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LIFE OF GOETHE

3—

Trippel's Bust of Goethe.
(See p. 401.)
From a Photograph ofa Cast ofthe Originalin Arolsen.

Life of Goeth

By HEINRICH DUNTZER

TRANSLATED BY
THOMAS W. LYSTER
ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND

Edel sei der Mensch,
Hillfreich und gut /

WITH AUTHENTIC ILLUSTRATIONS AND FACSIMILES

MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884

viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
insignificant details ; he knows that all affairs ar,e
locked and fitted together. There is hardly any-
great man who has been abused with such malignity
as Goethe. Lovers of his great poetry and great
thoughts have felt how grievous it would be if the
charges laid to his door were true. Those who have
begun to ransack the sources for exact evidence, who
have been at a loss for some connecting link, who
have despaired beneath the mass of matter to be sifted,
know what importance Professor Duntzer's details may
assume, and are grateful to him.
Mr. Lewes's Life of Goethe has long filled an
honourable place in men's esteem, and will ever do so.
It is a generous book, it makes allowances, and does not
judge the great Poet with tea-table criticism. If we
cannot help finding it unsatisfactory nowadays, let us
not forget that we owe that largely to Mr. Lewes him
self: he has educated us into disparagement. But
the fact remains that the book is unsatisfactory. Mr.
Lewes's main work on it was done a long time ago,
when comparatively few of Goethe's letters were printed.
And the revision mentioned in the preface of 1875 was
not a thorough, adequate revision. No one can fail
to observe, moreover, that the book is not only a Life
of Goethe, but a compendium of small essays of not
much value, and debates with the imaginary stiff-necked
reader who will not judge Goethe as Mr. Lewes desires,
and discussion of points lately settled beyond dispute,
such as the date of Werther, and the part of Mari
anne von Willemer in the Westostlicher Divan. Were
these superfluities omitted, but a small book of narrative,
of actual Mittheilung, would remain. And in that
small book much that is inaccurate will be noted.
Professor Dtintzer may well be content to leave his
book to the verdict of the many earnest students of

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix
Goethe, who desire precision and fulness of detail, who
want a book to refer to and find in. " No student of
Goethe," writes Professor Dowden,1 ''can afford to
neglect Diintzer ; no fair-minded person can view the
book with any feelings but those of respect and
gratitude. Here is a map provided with the aid of
which we can go over the ground for ourselves and
possess a sense of security — a map which enables us
at any point of the perplexing expedition to find our
bearings, if we only have a little patience, and to
ascertain precisely what lies before us and what be
hind." In other words, Professor Diintzer has written
for those who mean to take Goethe gravely, and in their
judgment he will find his reward. And perhaps
many not disposed to take Goethe gravely hitherto,
will find their hearts changed towards him when they
read how well he lived — not the life of a god in
Olympus, as is often absurdly said, but the common
place life of daily duty, — how good he was to his friends,
how diligent in a round of tiresome labours alien to
his nature, how compassionate to the suffering and the
poor, how free from bitterness towards the foes without,
how implacable towards the baffling foes within.
In translating this Book I have endeavoured to
transmute and fuse the German sentences into English.
If I have failed in places, I must ask the indulgence
which I should now give to another, knowing as I do
the great difficulty of resisting the influence of the
foreign style. Sometimes having examined the sources,
I have added little touches that belong to the subject,
and that seem to me to give interest and colour. I
have, of course, been scrupulous not to make any state
ment which does not agree with the Author's views.
Most of my information is indeed drawn from his very
1 The Academy, November 24, 1883, page 341.

* TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
useful books. With his aid I have detected and set
right several small errors of detail, and I owe him
sincere thanks for the patience and courtesy with which
he replied to my not infrequently mistaken objections.
The headings of chapters, and of sections in some
chapters, are my work. The footnotes and references
were begun for my own benefit, and it then occurred
to me that they would increase the value of the book
in England and America, as we have hitherto not
possessed any work on Goethe's life containing fre
quent reference to his Letters. Indeed, I hope that
this translation is the beginning of some exact Goethe-
scholarship among us.
It must also be mentioned that I have frequently
translated direct from the letters of Goethe instead of
translating from Professor Diintzer's paraphrase, and
have thus, I think, added to the clearness of the narrative.
As this is the sole book of minute reference to Goethe's
life accessible to English and American readers, I have
thought it my duty sometimes to change allusions into
direct statements ; and I have continually laboured to
introduce precise mention of date and place.
I owe thanks to the Reverend Oscar Krahmer of
Dublin for explanation of the meaning of some difficult
words ; to Professor Mahaffy for clearing up some
puzzles, and for acute criticism of some proof-sheets with
their Germanisms ; and to Professor Dowden for reading '
nearly all the proofs, for kindly assistance on very many
occasions, and for the support of unflagging sympathy.

Goethe's Arms, 1782 :
A Hexagonal Star of Gold or Silver, in a Shield round which runs a rim of silver,
the Star repeated above over the Crowned Helmet.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
To a man so great, and complete, and sufficient to
himself as Goethe, moulded on lines so large and
generous, justice in the highest sense can be done only
by one of equal gifts. Only an equal can realise by
sympathy the mysterious and powerful impulses that
animate such a being, can accompany him in spirit
through the struggles of his development, track in
imagination the perplexed paths by which he draws
towards his perfect ideal ; only an equal can enter into
the soul, the self-formative, enjoying, thinking, warring,
wrestling, inner man ; estimate aright now the success
and now the failure ; and at the end sum up the
perfect account of the whole existence.
But love too can do much. She lends that pene
trating sagacity which knows no rest until the informing
spiritual presence of the great dead is plainly felt ; nor
is love's blameless partiality blind to those weaknesses
and faults, inseparable from all human greatness — -as
small mishaps chequer every victory. There is indeed
no man who must not with reverence shrink from the

xii; AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
task of depicting such a mighty figure as the creator of
Faust, had not a kindly destiny willed that, beside his
own set confessions and the many radiations of his
spirit in Art, — so diverse, so full of significance — there
is preserved to us a vast number of original communi
cations — both epistolary and of other kinds — written
by the poet and by those who knew him. With the
aid of these we can follow him almost step by step in
the important crises — can obtain exact insight into the
secret recesses of his life.
But the delver of this unvalued treasure must use
the most diligent care. Often, indeed, secure interpre
tation and full illumination is possible only to one who
already possesses fresh and accurate knowledge of the
main course of Goethe's life and dealings with men.
Goethe has himself given to the world a minute
account of his first six and twenty years. All rivalry
of this exquisite book is vain. Yet here is really but
an apparent difficulty for the biographer. For there
is no question of rivalry. The old man's beautiful and
animated story of his youth is composed of Dichtung
and Wahrheit — of Poetry and Truth marvellously
woven. The general delineation corresponds with the
actual fact. But many of the particular details have
been moved from their places for the sake of artistic
grouping, and again, details for the completion of
episodes and scenes have been supplied by imagina
tion when memory and other sources failed. Accord
ingly, while Goethe's biographer will, from time to time,
refer his readers to the presentation of things in Dich
tung und Wahrheit, because this presentation is univer
sally known, and after it other men's work is bathos,
it should be understood — :without prejudice to the
beautiful ideal vision of the past that Goethe saw from
the serene heights of his wise old age — that the main

AUTHOR'S ^REFACE. xiii
duty of the narrator of the poet's early manhood is to
help exact truth to her rights, and that chiefly by
skilful use of the disclosures of recent years. In
Goethe's time it was not possible to arrange facts in
their correct order, or to throw upon them the light
now known to be the true one.
We have hitherto lacked a Life of Goethe which,
carefully sifting the vast masses of material, shall
indicate simply and clearly the nodal centres of his
development as a man and a poet ; indicate the rela
tions and circumstances that conditioned development ;
be perspicuous, and yet omit nothing of importance ;
and, moreover, call attention to the point of union
whence all the diverging lines of aspiration and of
action proceed ; to the traits of character everywhere
manifest, the noble magnanimity, the deep sense of
duty, the steadfast faith in the care of a Higher Power,
the restless unwearied activity, and the inward impul
sion towards a complete culture. Especially has the
period terminated by the final breach with Charlotte
von Stein (i 749-1789) waited for adequate treatment.
The after-time is easier to deal with. After following
Goethe so far, the reader possesses knowledge enough
of that wonderful nature, fulfilling its being, as it were,
of necessity, to read a general sketch of the rest of his
Life with profit. Still it is hardly needful to repeat the
warning, that all the several threads — the warp in the
woof of this marvellous existence — and not least the
thread of Domestic Life, must be followed up with
extreme care.
In the book here laid before the reader Goethe's
literary works are noticed as golden fruit that grew
and ripened on the profuse and splendid tree, his life,
but there is no attempt to fix their artistic value, or
measure their spiritual contents by analysis. As for

xiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
his scientific labours, only their importance as part of
Goethe's activity and culture, and their place in the
growth of science, can be indicated.
The illustrations present persons and places as
they actually were ; and they can be relied on. This
merit above all others I have sought to make a
characteristic of my account of Goethe's life ; I re
nounce all colour which does not belong to the thing
pojtrayed.

CONTENTS. ^OOK 1
BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF.
1749-1765.
CHAP. DATE. PAGE
•/ 1. From Wolfgang's Birth to the Death of his Grand
mother ...... 1749-1754 I
•il. From the Rebuilding of the Goethes' House to
the Outbreak of the Seven Years' War . 1755,1756 II
4ll. The Beginning of the Seven Years' War . . 1757,1758 17
•TV. From the Entry of French Troops into Frankfurt
to their Departure .... 1759-1762 26
$. From the Close of the Seven Years' War to Wolf- '_
gang's Departure for Leipzig '. . . 1763-1765 39

BOOK II.
STUDENT YEARS.
1765-1771.

I. Leipzig University .... 1765-1768 53
II. Interim between Leipzig and Strassburg spent in
Frankfurt ..... 1768-1770 80
III. Strassburg University .... 1770-1771 97

xvi CONTENTS.
BOOK III.
ADVOCATE AND POET.
I77I-I775-
CHAP. DATE. PAGE
I. Interval spent in Frankfurt between the Strassburg
and Wetzlar periods .... I77I-I772 126
II. The Summer of 1772 spent in Wetzlar . . I772 r43
III. From Goethe's Departure from Wetzlar to the /Sept. 1772- \
Marriage of Lotte . . . .1 April 1773 f
IV. The Publication of Gotz — The Beginning of/ May-Dec. \
Fame  ^ 1773 '
( The Year 1 g
V. WertAer—l,a.\a.tei — Jacobi — Great Designs • \ I7„ j ^

VI. Liii— Switzerland . . . . f Jan. -Nov. 1
I 1775 *

1774
.n.-No 1775

BOOK IV.
THE WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE.
1775-1786.
I. From Goethe's Arrival in Weimar to his Appoint- / Nov. 1775- \
ment on the Council . . . . ljune 1776 I
II. From Goethe's Appointment on the Council to the
Second Swiss Journey . . . . 1776-1779 267
III. The Second Swiss Journey — Three Years of
Multiplying Cares .... 1779-1782 295
IV. Four Years of Great Labour in Public Affairs —
Wide and Fruitful Study of Natural Science . 1782-1786 332
V. The Yearning for Italy . . . — 365

BOOK V.
ITALY.
1786-1788.
I. The Journey Southward — Venice — Rome. ./ Sept. 1786-I _
. Iphigenie . . . . . \ Feb. 1787 j 37

CONTENTS.

CHAP. II. Naples and Sicily
III. The Second Residence in Rome

¦{F%lr} 389
/ June 1787- \
{ June 1788 f 397

BOOK VI.
HOUSE AND HOME.
1788-1794.
I. From Goethe's Return from Italy to the Birth of
his Son. The Romische Elegien — Tasso . 1788-1789 415
II. Venice — Silesia — The Ducal Theatre — Optics —
The New House .... 1790-1792 435
III. The Campaign in France — Jacobi — The Prin
cess Galitzin — Reineke Fuchs — The Siege of
Mainz — Fichte — Voss — Schiller . . 1792-1794 452

BOOK VII.
THE DIOSCURI.
1794-1805.
I. The First Three Years of Union with Schiller.
The Horen — Wilhelm Meister — Hermann
und Dorothea — Ballads. The Third Swiss
Journey ..... 1794-1797 472
II. From the Third Swiss Journey to the dangerous
Illness of 1 801 — a Time of great Labour, in
Union with Schiller, for the Elevation of the
Theatre and of the Conception of Art in
Germany ..... 1797-1801 495
III. From Goethe's dangerous Illness of 1801 to the
Death of Schiller .... 1801-1805 520

BOOK VIII.
THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY.
1805-1814.
I. From the Death of Schiller to the Peace between
France and Prussia .... 1 805- 1 807

553

CONTENTS.

CHAP. 11. Bettine — Zacharias Werner — Sonnets — Minchen
Herzlieb — The Wahlvenoandtschaften — The
Wanderjahre — Pandora — Publication of Faust
— Death of Frau Rath — Napoleon and Goethe
III. From the Congress of Erfurt to the Retreat from
Moscow .....
IV. The Liberation of Germany

1807-1808 569

1808-1812 1812-1814

5§2
603

BOOK IX.
NEW LIFE.
1814-1823.
I. The Rhine and Main Journeys — Marianne Wil-
lemer — The Westostlicher Divan
II. Seven Years on the Heights

1814-1816 616
1816-1823 633

BOOK X.
THE RESTLESS CLOSE.
1824-1832.
I. Goethe's Old Age — An almost uninterrupted
Residence in Weimar, during which he pre
pares a Final Edition of his Works — Deaths of
Charlotte von Stein, of Karl August, of Luise,
and of Goethe's Son — A Period of unceasing
Activity — Wide Correspondence and Great
Influence .....
II. The Closing Days

1824-1830 656
/Dec. 1830-I
\ Mar. 1832 / 7°6

Appendix Index

721 749

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Bust of Goethe by Trippel .
The Coat of Arms that became Goethe's in 1782
Portraits of Goethe's Father and Mother
Silhouettes of Goethe's Father and Mother .
The House in which Goethe was born
Coat of Arms on the Goethes' House
Facsimile of the Writing of the Boy Goethe
Facsimile of the Writing of Goethe's Mother
Silhouette of Goethe as a Boy
Goethe's Sister ....
Facsimile of Goethe's Letter to Buri
Anna Katharina Schonkopf .
Friederike Oeser and her Sister
Herder and Caroline Flachsland
The Parsonage of Sessenheim
J. H. Merck
J. G. Schlosser
Sophie von Laroche
The Buffs' House and Das Deutsche Haus .
Charlotte Kestner ....
Silhouette of Goethe sent to Lotte (see Appendix, Article 15)
Facsimile of Poem " Wenn einen seeligeiV Biedermann "
Liii .... ¦ . .
Karl August .... . .
The Duchess Amalia ...
Charlotte von Stein (1790) .....
Goethe's "Garden House" in 1827

to

PAGE
Frontispiece xi 46
12
13
2022
36
42
face 48 60 70
104106
132
134141146H7172
173
215245247
248260

xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Goethe. Painted by G. M. Kraus in 1776 .
Goethe. Painted by May in 1779 .
Wieland. Sketched by Goethe 1776
Corona Schrbter. Painted by Anton Graff
Facsimile of Verses written by Friederike Brion
The Marchesa Branconi . - ¦ •
Goethe outside Rome. By Tischbein
Christiane Vulpius .
Charlotte von Lengefeld and Friedrich Schiller
Goethe's House in Weimar (1827) .
Pen-and-ink Sketch by Goethe (1793}
The Evening Circle of the Duchess Amalia (1794) -
Facsimile of the Honorary Diploma for Gerning, which
designed (1805)
Silhouette of Goethe's Mother (1805)
Johanna Schopenhauer
Bettine von Arnim .
Marianne Willemer (1819) .
Goethe. By Ferdinand Jagemann .
Goethe in his Study dictating to John. By J. J. Schmeller
Sebbers's Portrait of Goethe (1826) .
Silhouette of Goethe taken from a plaster cast of his face
Goethe lying in death. By Preller .
The Furstengruft of Weimar
Facsimiles of Signatures of Goethe at various times
Facsimile of Goethe's dedication of an album to Frau von Milkau
in 1828 ....
Facsimile of a Poem by Goethe in that album

PAGE 262284285 290
299 302
3§3
417 422449
462 474
Goethe to face 5485495605«8624631658671672 718 719720

End of
Volume End of
Volume

A small Selection from the Works of most importance
to the Student of Goethe's Biography.
i. Der funge Goethe, Hirzel, Leipzig, 1875. 3 Vols. Collection of
Goethe's Letters and Writings from 1764 to 1776.
2. Loeper's Briefs Goethe's an Sophie von La Roche und Bettina Bren-
tano, Hertz, Berlin, 1879.
3. Loeper's edition of Dichtung und Wahrheit. 4 Vols. Part of
Hempel's Goethe. Sold separate if desired.
4. Duntzer's Erlduterung of Dichtung und Wahrheit, Wartig, Leipzig,
1881.
5. Duntzer's Goethe und Karl August 1776-1805. 2 Vols. Dyk,
Leipzig, 1 86 1 - 1 865. Minute chronicle of Goethe's Life, embodying
quotations from a large number of original authorities.
6. Scholl's Goethe's Briefe an Frau von Stein. First edition, 3 Vols.
1848-51. New edition by Fielitz, Vol. i., Rvitten und Loening,
Frankfurt, 1883.
7- Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Knebel. 2 Vols. Brockhaus,
Leipzig, 1851.
8. Goethe's Briefe. 3 Vols. — the third in two parts. Allgemeine
Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Berlin, 1856-1865. A collection of all
the letters that could be printed without infringement of copyright
arranged simply in order of date. Very valuable.
9- Goethe's Briefe aus der Schweiz. (The excursion of 1779.)
10. Duntzer's edition ofthe Balidnische Reise. Hempel's Goethe, xxiv.
II. Biedermann's edition of the Tag- und Jahres-hefte, Hempel's Goethe,
xxiii.
12. Strehlke's edition of the Campagne in Frankreich, 1792, and of the
Belagerung von Mainz, 1793. Hempel's Goethe, xxv. See also
Huffer's notes on the Campagne in Frankreich in the Goethe-Jahr-
buch Band, iv.
13. Strehlke's edition of the Reise in die Schweiz, 1797, and the Reise am
Rhein, 1814, 1815. Hempel's Goethe, xxvi.
14. Vollmer's edition of the Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe.
4th Ed. enlarged. 2 Vols. Cotta, 1881-82.
15. Briefwechsel des Grossherzogs Carl August mit Goethe. 2 Vols.
Braumuller, Vienna, 1873.
16. Sulpiz Boisserie. 2 Vols. Cotta, 1862.
17. Creizenach's second edition of the Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und
Marianne von Willemer. Cotta, 1878.
18. Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter. 6 Vols. Berlin, 1883-4.
19. Eckermann, Gesprdchemit Goethe. 3 Vols. 3d Ed. Brockhaus, 1868.
20. Goethe's Unterhaltungen mit Miiller. Cotta, 1870.

xxii GOETHE - LITERATURE.
The above twenty books may be considered as indispensable to the
thorough student of the events of Goethe's life. After them should be
procured Goethe's Letters to K. W. Gbttling, Munchen, 1880; to N.
Meyer, Leipzig, 1856 ; to Schultz, Leipzig, 1853 ; to Soret, Stuttgart,
1877; to Auguste von Stolberg, Leipzig, 1881 ; to Voigt, Leipzig, 1868;
to Wolf, Berlin, 1868; to Fritz Schlosser, Stuttgart, 1877 ; to the Frau
Rath, Leipzig, 1871 ; to the brothers Humboldt, Leipzig, 1876. A
valuable guide through the maze of Goethe's letters is Strehlke's Verzeich-
niss, 2 Vols., Hempel, Berlin, 1882-84. Of solid value are Duntzer's
Frauenbilder, Cotta, 1852 ; his Charlotte von Stein, 2 Vols., Cotta, 1874;
his Schiller und Goethe, Cotta, 1859 ; his series of Erlduterungen to the
German classics, published at moderate prices by Wartig, Leipzig;
Goedeke's Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur ; Keil's edition
of Goethe's Tagebuch 1776-1782, Leipzig, 1875; and Herbst's Goethe in
Wetzlar, Gotha, 1881. All public libraries should take the admirable
Goethe -Jahrbuch. Four Vols, are published; Vol. V. will appear in
March 1884.
I do not venture on any attempt to select from the vast literature in
German which is concerned with the .Esthetic study of Goethe's Life and
Writings, except to mention one book of very great worth, Hettner"s
Literaturgeschichte des i8&" Jahrhunderts. Let those turn to Hettner to
whom at present Wilhelm Meister is a puzzle, as Hamlet was a puzzle
until Wilhelm found the key.
Mr. Oscar Browning's article, "Goethe," in the last edition of the Ency
clopaedia Britannica is a truthful, able, and interesting account of its subject.
This article and Mr. Bayard Taylor's Essays display more accurate Goethe-
scholarship than is possessed by any other writers in English that I know
of. For the Minchen Herzlieb episode, read Mr. Andrew Hamilton's
paper in the Contemporary for January 1876. Of course, every student who
desires aid toward really understanding Goethe has read Carlyle's essays,
and Emerson's Goethe, or the Man of Letters, and has carefully gleaned
those fine observations which Mr. Matthew Arnold has scattered here and
there in his poetry and prose. Some French writers of excellence on
Goethe are MM. Theophile Cart, Paul Bourget, Paul Stapfer, and
Edmond Scherer.
It would take a large volume to give an account of the Goethe-litera
ture of the world, a couple of pages cannot contain it. However, the
reader who uses the books above mentioned will go on for himself, and
throughout the pages of the Translation before him he will find many
other references, each serviceable in its place.

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.
BOOK I.
BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF.
CHAPTER I.
from Wolfgang's birth to the death of his
grandmother,
1749-1754-
In the old " free elective and commercial City of the Empire,''
Frankfurt -am -Main, was born, on the 28th of August 1749,
at the stroke of noon, the boy whose name was to be her
chief glory. The sun in the sign of the Virgin at its highest
diurnal altitude, Jupiter and Venus dominant, was a favourable
conjunction which the great poet notes in his autobiography —
we think' of Herder, who, born into a straitened life, saw
destiny in being born at midnight.
It was a good time and place to be born. Just before the
end of the first half of the century of the Illumination
(Aufklarung) ; in the morning dawn of German poetry — for
in 1749 the first five cantos of the Messias came out, and
Lessing and Wieland, who, at the same time as Klopstock, and
with like strivings, were the beginners of a new time in the
literature of our Fatherland, were then in the first stage of
their development. And what German city offered a more
rich and varied life, more freedom for growth, a more agi
tated intellectual air, a more lively concourse of distinguished
strangers, than this Imperial City, lying so close to the noblest
German river on its tributary Main ? Still, as Goethe sadly
notes,1 she, like most of her sisters, was "decaying in and
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, Dec. 7, 1777- — Te.

2 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. i.
with her privileges." Thorough depravity prevailed not among
the nobility alone ; the burgher city- councillors too were
tainted with the greed for power, the greed for gold, and the
evil passions of such parentage ; even to the lower ranks the
corrupted manners were now spreading. How well for our
poet that his father's house was islanded safe from the infec
tion, an abode of noble discipline, of austere dignity.
Goethe's father was the son of Friedrich Georg Goethe,
a journeyman tailor, who, leaving Artern on the Unstrut, a
Thuringian river, finally rested from his many wanderings in
Frankfurt, and there, in his thirtieth year (1687), took to wife
Anna Elizabeth Lutz, herself a tailor's daughter. She died
in 1700, and after five years of single life, Friedrich Georg
wedded the widow Cornelia Schelhorn, owner of the inn Zum
Weidenhof, and still comely in her seven and thirtieth year.
One who knew this grandfather of the poet describes him as
courteous, of thorough musical attainment, but off his head
with pride. The third and last child of this marriage, Johann
Kaspar Goethe, the father of the poet, was born July 27,
1 710. He went for his education in letters to the grammar-
school (Padagogium) of Coburg. During this absence his
father and elder brother died. At Leipzig and Giessen he
studied law with diligence ; then, according to the custom of
the time, was occupied in the Reichskammergericht at Wetzlar ;
finally, at Giessen, won his Doctor of Laws with a .masterly
dissertation. Urged by a passion for knowledge, he then
journeyed to Italy; bringing with him many works of art, rich in
store of facts and memories, he then travelled probably through
France and Holland, and came to his own city. There,..
resolved to spend the rest of his life in her service, he tried
for an inferior civic office ; he would take it without salary, if
the customary balloting might in his election be dispensed
with — a distinction which he thought fairly due to his well-
known qualifications. But the Council would not consent;
there being, they said, no sufficient reason for departure from
custom. So hurt was the Doctor of Laws by this, that he
vowed never to accept any civic post. By Kaiser Karl VII,
of unlucky memory, he was raised to the dignity of actual
(wirklich) imperial councillor ; and this cut off all possibility
of entering the service of his mother-town, since he now was
as high in rank as its highest office-bearers.

1 749-54-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 3
Not till universal peace1 seemed at hand did Johann
Kaspar begin to look about him in earnest for a wife worthy
of him. She must be one bright with the perfect bloom of
health, fit to bring forth vigorous sons and daughters; and
she must belong to an old, not wealthy, burgher family of
high dignity. Now Johann Wolfgang Textor, first in point
of seniority among the sheriffs and imperial councillors, had
lately — August 10, 1747 — been raised to the prime dignity
of the city — the Chief Magistracy. He was grandson of the
famous jurist — also Johann Wolfgang Textor — who had, in
1690, been summoned to Frankfurt as First Syndic; he was
son of Christoph Heinrich Textor, Advocate and Councillor
to the Elector Palatine. Since the chief magistrate was of
burgher descent, and not very rich, Johann Kaspar Goethe,
now almost eight and thirty, sought in marriage his eldest
daughter, Katharina Elizabeth Textor, just seventeen on the
19th of. February 1748.
To the young girl it was part of the order of things ; she
did not hesitate even at thought of going with this grave,
digrlified, well-to-do husband to the house of his mother,
Cornelia Goethe, who still, at eighty, bore the household
cares. The honoured widow had fifteen years before bought
for herself and her descendants a house on the Hirschgraben,
and an adjoining building with great cellars, in which there
was plenty of room for the good wine left from former inn-
keeping. She must have been rich, for since 1744 she had
paid 200 florins annual assessment.
So on August 20, 1748, Wolfgang's father and mother
were married. Only two months before his son's birth Johann
Kaspar was enrolled as burgess. But though he became the
Frankfurt representative of one ofthe countless German princes
of the time, he did not enter his name on the list of advocates :
he wished, in retirement, free from business, to live for self-
culture and for his family.
Goethe's father was a man of solid learning, of sober judg
ment ; adhering firm to his will ; stern in carrying out that
will ; and passionate in outbreak of wrath if he thought himself
wronged. But with all his sternness he had a tender, simple,
pure heart, and his most earnest desire was a happy home,
and the crown of children to honour his name. Honest
1 From the War ofthe Austrian Succession. — Tr.

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1749-54- ] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 5
craftsmen had gone before him ; his grandfather, Hans Chris
tian Goethe, had been a shoeing smith in Artern ; one of the
smith's sons had followed the same trade; and one of his
grandsons, a journeyman shoemaker, had since 1745 been
striving in vain for admission to the citizenship of Frankfurt,
and for the right to practise there as master-shoemaker. With
such prosaic records of descent Councillor Goethe longed for
a son — always thought of as a lawyer — of intellectual greatness
to give the one thing lacking — distinction — to the already
wealthy family. And what a splendid reality was to crown
his hope, differing much indeed from what he looked for;
nothing could be less his thought than that he should give to
Germany — to the world — a poet, with genius divinely lighting
up all things, of undying fame.
Though the young mother — hardly more than a child —
brought up to obedient ways, had accepted her upright, re
spectable husband without loving him, it was with firm reliance
for her welfare on his unwavering affection and the Divine care.
Nature had given her beautiful gifts, — a heart, noble, tender,
ardent; perception, vivid, interested; healthy naturalness in
feeling and act ; a joyous trust in God. And none of these
good gifts had been spoiled or wasted in a happy girlhood
spent under the loving care of a young mother, of whom she
was the firstborn, at only twenty, by a husband eighteen years
older. On the contrary, the eager animated goings-on in the
life of her native city — very much stirred just at that time —
would quicken and widen emotions and sympathies, would
develop character. As to things learned in school and from
masters indeed, her education was limited ; music and singing
alone she had brought to considerable proficiency. When
between ten and eleven, an ecstatic reverence for Kaiser Karl
VII. — handsome and good and unlucky — possessed the little
maid ; twice the emperor had to make a considerable stay in
Frankfurt when his capital Miinchen was in the hands of the
enemy ; even more than reverence, a secret love for him grew
in the childish soul, such close ties bound him with her native
city, he was crowned by disaster with such a wondrous halo.
She used to think he noticed her, especially at a time when
he often came through the Friedbergergasse, where the Textors
lived in a castellated house, and used to send greetings and
glances to their windows. Never to be forgotten were the

6 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. i.
wild horns pealing as he passed her home, leaving Frankfurt
for the last time. And when she learnt the death of her
beloved emperor, — he died January 20th 1745 — the keenest
sorrow pierced her soul. Two hours every day till four weeks
were spent, the solemn bells tolled remembrance of the dead,
and their mournful noise shook her with terrible throbbings.
But the pain of the young soul thus living in fantasy was
soon assuaged by warm influences from an external world full
of sunny brightness, for time brought good things to her house.
In her seventeenth year came the quite unexpected elevation
of her father to the Chief Magistracy, the highest dignity of
the city. With her mother and a sister Johanna Maria three
years younger than herself for companions, her young life went
joyously by ; to her father, a rather eccentric man, grave and

Goethe's Father and Mother, from silhouettes taken at the same period,
the fidelity of which was guaranteed by Goethe.
contemplative, always very busy, there was no bond of sym
pathy. And then the delicately blooming, brown- haired
maiden of eighteen, looking out on the world so brightly from
her brown eyes, left her father's cheerful house, especially
cheerful for its large well-cared garden ; and entered the rather
gloomy dwelling of her husband, without a garden, only from
the upper windows overlooking the gardens of neighbours.
During the early part of the young married life thus begun,
the household was managed by the aged mother-in-law, an
earnest insister on cleanliness and order. She was an extremely
amiable,_kindhearted woman; and the happiness in store for
her son in his marriage with the young bright daughter of the
Chief Magistrate was to her unalloyed joy. And though the

1 749-54-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 7
middle-aged husband, passionately fond of teaching, and desir
ing his wife to be proficient not only in music and singing but
in writing, gave the young thing regular lessons, and the hours
were very tedious, she still felt in all this more deeply than
ever the honest truthfulness of his great love.
But what a star dawned for Elizabeth when the son of
her youth was born. Named Johann Wolfgang after an ances
tor of honoured memory ; how much greater was this first
sapling of the united houses of Textor and Goethe to make
the name. Kind Nature gave the boy her best gifts. By his
mother came above all that feeling heart, without which, as
after many years he himself said to Lavater,1 no man is
supremely great in the world of practice or in creative art, and
the place of which cannot be filled by merely intellectual
power. Beaming through his clear brown mother's eyes his
spirit like hers was noble, tender, warm, passionate ; though
like he'rs it healed rapidly from the deepest wounds. By his
young mother, too, came his active imagination, vivid percep
tion, healthy naturalness, and that joyous trust in God which
speaks in the noble words to Lavater, " God, to whom I have
ever been true, has blessed me abundantly in secret"2 Like
his mother, the boy apprehended easily and quickly; like her
too in capacity for silent enjoyment, he was yet insatiable in
hunger for ever new impressions. His genius called unceas
ingly for fresh experience to assimilate and to grow by ; and as
it consumed rapidly, soon exhausted the familiar surroundings;
then a feeling of limitation made it yearn for the enlargement
and invigoration of change. And yet his thoroughly sensuous
intelligence, always desiring actual vision and the bodily pre
sence of things, clung close to the familiar, in so far that deep
down in his heart lived all experiences and feelings ; only the
separate and peculiar images of things could not but blur and
fade fast from that busily mirroring soul : to prevent their total
disappearance their colours must be refreshed.
But Wolfgang had part in the characteristics of his father
also, from whom came his serious fixedness of will and firm
persistence in doing what seemed to him right to be done ;
his serene consciousness of worth, his keen sense of duty. In
Wolfgang, however, beside all these, were deep insight and
1 Goethe to Lavater, April 9, 1781. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Lavater, October 8, 1779. — Tr.

8 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. i.
fiery vehemence, a restless instinctive pressing ever toward
higher culture, a consciousness that he was able to toil ter-
' ribly — " Gefiihl der Kraft zu kiihnem Fleiss," as it runs in
Faust — and the belief that he was born for greatness.
The young mother poured out all her most fervent love
on the beautiful child, sadly weak at first from a very painful
birth, but soon getting on capitally, to the great joy of his
parents, who felt in him a bond of nearer union. A year and
three months later the family wealth was increased by the
birth of a little daughter, named Cornelia, after Grandmother
Goethe. This little sister of Wolfgang had fine gifts, deep
seriousness, penetrating intellect, a loving susceptible soul, and
between brother and sister grew a tender union, which, in the
years spent together under the strict schoolmastership of their
father, was drawn closer and closer. The children often went
to the house of their grandparents Textor, where the fine
garden was a real blessing to them, or to the new home of
their mother's younger sister, Johanna Maria, married since the
end of 1751 to the druggist Melber. At no other houses
were they familiar visitors. With the half-brother of their
father, Alderman Hermann Jakob Goethe, there was no very
animated intercourse : still he was godfather at the christening
of Wolfgang's young brother, November 27, 1752. In the
same year the master-shoemakers were excited almost to in
surrection at thought of the admission to their rank of the
already-mentioned journeyman, Christof Justus Goethe ; the
refractory masters were put under arrest, and Christof Justus
"was at last successful in January 1753.
For that younger brother little Wolfgang cared far less
than for his sister. With her he used to play up and down
through the house, now in the wide spaces of the great entrance-
hall, now in the apartment curiously latticed from street and
hall, called Gerams, and now in grandmother's sitting-room
overlooking the courtyard.
This kind grandmother, now growing daily weaker, pre
pared a great delight for the boy in a puppet-show of David
and Goliath, which she caused to be exhibited to the children
on Christmas Eve, 1753. It was like a blessing at farewell
from the good old woman, now in her eighty-sixth year. Some
three months later she died suddenly when going to bed.
This death could, of course, make but slight impression on

1 749-54-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 9
the child, not yet five years old; still it was of great importance
in shaping the home-life of the future.
Only the prospect of rebuilding had enabled Rath Goethe
to put up with the gloom, the odd corners, the irregularity of
his house ; there was not even room enough in it, the com
panion house being let to a law-student named Clauer, son of
a former Keeper of the Town Archives. The children had
generally been kept in the family sitting-rooms, during summer
weather they were allowed to stay in the Garden-Room on the
second story, above the courtyard. It was a great delight to
Wolfgang to look from this room across the town gardens and
walls into the distance of the level country spreading down the
Main towards Hochst, to watch from these western windows
the ever new glory of the sunsets ; yet the delight was mixed
with loneliness and yearning at sight of the merry play, the
free coming and going of children, or the laughing, talking
groups of older people in the gardens from which he was shut
out. However, his father had a vineyard near the Friedberger-
thor, to which he sometimes permitted his son to accompany
him ; there, at about his sixth year, the boy was present at the
joyous ingathering of the grapes. The design of the rebuild
ing was now carefully thought over, and all distant preparations
for it were made, but there could be no real beginning until
after the birth ofa child expected in September (1754).
Wolfgang's father, who observed his easy grasp of knowledge
with great joy, put him early in harness, and tried even to
make play-hours bring fresh store of knowledge. When, by the
father's urgency and the boy's natural bent, the difficulties of
learning to read were conquered, lesson books in rhyme were
introduced ; a geography, the rhymes in which, barbarous, and
therefore amusing, were most easily fixed in -mind, and Cel-
larius's Latinitatis Liber memorialis. On these and other
exercises of memory there was strict insistance. Also with
especial pleasure the father related to the eager, precocious
boy, from the history of his mother-city, much which was con
nected with existing buildings, customs, and names. But
Wolfgang listened with far greater tension of interest and ex
citement to the stories of his mother, who, with her kindly
sympathy and vivid imagination, quite carried him away.
How she did rejoice when his wide open eyes glowed with
earnest sympathy, when his breast throbbed to the great heart-

10 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i,,ch. I.
beats, and his parted lips were eloquent with unspoken emlotion
and foreboding. Thus his mother was the first educator of
the inventive, plastic poet -power which dwelt within him.
And the popular chap-books too, on unsized paper, which he
could get for a few kreutzers at the bookstalls near the cathedral,
had even at that early time a fructifying effect on his busy
imagination. There was in the Frankfurt blood a great delight in the
old traditional festivities which ushered- in the half-yearly fairs,
and in the picturesque various activity of the fairs themselves.
Even grave Councillor Goethe, to whom from his youth these
had been familiar splendours, could not restrain the children
from a full enjoyment of them, and this especially because
Grandfather Textor, as Chief Magistrate, had always to take a
distinguished part in them. Goethe, only a few years before
his death,- recalled with delight how he and his sister gave
money, and bread-and-butter, and coloured eggs, to the masked
Three Kings at the Star-singing, to the Shrove Tuesday singers,
and to those who announced the coming of the swallows ; and
he thought, too, of the autumnal harvest festival, which, at a
later time, was merely a religious ceremony. Of delightful
festivals without the town, in which the children took part from
a very early age, he names the Shepherd Festival at the Grind-
brunnen, and the so-called Cow-dance on Pentecost Tuesday at
the Pfingstweide, which last was forbidden in 1758. So the year
in its course brought the children many a merrymaking within
or without the old Imperial City.

