Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[150] to me to concede too much to labor and not enough to genius. As a tour de force, Taylor's great work is doubtless monumental, and an honor to American scholarship. I remember with what regret I noticed that there was no copy of it, ten years ago, in the collection of Goethean literature in the Gothe-Haus at Frankfort, though Taylor's honorary diploma was there, and the custodian spoke of him with respect. As a translator of the whole work, and as a copious commentator and elucidator he is entitled to great credit, although his abundant notes are taken largely from German sources, easily accessible. No Englishman, at any rate, has done the same work so well. But it is to be remembered that although the translation of the Second Part of ‘Faust,’ in the original metres, taxes severely the ingenuity and adroitness of any workman, yet it is in dealing with the oft-translated First Part that the higher poetic qualities come in; and in this Taylor has been easily surpassed, I should say, by the late Charles T. Brooks. And while Brooks, it is true, stopped short of the longer and more laborious Second Part, yet he made