His love for Frederika exercised as powerful an influence over him in one direction as contact with Herder had exercised in another. In his meeting with her, and in his parting from her, he had sounded some of the profoundest depths of joy and suffering; and he had passed through a conflict in which his strongest feelings had been arrayed against one another. And in response to the touch of love his genius had sprung into free activity. He had written various lyrics giving utterance to his passion, and to this period also belongs “Heidenröslein,” in which he presented in a new form an old popular song. These perfect lyrics, slight as they are, are the earliest of his achievements in which we find the really characteristic qualities of his poetry. They do not, like his first efforts, bear the stamp of traditional rules, but are the direct expression of his own inward life. For five centuries—from the time when, at mediæval courts, Walther von der Vogelweide had sung his splendid verses—no poetic note of such mingled power and sweetness had been struck in Germany. In these early poems we feel the stirring of the forces of a new spring-time. They are full of a passionate delight in the beauty of the earth and the sky; in every line breathing of love they have the accent of sincerity; and they produce the impression of having flowed without effort from a mind which found the most natural outlet for its feelings in stanzas of noble and flawless melody.

CHAPTER III.

Of all the studies carried on at this time the one that moved him most profoundly was the study of Shakespeare, and at last he felt that he must find some means of expressing the thoughts and feelings kindled within him by the poet whom he adored. Accordingly he decided that on the 14th of October a Shakespeare festival should be held in his father’s house; and it was arranged that there should be a like festival at the same time in Strasburg. The plan was carried out, and Goethe, in language of glowing enthusiasm, poured forth his admiration of the dramas in which, as he said, “the history of the world sweeps on before our eyes on the invisible thread of time.”

At Strasburg he had lighted upon the autobiography of Goetz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron hand, who had played so great a part in the Peasants’ War in the sixteenth century. Goetz (born in 1480) was one of the manliest of the warriors who, in the age which formed the border-line between the mediæval and the modern world, fought valiantly for the causes they conceived to be those of justice and freedom. His autobiography is a frank and simple record of his adventures, written with a view to prevent his descendants from misunderstanding him. As Goethe read it, it seems to have flashed upon him that, notwithstanding external differences, there was much inward resemblance between the influences with which Goetz contended and those which in his own day choked up the springs of thought and natural feeling. Goetz had not allowed his spirit to be broken by the tyrannical forces of his period; he had asserted his individuality, and had been loyal to his own loftiest aims. Here, then, was a figure which might be made the medium for the expression of Goethe’s own aspirations; and he forthwith decided that Goetz should be the hero of his first drama.

The execution of the scheme was somewhat delayed; but, stimulated by his sister Cornelia, to whom all his thoughts and wishes were confided, he set to work early in the winter of 1771, and before the end of the year the drama in its original form was completed. Its title in this form was “Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand, dramatisirt” (“History of Gottfried of Berlichingen with the iron hand, dramatised”). While it was being written, he read in the evening to his sister the work done during the day, and he was greatly encouraged by her warm sympathy. Copies of the play, in manuscript, were despatched to Salzmann and Herder. Salzmann lost no time in congratulating his friend, but Herder’s response, to which Goethe looked forward anxiously, was long postponed.

About this time Goethe made the acquaintance of a man by whose friendship he laid great store. This was Merck, paymaster of the forces of Darmstadt, who was about eight years older than Goethe. He was a tall, meagre, rather awkward-looking man, somewhat cynical, but an ardent student of literature, and thoroughly loyal to his friends. Towards the close of 1771, a bookseller at Frankfort, asked Merck to edit the “Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen” (“The Frankfort Learned Notices,” or “The Frankfort Review,” as we might say), a new literary periodical which was to appear at the beginning of 1772. Merck accepted the offer, and went to Frankfort to make arrangements with contributors. During this visit Goethe met him, and they at once became friends. Goethe joined the staff of the “Gelehrten Anzeigen,” and during the next two years wrote for it a good many reviews of all kinds of books. The opinions expressed in these reviews give evidence of a free and vigorous judgment, and they are set forth in a fresh, incisive, and picturesque style. It may be safely said that all great poets are great critics, and in his first efforts at criticism Goethe gave sufficiently clear indications that in the maturity of his powers he would be no exception to the general rule.

He visited Merck several times at Darmstadt, where he became an intimate friend of Herder’s betrothed, who often wrote about him to her lover at Bückeburg. On one occasion, when walking to Darmstadt from Frankfort, he was overtaken by a tempest, and had to take refuge in a hut. Here he recited aloud, exactly as the words occurred to him, the “Wanderers Sturmlied” (the “Wanderer’s Storm-song”), a series of wild, irregular verses, in which he celebrates the power of Jupiter Pluvius, and apostrophises the Genius that makes the poet’s spirit independent of the accidents of time and place. To this period, also, belongs “The Wanderer,” a fine poem—suggested, no doubt, by his experiences at Niederbronn—in which a poet converses with a simple young mother in a hut built of stones taken from the ruins of an ancient temple.

It had always been intended that Goethe, as his father had done before him, and as it was the custom of many young advocates still to do, should perfect himself in his profession by practising for some time in connection with the imperial chamber at Wetzlar. Accordingly, he took rooms at Wetzlar, in May, 1772. The work of each advocate at the imperial chamber was exactly what the advocate himself chose to make it, and Goethe chose to make his a mere form. Wetzlar, a little town on the left bank of the Lahn, is situated in a charming country, and he did not feel disposed to burrow among musty law-books when, in bright summer weather, he had a chance of wandering in secluded valleys, and filling his sketch-book with studies of landscape. He also spent a good deal of time in reading Greek poets, taking especial delight in Pindar.

But even the pleasure he found in Pindar and in nature was by and by thrust into the background by a more absorbing passion. The thought of Frederika had often troubled him, but he had so far recovered from the shock of his separation from her that it had become possible for him to be subdued by a new fascination. And the possibility was soon transformed into reality. He had relatives at Wetzlar, and having started with some of them one evening for a ball which was to come off at a neighbouring village, he stopped the carriage to take up a friend of theirs who was to accompany them. This friend was Charlotte Buff, the daughter of a public official at Wetzlar. She was the second of a family of twelve children, and on her, after the recent death of her mother, had devolved the principal duties of the household. She was nineteen years of age, a beautiful girl with fair hair and blue eyes, remarkable for quick intelligence, and always bright and cheerful in the performance of the most troublesome tasks. Goethe loved her at once, and, with his usual impetuosity, could not help showing how passionately he was devoted to her. Every day he visited her in the afternoon, and delighted to lie at her feet on the grass while the children played around them; and in the evening he was often at the house again, drawn thither by an attraction he was powerless to resist. Charlotte—or Lotte, as she was called—was, of course, interested in a man who was so different from all the men she had ever met, and she gave him as warm and true an affection as a woman can give to one who is no more than a friend. Love she could not give him, nor did he ask for it, for she had already virtually pledged her troth. Her lover was Kestner, the secretary of the Brunswick Legation. Kestner, who was about eight years older than Goethe, was a man of solid qualities, able and steadfast, devoted to his professional duties, but with a keen and intelligent interest in literature. Goethe, before his first meeting with Lotte, had known him slightly, and soon became sincerely attached to him, thoroughly appreciating his manly and generous character. Kestner saw, of course, the tumult that had been excited in Goethe’s breast, but never either by word or by look gave the faintest sign of jealousy or of a wish to hamper Lotte’s freedom.

