Goethe's faith in the methods of classical art never passed away, but his narrow exclusiveness yielded. He became, with certain guiding principles which served as a control, a great eclectic, appropriating to his own uses whatever he perceived to be excellent. As in 'Hermann und Dorothea' he unites the influences of Greek art with true German feeling, so in his collection of short lyrics, the 'West-Östlicher Divan' (West-Eastern Divan), he brings together the genius of the Orient and that of the Western world, and sheds over both the spiritual illumination of the wisdom of his elder years. Gradually his creative powers waned, but he was still interested in all—except perhaps politics—that can concern the mind; he was still the greatest of critics, entering with his intelligence into everything and understanding everything, as nearly universal in his sympathies as a human mind can be. The Goethe of these elder years is seen to most advantage in the 'Conversations with Eckermann.' The most invulnerable of Goethe's writings are his lyrical poems; against the best of these, criticism can allege nothing. They need no interpreter. But the reader who studies them in chronological order will observe that as time went on, the lyric which is a spontaneous jet of feeling is replaced by the lyric in which there is constructive art and considerate evolution. In the poems of the 'West-Östlicher Divan' Goethe returns to the lyric of spontaneity, but their inspiration is rather that of a gracious wisdom, at once serious and playful, than of passion. His period of romance and sentiment is best represented by 'The Sorrows of Werther.' His adult wisdom of life is found most abundantly in 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.' The world has long since agreed that if Goethe is to be represented by a single work, it shall be by 'Faust.' And even those who perceive that 'Faust' is best understood by being taken along with Goethe's other writings—his early 'Prometheus,' his autobiography, his travels in Italy, his[Pg 6390] classical dramas, his scientific studies, his work as a critic, his vast correspondence, his conversations in old age—cannot quarrel with the judgment of the world. 'Faust,' if we include under that name the First and the Second Parts, is the work of Goethe's whole life. Begun and even far advanced in early manhood, it was taken up again in his midmost years, and was completed with a faltering hand in the closing season of his old age. What it loses in unity, or at least in harmonious development as a piece of art, it gains in autobiographical interest. All his works, Goethe said, constituted a great confession. More than any other of his writings, 'Faust' is the confession of his life.