CHAPTER II.
FROM THE REBUILDING OF THE GOETHES' HOUSE TO THE
OUTBREAK OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.
1755, 1756.
On the 6th of March 1755, six months after the birth of his
second daughter, Rath Goethe handed in to the Town Council
a plan of his proposed rebuilding ; a week later he gave notice
that, in order to build according to this plan, he would throw
down and build afresh that companion house to the north
which has been mentioned before. There was some hesita
tion about permitting this portion of the building, which would
thus be completely new, to have, like the old main-house, a
projecting second story, so the final decision of the Council
was not made known till the 25 th of April. Immediately the
neighbour house was thrown down, and the foundation of the
new building laid in the old cellar. The corner-stone was
placed by little Wolfgang, clad as a mason, a trowel in his
hand, the master stone-mason by his side directing. Props
were put against the main house, the gable wall on the ground
floor was to be renewed, part of the old roof was taken off.
The building gave all kinds of fun to the children. But since,
in spite of all defensive erections, the rain would come through
the breach in the roof until even the beds were drenched, it
was necessary to send the children to live elsewhere, with their
grandparents, or with cheery Aunt Johanna, and for lessons
they must go to school. This absence from home meant,
especially to the boy, greater freedom, and he used it to make
a wider survey of the city.
In accordance with the modern taste the house was to be
made comely without as within. In place of small round

Fig. 3. The House in which Goethe was born.

1 755-5°-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 13
windows came larger, with clear glass panes, then a special
adornment. The front wall was quite changed, square red
sandstone slabs were used for sills, etc., of the hall door, and
of the six windows on the ground floor ; on the windows of
the upper story these slabs were imitated by painting the
plaster. And the windows of this first row were protected
with the cage-lattices at that time usual, curving elegantly out
wards. At the top of the hall door
— the hall door was now placed
midway along the front of the house
— was a small window with a pro
jecting lattice adorned by cunning
smith -work ; beside flowers and
parrots there was a crown, and
beneath it the initials of the master
of the house. Above this, on the
keystone, was the coat of arms of
the Imperial Councillor, which he
also wore as a seal ; the upper half,
like that of the Textor family, had , . , ,
... . J? Fig, 4. Coat of Arms on the
a man visible to the knee, ready Goethes' House.
for combat, brandishing a drawn
sword in his right hand, and with neck-scarf flying; below
was a beam slanting from right to left downwards ; set on
this beam were three lyres lying obliquely lengthwise one
after another. This lower part of the coat of arms perhaps
connects with that Friedrich Georg Goethe, who cared for
dignified appearances, and who was such a lover of music.
Wolfgang, when a Leipzig student, thought so little of the
three lyres, that instead of them he introduced commonplace
shields in a coat of arms which was attached to a landscape
of his own etching, dedicated to his father.
At present his father was in the best spirits, all had gone
so well. To Wolfgang was given, all for himself, a com
fortable, large room, looking out on the street on the third
story next the roof; yet the opposite houses were so high that
the sun rose late to the child. Now earnest study was to
make up for delay and interrupted lessons. To the Young
Latin Scholar of Cellarius was added a book by John Amos
Comenius, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or The Visible World, the
picture-book of the time with the German and Latin names

14 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. ii.
for everything of land, or sea, or air ; and perhaps at this time
were undertaken a few of the two hundred Useful, Amusing,
and Remarkable Narratives and Discourses from the Most Cele
brated Greek and Latin Authors to be found in Heidegger's
Acerra Philologica. " Merian's Folio Bible with pictures, and
Gottfried's Historical Chronicle with Merian's copperplates,"
also came at this time into the hands of the eager boy.
And the work of arranging the household treasures, which
was purposely protracted, engaged the attention of the children
in many ways. First, their father's large collection of books
was divided between his study on the second story and a
room on the third story ; then the pictures, in dark frames
striped with gold, were hung in a precise order in the room
with three windows occupying the middle place on the second
story; the views from Rome, the geographical sheets, etc.,
found a place on the walls of corridors and passages; art
objects of many kinds — chief among which were those from
Venice, the splendid specimens of glass-work, the model of
a gondola, the bronzes, and the weapons — were, with almost
painful carefulness, placed on the shelves intended for them
The ingathering of the grapes was hardly over when the
world was horror-stricken by tidings of the mighty earthquake,
during which, on the ist of November 1755, a great part of
Lisbon was swallowed, and a vast tract of land and sea rocked
to and fro. All the pulpits zealously improved the terrible
occasion into a judgment of God on a world lying in wicked
ness. Each tale of the desolation of Lisbon was followed by
another more terrible, and the apprehension plain in all around
affected the intelligent boy ; but it was soon driven away by his
healthy tone of feeling, and by the conception of a benevolent
Deity, deep implanted within, and strengthened by his mother's
care. By Bettina it is told of him, that after hearing a ser
mon about the earthquake, he replied to a question from his
father : — " God knows well that by ill destiny no injury can
come to the immortal soul;" evidently a reference to the
gloomy notion that the souls which had passed away in their
sins were lost for ever. Grandmother and mother had accus
tomed the children, while still very young, to regular prayers.
In an exercise written out and translated by Wolfgang in
January 1757, it is told how the children, when their hair was
brushed, kneeling with folded hands, said their morning prayer.

'755-56.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 15
They were taught to go to church regularly, to know the
Lutheran Catechism. But ecclesiastical conceptions did not
cleave to Goethe's soul; to him they were merely acquired
formulas, of which he made such use as one makes of any
traditional theories; within him lived the idea of an all-
gracious and all-wise Creator and Preserver of the world, to
whom reverence must draw nigh by a way purer and more
spiritual than any words ; an indication is the thank-offering,
charmingly described by Goethe himself, offered as the first
morning sunshine fell across his chamber.
The first Christmas in the new house was near when the
youngest little daughter, only fifteen months old, died (1755).
However the stricken parents might sorrow, the children's
Christmas should not lack its brightness,; the puppet-show,
first given by their grandmother, and produced under the
direction of their mother two years before, was repeated now
in a way suitable to their more advanced age, in a company
of others as old as themselves. The audience sat in Wolf
gang's room; the stage filled the doorway of the adjoining
room. This representation interested the boy so much, that
he did not rest until he had penetrated the mystery. He soon
found where the little figures of the puppet-show were kept,
and then persuaded his mother to give them over to him, with
the book of words and the theatre. In the puppet-show story
of Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, most of the details, even as to
the composition of scenes and acts, are a free transfer from
Goethe's own boy-life.
These experiences of a childish theatre, which found more
favour with his mother than with his father, had their value
in training his dramatic faculty. But parallel to them, a
regular schooling ran its accustomed course; for his father
insisted on the fastest possible acquisition of the parts of
education dependent on memory alone, and tried constantly
to add to Wolfgang's knowledge even in his play-hours. An
earnest desire to know all about the various lands of the earth
and their peoples was encouraged in every way. He had
already some acquaintance with the more modern German
poets, which stood calf-bound on his father's shelves, — Flem
ing, Besser, Canitz, Drollinger, Haller, Hagedorn, Gellert,
Creutz; in them he learnt to read — he can hardly be said
to have read them — such is his own account. On the same

1 6 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. ii.
shelves he found Neukirch's rhymed translation of Telemaque,
— even in such a disguise the tale did the child good, — and
Kopp's translation of his father's favourite poet, Tasso. The
first seven books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in a translation pub
lished in Niirnberg in 1698, with engravings by Sandrart, fell
into his hands. Besides the popular chap-books on unsized
paper, among which without doubt occurred that of Faust,
he devoured Robinson Crusoe and Schnabel's Insel Felsenburg.
Certainly now-a-days nobody would let the last-named into
a child's hands ; but the people of that time did not as we do
fear injury to a young mind in the simple naming of natural
things. Wolfgang also came to know the travels of the great
circumnavigator and admiral, Lord Anson, a translation of
which into German had been published in 1749. Thus from
many sources the boy drew rich nourishment ; he was training
early to that restless activity which was to possess him to
the end.

CHAPTER III.
THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.
1757, 1758-
Very soon the peaceful quiet, in which seven happy years of
Wolfgang's life had passed, should give place to the clangour
of a war not to cease until seven more years were gone, a war
sundering native city, and even family, into two almost hostile
camps. Grandfather Textor, who had supported the canopy
over the Emperor and received from the Empress a golden
chain, stood with the larger part of the council on the Imperial
side; Councillor Goethe and the burghers were for Prussia.
Alas ! Vienna influence had gained over the governing body in
Frankfurt ; while its people desired the neutrality, which was
in accordance with Frederick's wishes, and by which the town
would be spared not only the contribution of soldiers to the
Imperial cause, but the march through of French reinforce
ments. Each man in high office looked for an ample share
of favours from the Emperor, — from the "rebellious" King
of Prussia what could be hoped ! On the outbreak of the
war, the Council immediately forbade the publication and dis
tribution of political pamphlets ; and required that " every one
•should attend to his business and calling, withholding himself
from discussion and pronouncing opinions." This was meant
to bridle in the citizens with their Prussian leanings, but it only
made the general mood more bitter, without restraining it from
expression. Frankfurt booksellers, despite the Council, pub
lished praises ofthe heroic Prussian King whom they honoured.
Wolfgang too was full of this enthusiasm, and he could ill bear
the angry censure of Frederick, which he heard every Sunday
at dinner in his grandfather's house ; heard not only from his
grandfather but from his grandfather's new son-in-law, Pastor
c

1 8 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i ch. in.
Starck.1 To hear these hostile things said, and to be com
pelled- to sit without answering was hard, nearly all the pleasure
was gone from the Sundays which had hitherto been so enjoy
able ; but he relieved his feelings by speaking to his father
praises of Frederick more ardent than ever. With great
delight he copied out the war-songs of the day, and he enjoyed
still more the satirical rhymes about the Emperor, which, dull
as they were, made a vivid impression on him. That a whole
league of nations arose against Frederick, made the sympathy
of the enthusiastic boy the more irresistible, and when there
was news of victory, his rapture rose the higher to think of
the odds overcome. Alas ! Kollin followed close pn Prague.2
Beside his father's zealous instruction Wolfgang began to
have some schooling away from home with other children.
At a later time he, perhaps by his father's desire, selected for
preservation a number of exercises then written which he
labelled Jugendarbeiten (Labores Juveniles). Of these the
earliest, belonging to January 1757, are short themes, com
posed in German, then translated into Latin. These "exercitia
privafa," which are quite childish in their style and have
several positive mistakes, must be altogether Wolfgang's own.
To the same January belongs the first of three conversations
written in German and then turned into Latin. These also
can hardly have originated with the father, they seem too light
and humorous for the stern serious man, they correspond well
to the character of the lively boy. The first in order, which'
is probably the earliest, is the happy turning of a real incident.
Wolfgang, when his father went to the cellar for wine, had
wished to go too ; he wanted to see once more the foundation-
stone laid two years ago. His father prescribed to him as a
theme the development of a conversation about this, and he
was then to make Latin of it ; the final fair copy has come
down to us. Wolfgang was delighted with the opportunity
of exhibiting his knowledge. Thus he pressed into service
Horace's fable of the Town and Country Mouse, the story of
which he had read in the rhymes of Drollinger; he also brought
in Damasippus, the dealer in antiques in Horace ; we cannot
1 Textor's third daughter had, November 2, 1756, married Pastor
Starck, nominated with her father's aid to the parishes Niederrad and
Sachsenhausen, soon after appointed Sunday preacher at St. Katharine's. —
DtfNTZER. 2 Prague on May 6, Kollin on June 18, 1757. — Tr.

I757-58.] BOYHOOD U^TDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 19
tell where Wolfgang got this bit of lore. He probably over
heard somewhere the joke of calling very good wine " theo
logical wine " founded on the word-play " vinum consulare,"
" vinum consistoriale." Great skill in the turnings and bright
playfulness are displayed in this dialogue. The second and
third cannot be of much later date. In one the father will
not hear of his son's making animals of wax; the small artist
may praise to the skies the work of his hands ; the father can
see nothing but childish nonsense, it is wasting good wax ; the
figures prove one thing at any rate, that their maker does not
know beauty from ugliness. When the son expresses a wish
to be taught, the reply is that his eyes must grow a little older
first. In the third dialogue, Wolfgang and Maximilian enter ;
it is doubtful who is meant by the latter name. There was a
Friedrich Maximilian, son of the Sheriff and Biirgermeister
Moors, who lived near the Goethes, but if it were this boy, a
younger brother of his, born on the same day with Wolfgang,
would hardly have been left out. Wolfgang had wished to
come some time before the Latin lesson which they both re
ceived at Maximilian's home, but alas ! he has been delayed in
laying the dinner-table and in other preparations for a visit
Maximilian thinks it strange that his friend is not invited to
this entertainment by his parents, but, as a dutiful son, Wolf
gang refuses to consider the matter closely. Maximilian will
hear nothing of all the devices proposed by Wolfgang for pass
ing the time before the lesson-hour. He cannot bring himself
to peruse the Praxis declinationum et conjugationum of Speccius
nor the Orbis pictus of Comenius; even an edition ofthe last-
named in four languages with the German, Latin, Italian, and
French names of things, is without charm to him. He pro
poses fencing or wrestling; Wolfgang, half from childish caprice,
half from fear of the sudden arrival of the master, rejects his
proposals, and here the conversation ceases. What pleasant
peeps into that home-life 1 It may be noted that in his German
composition the boy has in mind the introduction of certain
Latin idioms. In our bundle of manuscript we see too that
his father often dictated suitable stories of the time for trans
lation into Latin ; but indeed Wolfgang of his own accord did
exercises of all kinds. Further, we find a number of so-called
" Stechschriften," from the 29th March 1757 to March 1758,
in which Wolfgang competed with a pretty large number —

20 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. hi.
sometimes twenty-four — of his own age, about twice a month,
for a prize in handwriting, under the guidance of the regular
teacher of languages — probably of the "German school,
writing, and arithmetic master," Schirmer, who was very
popular in Frankfurt. The judgment of the handwriting, fall
ing to each of the parents in turn, came one time to Sheriff
and Bin-germeister von Olenschlager. Wolfgang was first only
once, but generally his copy was among the best. We give
here the subscription to one, where he has written his name
in full. From the Schirmer above mentioned he probably
had lessons in German and arithmetic. Goethe himself says
that in rhetorical things, Chrien and the like, he was best,
though he often had to stand down for mistakes in grammar.

^r^XD f
Facsimile i. From H. Weismann's Aus Goethes Kndbenzeit.
By this time the grim shadow of the war had fallen across the
Imperial City. Frankfurt was summoned to produce its con
tingent of seven district companies. The little army encamped
on the 6th June on the great Fischeifeld before the Aller-
heiligenthor ( " Gate of All Saints ") ; it remained here four
weeks ; thence it marched through Frankfurt and Sachsen-
hausen to the army of the Empire, and did not return till
peace had been made. Beside this military spectacle Wolf
gang several times saw the march through to which French
battalions, as auxiliaries of the Emperor, were entitled. There
was great joy among all the friends of Prussia in the short
days of November (1757), when at Rossbach the French and
Imperial troops were disgracefully beaten. A month later
the splendid victory of the Prussians at Leuthen (Dec. 5th>
1 7S7)> was followed by the capitulation of Breslau.

¦757-58.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 21
Rath Goethe's life was very happy just then. In March
1757 had been born a little daughter whose beauty and
sweetness won Wolfgang completely. The two elder children
grew and thrived, though Cornelia was somewhat tried by her
father's teaching mania. By this time the Councillor had
begun Italian with his daughter, that beloved language in
which he had, with the aid of an Italian master of languages,
even written the earlier portions of an account of his travels.
Wolfgang had to commit to memory his Cellarius in the
room where, under their father's tutorship, his sister was get
ting her first Italian lessons : it must have been winter, else
the boy could have stayed in his chamber next the roof. As
he used soon to know the portion of Cellarius appointed, he
had time to listen over the top of his book, and very quickly
obtained some grasp of Italian, yet he made no very extended
advance, though he used with his sister to learn the tasks set her.
Their mother was a model of a bright, busy, loyal Ger
man wife and matron; she shared with heartfelt sympathy
the joys and sorrows of each of her family circle ; still there
was special delight and pride in the glance which rested on
her Wolfgang who was growing up so well. She was already
rather intimate with the devout Susanna Katharina von
Klettenberg, who however, had not yet joined the Moravian
community. Fraiilein Klettenberg was niece of the wife of
Frau Goethe's great-uncle, Major and Town-Commandant
Johann Nicolaus Textor. To the cheery natural tone of
feeling of Goethe's mother, the pietistic tendency was some
thing quite alien, though she had been habituated to its note
in the hymn phraseology of the day. We give here her
contribution to a Fraiilein von Bellersheim's Album, on the
plan of which Bogatzky's Golden Treasury of the Children of
God was drawn up. Beside Frau Goethe, other people be
longing to the Klettenberg circle have made entries, mostly
in the years 175 2-1 7 54.
Spring 1758 saw the internal arrangements of the house at
last complete. On May r the Councillor had various things
which were only in his way publicly sold, among them some
woodwork, the old Gerams, three house-clocks, a violin, an
ebony German flute — these musical instruments were probably
left by his father — a number of law-books, of books on practice,
and historical books. So Wolfgang had experience of an

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. I. CH. III.

auction in the house of his parents, at which he had to bear a
hand and help his father.
Wolfgang had in March begun to translate some exercises
which the Conrector ofthe Gymnasium had set to several head-
class boys for imitation of the historian Justinus. Dating
from his birth-month, August, we find " Morning good-wishes?

Facsimile 2. Entry in an album, by Goethe's Mother, here for the first time printed
from the original in the Hirzel " Goethe Collection" in the Library of the University
of Leipzig.
of each day, which Wolfgang himself had " thought out and
wished for dearest father." They are in German only, until
the 14th, then from the 15th to the 17th Latin and German,
from the 18th to the 20th Greek takes the place of Latin,
after the 20th Latin holds its own to the end. The Greek
is written without accents, and is evidently the production
of a mere beginner. One of the German " sentences " is a
hexameter. A little further, on a new page, we find seven
"New Good-Wishes" all in three tongues, Greek, Latin, and
German. Here the Greek is generally accented, but has
mistakes in spelling and grammar. Farther on, we meet
Hosea, chapter vi. verse r, in German, French, Latin, and
Greek ; there are mistakes in the rendering into the two
latter languages. Perhaps they had only just been received
into the regular course of instruction when these translations
were made. Finally, the manuscript has a " Guide to the

I757-58-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 23
German-Hebrew Language" (rather "Handwriting"), an indi
cation that the boy had perhaps at this time overcome his
dislike of the " chosen people." -But instruction in German
was not forgotten. It was a delight to his father to see
Wolfgang read the most instructive poets of his library, though
to himself their rhymes had not the charm ofthe Italian. The
absence of rhyme in Klopstock's Messias made that poem a
torture to him. How the Bavarian Agent Schneider smuggled
in this poem ; how the children revelled in it, particularly in
the Dream of Portia, even more in the gruesome dialogue
between Satan and Adramelech ; how their recital of this
dialogue was near causing a dreadful accident ; and how after
this a stricter veto than ever banished the offending Messias,
is generally known from Goethe's own narrative.
The winter evenings were usefully spent. Rath Goethe
disapproved of cards and other round games ; as entertain
ment he had an instructive book read aloud ; and he saw
that it was read to the end, however tedious the children
found it, for his maxim was " Always finish what you have
begun.'' The serious man carried out with unwavering
decision everything which seemed to him beneficial. Thus
he himself gave the children lessons in dancing, to which he
would play some air on a fltite douce in three-quarter time.
But however his many whims and hobbies plagued them, the
children had a reverential attachment for one so earnestly
intent on their welfare. Their fullest love and desire indeed
was towards their young mother, who laughed and rejoiced
with them, taking life so cheerily. What a charm her
presence breathes in Herma7in und Dorothea ; where too the
Host of the Golden Lion has some touches of Councillor
Goethe. Intimate as the Goethes were with so many well-to-do
families, the children had no lack of companionship of equal
age. Here Wolfgang was prominent, his great talents, the
skill inherited from his mother to delight willing listeners with
exciting stories, and a certain air of distinction, gave him
mastery even over boys older than himself. "We were
always the lackeys," said the elder Moors, the neighbour and
friend of Wolfgang whom we already know, in after years to
the Frau Rath. And when his mother once represented to ¦
Wolfgang how he distinguished himself among his companions

24 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. hi.
by the upright carriage inherited from his father and by a
certain dignity, it is said that he replied : " he might make a
beginning with that ; later on he would distinguish himself in
everything." Another time, it is related, he called on the stars
propitious to him for their aid, adding a little later that what
sufficed for other people would not suffice for him. We must
picture the boy in the Sunday suit described by Goethe him
self, with hair curled and powdered, with locks standing out
well from his head, hat under arm, sword at side, a long
silken ribbon running through the bow at its hilt, great silver
buckles on his shoes, fine cotton stockings, black serge
breeches and some pretty coat and waistcoat. We would not
guarantee that these last were the coat of green barracan with
gold facings and the waistcoat of gold brocade described in
the child's tale The New Paris. He does not himself
mention the hair bag which he wore according to the not very
reliable account of Bettina von Arnim. Bettina sends him on
visits to acquaintances in dress-coat, silk stockings and shoes,
only when at home wearing surtout, long trousers, and boots.
All clothes were made at home ; his father would not take a
man-servant who did not understand tailoring.
On Sunday afternoons Wolfgang paid visits to his young
friends, with whom he had many other meetings too, both for
schooling and for play. Among them, we know, were the
two neighbour boys Moors ; the second son of Olenschlager,
born 1751, — his elder brother was deaf and dumb; — and a
boy called Hiisgen, four years older than Wolfgang. Also
with Karl Allesina von Schweitzer, the son of a rich trader, he
seems to have been by this time acquainted, and indeed with
many children of the middle class. That Wolfgang could not
conceal a certain pride in his grandfather's high dignity
excited the ill-will of many boys, and they vented it on him in
various ways. The worst was when one of the malicious
fellows taunted his father to him with being the natural son of
a man of high rank How the thought of this excited him is
told at length by himself; in his childish fantastic brain he
felt pleased by it, not understanding the shame of such a birth.
In any case in this intercourse with others of his own
age there would be no lack of boyish scuffles ; but at that
time nothing could appeal more strongly to children's delight
in mimicry than playing at soldiers and war, in which

'757-58.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 25
Wolfgang was of course always on the Prussian side. Goethe
mentions these " Parteiungen, Gefechte und Schldge" ("factions,
fights, and blows "), as closely connected with the armoury
which he, with the help of a servant, had stocked for their
dramas and tragedies. But indeed the drilling of the Frankfurt
contingent, and the marching through of French battalions,
would have excited the boys to play at soldiers. The dreadful
battles of Zorndorf (August 28th, 1758), and of Hochkirchen
(Oct. 14th, 1758), stirred the young souls : they little thought
how soon their own city would be a station for French
troops. It was Goethe's grandfather Textor who conducted
the negotiations with Vienna attendant on this.

CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE ENTRY OF FRENCH TROOPS INTO FRANKFURT-
AM-MAIN TO THEIR DEPARTURE.
1759-1762.
The festivities of New Year's Day, 1759, had been
cheerily celebrated. At noon on January 2d, 7000 French
soldiers entered Frankfurt, under a plea of a march through,
to which only one battalion at a time was entitled. They
overpowered first the Guard at the Affenthor in Sachsen-
hausen, then Major and Town-Commandant Textor, in pre
sence of the Constable Guard at the Bornheim Gate, then
the Guard itself; finally the main Guard within the town.
Thus by concerted treachery the hereditary enemy of the
Imperial city (though now her Emperor's ally), entered into
possession for the first time. The severe burden of quartering
soldiers fell on the citizens. Councillor Goethe had to give
up his ground floor, so handsome, the earliest furnished part
of the house, to King's Lieutenant Thorane, from Mouans,
near Grasse in Provence. Personally this man was kind-
hearted, highly cultivated, a lover of art ; but as an officer his
action was based on the theory, that citizens are to receive
with contented mind any insults which it may please officers
their lords to inflict. And the Frankfurt Town Council was
not strong enough to protect the rights of the people. The
betrayed city was treated as if it had been acquired by con
quest. Councillor Goethe, a good Frankfurter, who cursed
the French and those who let them in, was galled by constant
reminder of the fact that he was no longer master in his own
house. With his troubled spirit, he could not continue to give
to the teaching and culture of his Wolfgang the loving careful
ness of earlier years. Wolfgang had lost his dear room at

1759-62.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 27
the top of the house, for Thorane had appropriated it as a
studio for Frankfurt painters, from whom he ordered a set of
pictures to adorn the castle of his brother. In the first fort
night of this hated occupancy occurred the death of Wolf
gang's long-ailing brother, Hermann Jakob, in his seventh
year; there had been no very close bond between the
brothers. With the beginning year had been found a special
master of the ancient languages in Scherbius, at a later time
to play an absurd part as the butt of the Frankfurt Lokalposse.
At the end of that manuscript mentioned above (p. 22) are
some passages for exercise in Greek and Latin dictated by this
Scherbius. The Greek is still very faulty.
The stirring doings at home and the excited military
liveliness of the city were a great delight to the bright boy; his
regret that these enemies of Frederick were masters of Frank
furt forgot itself in careless light-heartedness the more easily
. as he gained greater freedom thereby. His mother tried to
accommodate herself to these changed circumstances, which
had their extreme unpleasantness for her too — circumstances,
the blame of which was laid by so many, including her
husband, on the shoulders of her father — and she strove after
her fashion to mould them into something tolerable. From
Diene, the interpreter lodged in the house, she got lessons in
the to her as yet unknown language of the unwelcome but so
cheerful and courteous guests. Nor did her boy let slip the
opportunity of improving his French. The occupation of his
native city was a new agency indeed in his whole culture, as
is always the knowledge of a foreign people, especially one so
civilised as the French. Alas, however, the French garrison,
in which were many Germans, introduced the greatest depravity
among all classes. Though Wolfgang had been brought up
by his father in delicate purity, and though the proud serious
ness which scares away inconvenient jesting and unseemliness
had breathed its power upon him, there were yet traces of
the light life now surrounding him left when it had passed
away. Hope in vain was roused in the Frankfurt partisans of
Prussia by the approach of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
who, collecting his army at Fulda, marched towards Frankfurt.
On April 13th, 1759 — it was Good Friday — the French,
under Broglio met him at Bergen and defeated him. Coun-

28 THE LIFE OF GOETHE-Mfc. [bk. i. ch. iv.
cillor Goethe, in order to welcome the exgHcted victorious
Prussians, had betaken himself to his viney«I .Qutsi.de the
Friedberger Gate. The grim disappointment oF the issue sent
him back to the city gloomy and morose, and when he saw
the Prussian prisoners and wounded his wrath became frenzy.
In the evening the matter came to a head in an < outburst of
passion on the King's Lieutenant ; and but for the prudence of
his agonised wife, and of the interpreter, he woifldlhave been
severely punished. His mood henceforth was the bitterer
that he had thus hardly escaped chastisement, and that there
was less hope than before of a speedy dislodgment of his
overbearing guests.
Soon after the occupation of the town, at any rate during
the Easter Fair, which began on Tuesday the 17 th of
April, French actors played "par permission de Monseigneur
pie Markhal Due de Broglio et de Messieurs les Magistrals de la
ville libre de Francfort" in the extemporised theatre, the
funghof on the Rossmarkt, near the Hirschgraben ; and these
French actors gave place every second day to German actors.
During former fair-times Wolfgang had been spectator of not
only puppet-shows, but of real acting ; now the free pass
which his grandfather had secured to him the longed-for
opportunity of frequently seeing the French drama. It was
some time, however, before his father would yield to the
urgency of Wolfgang and his mother, who laid stress on the
advantage of becoming familiar with the language ; they were
more likely to influence Rath Goethe thus than by any
reference to culture in a wider sense. The Frau Rath, who,
knowing minutely her husband's ways, had great power with
him, trusted in this indulgence, as in others accorded at a
later time to Wolfgang through her influence, that his good
disposition and friendly Destiny would save him from harm,
and her trust was not misplaced. Wolfgang became
familiar with many pretty operettas, the current comedies
of Destouches, Marivaux, and the tearful La Chaussee',
Diderot's Hausvater (Pere de Famille) ; and in tragedy, Le-
mierre's new play Hypermnestre. All this was especially pro
fitable in that it sent him to read Racine. So many frivolous
representations would indeed have been only too well calcu
lated to shake his moral structure, had there not been counter-
agencies at work : the serious dignity of his father ; the pure

1759-62.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 29
noble instinct of his mother's heart : the deep tender soul of
his sister Cornelia, with her bright intelligence. With this
sister he was left quite alone, when in August 1759, the sur
passingly fair little girl who had been such a delight to him
died in the third year of her short life.
He visited not only the French but the German theatre.
Goethe himself relates, that in argument with his father he
appealed to the good examples in Lessing's Miss Sara
Sampson and in Der Kaufmann von London (a German
translation of Lillo's tragedy). His frequent recourse to the
French theatre had meanwhile another important issue. At
first, while he still understood the language but imperfectly,
he used not to sit out the representations, but spent a
considerable time playing about the theatre doors witir other
boys. It was thus that he made towards the close'-1 of the
year (1759) the acquaintance of one boy whom he had seen
several times on the stage, a bragging lip-hero, who brought
him behind the scenes.1 There, when dress was being changed
or assumed, he saw much that was unseemly, and often indeed
improper behaviour.
An important aid in culture was the intercourse with the
painters employed by Thorane. Some of these he knew
already, for his father had had dealings with the native artists
of Frankfurt ; but now they had taken up their position in
his own room, where he could be present not only during
their conferences with the Count, but while they were at work.
He learned a good deal by asking and listening ; after a little
he even suggested subjects for pictures.
In the beginning of 1760 Rath Goethe complained to his
father-in-law, the chief magistrate, that Thorane, with his new
pictures, was taking every room in the house ; but it was no
light matter to order off a king's lieutenant, and nothing was
done. A christening-feast of the Pastor Starck saw new com
plaining rise to a violent war of words between Rath Goethe and
the chief magistrate ; it is said that the former in his passion
cursed the gold which Textor got for treachery, and cursed
the men who had let in the French. Then Textor flung a
knife at his son-in-law, who drew his sword, so the story runs,
and only with great difficulty did Frau Textor bring about
reconciliation. 1 Derones. — Tr.

30 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. iv.
It may be asked why Councillor Goethe did not, under
the present circumstances, send his son to the Gymnasium 1
With the rector Albrecht, very learned, but very shrewish,
proof against all the charms of nature and the world, he was
on the friendliest terms. Albrecht was a declared foe to all
private schools and private tutors, and even in his programmes
expressed with his own peculiar bitterness his anger against
people who would not see the advantages of a public
school. But many there were at that time who thought that
the Frankfurt Gymnasium taught nothing but insolence and
wrongdoing; and as the rector stood ill with the school-
governors above, and with the masters beneath, nothing was
done to remedy the crying evil. So the causes which pre
vented Wolfgang's father from entrusting him to the Gym
nasium were, first, a reasonable care for the boy's moral
purity ; then an old, at one time firmly- fixed, dislike to the
Frankfurt institution (we have seen his own father send him
to Coburg) ; more efficient probably than either, a conviction
that Wolfgang's wonderful powers ought to be developed by a
very rapid many-sided training.
He had allowed himself to be moved only so far as to
employ a Gymnasium master to teach the ancient languages.
In this, however, Latin was preferred far before Greek ; in
the latter, Wolfgang's utmost skill was to read the New Testa
ment. Wolfgang seems to have hardly glanced into Homer.
He had learned something of the great poet a couple of years •
earlier ; but, alas, only through the New Collection of the most
remarkable Tales of Travel, brought into Historical and Geo
graphical Sequence and Order, by a Committee of Savants.
This book, which he found in Pastor Starck's library, had
begun to appear in stately quarto volumes, in 1749, at Frank
furt. In the seventh volume (1754) there was a prose trans
lation under the definite title, Homer 's Account of the Subjugation
of the Trojan Kingdom. It had engravings of Troy heroes in
modern knightly costume ; the spirit of poetry was not in it.
Meanwhile, the theatre engrossed more and more Wolf
gang's time and thoughts. He even confesses an attraction
towards the sister of his young French friend. She was older
than either of the boys, "an amiable but silent girl;" she
received his attentions with pleasure, and that was all. Having
constantly gained ground in the foreign language, he felt

1759-62.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 31
urged by his delight in the half-myfhologic, half-allegoric after
pieces which he saw, to compose something like them ; and
the achievement was easy to his imagination, stimulated by the
passage of kings' daughters, and gods, and heroes across the
stage. It was perhaps just then that he first read the account
of the heathen gods, as set forth in the then current Pantheum
mythicum of the Jesuit Pomey. Of course the young French
braggart let play a chilling criticism on this performance of
Wolfgang ; it was an opportunity of making well felt his supe
riority in knowing the language and the faultless literature of
France. One result of his improving remarks was, that Wolf
gang sought to gain some clear views on the three so-called
Unities of the French stage. To this end he read Corneille's
Second Discours sur la Trage"die, and the prefaces in which
Corneille and Racine have expressed themselves on their
plays. From such data he formed his concept of the French
drama, and even began, as we know from himself, to write a
piece in French Alexandrines, but the project soon lapsed.
Reading German poets constantly meanwhile, it is not
wonderful that an impulse to do as they had done grew with
his growth ; and it was the more imperative, since to compose
in one's mother-tongue seems so easy. He mentions the
passion for making rhymes and verse which at private lessons
he had observed to be excited in other children by reading
the more modern poets of Germany ; at an early age he himself
1 found it delightful to pass from rhetorical to poetic treatment of
his exercises. Besides the poets already named, he was drawn
towards the so-called Anacreontics, — Gleim, with his Versuch
in scherzhaften Liedern ; Uz, with his Lyrische und andere
Gedichte ; Weisse, with his Scherzhafte Lieder. In verse so
light and flexible, of such fugitive import, he could turn off
poems with great rapidity. Towards sacred poetry, too, his
restless imitative faculty was applied. On the model of the
hymns set to the hymn-book tunes he wrote his own, and
thought that they were at least as worthy to be set and sung
as their prototypes. At the Sunday gatherings of the young
friends with whom He kept up a steady intercourse, more and
more independent of parental supervision, there was com
petitive recitation of such verses. Of course each thdught
his own lines the best; but on one occasion, the task of
producing extempore verse being imposed, Wolfgang reaped

32 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. iv.
a harvest of unanimous praise. And all these more or less
happy attempts aided the development of his mastery of words,
of his general power of conception.
Before the early-ripe boy was twelve years old, it seemed
good to his father to have him confirmed : much steadying of
character might be hoped to result from the ceremony. The
Sunday-preacher of the Grey Friars Church undertook to
prepare Wolfgang. This man was looked on by Rath Goethe
as the best clergyman of the city — Dr. John Philip Fresenius ;
he died so soon after this as July 4th 1761. Fresenius laid
great stress on Oral Confession ; all he wanted, however, was
an acknowledgment of sin in general terms ; there was an
introduction to the subject in his Book for Confession and
Communion. A gentle spiritual rendering of the truths of
Christianity, not the ossified thing of standing formulas and
propositions, would have edified and elevated the keen young
mind always striving after the real direct presentation of
things, and interpenetration of souL But this dead formula
knowledge, with no relation to an actual need, seemed to him
distasteful and unworthy. So this early endeavour to give
the boy a definite religious stay through union with the Chris
tian body missed the mark
Soon after, Councillor Goethe's many complaints about the
burthen of quartering imposed on him had perhaps success, at
any rate ceased, as Thorane in June 1761 left Frankfurt for
some time. To be secure from further imposition, the Coun
cillor had to make up his mind to let his ground-floor. An
old friend, the Circle Ambassador, Heinrich Friedrich Moritz,
from Worms, Director of Chancery of Solms-Rodelheim, a
man who lived only for his business, occupied with his small
quiet family the apartments vacated by Thorane. Frequently
this new inmate's younger and livelier brother, the Danish
Councillor of Legation, Johann Friedrich Moritz, likewise a
Circle Ambassador and Resident, paid a visit He liked talk
ing with Wolfgang, and taught him mathematics. He belonged .
to the pious Klettenberg set ; a Herr von Biilow, who excluded
women from his Sunday meetings, was just then its apostle.
The boy now got back his dear room at the top of the house.'
Rath Goethe was bright and light-hearted, since his late causes
of vexation were gone. On the eve of his son's birthday, he
joined the brothers Moritz in petitioning the Council to aid in

1759-62.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 33
the purchase of firewood for the poor, who were suffering much
from the general high prices : the petition was unsuccessful.
In this year (17 61) died step-brother Hermann Jakob, member
of the Council and tin-founder, who too had been prominently
hostile to the French ; as he died childless his inheritance fell
to Rath Goethe.
Lessons, which had been rather irregular during the last
two years, were now resumed with fresh energy and wider
field. English was learned by the children, with their father's
earnest approval, in four weeks from a master who professed
celerity. Lessons in mathematics, drawing, the piano, and
perhaps singing, were added. The little mother could play
and sing, and she was often called on to accompany the sing
ing of the Italian master of languages already mentioned.
Councillor Goethe, whose father, as we know, was a lover of
music, liked playing both lute and flute. It does not appear
that Wolfgang made much progress in piano-playing ; perhaps
the ability to play on the flute, which we know him to have
had at Leipzig, was acquired in these Frankfurt days. He
was now beyond the need of writing-lessons ; this the careful
copying out of his poems had done. That his exercises in
various languages might have more attractive contents, he
devised the imaginative form of a novel which should consist
of letters written in different languages by several brothers and
a sister. The introduction was to tell how the life together at
home had gone until the brothers went out into the world,
only the youngest remaining with their sister and parents.
The sister writes telling all the tale of household and home ;
the Benjamin of the family adds an occasional humorous letter;
while the brothers from the various places where they tarry for
their culture send home each an account of his journey or
his abiding. When Wolfgang wanted to give the sister the
true girlish note he thought himself into the soul of his own
sister ; and to make her write, telling him as if he were far
away all about herself and her life, must have been no small
delight to the young poet. The eldest brother in this novel,
apparently on a journey for culture only, tells what he has seen
in good German. The theologian of the family writes to the
father in very formal Latin, with occasionally a postscript in
Greek. To the brother, who is a clerk at Hamburg, is given
English ; to a younger brother at Marseilles, French ; to a
D

34 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. iv.
musician travelling in Italy, Italian; probably to the last
named language there was more attention paid just then ;
the youngest — the stay-at-home — for his own peculiar use
had betaken himself to Jew-German. Thus, even here, was
manifest the powerful poetic formative instinct by which the
boy, now fast developing into the youth, was always compelled.
Of dramatic creation there is next to nothing.
Meanwhile the Pietists, Herrnhuters, and other Separatists,
had gained a strong footing in Frankfurt Since Fresenius, the
most influential clergyman in the city, had declared himself
strongly opposed to these wilful off-branchings from the general
body of God's servants, there was the more anxiety to know
the position which Fresenius's successor, Plitt, would take.
Especial subject of conversation was the course of sermons
announced to be preached by Plitt between Trinity Sunday and
Advent (1762); in which he meant to develop a certain re
ligious system. Hearing the talk, Wolfgang, always mentally
active and ready for new efforts, conceived the notion of pro
ducing an exact transcript from memory of these sermons ; he
had already performed feats of the kind. He listened carefully
in church, and noted certain hold -fast points; when service
was over he hurried home, immediately dictated to his father's
secretary the whole sermon, and was able to hand it in before
dinner. His pleasure in this performance indeed soon ebbed,
for the sermons had little to attract him ; but his father, whose
maxim, as we know, was "Finish what you have begun," would
not have him break off until the course ceased. However
his transcript shrank continually from its first fair proportions,
containing at last only the text, the general theme, and the
heads. About this time Wolfgang and his sister took part in acting
some French and German plays. Their neighbour von
Olenschlager had occasionally dramatic representations in
the hall of his house ; his second son and other children
of the same age were the performers. So Wolfgang played
the hero of the then favourite Canut of Elias Schlegel; in
Racine's Britannicus he was the emperor; his sister was
Estrithe and Agrippina in either play ; young Olenschlager
Ulfo and Britannicus.
In this year (1762) Hebrew was enclosed in the widening
circle of acquirement. Since in the Jew-German to be repre-

1 759-62-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 35
sented in his polyglot novel many words are borrowed from
Hebrew, Wolfgang begged his father to have him taught the
old language in its purity; the Rector of the Gymnasium,
the Albrecht already mentioned, was the man for this. In
spite of the tiresomeness of reading difficult characters and of
learning forms and paradigms by heart, Wolfgang was for a
long time kept staunch to this undertaking by his teacher,
until at length impatience hurried him away from the
language of the Old Testament Books to their matter. Then
after the first half-hour he used regularly to break out with
his questions and doubts, by which the rector, helpless to
meet them, became at length much troubled. However, he
sent Wolfgang to the great Bible Commentary in his own
library, and in this book the boy often buried himself until
night surrounded him. At length the rector even gave him a
volume to take home, that he might more at his ease find
explanation — explanation which, it may be remarked, left him
for the most part unconvinced.
He had been early used to do many commissions for his
father. For instance, he was employed by the latter to make
purchases at the auction of the Art Collection of Baron von
Hackel (died Jan. 1760 — there was a lawsuit about the Baron's
inheritance), and the boy had had to stay at the auction from
beginning to end. He had made some small bids on his own
account too. More tending to culture than such a commis
sion were the appointments at which he met painters and
goldsmiths, where he gained clearer and more exact know
ledge of all that has to do with art. We hear of his valuable
intercourse with Juncker, the painter of sixty ; how he learned
much about jewels and their setting from frequent visits to
the goldsmith Lautensack, which he made on account of a
beautiful new snuffbox ordered for his mother, to be worn at
the peace celebration festivities. And he often went to the
goldsmith Scholl whose silhouette plate and pantograph inter
ested him. Appended is one of the silhouettes then taken.
Often the boy visited the great oil-cloth factory of the painter
Nothnagel, where he saw the painting of flowers of all kinds,
of landscapes and of figures, grew familiar with the activity of
many younger and older workers, nay probably at times used
the brush himself.
A peculiar trait of Goethe connected with his craving for

36

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. i. ch. iv.

