From all this it is evident that it is no light task to keep in touch with all the literature of the present day. Of the English, as well as the Italian, I shall have to speak again more particularly, for there is much more to be said. V (1830) There has been talk for some time of a general world-literature, and indeed not without justice. For the nations, after they had been shaken into confusion and mutual conflict by the terrible wars, could not return to their settled and independent life again without noticing that they had learned many foreign ideas and ways, which they had unconsciously adopted, and had come to feel here and there previously unrecognized spiritual and intellectual needs. Out of this arose the feeling of neighborly relations, and, instead of shutting themselves up as before, they gradually came to desire the adoption of some sort of more or less free spiritual intercourse. This movement, it is true, has lasted only a short time, but still long enough to start considerable speculation, and to acquire from it, as one must always from any kind of foreign trade, both profit and enjoyment. ON EPIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY[6] (1797) The epic and the dramatic writer are both subject to the universal poetic laws, especially the law of unity and the law of progressive development. Furthermore they both deal with similar subjects and both can use a great variety of motives. The essential difference consists in this, that an epic poet narrates an event as completely past, while the dramatist presents it as completely present. If one wished to develop in detail from the nature of man these laws which both have to follow, one would continually have to keep before his mind a rhapsodist and an actor, each in the character of a poet, the former surrounded by a circle of listeners quietly following with rapt attention, the latter by an impatient throng who have come simply to see and to hear. It would then not be difficult to deduce what is most advantageous to either of these two forms of poetry, what subjects either will choose preëminently, nor what motives either will make use of most frequently; as I remarked in the beginning, neither can lay claim to any one thing exclusively. The subject of the epic as well as of tragedy should be based on the purely human, it should be vital, and it should make an appeal to one’s feelings. The best effect is produced when the characters stand upon a certain plane of cultural advancement, so that their actions are purely the expression of their personality and are not influenced by moral, political or mechanical considerations. The myths of the heroic times were especially useful to the poets on these grounds.