In 1796 Goethe wrote “Alexis und Dora,” which serves as a splendid pendant to the “Roman Elegies;” and in the summer of the following year, while he was staying at Jena, he began, in friendly rivalry with Schiller, to compose a series of ballads. Goethe generously yielded the palm as a ballad-writer to Schiller; and it is true that Schiller’s ballads, which are among the finest of his works, have a dramatic force that makes them more akin than Goethe’s to the old popular poems of this class. But such ballads as “Der Erlkönig” (“The King of the Erls or Elves”), “Die Braut von Corinth” (“The Bride of Corinth”), and “Der Gott und Die Bajadere” (“The God and the Bayadere”) have a subtle charm of expression that was far beyond Schiller’s range. Goethe’s lyrical poems, too, many of which were written during this period, have a freshness and a lightness of touch which Schiller himself felt to be unapproachable. Whatever may be thought of Goethe as a dramatist or a writer of romance, there never has been, and never can be, any dispute as to his greatness as a lyrical poet. The secret of the unfading charm of his lyrics lies chiefly in their truth and spontaneity. Goethe never sought to express in writings of this kind what he himself did not feel; but if a strong feeling took possession of his mind, he could not rest until it found lyrical utterance. And in passing into form in verse, his feeling lost all that was accidental or of merely passing interest; its expression became the reflection, not of one man’s experience only, but of the ever-recurring experience of humanity. There are few elements of the inward life that Goethe does not touch in his lyrics, and all that he approaches is within the scope of his art. The German language, often so harsh and obscure, has in these perfect products of his genius an exquisite softness, richness, and transparency. Goethe, who knew well the difficulties it presented, found in it an organ equally fitted for the lightest play of fancy and the loftiest flights of the imagination.