Fig. 5. After the Frankfurt
Gedenkblatter an Goethe.

rich suggestion and living experience, is his love of intercourse
with older men of ability, though the idiosyncrasy might differ
from his own, even to opposition. He
names three such men each with his
share of oddity, but of sterling value ;
no doubt his adhesion to them was the
firmer because of the flattery of their
peculiar fondness, and their high expec
tation of his worth; more than their own
children they loved him, and each would
have been glad to see in him the
realisation of a cherished ideal. We
have already met the first of these, the
Sheriff and younger Btirgermeister von
Olenschlager, " a handsome, agreeable,
sanguine man," whose disposition was
to court and state affairs ; and so he
wanted to make Wolfgang, with whom he
was often very confidential, a fine courtier : any attempt to dis
tinguish oneself as poet seemed to him very little worth. The
two others were more repellent natures. The Polish and Saxon
Aulic Privy-Councillor, Friedrich Ludwig von Reineck, of an
ancient noble family, through his stubborn self-will had fallen
out with every one; his own daughter had fled from the tyranny
which had destroyed her happiness. This gloomy hater of man
kind often asked his son's household playmate, young Goethe, ¦¦
to dine with them. He would have been only too glad
to win Wolfgang to misanthropy; instead of this, inter
course with the charming gifted boy calmed and softened}!
him and developed the benevolence which lay beneath his
external acridity. Of poetry, he of course knew less than
Olenschlager ; he wished to direct Wolfgang to a diplomaticj
career, and accordingly talked to him much of the inter-J
national affairs of the world. The third in this discordant'?
trio was the Brandenburg-Ansbach Councillor and Anhalt-
Kothen Aulic Councillor and Agent Friedrich Wilhelm
Hiisgen, a decided pessimist, whose face was repulsive by the'
disfigurement of pockmarks and the loss of the left eye. But
Wolfgang, while very young, came to know him, and drew
closer and closer to him as time went by ; the man attracted
him so by wide knowledge, by cheerfulness and order of

I759-62.J BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 37
surroundings, and even by their loneliness ; the only son, then
of but little promise, clave altogether to his mother. Husgen
was an excellent jurist, but being a Calvinist could not
practise as advocate, and only in very important matters
would people make use of him for consultation. Like
Wolfgang's father, Husgen hoped to see the boy a lawyer yet ;
a trade, he said, necessary that one may defend one's own
against the pack of scoundrels called mankind : that there
may be some one to stand by the oppressed ; and, perhaps, to
expose the rascal, though that is not always either easy or
profitable. But also intercourse with younger friends, life spent in his
wide branching family and its large circle of acquaintances,
helped to stimulate in Wolfgang a fresh joyous power of sym
pathy. And yet at this period (1762-3) he was deep in the
Bible idyll of patriarchal life, a whole new world of poetry to
him. As for the manifold contradictions which he found in
the Holy Books, he cleared them all easily enough after his
fashion. From a very early age the touching story of Joseph
had a deep charm for him ; on subjects drawn from it he had
already designed and minutely described twelve pictures, some
of which had been really executed by friendly painters. Now,
a literary poetic treatment of the story hovered before his
mind's eye, only the suitable form was wanting, for the verse
of the Messias he thought too stately and measured. Since a
distinct portrayal of the religious life of the patriarchal time
would be necessary, it seemed to him of great importance to
know the present customs of the Jews. The race had on a
first acquaintance excited in him strong repulsion, but he had
long ago put off his dislike ; and he was not content until he
had not only visited their school, but been present at a
circumcision and a wedding, and got a peep at their Feast of
Tabernacles. And he now had a friendly greeting for the
pretty Jewish maidens who on the Sabbath went to walk on
the Fischerfeld, the Council having ordered that " all Jews
and Jewesses should absolutely refrain from walking on the
Rossmarkt," where polite society took its exercise.
By the 3d of November 1762 a provisional peace put an
end to the war by sea between France and England ; three
weeks later Austria and Prussia made a truce, though only
within the bounds of Silesia and Saxony. In December

38 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. iv.
1762 Frankfurt was freed from her French visitors, who for
almost four years [since January 1759] had domineered
over and ill-treated her; who had thwarted her justice,
scorned her freedom, and debased her morals. In the
occupation of his native city by the talented frivolous neigh
bour race there had been much gain for Wolfgang's culture ;
but the evil air had at least blown on the delicate bloom of
boyish purity, and if happily no disease was the result, he had
been saved by the good moral discipline of his father, the
love of his mother, the noble heart of the sister who clung to
him so tenderly, and his own healthy nature.

CHAPTER V.
FROM THE CLOSE OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR TO WOLFGANG'S
DEPARTURE FOR LEIPZIG.
I763-I765-
In honour of the sudden peace concluded February 15th,
1763, the Frau Rath was presented with the snuff-box, which
through Wolfgang's unceasing urgency had been at last
finished ; it was adorned with diamonds and an image of Peace.
In March the festival music composed by Capellmeister Fischer
was performed ; as to which the report ran : " The author ofthe
words is a distinguished poet," — perhaps the same "famed
poet of our city " wkD had supplied the verses for the
" Thanksgiving and Harvest-festival music," performed in the
beginning of November 1762. Our Wolfgang was not
excited to any poetic jubilation by the long anticipated peace.
To his heart just then lay nearer his Joseph of the Eastern
patriarchal time. The fitting form for his idea had been
indicated by Friedrich Karl von Moser's prose heroic poem,
Daniel in der Lowengrube (Daniel in the Lions' Den) just
published. He had long thought out the details of his work, the
far lands in which the action lay had grown very familiar to him,
and he now flung himself eagerly on the complete development
of it. Bound by no restraint of verse, aided by the external
peacefulness, even exaltation of the time, he moved on rapidly ;
and then the happy progress freshened his ardour. It was,
moreover, his good fortune that he had not to write down the
poem himself, but could dictate it to a young man of weak
mind then living in the house, who liked writing very much.
This was that Clauer, who before the rebuilding had lived in
the Goethes' neighbour house, and to have to leave it had so

40 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. v.
pained him that he became deranged. Rath Goethe, interested
in him, had later on taken him in again : he acted as a kind
of scribe. It is said that the youngest sister of Goethe's
mother — the sister who married Pastor Starck — had been
intended for Clauer. Wolfgang made use of him; to him
had probably dictated Plitt's sermons. When Joseph was
happily finished, it occurred to the young author to add a
number of such earlier efforts as seemed worthy ; with the
whole collection, under the name Vermischte Gedichte
(Miscellaneous Poems), he meant next New Year's day to
delight his father.
Meanwhile his father had with great energy urged on the
boy's culture, had even already begun the special training to
the law. He had placed in Wolfgang's hands Examen institu-
tionum imperialium, the work — composed in question and
answer form — of whilom Professor Joachim Hoppe of Danzig.
Wolfgang was soon quite at home in this book. Beside this
ran a diligent study of the Latin classics, while Greek, as not
useful to a lawyer, fell back. In this year (1763) probably
began lessons in fencing and riding; for this father would
have his son early skilful in all bodily exercises. Swimming,
however, Wolfgang did not learn : inland Germany then cared
little for it. His beginnings in skating too belong to a later
time. Now greater freedom being yielded to him, he lived a
merry life with his playmates, and engaged in some not very
, dreadful youthful sallies. Among his young Frankfurt friends
we find none of remarkable gifts. The boy drew gladly to
wards joyous, kindly hearty companions, among whom he.
could throw off reserve. Some of these we have already met;
here we shall make the acquaintance of two others, who just
at this time emerge into greater importance. They are good-
hearted, witty* Johann Jacob Riese, three years older than
Wolfgang ; and Johann Adam Horn, always ready for fun and
mad tricks, called Hornchen (Hornkin) because so small of
stature. Both were to devote themselves to law studies at
the same time as Wolfgang. In close intimacy with them
was a certain Kehr, who was for some time a private tutor;
to whom Goethe later on sends greeting from Leipzig.
Now too, perhaps, he made the acquaintance of Johann ,
Bernhard Crespel, who had been brought up in the Jesuit

V^-tS-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 41
schools, and who while still in the cradle had been appointed
Councillor by Prince Thurn and Taxis. Born in Frankfurt
two years before Wolfgang, and having been long absent from
his native city, Crespel was now in the later half of 1763
living there with his father, a rich jeweller. Goethe's friend
ship with his fellow-townsman Klinger must have begun about
this time, for Goethe in his last years referred to having
played near the pump of his father's house with Klinger, who
was three years his junior. Klinger grew up amid hard cir
cumstances : his father having died early in the boy's life, he
had to earn his bread for a time by manual labour ; but his
talent was noticed by Professor Zinck, who had him received
into the Gymnasium, where his progress was quite correspond
ent to the great expectations of him. To Rath Goethe's
home the general stir about the poor young scholar would be
one passport of admittance ; another being that Klinger's father
had been in the service of a now dead friend von Lersner ;
von Lersner's eldest son was godfather to young Klinger.
Of girl acquaintance in friendly families there was no lack
to the charming bright, gifted boy. His sister had grown
very intimate with the three carefully educated daughters of
the rich merchant Gerock, all older than herself; they enjoyed
life in easy comfort ; the second seems to have been extremely
attached to Wolfgang. Then there were Crespel's two sisters,
also friends of Cornelia ; the elder, Maria Katharina, was some
days older than Wolfgang ; the other, Franziska Jacobea, more
than three years younger. There was, too, delightful intimacy
with Charitas Meixner from Worms, who stayed for her educa
tion three years with her uncle, Councillor of Legation Moritz.
Cornelia herself, to whom he was attached with the most
confiding affection, loved natural cheerfulness and a free open
manner speaking the real heart meanings; a cold bearing
emptied of all feeling, was as distasteful to her on one hand
as, frivolous lightness on the other. No one could with deeper
recognition than she greet and love the pure presence of a
noble soul growing and opening free as a flower to the air,
and so her devotion to her brother was noble and comprehend
ing. By her personal dignity she ruled the circles in which she
moved though her features were not beautiful or imposing; a
deep regret to herself. But her eyes were, as Goethe says, the
deepest kind, behind which one expects the greatest things, and

42

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. I. CH. V

when they expressed good-will or affection there was nothing
like their shining. We give here a picture of her hurriedly
sketched in 1773, by Wolfgang, on the wide margin of a proof-
sheet of Gotz. The mode of arranging hair then customary
makes even longer the arched brow with which she was herself
so impatient; the great
likeness to her brother is
plain, but the sharp emer
gence of the outlines pro
duced by the head-dress,
the prominent eye, and the
definite eyebrow and nose,
contribute to give a certain
sfrongness to the counted
ance. Goethe himself relates,
with the plainness peculiar
to him, how he about this
time had made the ac
quaintance of some young
people of low social stand
ing, who misused his verse-
making powers to play mis
chievous practical jokes.
He tells how he made little
excursions in this company
to Hdchst, no very great
distance ; on one of these
excursions they introduced
an acquaintance of theirs
to Wolfgang, who asked ¦
his grandfather to give to
this stranger a place just
then vacant. In one of the homes thus opened to him,
Wolfgang met a girl named Gretchen somewhat older than
himself, and he became much attached to her. Once having
forgotten his house-key he had to spend a night with the set—1,
Gretchen included — in a sitting-room. Then they made a
trade of selling the verses which Wolfgang produced; and still
his passion for the girl grew, though she was far from encour
aging it, on the contrary constantly gave him good advice.

Fig. 6. After : Goethe's Briefe an Leijtziger
Freunde ; Herausgegeben von Otto Jahn.

1763-65-] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF 43
Passavant, a friend of Goethe in later life, knew that the house
in which Wolfgang met Gretchen was close to Peter's Church,
which, with its large churchyard, was situated in the northern
part of Frankfurt.
Meanwhile his father urged with unabated vigour his legal
and general studies. Probably by this time the little Hoppe
had been replaced by Jurisprudentia Romano- Germanica for-
ensis, written by the Jena professor, George Adam Struve, dead
since the end of the seventeenth century. Now again, after
eighteen years, Frankfurt was to see the Election and Corona
tion of the German King ; and so Rath Goethe thought it well
with his son to go over the daily accounts of the last two
Elections and Coronations, in order to make clear to the boy
the additional capitulation conditions of this occasion, and
the significance of this important Imperial Ceremony on the
whole. By the end of November 1763, it was known that
the Electoral Assembly was to begin its sittings on January
4th, 1764, at the old place, Frankfurt — not Augsburg, as at
first arranged. By decree of the Council an official on horse
back, accompanied by four trumpeters also mounted and a
guard on foot, proclaimed in twenty-one parts of the city —
and thus of course near the Hirschgraben — this ordinance ; —
"That all contracts with strangers about houses within the
city should be void during the Election and Coronation, and
that the said houses should be placed at the disposal of the
City Quartering Committee for the new-comers of the time."
Heinrich Friedrich Moritz had soon after the departure of the
French left Rath Goethe's first story ; it was now given to a
chevalier from the Electoral Palatinate who came in January ;
and the upper story was given to the Niirnberg Counsellor
Kb'nig of Kbnigsthal, who did not come until February. So
the family found its quarters for a short time narrower than
even during the French occupation.
In order that his father might hear what was going on
Wolfgang had to spend a great deal of time from home ; he was
even required to write little themes on what he saw. Every
where bustle and life, especially since these days of splendour
coincided with Shrove-Tide. There was Italian opera, there was
French comedy and German drama, there were magic lantern
exhibitions ; every kind of spectacle indeed, beside no lack of
public and masked balls. Amid all this Wolfgang found

44 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. v.
many opportunities of meeting Gretchen. The postponed
electoral assembly began on the 4th of March ; the , elective
capitulation was settled by the 9th; on the 21st took place
the public entry of the Elector Bishop of Mainz ; three days
later that of the two other Ecclesiastical Electors. On the
26th all strangers had to leave the city, for next day should see
the actual election. Then on the evening ofthe 28th arrived
the insignia of the kingdom ; on the 29th the late chosen King
was solemnly received. A festival of thanksgiving and rejoic
ing on the ist of April was followed by the coronation on the
3d. How on that evening Wolfgang, in partial disguise, with
Gretchen on his arm, saw the splendid illumination, is described
in detail in Dichtung und Wahrheit, and how, when late that
night, he parted from Gretchen at her door she for the first
and last time kissed his forehead.
Meanwhile it had been notified to the Town-Council that
in the Record Office (Gerichtskanzlei) monies had been pur
loined ; and that other underhand work had been going on ;
in all which special guilt was laid to the charge of that assistant
who had last year been appointed at Wolfgang's recommenda
tion. When examined, he revealed how he had come to know
Wolfgang, the kind of company kept by the latter, and how he
passed his evenings. When all this was told to Wolfgang's
father he was terribly stirred. With difficulty Frau Rath per
suaded him to give the questioning of Wolfgang to their in
timate friend Schneider (the smuggler of the Messias), who was
so fond of Wolfgang. Almost half a century later Goethe, with .
great freedom of treatment, tells how, the morning after the
coronation, Schneider, with tears in his eyes, came to the dear
room on the top story ; how sorrowful questioning was at first
met by hesitation, by evasion — how at last full confession to
the old friend was seen to be the best. The statement that
every kind of deceit played its part in the subsequent inquiry
has been refuted by an examination of the Criminal Registers
of Frankfurt, which have come down to us entire. It was a
great pain to Wolfgang that people should know of his intimacy
with such companions ; a still greater that so rude an end was
put to his loving intercourse with Gretchen. He gave himself
to the tempest of his grief: he could not go when his father
invited him to see the last festivities of the Coronation time.
Only when on April 1 2, their bitter reminder of his sorrow

1 763-65.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 45
ceased, could he be persuaded out-of-doors. According to his
own account his pining lasted long; and at length it was thought
well to bring into the house a friend of his older than himself,
who had until lately been tutor with people known to the
Goethes ; the room next Wolfgang's was given to him. This
may have been a certain Miiller who seems to have been in
timate with the family of Johann Friedrich Moritz. Two years
later Wolfgang wrote that while Muller loved him he had
supported his weakness, shared his joy, scared his gloom away.1
In Dichtung und Wahrheit Goethe goes on to tell how this
guardian, by repeating Gretchen's words, " I have always looked
on him as a child," brought about the crisis of his melancholy-
fever ; for she then seemed to him a selfish coquette — still his
heart was often tortured by the beloved familiar image of her.
That with this friend he went through the history of ancient
philosophy we may perhaps take as matter-of-fact statement of
the truth ; also that on long walks in the summer woods he
tried his hand at sketches of the landscape, which, though im
perfect and irregular, gave great pleasure to his father. Then
his father ruled lines round each sketch, wishing to compel the
draughtsman to completeness and thoroughness; — whereas
Wolfgang, who only cared that certain things which he had seen
should be represented, had not in the least wanted the pictures
to be complete or thorough in themselves. We further hear
that in this friend's company he went to Homburg and Kron-
berg, climbed the Feldberg, where the wide view filled them
with fresh longing for the distance ; Wiesbaden and Schwal-
bach he also visited ; saw from the bordering heights for the
first time the silver stretches of the Rhine ; wondered at the
splendours of Electoral Mainz ; and then home, content and
calmed and gladdened.2
At any rate, we may suppose that Wolfgang, with that gift
which was his through life, recovered from this shock sooner
than the Autobiography would lead us to believe. Then,
though a mysterious whisper may have run through Frankfurt,
telling with the usual heightening the story, how the dignified
child of such wonderful precocity had fallen into bad com
pany, in which story a girl would play an important part, still
1 In a letter written in French to Augustin Trapp, dated " ce 2 du
Juin 1766." Derjunge Goethe, i. 15-17.— Tr.
2 Dichtung und Wahrheit, vi. Buch.' — Tr.

46 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. v.
this new thing would, like every other, soon grow old. And if
many a spiteful fellow was glad at Wolfgang's calamity, and
the m'oralisers were horrified for the time, still all must have
been soon forgotten as a childish escapade. The physician
Senckenberg, whose account of so many things, and especially
of all relating to the Chief Magistrate Textor, is harsh and
biting, has not a word to say of this Gretchen episode. In a
letter, of date seven weeks later than the painful discovery of
his secret, we meet such a calm composed Wolfgang, that we
cannot believe in an agitation of the enduring kind described
in Dichtung und Wahrheit. This letter relates to a Junglings-
bund of the time.
The young E.K.L. Isenburg von Buri1 had at the estate
Neuhof on the Main, almost three leagues from Offenbach,
founded a Secret Society (Geheimbund). It was called the
Arcadian Society (Arcadische Gesellschaft), after the Roman
Society (Accademia degli Arcadi), of merely literary purpose. It
was dedicated to God and Virtue, and on its seal was an Apollo
with lyre and aureole. The date August 22, 1759, assigned
for the founding of this society, seems perhaps intentionally
placed too early ; for Buri was the first President (Archon) of
the Bund, and no one under fifteen could be Archon. A
candidate to be received into the Society's membership must
be over twelve and of " the proper worthiness." The Archon
by himself was the first grade ; the three next were the Prae-
positors (Aufseher), then the Noble Freemen (edle Freien)
— who must be of noble blood and who had all the rights
of the Proctors, — third, the Freemen (Freien). None of
these grades could exceed twelve in number. Lowest of all
was the grade of the ordinary members — the Commons (die
Gemeinen), with no limit of number. At a later time, girl
members appear. Four times in the year there were meet
ings; on the 14th of February ; the 20th of May; the 2 2d
of August; the 15 th of November. The alternating place of
assembly was called Philandria — probably Love of Man
kind, not Love of Men is meant. The Archon might of his
own authority enroll members. Young Archon Myrtill — viz.
1 Bom June 1747 ; his father was Friedrich Karl Buri, ennobled in
1753. first Directorial Councillor, then Privy-Councillor oflsenburg-
Birstein and Governmental Director (Isenburg- Birsteinische Direktorial-, ¦',
spater Geheimrath und Regierungsdirektor). — Duntzer.

J763-65.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 47
Buri, the founder — tried to get grown-up men and men of
high rank for his Bund, and with considerable success ;
Prince Ludwig, of Hessen-Darmstadt, five months older than
Wolfgang, was already a member. Wolfgang heard much
praise of the Society from his friend von Schweitzer, who,
under the name Alexis, was a Praepositor (Aufseher) of the
Bund. Still it was not in response to this friend's wish —
expressed probably about the time of the Gretchen trouble —
that Wolfgang joined. The resolve to do so was most likely
clue to his father. After the Frankfurt meeting of May 20th,
1764, Wolfgang, tired of endless delay, applied direct to the
young Archon. The letter, dated May 23d, 1764, was
dictated to a scribe, probably Clauer, from whose idiocy no
understanding of the contents was to be feared. The com
position of this remarkable letter is unusually formal. Since
Buri, it says, must be aware that his merits have drawn hearts
to him in lands more distant than the writer's, he cannot be
astonished at the boldness of this letter. To the writer it
were the deepest sorrow to be constrained to silence — to a pro
longation of merely in secret revering Buri's great qualities —
" Not one of those friends of mine who know you thinks that
I shall be successful. Perhaps a little envy has something to
do with this. But this moment the very best reason occurs
to me ; you will have no intimacy with a human being of
imperfections such as mine, lest you should be called to
account for doing so. Your Excellency (Ew. Wohlgeboren)
must know well that we are only too glad to conceal our
faults, when we wish to draw near to one whom we revere. I,
however, am like the suitor in Rabener in this, that I make a
preliminary confession of my sins. I know, of course, that the
time spent over this rambling stuff will seem long to you ; but
what help for it ? you must become aware of this fault of
mine either before or after acquaintance. One of my chief
defects is, I am rather hasty — you know what choleric tempera
ments are, do you not? — but then no one forgets an injury
more easily than I. Further, I am used to giving orders ; but
where I have no authority, I can let things alone ; and I will
readily submit to such a jurisdiction as yours must be. At
the very beginning of my letter, you will find my third fault ;
— I write to you in a way familiar as if I had known you for a
century, but it cannot be helped ; that is another habit which

48 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. i. ch. v.
I shall never be rid of. I hope that your spirit, which is not
the slave of such puerilities as Ceremonial will pardon me the
absence of it ; though, believe me, I never neglect the due
tribute of respect. A last item occurs to me ; I have one
thing more in common with the character mentioned above —
I am very impatient and cannot bear to remain long in
uncertainty. I beg you to come to a decision as soon as
possible. These are my cardinal sins. Your keen eye will
detect a hundred more, which, however, will not, I hope, banish
me from your favour, but everything will speak for me, and
my faults as well as my zeal will bear witness to you that I
remain, etc. etc." In a postscript he adds that he is about
the age of Alexis, of whose conduct in putting him off, feeding
him with hopes from day to day, he complains bitterly.
Three days later Buri, with polite waiving of the compliments
of the letter, referred Wolfgang to this very Praepositor
Alexis, from whom Buri would await a report. But Alexis
implored the Archon " for God's sake not to connect himself
with Goethe," whose vices (Laster) have been to Alexis a
reason for not making him known to the Archon, and who is,
therefore, now " turning recta " to the Head. Laster points
direct to the bad company that Wolfgang had kept, of which
Schweitzer must have heard, then as Arcadian Shepherd of
Virtue turning his back on the goat ; beside there was
personal grievance in Wolfgang's bold setting aside his
mediation. If Wolfgang's petition had shown a certain
stiffness, his reply to the Archon on the 2d of June was a com
plete outpouring of himself ; that reference to Schweitzer
made him hopeful; he had no suspicion of an evil report
from his friend. We give in facsimile this reply — the
first complete preserved letter from Goethe's own hand
Buri and Schweitzer do not seem to have had any further
negotiations ; the former merely tried to put the matter off.
When he answered Wolfgang on the 25 th of June, he excused
his delay by alleging visits from many great people. But the
ingenuous Archon, instead of admitting Wolfgang immediately,
as he should have- done were there truth in his words, observed .
that in the portrait of Wolfgang drawn by Schweitzer, he
could not find' anything but what was worthy of admittance
The collection of preserved letters of the Bund unfortunately
breaks off with this June of 1764 ; yet from what is extant it

1763-65.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 49
is evident that a higher age to qualify for entrance was about
to be set ; the standard proposed was sixteen. By such a new
standard of age a cunningly tacking young Archon could
comfortably set aside a Goethe guilty of Laster. A Bund of
Virtue of so dishonest practice might well be henceforth
contemptible to Wolfgang. Such treatment must, of course,
fill him with wrath, besides he would soon have turned his
back on this hollow Pharisaic Bund, which protested that its
honours were not for Birth, but for Virtue and Merit, and at
the same time divided its Noble Freemen (adlige Freien)
from its Burgher Freemen. To Wolfgang the whole business
was a new bit of sad experience.
Summer found him no longer self-condemned to solitude, but
able with fresh bright spirits to enter into the old cheery life
in the always widening circle of friends and acquaintances.
Yet with all his overflowing cheeriness and lightness he enjoyed
..discussing moral problems with his young friends ; very eager
often was the contest with those whom he knew well. A year
after he had left Frankfurt his friend Horn writes to Moors
that " Goethe is a greater philosopher and moralist than ever;"
and reminds Moors what solid seeming Goethe could give
to merely probable grounds of belief; there is also a reference
to his pride.
Then there was the sweet attraction of Charitas Meixner,
through whom he came to know young Trapp, her cousin from
Worms. That Wolfgang's life at this time was not lacking in
joyousness is plain from letters of the after Leipzig time to
Riese; in one he sighs for "the youths and maidens his friends,"1
in another sends general greeting to the maidens of the city.2
& or did- Wolfgang's adherence to friends of riper age slacken;
chief among these was Olenschlager, with whom, when writing
the Elucidation of the Golden Bull, published 1766, Wolfgang
spent much time. Wolfgang's compatriot, Johann Georg
Schlosser (born 1739), held to be a bright example of well
applied academic study, was by April 1762 back in Frankfurt,
a doctor and advocate at three and twenty ; but Goethe will
at this time hardly have seen anything of the serious man.
Councillor Goethe zealously urged on the legal training of
1 Letter to Riese, 28th April 1766. Der junge Goethe, i. 13. — Tr.
2 Letter to Riese, 6th Nov. 1765. Der junge Goethe, i. 12 (end of
letter).— Tr. 35

50 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. , [bk. i. ch. v.
Wolfgang, who felt little inclination for jurisprudence, and
refrained from downright refusal to study it only because he
would not shatter all his father's plans. The Councillor would
sometimes describe the course of study which he had marked
out for his son, to the torture of the latter, who cursed the
law in secret. But Wolfgang's close study of the Latin classics
gained much approval. Yet more, he longed for the most
comprehensive knowledge ofthe wide domain ofthe sciences,
and so he flung himself on Gesner's fsagoge in eruditionem
universam, on Morhofs Polyhistor literarius, and on. the
Dictionnaire historique et critique of the brilliant sceptic and
sneerer Bayle. He was much stirred by the Briefe die neueste
Literatur betreffend, the joint production of Lessing, Nicolai,
Mendelssohn and others, which had been coming out in Berlin
since 1759, and by the Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften,
of which Weisse had since the same year been the conductor ;
these showed him the higher standpoint which criticism had
won above the narrow-hearted limitation, the uninteUi§a^|
dulness of Gottsched. With the older literature of Germany
too he by this time had' probably busied himself; at any rate
the solid excellence of Geiler of Kaisersburg was known to
him.1 And his first acquaintance with the old French writers,
with Rabelais, Montaigne, etc., had probably been made before
this period. With the living French speech he remained
familiar, through the Sunday sermons of the Reformed church
of Bockenheim and the occasional visits of French actors to
Frankfurt. More than all else poetry was dear to him : he felt the
divine inspiration. In one of his Leipzig letters he wrote^f >
course with exaggeration, that in his later Frankfurt period his
hatred had gone out against those who, consecrating them
selves for service in the sanctuary of the Law, had refused ear
and voice to the soft allurements of the Muse.2 Poetic forms
he handled with extraordinary, almost wanton, facility. Though
for the most part producing light playful verse, he could move
with grace and readiness in the grave measure of the religious
1 In the sixth book of Dichtung und Wahrheit, talking of the fault
finding of his Leipzig instructors in dialect, Goethe says : "I was to for
get that I had read Geiler of Kaisersburg." — Tr.
2 See tbe verses in his letter to Riese, April 28th, 1766. Der junge
Goethe, vol. i. page 14. — Tr.

•763-65.] BOYHOOD UNDER HIS FATHER'S ROOF. 51
ode, following in the steps of Andreas Cramer and Adolf
Schlegel. An instance of his skill is the Poetische Gedanken
uber die Hollenfahrt Jesu Christi, written at this period, prob
ably at the request of his uncle Pastor Starck. Wieland's Don
Sylvio von Rosalva was among the poems which especially
delighted him. Wieland's translation of Shakespeare — begun
in 1762 — must have fallen in his way, yet the boy was not
ripe for this great appearance ; which indeed the translator
himself did not estimate aright. Wolfgang was still under
the influence of the French Drama, notwithstanding what
Lessing's Miss Sara Samson and Philotas and even Klopstock's
plays had done for him.
He would fain have gone to the young University of Got
tingen ; Heyne was a special attraction there ; but his father
decidedly objected, and with grave insistance decreed that his
son should, like himself, spend his university days at Leipzig.
?'In this matter also Wolfgang did not venture to chafe his father
by opposition, but the firmer became his resolve to shake
himself free in Leipzig from the profession which was being
thrust on him : to devote himself there to classical literature
—he had put his hope in Ernesti and Gellert; this resolve
he kept secret from every one but his sister.
The Autumn Fair of Frankfurt, after some introductory
prelude on the 5th of September 1765, began on the 9th.
During the Fair or shortly before, in the very last month of
Wolfgang's stay in Frankfurt, his susceptible heart, notwith
standing sad experience, was thrilling in a new love affair. We
know that before he left Frankfurt he had almost finished a
tragedy — Belsazar, and had read it aloud to a maiden, to please
whom, he wrote in October from Leipzig, was his sole desire.
The piece, like Klopstock's Salomo, on which it was modelled,
was written by turns in Alexandrines and in iambic lines of
five feet, and since this maiden especially liked the latter kind
of verse, he writes that it shall be chosen for the as yet un
written fifth act. " I saw no more of that best of tragedy
maidens," he writes to Riese in the letter spoken of. " If you
don't find out what she thinks of Belsazar before your depart
ure [for Marburg University] my destiny remains in the
balance."1 That is, he means to leave to the decision of this
fair one the question whether he should try his skill further on
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 10. — Tr.

52 ' THE LIFE OF GOETHE. bk. i. ch. v.
this drama. Fear of betrayal had prevented him from meeting
the girl — probably an actress — in a hoped-for last interview
before his departure. Perhaps it is the same girl who is
alluded to a year later in a letter to young Moors :¦¦ — " I have
not to thank for the affection of my maiden [his beloved at
the time, Kathchen] the miserable petty tracasseries of your
ordinary gallant. No retaining gifts are needed with her, and
I look down with contempt on the toils with which I formerly
bought the smiles of a W  "1
However the thought of separation from home, parents,
the beloved sister who would so especially grieve, and from so
many friends, may have weighed on his heart at times, the
escape to freedom was a deep joy. In cultivated Leipzig he
felt summoned to an existence, new, expansive, in which his
spirit might unfold free wings, in which his life might mould
itself as seemed good ; he saw the leaden weight of law-studies
drop from him ; the benumbing religious exercises, to him
unprofiting, would no longer shackle the fresh days and hours.
When on his birthday he wrote verses in the album of his
friend, Friedrich Moors, he signed himself " The Lover of
the Belles Lettres ;" in the verses he ridicules in Voltairean
wise, those people who consider themselves "die beste Welt"
(the unco' guid) ; one of his mockeries is a comparison of die
beste Welt to the "heads of poets."2 This wanton mood was
soon to take its revenge on the self-conscious lad ; he must be
scared back on himself again before his nature could develop
in the splendid blossom of his youthful manhood.
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 19. — Tr. 2 Ibid. i. 85. — Tr.

