We might say in a short word, which covers a long matter, that your Shakespeare fashions his characters from the heart outwards; your Scott fashions them from the skin inwards, never getting near the heart of them.

The one set become living men and women; the other amount to little more than mechanical cases, deceptively painted automatons."[35] And then he goes on to contrast Fenella in _Peveril of the Peak_ with Goethe's Mignon.

Mr.Carlyle could hardly have chosen a less fair comparison.
If Goethe is to be judged by his women, let Scott be judged by his men.

So judged, I think Scott will, as a painter of character--of course, I am not now speaking of him as a poet,--come out far above Goethe.

Excepting the hero of his first drama (Goetz of the iron hand), which by the way was so much in Scott's line that his first essay in poetry was to translate it--not very well--I doubt if Goethe was ever successful with his pictures of men.