The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in Germany, 1749. Died at Weimar, in Germany, 1832. Aged 83.] For comprehensiveness and grasp of thought, for profound knowledge of human life and dealings, for intellectual prowess, for intimate acquaintance with various and opposing arts and sciences, Goethe stands alone in Europe throughout the period which he elevated by his presence and swayed by his achievements. He was a great poet, an excellent dramatist, a fine novelist, a skilled naturalist; with chemistry, botany, and anatomy he was familiar. In truth, it is not easy to limit the immense domain through which his giant mind ranged at its will, conquering and acquiring wherever it touched. His productions are voluminous, corresponding to the wealth of his overflowing brain. His “Faust” predominates far above his other works in popular impression. It is the one in which he seems the most resolutely to have committed himself to his subject. Wild, audacious, lying as this does desperately out of the Real and the Possible, he throws himself into his enterprise, doing it justice, with all his gathered might. We have a feeling persuasion of this having been his own favorite work, to which he most confided, with love, the intimacies of his genius. The recognition of Faust, as a high work of art, must, however, be restrained to the first part. In the second the poet seems as though self-bewitched. Certainly, Germany never has possessed so consummate a master, in art, of her words. His lyrics are gems of music. They have the _felt_ charm of grace, rather than demonstrable worth. In the verse of Schiller it is the other way. Ask of his Germany what constitutes the all-extolled merit of Goethe, and you will hear for answer:--“He is the great world-sage.” But some of the elements of true wisdom he unquestionably lacked. Admit all his strength, his knowledge, his skill, his intuition, and you still miss the heart lodged by Mother Nature in the bosoms of Homer, of Shakspeare, of the compatriot and contemporary Schiller; which, warm and large, embraced with loving and devout sympathy all that is great and high in the souls of men. You desire, in many of his personages, the beating pulses of simple, natural, human affection; the exuberance of genial and generous passion;--in himself, the possessing and tyrannizing enthusiasm, proper to the vowed follower of the Muse. His _judgments_ of the world show distinguished capacity, but his _pictures_ are not generic representations of Man, either as reality gives him in experience to every one of us, or as poesy would select him. Goethe promulgated speculations on plants and colours that have been received into science. He made other speculations during his mighty and protracted career, which passed into the spirit of more than one generation, to influence, guide, advance, fashion, and direct it. [By Alexander Frippel, 1789. Modelled from the life when Goethe was in his prime. It was done at Rome, by order of the Prince Waldeck, in whose castle at Aroldsen the original exists. Goethe at that time allowed his hair to grow in all its natural luxuriance. “I remember him well,” says a distinguished friend and countryman of his; “he was then as handsome as Apollo.”] 337A. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. _Poet._ [This bust is by Rauch, from the marble, dated 1820. It was a commission from the Grand Duke of Saxe Weimar, and occupies its place in his palace.] 337B. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. _Poet._ [This bust is from the colossal statue, the work of Steinhauser, executed by order of the Grand Duchess of Saxe Weimar.]