BOOK II.
STUDENT YEARS
CHAPTER I.
LEIPZIG.
October 1765 -September 1768.
Wolfgang was just sixteen years and one month old, in the
fresh bloom of health, full of bright hopefulness, of youth's
keen pleasure in the present, when in the company ©f book
seller Fleischer — Olenschlager's publisher, he left the city of
his childhood ; to return almost three years later with richer
store of knowledge and experience, but ill, scared back on
himself, half despairing of life.
Leipzig Fair was going on in the early days of October, and
its stir amid which our traveller entered was a delightful re
minder of home. Very interesting to him was his first sight
of the merchants of Eastern Europe, Russians, Poles, and,
above all, the Greeks. ' In the first story of the Feuerkugel,
between the Old and New Neumarkt (now the Universitats-
strasse and the Neumarkt), he hired of the aged widow Straube
two pretty rooms looking out on a court which was also a
thoroughfare. The evident bloom of prosperity, the lofty buildings, the
bustle of life, made a considerable impression on him ; beyond
the city walls the many walks, the large and beautiful gardens
pd pleasant places of resort, seemed pledges of a life of enjoy-
lent. Add to this the capital dinners, by no means dear,
vhich he could not praise sufficiently. Setting dinners aside,
kowever, Leipzig was a dear place to him ; " groschen there
vere as kreutzers in Frankfurt ;" yet it was possible to live at a

54 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
cheap rate, and he hopes to manage the year with 300 thalers
(the allowance from his father?) — ay, even with 200. During
the fair, there were indeed very merry doings; "parties, theatre
going, banquets, suppers, pleasure -excursions." "I cut a
figure here, I can tell you," he writes to friend Riese on the
20th of October, "but, for all that, I am no dandy, and never
shall be. To be industrious here will require an art." Accord
ingly, the object towards which the young student, with his
craving for knowledge, strove was the mastery of this art.
On the 1 6th of October, the new Rector announced with
bell-ringing, formally entered on his office ; three days later
Wolfgang was inscribed a member of the University. On his
arrival in Leipzig, he had handed in his letter of introduction
to the Professor of History, Johann Friedrich Bohme. The
fair over, bookseller Fleischer departed, after having introduced
Wolfgang to many of his acquaintance ; and now only did
Wolfgang venture to tell Bohme that he desired to study
classical antiquity, instead of jurisprudence ; a desire which
Bohme seriously disapproved, and which he certainly would
not gratify without Councillor Goethe's consent. Now for the
first time arose before the lad's mental vision a formidable
barrier of objections, hitherto overlooked. The thought of
his father, violent in anger at such disobedience, of his mother's
and his sister's suffering, while that anger lasted, frightened
him ; and this fear of proceeding to extremity, this feeling of
duty towards those near and dear to him, proved stronger than
his heart's desire. Accordingly, he decided to begin with the
first lectures on Law, on Institutes, and the History of Law;
to which were added, with Professor Winckler, the unavoidable
collegium philosophicum et mathematicum on the system of Wolff;
with Bohme himself lectures on History and an introduction~to
Public Law. Besides, Bohme permitted attendance at Ernesti's
lectures on Cicero De Oratore and Gellert's based on Stock-
hausen's Sketch of a Select Library ; nor did he object to Wolf
gang's interest in Gellert's "Exercises in German and Latin
composition, for the cultivation of understanding and style." At
first, the hot-blooded youth was a diligent hearer, though ira
the History and Law lectures there was hardly anything whicrl
he did not know — a new reason for hating his law studies j
and though he wearied of the unrealities of the metaphysicJ
and logic, while in Ernesti's lectures, really instructive al

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 55
they were, he did not find what he hoped. There was depres
sion too, in Gellert's dry treatment of the History of Litera
ture ¦;' in his narrow-souled discouragement of poetic efforts,
of fresh spontaneous emotion ; in his painful correcting of
mistakes without any helpful indications, without any spiritual
elevation ; in his altogether schoolmaster -like attitude, his
anxious insistence on good handwriting, his interspersing of
platitudes on moral and religious subjects. Once too, Wolfgang
attended a lecture of the much abused Gottsched, and made
merry over the lecturer in wanton verses addressed to Riese.
On the other hand, the excellently conducted theatre of
Heinrich Gottfried Koch gave him much delight. At this
almost immediately he saw with great satisfaction Weisse's
Comedy Die Poeten nach der Mode, in which the father desires
his daughter to marry the suitor Dunkel, who pours out his
soul in turgid hexameters; while the mother favours the
rival Reimreich, who speaks in tame rhyming verses. He
saw with much pleasure too Der poetische Dorfjunker, by Frau
Gottsched, after Destouches, a play which amusingly contrasts
with more modern court manners the antiquated mode of life
of the country aristocracy. Most excellent among the actors
was Bruckner, next to him was Frau Starke ; the " first sweet
heart " (erste Liebhaberin), Fraulein Steinbrecher, was not so
good. Theatre-going had the more charm for Wolfgang since
he had at last set to work writing drama, was busy finishing
Belsazar, while many other subjects hovered before him. The
" Great Concerts " conducted by Johann Adam Hiller, should
be mentioned here as another powerful attraction of those
days.1 He spent many evenings in Frau Bohme's society. The
refined Leipzig lady used with tender courtesy to point out to
him his incorrect pronunciation, and the many irregularities
which she perceived in the picturesque powerful speech of his
Frankfurt home. Improving as this might be, it was rendered
a little hard to bear by the almost invariable presence of
another lady, her companion, by no means as merciful. And
Frau Bohme spoiled all his pleasure in the modern poets,
1 The Great Concert (Das Grosse Concert) had been founded so far
back as 1743. The guidance of it was undertaken by Hiller in 1763.
There were twenty -four concerts every winter. See Keil's Corona
Schroter.—Tx.

56 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
favourite passages from which were so familiar to his lips.
Nor did he himself fare better when he repeated some lines of
his own, without letting her know whose they were. Unfor
tunately he had no friend to tell all his worries to ; no one
could be less fit for his confidences than his poor weak-eyed
fellow-lodger, the theologian Limprecht, an object of charity
to Frau Straube. Though they were good friends, for'Goethe
pitied the poor fellow, sympathising in his lot, and lightening
it with generous gifts, there was in the sufferer no sense for the
joys and pains of the other.
The dinner-table at the house of the Professor of Medicine,
Christian Gottlieb Ludwig, was frequented mostly by medi
cal students, who, like their brethren in all times and places,
talked of little but Medicine and Natural Science. So the
only friendship formed there was with the sometime tutor in
Ludwig's family, the excellent Humanist Morus, a Master of
Arts, thirteen years older indeed than Goethe, a gentle and
amiable presence. Goethe's desire for knowledge of classical
antiquity led to frequent intercourse with this well-stored mind.
Morus touched the weaknesses of the much-prized modern
poets with a criticism keener than Frau Bohme's. And
though this criticism failed, as Gellert's silence had failed, to
take away Goethe's pleasure in these writers, it did make some
change in his practice ; he reviewed his own poems with more
severe judgment.
Among the works which at this time specially interested
him may be noted here the Komische Erzdhlungen of Wie-
land. His ardour for dramatic composition had as the winter
advanced grown thoroughly damped by seeing so many pieces
so different from his win on the Leipzig stage a favour which
he could not hope for his own efforts. But though thus
limited for a time as to original composition, he did not
slacken in his endeavour to gain thorough insight into the
principles of correct taste, inadequate as were the sources
within his reach. Perhaps at this time he read Aristotle's
Poetics in the translation of Curtius (1753) with the many
annotations and dissertations of the translator : one disserta-, ':x
tion was Concerning the Nature and True Conception of the
Poetic Art — (von dem Wesen und wahren Begriff der Dicht-
kunst). In May 1797, after he had sent this book to Schiller,

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 57
he wrote that he had read it thirty years before, but had quite
failed to understand it.
That already mentioned cooling down of his ardour for
authorship had made considerable advance even by January
1766, when a letter from home arrived, commissioning him to
produce a festal poem for the marriage, to take place on the
17 th of February, of his uncle the Advocate Textor. All real
delight in his theme being absent, here was a delicious
opportunity for a show-off piece (ein Paradestitck), and by
bringing in all Olympus he delivered a piece of writing which
could hold its own -beside the other manufactured goods ofthe
day. Not only was there loud applause at home, he even
thought well of the performance himself. In letters to his own
home he could not, alas ! pour himself forth in confidences.
Very glad he would have been to open his heart to his sister,
his chief correspondent, but all they wrote was seen by their
father ; who, indeed, made his daughter a kind of speaking
tube for giving lessons, so that there was a teaching air abotjt;
her letters, and hardly a word in them really from the heaon>
So, too, Wolfgang's letters were mostly on matters of pece(1
gogy, or halted at mere superficial things. The only use
this correspondence was, that his handwriting, injured or
scribbling hurried notes of lectures, gradually improved und^e
the exhortations from home, which fell in with Gellert's on tceci
same subject. rns>
As the lectures gave him less and less satisfaction — trP"
collegium philosophicum had been shipwrecked about ShrovS
Tide by the appearance of hot pancakes at the same time ca
day with it — as his belief in his own poetry faded ; as hr>
more and more bitterly felt the want of a friend, and of thti
delight of mutual confidences ; his mood became a very dark
one ; and his endeavours to win cheerfulness in the open face
of nature proved unavailing. It was at this period that he
cut his initials (J.W.G.) on a linden. Perhaps before the end
of the first • half-year (1765) he burnt in the kitchen fire
nearly all he had written, — outlines, or actual beginnings, or
completed works. In his gloom he did not write even to
his friends. He may have felt religious stirrings at this time ;
he withheld himself, however, from all church intercourse.
Towards the middle of April (Easter Sunday in 1766 fell on the
30th of March) his merry friend Horn made his appearance ;

58 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i,
he too, was going to begin three years of law study. He
thought Wolfgang strangely altered, could make nothing ofthe
" dreamer " (Phantast).
A vivid picture of his state at this time is given in a reply
to Riese, dated April 28th, 1766. His single pleasure, he
writes, is " to lie amid the bushes by the brook " thinking
about those who are dear to him, but even at such moments
the longing for friendly social life does not cease to be
importunate. " I sigh for my friends and my maidens, and
when I feel that I sigh in vain" — here follows in four rhyming
stanzas the description of an imagined storm which rages over
brook and thicket, driving him to " mourn in solitude within
lonely walls." Immediately after this he says : — " But how
merry I am, quite merry. Horn's coming has done away with
a great part of my melancholy. He is surprised at the change
he sees in me." Then he adds in a rhyming strophe, that
/Horn in vain sought a reason for this change, nor could he
animself give any. Then in forty lines of five-foot iambics, —
ane beloved dramatic verse — he launches forth in a very
Mcained description of his feelings; his pride is broken ; when
po: first saw what the fame of great men really is, and how
thceat must be the strivings which attain to it, it became clear
tat him — here there is an extremely forced metaphor — that he
chas quite without the poet's inspiration. Farther on, he
sevvises his friend to put their names down for more lectures ;
f orn attends five lectures, he himself six ! Lastly, he warns
hiis friend against " academic morals." The lectures which he
lattended just then were : — his law lectures ; History of the
xerman Empire with Bohme ; Batteux' book on Poetry and
ahe Belles-lettres with Gellert ; Exercise in Style with Clodius
'- — this on Gellert's recommendation ; finally, Physics with
Winckler ; for the living presence of Nature had already
enthralled him, and there, rather than in gray metaphysical
systems, he sought instruction.
About this time word came from home that Johann Georg
Schlosser having been summoned to attend Duke Friedrich
Eugen of Wiirttemberg at Treptow, as private secretary, would
take Leipzig on his way, and stop there for a while. Perhaps
Wolfgang's melancholy had betrayed itself in his letters, and
his father had asked Schlosser to look after him. Schlosser
stopped with the wine-seller Schonkopf on the Briihl — where

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 59
it is now No. 79. (Frau Schonkopf was from Frankfurt-am-
Main, and during the fairs, one of which began on the 28th
of April, their guests were mostly Frankfurt folk.) Goethe, who
felt a passionate longing to tell everything to this solid many-
sided man, stayed close by him always, joining Schonkopf's
table d'hote for his sake. The lad's fullest confidence was
awakened by the kindness of the serious Schlosser, in whom
high self-respect was accompanied by a restless pursuit of
culture, with austerity on that bulging forehead intervening
between the black hair and black eyebrows ; and he revealed
all his melancholy soul, wavering hither and thither, with no
sure support or stay. Then the elder friend spoke encourage
ment, and roused him from his dreams to serious reflection
and manful composure of soul.
Schlosser showed poems and themes of his own composi
tion in several modern languages to Goethe, who felt a desire
to make like efforts. After Schlosser's departure they became
correspondents, and, if Dichtung und Wahrheit be correct,
Goethe used to send his friend poems in German, French,
Italian, and English, on the subjects they had often talked
about. His letters home, too, were frequently in French or
English; it is not improbable that his sister wrote in the
former language. Still preserved is a letter in French, dated
June 2d, 1766, from Wolfgang to his friend Trapp in Worms,
terminating with thirty-nine Alexandrines. Trapp had com
plained of Wolfgang's silence through a friend who was coming
to Leipzig, and had promised news of Charitas Meixner as a
reward for a letter. Wolfgang complains of his friend Miiller,
who is always talking about the train of lovers of Charitas ;
still Wolfgang is not frightened ; he will try to live worthy of
his beloved ; love alone shall be his guide to the summit of
fortune : —
" Au sommet du.bonheur par lui je vais monter.
Au sommet de la science monte par l'industrie,
Je reviens, cher ami, pour revoir ma patrie,
Et viens voir en depit de tout altier censeur,
Si elle est en etat d'achever mon bonheur."
Lastly, he presses for fuller news of Charitas.
Probably French gallantry had more part in this than real
passion ; another magnet had begun to draw his soul. The

6o

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. ii. ch. i.

cure begun by Schlosser was continued in the happiest way by
the family and guests ofthe little wine-shop ; for he liked his
company there so much that he still went there after his
friend's departure. The most powerful charm was in the
daughter of the house, Anna Katharina, three years his senior;
he*was at this period always attracted to girls somewhat older
than himself. She was called Kathchen ; in Goethe's narrative
she is always Annette or Aennchen. We give here her
portrait taken just at this time. Horn describes her to his

' Fig. 7. Anna Katharina Schonkopf. From Goethe's Briefe an Leipziger Freunde.

friend Moors as a well -grown though not tall girl, with
a round, friendly, if not remarkably beautiful face, and
an open gentle winning manner; as having much frank
simplicity of nature without coquetry, and a pretty intelligence
though she has not had the best education. This pretty, •

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 61
unaffected girl, with her high spirits, her saucy fun, and her
affectionate kindliness, was very delightful to Wolfgang, who
had now forgotten his melancholy and looked forth hopefully
on the world. So delightful was her presence that the
Schonkopf 's house became a second home to him ; he soon
felt like one of the little family, to whom indeed there was no
dearer guest than the openhearted Wolfgang.
Two of his table companions here were of important
influence on his culture. Johann Gottlieb Pfeil, seventeen
years his senior, was the tutor of Freiherr von Friesen, who
had been studying in Leipzig since 1763 ; they both dined at
Schonkopf 's. Pfeil had become well known as early as 1755
by his anonymously published Geschichte des Graf en P  , a
counterpart to Gellert's novel Leben der schwedischen Grafin
von G  ; by his Versuche in moralischen Erzdhlungen ; and
by his domestic tragedy Lucie Woodwill. Pfeil, who was com
pleting his law studies, tried to influence his young friend's
literary judgment ; he specially urged the necessity of weighty
matter and concise treatment Six years older than Goethe,
Christian Gottfried Hermann, son of the Court Preacher at
Dresden, was another important friend. Since 1763 he had
been a zealous student of law ; he was one ofthe most diligent
and steady of the Academic citizens. Wolfgang put thorough
trust in this good friend with his calm precision and earnest
ness ; qualities which did not exclude a disposition to pleasant
merriment. Hermann's importance was the greater in that he
cared a great deal for Art, and had a special talent for
sketching from nature : he thus roused afresh Wolfgang's
fondness for drawing.
Another who took much interest in him was the Naum-
burger, Gottlob Friedrich Krebel, Receiver- General of the
Excise : twenty years older than he ; engaged just then on a
Book of Titles with Special Reference to the Electorate of
Saxony ; a man thoroughly familiar with the genealogy,
geography, and topography, not only of Germany, but of
foreign countries. Always merry, with a bright look in his
clear, somewhat prominent eyes, this big portly man delighted
in railing at Wolfgang after the manner of Falstaff, in rousing
him to wit-combats.
In the evenings there were many other guests at Schon-
kopf's; among them Ernst Wolfgang Behrisch, tutor of a

62 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
Count von Lindenau, a thin, well-built man eleven years older
than Wolfgang, with a long nose, rugged features, but fine
manners. It was very natural that Wolfgang and Behrisch
should become intimate. Each was interesting to the other ;
the youth, scintillating intellect, free and mobile as quicksilver,
compelled the attention of the original being, beneath whose
oddities there was a genuinely cultivated mind and a good
heart. Even Gellert had a very high opinion of Behrisch.
For Goethe this new friend was of the greatest importance,
because, although much of his time fleeted in foolish jestings
and nothings, he remained a faithful friend and a severe
critic. It is true that he sometimes ridiculed the good; but
then there was a spirited opposition which wrought for culture,
and through which real weaknesses were the more irrevocably
damned. Thus our youth had again found his way into a
circle of friends older than himself, by whose rich store of
experience he profited, while through the great differences
of their characters his knowledge of men was widened.
In order to prevent word of his love for the host's daughter
from going to Frankfurt, he sought strange means to veil it
from common regard. He pretended to be enamoured of a
certain young lady, to whom he paid court in the most osten
tatious way. Probably with this affair is connected that change
of wardrobe for which Dichtung und Wahrheit gives another
cause. " He is with his pride a dandy too," writes Horn to
Moors on the 1 2th of August 1766; " and all his clothes, fine
as they are, are in such foolish taste as to render him conspic
uous in the whole University. . . . His sole study is to please
his lady-love and himself. In whatever company he may be
he makes himself ridiculous, rather than agreeable. Just
because the lady admires it he has put on such airs and graces
that one can't help laughing outright. . . . She is a most
insipid being. Her mine coquette avec un air hautain is all she
has to bewitch Goethe with." Wolfgang quietly put up with
all the ridicule, if only he might keep curious eyes off his real
love affair. When Jerusalem, son of the celebrated preacher
of Osnabruck, calls Goethe a coxcomb (Geek) it is perhaps
because in Jerusalem's two years of study at Leipzig (Easter
1765-1767), that period by which he remembered Goethe
was the strange one here described ; but in any case the lad's
sparkling, versatile, or, as Herder wrote to Caroline Flachsland

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 63
in 1772, sparrow-like nature, with such a delight in mad
escapades, could hardly have commended itself to the grave
Jerusalem who was a few years his senior. It needed a more
penetrating vision to recognise beneath that wild or foolish
exterior the earnestness of purpose within, the depth and force
of passion. Of his attendance at lectures in the summer half-year of
1766 we know little. He made Bohme very angry by sketch
ing on the margin of his note-book the authorities quoted in
the law lectures, each with the oddest of periwigs ; the students
sitting near him of course laughed. As for Gellert, it was only
too plain that he knew nothing of the poetry which flows of
itself from a full heart and genuine feeling ; and his silence
regarding all modern poets was felt as an injustice. That
poem written by Goethe in January 1766 for his uncle's mar
riage was later on submitted to Clodius, and underwent sharp
criticism at his hands ; the excessive use of the personages of
mythology for Such a petty human aim was one of the relics of
a very pedantic age, etc. His mercilessness, which would
allow no atom of merit to the poem, embittered Goethe the
more because it was quite easy for people to find out whose
was the poor piece of journeyman work they were laughing at.
In the spring of 1766 was published the Laokoon of Leas
ing, an important event to one so anxious for light as Goethe.
Painting and poetry, hitherto supposed to be dominated by
the same laws, now had their boundaries exactly determined ;
no doubt of their essential difference was henceforth possible.
Probably about this time, and perhaps at Schlosser's instiga
tion, he read William Dodd's The Beauties of Shakespeare Selected,
a second edition of which had appeared in 1757. In these
beautiful separate passages untranslated he felt far more than
in Wieland's German the spiritual presence of the great poet,
whom henceforth he reckoned among- his veritable Masters.
All friends of the stage at this time hailed with delight the
building of the new Leipzig theatre ; for the erection of the
framework on July 18th, 1766, the Carpenter's Speech (Zimmer-
mannsspruch) was written by the young poet Michaelis — born
at the close of 1746. Goethe must have come in contact with
him, for Michaelis, beside lectures in medicine, attended those
of Gellert and of Ernesti, and in this same year published a
volume of poems.

64 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
At this period Goethe became intimate with the two sons of
the printer Breitkopf : Bernhard Theodor, some months older
than he, and Christoph Gottlob, born September 1750, wonder
fully good and true-hearted. Their elder sister, Sophie Con-
stanze, was in perfect youthful bloom. It was in this summer
(1766) that the Breitkopfs' new house the Silver Bear, facing
their old one the Golden Bear, was completed. Probably
Fleischer, before his departure, had introduced Goethe to the
Breitkopfs, as he had to those other friends, the bookseller
Reich, and Reich's partner in business, Fraulein Weidmann.
The dissimulation of his love-affair grew by degrees un
endurable. And when his friend Moors earnestly questioned
him about the matter, even threatening withdrawal of friend
ship, Goethe confided the secret to Horn, whom he asked to
write to Moors what he found it hard to write himself.
Horn's letter, dated October 3, 1766, explains how Goethe
had pretended to be in love with that coquette, and cut a
dash only that he might unsuspected from time to time see
and speak with his real beloved, — a girl beneath him in rank :
Horn has often accompanied him on his visits to her. —
" Since then he has honoured me with a more intimate con
fidence — has discovered to me the state of his affairs, showing
that he does not spend as much as might be thought. He is
more of a philosopher and moralist than ever ; and innocent
as his love is, condemns it. ... I pity him and his good :'
heart, and it is really a sad affair — to love without hope the best
and dearest of girls. And suppose she loves him in return
— why, it can only make him the more wretched."
But two days earlier, Goethe — thinking that Horn had al
ready fulfilled his engagement — had himself addressed Moors,
and sought to justify to this twin-friend all his course of con
duct : — " What is rank ? An idle colouring which men have
invented to daub on people who do not deserve it. And in
the eyes of a thinking man wealth is just as miserable a pre
eminence. Here am I, who love a maiden without rank and
without fortune ; and now, for the first time, I feel the happi
ness which true love gives. . . . The good heart of my S 
(Schonkopf) is a pledge that she will not give me up until
Duty and Necessity command us to separate. If you knew
this good maiden you would pardon me my follies since I love
her. Ay, she deserves the best happiness, which indeed 1 1

Leipzig, 1765-6,8.] STUDENT YEARS. 65
wish her, without any hope of ever myself being able to con
tribute to it." Unable to endure this course of dissimulation
any longer, he thus stood forth as Kathchen's open lover, and
let her ladyship speed. Then he abandoned himself to the
delicious passion, and thought no more of what the end might
be. There was a sort of boyish fantastic in this love; he
despised the world's prejudices, and yet had not courage to
defy them. On the same day (October 1, 1766) he wrote to
Trapp again in French, but without verses. He has heard
with delight how Charitas had wished to possess his letter of
four months ago, with its declaration of ardent love for her.
Trapp may give her the letter only on condition that she will
keep it as a frequent reminder of an unhappy lover who loves
her without hope ; who wishes her the happiest life, without
any prospect of himself being able to contribute to her happi
ness.1 Thus this affair was brought to a conclusion with be
seeming gallantry. Kathchen's power was now undisputed.
This autumn he cut her initials above his own on his linden.
In the beginning of October (1766) the old theatre was
closed, and the new one opened with Johann Elias SchlegePs
Hermann. On the drop scene — painted by Oeser, Director
of the Academy of Drawing — you saw the porch of the
Temple of Truth, in which stood statues of the ancient
dramatists, and of some French and German followers ; but
in the midst, straight towards the temple, moved a man in a
loose garment — a solitary figure — to represent Shakespeare.
The addresses at the closing of the old theatre and the open
ing of the new were written by Clodius in ample Alexand
rines. Though the Professor had attacked the pompous
mythological adornment of Wolfgang's Birthday Ode, here —
caught from Ramler — was manifest the no less pedantic mania
for the full sound of the dignified Greek and Latin words.
Goethe, in whom the anger roused by Clodius's mercilessness
was still awake, did not let the occasion slip. He made an
irresistibly ludicrous parody by bringing together in a poetic
address to the confectioner Handel 2 the foreign words used by
Clodius. He wrote this address in pencil on the wall of the
house, in Handel's Cake Garden at the hamlet Reudnitz. No
less was the spirit of mockery stirred within him later on by
Clodius's play, Medon oder die Rache des Weisen. On the
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 17, 18.— Tr. 2 Ibid. i. 86.— Tr.
F

66 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
evening of the very day of its representation, he threw off at
Schonkopf s a Harlequin's Prologue, parodying the essential
inanity of the play ; and friend Horn immediately recited this
prologue to the delight of all.
They had a merry time of it this winter (1766-7) in Schon
kopf 's house, where the happiness of loving unlocked Wolfgang's
soul. Sunday was an especially bright day, when a larger com
pany than usual regularly assembled to drink punch together.
Wolfgang used to sing with Kathchen from the collection of
songs which Zacharia wrote and set to music, while Kathchen's
younger brother accompanied on the piano. Occasionally
other cultivated musicians played, and a Fraulein Obermann,
from the opposite side of the street, who was training to be
a concert singer, would add to the pleasure of the evening
with her voice. Already, too, they had got so far as little
dramatic representations; we hear, for instance, how in Kriiger's
Herzog Michel, Goethe won great applause in the part of the
vassal who dreams of good fortune.
At the Breitkopfs' also there were frequent joyous even
ings. Wolfgang, who had been very helpful during the house-
changing, grew in intimacy with them all. Musical and
dramatic performances, especially acting proverbs, at which
Wolfgang was exceedingly good ; parlour-games and pranks
of all kinds made the time bright and delightful. How
much happier he felt than when he had had to listen to
Frau Bohme's corrections. That good and kind lady was
dangerously ill, and could see no one ; she died in February ,
1767. The Concerts and the theatre continued to be sources of
a manifold delightful culture; at the theatre he saw many
merry operettas (Singspiele). At the concerts one much
admired figure was the young Corona Schrb'ter, then just six
teen,1 who ruled all hearts, especially young hearts, by her
beauty and her impassioned acting. There, too, Fraulein
Schmehling, who was but eighteen, earned fame by her extra
ordinarily full, pure, powerful voice. Perhaps already Goethe
had begun to write, at the request of Corona's adorers, little
poems in which he could speak his own emotion ; at Leipzig
1 She was bom January 14, 175 1. She had begun singing in the
Great Concerts in 1765, when she was but fourteen ! See Robert Keil,
Corona Schrb'ter, pp. 10 and 33. — Tr.

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 67
it was then the custom to scatter such offerings in honour of
actresses and prima donnas.
Beside lectures prescribed and necessary, he attended
others prompted by his own desire for knowledge. Most
important, because of their bearing on his soul's strong desire
after a fixed central point in art, were the lessons in drawing
with Oeser. This master, caring more for the significant than
the beautiful, a sworn foe to ornament, tried not to make
painters of his pupils ; but to cultivate eye, intelligence, and
taste, to a capacity for understanding and enjoying works of
art. What the great Winckelmann had learned from Oeser — -
that the ideal is to be found in simplicity and repose ; that
beauty in art depends on delicate sensibility and a purified
taste, rather than on deep reflection — this Wolfgang heard
from the same teacher, who was now with glad enthusiasm
watching the movements of his great pupil in Rome. Oeser
listened with willing ear to all Wolfgang's often curious thoughts.
"What is there that I do not owe to you !" writes Wolfgang,
soon after his return to Frankfurt1 " Any feeling I have for
the beautiful, any knowledge, any judgment, all, I have through
you. What a certain, what a luminous truth is now your say
ing that for the development of the budding philosopher or
budding poet the studio of the great artist is a far better place
than the lecture-room of the thinker or critic. Precept does
much, but encouragement (Aufmunterung) does everything.
Who but you among all my instructors has thought me worthy
of encouragement? Neither unmixed praise nor unmixed
, blame, than either of which nothing can be more injurious to
faculty. Encouragement after blame is sun after rain — a
rich increase. Ay, Herr Professor, had you not aided my
devotion to the Muses, I should have despaired." So com
pletely was Oeser's teaching the central point of Goethe's
art-culture. Wolfgang, alas ! often clouded the happiness of his love by
jealous grumbling ; for the host's pretty daughter had to show
a friendly face to many besides himself; and, indeed, he had
no exclusive rights, for he was unable to propose marriage to
her. One day, when he came to his linden, he was much
moved by seeing that the sap had flowed over his initials from
the place where hers were cut ; for this brought to his mind
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 35- — Tr.

68 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
with sudden force the tears which his rudeness, dear as she
was to him, had often made her shed. Immediately he
hastened to beg her forgiveness. Also he felt impelled to put
this incident in an idyll which he never could read without'
emotion. On the Wednesday after Easter, April 22, 1767, the gifted
Caroline Schulze, accompanied by her brother, a well-known
ballet-dancer, made her appearance in the ballet, Das Leben
der Bauern. She took her benefit as Julie in Weisse's Romeo
and Julie, which was acted for the first time on the 6th of May.
Oeser, who had the decorations in charge, painted her as she
appeared in this part. When a very old man Goethe remem
bered her brilliant performance. He never missed seeing her ;
and he extolled her acting in verse, in which he entreated her
to condescend no more to the ballet.
About Easter the poet Zacharia, Professor of Poetry am
Carolinum at Brunswick, came to Leipzig for a fortnight ; he
dined at Schonkopf's, which his brother, a reserved silent man,
regularly frequented. The poet, now forty years old, might
be proud of the hospitable reception which the company
at the table d'hote gave him. The ode which Wolfgang
addressed to this " Liebling der Muse," soon after his depart
ure, shows how close they had been drawn together. The
yearning complaint of this ode has an extremely forced
affected note, and the Greek Mythology is quite unnecessarily
summoned to aid, so Clodius might, had he chosen, have paid
out the parodist in his own coin. Oeser's Simplicity and
Repose is the last thing to be found in it. Goethe's poetry
had just then arrived at the midmost stage of a process of
fermentation ; and here he unfortunately feels inspired to the
height of the antique Ode, without, however, possessing the
mastery of the antique form. When, on the 6th of May, he
was asked to write a verse in a friend's album, he pressed into
his service a little poem by Gleim, in which the happiest of
moods finds utterance. The slight changes introduced are
very significant; Gleim's maiden is " schon zum Kiissen;"
Wolfgang's is "willig ihn zu Kiissen? and instead oi one friend
there are many.
About this time appeared Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, .¦
the first National Comedy which Germany possessed; sure,'
too, to be specially effective in Leipzig, in that it, as it were,

Leipzig, ±765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 69
puts on the stage the loveableness of the Saxon ladies. To
Wolfgang there must have been special interest in the light
thrown on his old hero the King of Prussia, not such a hero
to him now as formerly. About this time he got into a scrape
without being really to blame. Friend Horn, by adding some
lines of his own to the verses (the Handel verses) written to
ridicule Clodius's theatre -speeches, had made them refer to
the Medon ; and because, among his intimate friends, he did
not, for his own part in them, get all the praise he desired he
was so unwise as to make them rather widely known ; soon
many copies of them were about. Clodius and his by no
means unimportant party were deeply hurt. It was asked
who the author was, and it was not hard to find out Wolfgang,
¦ about whose eccentric behaviour there were many stories.
Not content with thinking him a malicious mocker, they
painted him an immoral abandoned being like Giinther, who,
almost half a century ago, had died in the extremest wretched
ness, before he had reached his twenty - eighth birthday.
Word of the attack on Clodius reached Dresden too, where
the father of young Count Lindenau heard that this wicked
Goethe was the nearest friend of Behrisch ; that the two went
about together late at night ; and even that his son in their
company had been to a certain garden, which belonged to
girls who were better than their reputation. The Count
immediately dismissed the unprincipled tutor. Behrisch
indeed, through Gellert's agency, was engaged as tutor to the
Hereditary Prince of Dessau; but Goethe's loss of a very
winning sympathetic friend remained the same. When
Clodius soon after published his Medon in the second
part of Versuche aus der Literatur tmd der Moral, he ob
served that, should this win the approval of other men of
worth; — "he would think little about the attacks of those
who were beneath criticism." This was the "Wise Man's
Revenge" (Die Rache des Weisen) on the pert student from
Frankfurt. In this summer (1767) we note a growth of closer ac
quaintance with Oeser's daughter Friederike Elizabeth, who
was a year older than Goethe. During the winter he can
hardly have seen anything of her, since he did not know
Oeser well enough to be invited to those evening assemblies ;
at which, among others, the highly valued poet Christian

70

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. ii. CH. I.

Felix Weisse j1 his friend Christian Garve ; the Academic
professor of languages, Huber ; the merchant Kreuchauff, a
collector of objects of art, were frequent guests. Oeser, who
delighted in our brilliant youth, would often walk with him
round the city from gate to gate, and in summer invited him
to Dolitz, a country residence. Here Goethe often met a
joyous circle of friends ; but the chief attraction was the
daughter of the house ; not beautiful — for small-pox had left
its traces^ — but cultivated, intellectual, full of roguish wit,
cheery and kindly. She felt much interested by his spark-

Fig. 8. After a picture hy Johann Heinrich Tischbein.
ling intelligence; by the independence and teachableness]
in such rare union. We give here her likeness and that
of her sister, the wife of the engraver Geyser. There were
often lively wit- combats. Beside Dolitz, another frequent
place of call for Wolfgang was Sellerhausen, the summer
1 Weisse held the post of Circle Tax-Collector (Kreissteuereinnehmer) .
— DlTNTZER. :

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 71
residence of Reich, situated about a league outside Leipzig.
An alley between trees on the shady bank of the Rietschke
towards Reudnitz was long called the " Poet's Walk ;" at the
stone table, on a garden eminence, it is said that Wolfgang
often sat.
There was all this time no lack of the rash deeds born of
a mettlesome humour ; partly was our young student in them
compliant to the wishes of friends ; partly did he in adven
ture find a spice to life. Only incidentally do we hear of a
slight wound in the arm in a duel with a theological student,
the Livonian Bergmann, who came to the University in
Easter 1767. The story has it that Wolfgang brought about
this duel by deliberate provocation of the freshman (Fuchs).
Merry tricks of mystification were much in vogue. Poor Horn
was a special object of these tricks ; he began to be called
the Pegauer — Pegau is the Saxon Abode of Fools.
Wolfgang must have written a good deal in that spring
and summer of 1767; Behrisch's beautiful transcript of his
poems could have contained no work earlier than the burning
already spoken of. Probably the volume had for its chief
contents the poems called forth by the sight of the engravings
and drawings in Leipzig collections ; poems, some of which,
we learn from Goethe himself, describe the situations pre
ceding or following those represented in the pictures ; some
are songs which one might suppose sung by the persons
depicted. That departure of Behrisch at the close of Goethe's second
summer Semester (1767) left a great gap in his life. At the
end of August, or the beginning of September, he hurried to
Dresden, for he yearned to refresh heart and spirit before the
masterworks of the Picture Gallery ; and this would be closed
by the end of September. From that peculiar belief of his,
that every important resolve if communicated to others fails to
be carried out, he told no one of the journey he proposed.
Because he had inherited his father's dislike of inns — still
more, probably, because he wished to remain quite unknown
in Dresden — he oddly enough boarded with a shoemaker in
the suburbs — a cousin of Limprecht This shoemaker's
character was known to him through the man's letters to
Limprecht. The visit to Dresden was almost exclusively
devoted to the Gallery. His own preference led him to the

72 "THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
Dutch masters, whose works were the chief treasures of the
collections of Leipzig and Frankfurt. Not denying the merits
of the Italians (he has just read of D'Argenville's Lives of the
Painters the first part, which treats of the Italians), and hav
ing some real joy in their august magnificence, he nevertheless
finds them far removed from his experience of life up to the
present ; while in the Dutch he can admire the triumph of Art
above a Nature with which he is familiar. So did the spirit
of the Netherlanders transfuse itself in him that, on leaving the
Gallery, he used to see everyday scenes through the eyes of an
Ostade, a Schalken.
After his return his life was soon drawn back into the old
round, in which the absence of Behrisch was bitterly regretted.
Just at the beginning of his third student year (October 1767)
he wrote — in free, unrhymed stanzas of four lines — three odes
to Behrisch, in which, indeed, there is mastery of language
and evidence of vivid imagination, but which are forced and
extravagant to obscurity. They complain how calumny pre
vails in Leipzig — weaving round the good man a foul garment
of ill report, which makes him shunned, and compels him to
seek another abode. Let Behrisch burst the flower-chains of
friendship which would keep him at Goethe's side ; let no
thought of the fellow-prisoner stay the footsteps of him who
can fly. His own last year at Leipzig has begun ; it will pass
rapidly, and then — freedom ! This fantastic gloom did not
last long; there was so much to delight him — chief of all,
his love, to which he gave himself without concern for the
future. The lectures of his professor of law were become a merely
secondary matter ; more than from them, or indeed from his
own industry, he learned from his companions of the table
d'hdte. Of these it may be mentioned that Hermann in this
year graduated, and became Supernumerarassessor in the
Supreme Court of Justice ; and that Pfeil, the year after,
obtained the Doctor's degree. Art, concerts, and the theatre,
absorbed Wolfgang more and more. Beside keeping up his
regular lessons with Oeser, he studied the history of Art ; and
grew, as time went by, more frequent in his visits to the Leipzig
collections, all the owners being very friendly to him. His
passion for reading at the book-market was unappeasable.
Weisse's Neue Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften und

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 73
freien Kiinste was especially the order of the day, but the
magazines of Nicolai, Klotz,1 and others, were also eagerly
devoured. Then there were numerous pamphlets. Still, he
writes from Frankfurt in the following year, clings to him the
reading of little old books (Schartekchenlesen), which in Leip
zig often passes for erudition.2 It is not wonderful that the
concerts attracted him, when two such singers as Gertrude
Elizabeth Schmehling and Corona Schroter could be heard in
" the same piece. Four lines addressed to Corona on her per
formance in Hasse's oratorio, Santa Elena al Calvario, in
December 1767, have been preserved.3 At the theatre he
was greatly delighted by Fraulein Schulze in Minna von
Barnhelm (November 18, 1767). The play was received
with the warmest applause, and was represented six times
afterwards before the close of the year. On February 24,
1768, Fraulein Schulze played for the last time in Leipzig.
Goethe was unable to take part in the festival celebrating her
departure, in which Oeser and Weisse were active, and where
the still hostile Clodius handed her a poem ; but he was prob
ably one of those students whose parting verses the actress
preserved in a large volume all her life.
The amateur theatre under " Directeur Schonkopf"
flourished this winter (1767-8) in especial vigour. We hear of
a brilliant representation of Minna, in which Corona Schroter
played the heroine, Dr. Johann Jakob Engel, afterwards Chief
Director of the Theatre of Berlin (he was ten years older than
Goethe) played Tellheim ; Goethe was the sergeant Werner ;
Constanze Breitkopf was Franziska, and Horn was the servant
Just. And in a representation of Diderot's Hausvater (Pere
1 Nicolai's magazine at this time was the Allgemeine deutsche Billiothek,
which was started 1765. The Literaturbriefe already mentioned (see p.
50), ceased to appear in 1765. Professor Christian Adolf Klotz
(1 738- 1 771) edited the Deutsche Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften,
published at Halle. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Friederike Oeser, 13th February 1769. The remark here
quoted is near the end of this long letter. See Der junge Goethe, i.
55-— TR. 3 " Unwiderstehlich muss die Schbne uns entziicken,
Die frommer Andacht Reize schmiicken ;
Wenn jemand diesen Satz durch Zweifeln noch entehrt,
So hat er dich niemals als Helena gehort."
Der junge Goethe, i. 92. — Tr.

