In “Wilhelm Meister” Goethe gives us much dramatic criticism. It has, of course, no vital relation to the story, but it is penetrating and suggestive, and the famous criticism of “Hamlet” marked an era in the modern appreciation of Shakespeare’s methods. “The Confessions of a Fair Soul,” of which the sixth book consists, have no connection whatever with the romance except that Meister is described as reading them. Yet who would wish that this exquisite study had been excluded? The original of the “Schöne Seele” was Goethe’s friend Fräulein von Klettenberg. In presenting the history of her inward life, he penetrates to the very depths of a spirit purified, calmed, and ennobled by mystic contemplation of the invisible world. The next great work completed during this period was “Hermann und Dorothea,” an idyllic poem in hexameters. The idea of using classic forms in the treatment of a domestic theme was suggested to Goethe by Voss’s “Luise,” an idyll in hexameters, which he had read again and again with warm interest. “Hermann und Dorothea” consists of nine cantos, each of which is headed with the name of one of the Muses. The first five cantos (originally four) were written in nine days in the autumn of 1796, when Goethe spent some weeks at Jena. The work was resumed from time to time, and finished in the following year. Nothing could be simpler than the tale told in this poem. Hermann is the son of an innkeeper in a Rhenish town. A band of emigrants, driven from their homes by stress of war in the period of the French Revolution, happen to come to the neighbourhood in the course of their wanderings, and Hermann’s good mother sends him to them with a supply of clothing and provisions. Among them he sees Dorothea, who at once wins his heart. On his return he finds his father and mother in conversation with the pastor and the druggist; and the pastor, a man of insight, perceives at a glance, from Hermann’s heightened colour and sparkling eyes, that something has happened to excite and gladden him. He relates what has happened, and his father suspects that he loves Dorothea. The old man has always wished that his son should marry a maiden of a prosperous family, and angrily declares that he will never receive as a daughter a common peasant girl. Hermann sorrowfully leaves the room, and is soon followed by his mother, who finds him seated in deep dejection under a pear-tree which, crowning vine-clad slopes behind the inn, serves as a landmark far over the country. He opens his heart to her, and she consoles him, and gives him hope that his father’s resistance may be overcome. It is finally arranged that the pastor and the druggist shall go and see Dorothea, and form an opinion of her fitness to be Hermann’s wife, and that Hermann shall drive with them to the place where the emigrants have for the time taken up their abode. The pastor and the druggist are captivated by Dorothea, and return to the inn to communicate their impressions.