For Your Surplus Men File: 1827

We then spoke of the Two Foscari, and I remarked that Byron drew excellent women.

"His women," said Goethe, "are good.  Indeed, this is the only vase into which we moderns can pour our identity; nothing can be done with the men.  Homer has got all beforehand in Achilles and Ulysses, the bravest and most prudent."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann 171 (North Point Press ed. 1984)