The relation was a most difficult one, and made Goethe restless and unhappy. At last the strain became intolerable, and he resolved to save himself by flight. On the 10th of September, having dined with Kestner in a public garden, Goethe spent the evening with the lovers in Lotte’s home; and, as it happened, the talk became unusually sombre, Lotte herself giving it a serious turn by a reference to the invisible world. On returning to his rooms he wrote farewell letters, adding next morning a line for Lotte alone. “Be ever of cheerful mood, dear Lotte,” he wrote,—“you are happier than a hundred—only not indifferent! And I, dear Lotte, am happy that I read in your eyes that you believe I shall never change. Adieu, a thousand times adieu!”

On the same morning he quitted Wetzlar, haunted by the thought of her, but with the feeling that he was escaping from a grave and imminent peril. At Darmstadt Goethe had met Frau von Laroche, who had made some reputation as the author of a recently-published romance, “Die Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim.” She was the wife of a high official at the Electoral Court of Trier, and her home was on the outskirts of a beautiful village that nestled at the foot of Ehrenbreitstein. In response, no doubt, to an invitation to visit her, Goethe now made his way slowly down the Lahn towards the Rhine, finding in communion with nature some relief from the depression that had succeeded the excitement of the previous weeks.

During his stay at the house of Frau von Laroche several guests arrived—among them, Merck with his wife and little boy. Goethe thoroughly enjoyed his visit, opening his heart and imagination to all the impressions produced on him by free, joyous intercourse with friends, and by the lovely scenery of the Rhine country. Frau von Laroche, by whom he had not been strongly attracted at Darmstadt, won his confidence and affection; and he had many a pleasant talk with the eldest of her two daughters, Maximiliane, a girl of about seventeen, whose fine dark eyes and frank, pretty ways might have created for him a new danger but for the power that had so completely subdued him at Wetzlar.

Before the end of September he was back at Frankfort, and in the course of a few weeks he was again engaged in professional business, to which he continued to give some attention during the whole of the remaining time spent in his father’s house. But he was firmly resolved that his real work should be literature, and now so much had happened to deepen his feeling and quicken his imagination that the difficulty was, not how to find something to say, but how to give expression to even a small proportion of the thoughts that pressed upon him for utterance.

At Wetzlar Goethe had received Herder’s anxiously expected reply with regard to the “Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen.” It was anything but flattering to the young writer’s vanity. Herder had hardly a good word to say for the play, and expressed the opinion that it had been spoiled by his slavish adherence to the manner of Shakespeare. In his answer Goethe acknowledged the justice of the strictures of his extremely candid friend, and announced his intention of completely recasting the work. At Wetzlar, however, he was in no mood to undertake so strenuous a labour, and after his return to Frankfort he was for some time too much occupied otherwise to think of carrying out his purpose. But Merck, who heartily admired the play, urged him to give it its final form; and early in 1773 Goethe at last took the task in hand. Shutting himself up in his room at the top of the house, he worked at it day after day, becoming more and more absorbed in it as he went on; and before the winter was fairly over, he finished it. In its new shape the play received the title, “Goetz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand. Ein Schauspiel.” (“Goetz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand. A drama.”) It is impossible to compare it with the work as originally written without admiring the high conception of art by which Goethe was controlled in transforming what he had done. In the minutest details he sought for perfection, and entire scenes, in themselves powerful and interesting, were struck out because they did not seem to accord with the scheme as a whole. Long afterwards he taught that it is in “limitation” (Beschränkung) that the master reveals himself; and already he had some perception of the vital importance of this great truth.

In working out his conception Goethe did not consider it necessary to adhere strictly to the facts of history. He makes Goetz die immediately after the Peasants’ War, whereas in reality he lived nearly forty years afterwards, and distinguished himself in Charles V.’s wars with the French and the Turks. This, however, need not disturb any one in the enjoyment of the play, which is to be judged as a work of art without reference to the actual events which it in part reproduces.

“Goetz” is as far as possible from being a faultless play. Goethe tried to conceive it in the spirit of Shakespeare’s historical dramas, but at this early period he had not sufficient mastery of his intellectual resources to be able to give, as Shakespeare gives, unity of design to the representation of a complicated series of incidents. The forces called into exercise have in some instances only an accidental connection with one another; they are not combined so as to produce the impression of a complete and harmonious process of development. Nevertheless, the work is unmistakably a creation of genius. It brings before us in grandly sweeping outlines, and in bold, vivid colours all the leading elements of the national life of Germany in the early part of the sixteenth century. The characters live and breathe, and their language—fresh, vigorous, and animated—is that which we should expect to hear from them in real life. Goetz himself is an admirable type of a just and fearless warrior. He has not, indeed, any large conception of the issues towards which his age is moving, but in the midst of debasing influences he knows how to maintain the purity of his own impulses, and how to strike boldly and strongly in defence of ideas of which he makes himself a champion. Rough in manner, and a lover of plain speech, he is at heart tender and humane; and in the most difficult circumstances, when a character less simple and direct might be liable to gross misconstruction, there can be no doubt as to the honesty and dignity of his motives. Men of this noble mould—frank, unconventional, and true—were never more needed than in Goethe’s own day, and one of the objects of the play was to suggest that if they were possible in the sixteenth, they could not be impossible in the eighteenth century.

A love-story is interwoven with the presentation of Goetz’s activity; and from the point of view of art this is perhaps the best part of the drama. Weislingen, a young and brilliant statesman at the corrupt court of the Bishop of Bamberg, is taken prisoner by Goetz. He falls in love with the knight’s sister, Maria, and his love is returned. When, however, he goes back to the Bishop’s court, pledged to support no undertaking against Goetz or his friends, he is overcome by the wiles of Adelheid, a subtle, cruel, and fascinating woman, who understands thoroughly the essential weakness of his character. She professes to love him, and becomes his wife, and in the end he is poisoned by his servant, who acts as her agent. Weislingen and Adelheid are genuinely dramatic figures, and the character of Maria, simple, affectionate, and loyal, is not less finely conceived. It was Frederika Brion he was thinking of when he depicted Weislingen’s love for, and desertion of, Maria. When the play was published, he sent a copy to Salzmann, with a request that it should be forwarded to Sesenheim. “Poor Frederika,” he wrote, “will be to some extent consoled when the unfaithful one is poisoned.”

