Nothing is more foolish than to depreciate Goethe in order thereby to exalt Schiller, whom it was always customary to praise in order to disparage Goethe. Do such critics really not know that those highly-extolled, highly-idealised figures, those sacred pictures of virtue and morality which Schiller produced, were much easier to construct than those frail, worldly beings of whom Goethe gives us a glimpse in his works? Do they not know that mediocre painters generally select sacred subjects, which they daub in life-size on the canvas? But it requires a great master to paint with lifelike fidelity and technical perfection a Spanish beggar-boy scratching himself, or a Netherlandish peasant having a tooth extracted, or some hideous old woman such as we see in Dutch cabinet pictures. In art it is much easier to picture large tragic subjects than those which are small and droll. The Egyptian sorcerers could imitate Moses in many of his tragic feats: they could make serpents, and blood, and frogs; but when Moses created vermin, which would seemingly be less difficult to copy, then they confessed their impotence, and said, "It is the finger of God." Rail as you will at the coarseness of certain portions of Faust, at the scenes on the Brocken and in Auerbach's cellar, inveigh against the licentiousness in _Wilhelm Meister_, it is nevertheless more than you can do; it is the finger of Goethe! But I hear you say, with disgust, "We do not wish to create such things. We are no sorcerers; we are good Christians." I know quite well that you are no sorcerers. Goethe's greatest merit consists in the perfection of all his works. Here are no portions that are strong while others are weak; here no one part is painted in detail while another is merely sketched; here is no confusion, nor any of the customary padding, nor any undue partiality for certain special characters. Goethe treats every person that appears in his romances and dramas as if he or she were the leading character. So it is with Homer, so with Shakespeare. In the works of all great poets there are, in fact, no minor characters at all; every character in its place is the chief personage. Such poets are absolute monarchs, and resemble the Emperor Paul of Russia, who, when the French ambassador remarked that a man of importance in his empire was interested in a certain matter, sharply interrupted the speaker with the memorable words--"In my empire there is no man of importance except he to whom I may happen to be speaking; and he is of importance only so long as I address him." An absolute poet, who also holds power by the grace of God, in like manner views that person in his intellectual realm as the most important who at that particular moment is speaking through his pen. From this art-despotism arises that wonderful perfection of the most trivial and unimportant figures which we find in the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and Goethe.