Shakespeare
is no sectarian; to all he deals with equity and mercy; because he
knows all, and his heart is wide enough for all. In his mind the world
is a whole; he figures it as Providence governs it; and to him it is
not strange that the sun should be caused to shine on the evil and the
good, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
Goethe has been called the German Voltaire; but it is a name which
does him wrong, and describes him ill. Except in the corresponding
variety of their pursuits and knowledge, in which, perhaps, it does
Voltaire wrong, the two cannot be compared. Goethe is all, or the best
of all, that Voltaire was, and he is much that Voltaire did not dream
of. To say nothing of his dignified and truthful character as a man,
he belongs, as a thinker and a writer, to a far higher class than this
_enfant gate du monde qu'il gata_. He is not a questioner and a
despiser, but a teacher and a reverencer; not a destroyer, but a
builder-up; not a wit only, but a wise man. Of him Montesquieu could
not have said, with even epigrammatic truth: _Il a plus que personne
l'esprit que tout le monde a_.
Pages:
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469