Note 679 — Chapter III · GOETHE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Goethe would probably not himself have refused this ascription, but might, on the contrary, have welcomed it. He even wanted the Nibelungen in prose: and more than once, I think, adopts translateableness as a criterion of Poetry (v. inf. note, p. 368). But this does not bridge, it only deepens, the gulf. Again, it may be, and has been, urged that in the Hamlet piece he was avowedly speaking from the theatrical point of view in every direction. True again: but if anybody, with such literature as Hamlet before him, can take this point of view, we know that his heart and his treasure lie, not in the book, but on the boards.