The play was printed by Merck, who had started a printing establishment of his own; and in the summer of 1773 it was published. The enthusiasm it awakened far surpassed Goethe’s anticipations. Hitherto the unities of the French classic drama had been rigidly respected in the drama of Germany. Lessing had fought hard to show that they are not essential to a great work of art, but in his own plays he had not cared to violate them. The author of “Goetz” had wholly ignored them, daring to think rather of the vitality of his characters than of the conditions of a well-rounded scheme. To some critics of the older generation the play seemed almost grotesquely extravagant, but the younger men hailed it as a glorious symptom of the uprising of a new and adventurous spirit of liberty. A man of genius, putting aside conventions and artificialities, had gone straight to reality for inspiration, and had uttered a word that delivered them, as they thought, from the necessity of submitting not only to the unities, but to any kind of artistic law. A school of writers was formed, all of whom looked to Goethe as their chief. Prominent among them was Klinger, a native of Frankfort, the title of one of whose plays, “Sturm und Drang,” was afterwards accepted as the name of the period in which it was produced. Lenz, whom Goethe had known at Strasburg, and who, after Goethe’s departure, had tried to win the affections of Frederika Brion, was another member of the group. These young writers had plenty of ambition and vigour, but they mistook eccentricity for originality, sentimentalism for passion, noisy declamation for poetry, and not a shred of interest now attaches to their productions, except as documents which throw light on a curious phase of literary history.

After the publication of his play, Goethe became one of the “lions” of Frankfort, and had to endure the visits of innumerable strangers who wished to make his acquaintance. He acquired confidence in his own genius, and did not doubt that he would be able to justify the highest expectations formed as to his future work. He was universally liked, for he had all the good qualities with which he had endowed Goetz, and his friends found that there was always something exhilarating in his frank and brilliant talk. Yet at this time he was passing through a period of deep depression. It was not connected with any particular misfortune, nor was it due to love for Lotte, for Kestner and she were now husband and wife, and Goethe thought of her only as a friend. His unhappiness sprang wholly from spiritual causes. He had longings which the actual world seemed to be incapable of satisfying, and the more he reflected on life, and sought to comprehend its meaning, the more he was oppressed by the old, old mysteries that have baffled and saddened so many a noble mind. Sometimes the idea of suicide suggested itself, and in his autobiography he has described how he laid a dagger by his bed-side, and before putting out the light tried whether he could not pierce his breast.

In the autumn of 1773, the marriage of Cornelia and Schlosser took place, and they quitted Frankfort, ultimately settling in Emmendingen. This was a severe blow to Goethe, for communion with his sister had been to him a constant source of consolation, and in her absence he was driven in, more than ever, upon himself. A little later in the year he heard with pleasure that he would soon have frequent opportunities of seeing Maximiliane Laroche, who, although still only a young girl, was about to be married to a Frankfort merchant, an Italian called Brentano. The marriage was not a happy one, and proved to be for Goethe a new cause of trouble. Feeling for Maximiliane, both for her own sake and for her mother’s (whom he always addressed as “Mamma”), a sincere brotherly affection, he often called upon her, and did what he could to make her life in Frankfort tolerable. Brentano was of a furiously jealous disposition, and, misunderstanding these visits, one day grossly insulted Goethe. Violently agitated, Goethe declined to enter the house again, and, for a long time, saw Maximiliane only when he met her at the play or elsewhere accidentally.

It was always Goethe’s habit, when burdened by any feeling, to liberate himself by means of some imaginative effort; and now he felt that the time had come for this mode of relief. He had not to choose a subject, for the plan of a romance had already taken firm possession of his mind. Towards the end of 1772 he had heard of the suicide of Jerusalem, a young secretary of legation at Wetzlar, with whom he had had a slight acquaintance both there and at Leipsic. Jerusalem had loved a married woman, and in a moment of despair had shot himself with a pistol borrowed from Kestner. Goethe, after the first shock of the tidings was past, decided to give an imaginative presentation of the tale, but in the early part to substitute for Jerusalem’s experiences, about which he had only general information, the story of his own love for Lotte. From time to time the execution of the scheme was put off, but when driven by an imperious impulse to give form to the conceptions by which he was haunted, he accomplished his task with almost feverish haste. The work was ended about the beginning of March, 1774, and the greater part of it was written during the preceding month. The figures of the romance stood out before him in sharply-cut outlines, and their story flowed freely from his pen, because in reality it was the story of his own inmost life. He called it “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers” (“The Sufferings of Young Werther”).

The work consists of a series of letters written by Werther, and some explanatory statements made by the editor. In his conception of the tale, and in his choice of form, Goethe was deeply indebted both to Richardson and to Rousseau, but especially to Rousseau, the spirit of whose “La Nouvelle Héloïse” breathes in every line of “Werther.” “La Nouvelle Héloïse,” however, is a book of the past, interesting only to students of literature and of the history of ideas, whereas “Werther” is still alive, and can never wholly lose its freshness.

Werther has many qualities that excite interest and sympathy. He has a deep vein of poetry; Nature appeals to him strongly; he is an enthusiast for the best literature; and he is always generous to the poor and the distressed. But he is incapable of manly decision, and on the slightest provocation he sheds floods of tears, secretly proud of his sensibility as a mark of a superior type of character. When the story opens, he is in a little provincial town, whither he has gone to see about a legacy left to his mother. He is not discontented, for in Homer and Ossian he has the kind of companionship he loves, and in the surrounding country there are exquisite views which he is never tired of admiring and sketching. Suddenly he meets Lotte, and his whole being is transformed. In her are realized all the dreams he has ever had of womanly loveliness and charm. She does not glide into his affections; the moment he sees her—with the children, for whom she cuts the “Abendbrod,” clamouring around her—she becomes the supreme object of his devotion. To be in her presence is ecstasy. It is of her that all things in Nature speak to him, and he has no thought, no wish but to serve her. She is already betrothed, but her lover is from home, and as long as he is absent Werther thinks little about him, and lives in a world all glowing with the light reflected from his own happiness.

By and by Albert, the accepted lover, returns, and now for the first time Werther realizes that Lotte is beyond his reach. He suffers unspeakable tortures, and knows not where to turn for relief. Deep in his heart, before he ever saw Lotte, the seeds of morbid growths had been implanted, and in his wretchedness they spring up in rank luxuriance. All life becomes hateful to him. Nowhere can he find anything that does not seem to bear the mark of some primæval curse. Even Nature, in communion with which he has so often felt bounding delight, takes on the aspect of a devouring monster. Her forces are pitiless; and he himself, full of tender compassion, cannot move without crushing some helpless creature under his feet. Against the very essence of things he rises in revolt. Thinking of what life may mean, he feels that he is standing on the edge of an abyss, and he looks with horror into its black depths.

At last, yielding to the entreaties of the friend to whom his letters are addressed, he flies from the scene of his misery, and, accepting a diplomatic appointment at a German court, hopes to regain peace of mind by taking part in the world’s work. But he is slighted in an assembly of people with whom, as a man of the middle class, he is not thought fit to associate; and the insult so rankles in his mind that he sends in his resignation, and after some months of brooding he cannot resist the temptation to go back to Lotte. By this time she is married; nevertheless, his passion burns more fiercely than ever, and anguish rends his heart when he sees her in Albert’s possession. She has always had a warm regard for Werther. Now his sufferings arouse her pity, and in the end she cannot conceal from herself that she loves him. But she expostulates with him, and begs him to leave her, to marry some one who can honourably give herself to him, and to return as a friend. Albert becomes jealous and watchful, and utter shipwreck seems to be the destiny of the newly-formed household. Werther, sick at heart, loathing existence, resolves to bring his agony to a violent end, and after a wild scene, in which Lotte almost loses control of herself, the tragedy closes with his death. The pistol with which he shoots himself he borrows from Albert on the plea that he is about to start on a journey. Lotte takes it from its place, and, having wiped the dust from it, hands it to the messenger with a sad foreboding that some terrible disaster is at hand.