74 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. il ch. i.
de Famille) Engel was one of the company. Goethe was
particularly good in comic parts, his best was " the lover Don
Sassafras "(?) And his own dramatic faculty was stimulated by
all these theatre-doings ; as usual, that which deeply interested
him called forth his creative power. He wrote the pastoral
drama Die Laune des Verliebten, as a poetic atonement to
Kathchen for the rudenesses of his jealousy ; for the shepherd
Eridon is an image of his own behaviour, while Horn and his
maiden are perhaps shadowed forth in the happy pair of
lovers. To this winter also falls Die Mitschuldigen, which had
at first only one act. In this play one cannot but feel the
influence of Lessing's Minna, especially in the character of the
Host ; Goethe is still, however, true to the Alexandrine, since
verse had a certain artistic restraining power which he missed
in prose. The play shows how deep Goethe had seen into
the ills of society ; but the mild judgment of sin implied in its
winding up is rather of the art of the writer of comedy than a
reflection of the young Wolfgang's real views. According to
Dichtung und Wahrheit (Bk. vii.) he at this time sketched
and began several other plays, to ease his mind of the gloomy
reflections to which he was compelled at sight of the sins
undermining family life around him ; but he let these begin
nings drop, because in each the complication became painful
and threatened a tragic end.
In the New Year (1768), the course of Wolfgang's love
affair took a very distressing, though a very natural turn. He
had brought to Schonkopf's an advocate, Johann Gottfried
Kanne, his senior by four years, by birth a Saxon. After hav
ing suffered so much from Wolfgang's jealousy, and being
unable to see in his love-making anything except a trifling,
which his return to Frankfurt would soon bring to a close,
Kathchen could not withstand the bona fide wooing of the new
comer, and Wolfgang had soon to acknowledge that her love
for Kanne was real and deep. We know that Kanne as well
as Horn lodged with the Schonkopfs — at any rate a little
later. Wolfgang grew immeasurably wretched when he found
that the girl, though still very fond of him, had really given her
heart to another. In vain he sought out every way of pleasing ;
he gave her books, he painted fans for her, he paid her all
thoughtful and courteous attentions. When, however, he saw
that it was all no use, "he was violent towards his physi- 1

Leipzig, 1765-68:] STUDENT YEARS. 75
cal nature to spite his moral ;" x he abandoned himself to an
irregular life, which made demands on his powers too great to
support. •
As two years ago he had fled to the bosom of Nature in
the freshness of its young spring life, so now did he flee.
Especially frequent were his visits to Dolitz (he probably in
this spring, as in preceding springs, had an attic at a hostel in
Reudnitz), for at Dolitz was there not always the chance of
finding in the garden or the fields the kind and bright
Friederike?2 Nor did he fail to visit Sellerhausen often. In
this trouble his Muse was not silent, as two years ago she had
been ; she inspired him to lyrics, some breathing the yearning
and pain of love, but also some which speak courage and
spirit, and mock at the inconstancy of maidens ; these
Bernhard Theodor Breitkopf set to music. Under the
Breitkopfs' roof he spent a great deal of time, not only in that
family, whose most intimate friendship he had long enjoyed ;
but also with the engraver Stock, who with a wife older than
himself and two little daughters, was living in the top story.
Here Goethe practised etching landscapes, and did tolerably
well ; one of his pictures he dedicated as " most obedient
son " (" ganz gehorsamer Sohn ") to his father, another to his
true friend Hermann, a third to Behrisch. For Schonkopf he
designed a Bill of Fare ( Wirthschaftsetikette), for Kathchen a
book-marker. .He also practised many little vignette wood
cuts. With all this activity the fresh enjoyment of life would not
come back. When in May 1768 Lessing stopped four weeks
in Leipzig, it was the humour of Goethe and Horn to make
no endeavour to see the rare mortal who was so near them ;
chance, they hoped, would bring him across their path.
Lessing was present at a performance of his Minna ; but even
from this Goethe was absent. And chance was not good to
him ; and he was never to see Lessing.
With great joy did he look forward to the coming of
Winckelmann, who, on his journey to Dessau, was to visit
Oeser. Of course Wolfgang never thought himself worthy to
speak with the great Expounder of Ancient Art ; but what
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, vii. Buch. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's letter in verse to Friederike Oeser, 6th Nov. 1768.
See especially lines to be found Der junge Goethe, i. 32, 33. — Tr.

76 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
plans he had of riding to Dessau with his friends ; he hoped
often to see Winckelmann in that beautiful neighbourhood,
especially in Wdrlitz.1 What a terrible overwhelming effect-
the news of Winckelmann's murder on the very confines of
Germany had may then be imagined ; Goethe first heard of it
when going to Oeser, who was so shaken, that for a while he
shut himself from almost all communication.
At about this time Goethe made the acquaintance - of
Behrisch's successor, Ernst Theodor Langer ; for, although
Count Lindenau had strictly forbidden intercourse with the
wicked friend of the former tutor, Langer could not resist the
wish to know one of whom he had heard so much. There
was the youth possessed by the noble thirst for knowledge
and culture ; breathing intellect and life, though just then of
such a melancholy mood; it was nothing wonderful if the
disciplined learned earnest man, superior in age by five years,
was so completely won that a close comradeship grew between
them, which was nurtured by eager talk on long afternoon
walks together. Langer introduced him to many fields of
knowledge, especially Greek Literature, in which the teacher
had wandered far.
The same power of attraction drew towards Wolfgang
Georg Groning of Bremen, his senior by four years, who, in
Easter 1768, had come from Gottingen to win a Leipzig
Doctor- of- Laws Degree; his love for plastic art (he was
Wolfgang's successor with Oeser) effected and maintained
their union.
The painful disquiet arising from the loss of Kathchen ;'
restless excitement ; irregular living ; heavy Merseburg beer ;
coffee with milk drunk after dinner ; a cold caught when
bathing ; the unwholesome vapours breathed when etching on
steel ; perhaps, too, the chest affection which he had brought, .;
on himself at Auerstadt on his journey to Leipzig three years .'
before by over-violent exertion ; all combined to disturb the
sensitive balance of his organisation so violently, that one
July night he was attacked by a violent hemorrhage. In the
next room slept the poor theological student Limprecht, whom
Goethe's ill -humour had often of late made suffer. Just
enough strength he had to rouse quickly this neighbour, and
1 It is interesting to note that Goethe in 1778 planned the Weimar|
Park on the model of the beautiful one at Worlitz, then unique. — Tr. : -f

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 77
to send him to Dr. Reichel, a friendly physician who lived at
the Breitkopfs'. By Dr. Reichel's exertions immediate danger
was staved off, but there was still imperative need of rest.
Then a tumour that formed on the left side ofthe neck would
need long care. The families Breitkopf, Reich, Stock, Oeser,
and Schonkopf, were interested in the sick lad as if he were
one of their own ; and of his younger acquaintance, beside his
good next room neighbour, Horn, Hermann, Langer, and
Groning, proved their true friendship. Langer not only would
often talk by his bedside till the deep of night of matters
intellectual, but would guide the sufferer in a calm and
peaceful way, which itself was healing, towards thoughts of
religion ; laying before the vexed and restless heart his own
sure belief in the Divineness of that Christian Revelation
which enjoins patience under tribulation ; to all which
Wolfgang gave the more willing heed because it came from
one whose clear and well-trained intelligence he had in other
relations learned to respect. Yet he could himself accept the
Christian Revelation solely in moments of glowing emotion,
of overflowing soul, in no wise by the critical reason. A note
worthy incident of this time comes by his own account — he
made over to Langer whole basketfuls of his once so much
prized German poets and critics, receiving in exchange some
Greek classics.
As he grew better his friends took him on many walks,
and tried every way of amusing him. Since his recovery went
on steadily, he hoped to leave Leipzig on his birthday — the
day which he always liked to choose for important acts. His
strength, indeed, would not be restored so soon ; his nerves
had suffered too much. Almost a year and a half later he
writes to the younger Breitkopf: — "However sound and
strong one may be, in that accursed Leipzig one burns out as
fast as a bad torch. Well, well, the poor fox-cub will little by
little recover."1 If, in this letter, he exhorts the recipient to
beware of loose living,2 there is here no proof that loose living
had been a cause of his sufferings ; the expression — " the poor
1 Goethe to Gottlob Breitkopf; date guessed at in Der junge Goethe is
August 1769. See Der junge Goethe, i. 67. — Tr.
2 "Nur eins will ich dir sagen, hiite dich vor der Liederlichkeit. Es
geht uns Mannsleuten mit unsem Kraften wie den Madchen mit der Ehre,
einmal ""*m Henker eine Jungferschaft, fort ist sie." — Tr.

78 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. i.
cub will recover little by little " refers to his ill-fortune in love,
so in, the Zueignung (Dedication) of his Neue Lieder we have
the allusion to the fox of fable.1
Reich, who through Weisse had got the publishing of
Wieland's Musarion, showed the convalescent its first proof-
sheets — it was just then getting into type. Peculiarly impress
ible at the time, and with a new impulsive leaning towards
the ancients, he thought he saw the antique rise again
in this charming poem with its thorough interpenetration
of reality.2 He often went to Dolitz to see Friederike, who met him
" with great glee, and almost laughed herself to death at the
absurd notion of anybody's dying of consumption at twenty."3
By cheerful description of her enjoyable days in the country,
she imparted to him some of her own delight in life. He saw
her frequently, on one occasion in the theatre ; when he was
leaving Leipzig he gave her a copy of his songs with Breitkopfs
music, and begged her to sing them in memory of him.
Breitkopf promised to set Goethe's other songs too, and
already publishing was talked of. All his friends felt the
warmest concern at his departure. His hardest trial, which
he yet could not deny himself, was the farewell to Kathchen,
whom he saw for the last time on the evening of August 26.
It was agreed that there should be a correspondence, only he
must pledge himself never to write before the first day of each
month. Of course there was no denying that he had lost
Kathchen, and how could he, as he then was, put forward any
claim to her. But this he might hope, little as it was, that
though he had been such a torment to her, she would often
think of her " good youth," and wish for his presence. On
August 27, the eve of his departure, he set out to see her
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 109, no. The poet who sees young people,
love-making warns them, whereupon they laugh and exclaim: — "The
fool ! The fox who has lost his tail would be glad " to see others like
himself, or to that effect ; to which the poet replies : — ' ' The fable does
not hold good in this instance, the honest fox-cub without a tail warns you
to beware ofthe trap." — Tr.
2 Dichtung und Wahrheit, vii. Buch. — "Musarion wirkte am meisteni
auf mich.' . . . Hier war es, wo ich das Antike lebendig und neu wieder J
zu sehen glaubte." — Tr. ,
3 Goethe to Friederike Oeser, 13th February 1769. The passage ;
here quoted will be found Der junge Goethe, i. 47. — Tr. -(,- .

Leipzig, 1765-68.] STUDENT YEARS. 79
once more, but he became so very sad that he did not go
through with it. " I was as far as the door," he writes from
Frankfurt to explain why he had not taken a final leave ; " I
saw the lamp burning and went to the foot of the stairs, but I
had not the heart to go Tip. For the last time ! — how should
I ever have come down?"1
1 Goethe to Christian Gottlob Schonkopf, October I, 1768. See
Der junge Goethe, i. 23. That he saw Kathchen for the last time on
August 26, 1768, is fixed by a letter of August 26, 1769, in which he
says to her : — "This day a year ago I saw you for the last time." See
Der junge Goethe, i. 65. — -Tr.

CHAPTER II.
INTERIM BETWEEN LEIPZIG AND STRASSBURG SPENT IN
FRANKFURT.
September 1768-APRiL 1770.
On the 3d of September 1768 Wolfgang saw old Frankfurt-
again. He was received with passionate tenderness, the bright
lad who had gone forth in blooming health now returning
wasted and pale, life half despaired of. His father was in his
gentlest mood, and did his very best to hide the disappointment.;
which he felt at seeing that all his plan of study for Wolfgang
had fallen to the ground. Cornelia's gladness at her brother's
return was the warmer since she had much to tell him which
even her mother might not hear. She wished to learn and
read more as she liked, and it had been hard on her to be the
only object of her father's teaching activity. Her whole soul
was opened to her brother ; he had been and was her model
in all things ; even her stiff hand-writing had become exactly
like his ; and there were many notes in his style which she too
struck. One deep secret regret of hers was that with her bold
features it was unlikely that she should ever win love ; and a
noble man's love was, she felt, the first and chief thing required
to make life a real good. Though her father did not interfere
with her coming and going or her amusements, his never-ending
schoolmaster-like instruction had been excessively oppressive
to her, and she had grown more and more hardened against
him ; it was no use that her mother tried to qualify the bitter
ness of this relation ; poor mother, she had plenty of trouble,
with Wolfgang, too, a cause of so much anxiety to his parents.
In her distress she had drawn closer and closer to the pious
Fraulein von Klettenberg and her circle ; not indeed that her
natural healthy trustfulness in an all-wise and all-gracioii5,Qjji<t

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 81
ance had in any wise been darkened. That dear friend, clear
sighted in temporal as in spiritual things, was a wise counsellor
in all difficulties. Shortly before Wolfgang's return, his grand
father's tongue and right arm had been paralysed when he was
in the midst of official duty, and he could not yet speak. Also
Wolfgang had to lament the recent death of his friend the
painter, Seekatz of Darmstadt, on whose advice and help he
had so much reckoned. He himself could look forward to
being well soon, for the doctor said that his lungs were quite
sound though the passages to them were affected. He had
of course to arrange his rooms ; then there were visits ; and
the fair just beginning with its sights and sounds laid claim to
his attention. Very soon after his return, Jung, a maker of
lay figures, whom Wolfgang had known as an attendant at the
Leipzig Art Academy, and who had letters of recommendation
from Oeser, came through Frankfurt on a business journey,
and found a kind reception in the Goethes' hospitable home.
Wolfgang met again in Frankfurt many of his old friends,
among them Crespel, who stayed until November. It was
now that he made acquaintance with his fellow-townsman, the
painter George Melchior Kraus, son of the host of the White
Snake. Kraus was in his thirty-fifth year, and was just back
from Paris. Cornelia's friends — few of whom he did not
already know — were something quite different from the bright
refined Leipzig ladies ; their sentimentality, their finical pru
dery, their prim manners, their tedious dulness, repelled him.
But there was one new friend and correspondent of his
sister's, Katharina Fabricius of Worms, in whom he felt much
interested, so much that he began himself to write letters
to her. His heart clung to Leipzig, and especially to the house- -
holds Schonkopf and Oeser. Already on the r3th of
September 1768, we find him turning in loving remembrance
to his "dearest instructor." To Kathchen about the same
time, he sent a pair of scissors, a knife, and leather for two
pairs of shoes; these were her fairings. To Schonkopf he
writes on the ist October that, though yet uncertain whether
he has not got consumption, things are looking better; his
thin cheeks are filling out, and since he has " neither maidens
nor the cares of life" to trouble him, he hopes to progress in
his recovery. The latter part of the letter is addressed to
G

82 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
Kathchen; her neck-handkerchief is ready, the fan is in
hands ; and he will paint materials for slippers for her. The
girl's reply was wayward and. saucy, as it might have been in
the happiest days of their mutual intercourse.
The doctor tried with tonics to revive the lad's relaxed
forces, and pronounced extreme calm indispensable. Never
theless, Wolfgang could not help pushing on with many
occupations ; he drew, etched, and wrote ; and his professional
studies might not be entirely neglected in the face of his
father's anxiety. Generally he was so busy that his sister
hardly liked to disturb him in his attic-room. He became
intimate at this time with an amiable young English fellow in
a Frankfurt boarding-school. With this new friend, Cornelia
fell passionately in love, but alas ! he did not stay long in
Frankfurt, nor had she success in a scheme of getting
her Harry's portrait sketched by Kraus at a concert party
which the Goethes gave — Cornelia played the piano well
Several of Wolfgang's Leipzig friends in passing through
Frankfurt called to see him; there was one of them who
resembled the young Englishman ; Cornelia felt the attraction.
Once Wolfgang went with a medical friend, Strassburg-bound,
to see the great Senckenberg Institution which had sprung up
during his Leipzig absence. His greatest pleasure was in
visiting the private art collections of Frankfurt ; but he did
not succeed in his attempts to diffuse among the owners the
ideas which he had derived from Oeser.
His monthly letter to Kathchen of the ist November
(1768) strikes the usual note of cheery jesting. Now,
, indeed he is being punished for his sins against Leipzig ; his
present sojourn is as disagreeable as the Leipzig period might
have been agreeable, if certain persons had thought fit to
make it so. Five days later we find him replying to
Friederike Oeser lightly, in irregular rhyming verse. The
songs which he has left her she may sing in happy mood
there in her Dolitz, where he had sung them from heaviness.
This letter was enclosed with one addressed to her father,
dated three days later (Nov. 9th, 1768), in which he expresses
his deep gratitude.1 About this time he read Wieland's Ldris
(published by Reich), Gerstenberg's Ugolino,Weisse's Grossmuth
fur Grossmuth, and a Treatise on Engraving translated from the
1 This letter has been already quoted from. See p. 67. — Tr.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 83
English.1 In a letter ofthe 24th November to Oeser he says
that his reflections on these works are " perhaps tolerable for a
spoken conversation, but are far from having either the order
or exactness which would make them fit for writing down."
So little was it his way to make ado with any hastily grasped
theory. Cornelia writes on Nov. 16th to her friend Katharina
Fabricius, that Wolfgang is drawing her the nicest heads, and
that he is just engaged on a new comedy. As further on she
says that he is reading to her all that he writes, while she
listens with great pleasure, we may be sure she has long ago
heard both the pieces which he brought from Leipzig. But
he had already begun to suffer again, and the chief cause this
time was want of care in using the acids necessary for his
engraving. On Cornelia's birthday (December 7th, 1768) Wolfgang
was attacked by a violent internal pain ; all the remedies tried
failed to lessen his fearful sufferings. Cornelia, unable to
bear the sight of his agony, went away in despair. His mother
in her utter need tried her old pious plan of opening a Bible
with a sharp point. The text, " Thou shalt yet plant vines
upon the mountains of Samaria" (Jeremiah xxxi. 5), filled her
with joyous confidence, and all her life she remembered that
beautiful promise, as indeed did Wolfgang too. When the
orthodox methods of the pharmacopoeia failed, resort was had
to alchemy. Fraulein Klettenberg's good physician, Dr.
Metz, a student of alchemy, had not long before effected a
wonderful cure on that pious friend, with a salt prepared
in the method of alchemy. Wolfgang's mother, who had
chosen this physician for herself and her son, entreated
him, going to him in almost the last resort, to give the
sufferer this magic salt. And lo ! there was at once a
change for the better, the threatened suffocation was at least
averted. Cornelia writes to her friend, that Wolfgang's dread
ful state of danger had lasted two days, then things had
become somewhat better, yet he could not remain a single
quarter of an hour in upright posture. For three weeks he
could not leave his room, during which time he saw almost no
one but the doctor, the surgeon, and the members of the
family. A new tumour had formed on his neck; first they
1 So we learn from the letter spoken of immediately after. — Der junge
Goethe, i. 37, 38.— -Tr.

84 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
tried to reduce it, then to bring it to a head, at last they had
to lance it. His chief consolation at this time was his power
of drawing ; he made sketches of the room with its furniture
or the people who might be there, and illustrated the stories
of the city which he heard.
His sufferings roused general sympathy; the only one
who remained cold was his friend Miiller. Cornelia tells her
friend in Worms, that Wolfgang is no longer on such good
terms with Miiller, because their principles are so different ;
Midler's philosophy is deduced from what he has read ; her •
brother's from what he has felt and seen ; and she now per
ceives that the former is unpractical. When the doctors were
able to assure Wolfgang that his digestion was the only thing
out of order, he became so content and light-hearted that he
was even able to cheer the anxious family ; yet in the few days
of such near neighbourhood with death, — such closeness, as
he himself puts it, to the awful strait that we all must pass
over,1 in those few days solemn thoughts had been his.
" In a fit of great folly," he threw off a Neujahrslied (Song
of the New Year), and even had it printed for his own amuse
ment.2 Other occupations were sketching and writing tales.
The drawing was a great delight to his father, who got an old
friend, the painter Morgenstern, to put in the lines of perspec
tive correctly. Another matter about which Councillor Goethe
began to talk, and not to annoy him his son fell in easily with
his wishes, was the speedy resuming of law study at Strassburg.
As to a third matter there was not the same harmony, — the
father would fain have seen his recovering son less interested
in the alchemic theorisings and experiments in which the
doctor who was thought to have saved his life, and their good
friend Fraulein Klettenberg were zealously occupied.
Horn was the first to hear from Wolfgang of his recovery ;
Horn was to tell Kathchen, whose extreme concern had been
a salve to Wolfgang's heart. " There is good in misfortune
1 In a letter to Oeser, Feb. 14, 1769. See Der junge Goethe, i. 57.
— Tr.
2 Goethe to Kathchen Schonkopf, Dec. 30th, 1768. See Der junge
Goethe, i. 40. In this letter he also speaks of the drawing and writing
tales (Mdhrchen). The curious interference of his father with his sketches
is from Dichtung und Wahrheit, viii. Buch. The result on the sketches
was rather amusing. A like interference three years earlier has been
described. See p. 45.- — Tr. . ,

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 85
too," he writes to heron December 30th (1768): "I have
learned much in illness, that I could have learned nowhere
else in life. . . . When I get better I shall go to foreign
places, and how soon I shall see Leipzig again depends solely
on you, and some one else " (the preferred suitor Kanne, of
course) ; " meanwhile I think to visit France, to see how life
is lived there; and to learn French." Should he, however,
for all this pleasant scheming, play the foolish stroke of dying
before Easter arrives, he will order a gravestone in Leipzig
churchyard.1 The early days of the New Year (1769) found him able to
go out of doors again. Good Legationsrath Moritz, who hoped
great things from Wolfgang, gave a party to celebrate his
recovery. Since farces were just then the order of the day,
Wolfgang began one with the title Lustspiel in Leipzig, which
was also to be printed.2 He confides to Oeser his doubts
concerning Nos. 28 and 30 of Lessing's lately published
Antiquarische Briefe. But before Oeser's reply arrived,
Wolfgang had had another severe attack which kept him in
his room for four weeks. When well enough to write he
turns — full of annoyance at not having heard from Leipzig —
to his Kathchen, who was still a constant presence in his
thoughts. " During the last fortnight I have again been
aground" (sitz' ich wieder fest), he writes (Jan. 31st, 1769).
" At the beginning of this year I was let out on parole ; that
little bit of freedom too is past, and I shall probably also spend
part of February in the cage, for God knows when it will be
all over ; however, I am quite calm about it, and I hope you
will be so too. . . . Dear God, here I am merry again even
1 That she may visit his grave at least once a year on his Name Day.
See Derjtmge Goethe, i. 41. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 50; Goethe to Friederike Oeser, 13th Feb.
1769 — " Hierher gehort auch dass ich in diesem neuen Jahre eine Farce
gemacht habe, die ehstens unter dem Titel : Lustspiel in Leipzig
erscheinen wird. Den [denn] die Farcen sind ietzt auf alien Parnassen
contrebande, wie alles aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Vierzehenden
[Vierzehnten]." Does the following translation contain the natural
sense of this passage? "Here I should mention that since the New
Year began, I have written a farce, which as soon as possible shall be
published in Leipzig, as a comedy" (not as a farce.) "For on every
Parnassus farces are at present contraband" (not allowable) ; "as indeed
is everything of the Louis Quatorze Age." The Lustspiel was destroyed
by Goethe before he went to Strassburg. — Tr.

86 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
in the midst of pain. If I were not so cheery how should I
bear it all. Continuously shut up in one place for almost two
months."1 Still on the 14th of February, as he informs Oeser,
imprisoned by illness, though with the best hope of recovery;,
with the winter, he hopes, his winter too will pass away, his
spring return. Yet Leipzig, whither Oeser had invited him,
he cannot revisit so soon, perhaps not within a year ; when
he comes he wants to make a good stay. He seems at this
time to have played waywardly with the imagination of him
self, a settler down in Leipzig, yet leading Kathchen to his
home a bride. Oeser had replied that Lessing had in those
letters enormously erred in his remarks on the passage from
Pliny; let Wolfgang only watch a heraldic engraver for an
hour, and he will laugh away his sickness, to think of the
observations of Christ, Klotz, and Lessing on the subject.
Wolfgang, when thanking Oeser for enlightening him on
the matter, adds this characteristic utterance: — "Lessing!
Lessing ! if he were not Lessing I would fain say something.
I cannot write in his dispraise ; he is a conqueror, and will be
a rude hewer of wood in Herr Herder's Waldchen " (the first
number of the Kritische Waldchen — Critical Groves — treats
of Lessing's Laokoon), " if he falls upon them. He is a
phenomenon of intellect, and after all such phenomena are not
common in Germany. Whoever does not wish to agree to
all. he says, need not; only let him not be contradicted!
Voltaire has not been able to do our Shakespeare any wrong.
No smaller spirit will overcome a greater." In this letter
he sends greeting to Clodius, who, at Oeser's intercession,
had at last to Wolfgang's great relief forgotten his ancient
grudge. In a letter to Friederike, dated a day earlier (Feb. 13th,
1769), he speaks very amusing, but true words of the whole
so-called " Bardic Poetry," and especially of the Gesang
Rhingulphs des Barden als Varus geschlagen war. AH that is
strange and forced displeases him ; the poet's task is to make
us feel what we have not felt before ; but mere noise and
exclamation instead of pathos is ineffectual. Gerstenberg he
reverences ; it is a great spirit with principia apart. Of
Gerstenberg's Ugolino he observes that grace and deep pathos
do not combine to a worthy subject of a noble art Lessing,
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 42, 44.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 87
he thought, gave poetry too wide a scope.1 One must differ
even from the great spirits ; who err as do small ones, the
latter because each conceives his own horizon the world's
boundary ; the former because they know no boundary. Light
is Truth, yet the sun, the source of Light, is not Truth.
Falsehood is Darkness. And what is Beauty? Neither
Darkness nor Light, but Twilight ; the offspring of Truth and
Falsehood. In his confinement — all his instruments a pair of
compasses, paper, pen and ink, and two books — he thinks
that he penetrates in knowledge of Truth as far as — nay
farther than many a man with all the apparatus of libraries
and learning.2 Nothing is true which is not simple. Humble
ness and Reflectiveness are the qualities most needful to guide
our steps in the path of Simplicity. Thus did he during his
weary illness solace himself with the most penetrating con
templations on Art and Poetry. Indeed, the general cheery
tone of the whole letter — in which he, as usual, breaks a lance
with Friederike — betrays nothing less than that he who wrote
it was an invalid. If his poems, as she says, have not pleased
her, she has not viewed them aright ; let her throw them into
the fire, for he is one of those patient poets who when one
poem is not approved make another. He would be very
glad to hear from her something about the last good books
out ; in Frankfurt you heard nothing of them until a quarter
of a year after the fair. Though he had almost entirely
given up reading new literature, and though his own verse
will not flow — except in a little bit of intoxication — he cannot
all at once completely refuse to satisfy the longing for literary
novelties. Though Wolfgang was soon able to leave his sick
chamber, the old vigour was not there, just as the old fresh
ness of soul was not. No departure for Strassburg could at
present be thought of; this was a great disappointment to
his father. Wolfgang buried himself deeper and deeper in
books on Alchemy and in pietistic meditation ; for Fraulein
1 Here I have taken the liberty of adding from Goethe's letter some
links of connection that seemed necessary. See Der junge Goethe, i. 53.
— Tr.
2 Immediately after the letter runs thus : — "A great savant is seldom a
great philosopher, and he who has painfully turned over the leaves of
many books despises the easy simple Book of Nature ; and yet nothing is
true, etc." Der junge Goethe, i. 53. — Tr.

88 THE LIFE OF. GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch, ii.
Klettenberg and Moritz had gained great influence over him
during his recovery. It was a matter of course that with
them he again began going to the Lord's Supper. About
this time (March 1769), he had the pleasure of a visit from
his Leipzig friend Gervinus — a native of Zweibriicken and
very intimate with Oeser. From Gervinus he heard that
" Rhingulph the Bard," was Oberamtsadvokat Kretzschmann
of Zittau, who had just visited Leipzig, where he had been
received with all honours. Meanwhile Friederike had emptied
all the vial of her saucy wrath on Wolfgang, especially because
he had spoken ill of her sex. His answer (April 8th, 1769)
is in the same strain. Of his own sex, he says, his estimate is
but low ; he does not rate woman higher, and that is woman's
own fault He still maintains that girls are in general too
easily credulous ; Friederike's distrustfulness shows him that
the more prudent ones are full of suspicion. And though
"Rhingulph" is, he hears, Friederike's friend, yet he cannot
retract what he has said of the Bardic poems. Saxony has
tamed the savage and bold nature of his republican spirit, but
it has not made him a singer in mutual admiration concerts.
To her father he owes that perception of the Ideal which is
his guide in criticism ; of course he at the same time yields to
each kind of art, by its own standard, its due praise.
At the beginning of April (1769) Horn, whom, he had
eagerly desired to see, returned, his three years of Leipzig
study over. Horn thought not only that Wolfgang looked
unhealthy, but that the air of the Kingdom had made him
" stipide." And Wolfgang too, was disappointed in Horn.
Love sickness sat so oddly on his merry friend, and sentimen
tality was nauseous to one who professed no faith in maidens.
As Horn was pursuing his law studies with great diligence,
and found in Wolfgang no response to his ecstasies, it
came about that the friends saw each other less often than
before.1 When Wolfgang was again able to make use of his attic,
he provided himself with a little draught -furnace, and all
things needful for alchemic experimenting ; his father, though
1 Horn was in love with Constantie Breitkopf. See as to his sentimen
tality, Goethe's letter to Kathchen, June 1st, 1769. Der junge Goethe, i.
62. As to their isolation from each other, see Goethe's letter to Kathchen,
Jan. 23, 1770. Der junge Goethe, i. 72, 73. — Tr.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 89
viewing this enterprise with unfavourable eyes, did not interfere
to prevent it. With the assistance of his physician and
Fraulein Klettenberg, he made many successful experiments ;
one often renewed with great pleasure was the demonstration
of Liquor Silicum (Kieselsaft). Books on Alchemy became
almost a craze with him, though he, seeking exact knowledge,
was sometimes made desperate by their strange mystifications.
The bookseller Fleischer — Wolfgang's old travelling- com
panion to Leipzig — brought out in this very year (1769) a
new edition of Welling's chief work, Opus mago-cabbalisticum.
These were dark studies, but they led him to Boerhaave's
clearer Chemistry (Elementa Chemiae) ; and to the same
author's Aphorismen — on the diagnosis and cure of diseases.
With peculiar zest he used to read in the four volumes of
Arnold's Unparteiische Kirchen -und Ketzergeschichte,1 the pious
author of which finds true Christianity to be exactly with
those whom the Church has cast out ; this accorded well
with Wolfgang's temper; he being a passionate advocate of
intellectual freedom. The various theories of God and the
World which he met in this book were full of interest to him ;
and his active intelligence knew no rest until, borrowing the
main features from Welling, he had thought out a system of
his own. By degrees he became again interested in his sister's
circle of friends. Though among them he could not find the
roguish wit, the culture, and versatility of the Leipzig ladies,
there was a kindly good nature and a cheery capacity for
enjoyment in them, not without considerable attraction for
Wolfgang. And now about the 20th of May (1769) Kath
chen sent him word through Horn of her betrothal with Dr.
Kanne. Long as he had been prepared for this, it was a
heavy blow. Not until the 1st of June did he pluck up spirit
enough to wish her joy. Through his whole letter you feel
the presence of his piercing misery alternatively with the
bitterness of his contempt for woman's fickleness. Maidens'
hearts are indeed anything but marble. He will not write
again until October. That she calls him her dear friend, her
best friend, scorches his soul when he remembers all the
lovers she has salted down with "friendship." "I have
always told you that my fate is bound up with yours. Soon,
1 An Impartial History ofthe Church and of Heresies. — Tr.

90 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
perhaps, you will see how true my words were ; you will
soon perhaps hear some news which you do not expect"
This is a dark hint at his resolve to leave Germany imme
diately. When in August (1769), a report spread in Leipzig
that he had again become ill, Kathchen wrote inquiring very
anxiously about him. Exactly a year from the day on which
he had last seen her, he then replies in a short letter ; with
few sharp outlines you find his bitter grief imaged there. The
report of his illness had not been quite justified ; he is in
tolerable health ; often, however, not so good as he could wish.
"You can if you like suppose that I was prevented from
writing to you by indisposition only ; other causes will soon
perhaps prevent you from writing to me. ... I am intoler
able to-day. If I were in Leipzig I would sit beside you and
make a long face ; you doubtless remember such a spectacle.
Yet no ! if I were with you now, what content ! O could
I call back the three and a half years that are gone, I swear to
you, Kathchen, dear Kathchen, I would be wiser." 1
At about the same time (August 1769) he wrote begging
the younger Breitkopf — Gottlob — to write him one letter
even. " I am spending my life tolerably content and quiet ; "
he confides to this true friend. I have half-a-dozen English
girls whom I often meet ; and am in love with none of them ;
they are charming beings, and make my life uncommonly
pleasant. One who had never seen Leipzig might do right
well here ; but Saxony, Saxony ! ay ! ay ! that is the strong
tobacco." Among the girls whom he now often met were four
Gerocks and Crespel's two sisters. In this circle he could
often muster brightness enough ; though it was rather good
animal spirits, as he himself says, than a genuine joy of the
heart ; still in the fresh Present he could often forget his
distant sweetheart, and how he had lost her. It is note
worthy that in the letter last quoted he does not directly
speak of his songs — they had been printing since Easter;
only he begs his friend to let him know what the elder Breit
kopf — the publisher of them — had to say.
Weak in body, and suffering from the smart of unrequited'
love, the bond which drew him to the godly grew closer, so
that on the 21st and 22d of September (1769) we find him in
Moritz's company, present at the Synod of the Herrnhut Com-
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 65, 66.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS.

