In the preliminary announcement
to the first issue (January 1st, 1772) it is stated that the reviews
of books will range over science, philosophy, history, _belles-lettres_,
and the fine arts, and particularly that no English book worthy of
notice will escape attention. Of the successive reviews that appeared,
only three are certainly known to be by Goethe, though he must have
written or assisted in writing several others. With his usual
causticity Herder characterised the manner of the two chief
contributors. "You," he tells Merck, "are always Socrates-Addison; and
Goethe is for the most part a young, arrogant lord, with horribly
scraping cock's heels, and, if I come among you some day, I shall be
the Irish Dean with his whip." Goethe himself, reviewing these early
efforts in the light of his maturity, is sufficiently modest regarding
their intrinsic merit. He had then, he says, neither the knowledge nor
the discipline requisite for adequate criticism. On the other hand, he
claims to have given evidence in his notices of books of a gift, which
no reader of them can fail to perceive--the gift of instinctive
insight into the essentials of the subject in hand.
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