“Werther” is a story of a “mind diseased”; and, judged from this point of view, it stands supreme among the prose writings of the eighteenth century. Goethe himself never wrote, in prose, anything more powerful. Werther’s malady was not the malady of an individual only, but of an age. Thoughtful men had outlived their beliefs, their institutions, their customs; all around them was a world touched by the finger of decay. They sought to shake themselves free from the intolerable yoke of the past, but as yet nothing had appeared that could take the place of the old ideas; there was no influence to awaken disinterested enthusiasm, to lead to combined and settled effort for worthy ends. So even the best minds—and perhaps they more than others—felt themselves isolated, and, in the absence of nobler interests, were forced to think much about their own moods, about the ebb and flow of the tides of purely personal feeling. Hence a morbid sensitiveness, an extravagant sentimentalism; hence, too, a disposition to read the facts of existence in the light of individual experience—a tendency to conclude that, because the hungry “I” was unhappy, therefore the universe was a gigantic blunder and imposture. In “Werther” Goethe probes this disease to its roots. It is a profound error to suppose that he intended the hero of the tale to be taken as a complete representation of his own character. Werther wholly lacked many of the qualities that made Goethe great—his original impulse, his creative energy, his strength of will. But Werther’s mood had for a while been Goethe’s mood, and it is for this reason that as we read the solitary sentimentalist’s letters he seems to start into life, and we learn to know him, back into the inmost recesses of his spirit, more intimately than if he stood before us in actual flesh and blood. It was a phase—a passing but most striking phase—of his own many-sided nature that Goethe was disclosing, and he could not but write of it in words of searching power. And yet all was not put down exactly as it came into his mind. With fine, instinctive art he selected those elements of the tale, and those only, that were fitted to reveal his essential purpose, and to prepare the way for the ultimate issue. When we close the book, and look back, we feel that no other issue was possible. Were Werther a man of good sense and resolute will, he could easily, no doubt, disentangle himself, but with his character, and in his circumstances, ruin is inevitable.

Lotte, as she is presented in the first part of “Werther,” is one of the most exquisite of Goethe’s creations. Her youth and beauty, the frankness of her manner, the joyous spirit in which she devotes herself to others, and the warm poetic feeling combined in her nature with a sound and ready judgment, are brought out with so delicate a grace, yet in such clear outlines, that we do not wonder at the influence she exerts over all who know her, and especially over a sensitive mind like Werther’s. It is hard to realize that the Lotte of the second part is also the Lotte of the first, and it may be that here there is a flaw in Goethe’s idea of the character. The maelstrom of passion within whose sweep she is caught is so powerfully depicted that at the moment of reading we are not permitted to raise any question as to the consistency of the conception; but when all is over, we cannot help suspecting that we have been introduced to two Lottes rather than to one. The Lotte who afterwards lives in the imagination is certainly the Lotte of the first part, a sane and wholesome figure, contrasting strongly with the shrill and despairing Werther. Albert stands out less prominently than Werther and Lotte, but he also has living qualities, and if anything could make the final scenes, so far as Lotte is concerned, intelligible, it would be his pompous self-esteem and exasperating respectability.

One of the secrets of the charm of “Werther” lies in its style. It is a style peculiar to Goethe himself, yet without a trace of eccentricity. Strong, lucid, and picturesque, it adapts itself with perfect suppleness to every mood the writer wishes to express; and it is so absolutely unaffected that, as we read, we think of what is said rather than of the artist’s way of saying it. “Werther” is also remarkable as the first modern German book in which we find descriptions of nature that are still full of charm. It was Rousseau who had opened men’s eyes to the splendour and loveliness of the outward world. Goethe had learned all that Rousseau could teach as to the art of suggesting natural scenery to the imagination through written speech, and in “Werther” he went far beyond the highest achievements of his instructor. His descriptions are often merely rapid sketches, but they are sketches drawn with so sure a touch that they never fail to call up a vision having all the freshness of reality. And they intensify interest in the tale, for nature is brought in less for its own sake than for the sake of its relation to feeling. It is with Werther’s eyes that we see the scenes he reproduces, and he finds in them always a power that responds to his own happiness or gloom.

Few books have ever produced so strong a sensation. Almost everywhere in Germany “Werther” was received with mingled astonishment and delight. It had come straight from the writer’s heart, and went as straight to the hearts of those who read it. They found in the tale a voice that gave utterance to much that they themselves had been feeling, and many of them not only shed hot tears for Werther’s fate, but affected his modes of expression, and even dressed as he had dressed—in blue coat, yellow vest, yellow hose, and top-boots. By and by the book was translated into almost every European language, and in far Cathay Werther and Lotte were painted on glass by native artists.

At first there was one discordant note in the general chorus of praise. Kestner was gravely offended by what he took to be a misrepresentation of the relations between Goethe, Lotte, and himself. In reality there was no misrepresentation, for Goethe had dealt freely with the experiences through which he had passed, using only those of them that were adapted to his scheme, and adding scenes in which there was no element of fact. The Lotte of the first part, notwithstanding her black eyes, is Charlotte Buff, perhaps slightly idealized; but in the second part she is wholly a figure of the imagination. As for Albert, Goethe, if he thought of any one in particular in conceiving the character, thought of Brentano, not of Kestner. In the end Kestner had a better understanding of what had been intended, and was not a little proud of the part his wife had unconsciously played in the creation of so famous a romance.

Goethe himself says that when he finished “Werther” he felt as one feels after a general confession. The load that had weighed so heavily on his spirit was for the moment removed, and, once more free and happy, he looked forward hopefully to new activity. By and by he could even jest about the characters whose woes had moved him so deeply. Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller and man of letters, who had done better work in his time, wrote a parody of the book, showing how in reality Werther and Lotte became husband and wife, and lived happily ever after; the pistol with which Werther had tried to shoot himself having been loaded with chicken’s blood. Some verses written by Goethe show that he took offence at this indignity; but afterwards he wrote an amusing little dialogue, in which Werther and Lotte complain of Nicolai’s misconceptions. The chicken’s blood has blinded Werther, and Lotte, while pitying him, is anything but enchanted by the change this has made in his appearance. His eyebrows, she says, will never be so beautiful as they were before. In “Dichtung und Wahrheit” Goethe speaks of this dialogue with some pride, and it certainly shows how completely, at the time when he wrote it, he felt himself emancipated from the influences from which “Werther” had sprung.

He had not yet, however, brought his powers under strict control. Many conflicting ideas struggled in his mind for mastery, and his moods varied from day to day, one giving way to another without any apparent reason and with startling rapidity. Goethe’s nature was too complicated, touched to too many fine issues, to attain suddenly, or soon, to inward repose.