9i

munity at Castle Marienborn in the County Oberisenburg.
This castle Zinzendorf, when the old line of Counts who lived
there died out (1725), had rented ofthe Count von Isenburg-
Biidingen, whose man of business was Goethe's friend Moritz.
At this Synod Goethe met a still living immediate disciple of
Zinzendorf, the Moravian Neisser, who had been a cutler ; a
Swiss Loretz, once a captain ; a French ex-major of noble
birth, etc. These excellent men, he at a later time tells us,
had his entire respect ; yet they, not less than Fraulein Klet
tenberg, refused to the young student the name Christian,
because he could not accept the doctrine that man is not to
expect anything from his own strength, that all his good is to
be an outflow of the Divine favour.
In this autumn (1769) too he went to Worms, perhaps in
Moritz's company. Here he saw Charitas Meixner, probably
by this time formally engaged. Then there was Charitas's
cousin Trapp, and Katharina Fabricius, whom he now learned
to know personally ; it will be remembered how they had been
correspondents. At the Eulenburg, then the residence of the
family Kampf, beyond the Mainz Gate, he scratched his name,
with the date, on a pane of glass.
Not until the end of September (1769) was the printing
of his songs to Breitkopfs music completed. On the 30th of
October there was an article on them in Hiller's Nachrichten
und Anmerkungen die Musik betreffend. It says that the writer
by no means lacks talent for this light and sprightly kind of
poetry ; the songs had well deserved to be made public, and
to have such good music composed to them. Wolfgang,
whose name remained hidden, was painfully moved by the
publication of these poems, the remembrancers of so different
a time. Nothing was farther from his thoughts than to suppose
that they had any particular merit.
Soon after this he saw his first great man, the Corsican
Paoli, who when going to England passed through Frank
furt. Paoli met all the curious flockers around him with
good-humoured politeness. Another arrival in Frankfurt
was J. G. Schlosser, who had given up his place at Treptow
to practise again as an attorney. He maintained friendly
intercourse with Wolfgang, who had changed so much since
they last met.
Very painful were his feelings when Kathchen asked him

92 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
to write a poem for her near approaching marriage-day. He
did not answer the letter ; even at a much later date (Decem
ber 12, 1769), he but incidentally refers to it, saying that he
had attempted some marriage odes, but all his attempts had
expressed either too much or too little of his own emotions,
and how could she have expected him to celebrate worthily in
verse any joyful festival ?
In this winter (1769-70), Wolfgang's health, by degrees,
became so far re-established that he was again able to take a
thorough pleasure in the theatre, in concerts, and parties.
But there were still throbbings and shootings of the pain for
his lost love. In December (1769) a dream, in which he saw
Kathchen — married, so stirred him that he could remain no
longer silent. He wrote next morning, asking whether the
marriage has really taken place ; if it has, he hopes that it is
the beginning of happiness for her. " Physically, I am restored
to health," he writes, " but my soul has not yet healed ; I am
in a silent, inactive calm, but that is not happiness. And in
this languor my imaginative powers so drowse that I can con
jure up no shape of what was once most dear to me. . . .
No marriage ode have I to send you. . . . Since — ay, this long
time back, my poems have been dreary and disordered as my
brain, as you can perceive by the greater part of those already
printed, and as you will perceive by others which are not
printed yet."
He has been unable to restrain himself from writing to
her once again before the certain tidings of her marriage has
come to him. She is not to reply herself, since he would fain
see her writing, hear her voice no more, it is ill enough that
his dreams are so busy. Yet within three months shall she
receive one last letter from him, saying whither he is to travel,,
and when. The books which she wished for he sends to her
address.1 His departure for Strassburg at Easter (1770) was now a
settled thing. Father and son were equally eager for it ; the
former, because he thought that Wolfgang's law studies had
been too long intermitted ; and Wolfgang, because he earnestly';
desired to put a still greater distance between himself and
Kathchen ; in a foreign land — in France — his pain would find
1 Goethe to Kathchen Schonkopf, December 12, 1769. Der junge
Goethe, i. 6S-71.— Tr.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 93
ease. Strassburg might be called a French city, for, though
the French reckoned the inhabitants of Elsass mere German
subjects of the king, France had yet made the plundered terri-
tory an assured possession.
An indication of the formation of firm resolves is to be
found in the setting aside at this time of a quarto note-book
with the superscription : Ephemerides. Was man treibt, Heut
dies und morgen das. 1770. The contents are various ; short
quotations from books read, titles of books, original reflections,
written in French or Latin for practice. The first third of
this book, written before he had left Frankfurt, shows how he
was occupied with the languages and literatures of France and
Germany, but not to the exclusion of Wieland's Translation
of Shakespeare ; trace of Greek studies there is none, a little
law, a great deal about the theory and history of plastic art,
of poetry, and of music ; meditations on God and the world ;
finally, many indications of alchemic and cabalistic studies.1
When he heard from Horn that the wedding was put off to
Easter (1770), his heart leapt at the wild thought that fortune
might yet give him Kathchen for himself. Writing to her on
the 23d of January (1770), he says, that he is living in content,
is healthy, and bright, and industrious, for he has no girl in
his head. But he is tired of Frankfurt, and will leave for
Strassburg at the end of March. There he will be always
glad to get a letter from Kathchen Schonkopf. "You are, and
always have been, the loveable maiden, and will also be the
loveable wife. And I — I shall still be Goethe. You know
what that means. When I name myself, I name all of myself,
and you know that ever since I saw you I have been only a
part of you." From Strassburg he will go to Paris, where he
hopes to stay a good while. "And after that, God knows
whether anything will come of it !" Should her marriage not
take place within the year — well he will not hang himself
because of the delay — perhaps he would himself yet bring her
the so long-promised neckerchief and fan, and address her as
"Mademoiselle Schonkopf," or " Kathchen Schonkopf." Talk
ing of Horn and his Constantie, Wolfgang says it may end with
a wedding after all, and that would be a wonderful sight ; but
there might be another wedding much more strange, and yet
1 Reprinted in A. Scholl, Briefe ttnd Aufsdtze von Goethe aus den
Jahren 1766 bis 1786. Weimar, 1846. S. 63-140.— Tr.

94 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii,
not impossible, only improbable. When Cornelia marries and
goes away, he will divide the house with his parents ; ten
rooms, handsome and well furnished in the Frankfurt taste,
will fall to him.1 Since, however, it seems unlikely that she
will have him, he begs her to woo, on his behalf, that friend
of hers who most resembles her. For his travelling need not
prevent the consideration of such things. " In two years I
shall be back again. And then — I have a house, I have
money. Heart, what desirest thou more? A wife!" This
free outpouring to one who was looking forward to her mar- '
riage-day, he intends to excuse when he adds the concluding
remark that, for once, he has to-day been merry.2
The painful tension of feeling resulting from this imprac
ticable love -suit could not remain hidden from his father,
whose ill-humour and disquiet were thus, of course, increased.
Wolfgang had excited his father's violent anger by imprudent
criticism of the architecture of the house, which we know had
been so carefully planned, and by suggesting that it might be
rebuilt in Leipzig taste. Through the Frau Rath's agency the
violence of this anger had been appeased, but she could not
prevent a sense of injury and vexation from lasting some
time. One important reason why, at this time, poetic labours
seem to have been set aside, is to be found in the diligent
professional study to which Wolfgang had to give himself.
On the 6th of February (1770), he writes to Assessor Her
mann : — " I am glad if you have found something to your
liking in my poems. I hope that in time I will do something
better ; with us Quasimodogenitis, people must be indulgent. ,
Painting, and music, and all that is called art, I have just as
much at heart as ever." His friend Reich has sent him
Wieland's Dialogen des Diogenes? by post, and he has read it
by post — at post haste. "The engravings" (by Oeser) "are
excellent, and the book is — by Wieland. One must just name
him and leave it, for to describe, to criticise the character, the
mood of this man, is no task for us."4 To the friendly pub-
1 Probably this was the plan of his father, who wished to keep Wolf
gang always at his side. — Duntzer.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 72-5. — Tr.
3 Published by Reich himself. — Duntzer.
* Der junge Goethe, i. 75, 76.

1768-70.] STUDENT YEARS. 95
lisher he writes (February 20, 1770) : — " Feel and keep silence
is all that one can do on this occasion, for even to praise a
great man is not permitted, unless you are as great as he.
But I have sometimes, indeed, been angry on the score of
Wieland, and I think with reason. Wieland has the ill-luck
to be often not understood ; sometimes, perhaps, it is his own
fault, but sometimes it is not, and then one cannot but be
angry when persons vend to the public their misunderstandings
as explanations." After Oeser and Shakespeare, Wieland alone
he can reckon among his genuine teachers ; others had pointed
out his mistakes, these alone had shown him how to do better.
In conclusion he begs Reich to tell the poet Wieland of one
not yet man enough to fully estimate his worth, but with heart
pious enough to yield to it all reverence.1
Of all that he had himself yet written Die Mitschuldigen
— the new draft of which, in three Acts, belongs to this winter
(1769-70), and that record of penitence, Die Laune des Ver-
Hebten, alone pleased him ; all else composed since the Leipzig
auto-da-fe (p. 57), whether merely sketched or actually begun,
he calmly gave to the flames a short time before his departure.
Among these must have been several unfinished plays — some
carried as far as the third or fourth Act — and many poems.
Letters and miscellaneous papers too went into the fire.
Only Behrisch's beautiful transcript of his poems was spared ;
the story that Behrisch had this buried with him is without
foundation. The best of his friends, his Leipzig comrade Horn, who
was just about to graduate, went with him to Mainz, through
which the diligence from Frankfurt to Strassburg passed. By
Horn he had sent a last greeting to Kathchen on the 5th of
March (1770). The news of her marriage, which took place
two days later, severed the bond of yearning and hope which
had held his thoughts to Leipzig so long.
Thus after an invalid seclusion of more than a year and a
half (September 1768 — April 17 7°), Wolfgang for the second
time left home. The mad overweening spirit of youth in him
had been scared back into reflection and thoughtfulness by
long weariness of pain, yet it was not dulled and tamed; he
saw deeper than the surface of things now, yet they had not
thereby become staled and discarded ; the grief of unrequited
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 77> 7&.

96 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii.
loving had clarified and ennobled emotion, had rendered more
clear and definite his desire for a pure union of souls ; close
intercourse with pious natures had made belief in all things
high come easy to him, while his persuasion remained un-
weakened that each one ought to work out his own free
development ; busying himself with art and literature, he had
effectually furthered his endeavour after the ideal and grace,
but Wieland was still to him the master of these. In Strass
burg, just a hundred years before it was won back to Germany,
Goethe was to turn aside from the influence of that France
whose capital he had desired to see ; he was to be penetrated
for the first time with the glow of a pure ideal love, and be
consecrated as its priest ; by Herder he was to be irresistibly
led to the basis of all true poetry deep within the soul.

CHAPTER III.
STRASSBURG.
April 1770-AuGusT 1771.
Not so joyous as four and a half years before when entering
the Athens on the Pleisse, Wolfgang arrived at Franco-German
Strassburg on the second Monday before Easter (April 2,
1770). Sorrow for the loss of Kathchen interwove with
religious melancholy ; his belief in his own poetic inspiration
was gone ; the world was not so bright as it had once seemed,
the irritability and depression of sickness was still upon him.
He secured rather comfortable and convenient lodgings
on the south of the very lively old Fish Market, in the house
now No. 80 ; the landlord's name was Schlag. Goethe had a
letter of recommendation to a pious tradesman, in whose
business one of his cousins — perhaps a young Melber — was
an apprentice. Through this connection many other good
but dull people became known to him ; his chief intercourse
at first was with them, it was but of a superficial character.
We have evidence of the state of his mind in two letters
to the poor -theological student Limprecht, to whom alone he
could turn in Leipzig, now grown so strange. The first of
these letters was written on the eve of Good Friday (he wished
to do a good work on this holy day) ; he sends to Limprecht,
who, he feels sure, needs money, the enclosed louis d'ors, and
begs that the letter be taken as it is written, without ceremony
and with all his heart.1 But this was not despatched until
the 19th, after having received a quite unexpected letter from
Limprecht on the 1 8th. In the letter of the 1 9th Wolfgang
writes : — " I am changed, greatly changed, for this I thank
1 This letter is dated Good Friday 1770, the \2th April. But Good
Friday 1770 was the 13th of April. See Der junge Goethe, i. 231, 232.
—Tr. H

98 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. iii.
my Saviour ; I thank him too that I am not what I should be.
Luther says — ' I dread my good works more than my sins.'
And while one is young one is complete in no respect. I
have now been here fifteen days, and I find Strassburg not a
whit better or worse than anything else I have yet' seen, that
is, middling enough, yet with certain aspects which, for good
or bad, have power to excite, to rouse from the dull everyday
condition." It will be observed how very pietistic his tone of
thinking remains.
On the same day (the new half year had just begun) he
was inscribed among the university students. His tradesman
had recommended the table d'hdte kept by the old maiden
ladies named Lauth, at No. 13 in the Kramergasse. The
president — by right of seniority — was the Licentiate Salzmann,
Registrar of the Administrative Court, now in his forty-ninth
year, a man of great benevolence and calm intelligence, who
moved with measured pace, always in shoes and stockings, his
hat under his arm, an umbrella his defence. He was greatly
interested by Wolfgang, who, with characteristic trustfulness,
yielded all his heart to him, and acted on the wise counsel of
his rich experience. Frequent visits were paid to Salzmann
in his yellow chamber with the Silenus on the chimney-piece.
Salzmann explained to Wolfgang how best to prepare for the
law examinations. There were no distinguished professors in
the law school : you had only to amass learning sufficient for
practical purposes, and to give evidence of it by passing an
easy examination. Wolfgang had, at home and at Leipzig, |
acquired so much information that, with the aid of note-books,
he could easily make himself ready. The little company of
Germans who made up the table d'hdte spoke German mostly,
and the majority of them were medical students. Goethe be
came intimate with a law student who had nearly completed
his studies : his name was Engelbach ; he was five years older
than Goethe ; he came from Buchsweiler, where his father was
Kammerdirektor. The medical student Weyland, also from
Buchsweiler, son of a doctor then dead, attracted Goethe, a
year his senior, by his kindliness, his good disposition, his
vivacity : he was, it is true, rather easily irritated. Salzmann
had some years before founded a Literary Society, not limited j
to the frequenters of the table d'hdte ; in this Society new
French and German books were procured, and on fixed days

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 99
the members read essays and held debates. Here was, of
course, another object of great interest to Wolfgang. Then
Secretary Salzmann had friends everywhere, and through him
Wolfgang came to know many families who made him welcome,
with or without his Mentor, in their town houses, or in their
country places beyond the gates. As his days grew more
sociable, and as his youthful spirits were repaired and strength
ened by cheery open air living, so by degrees did he withdraw
from the companionship of the pietistic, who, ignprant of
everything but their indoctrinated creed, incapable of unfettered
thinking, had become very wearisome to him.
His intellectual thirst was of course not to be satisfied
by the studies of his professional school. But the Latin and
Greek classics which he had brought with him remained
almost unused. The books on Alchemy were not yet put
away ; however he entered gladly into philosophic speculation,
to which Salzmann also was inclined. In Ephemerides we find
Moses Mendelssohn's Phadon compared with the Phaedo of
Plato;1 this belongs to the early Strassburg period.
When the Austrian Arch-Duchess, Marie Antoinette, the
betrothed of the Dauphin, journeying to Paris, entered Strass
burg on the 7 th of May (1770), Wolfgang hastily threw off a
satirical poem in French.2 A Frenchman of his acquaintance
criticised with great severity his verse and his choice of lan
guage, and, so far as Goethe himself remembered, this was
his last attempt to compose poetry in French. Indeed about
this time we find as little done in German verse-making as in
landscape sketching. He was differently employed. There
was so much dancing in and about Strassburg, that he, having
neglected the art in Leipzig, had to get lessons ; his master
was a Frenchman, the celebrated Sauveur. With the help of
his two daughters Sauveur soon made Wolfgang a good dancer.
The love story which is connected with these dancing lessons
1 Schbll : Briefe und Aufsdtze, S. 89 etseq. — Tr.
2 He satirised the order which forbade the presence of deformed, or
lame, or blind persons, on the route of the Arch-Duchess. These were,
said Goethe, precisely the people that Christ desired to see around him.
Dichtung und Wahrheit, ix. Buch. See also in this context the extra
ordinary effect produced on Goethe by the horrible subjects of the pictures
which decorated the chief hall of the pavilion erected to receive the young
bride ; the history of Jason was portrayed in them. In the less important
apartments were copies of Raphael's cartoons. — Tr.

ioo THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. iii.
is well known from Goethe's charming but probably freely
heightened account. 1
Very late in the half year came a third native of Buch
sweiler to Strassburg and to the table d'hdte. The theological
student, Franz Christian Lerse, six weeks older than Goethe,
matriculated on the 8th of June (1770). He was remarkable
for calm prudence, for clear decision, for exactness and love
of order ; he was kindly and true-hearted, with plenty of dry
humour, In all that furthered the cultivation of intellect and
of heart he earnestly sympathised. Goethe and he became
fast friends.
In the early midsummer holidays (1770), setting out on
June 23, Goethe rode with his friend Weyland to Saarbriicken.
There Weyland's half sister lived, wife of the Regierungsrath
Scholl, and at the house of Privy Regierungs- und Kammer-
prdsident von Giinderode, Goethe could reckon on a friendly
reception, for Frau Giinderode was daughter of von Stalburg,
a Sheriff of Frankfurt. Engelbach went with our travellers as
far as Buchsweiler, where they stopped a night. Evening of
June 26 saw them ride into Saarbriicken, where they were
most hospitably entertained for three days, and were received
in the best society of the place. On the 27 th, a rainy day,
Wolfgang felt impelled to write to some girl friend in Frank
furt. He speaks the praise of a light, unshackled heart, which
gives us courage to woo great joys, while to be in love makes
us timid and weak ; love is an emotion which lulls us into in
activity, one's heart floats in it, always confined to one charmed
spot, though restless and unappeased. " Tell my Franzchen"
(Franziska Crespel), he playfully writes, "that I am now as
ever hers. She is very dear to me, and I was often provoked
that she teased me so little ; one likes to feel one's fetters
when in love."2 In the happy mood of this summer ride
he wrote at Saarbriicken the love song, " Wo bist du itzt mein
unvergesslich Madchen 1" in which the lover calls his beloved
to return, for all her absence has been rainy weather.3
Numerous and varied conversations about the enterprises ,
of the late Prince gave Wolfgang his first insight into the
significance of mountain districts considered as human
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, ix. Buch. (the concluding pages). ^Tr.
2 This letter will be found, Der junge Goethe, i. 255. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, i. 265, Als ich in Saarbriicken. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 101
property. On their home journey our travellers saw several
machine factories, an alum manufactory, the Duttweiler coal
mine, a mountain mine on fire, the resin manufactory at
Sulzbach, and the glass manufactories of Friedrichsthal. At
Neukirch, where they stopped a night, Wolfgang without
companion visited at a late hour the lonely hunting-seat on
the hill ; there he sat long deep in thought. Any oppor
tunity of subduing by the awful impressions of gloom and
loneliness the nervousness which still lingered within him was
welcome. Next day their way, leaving Bitsch to the left, led
them through the large wild scenery of the Barenthal. Here
Wolfgang was much interested by the general good report of
Baron von Dietrich, as one who by developing the mining
' resources of the country largely benefited men. But of yet
more significance was a visit to Niederbronn. Here the
spirit of the old Roman Age revealed itself amid strange
circumstance to his intelligence ; for in the familiar bustle of
rude farm -yards he found broken antique pillars; sacrificial
altars with their bas-reliefs and inscriptions ; and Roman
vessels of many kinds. The Wasenburg between Niederbronn
and Oberbronn, built on a hill — its foundation Roman ruins
— was not left unvisited ; Goethe here read an inscription of
dedication to Mercury.1
Soon after his return from the Lothringen journey, he
went (July 1770) to see a place still held in great veneration,
where, in the basement story of a Roman castle, a Duke's
daughter was said to have found a place of refuge from
the persecution of a cruel father : " with a hundred, ay, a
thousand of the ' faithful " he made the pilgrimage to the
Odilienberg, near Baar. The eight-day devotion in memory of
the elevation of the bones of the Saint falls in the first half of
July. Not far from the chapel you are shown St. Odilie's
Well. Goethe also went to see the convent Hohenburg, said
to have been founded by Odilie, where you can see _ her like
ness in nun's garb. The memory of the Saint impressed
the poet so vividly, that nearly forty years later it hovered
before him when delineating the pure, almost supernatural
sufferer of the Wahlverwandtschaften?
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, x. Buch. — Tr.
2 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xi. Buch. So Franz in Gott von Ber-
lichingen is named after Franz Lerse. — Tr.

102 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. iii.
Amid all his temporal enjoyments and gaieties, amid all
his earnest endeavour after wider knowledge and experience,
the pietistic mode of thinking was not yet disused ; he even
employs the pietistic phraseology. On the 28th of July
(1770), he begs his friend Trapp to pardon his discourteous
silence ; his unfixed life has prevented him from answering
Trapp's letter. " I am living I may say for each day as it
comes " he writes, " and I thank God, and often his Son
when I can, that I am so circumstanced as to seem enjoined
to this mode of living. . . . There was once a time when
the world seemed to me as full of thorns as it now does to
you. The Heavenly Physician has renewed the flame of
life in my body, and I have joy and courage again." Love-
likings, those " unripe stirrings of our heart," he calls fools
which lead us by the nose. He declares that wise reflections
are light wares, but prayer is a profitable trade ; — " a single
uplifting of the heart in the name of Him whom we call Lord,
until we are able to call Him Our Lord," will load us with
countless benefits.1
As the Law Examination drew near he had to work
harder at his professional studies. Though it was only need
ful that he should prepare himself to answer questions of the
usual difficulty and scope — in which task the note-books lent
him by Engelbach were of great service, he could not rest
satisfied with this : he was impelled to closer study of many
points. So we understand him when he says, writing on the
26th of August (1770), to his dear Klettenberg, that Juris
prudence is beginning to give him much pleasure ; he, how
ever, adds the confession that die Chymie is still his secret
beloved. When he adds : — " Still, you see, the featherbrain
(Geek) of old times! the  " (the rest of the letter is
lost) he is thinking of the many-sided activity which had
grown second nature to him. His letter so long due had
been at last prompted by a special occasion ; that morning he
had gone with the Christian community to celebrate our
Lord's sufferings and death. As to his condition he observes :
— "The many men whom I see, the many incidents which
fall across my path, supply me experiences and knowledge of
which I had not dreamed. For the rest I am just well
enough to support a moderate and needful amount of labour,
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 235-7. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 103
yet to be reminded at times that neither in body nor soul am
I a giant," So little as yet had the old strength returned ; his
health was precarious. And so far is he now from overween
ing confidence in his own strength that, referring to his birth
day, the day after the morrow, he begs his friend to pray for
him, that all may be as it should be. Yet he mentions too
the opinion of Salzmann, who with his cold-blooded way of
looking at the world, believed himself to have found : —
" That we are placed in this world specially in order to be
useful to it; that we can make ourselves fit for this destina
tion, in which task Religion will also be found of some
service."1 Soon after this he passed the examination in law, and
immediately began to work at his Doctor's Disputation;2
probably he intended to take his degree at the close of the
winter half-year of 1770, but various influences were to prevent
the speedy realisation of any such plan.
One of the many good things which befell our poet during
his long life was his meeting with Herder in Strassburg.
Herder was born in 1744, at Mohrungen, a town of East
Prussia, of poor parents. He had fought his way up from
poverty to distinction ; he had tasted much bitterness ; and
now was about to spend a passionate and restless six months
in Strassburg, his excitable nature stirred to the depths. He
had sat at the feet of Kant in Konigsberg ; he had imbibed
the philosophy of Hamann also ; at Riga he had worked with
admirable result as a minister and as a teacher in the
Cathedral School (1764-1769). While there he had made
himself well known with his Fragmente zur deutschen Literatur
and his Kritische Wilder, though they had been published
without his name. But, alas ! the malignity with which Klotz
and his followers had tried to undermine the position of the
bold inquirer had hurried him away.to assert that he had no
part in these writings. By this frantic act he made his posi
tion quite untenable, for the untruthfulness of his assertion was
plain as day ; so he made up his mind to disappear from ken
of German eyes. He went to France by sea (June 1769),
landing at Nantes. He spent some time there, and then two
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 239-241. — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Engelbach, September 10, 1770. Der junge Goethe,
\. 242. — Tr.

104

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. II. CH. III.

months in Paris, in acquiring knowledge of the language, the-
literature, and the people, and in developing his mental cul
ture on all sides. Then he felt a mission to be the Reformer
of Livonia; he cursed such authorship as his had been
hitherto; he vowed in future to write nothing which would
not add to the stock of thought amassed by the human race.
Then, however, he had responded to the advantageous offer
of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp ; had actually set out from
Kiel (July 1770) as chaplain and conductor of the delicate
young Prince of Holstein on a tour to Italy. In Darmstadt,
at Merck's house, he met and loved the portionless Caroline

Fie. 9. Herder and Caroline Flachsland ; portraits taken at the same period. From
Johann Gottfried von Herder's Lebensbild; Herausgegeben von seznem Sohne.
Flachsland; and to make a home for her he accepted the
post of Counsellor of the Consistory and Head Chaplain to
Count William of Buckebu'rg. In Strassburg, where he arrived
on the 5th of September (1770), he intended to gain as
speedy a release as possible from the tutorship, which had
become so little accordant with his plans, and to get surgical
treatment for a lachrymal fistula, which was a weary dis
figurement and burden. While he, in great anxiety, was
awaiting day by day formal appointment to his new post,
Wolfgang met him by chance at the foot of the steps of the
inn Zum Geist, which they were both about to enter. Wolf-

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS; 105
gang knew Herder only by his Kritische Wdlder, and, so far
as the first part was concerned, he sided with Lessing, whose
views are there combated. Pie already knew of Herder's
arrival, and was prepared for his somewhat remarkable, though,
on the whole, pleasing appearance. So in the stranger clergy
man with the high toupe and the black silk cloak carelessly
gathered and shoved into a pocket, coal-black eyes full of
power, and a winning expression on his somewhat pouting
mouth, he immediately recognised the celebrated newcomer.
Wolfgang's reverential accosting was met by Herder with
gentle friendliness ; it must indeed have been very welcome to
him, with his " thirst and weariness of soul," and his dislike of
Strassburg. They got on into free, earnest talk, so much
was Herder interested; and the youth took courage, and asked
leave to call. (This first meeting cannot have taken place
later than the 12th of September; for on that day Herder
left the inn to live at the Prince's. On the 20th he told the
Prince of his resolve to leave.) Herder accepted kindly the
open trustfulness and respect which Goethe showed, and being
then in an agitated and tender mood he revealed the sunny
side of his nature. Thus Wolfgang became more and more
devoted to this new friend, who stood so high above him in
experience and judgment, illuminating by flashing glances
many things which had been obscure. If, as Dichtung und
Wahrheit relates, he showed Herder Die Mitschuldigen with
out getting rebuked, it must have been in this first period,
before Herder's " repellent pulse" (" abstossender Puis") had
returned. ¦ A month after this meeting with Herder began that acquaint
ance with the Brion household, in which Goethe's heart was
so deeply stirred. Pastor Johann Jakob Brion of Sessenheim1
was of Strassburg origin, and belonged to the Lutheran Evan
gelical Church. The little hamlet Sessenheim, girt round
with pleasant orchards, stands about five minutes' walk back
from the great highroad between Strassburg and Mainz, not
far from the village of Drusenheim. The parsonage was a
simple unpretentious building, which had already done service
for two centuries. Pastor Brion, its present occupant, was in
1 This spelling was that current in Goethe's time. The name, of
which there is very early mention, had originally but one s in the middle ;
the duplication marks that the preceding vowel is short. — Duntzer.

1 06

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. ii. ch. III.

his fifty-fourth year, a man of strict orthodoxy, very kindly
and hospitable withal. He had the spiritual charge of six
parishes. Wolfgang owed his introduction to his friend Wey-
land, whose half-sister was married to the brother of the
pastor's wife. ¦ The " Frau Pfarrerin," Magdalena Salomea,
now forty-six years of age, was, like her husband, of Strassburg
origin ; her maiden name was Scholl ; and the brother just
mentioned was the Regierungsrath Scholl whom we have
already met in Saarbrucken. The eldest daughter of the
Brion family was the wife of a pastor in Baden ; in the

Ho

Fig. io. The Parsonage of Sessenheim in 1770. From the monograph of Ph. F.
Lucius ; Friederike Brion. von Sessenheim.
parental home, beside a boy, Christian, seven years of age,
were still three daughters — Maria Salomea, who was only a
few days younger than Wolfgang ; Friederike Elisabetha, who
was eighteen or nineteen ; and Jakobea Sophia, who was
about four years younger than Friederike. In Dichtung und
Wahrheit there is a wonderfully fresh and vivid account of the
impression — doubtless idealised in the poet's memory — which
the light slender Friederike made. Bright blue eyes, a deli
cate small face, her pretty nose, tip-tilted, made saucy inquiry
of the air, a neck that seemed too slight for the dark-gold.!
masses borne on' the dainty little head, a charming German;

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 107
costume which well became her — with such charms did
Friederike — they called her Riekchen — present herself before
Wolfgang, whose passionate heart of youth she was to fill for
the first time with the deep throbbings of an ideal love.
The delicacy of chest from which she suffered escaped
Wolfgang's knowledge at this time; she went and came so
fast in almost bird-like flights without losing breath, he thought
her parents' anxiety about her excessive. Her more robust
elder sister, solidly prudent and decided, presented a contrast
which heightened the loveliness of her refined, tender, ardent
presence. She stood charmingly on the boundary which
divides the girl of country life from the girl of city life.
Two letters remain to us which relate to that first visit to
Sessenheim, the free poetic rendering of which, in Dichtung
und Wahrheit, is so instinct with imperishable breath. To a
girl, probably the friend to whom he almost four months ago
wrote from Saarbriicken extolling the fortune of having a light
free heart, he writes on the day after his return from Sessenheim
— the 14th of October (1770) : — " I have never had such vivid
experience of what it is to be merry without the heart having
any share in it, as at present, as here in Strassburg. An
acquaintance widely extended among nice people, a lively
cheery society chases day after day away, leaves me little time
for thinking, and none at all of the calm needful for feeling,
and when one is not feeling one's friends are certainly not in
mind. To sum up : my present life is exactly like a sleigh-ride,
plenty of brilliance and bell-tinkle, but just as* little for the
heart as there is much for the eye and ear." Why he now
writes he does not, indeed, plainly confess : — " I have been
spending some days (einige Tage) in the country among very
charming people. The society of the amiable daughters of
the house, the fair country scenery, and the kindliest autumn
weather, awoke in my heart every emotion that had fallen
asleep, every memory of what I love."1
Next day (October 15, 1770) he must write to Friederike
herself, venturing to address her as " dear new friend," since
at first glance his eyes read in her eyes tj it there was hope
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 243-5. -A™ M'amselll Immediately after
the point at which the above quotation stops is t) chronologically im
portant sentence : — "dass ich kaum angelangt bin\ Is ich schon hier sitze
und an Sie schreibe." October 14, 1770, was a Sunday.— Tr.

108 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. hi.
of friendship between- them, and for their hearts he would
answer. What exactly he would write to his "dear dear
friend " he does not know ; but he notes by a certain inward
unrest that he longs to be with her. At farewell she must
have seen how sad was parting to him : — " You would not be
lieve that the city bustle, contrasted with your sweet country
joys, would be distasteful. Yet in truth, Mamsell, Strassburg
never seemed so vacant as it does now. I hope indeed for
better days, when time has a little dimmed the remembrance
of our dainty and humorous merrymakings, when I no longer
feel so vividly how sweet and good my new friend is. Yet
could I, or would I, forget that. No, I will rather keep my
slight heartache and write to you often. And now many
thanks, and many sincere remembrances to your parents.
To your dear sister many hundred  what I would gladly give
you again."1 We have only the sketch of this letter ; for none
of the many which he afterwards wrote to Sessenheim was a
preliminary sketch needful! These letters are lost to us.
Friederike's elder sister, in chagrin, burnt them all at a later
time. Meanwhile many new-comers joined the Lauth table tfhdte,
the number of those who surrounded the table rose from a
dozen to about twenty. Among these new-comers was
Heinrich Jung, called Stilling, who entered the University on
the 18th of September (1770). Jung was now thirty years of
age, and his fortunes had been remarkable. Charcoal-burner,
tailor, tutor, schoolmaster, help in a business establishment in
turn, it was at last revealed to him that his Heavenly Father
had been preparing him for the study of medicine by sharp
and weary trial from his youth up. After six years' endeavour
to learn all that medical books could teach, he at length
made up his mind to enter a regular medical school — and this
brought him to Strassburg — though he had no means, and had
betrothed himself to a girl poor as himself; his support was
in the motto Jehovah jireh — the Lord will provide. And he
was not put to shame for having thus made God his paymaster.
Wolfgang felt a sincere sympathy with this earnest man whom
it was so easy to make fun of; he won Jung's heart completely
by the noble decision with which he brushed away the cheap
ridicule which a witling made of Jung's wig. Such a sincere
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 245-247.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 109
belief in miracles, such a direct reference always to God as the
pole-star of life, were met by Wolfgang with that respect
which he already gave to like peculiarities in Fraulein Kletten
berg and other pious friends ; from whom, indeed, at this time
he was not far removed. Jung's earnestness won Wolfgang,
and in their scientific aspirations they found many points of
union, for just at this time Wolfgang was about to widen his
field of knowledge by attending lectures in natural science and
medicine. Thus he went with Jung to the elder Spielmann's
chemistry class, and to Lobstein's anatomy class; he heard
Ehrmann's clinical lectures, and even studied midwifery under
the younger Ehrmann, not being deterred by the high fee
of six new louis d'ors. And another fostering cause of his
intimacy with Jung was their fellowship in attendance in
Herder's sick-chamber.
Since we last saw Herder he had taken new lodgings, the
prince having departed ; and in these lodgings his next room
neighbour was a Russian medical student,1 cousin of a Riga
acquaintance. This Russian (who matriculated on Novem
ber 13) stood faithfully by Herder in the operation, and
during the weary after-time of suffering. The operation — the
bone of the nose had to be drilled — was performed on October
21 (1770); a painful treatment followed, involving long con
finement to the sick-room, and alas ! the hoped-for result did
not take place. During this dreary time Herder was to be
seen by hardly any one but his Russian, Wolfgang, who came
every morning and evening, and Jung. That all these, but
especially Wolfgang, who revealed his feelings and enthusiasms
so unreservedly, often suffered a good deal from Herder's easily
roused bitterness, was a matter of course. But Wolfgang felt
the extraordinary value of that deep insight, of that compre
hensive knowledge, and aspired to turn these things to account
for his own mental enlargement ; nor could it escape his notice
that Herder, scold as he might, did yet estimate the gifts of
his young friend at a high rate. Thus was he enabled to
endure. At this time, beside researches on the First Book of
Moses which led deep into the History of the East, Herder's
chief preoccupations were Shakespeare, Ossian, the Psalms,
and Klopstock ; and in the main these were the subjects of his
1 Named Peglow. — Tr.

no THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. hi.
conversation. So soon, however, as he was in any degree
fit for original work, he with speed completed his long pre
pared Prize Essay on the Origin of Language, which had to
be sent to Berlin before the close of the year. Goethe, read
ing it in manuscript, learned a great deal, for he had not yet
thought on the question with which it dealt. The proposi
tion which Herder works out to such irresistible demonstra
tion, that God had not been a direct teacher of language in
paradise, but rather had given to man the powers by which he
might develop a language, this proposition thoroughly fell in
with Wolfgang's view that the growth of all things was accord
ing to natural laws. He talked with unreserved animation on
this subject, and indeed on all that came uppermost, not
escaping frequent sharp sarcastic correction. Herder was
especially fond of Goldsmith's Vicar qf Wakefield, which he
perused again and again ; the German version he would read
aloud to his friends in the easy quiet way peculiar to him,
from which every trace of declamatory fervour was banished.
Even here his bitter remarks found occasion, now in the out
breaks of feeling of the listeners, now in their want of acute-
ness as to the course of the story or its beauty. Wolfgang
was the more captivated by the Vicar because the family in it
reminded him forcibly of his Sessenheim friends.
The correspondence with Friederike meanwhile briskly
ran its course ; probably there were often little gifts, and per
haps another visit. There was a letter in December 1770
to friend Horn, which Goethe himself thought worthy of
preservation. Here, according to Eckermann's account,1
are already traces of Werther ; the Sessenheim relation is
accomplished, the happy youth seems to be lulled in a
delirium of the sweetest emotions, loitering away his days as
in a dream ; the perfect content of the happiness is indi
cated even in the smooth neat and elegant handwriting.
Two little poems, which have been preserved, are addressed
to the two sisters, and refer — one to a visit soon to be paid
despite the harshness of winter,2 another to an evening ride
from Sessenheim, performing the commission of the girls.3
1 Eckermann, April II, 1829. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 266. — " Ich komme bald, ihr goldnen
Kinder."— Tr.
8 Der junge Goethe, i. 263. — " Nun sitzt der Ritter an dem Ort, Den
ihr ihm nanntet Hebe Kinder." — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. in
He probably visited the parsonage at Christmas, and probably
he then gave Friederike the book of songs which he made by
putting his own words to well-known airs.
In the beginning of the year 1 7 7 1 Herder's discontent at
the absence of the promised result of the operation reached
such a pitch that "he began to stamp" (zu pochen anfing).
He applied to the most famous surgeon in Strassburg, Busch,
whose operations seemed at first successful ; but at the begin
ning of spring it appeared that " after all pains, expenses,
exhaustions, negligences, uneasiness, and mortifications,"1 the
treatment had failed, all hope was gone, nay, perhaps
dangerous consequences were to be feared. If in this sad
time Herder's letters to his bride even were cold and " dis
cordant," how much must Wolfgang and Jung have suffered,
the constant eye-witnesses of his dreadful need ! But they
steadfastly endured the fretfulness, the bitterness, the con
temptuous ridicule of the man whom they reverenced and
pitied, from whose mind such store of living thoughts, of
penetrating insight, of rich knowledge, was lavishly poured.
The story of the human race which tells of all nations — what
each might have been, what destiny each has actually had,
how each has found a happiness after its own fashion, and at
the same time how the nations, following one on other,
have in turn taken up and continued the great progressive
development of humanity— how radiant clear did Herder
make this ! It was a special pleasure to him to speak his
thoughts on plastic art, which he considered the art for the
sense of touch, as opposed to painting, the art for the sight.
Goethe remembered at a later time that he often said that
sight was everything with Goethe. In poetry Herder con
demned all elaboration, and accordingly Wolfgang's favourite
Ovid fared ill ; the Greeks he set above all others, and among
them the greatness of Homer. He said indeed, later, that
with Goethe beginning his study of Homer in Strassburg,
Homer's heroes seemed all conceived as beautiful great storks
freely wading about ; he still thinks of Goethe when he comes
on one of those excellent passages where the Father of Poetry
peeps over his lyre and smiles in his venerable beard. As the
greatest Poet of the North Shakespeare was extolled; his
dramas are leaves from the Book of Events — of Providence —
1 From a letter of Herder's to Caroline Flachsland, spring 1771. — Tr.

