His remarks on German drama are general in character, though we know that in his early days he was much interested in translating contemporary German plays. His version of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ was the most important of these translations. A letter of Scott's contains the following reference to this play:[140] "The publication of Goetz was a great era ... in German literature, and served completely to free them from the French follies of unities and decencies of the scene, and gave an impulse to their dramas which was unique of its kind. Since that, they have been often stark mad but never, I think, stupid. They either divert you by taking the most brilliant leaps through the hoop, or else by tumbling into the custard, as the newspapers averred the Champion did at the Lord Mayor's dinner." When he is on English ground we can best trace Scott's individual opinions, yet even here he reflects some of the limitations of the less enlightened scholarship of his time, especially in connection with early Elizabethan writers. He passes from _Ferrex and Porrex_[141] and _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ directly to Shakspere, and quite omits Marlowe and the other immediate predecessors. He was not ignorant of their existence, for against a statement of Dryden's that Shakspere was the first to use blank verse we find in Scott's edition the note,--"This is a mistake. Marlowe and several other dramatic authors used blank verse before the days of Shakespeare";[142] and one of his youthful notebooks contains this comment on _Faustus_: "A very remarkable thing. Grand subject--end grand."[143] In 1831 Scott intended to write an article for the _Quarterly Review_ on Peele, Greene, and Webster, and in asking Alexander Dyce to have Webster's works sent to him he said, "Marlowe and others I have,--and some acquaintance with the subject, though not much."[144] Webster he considered "one of the best of our ancient dramatists." The proposed article was never written, because of Scott's final illness.