Two complete prose dramas were written in Frankfort after he finished “Werther”—“Clavigo” and “Stella.” “Clavigo” is a dramatic rendering of incidents recorded in the “Memoirs” of Beaumarchais. These “Memoirs” appeared in Paris in the spring of 1774, and in the summer of the same year Goethe’s play was published. In imaginative energy, and in range and depth of feeling, “Clavigo” is far inferior to “Goetz,” but it displays a striking advance in the power of construction. The formerly despised unities are here observed, and the interest, such as it is, steadily grows until it culminates in the catastrophe. The chief defect of the play is that Clavigo, on whose action everything depends, is too feeble a character to excite much interest. His cynical friend, Don Carlos, has, however, marked individuality, and the part played by him is still found by German actors to repay careful study. Maria, the heroine, dies of a broken heart, and in describing Clavigo’s desertion of her, as in describing Weislingen’s desertion of the Maria of “Goetz,” Goethe did a kind of penance for his treatment of Frederika Brion.

“Stella,” which was written in 1775, seems to have been suggested by Swift’s relations to Stella and Vanessa. In this play also Goethe respects the unities, and much technical skill is shown in the development of the story. The play in its original form, however, could not now be acted without exciting ridicule. The hero, Ferdinand, having married Cecilia, whom he loves, feels after a while that his freedom is unduly limited by a wife and daughter; and accordingly he leaves them. Then he falls in love with Stella, but her also he ultimately deserts. When the play opens, he has returned in the hope of being re-united to Stella. He finds her, but at the same time finds his wife and daughter, the latter having become Stella’s companion. There is now a vehement conflict of motives. Which of the two women shall he select? Cecilia suggests that it may be possible for him to live with both, and this solution, with Stella’s hearty consent, he joyfully accepts. Such was the passion for “nature” at the time that the public do not seem to have been in any way offended or perplexed by this strange conclusion; but thirty years afterwards Goethe changed the last act, bringing the play to an end with the suicide of Ferdinand and Stella. A tragic issue, however, could not be made to appear the natural result of conditions which were in the first instance planned for a wholly different scheme.

To this period belong two short plays with songs—“Erwin and Elmire,” and “Claudine von Villa Bella.” Both are brightly written, but—except in the charm of their songs—they have no qualities that mark them off sharply from work of a like kind done by other dramatists of the time. The idea of the first of these two plays is the idea of Goldsmith’s ballad, “Edwin and Angelina.”

At this time Goethe sometimes amused himself by writing humorous and satirical sketches, in all of which there is a free and lively play of fancy. The most famous of them is “Götter, Helden, und Wieland” (“Gods, Heroes, and Wieland”), which Goethe (with a bottle of Burgundy on the table) dashed off one Sunday afternoon. Lenz, to whom it was sent, printed it without having received Goethe’s permission. In this prose “farce” Goethe very wittily makes fun of Wieland’s misrepresentations of Greek mythology.

So many ideas crowded into Goethe’s mind that it was impossible for him to realize all his plans. For some time he thought of taking the career of Mahomet as the subject of a poetical drama, and if we may judge from the beginning he actually made, the theme as he conceived it would have given full scope to his highest creative faculties. He also intended to write a poem on the Wandering Jew, bringing out the contrast between the loftiest idealism, as represented in Christ, and vulgar worldly intelligence, as represented in Ahasuerus, who was to have expostulated with Christ for uselessly exposing Himself to danger by the proclamation of unpopular truths. Of this poem he completed only a few passages, written in couplets like those of Hans Sachs—a poet whom Goethe warmly admired. Another of his poetical fragments is “Prometheus,” one of the finest of his early writings. The Moravian Brethren, with whom he still occasionally associated, impressed upon him that man, of himself, can do nothing well, and that his aim should be to wait passively for supernatural influences. This doctrine was ill fitted for a young poet who by a law of his nature was impelled to ceaseless effort; and in “Prometheus” he proposed to develop an exalted conception of the power of the free individual mind. The defiant address of Prometheus to Zeus, with which the fragment closes, ranks among the most splendid of his shorter poems.

CHAPTER IV.

The original “Faust”—the “Faust” written at Frankfort—contains all that is most essential in the First Part as ultimately published.[1] The Faust legend served only as a suggestion for Goethe’s drama. From being little more than a tale of magical wonders, it became, in passing through the alembic of his imagination, a conception pregnant with thought and passion—a conception in which were embodied all the most vital elements of the intellectual life of his century. Faust, as Goethe presents him, is a man of magnificent intellect, endowed originally with the purest and loftiest aspirations of humanity. When the drama opens, he has devoted many a year to study; but, sitting alone in his Gothic chamber at midnight, he feels sadly and bitterly that his labour has been in vain. Dry, abstract knowledge he has in abundance, but it does not satisfy him; it seems to him but a mockery of the knowledge for which he has always yearned. He pants for something infinitely grander than his books can tell him of. A Titan of the spirit, he would mount the very heavens, and snatch from the universe its inmost secrets. And so, despairing of finding truth by ordinary means, he has recourse to supernatural methods. Opening his book of magic, he sees the symbol of the Macrocosmos; and at once the scales fall from his eyes; he is confronted directly by the secret forces of nature working together in glorious harmony. At last, for a moment, joy wells up in his heart; he asks himself whether he has not become a god. But suddenly it flashes upon him that he is but a spectator, and he longs for so much more than can come to him by mere vision! To drink at the infinite sources of existence, to feel his soul quickened by contact with the very essence of life—nothing short of this can give him a rapture corresponding to his needs. Looking again into his book, he finds the symbol of the earth-spirit; and through all his being thrills a consciousness of energy and courage. There is no achievement of which he does not feel himself capable; he has an impulse to go out into the world, to experience all its delights and woes, and even in the crash of shipwreck to exult in his strength and freedom. The earth-spirit itself he must see, and it responds to his summons. But it scoffs at his claim of equality, and, as it disappears, leaves him once more in despair.

Baffled in his ideal aspirations, Faust gives himself up to the enjoyment of such pleasures as may be accessible through the senses. After the first monologue, and before the introduction of Gretchen, we find in the original “Faust” only Faust’s first dialogue with Wagner; the scene, afterwards considerably modified, in which Mephistopheles mystifies the ingenuous student; a draft, chiefly in prose, of the scene in Auerbach’s cellar; and a few lines, ultimately struck out, indicating the perplexity of Mephistopheles as he passes a cross by the wayside. Goethe was apparently in haste to reach the tale of love and sorrow, in which the destiny of Faust was to be interwoven with that of Gretchen, and the full meaning of his repudiation of the law of his spiritual being was to be disclosed in its tragic consequences.

After the accidental meeting of Faust and Gretchen in the street—when, struck by her beauty, he offers her his arm, and she escapes from him—there are wanting “Wald und Höble” and “Walpurgisnacht;” the part to be played by Gretchen’s brother, Valentin, is only indicated; immediately before “Trüber Tag” there is a dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles which was afterwards omitted; and the last scene of all, the scene in the prison, is in prose. In other respects this part of the drama received at Frankfort what was essentially its final form. When the work was to be published, some lines and expressions were altered; but these changes did not vitally affect the conception as it had originally taken shape in Goethe’s mind.

