"Stifled by Heaps of Imitations"

“It is not wonderful, but yet it excites wonder, when, in contemplating a literature, [especially the German,] one observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a subject which has been given, and happily treated in a certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner, until, at last, the original itself is covered up, and stifled by the heaps of imitations.” – Goethe