Goethe's World as Seen in Letters and Memoirs. Edited by
Berthold Biermann. ,(Peter Owen. 2 Is.) EXCELLENT though this book is in concep- tion, it is ruined by the poverty of its translation. The selection from Goethe's letters and from other contemporary material presents a clear picture of the man in all the phases of his life, though it is badly deficient on the side of his scientific work. The material is, on the whole, better chosen, because less fragmen- tary, "than that of Ludwig Lewisohn's comparable two-volume Goethe : the Story , of a Man, which The Bodley Head brought out for the bicentenary. But although much of its contents purports to be in versions already published, many of them long ago, the revising hand of the contemporary American translator of the rest is evident on every side. One would not dispute his knowledge of German, but his use of English tenses and general insensitiveness to the finer meanings of words not only suggest that English is not his native language, but defeat the purpose of the book and make it most
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