Of all the products of Goethe’s genius, his presentation of the story of Gretchen is the finest; and, if we exclude Shakespeare, it would be hard to find anywhere in modern dramatic literature an equally noble achievement. The original of Gretchen, as a fresh, simple, happy maiden, with a heart overflowing with love and confidence, was Frederika Brion; and it may be that in depicting the early scenes in which she talks with Faust Goethe was recalling what had actually happened at Sesenheim. Frederika, for instance, must often have been astonished and rather dismayed by strange opinions expressed by her lover, and it is likely enough that she questioned him about religion, and that his answer was in spirit akin to the matchless lines in which Faust makes confession of his faith. But Goethe never seeks in his poetry simply to reproduce his personal experience. He transports us into an ideal world in which all that he has to show us stands out clearly, stripped of the accidental qualities which in actual life so often obscure our vision and disturb our judgment. Gretchen is not merely Frederika; she is the living representative of an enduring type of character and feeling.

Unlike Frederika, Gretchen is tempted to stain the purity of her spirit, and is brought within the sweep of forces that work her destruction; but she is never allowed to pass beyond the range of our sympathies, and in the end we are made to feel that in a deeper sense than that of theological dogmas she is “saved.” The last scene, as afterwards rendered in verse, has a more ideal character than it possesses in the original prose, yet in the process of transformation it lost some elements of tragic depth and force. In this great scene Goethe concentrates, with absolute truth to nature, all that is saddest and most terrible in human destiny.

Faust, as Goethe conceives the character, retains our interest through all the phases of his development; for we are often reminded that his was originally a noble nature, and that at the bottom of his heart there are still many survivals of humane and generous impulse. He is never a merely vulgar sensualist; he is an idealist who, having demanded of the universe more than it is capable of yielding, has given way to a mood of bitter and reckless spiritual despair. Mephistopheles is a creation not less remarkable in his own way than Faust, and upon the stage he is by far the more effective of the two, the outlines of his character being more distinct than those of his restless, wavering, unhappy comrade. In the Second Part, written long afterwards, his name is little more than a symbol for an abstract principle; but in the First Part, and especially in the scenes conceived at Frankfort, Mephistopheles has all the freshness and vigour of thorough individuality. It would be impossible to imagine a more striking contrast to the struggle incessantly going on in Faust’s mind than the settled purpose, the frank cynicism, and the grim humour of Mephistopheles. The character was suggested to Goethe by some qualities of his friend Merck. Merck, although honourable and good, had moods in which he took anything but an amiable or cheerful view of life; and his scoffs and sneers (as we may see from the description of him in “Dichtung und Wahrheit”) produced a more lasting impression on Goethe than his better characteristics. Although suggested by Merck’s cynical outbursts, Mephistopheles is not the less, of course, to be regarded as in the main a free creation of the imagination.

In “Faust” Goethe’s art reached the highest level it was capable of attaining during the early part of his career; and from a biographical point of view it is even more deeply interesting than “Goetz von Berlichingen” and “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.” Goetz and Werther each represented a particular phase of his character in the course of its development. Faust represented his character as a whole just as it was about to enter upon a new stage of its growth. Goethe had not, indeed, allowed his will to be subdued by passion; but he had all the vehement cravings, all the restless aspirations, the disappointment of which is the secret cause of Faust’s gnawing misery. Goethe at this time enjoyed many a hearty laugh with his friends, and wrote many a bright and genial letter; but beneath the surface he suffered from a profound agitation of spirit, often longing for he knew not what, and feeling that there was no anodyne for the pain of a yearning that the world, as he conceived it, could not still. In this respect also Goethe may be taken as a representative of his period. For the men of the “Sturm und Drang” nothing in the actual universe seemed to be good enough. Not institutions, not social conventions only, but the very conditions of life itself appeared to them to be unjust and injurious limitations of free individuality; and with all their might they kicked against the pricks, and cried out angrily against the tyrannous order that would not bend or break at their bidding. It was inevitable that Goethe should feel the full power of the dominant influences of his epoch, and to the fact that he felt it, was due, in the springtime of his life, the splendid efflorescence of his genius.

It so happened that at the time when Goethe was striving to relieve his overburdened spirit in “Werther” and “Faust,” the “Ethics” of Spinoza came into his hands. This was an event of great importance in his life, for Spinoza introduced him to a higher order of thought than he had yet known. He never accepted Spinoza’s system of doctrine as a whole, yet the “Ethics” exercised a powerful influence over him, and for many years he returned to it again and again, always finding in it something that came home to him, and that he could make his own. Indeed, Spinoza was the only purely philosophical writer by whose teaching he ever largely and permanently benefited.

Apart altogether from the particular truths he learned from Spinoza, it was almost inevitable that in his restless and unhappy mood the “Ethics” should have for him a strong fascination. He, whose poetic temperament led him always to think with feeling and through the imagination, could not but be impressed by the calm and stately progress of an argument presented in passionless, abstract terms, and by means of an unswerving logical method. Again, it consoled Goethe to find that the philosopher who, of all others, had most completely stripped his mind of prejudice, could look at life steadily, and yet think of it, not in a spirit of resignation merely, but with hope, cheerfulness, and courage. Most earnestly, too, did he respond to the idea that while the ultimate powers of the universe reveal themselves in a vast and inexorable order, the individual mind can bring itself into harmony with that order only by remaining for ever true to the laws of its own being. The noble generosity of Spinoza’s temper also, as Goethe himself explains, was one of the sources of his charm. “Whoso rightly loves God must not ask that God shall love him in return.” That was a saying after Goethe’s own heart. Did not he himself afterwards write, “If I love you, how does that concern you?”

During his residence at Frankfort Goethe did not attain, or nearly attain, to a position at which he could say that he was reconciled to himself and to the world. But Spinoza’s teaching was to him like cool water to parched lips. Communion with this serene and lofty spirit put him on the track that was to lead to inward self-control and to the harmonious development of his powers.

While Goethe was working with inexhaustible energy, he did not neglect his friends, and he had many opportunities of adding to their number. Lavater, who was making active preparations for his much-talked-of book on Physiognomy, wrote to Goethe from Zürich, and in 1774 spent a week as a guest in his father’s house. Years afterwards, Lavater, although always one of the most popular clergymen of his time, repelled many of those who had known him intimately by mingled fanaticism and vanity; but now Goethe was strongly attracted by his enthusiasm, and took an extraordinary interest in his notions as to the possibility of understanding the mind through its expression in the body, and especially in the face. With Lavater’s friend Basedow, the ardent upholder of Rousseau’s ideas on education, Goethe was also on friendly terms. He was often, however, irritated by Basedow’s boorish talk; for, notwithstanding his zeal for “nature” in social intercourse, Goethe detested rude and arrogant assumption. He himself was the brightest and pleasantest of companions, with a manner made all the more attractive by a touch of lively Bohemianism. It may be worth noting that there was no trace of Bohemianism in his appearance. He dressed well—so well, indeed, that it was often hard for him (his father being by no means generous) to pay his tailor’s bills.

