But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare is his superior"
(vol. i. p. 209).
We see now what Goethe means by "reflection." It is the faculty of
self-separation, or conscious CONSIDERATION, a faculty which would have
enabled Byron, as it enabled Goethe, to reply successfully to a charge
of plagiarism. It is not thought in its widest sense, nor creation, and
it has not much to do with the production of poems of the highest order-
-the poems that is to say, which are written by the impersonal thought.
But again--
"The English may think of Byron as they please; but this is certain,
that they can show no poet who is to be compared to him. He is
different from all the others, and for the most part, greater" (vol. i.
p. 290).
This passage is one which Mr. Arnold quotes, and he strives to diminish
its importance by translating der ihm zu vergleichen ware, by "who is
his parallel," and maintains that Goethe "was not so much thinking of
the strict rank, as poetry, of Byron's production; he was thinking of
that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters into his poetry.
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