It
were a long chapter to unfold the difference in drawing a character
between a Scott and a Shakespeare or Goethe. Yet it is a difference
literally immense; they are of a different species; the value of the
one is not to be counted in the coin of the other. We might say in a
short word, which covers a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions
his characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them from
the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them. The one set
become living men and women; the other amount to little more than
mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons."[35] And then he
goes on to contrast Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ with Goethe's
Mignon. Mr. Carlyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison.
If Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged by his
men. So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter of character--of
course, I am not now speaking of him as a poet,--come out far above
Goethe. Excepting the hero of his first drama (Goetz of the iron hand),
which by the way was so much in Scott's line that his first essay in
poetry was to translate it--not very well--I doubt if Goethe was ever
successful with his pictures of men.
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