The plainness and earnestness of
the two lines I have already quoted from Goethe:-
Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt -
compared with the play and power of Shakspeare's style or Dante's,
suggest at once the difference between Goethe's task and theirs, and
the fitness of the faithful laborious German spirit for its own task.
Dante's task was to set forth the lesson of the world from the point
of view of mediaeval Catholicism; the basis of spiritual life was
given, Dante had not to make this anew. Shakspeare's task was to set
forth the spectacle of the world when man's spirit re-awoke to the
possession of the world at the Renaissance. The spectacle of human
life, left to bear its own significance and tell its own story, but
shown in all its fulness, variety, and power, is at that moment the
great matter; but, if we are to press deeper, the basis of spiritual
life is still at that time the traditional religion, reformed or
unreformed, of Christendom, and Shakspeare has not to supply a new
basis. But when Goethe came, Europe had lost her basis of spiritual
life; she had to find it again; Goethe's task was,--the inevitable
task for the modern poet henceforth is,--as it was for the Greek poet
in the days of Pericles, not to preach a sublime sermon on a given
text like Dante, not to exhibit all the kingdoms of human life and
the glory of them like Shakspeare, but to interpret human life
afresh, and to supply a new spiritual basis to it.
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