Another of his intimate friends was Johanna Fahlmer, the aunt of the brothers Jacobi, both of whom were beginning to make a mark in literature. She settled at Frankfort with her mother in 1772, and Goethe, who made her acquaintance soon after his return from Wetzlar, valued few of his friends so highly as the young, genial, and clever “Aunt Fahlmer.” She was anxious that he should enter into close relations with her nephews, but their writings did not quite please him, and for a long time he made no attempt to approach them. In 1774, however, he felt that it might be pleasant for him to know them, and in the summer, having spent some weeks with Lavater and Basedow at Ems, he made his way with these friends up the Rhine to Cologne—“a prophet to the right, a prophet to the left, the child of the world in the midst,” as he wrote in a humorous little poem describing their dinner at Coblenz. At Cologne the party broke up, and Goethe went on to Düsseldorf, where the Jacobis lived. As it happened, they were at Elberfeld, and thither Goethe followed them. The younger of the two brothers, Frederick Jacobi, who was Goethe’s senior by about six years, made a most agreeable impression on him, and at Pempelfort, Jacobi’s country house near Düsseldorf, they became fast friends. They visited Cologne together, and had so happy a day there that at night, when each had retired to his room in the inn, Goethe could not resist the impulse to renew their talk. So he went to Jacobi’s room, and sitting at the open window, looking out on the moonlit Rhine, they enjoyed an hour of unalloyed happiness in the free communion of mind with mind and heart with heart. Goethe had never before given to a friend so deep a love, and the attraction was mutual. Jacobi, who was a man of high intellectual power and fine character, knew well the real nature of the treasure he had won in winning Goethe’s friendship. One of the most absorbing subjects of discussion between them was the philosophy of Spinoza, with which Jacobi also had been making himself familiar. Their opinions on the subject did not agree, but that in no way lessened the cordiality or the pleasure of their intercourse.

In 1775 Goethe had pleasant intercourse with the Counts Stolberg, who afterwards achieved distinction in literature. They were about his own age. During their stay at Frankfort they often dined with Goethe, whom they intensely admired; and one day, when the wine had circulated, there was much poetic talk about an unquenchable thirst for tyrants’ blood. Goethe’s father shook his head and smiled, but Frau Aja, as they called his mother, knew nothing of tyrants, and was dismayed by the ferocious outcries of the young poets. Going to her wine-cellar, she brought up a bottle of her oldest and best wine. “There!” she said, “that is the true tyrants’ blood. Delight yourselves with that, and let there be an end of murderous thoughts.”

In the history of Goethe’s last year at Frankfort, 1775, the central name is that of Lili Schönemann. Lili (Anna Elizabeth) and her two brothers lived with their mother, the widow of a wealthy banker. They belonged to what was considered the highest rank of Frankfort society, and every evening kept open house for their friends. Early in the year, probably in the evening of New Year’s Day, Goethe was present at one of their parties, and saw Lili for the first time. She was then in her seventeenth year, a beautiful fair-haired girl with blue eyes, graceful in all her movements, and with the ease and self-possession that came of constant association with people of her own class. She was as different as possible from Frederika Brion and Charlotte Buff, but Goethe was fascinated by her beauty, and she in her turn could not resist the handsome young poet, whose work had made his name familiar to all educated Germans. After some misunderstandings they became engaged, and Lili gave Goethe a little golden heart which was fastened round his neck with a ribbon.

Notwithstanding his love for Lili, the engagement brought with it no happiness to Goethe. Her relatives, whom he disliked, thought he was not socially her equal, and he, to whom free expression was so essential, could not bear the restraints imposed upon him at Frau Schönemann’s fashionable parties. It embittered him, too, to see the readiness with which Lili responded to the courtesies of men who would gladly have supplanted him. He had a suspicion that she could never belong to him absolutely, and that if they became husband and wife her ideas would go on diverging more and more widely from his own.

Torn by conflicting motives, Goethe felt at last that he must shake himself free for a while from the circumstances that caused him so much perplexity; and in the middle of May he started with the Counts Stolberg for Strasburg—all three, by the way, dressed in Werther’s style. From Strasburg he visited his sister at Emmendingen, who urged him to break off an engagement that seemed to her wholly unsuitable. He then travelled to Zürich, where he was cordially welcomed by Lavater; and afterwards he went southwards, thinking that he might perhaps go on to Italy. But, now that he was far away from Lili, she became dearer to him than ever. On her seventeenth birthday he was at the Pass of St. Gotthard, and, as he kissed the golden heart she had given him, he was seized by so ardent a longing to be with her again that he immediately turned back and began his homeward journey.

On his return all the old difficulties presented themselves, and in the end, to the relief of Lili’s mother and Goethe’s parents, and not much apparently to the regret of the lovers themselves, the engagement was allowed to lapse. His relation to Lili had not moved him as he had been moved by his relation to Frederika and Lotte; nor did it become a source of inspiration in his later work. But to his love for her we owe two exquisite lyrics, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben” (“New Love, New Life”), and “An Belinden” (“To Belinda”), and the finely humorous poem, “Lili’s Park.”

The time had now almost come when Frankfort, on which Goethe had shed so much lustre, was to lose him, and he was to surround himself with an entirely new set of conditions. Towards the end of 1774 he was presented at Frankfort to the Hereditary Prince of Weimar, who was then seventeen years of age, and to his younger brother, Prince Constantine. The meeting gave the Hereditary Prince so much pleasure that Goethe had to visit him at Mainz—a visit made memorable by the fact that during Goethe’s absence from Frankfort, Fräulein von Klettenberg, for whom he had all his old affection and reverence, died. In the autumn of 1775 the Hereditary Prince became Duke of Weimar; and shortly afterwards, on his way to Stuttgart, where he was to be married, he begged that when he returned with his bride Goethe would visit them at Weimar. Goethe gladly accepted the invitation, and in October, when the young Duke and Duchess came to Frankfort, it was arranged that within a few days he should follow them.

Geheimerath Kalb, the official with whom he was to travel, had been left behind at Stuttgart, and his coming was so long delayed that Goethe finally became impatient, gave up the idea of visiting Weimar, and set off for Italy. At Heidelberg he was aroused during the night by a messenger, who arrived with a letter announcing that Kalb was awaiting him at Frankfort. He hurried back, and on November 7, 1775, entered Weimar. He thought he was merely about to pay a short visit to a friendly prince; in reality he had come to a new home, and had formed relations which were to alter the whole complexion of his life.

CHAPTER V.

Goethe was received with enthusiasm by the young Duke, and all sorts of entertainments were got up for his benefit. These entertainments gave rise to much gossip, and soon it was whispered in many places in Germany that Goethe was leading a shamefully dissolute life at Weimar, and exercising on the Duke a most deplorable influence. By and by Klopstock, hearing a rumour of what was supposed to be going on, took it upon himself to write to his fellow poet a letter of reproof and expostulation. Goethe had the highest respect for Klopstock, and, when he had passed through Frankfort, had taken occasion to show him due honour. But now it was necessary to prove that there were limits beyond which even the author of “The Messiah,” in his intercourse with younger men, had no right to pass. Accordingly Klopstock received a cool little letter in which it was indirectly and delicately intimated that he had interfered in matters which did not concern him, and about which he was inadequately instructed.

