Such a spirit of opposition, even though passive, we occasionally assume toward critics, both at home and abroad, whose knowledge of facts we by no means deny and whose premises we often grant, but whose conclusions nevertheless we do not share. Still we must be especially forbearing to the English when they appear harsh and unjust toward foreign productions; for those who count Shakespeare among their forebears may well allow themselves to be carried away by their pride of ancestry. GERMAN LITERATURE IN GOETHE’S YOUTH (1811-14) So much has been written about the condition of German literature at that time,[12] and to such good purpose, that every one who takes any interest in it can obtain full information; the opinions with regard to it, too, are fairly unanimous; so that anything I say about it here, in my fragmentary and desultory fashion, is not so much an analysis of its characteristics as of its relation to me. I will therefore first speak of those branches which especially react upon the public, those two hereditary foes of all easy-going life, and of all cheerful, self-sufficient, living poetry:--I mean, satire and criticism. In quiet times every one desires to live after his own fashion; the citizen wishes to carry on his trade or his business, and then enjoy himself; so, too, the author likes to produce something, see his work published, and, in the consciousness of having done something good and useful, looks, if not for remuneration, at any rate for praise. From this state of tranquillity the citizen is roused by the satirist, the author by the critic, and so it comes that peaceful society is rudely disturbed. The literary epoch in which I was born developed out of the preceding one by opposition. Germany, so long inundated by foreign people, pervaded by other nations, employing foreign languages in learned and diplomatic transactions, could not possibly cultivate her own. Together with so many new ideas, innumerable strange words were obtruded necessarily and unnecessarily upon her, and even for objects already known people were induced to make use of foreign expressions and turns of language. The Germans, brutalized by nearly two centuries of misery and confusion, took lessons from the French in manners and from the Latins in the art of expression. This art ought to have been cultivated in German, since the use of French and Latin idioms, and their partial translation into German, made both their social and business style ridiculous. Besides this, they recklessly adopted figures of speech belonging to the southern languages, and employed them most extravagantly. In the same way the stately ceremoniousness of prince-like Roman citizens had been transferred to the educated circles in German provincial towns. As a result, they nowhere felt themselves at home, least of all in their own houses.