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forth and extolled, while sterling merit is slandered or, as Goethe says, "secreted, by means of an inviolable silence, in which sort of inquisitorial censure the Germans have attained great proficiency." 1 The motives and considerations how ever from which all this proceeds, are of too low a nature for me to care to enumerate them in detail. But what a difference there is between periodicals such as the Edinburgh Review 2, in which gentlemen of independent means are induced to write by a genuine interest in the subjects treated, and which honourably upholds its noble motto taken from Publius Syrus: Judex damnatur, cum nocens absolvitur, [The judge is condemned when the guilty are acquitted] and our mean-spirited, disingenuous, German literary journals, full of considerations and intentions, that are mostly compiled for the sake of pay by hired editors, and ought properly to have for their motto: Accedas socius, laudes, lauderis ut absens [Be a friend and praise. When you're away, we'll praise you]. Now, after twenty years, do I understand what Goethe said to me at Berka in 1814. As I found him reading Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne [On Germany] he remarked in course of conversation that she had given too exaggerated a description of German honesty and one that might mislead foreigners. He laughed and said: "Yes, to be sure, they will not secure their baggage behind and will have it cut off." He then added in a graver tone: "But one has to know German literature in order to realise the full extent of German dishonesty." All well and good! But the most revolting kind of dishonesty in German literature is that of the time-servers, who pass them selves off for philosophers, while in reality they are obscurantists. The word time-serving no more needs explanation than the thing needs a proof; for anyone who had the face to deny it would furnish strong evidence in support of
1 Goethe, Tag- und Jahreshefte [Day and year copybooks], 1821.
2 This I wrote in 1836. The Edinburgh Review has since however greatly deteriorated, and is no longer its old self. I have even seen the nonsense of clergymen in its pages, written for the mob.