The worst that could be said about the lively proceedings that went on at Weimar after Goethe’s arrival was that they took up a great deal of time, and wasted much good energy. As for the notion that the Duke was in any way misled by Goethe, nothing could be further from the truth. The Duke had in his blood the fiery impulses of many a wild ancestor, and even now it was Goethe’s aim to restrain rather than to stimulate his passion for pleasure and excitement. Goethe knew him too well to think of troubling him with formal advice, but none the less he sought to suggest to the young prince that as a ruler he had obligations which honour required him to take seriously. Afterwards Goethe kept this object steadily before himself, and the result was that, notwithstanding occasional outbreaks of irregular passion, the Duke became one of the best of the minor German sovereigns, for, of all men, Goethe had the strongest hold over his imagination and feelings.

At first Goethe found some difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory relation with the young Duchess. For a time she also was disposed to think that he led her husband astray. She was, however, too frank and sincere not to see things in the end as they really were. She became Goethe’s true friend; and he often had opportunities of showing how worthy he was of her confidence by acting as a mediator for the removal of domestic misunderstandings. With the Duchess Dowager Amalia he never had the slightest trouble. Although the mother of a reigning prince, she was only thirty-six years of age at the time of Goethe’s arrival in Weimar. She was a woman of masculine intelligence, and during her son’s minority had discharged firmly and discreetly her duties as regent. Handsome, amiable, endowed with delicate tact, and taking a sincere interest in art and literature, she could not but attract Goethe; and he in his turn at once gained her good opinion. She saw clearly how wisely he was likely to guide the Duke, and was most eager that he should, if possible, be persuaded to settle in Weimar.

Among the residents of the little capital a high place was by universal consent conceded to Wieland, who had accepted, in 1772, an invitation sent to him by the Duchess Amalia, to come to Weimar as the tutor of her sons. Wieland was now forty-two years of age, and one of the most prominent writers in Germany. He had been grievously offended by the “Farce” written at his expense, but Goethe had by letter made some amends for the injury done to him, which, after all, was not very serious; and Wieland had magnanimously let the matter slip from his mind. Now, when he met Goethe, he thought he had never seen any one who was more to his liking. He wrote to a friend that he was “as full of Goethe as a dewdrop of the morning sun.” And the two poets continued to be on pleasant terms with one another. When Wieland wrote “Oberon,” incomparably the finest of his poems, he was enchanted by Goethe’s warm appreciation of its merits. It was natural for Goethe to praise lavishly anything that pleased him. There was no room in his generous spirit for even a touch of petty jealousy.

While living at Frankfort, he had for some time had much reason to complain of the conduct of Herder, who for no good cause had conceived a violent prejudice against him. Happily, this had been dispelled; and at Weimar Goethe was able to be of splendid service to his friend. The office of Court preacher and general superintendent of matters ecclesiastical was vacant, and the Duke asked Goethe whether he knew of any one to whom it might be offered. He at once suggested Herder, who was thoroughly tired of his position at Bückeburg, and thinking of accepting a professorship at Göttingen. The majority of the clergy of the duchy were by no means delighted with the proposal, for Herder had the reputation of being a heretic; but Goethe never grudged labour undertaken for a friend, and worked so hard, and with so much tact, in Herder’s interest, that all difficulties were overcome. Herder came to Weimar in 1776, and soon made a great mark, not only as a preacher, but as an earnest promoter of every scheme for the public welfare. At Weimar he wrote his “Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit” (“Ideas towards the Philosophy of the History of Humanity”), which, although only a fragment, displays so wide a knowledge, so firm a grasp of great principles, and so deep an appreciation of all that makes for the highest ideals, that it can never lose its place as one of the treasures of German literature. For many years Goethe and Herder had much pleasant intercourse in Weimar, and encouraged each other in work by mutual sympathy.

The Duke became so attached to Goethe that he was resolved they should never part, and accordingly he expressed to the high officials of his Government his wish that his friend should be admitted into the public service. The proposal met with vehement opposition, for grave old councillors found it impossible to believe that a poet could be capable of attending to business. The Duke, however, warmly supported by his mother, insisted on having his own way.

The elder Goethe strongly disliked the idea of his son entering the service of a prince. Brought up in a free imperial city, he had a decidedly Republican feeling, subject, of course, to loyalty to the Emperor, which was rather a nominal that a real obligation. Moreover, he had always hoped that his son would become an eminent Frankfort lawyer, and that he himself and his wife would have the pleasure of welcoming to their home a daughter-in-law whom they could love. Goethe, however, felt that it would be impossible for him to go back to Frankfort. He had not been happy there; he still disliked the work of an advocate; he longed to be independent; and he knew that he would receive every consideration from the Duke, the Duchess, and the Duchess Dowager, for all of whom he had a sincere regard. On the other hand, he did not wish to bind himself absolutely to remain in Weimar. It was necessary that he should be at liberty to leave it at any time when he might desire to go. This he stated to the Duke, and so the matter was arranged.

In the spring of 1776, Goethe was formally appointed a member of the Privy Council, with the title of “Geheimer Legationsrath,” Privy Councillor of Legation. His salary, which was gradually increased, was at first 1,200 thalers (£180). The Duke, as a special mark of favour, provided for him a house overlooking the Ilm, and surrounded by a pleasant garden. It was in the Park beyond the town, so that Goethe was able to have perfect quiet, and to enjoy to his heart’s content solitary strolls along the banks of the stream flowing past his dwelling. Here he lived for some years, his household consisting of his valet Seidel, whom he had brought with him from Frankfort; a man servant; and an elderly woman who acted as cook. Afterwards he took a house in Weimar, and spent only the summer months in his garden-house.

By the time he definitely took up his abode in Weimar, he had formed a relation which was to exercise a powerful influence over him during the following ten years—his relation to Charlotte von Stein. In Frankfort he had seen her silhouette, which was to appear in Lavater’s book on Physiognomy. Under it he wrote, “It would be splendid to see how the world reflects itself in this soul. She sees the world as it is, yet through the medium of love. Mildness is, therefore, the general impression.” So vividly did the face appear before him that it kept him awake during three successive nights. On the other hand, Frau von Stein was familiar with, and strongly admired, Goethe’s writings. They were thus prepared to think well of one another.

When Goethe arrived in Weimar, she was at her estate, Kochberg; but she soon returned, and he was introduced to her at court by the Duke. She was six years older than Goethe, had been married eleven years, and was the mother of seven children; and she had no very remarkable intellectual gifts. She had, however, delicate grace and beauty, fine tact, and warm sympathy with all that seemed to her best and greatest in life and literature; and these qualities drew Goethe towards her with an irresistible attraction. At first his expressions of regard and admiration—after the fashion of the time—were so ardent that she was rather alarmed, and took care that he should not see her too often; but by and by he showed the most tender respect for her wishes, and so there grew up between them a true, pure, and noble friendship. There were few days when they did not meet. When either was from home, he sent her long letters telling her everything that happened; and even when both were in Weimar, little notes containing kindly greetings constantly passed between them. Goethe confided to her all his cares and anxieties, and she never failed to strengthen him, and give him fresh courage, by her sympathy. His thoughts, studies, and plans of work he also spoke of, and she sought not only to understand them and to share the pleasure they gave him, but to encourage him in all his high undertakings. If sometimes there were misunderstandings, they soon vanished, and Goethe could write to her that the torment due to such experiences was “the sunlit rain (Sonnen-Regen) of love.”