Print collector's quarterly (4.1914)

its spirituality, knowledge of what is indispensable,
elimination of everything superfluous, rapid and happy
execution. More no one need give us; for here, just as
well as in some other form, the height of art is reached.
Parnassus is a Montserrat where many resting places at
different elevations are obtainable. Let each one try
and find a suitable place for himself, be it on the sum-
mit or in a remote corner.”
Goethe’sacquaintance with the graphic art of England
was limited to the engrayers of the eighteenth Century.
With his habitual dislike of caricature, he had little
appreciation for Hogarth. When Lichtenberg sent him
a copy of his commentaries on Hogarth’s engravings,
Goethe answered rather curtly that he had offen seen
these prints, and “partly recognizecl, partly feit, in a
vague way, their brilliancy.” Two years later, in the
Paralipomena to the Annals of 1796, he jotted down
[apropos of Lavater] the remark: “What is Hogarth
and what is all caricature, as here applied, but a triumph
of formlessness over form?” And in “Der Sammler und
die Seimigen” he ridicules the “Serpentine man”
[Schlängler], in allusion to Hogarth’s admiration for the
S line. Of the other English artists of the eighteenth
Century, Robert Strange and Thomas Wright were most
to Goethe’s liking, the former for his reproductions of
Guercino, the latter (who had engraved Dawe’s por-
trait of Goethe) for his “exquisitely dainty and at the
same time vigorous method.” From the insipidity of
much of the current English stipple-work Goethe turned
with pleasure to the landscape etchings of David Charles
Read, although (as he wrote to John Murray, junior)
he founcl “something harsh in his treatment of clouds.”
Goethe followed with the greatest interest Bewick’s

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