His version of Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_ was the most important of these translations.

A letter of Scott's contains the following reference to this play:[140] "The publication of Goetz was a great era ...

in German literature, and served completely to free them from the French follies of unities and decencies of the scene, and gave an impulse to their dramas which was unique of its kind.

Since that, they have been often stark mad but never, I think, stupid.

They either divert you by taking the most brilliant leaps through the hoop, or else by tumbling into the custard, as the newspapers averred the Champion did at the Lord Mayor's dinner." When he is on English ground we can best trace Scott's individual opinions, yet even here he reflects some of the limitations of the less enlightened scholarship of his time, especially in connection with early Elizabethan writers.