action_, which also was a portion of his existence. And for beauty, drama, pathos, ease, phantasy, and fertility in varied invention, nothing has ever surpassed if anything has even equalled the two parts of _Faust_ regarded as a single poem. Apart from his literary labours, Goethe occupied himself with the administration of the little duchy of Weimar, and in scientific research, notably on plants, animals, and the lines in which he displayed marked originality. He died in 1832, having been born in 1749. His literary career extends over, approximately, sixty years, equal to that of Victor Hugo, and almost equal to that of Voltaire. THE CONTEMPORANEOUS PERIOD.--After the death of Goethe, Germany could not maintain the same height. Once more was she glorified in poetry by Henry Heine, an extremely original witty traveller, in his _Pictures of Travel_, elegiac and deeply lyrical, affecting and delightful at the same time in _The Intermezzo_; by the Austrian school, Zedlitz, Grün, and the melancholy and deep-thinking Lenau; in prose, above all, by the philosophers, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and lastly Nietzsche--at once philosopher, moralist (after his own manner), and poet, with an astonishing imagination; by the historians Niebuhr (before 1830), Treitschke, Mommsen, etc. Germany seems to have drooped, so far as literature is concerned, despite some happy exceptions (especially in the drama: Hauptmann, Sudermann), since her military triumphs of 1870 and the consequent industrial activity. CHAPTER XVIII THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers: Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc. LITERARY AWAKENING.--After a long decadence, Italy, less overwhelmed politically than previously, reawoke about 1750. Once more poets came forward: Metastasio, author of tragedies and operas; Goldoni, a very witty and gay comic poet; Alfieri who revived Italian tragedy, which had been languishing and silent since Maffei, and who, like Voltaire in France, and with greater success, established a philosophical and political tribune; Foscolo, sufficiently feeble in tragedy but very touching and eloquent in _The Tombs_, inspired by Young's _Night Thoughts_ and _The Letters of Jacob Ortis_, an interesting novelist and eloquently impassioned patriot; Monti, versatile and master of all recantations according to his own interests, but a very pure writer and not without brilliance in his highly diversified poems. EMINENT PROSE WRITERS.--Italy could show eminent prose writers, such as those jurisprudent philanthropists Filangieri and Beccaria; critics and literary historians like Tiraboschi.