired in the
professor of a solitary department. Freedom, and grace, and smiling
earnestness are the characteristics of his works: the matter of them
flows along in chaste abundance, in the softest combination; and their
style is referred to by native critics as the highest specimen of the
German tongue. On this latter point the vote of a stranger may well
be deemed unavailing; but the charms of Goethe's style lie deeper than
the mere words; for language, in the hands of a master, is the express
image of thought, or rather it is the body of which thought is the
soul; the former rises into being together with the latter, and the
graces of the one are shadowed forth in the movements of the other.
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