Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

54 CRITICISM AND CREA TION. [ll.
science to temperament, else the result will be frigid and
without vitality. It remains for ever true in the region
of poetry that 'immortal works are those which issue
from personal feeling, which the spirit of system has not
petrified.'
These last words are from a paper in a recent Quar-
terly Review, entitled 'A French Critic on Goethe.' I
had written nearly all the foregoing before I read that
paper, and when I read it I found in it remarkable con-
firmation of the views I had been trying to express. No
one could doubt the hand from which that paper came ;
and, since its first appearance, it has been acknowledged
as Mr. Arnold's. Both the French critic and his English
commentator agree in the opinion that of all Goethe's
works the First Part of Faust is his masterpiece. And
the reason they give is this ; that, ' while it has the
benefit of Goethe's matured powers of thought, of his
command over his materials, of his mastery in planning
and expressing, it possesses an intrinsic richness, colour,
and warmth. Having been early begun, Faust has pre-
served many a stroke and flash out of the days of its
author's fervid youth.'
Both the French critic and his commentator agree
that after this 'a gradual cooling down of the poetic
fire ' is visible, ' that in his later works the man of reflec-
tion has overmastered the man of inspiration.' The
conclusion to which the Quarterly Reviewer comes on
the whole is that Goethe's pre-eminence comes not from