112 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk, ii. ch. iii.
of the World — fluttering across the storm of Time. In front
of Shakespeare's picture he often embraced the poet-lad, into
whom he, as it were, desired to transfuse his whole admiration
of one, who, spurning all the lumber of dramatic rules, unities,
and such like, sets man and nature before us with large and
generous portrayal. The strange old world of Ossian too
Herder revealed to the younger friend, teaching him to recog
nise the powerful popular spirit which breathes in this poet. He
pointed out with enthusiasm that the gold of genuine poesy is
the general dower of the human spirit ; is to be found — not in
the old Scottish ballad alone — in the popular song of every
country, not excluding even Lapland ; and he would then
urge Wolfgang to search out what might still live among the
peasants of Elsass. Among modern literatures he especially
loved English : Sterne, Swift, Richardson, and Fielding, were
his favourite English authors. In French Literature he could,
on the other hand, see nothing but decline — the feebleness of
old age; even Rousseau with all his greatness was yet the ¦
Frenchman, intent on seeming ; of all French books he most
abhorred the Systhne de la nature.
These remarks on France had the more weight with Wolf
gang, as Herder, made for the thorough comprehension of a
national character, had himself been in France, and knew
personally many of her living men of name. That in Strass
burg Goethe so decidedly turned away from the power of
France has for most essential cause the influence of Herder;
though indeed the idle pride and haughtiness of La grande
nation — there were plentiful instances in Strassburg — contri
buted to the same result.
In German Literature, beside Klopstock, Herder esteemed
above all Gessner ; but he did not deny Winckelmann, Less
ing, Wieland, Gleim, Gerstenberg, and others. Wolfgang's
own efforts found little favour with him, and so the young poet
grew guarded in his confidences on that head.
He indeed kept secret from Herder many other things;
his dabblings in alchemy, his mystic piety, his collection of
seals, and of course, especially secret, his love for Friederike, j
For every little weakness that emerged in social intercourse
Herder had his small stinging arrow of sarcasm ; he ridiculed
Wolfgang's hobbies, and would not let pass uncorrected any
extravagant or groundless piece of criticism. Though Wolf-

strassburg, 1770-71 ] STUDENT YEARS. 113
gang knew to divide the just blame from the bitterness of a
sick mind, yet he probably did not always good-humouredly
swallow the dose. When about the close of this year (17 71)
Herder had given a public chastisement to a voluminous
book-maker of the day, Wolfgang wrote quite frankly that
though the scribbler's chastisement had given him pleasure it
was pleasure mingled with the hound's reminiscence of old
floggings ; old wales had itched, as do recently healed wounds
when the weather changes.1 Such cruel harshness would have
overcome the most enduring patience, had not Herder at times
put it off for very loveable moods. In this memorable friend
ship the direction of Wolfgang's thoughts acquired a bent alto
gether new, though quite accordant with his nature ; even in
, Herder's handwriting he felt a certain magic power.
With Salzmann, and with those younger friends, Wolfgang
meanwhile kept up a constant and animated intercourse, and
there was no lack of social amusements. The concerts were
a, great pleasure. During the Strassburg period he learned to
play the violoncello ; Salzmann loved music, and one of his
table d'hdte associates, the somewhat devil-may-care and mocking
medical student Meyer, was enthusiastic about music and song,
even wrote a comic opera. There were in Strassburg two
theatres ; one French, one German. At the former Wolfgang
saw at this time — if not earlier, in spring or in summer — the
actor Aufresne, who with great success strove after the highest
truth and genuine nature in his playing of tragedy; and thus
having broken with the dramatic art, as delivered to that age
by the age of the classic writers, he found that Paris would
not accept him more; he must go to foreign places for
acknowledgment. Wolfgang had the delight of witnessing
several important performances of the great actor. That
Aufresne had met with such opposition in Paris, was a fresh
proof how little nature and truth were valued in France.
Beside natural science, and medicine, we find him study
ing the antiquities of Elsass, to which Niederbronn first
prompted him. Schopflin's Alsatia illustrata led him to Ober-
lin's description of the Museum Schoepflinianum, and to this
museum itself; he was allowed by Professors Oberlin and
Koch — both friends of Salzmann — to visit it again and again.
The endeavours of these two men to win him for Strassburg
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 302-4. — Tr.

"4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. il ch. hi.
and the French service must have at least begun at this time.
But they were unsuccessful.- Herder's earnestly expressed
conviction of the decadence of French literature ; French
political discord so often forced on one's notice — a discord
which made German affairs seem at least tolerable ; Goethe's
own steadfast desire for wider culture, and for a poetic activity
possible only in his mother-tongue ; last, his love for his Ger
man Fatherland — all contributed to make him put away the
tempting offer; even the prospect, did he accept, of being
summoned to the German Office at Versailles overcame him
not. Another matter which must have occupied his attention
at this time was the Disputation needful for his Doctor's
degree. He had at length made up his mind to maintain
the thesis that the State is not merely justified in fixing a
form of religion to which all must adhere, but bound to do so.
Through all this manifold activity, all this eager and stir
ring course of life, wound the golden thread of his Sessenheim
love. It was a bliss to which he had yet been strange ; for
Kathchen's bright personality had possessed rather his fancy
than his soul, and that while he was yet unripened. Then
Kathchen had given him up, and he clung to her with a sort
of love-sick obstinacy ; while here the clear voice of like soul
yearning after like soul guided him along. During the first
three months of the new year (17 71) the correspondence con
tinued to grow constantly more affectionate. Wolfgang prob
ably also visited the parsonage once. It is highly probable
that he went at Easter (31st March); in that neighbourhood
Easter Monday was marked by great family gatherings. Prob
ably then this Easter Monday witnessed that merrymaking at
which Wolfgang "won Friederike's heart in play,"1 and kissed
her for the first time. At her kiss he thrilled with the glowing
certainty that she loved him ; but it seems as if even then
there arose within him the foreboding of his possible faith
lessness : for in verses written immediately after, he begs
Destiny to let him be to-morrow of the same mind as he is
1 " Jetzt fuhlt der Engel was ich fuhle,
Ihr Herz gewann ich mir beim Spiele,
Und sie ist nun von Herzen mein.
Du gabst mir, Schicksal, diese Freude,
Nun lass auch Morgen seyn wie Heute,
Und lehr' mich ihrer wiirdig seyn."
Der junge Goethe, i. 263. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 115
to-day, and to teach him to be worthy of her.1 It remains
uncertain whether this was the day on which the tablet with
the names of the family and the guests was hung up on one
of the four beautiful beeches in the little wood called " Grove
of Nightingales " (Nachtigallenwdldel). On this tablet Goethe
set his own name last, and wrote in verse his desire that if
any name is to grow marred it may be his own.2 These lines
Friederike's sister Sophie knew by heart so late as 1835.
Immediately after Easter (17 71) Herder left for Biicke-
burg. Whether Wolfgang returned to Strassburg to say good
bye, or stayed in Sessenheim for the pastor's birthday, April
ioth, we do not know. Shortly after, probably, falls that visit
of the Pastorin with her two daughters to Strassburg relatives,
of which there is a full account in Dichtung und Wahrheit.
Friederike and Wolfgang went together on walks in the neigh
bourhood, during one of which he cut their names on a tree.
After her departure for home he felt extremely unhappy ;
especially because in her leave-taking her girl-friends had
seemed of more account than he.
When Herder was gone Jung pressed more close than
ever to Wolfgang, who made him know Shakespeare, Ossian,
Sterne and Fielding, and induced him to go to the theatre on
the 9th of May, when Frau Abt played Julie in Weisse's
Romeo und Julie, in which part Wolfgang had seen Caroline
Schulze at Leipzig. Soon after Jung had to be comforted
about an unsuccessful literary endeavour of his — so we learn
from one of Goethe's letters to Herder, the date of which is
fixed by a reference in it to the. Julie* Jung was thrown into
painful anxiety by news which came on the 14th that his
betrothed was seriously ill. How sympathising Wolfgang
was at this time; how he packed his friend's valise, and
1 See the lines just quoted. — Tr.
2 " Dem Himmel wachs' entgegen
Der Baum, der Erde Stolz.
Ihr Wetter, Sturm' und Regen,
Verschont das heil'ge Holz !
Und soil ein Name verderben
So nehmt die obern in Acht !
Es mag der Dichter sterben,
Der diesen Reim gemacht. Der junge Goethe, i. 270. — Tr.
" Der junge Goethe, i. 257. — Tr.

116 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. ii
procured him travelling necessaries, and had them taken to
the Rhine boat, finally parting with tears, Jung himself has
told us !
Before Whitsuntide (the 19th of May 177 1) Wolfgang-
just then troubled with a cough — went to Sessenheim, whence
he had had word that Friederike was ill. He found her still
poorly ; but could not help promising to the elder sister to go
with her to a dance on Whit Monday. From two in the after- .
noon until midnight he danced almost without interval with
her. " I forgot my feverishness," he writes to Salzmann ;
" and since then it has been really better. You should have
been a looker-on at least ; the whole Me sunk in dancing." x
He found himself detained in Sessenheim longer than he had.
intended, as he could not leave the invalid. He had already
perceived how great a mischief he was to be cause of, having
roused in Friederike's soul desires and claims which he could
never satisfy. If he had at first quite abandoned himself to
the sweet ecstasy of loving her, he now had wakened from his
dream of delight to survey the matter with cold and deliberate
prudence ; he saw that he must renounce his beloved in order
to save his own happiness — and with it hers — from shipwreck.
Already, when he saw Friederike in the city, he had been com
pelled to acknowledge that she seemed out of her place;
now he was forced on the thought that, should his father
accept this rustic daughter-in-law — a most unlikely thing — she f
would in the dignified austere Frankfurt home but lead a life
of constraint and unhappiness. This being granted, he must,
in order to make her happy, leave his father and set up on
his own account. But how was he to do this? he had
never regarded law as more than a secondary episodic part
of the business of life ; he had never thought of earning his,
bread by it ; his serious endeavour had always been to further
his own development and his creative literary activity. And
like a warning wraith to dissuade him from such a course,
arose the thought of all his good father's plans slain by his
cruel indifference. In this strait, to which his heedlessness
had brought him, he gave up the happiness of his heart to
save his intellectual development — infinitely painful as it was
to sacrifice with his own happiness that of the tender sick girl
who loved him, and who, he felt, could never belong to any »
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 252-3. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 117
other. It was a hard struggle. From' the first there was no
doubt of the issue ; but still it was hard. Eight years later,
Goethe told Frau von Stein that Friederike had loved him
more beautifully than he had deserved ; x which reminds us of
his observation elsewhere that women love more beautifully
than men. While the former listen only to the voice of the
heart, man is actuated by the impulse to gain free develop
ment, to protect his full unmutilated life. Twenty years later,
Goethe makes the Princess complain to Tasso : —
"Wir sind von keinem Mannerherzen sicher
Das noch so warm sich einmal uns ergab." 2
Wolfgang with bleeding heart gave up Friederike that he might
not lose himself. It was his first great renunciation — in truth
a tragic one ; for one of the noblest women — one worthy of
the highest happiness — was almost heart-broken by it.
From four letters to Salzmann still preserved we learn about
this stay at Sessenheim, which lasted more than four weeks.
" For the honour of our Lord God I do not leave this place
just at present," he writes in the second week after Whitsuntide.
It is impossible to leave his beloved in her illness, however
dreary and bitter staying has become. " The atmosphere of
the place is not very clear, the little one continues sadly ill,
and that makes everything seem awry. Not to forget the
conscia mens, and alas ! Not recti, which plagues me. Yet there
is ever land." He finds, at any rate, a certain calm in seeing
Friederike, while were he far from her his mind would be
tossing in uneasy care. Then he begs Salzmann to send him
a couple of pounds of sweets, which will make sweet mouths,
sweeter than the faces around have been for some time.3 On
June 5 he writes : — " Here I am tight and fast ; * my cough
continues ; I am indeed pretty well in other respects, still one
is but half alive when unable to fetch one's breath. And yet
I will not go to town. The exercise and fresh air do one
good as far as anything does good, not to reckon  " Here
he breaks off, not venturing to name the real cause of his
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein : Emmendingen ; Tuesday, 28th Septem
ber 1779.— Tr.
¦1 Tasso, ii. 1. — Tr.
•" Der junge Goethe, i. 252. — Tr.
4 "Hier sitz ich zwischen Thiir und Angel "—"Here I sit between
door and hinge." Der junge Goethe, i. 253. — Tr.

n8 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. iii
detention. "The world is so fair! so fair!" he goes on,
" could one but enjoy it ! I am often peevish when I think
of this, and often deliver to myself most edifying discourses
on the to-day, on that doctrine" (the Carpe diem doctrine),
" so indispensable for our happiness, yet which many a pro
fessor of ethics never grasped, and which none expounds welL"
It was a dreary pursuit of shadows this life that he for more
than four weeks led in Sessenheim ; an expiation, as it were,
of his former careless walking. Where now was the glad rapture
which once at Friederike's side had lifted him to heaven ? If
he had not yet distinctly said that his return home was to put
an end to the alliance, his silence as to any prospect of
marriage spoke as effectively as the restraint which he now
put on his manner. It might well seem strange to the Sessen
heim folk, and to the friendly callers at the parsonage, that the
young student should stay so long, and still nothing said of
marriage ; that his health needed the country air was but a
.lame excuse.
Meanwhile Wolfgang provided many kinds of entertain
ment, and made himself useful in general. Thus he painted
the pastor's coach, which old friend, eight years after, he found
still in existence,1 he cobbled (kiinstelte) many things wifh the
help of a neighbour, and the plan of a rebuilt parsonage be
longs to this period. He was on friendly terms with the
villagers. He is said to have amused himself by learning
basket-weaving at this time. In fact he busied himself in aU ,
sorts of ways, probably with his Dissertation among the rest.
He diligently read Homer in the edition which Herder recom
mended ; he was at last able to get on almost wholly without
a translation (that which he used being the Latin one in
Clarke's edition). As afterwards he used to read Homer
aloud in free extempore rendering to his sister, so did he now
read to the Sessenheim sisters — sometimes to Friederike alone
— especially the most powerful passages. He translated ,,
Ossian's affecting Songs of Selma, which he read with a fervour :
which spoke his own pain, then giving his translation to
Friederike. He also gave her a copy of Die Mitschuldigen.
In her song album he wrote a great deal. He hunted after
what fragments of native song might still linger in Sessenheim \
and the region around. Whether Friederike herself sang any
1 See the letter to Frau von Stein indicated above. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 119
such remains a matter of doubt. When she at last got well
there were many excursions and walks by her side in the lovely
country, then very lovely indeed through the continuance of
fair weather. On one fine morning he spoke in an exquisite
song his impatience that Friederike, after having promised
to go to the Grove of Nightingales with him, now kept him
waiting over long.1
From Strassburg, meanwhile, came from Salzmann and
others calls to return, nor can he have failed to get from home
many exhortations to proceed with the business of the degree.
But it was hard to leave the spot where lived she who was
dearest in the world to him, who through him had become
so happy, and now was to have that happiness shattered.
Even at the end of the fourth week, about the 15th of June
(177 1), he cannot man himself to the needful resolve. "I
am coming, or I am not coming, or — I will know all about it
better when it is done than now," he writes to Salzmann in
extremest agitation. " Rain without and rain within, and the
rude winds of evening rattle in the vine leaves round the
window, and my animula vagula" (my poor wavering soul),
" is like the weather-cock yonder on the church tower ; ' turn
again and turn again,' so the day wears ; though ' bow thyself
and stretch thyself" (calmer movements) "have been long
quite out of use." Then he adds mockingly that should he
grow girl-natured and forget his stops it will not seem at all
strange. His deep regret that he could not lead the chosen of
his heart to his father's house speaks in the emotional close : —
" God guard for me my dear parents, God guard my dear sister,
God guard my dear Notary, and all kind hearts. Amen!"2
May one guess that a warning word had been spoken by his
sister, who might have heard through Horn of his Sessenheim
love, and have put before him the consequences of such a
union. Not long after, perhaps on the 18th June (17 71), he
begs Salzmann to give the female bearer of his letter a louis
d'or ; he is stuck fast in Sessenheim for want of money, not
having provided for such a long stay. Even yet he cannot
leave the dear circle, however sternly he wills it. " What can
willing it do when opposed to the faces I see around. The
state of my heart is strange, and my health halts after its old
» Der junge Goethe, i. 261. " Erwache Friederike." — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 249-50. — Tr.

120 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch, in.
fashion through the world, which is lovelier than I have seen
it for a long time. The most charming country, people who
-love me, a round of joys." Thus he sees all the dreams of
his youth fulfilled, but he is not one hair's-breadth happier.
" The appendix ! the appendix ! with which destiny always
supplements our good things I"1 The appendix is, of course,
the torturing consciousness that he must renounce his heart's
desire, and destroy the happiness of Friederike. Immediately
after this, perhaps on the 20th, just before the midsummer
holidays, he tore himself away.
Into Strassburg just then pressed — his head full of intrigues
and wild fancies, not without considerable poetic gift — the
Livonian, Jakob Lenz, about a year and a half younger than
Wolfgang. Desiring to see the world, and to play his part, he
had defied the will of his relatives and joined himself to'the
two eldest sons of a nobleman of Courland, a Herr von Kleist,
who wished to take military service in Elsass ; they gave Lenz
free bed and board and occasional presents, but no fixed
income. Through the Deutsche Gesellschaft he had become
intimate with Salzmann, and being a good listener had been
told of the love distraction of Goethe, now so long detained
in Sessenheim. To Lenz nothing could be more alluring than
the notion of captivating the gifted Frankfurter whose unhappy
love affair made him so much more interesting. A very at
tractive presence was that of this new-comer to Strassburg — a
lovely little head, pleasant though somewhat snub features,
an agreeable but not quite fluent mode of speech, a manner
timid with a child's reserve, such were one's first impressions.
With all his true-hearted loveableness and trustfulness, dashed
with crackbrained frolicsomeness, he threw himself into the
arms of Wolfgang, now in a mood very accessible to earnest
friendliness. A close alliance grew between them, cemented 5)
to a most perdurable toughness by Lenz's poetic endowment
and enthusiastic admiration for Shakespeare. He delighted
in strange pranks, and was furnished with an inexhaustible
stock of notions and rhymes.2 Wolfgang, followed about by
the tender-tiearted Lenz as by his own shadow, felt inseparably
bound to one in whom, through all his wild behaviour, he
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 250-1. — Tr.
2 Goethe thought the English word whimsical the best word to de
scribe Lenz's mind. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 121
recognised an aspiration and effort like his own. They often
went together to the inn at the Wasserzoll, beside the river
111, where the lindens were witnesses of their most intimate1
confidences. The road to Sessenheim ran by.
Soon after, too, Jung came back ; he had during his
absence married his Christine, still an invalid, by the bedside.
" His first visit was to Goethe," he tells us himself. " The
noble fellow leaped up when he saw who came, fell on his
neck and kissed him. ' Here you are again, good Stilling ! '
he cried, 'and how goes it with your maiden?' Stilling
answered, ' She is no longer my maiden, she is now my wife.'
' That is well done,' answered the other ; ' thou art an excel
lent young fellow.'1 That half day they spent altogether in
friendly conversation and stories. The well-known gentle
Lenz was by this time also of the party. . . . Goethe, Lenz,
Lerse, and Stilling, formed a circle in which any one would
feel happy who can feel what is beautiful and good"
The Doctor's Dissertation was now quickly brought to a
close and transcribed; we only know the beginning of the
title : De Legislators. One copy went to his father, the other
to the faculty. But the faculty would not permit to be printed
an essay which quite ignored Christian Revelation, and treated
Religion merely as an institution. Great offence also was
given by the assertion that what stood on the Tables of the
Law was not the Ten Commandments. If, as Dichtung und
Wahrheit asserts, Wolfgang, from disinclination to see himself
in print, really designed to have his treatise rejected, he could
have chosen no better way. The Dean Reisseisen acknow
ledged the thoroughness and acuteness of the author, to whom
the faculty would give the licentiate degree if he would main- .
tain some theses by disputation. Nothing could have been
more welcome to Goethe. So a great number of theses, many
of the most general character, were huddled together and
printed. The public Disputation came off on the 6th of
August, and everything went tolerably. Lerse was one of the
opponents chosen, and he beset the licentiate in spe so hard
that the latter, in the best humour, clapped his hand on his
sword and called out in German, " I think, brother, you would
like to be my Hector." That Wolfgang, with his energetic
sharply pronounced personality, was not a very great favourite
1 " Du bist ein excellenter Junge :" a pun on Jung. — Tr.

122 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii. ch. hi.
in Strassburg, is nothing to surprise us. In letters of that
time he is called a man of genius, but also of unbearable
arrogance, an over-witty fellow of ^acknowledge, a deranged
mocker at religion ; always a splinter too much or too little.
Meyer of Lindau speaks of him to Salzmann as " that foolish
Goethe" (den ndrrischen Goethe) — this however is in direct
reference to his love affair.
After taking his degree Wolfgang seems, in the company
of some friends, to have made that trip on horseback to the
southern limits of Elsass which is mentioned in Dichtung
und Wahrheit. Between Colmar and Schlettstadt resounded
"waggish hymns to Ceres" (" possierliche Hymnen an Ceres"),
in which even the question of free trade was discussed. It is
hard not to feel certain that Lenz was one of the party. On
this journey, too, Wolfgang must have hunted after Alsatian
popular ballads. Later he writes to Herder that " on his
peregrinations" in Elsass he had dragged a dozen ballads
from the throats of the old grandmothers ; the grandchildren
had no song except, " Ich liebte nur Ismenen."1
Just before or after this excursion must have arrived that
" Hellebore-letter " (Niesewurzbrief), in which the young fellow
who would be too fond is made feel how humble he ought to
be before Herder, and has indicated to him all that there is
yet to do before firm sufficience to himself be attained. " My
whole Me is shaken," wrote Wolfgang in the first burst of
emotion. " Apollo of the Belvedere, why dost thou show thy
self to us in thy nakedness, that we must humble ourselves
before thee ! Spanish costume and paint !" He begs Herder
to remain to him what he is now. Gladly will he, if unable
to strike out a path for himself, follow his friend as the friendly
moon accompanies the earth. Still his vivid consciousness of
worth breaks forth with all energy in the words : " But this —
take it home to you — I would rather be Mercury, last, and, what
is more, smallest of the seven, to circle with you round one sun,
than first among the five who own the influence of Saturn."
He will not loose his grasp of Herder, even though, like Jacob
with the angel of the Lord, he wrestle until he be weary.2
The fiery youth would not have borne with these bitter words
had he not felt that they were not wholly undeserved, and that
he owed much to that ripe judgment and that cultivated taste.
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 297.— Tr. 2 Ibid. I. 259. — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. 123
In a life of intimate union with friends after his own heart,
he tried to forget his sorrow and his wrong-doing. He thought
of writing a drama, Julius Casar; a couple of prose passages
intended for it are to be found at the end of the Ephemerides}
It may be conjectured that Aufresne's large, free presentation
of heroic characters had wakened in him the old ambition to
write tragedy. But he seems about this time to have dashed
off a comic opera also ; for when he writes to Jung from Frank
furt, begging that " the opera the Mondo alia riversa " be re
turned to him, he cannot mean Die Mitschuldigen.2, This must
rather have been a treatment of the theme A Harlequin's Ad
ventures in Wonderland, like Ulrich Kdnig's adaptation (1725)
Le monde renversi, which was probably from an Italian source.
Rather may we find Die Mitschuldigen referred to in the
Comcedia which, a couple of months before, he had begged
Salzmann to get back for him " from O-Ferol, or the person,
whoever he may be, that has it." Salzmann is to send it to
Herr H  (?), addressed to Goethe, and sealed. 3
But all these distractions failed to make him forget
Friederike. Once again he must see her, to take personal
leave. To this the following note to Salzmann relates : —
" My eyelids are falling with weariness ; it is only nine. A
strange disposed time ! Last night full of excitement ; early
this morning chased from bed by plans." (Plans relating to
Friederike?) "Oh! there is in my head the same disorder
that there is in my room ; I cannot even find a scrap of paper
but this blue kind. Yet any paper is good to say to you that
I love you, and this doubly good; you know what I had
meant it for." (For the envelope of a letter of farewell to
Friederike.) "Be merry until I see you again. I am not
quite cheerful ; I am too much awake not to feel that I am
catching at shadows " (for he still would fain win his beloved).
" And yet, at seven in the morning my horse is saddled, and
then — adieu !"* The pain of the final leave-taking must have
1 Scholl: Briefe und Aufsatze, 137-140.— Tr.
2 A letter to Jung enclosed in one to Salzmann, dated February 3,
1772. Der junge Goethe, i. 305-6. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Salzmann, November 28, 1771- Der junge Goethe, i.
300-302. — Tr. .
* Goethe to Salzmann (August? 1771). Der junge Goethe, 1. 254.—
Tr.

124 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ii.'ch. iii.
been very great. He himself felt that he was deeply to blame ;
but Friederike in all her desolation uttered no reproach.
During the very last days in Strassburg the poet's union
with the city grew by chance closer still through the cathe
dral ; on the platform of which he so often, amid a circle of
friends, had greeted the departing sun with brimming goblets;
where too he had chiselled his name on the right corner post
at the south-eastern spiral staircase. One day, in a consider
able company at a country-house near Strassburg, the talk fell
on the cathedral. They had a fine view of the front, with the
one tower lifting itself high above. Somebody remarking what
a pity it was that the other tower had not been built, Goethe
expressed with his usual vivacity his conviction that even the
tower already there was not finished ; above the four spiral
staircases ought to be four light pinnacles. To his joy the
organ-builder Silbermann, who was present, assured him that
the original sketches, still preserved, confirmed what he had
said. His request to have these shown to him before his
departure was granted, and he traced on transparent paper the
forms of the four pinnacles unbuilt.
That personal leave-taking had not contributed to banish
the memory of Friederike, and he was impelled to utter his
yearning in verses written on a gloomy morning of one of the
last Strassburg days and immediately sent to Sessenheim.1
No light thing either was the parting from his friends — espe
cially Salzmann, Lerse, Lenz, and Jung. "To Lerse, my
worthy friend and Shakespeare's, in never-ending remem
brance," so runs the inscription subscribed by him in a copy.
of Othello. Lerse wrote underneath : — " May my heart be
ever thine, dear Goethe." At that time, too, he wrote in
Lenz's album these verses : —
" Zur Erinnrung guter Stunden,
Aller Freuden, aller Wunden,
Aller Sorgen, aller Schmerzen
In zwei tollen Dichterherzen,
Noch im letzten Augenblick
Lass' ich Lenzen das zuruck.''
On the 23d of August he could depart with the glad con
sciousness of leaving behind him many true hearts ; but his
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 268 : " Ein grauer triiber Morgen Bedeckt
mein liebes Feld." — Tr.

strassburg, 1770-71.] STUDENT YEARS. I25
lightness in love had wrecked the happiness of the fairest and
dearest of all.
On his return journey he stopped at Mannheim to see the
museum of casts from the antique ; where before him Herder
had spent two whole days of enjoyment, gaining therein new
insight on the subject of Plastic Art. The statues made a
grand and fruitful impression on Goethe, which did not let
him rest until he had a small collection of casts of his own.
The Laokoon especially fettered his attention, and he agreed
with Herder and Winckelmann against Lessing that the father
does not shriek; he thought that the serpent-attacked ab
domen is so contracted that shrieking is impossible. This
view he promulgated more than a quarter of a century later.1
He wrote a letter on these matters to Oeser, not, however,
entering with any particularity on this theory of his own.
Now that the loss of Kathchen was forgotten in a deeper
grief, he could again think of that Leipzig from which he had
so long turned away his face.
Of the grandeur of ancient architecture he had a foretaste
when he saw a cast of a capital from the Pantheon, and the
vast beautiful acanthus leaves made him somewhat waver in his
faith in Gothic Art.2 Fifteen years later he recalls in Venice
this deep impression.3
Thus from Strassburg he returned much stronger than
from Leipzig; if not a doctor he was yet a licentiate ; but on his
soul there was a heavy burden. However he had known what
pure and beautiful love is, and through Herder he had been
consecrate a German poet, with his work proceeding from the
depth of the spirit, and from genuine feeling and seeing.
1 More exactly, he promulgates this view : — That neither of the sons
is yet bitten (the younger son's exhaustion to be explained by compres
sion in the serpent's coils) ; and that the whole attitude of the father is only
comprehensible if we consider him as bitten at the very moment here
chosen by the sculptor. Goethe's essay Ueber Laokoon appeared in the
Propylden, I. i. 1798. — Tr.
2 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xi. Buch (last page or two). — Tr.
3 Die Italidnische Reise, October 8, 1786. He had by that time quite
made up his mind : — " Diese " (Gothic ;Art) " bin ich nun, Gott sey Dank,
auf ewig los." The love for Gothic Art had been lately wakened by the
great Cathedral of Strassburg, of the influence of which on Goethe Herr
Duntzer perhaps does not tell us enough. Note later on the influence of
Cologne Cathedral. — Tr.

BOOK III.
ADVOCATE AND POET.
CHAPTER I.
INTERVAL SPENT IN FRANKFURT BETWEEN THE STRASSBURG
AND WETZLAR PERIODS.
August 1771-MAY 1772.
Mother and sister received Wolfgang with perfect love, and
his father was heartily glad to see him back again so bright
and well, and qualified at last to begin a life of regular pro
fessional activity. Grandfather Textor had died in Februarys
( 1 7 7 1 ) -1 On Wolfgang's birthday (August 28,1771 ) — he hadi
probably reached Frankfurt the day before — he sent to the
Chief-Magistrate and Sheriffs his " most dutiful beseeming peti
tion, that these honourable sirs would most graciously be pleased
to admit him to the number of so-called Advocatorum ordinari-
orum" in order that he might " thereby prepare himself for the
weightier duties which it might please a high, authoritative, and
venerable magistracy of its high will and pleasure to require oj
him" In the latter paragraph do we not see the hand of his
father ? His admission followed on the 3 ist of August. Three
days later Wolfgang took the advocate and burgher oath before
his old friend the senior Biirgermeister von Olenschlager.
There was no thought of any considerable amount of
lawyer work at present. Such work, consisting in the drawing
up of legal documents, the ordering and administration of
affairs of property, quite wanted any charm which might' be
1 See Wolfgang's letter to grandmother Textor on this event, Der
junge Goethe, i. 247-9. — Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 127
found in public appearances, and it would have been inter
rupted by a contemplated half-year's stay at Wetzlar, which
was to begin at Easter 1772. Through his uncle Textor,
who, elected a councillor in this month (August 177 1), had to
give up his business as lawyer, he got only one case. Not
even one came through his close connection with J. G.
Schlosser, nor through Schlosser's brother, Dr. Hieronymus
Peter Schlosser. The latter was in his thirty-seventh year, an
extremely refined man, skilled in Latin verse, steadfast, wise,
learned ; in his ten years' practice as legal adviser he had won
every one's trust Only two cases were entrusted to our young
advocate during the first seven months. In the first his friend '
Dr. Moors represented a plaintiff father, Wolfgang the defend
ant son. On the 1 6th of October he made his first memorial.
He was severe on the " big-talking, dull, text-bookish, schoolroom
wisdom " of the father's bill of complaint, on the " most common
place rules of an undigested legal dogma ; " he ridiculed a pair
of "absurd mice of text-book definitions which, indeed, bore.
witness to their mother ;" but he was especially severe in de
manding that an example should be made of the plaintiffs,
who had assailed the sacred person of a judge, " one of the
most venerable elders of the city." To pay him back friend
Moors called him an incipient advocate, the sworn foe of
actual grounds of evidence, one who seemed to have for friends
and colleagues witty young hares, one who let out mice which
he ought to have had caught by his legal tom-cat; adding
that he was ignorant of law. Wolfgang's reply is dated March
30, 1772. In the judgment delivered on April 22, in favour
of the son, both advocates were " seriously reprimanded for their
unseemly violence of tone, the issue of which could only be to
embitter the already enraged clients''
The second case, the one in which the defence was trans
ferred from the shoulders of uncle Textor to those of Wolf
gang, was an action against the exchequer ; the first memorial
was presented on the 6th of November (177 1), and the oppos
ing party handed in its defence on the ioth of February 1772.
The documents were then sent to the Faculty at Tubingen.
This limited professional business Goethe could, as he
writes to Salzmann,1 master in spare hours, and the more easily
1 Goethe to Salzmann, November 28, 1771, Der junge Goethe, i.
300-302. — Tr.

