"
Goethe's whole education and life were those of the artist. He
lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In his autobiography he
describes accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm Meister.
For as there is in that book, mingled with a rare and serene
wisdom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom
applied to produce a constrained and partial and merely well-bred
man,--a magnifying of the theatre till life itself is turned into
a stage, for which it is our duty to study our parts well, and
conduct with propriety and precision,--so in the autobiography,
the fault of his education is, so to speak, its merely artistic
completeness. Nature is hindered, though she prevails at last in
making an unusually catholic impression on the boy. It is the
life of a city boy, whose toys are pictures and works of art,
whose wonders are the theatre and kingly processions and
crownings. As the youth studied minutely the order and the
degrees in the imperial procession, and suffered none of its
effect to be lost on him, so the man aimed to secure a rank in
society which would satisfy his notion of fitness and
respectability.
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