128 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. i.
since his father carefully went through the documents with
him and talked them over, and then he had a practised scribe,
Liebholdt, at his side. It was only needful to set forth the
circumstances skilfully, and to dismiss the arguments of the
opposite side, mere play to the fresh vivacity of Wolfgang.
His real earnest at this time lay in his endeavours to conquer
the pain of the loss of Friederike, and to further his mental
development, which urged on towards poetic embodiment.
"My nisus forwards is so strong," he writes to Salzmann,
" that I can seldom compel myself to take breath and
look backwards."1
His most intimate confidant was Cornelia. To her he
told the story of his enduring love -pain, and she acknow^
ledged that he was right to break off an impossible connection,
Before leaving Strassburg he had commissioned Salzmann to
send to Friederike two volumes of copper-plates which she had
particularly admired. But as Salzmann did not feel sure
about the selection of them he wrote to Goethe, who tells
him to rely on his own taste ; he may, when sending them
to the "good Friederike," enclose a note or not, as he
wishes.2 Wolfgang had from Cornelia an account of Herder's visit
to the house ; he had been very friendly, and had expressed
a wish, which could not be gratified, to see some of our poet's-
youthful experiments. In return Cornelia had much com
municated to her from the papers accumulated during her
brother's stay in Elsass, including the popular ballads he had
gathered, which he urged her and her friends, the Gerock and
Crespel girls, to sing. By this time he had probably begun1,
reading aloud to his sister, in his own animated way, the great
passages of Homer.
His mother's good friend Fraulein Klettenberg still took
a kindly interest in him, changed as was his religious mood; '
she did not give up her hope that he would yet be a servant';
of' the Lord. Of his abilities she had the highest estimate, j
At a later time an observation of hers was recalled with plea
sure by Goethe's mother : — " When thy Wolfgang goes to
Mainz he brings back more new knowledge than others bring ;
1 Goethe to Salzmann, November 28, 1 77 1. He had begun on
Gotz von Berlichingen at the time. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 296. — Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 129
from London or Paris." Her religious friend, the good
Legationsrath Moritz, had died in March 177 1.
As for Wolfgang's younger friends, he was specially intimate
with Riese and with Dr. Horn ; the latter, who had now lost
all hope of winning his Leipzig sweetheart, was the same
cheery companion that he had been in former days, not being
dispirited even by the smallness of his professional gains.
Riese, who had become Secretary to the Vestry Board, was
very fond of meeting Wolfgang's ardent assertions with cold
doubts and considerations, on which ensued lively discussions.
Crespel too was back in Frankfurt; he had come in the
course of the previous year, and had obtained a place as
supernumerary (Accessisf) in the Post Office. His quaint
humour and honest kindliness were a real gain to the little
circle of friends. These four — Goethe, Horn, Crespel, and
Riese — used to play chess on a great double board which
belonged to Riese. Crespel was a great lover of music and
a master of the Viola d' amour. Goethe practised diligently
on the violoncello, probably sometimes taking parts with others.
To Salzmann, the witness of his disturbed Strassburg days, he
writes very soon after his return to Frankfurt : — " What I pro
duce (mache) is nothing. So much the worse ! As usual
more scheming than performing. And so not much will ever
come of me." He asks Salzmann to procure him from Silber-
mann a sketch of the ground-plan of the cathedral, and to ask,
in passing, whether one could procure a copy of the great
original design, and in what way.1 Perhaps we may ascribe to
this period the first sketch of the essay which he dedicated to the
founder ofthe cathedral (p. 160). On the 21st of September
(177 1) we find him writing to a friend then living in sight of
the cathedral. This great masterpiece of German architecture
speaks with more emphasis than he can, that a great intelli
gence differs from a small one mainly in that its work is self-
sufficient, seeming to have been co-existent from eternity with
its idea, without regard to what others may have done.2
His whole soul was now possessed with enthusiasm for
Shakespeare and Ossian. He was seized with the bold notion
of celebrating the Name Day of the former, October 14,— the
birthday, April 23, was too far away for a disciple's eagerness.
1 This letter already quoted, Der junge Goethe, i. 296. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Johann Gottfried Rbderer ; Der junge Goethe, i. 315.
K

130 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. i.
Through Jung he called on the Strassburg " Gesellschaft" to
do likewise, and it did, Lerse making the speech demanded
by the occasion. To Herder, who had lately written with the
usual sharpness, Goethe sent this autumn the dozen popular
songs culled from those which the grandmothers of Elsass
chanted by their firesides. His letters will shortly say some
thing about Celtic, Gaelic matters. He has not yet got certain
necessary books, but soon must. On behalf of his sister he
invites Herder for the 14th of October, Shakespeare's name-
day, which is to be kept with great pomp ; and he must, if
not in body, be with them in spirit ; let him send them by
that day, if possible, the Essay on Shakespeare (which just
then occupied him), that it may be a portion of their
Liturgy.1 This letter was very soon followed by one with which
Wolfgang enclosed passages from the supposed original Temora
of'Ossian, with literal German translations. He again begs
Herder to send the Essay on Shakespeare for the festival.
" The first health drunk after that of the Will of all Wills shall
be yours," he goes on ; "I have already preached together a
capital public for the Warwickshire man, and I am translating '.
passages from Ossian, that him too I may proclaim out of the
full heart . . . Apostle or Philistine ! I remain towards you
what I have been."2 Wolfgang's speech at the festival, which
has been preserved,3 betrays Herder's influence even in the
style, though that is more bright and free than Herder's. The
Greek drama, it says, set before the people great isolated acts
from the lives of their fathers in the clear simplicity of perfect- •'
ness, roused large undivided emotions in their souls, for it was
itself complete and great. " And what souls ! Greek souls !
I cannot expound to others what I feel to be the significance
of that word, but I do feel it, and let me save time by an
appeal to Homer, Sophocles, Theocritus ; they have taught me
to feel it. Now I add quickly, all this being so : — Little
Frenchman, what dost thou with Greek armour ! ' it is too large
and heavy for thee.' Thus it is that French tragedies are
themselves their own sufficient parodies. . . . The drama
of Shakespeare is a casket of lovely rare things ; before our
eyes the history of the world undulates past, along the thread '
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 297. 2 Ibid. i. 298-300. — Tr.
3 Ibid. ii. 39-43 j Zum Schahespear's Tag. — Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 131
of time — the thread itself unseen. His plots are, in the com
mon sense of the term, no plots ; but his plays all circle round
that mysterious point, not yet seen and fixed by philosopher,
at which the Idiosyncrasy of the Me, the shaping which our
Will would fain assume, clashes with the necessary course of
the Whole." He goes on to say that Shakespeare's men are
absolutely natural, on a colossal scale. Often he has to stand
shamed before Shakespeare, confessing himself a poor sinner
against nature, who prophesies through Shakespeare, while
"my human beings are soap bubbles puffed upward from
unreal fantasies."
And very soon after the young poet was to come upon
a noble German figure, whose likeness he felt compelled to
set forth in the free Shakespearian manner. The autobiography
which Gotz von Berlichingen left to defend his name excited
in the young Goethe a feeling, which, in a letter to Salzmann
of November 28 (1 7 7 1), he calls a " passion." He flung him
self on the task of dramatising the story; of "saving the
memory ofa brave man from darkness." All his strength he
expends on this object, which he strives to grasp and carry ;
and what will not go easily he drags to its place. Homer,
and Shakespeare, and all are forgotten ; as for Strassburg
Cathedral, there is no hurry about that original design of it
which he had lately asked after. Towards the middle of
December (1 7 7 1) the play x had been completed in a rapid run
of about six weeks, during which Cornelia's praise had encour
aged and inspired him ; he used to read aloud to her every
evening what he had written during the day. He worked
mostly in the early morning hours.
Soon after this he gained a new friend, Johann Heinrich
Merck, now Army Paymaster (Kriegszahlmeister) at Darm
stadt, where he had been born eight years before Goethe.
After completing his studies, he was charged with the care of
a young Herr von Bibra on his travels, during which they
stayed a considerable time in French Switzerland. At Morges
on the Lake of Geneva, he met and wedded the daughter of
an important Officer of Justice (Justizbeamte). On his return
from Switzerland he got an appointment in the Privy Court
of Chancery (Geheimekanzlei) at Darmstadt, changed a year
later for one in the War Department. He was especially
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 44-196. — Tr.

132 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. i.
familiar with English literature, and had done some translation
from the English. In all directions, indeed, did his keen
restless intelligence search after comprehensive and thorough

Fig. ii. After all engraving of the time.
knowledge on which to base a powerful and efficient activity.
He was long and lean ; his nose was prominent and sharp ;
his eyes " light blue, perhaps gray, roved hither and thither,
noting everything." 1 Whether his exterior were winning or
not, you were subdued by that keen understanding, that easy
play of intellect, that ingenuous good -will, that quiet self-
reliance. Goethe's description, in which there is an adumbra
tion of the embittered Merck of later days, has done unintended
wrong to a noble and capable man. On Goethe, whose genius*
he recognised and affectionately strove to develop, his action
was most beneficial. To his beautiful spirit we have the testi
mony of his many letters ; of the esteem in which his name
1 " Somewhat tiger-like " (etwas Tigerartiges) Goethe says. Dichtung
und Wahrheit, xii. Buch. — Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 133
was held, even in distant circles ; of the deep, abiding friend
ship with Goethe, and with many others, men and women, who
all delight to praise him. It is true that he had a sharp eye
for all weaknesses ; but he had also a natural good taste,
which had been perfected by culture. If he censured what
was bad, it was always his impulse to point to what was better;
he delighted in furthering the development of real genius : in
fact, so far from being a steadfast Denier, he himself was
irresistibly impelled to activity in various fields : poetry, art,
science, practical affairs. All his life he remained in a situa
tion beneath his deservings; the feeling of wrong rankled
within him ; and this, alas ! together with misfortune in his
family, brought out the gall which lay in his character. But
at bottom he was always a noble man. Beneath his picture
should be written the words which he wrote late in life to his
daughter (then fifteen) : — " Our little bit of a good name is all
that is left us ; and if I had lost that, I could never have
endured the cruel strokes which Fate has dealt me."
Now when Herder, gloomy in Biickeburg, treated our
Goethe with almost scornful bitterness, at last relapsing into
galling silence, it was special good fortune to meet this keen
critic, who stimulated and renewed the lad's ardour by gladly
recognising his genius, and by cleaving to him with warm
hearted good-will. True, Merck had already become a sufferer
from physical ailment, and was dispirited about many things,
particularly that unsatisfactory situation. But a beneficial
impetus was given to him just then, when Deinet of Frankfurt,
who had married the widow of the bookseller Eichenberg, put
in his hands the management of the Frankfurter gelehrte
Anzeigen 1 — just such work as he desired. The new Review
it was that had brought him to Frankfurt. He there visited
J. G. Schlosser, whom he reckoned on as one of his chief
fellow-workers. At Schlosser's house he seems to have met
Goethe, who, towards the close of 177 1, writes to Herder: —
" Some time ago I had a rich evening in Merck's company.
I was as happy as I can be to meet again at last a human
1 The Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen began to appear in 1772, under the
guidance of Merck and Schlosser. Chief contributors — Merck, Goethe,
Herder, Hieronymus Schlosser, Rector Wenck of Darmstadt, Prof. Peter
sen of Darmstadt, the Jurist Hopfher of Giessen. At the end of 1773
the Review fell into other hands, and lost its merit and its high fame.- -Tr.

'34

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. nr. ch. i.

being in intercourse with whom emotions develop and thoughts
take shape." 1 And Herder's Caroline says in a letter of De
cember 30 that Merck is delighted with Goethe's enthusiasm
and genius. This is not the acrid fault-finder, whom we usually
figure to ourselves under the title Mephistopheles- Merck.
No, we find him taking
pleasure in the fresh
ardour of his young
friend, whom Herder
— directly opposite to
Merck in this — in writ
ing to his bride nick
names a " crow," a
" sparrow-like nature."
Merck, with wise toler
ation, permitted free
course to his young
friend's thoughts, as
equally entitled to ex
istence with his own;
never discouraging a
difficult mental process
by intrusion of his own.
higher insight. It may
have been at this time
that Goethe was enlisted
as one of the future
contributors to the new
Review. Of Gotz no
mention was as yet
made to Merck. To Salzmann and Herder transcripts of the
play were sent about this time. The transcripts were probably •
made by Philipp Friedrich Seidel, a lad of seventeen, son of
a Frankfurt tinman, left an orphan at an early age, and now
a servant of the Goethes.
In writing to Herder Goethe calls the play a"Skizzo;"
into it, however, he has put all his strength, because he de-'
sired to submit it to the "dear man," whose criticism would;
not only open his (Goethe's) eyes as to that piece, but guide ( ,
him in his work at it in the future. In the same letter he
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 304.

Fig.

After an engraving of the time.
See above, p. 58.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 135
confides to Herder that he has in his head the "Life and
Death of Socrates " as a subject for drama ; he wished to set
forth the hero-philosopher-spirit falling victim at length before
the infinite massive strength of human worthlessness. Time
is needed to ripen the "thought out" (das Gedachle) into
emotion. Indeed he feels uncertain whether he will be able
to soar from the service of the idol which Plato gilds, and to
which Xenophon offers incense, to the true religion which re
cognises in place of a saint a great Man, whom we can take
to the heart with enthusiastic love. In his usual submissive
way, he begs the reverend priest, while caring for the altar, not
to forget the acolyte race, whose fantasy goes forth in wild
yearning for the chasuble, but whose strength, alas ! setting
more before it than it is able for, too often finds its non plus
ultra in mere Adjunctus and sacristan offices.1
In a letter of the 3d of February 1772 he thanks Salz
mann for the trouble he had taken about Gbfz ; Salzmann
had been much pleased with it, and had written a letter of
careful criticism. There is a period of pupilage, replies Goethe,
which we cannot overleap ; a remark which reminds us of what
we have just heard him say to Herder. Salzmann having in
quired about the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, Goethe observes
that no Review will surpass it in honesty and independence of
feeling and thinking ; the staff of writers for it is considerable,
and daily increasing; he is not himself connected with it, other
wise than that he knows and esteems the director (Merck), and
that an important co-operator in it (Schlosser) is a particular
friend.2 Yet we find Deinet writing on the 8th, calling Goethe
— for only Goethe can be meant by " friend of Merck," — calling
Goethe a very industrious collaborateur in the department of
Belles Lettres. And on the 14th comes from the collaborateur 's
pen a criticism of the Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim ;
the anonymous production of Frau von Laroche, published
under the auspices of Wieland. The uninvited critics had
been hard on the book; Goethe defends, saying that these
gentlemen are mistaken in thinking that a book stands for
judgment, when it is a Human Soul.3 The three following
months saw several more articles by Goethe, and the few that
came out in June would have been written before the middle of
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 302-304. — Tr. 2 Ibid. i. 305. — Tr.
3 Ibid. ii. 411.— TR.

136 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. i.
May, about which time he went to Wetzlar ; we know that, for
the sake of variety and on account of the profusion of matter,
articles often waited a considerable time their place in the
Review. Goethe criticised not only lyrical poetry and drama,
but many kinds of books, even some on religious subjects ; he
always speaks with animated decision, often with scathing wit.
A little anonymous work by Wieland,1 in the philosophic
humour of which one cannot fail to recognise the author of
Musarion and Agathon, is dismissed with the significant re
mark : — "Of all earthly possessions the most precious is a
heart careless of the foolish praise and blame of the crowd :
among thousands you will hardly find two such hearts." In
an article of Merck's the observations on Gellert's lectures
were written by Goethe.
That " The Life and Death of Socrates " remained an un
realised plan was not due so much to Herder's long silence
as to the intractability of the material, to pre-occupation with
the Review, and to a life spent more and more in society.
Towards the close of the year (17 71) appeared a collection of
Klopstock's Odes, the first which he himself published. Goethe
was familiar already with the most important of them, though
in not quite the same form ; those on religious subjects inter
ested him little ; the bardic garb he liked not at all ; he was
not moved by the excessive Fatherland and " Cidli " enthusi
asm of others. It is true that he recognised the strength of
the well- wrought periods, the culmination of art in the verse,
and by sympathetic reading aloud strove to illustrate these their
merits ; still he could not but deal them hard measure while
Greek poetry was such a passion to him. Let us remember,
too, how in his Gotz he haVjust been making the last German
knight live and move again (not to the advantage of the Holy
Roman Empire of the German nation), and we shall realise
.what a watery dream this shapeless Bardenthum must have
seemed. The primary effect of Klopstock's volume was to
make him a skating enthusiast ; he used, as he swept over the
ice, to make the night air ring with passages from Der Eislauf
and Braga, and (probably) the two other Ice Odes. He
trained himself to skate in a place where he was alone, and
then invited others to join him. The scene of this skating
1 " Gedanken iiber eine alte Aufschrifl," Leipzig, 1772. — See Der
Junge Goethe, ii. 420. — Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 137
Was probably either the frozen flooded Rodelheim meadows, or
those at the Kettenhof beyond the Bockenheim gate.
Eager pursuit after indications of Socrates had led our
poet to some depth in Plato and Xenophon ; but before long,
feeling how far he was yet from being able to comprehend the
former, he turned from him to the Greek poets. " Then my
eyes were opened, and I saw my own un worthiness," he wrote
at a later time to Herder, from Wetzlar ; " and I fell to at
Theocritus and Anacreon ; at length something in Pindar
fixed me, and fliere I still remain. Otherwise I have done
nothing, and everything is in a dreadful state of confusion
with me."1
At the beginning of March 1772 he went with Schlosser
for a few days' visit to Merck, in Darmstadt ; and to Merck's
kindly sympathy the young poet opened all his heart. He
had at length overcome the grief for Friederike, and revealed
himself on this trip in his extraordinary, all-bewitching loveable-
ness ; but he watched to prevent his too sensitive heart from
any new passion. Herder's betrothed, Caroline Flachsland,
who was stopping with her sister, the wife of Privy Councillor
(Geheimerath) Hesse, met him on two afternoons and at a
dinner;, she writes to Herder: — "Goethe is a good -hearted,
cheery mortal, without any learned adornment; he finds a
great deal of occupation and interest in Merck's children. . . .
The first afternoon was spoiled by a game of Trisett and two
visitors. Only one moment Goethe, my sister, and I sat
together in the afternoon sunshine, which was lovely, and
talked of you. . . . The second afternoon we spent in a
' pleasant walk, and in the house over a bowl of punch. We
were not sentimental, but very gay, and Goethe and I danced
minuets to piano music; and then he repeated for us an
excellent ballad of yours that I never heard before " (the Scotch
ballad Edward). " At my request, often repeated, he sent me
a copy of it the day after his return to Frankfurt ; but he wrote
no letter. Herr Schlosser is good, very good ; only he has a
little too much society varnish. He likes me very much ; and
more, I think, than Goethe, which however I regret In one
of his letters to Merck he has talked of me through six lines
long. They will come again in the summer." On this visit
Goethe also made acquaintance with Merck's more intimate
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 307. — Tr.

138 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. i.
friends, Rector Wenck, Court Preacher Jaup, Magister Peter
sen, and Geheimerath Hesse. And he showed Gb'tz to Merck,
who gave him kind and clear-sighted criticism.
He had now become so thoroughly at home again in his
Frankfurt life, and at the same time had found such an
inspiring circle of friends in Darmstadt, that he fell into a
silence towards those whom he had left in Strassburg, even
towards Salzmann and Jung. Not that the image of either
friend was effaced, it was rather hidden away beneath the cares
and interests of his stirring intellectual and social life. Spring
advancing awakened afresh his delight in song. The power
of Niederbronn was on him when he wrote the dialogue, Der
' Wanderer ; in which there is a moving plaint over the destruc
tion in modern days of the relics of antique art that have
survived the former storms.1 Herder's betrothed writes that
it is an excellent poem of a hut built amid the ruins of an
ancient temple. About the middle of April (1772) Goethe,
going to Darmstadt on foot, was overtaken by a violent storm,
which for some time he calmly permitted to do its worst; at
last, quite exhausted by its force, he sought shelter in a cottage.
On this occasion he spoke aloud, as he used to repeat the Ice
Odes of Klopstock, dithyrambic verses about the might of the
great Genius who lifts him above the commonplace condi
tions of life, surrounding him with warmth and purity; of
the great sweeping force and rage of Pindar, how unlike to
the pleasant voices of Theocritus and Anacreon, that lull the
charmed heart.2 What a picture ! Frankfurt left behind, where
as an attorney he is burdened with petty private affairs ; the
brilliant, winning, young poet, overtaken by rain and storm ;
overtaken still more imperatively by a lofty stress of spirit, pour
ing himself forth in song inspired by Pindar, and the Greeks.
Of his stay in Darmstadt Caroline Flachsland writes : —
"We spent every day together; went together to the [Bes-
sunger] forest ; together got wet through and through. We
all ran to the same tree, and Goethe sang to us a little song
that you have translated from Shakespeare: — 'Wohl unter
griinen Laubes Dach," and we all joined in the last line: —
'Nureins! das heisst auch Wetter!'3 The common misfor-
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 7. — Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, ii. 3-7. — Tr.
3 Amiens' song in As You Like II : — "Under the greenwood tree."
— Tr.

AUG. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 139
tune made us all very confidential. He read aloud to us some
of the best scenes from his Gottfried von Berlichingen. I
felt in it the beloved spirit of our old Germans ; and little
George, begging for a white steed and armour, is my George.
Then we went on the water " (at a lonely residence in the
forest), " but the weather was bad. Goethe is crammed with
songs." She sends Herder a poem which Goethe made one
morning on a lonely walk in trie fir wood ; another excellent
one, about a hut built in the ruins of an ancient temple, she will
ask him for should he come again. To this lady and her
sister he gave a moving account of his Leipzig love ; Friederike
he did not mention, hers was too sacred a memory.
Merck and Goethe about Easter (19th April 1772) came
together to Frankfurt, but passed on immediately to Homburg.
"The Landgraf and the Landgrafin have loaded us with
kindness," Merck writes to his wife. " I have had the honour
of more than an hour's conversation with his Highness. They
sent one of the court carriages to bring us to the forest, where
we found a fairy-land." Their visit was more particularly
intended for a Maid of Honour, Luise von Ziegler, who
had, for a short time back, been the most intimate friend of
Herder's betrothed ; Merck had sung her as " Lila." Caroline
writes of her : — " She is a sweet visionary maiden ; has had
her grave made in her garden; she has a throne in her garden;
her pleasures are her arbours and roses in summer, and her
little lamb, which eats and drinks with her. . . . Her life in
Homburg is rather lonely, and that makes her heart so op
pressed and full that she regularly clings to any good soul
she comes across." Beside the reason assigned here there
was unhappy love in the case. She had at that time with
her, on a visit, her friend Fraulein von Roussillon, Maid
of Honour (Hofdame) to the Duchess of Pfalz-Zweibriicken.
Merck was especially intimate with Fraulein Roussillon; he
used to accompany her on walks; tried to divert and cheer her
suffering and melancholy ; it may have been he who gave her
the name " Urania." When Merck, with Goethe by his side,
met these two ladies, Urania received him with warm kisses
and embraces, and Lila fell on his breast ; to the young Frank
furt lawyer each gave a cordial hand. He too on a walk one
day ventured to beg from them the rapture of a kiss. He
was just as far from love in the matter as was Merck, it was

140 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. i.
the sentimental usage of a time overlavish in kisses and
embraces. In Frankfurt Merck stopped with the Goethes, although
he could always reckon on the house of his old friend Damian
Friedrich Dumeix, Dean of St. Leonhard's. "Goethe's sister
is agreeable, and they are all good people," he tells his wife.
" I am beginning to be regularly in love with Goethe. Here
is a human being who touches my heart as very few have ever
done." Merck had gone to Frankfurt on Frau von Laroche's
account ; she Goethe and himself were to travel to Darmstadt
together. He writes to his wife that the Laroche had brought
her eldest daughter Max, and that both ladies are to be their
guests, so she (Merck's wife) is to procure a bed for Goethe
and himself in the big room at the house of Professor
Jaup. " Frau von Laroche is a lady of the grand world, of
very distinguished manners ; she speaks French better than
German, and her intellect passes over with astonishing light
ness from the most solid conversation to the most everyday
attentions of society. She assumes when she will the semblance
of indifference, she puts it off when she will. She is a strong
personality, and I know from experience that it is not a good,
thing to fall out with such. At least she is quite different in
social intercourse from what she is in her letters. She talks
infinitely better than she writes." Goethe too was not attracted
by the fine court lady, in whom he, to his surprise, saw the
author ofthe Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim ; the French
social tone to which her daughter also had been trained was
distasteful to the poet of Gbtz, who loved to speak from the
full heart. So Goethe did not go with them to Darmstadt
after all. When Herder's betrothed writes that Goethe rages
like a lion against Frau von Laroche, she probably borrows
the expression from Merck, who liked the lady less and less
the more he saw of her. In Caroline's description of the
Laroche we must probably allow for a certain amount of pique
at having to play an unimportant part beside the new guest,
but there is no doubt that the main outlines are correct. '' A
presence, how different from the simple noble Sternheim!"
Caroline writes. "A fine dainty lady, a court dame, a woman
of the world, with a thousand little adornments, even though
she wear no lace; a woman full of wit, full of very delicate
intelligence. She enters very lightly and easily, wafts to

aug. 1771-MAY 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 141
whom she will a kiss with her hand; her handsome black
eyes speak right and left, and everywhere, and her bosom
heaves ever so high,
so— youthfully that —
in short, with her ex
cessive coquetry and
acting a part, she has
not pleased us." Caro
line goes on to tell
how the Laroche said
each pretty thing in
right silvery tone, which
she called the tone of
her heart, but which
was assumed for mere
politeness; she and her
daughter would fain
have ruled society by
their wit. Later on
Caroline acknowledges
the many talents and
general excellence of
Frau von Laroche ;
thinks, however, that
she might find good
work to do among her
children, might love
her husband better
and trumpet his praises
less. Goethe could only feel repelled by the unexpected
characteristics of this sentimental fine lady of forty, the friend
of Wieland, and also the friend of two men whom neither
Goethe nor Merck liked, the brothers Jacobi; and in her
presence we should expect to find him play any but an
amiable part.
Immediately after the departure of this curious lady, he
settled with Merck again (end of April 1772). Caroline writes : —
" We went yesterday with Goethe to my Rock and Hill " (in
the Bessunger forest). " He has appropriated a large splendid
rock, and goes to-day to cut his name on it ; nobody, however,
can climb it but he." [On August 28, 1872, the Darmstadt

Fig. 13. After an engraving by Schule ; Leipzig, 1787.

142 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. l
Society for erecting Memorial Tablets placed a tablet to ,
Goethe's memory on this rock — of the Herrgottsberg ; modern
learned mystification has tagged on some legend of the Devil's
Hoof (Teufelsklaue).] Shortly after Herder's betrothed writes :—
" Merck came with Goethe to us in the garden ; I walked with
him [Merck or Goethe?] alone, we wished you into our
neighbourhood. — to Giessen, and finally — that you would come
to see us in the autumn." Lila too had arrived at this time.
Once Goethe, at Merck's house, read to Lila and Caroline the
touching story of Le Fevre, in Tristram Shandy. Caroline
again felt that she was in the presence of an extremely good
man, one worthy of her Lila ; only, to win her he must be of
the nobility. But no one could be further from any intention
of tying his heart than Goethe, at that time altogether intent
as he was on the perfecting of mind and spirit. True he had
succeeded in disciplining his soul to the patient working out
of a great poem, and might hope to find continually henceforth
firm footing ; still he knew that he was only in the beginning
of his growth, that before he could stand alone and erect he
needed the vivifying and strengthening of a rich experience.
In Frankfurt Schlosser was always near, but yet more import
ant was the alliance with Merck, who had given Gotz the
praise it merited when Herder had remained obstinately silent.
Gladly would Goethe have prolonged the time to be spent in
Darmstadt, where he found so much sympathy ; but Councillor
Goethe pressed that his son should go to Wetzlar as he and
many others — Crespel being one— had done, to gain as prac
titioner in the Reichskammergericht more exact knowledge of
law procedure. However little Wetzlar, narrow, dull, already
so long plagued with an Imperial Visitation-Commission, might
have to attract, Wolfgang would not oppose in this matter the
wishes of his father, who left him so free in other ways ; and
so, confiding after all in his destiny, he turned his steps north
wards.

CHAPTER II.
THE SUMMER OF 1 772 (MAY-SEPTEMBER) SPENT IN WETZLAR.
In the middle of May (1772) he arrived in the old town, the
seat of the Reichskammergericht. He took up his quarters on
the dark steep difficult Gewandsgasse, in a great roomy house
— the fourth from the Corn-market on the left, opposite the
Entengasse. His two rooms on the second story overlooked
the street ; some time ago Goethe's name was still to be read
on one of the panes. He had a letter of introduction to his
great-aunt, Frau Geheimerath Lange, who lived where the
Gewandsgasse and the Schmidtgasse meet. She was the
youngest daughter of the procurator and advocate Dr. Lind-
heimer; her elder sister was Goethe's grandmother Textor.
By her first marriage with the procurator Dr. Dietz she had
one son ; by her second with the procurator and Privy Coun
cillor Lange- two yet unmarried daughters.
How low-spirited Goethe at first felt, in spite of the beauty
of the surrounding country, may be inferred from Caroline
Flachsland's observation in a letter of the 25th of May (1772),
that the place is " lonely, dreary, and empty." This she
derived, probably, from the letter which he sent to Lila, en
closing therewith three poems "to be shared" — one for
Urania, one for Lila herself — which both relate to the day of
their first meeting at Homburg ; x third, the Felsweihegesang
an Psyche, which speaks the wish that Caroline — whom he
imagines in silent melancholy by her Rock, thinking of her
absent Herder — may also be mindful of him who took the
very summit of the mountain for his own.2 In vacant Wetzlar
he thought with yearning of the three beautiful souls whom he
had found in Homburg and Darmstadt.
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 22-26.— Tr. 2 Ibid. ii. 20.— Tr.

144 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. ii.
On May 25, 1772, "he was enrolled among the " Prakti-
kants," whose industry was anything but excessive, depending
almost wholly on their own good-will. The young poet did as
little to increase his knowledge of law as did Uhland forty
years afterwards in Paris. If the latter, instead of making
himself familiar with the French legal procedure, transcribed
old poems in the Library, and wrote new ones of his own,
Goethe in Wetzlar pushed on with his study of the Greek
poets and his literary development, and abandoned himself to
a passionate enjoyment of nature in the lovely valley of the
Lahn. The life of the young lawyers who came together in Wetzlar
from every district in Germany was far from being dry and dull,
after all. At the largely attended table d'hdte of the inn Zum
Kronprinzen was a mock Table Round, an Order of Knights
instituted — so the title said — for the Protection of the Right
and the Delivery of Oppressed Youth. This order had been
founded by von Goud of Hildesheim, a member of the Bruns
wick Embassy, six years Goethe's senior. Goethe too joined
this fantastic Bund; it even amused him for some time to take a
share in ordering the ceremonial, that the parody might not lack
all semblance of the real. He was himself named " Gbtz von
Berlichingen der Redliche ; " for people had heard of his play. .
The Goue" above mentioned, who was entitled " Castellan von
Coucy," held himself a great genius — had he not already four
dramas in print? Another poet whom Goethe met at the
Table Round was the Gotha Secretary of Legation, Friedrich
Wilhelm Gotter, — born 1746, — who had especially formed
himself on French literature; was fond of translating plays
from the French ; and sometimes, too, ventured on little
original pieces with some skill, if with no great power. The
two poets found a bond of union in their like activities in
different channels. Gotter had two years ago been joint-
editor with Boie of the first year's issue of the Gottingtr
Musenalmanach, in which he still took some share; and it
was no secret that Goethe was a contributor to that new
Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, which had made such a stir.
Another valued friend of Wolfgang's was his equal in age, von
Kielmansegge of Mecklenburg, who had come to Wetzlar to
look after a law-suit Goethe felt a very special esteem for
this serious deep-thinking man, who refused his sympathy tq_

wetzlar, summer 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 145
nothing of human interest. There was also a certain Bruns
wick Secretary of Legation, exactly eight years older than
Goethe, distinguished by his accurate knowledge, his prudence,
his unwearied industry, his order, his content, his noble feel
ing. Not, however, until a considerable time had passed, did
Goethe learn to know Johann Christian Kestner of Hannover.
It happened thus. One afternoon Kestner and Gotter
had strolled to the hamlet Garbenheim, which, pleasantly
nestled on a hill slope about half a league from Wetzlar, was
a favourite goal of those who wished to breathe the country
air. Entering the garden of the village inn, they found Goethe
stretched on the grass beneath a tree, talking with three friends
who stood around — von Goue", whom Kestner calls the
Epicurean ; von Kielmansegge, the Stoic ; and a Dr. Konig,
who is a mean between the other two. Even at this first
meeting Kestner saw that the young Frankfurter had genius
and a vivid imagination. On a more exact knowledge he
wrote the following sketch. It is hard to say whether the
likeness of the painter or of him painted therein most ap
pears : —
" He has a great deal of talent, is a true genius and a man of charac
ter ; possesses an extraordinarily vivid imagination, thus speaks mostly in
images and similes. He is used to say that he always expresses himself
unexactly, never can exactly ; adding that when he is older he hopes to be
able to think and say the thoughts themselves as they should be. He is
passionate in all his emotions ; exercises, however, often great control over
himself. His way of thinking is noble ; being very free from prejudices,
he acts as is pleasing to him, without inquiring whether He pleases others,
whether it is the fashion, whether convention allows it. He hates any
constraint. He loves children, and never wearies of their company. He
is bizarre, and there are things in his behaviour, his outward man, which
. might repel some ; but with children, with women, and indeed many
besides, he is high in favour. Woman he holds in high reverence. In
'principiis he is not yet stablished, — is as yet but striving after a phil
osophy. To add something on this subject — he holds Rousseau high,
'! though no blind adorer. He is not what is called orthodox; still this is
,not from pride, or caprice, or desire to play a part. And on certain
great subjects he will open his mind only to a few ; would fain not
disturb others in their tranquil beliefs. Indeed he hates Scepticismum ;
seeks truth and conviction on certain great subjects ; thinks, too, that
he is already convinced as to the weightiest : so far however as I have
observed is not as yet. He goes neither to church nor to the Lord's
Supper, and rarely prays ; for, he says, ' I am not hypocrite enough for
that.' At times he is tranquil as to certain matters, at times anything but
tranquil. He reveres the Christian Religion, but not in the form in which
L

146

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. III. CH. II.

our theologians present it. He trusts there is a future life, a better state.
Striving after Truth, he yet holds the feeling of truth higher than the
demonstration. He has already done much, and has much knowledge,
much reading ; but he has thought and reasoned still more. He has been
mainly taken up with belles lettres and the fine arts ; or rather with every
kind of knowledge but that which earns bread."
Besides Garbenheim Goethe loved the grotto-spring over
shadowed by limes, beyond the Wildbacher Gate, and the
pleasant park-like garden on a gentle rise there, the Metze-
burg of these days. In this garden he read his Greek poets,
or mused on the dear ones far away, or on his strange destiny ;
here his poem, Der Wanderer, received its final shaping; it
was sent to Darmstadt at the end of May ; here, too, pro
bably the translation of
Goldsmith's Deserted
Village, composed in
rivalry with Gotter, had
its origin. On the evening of the
9th of June (1772) he
drove with his great-aunt's
daughters to a ball at the
hunting-lodge atVolperts-
hausen, a hamlet about
a league and a half from
Wetzlar. On the way
they stopped to take up
the second eldest daughter
of Heinrich Adam Buff,
one of the stewards em
ployed by the Teutonic'
Order of Knights to look
after their property in that
neighbourhood. He lived
in the little two -story
house which stood on the
left hand side of the ap- ;
proach to " Das Deutsche \
Haus," where the Protestant Girls' School stands now ; Char
lotte Sophie Henriette Buff, the second daughter, born January
13j 1753, had eleven brothers and sisters still living, all with
blue eyes and blonde hair like her own. In the spring '•

Fig. :

The Buffs' House and Das Deutsche
Haus. From au old cut.

^fei^t

'QAi^ta4^

Fig. 15. From A. Resteer's Goethe -und Wcrtlu-i:

148 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. ii.
of 1767 Kestner had seen her first, and at once loved
her. He describes her delicate physique, her gentle soul ; she
was sprightly and lively, of quick conception and great pre
sence of mind. With her chat, her merry notions, her humour,
she made everybody feel happy ; then she was virtuous, pious,
industrious, teachable, and willing to undergo any womanly
toils. The young Secretary of Legation was now her accepted
lover. When, in March 17 71, her mother, the pattern of a
good housewife, died, all the cares of the household fell on the
shoulders of Charlotte ; the eldest daughter, Caroline Wilhel-
mine, seems to have been less capable. Kestner writes : —
"All Goethe's attention was at once fixed on Lottchen. She is still
young ; though no regular beauty she has a very pleasing, attractive, con
formation of features ; her glance is like a cheery morning in spring ;
especially was it so that day, for she loves dancing ; she was in good
spirits ; her dress was quite unelaborate. He noticed in her a feeling for
the beauty of Nature, and an unforced wit — rather humour than wit. He
did not know that she was no longer free ; I came a couple of hours later,
and it is never our wont to manifest, in public resort, any relation closer
than friendship. He was extravagantly merry that day ; so he is often,
and at other times melancholy. Lottchen made a complete conquest, the
easier because she did not try any such thing, but simply gave herself to
the enjoyment of the evening. Next day, of course, Goethe must call to
inquire after Lottchen's health. Hitherto he had known her as a merry
girl, who liked dancing and pleasures undisturbed by care ; now he learned
to know her on that side where her strength is displayed — on the side of
her housewifely activity."
At first sight Goethe was thus captivated by the fresh natural
ness of the bright maiden, and she, too, felt much attracted
towards the new charming visitor to her sphere. And when
he saw her in the midst of the numerous flock of her brothers
and sisters, ordering and disposing like a most careful and
loving mother, his emotion was deepened; must not the
famous scene where Werther sees Lotte first, be, like so much
else in the novel, a transfer from reality ? There was, indeed,
in her presence, a magnetism which kept him constantly at her
side, though he now knew her to be engaged to Kestner, and
never of course thought of striving to win her from his friend.
When von Born, whom he had known since the Leipzig
period, said to him in the earlier days of his acquaintance with
Lotte, that he would estrange her from Kestner, he answered :
— she was much too noble to give up Kestner ; but should she

wetzlar, summer 1772.] ADVOCATE AND, POET. 149
prove capable of such an act, he (Goethe) would immediately
abandon her.1 Kestner was glad to see his little-occupied
friend keep Lottchen company. He went generally in the
afternoon, and then, it was his pleasure to sit at Lotte's feet
while her little brothers scrambled over him. In the evenings
he often met Kestner in her presence, when he would find her
in her blue stripe night-jacket2 He was also much with her
in her garden that lay on the path to the Wildbacher Gate ;
you could hear from it the murmur of the Wildbacher fountain
nigh at hand. The path to the gate led over the so-called
"Geese Meadow" (Gdnsewiesc) ; just outside the gate was the
vegetable ground, whither Goethe often accompanied Lotte.
Between Goethe and Kestner nearer acquaintance and like
tastes knit in time the friendship very close. Kestner writes
a couple of months later : —
" Meanwhile, although he could nourish no hope with regard to Lotte,
and did nourish none, all his philosophy and inborn pride failed to enable
him completely to suppress his affection. And he has qualities to make him
dangerous to a woman, especially to one of feeling and taste ; but Lottchen
knew how to treat him so as to encourage no budding of hope, yet so that he
must admire her way of acting towards him. His peace of mind suffered
greatly ; there were various remarkable scenes by which Lotte always rose
in my estimation, and he could not but seem a worthier friend ; yet was I
often forced on amazement when I considered into what strange creatures
can love often transform the strongest and — in other matters — most self-
sustained of mankind. In general, I was pained for him, and there arose
within me many straggles of affection : for, on the one hand, I thought
my power to make Lottchen happy might not be so great as his ; on the
other hand, could not endure the thought of losing her. The latter motive
was victorious, and I have never marked in Lottchen the shadow of such
a thought." This noble freedom from jealousy was never forgotten by
Goethe, who would have been driven to extremity by any
attempt to forbid him access to Lotte's presence.
During the hard struggle between love and renunciation,
Goethe could not win the calm needful for poetic activity —
could not even pour his heaving passion in verse, such chaos
ruled in his unquiet soul. To this period, probably, the trans
lation of a short Ode of Pindar3 is alone to be assigned.
1 Goethe to Kestner [14th April 1773]- Der junge Goethe, i. 364-5.
 ,j,R> 2 Goethe to Kestner [27th October 1772], and again [16th June 1773].
Der junge Goethe, i. 323 and 373. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, ii. 14-16. — Tr.

ISO THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. ii.
With Merck he remained steadfastly united; he hoped to
accompany this friend and his wife on a journey to Switzer
land, which they had planned for the following year. And at
length from Herder, after a half-year's silence, a reply came.
It was, however, in the old tone of bitterness, and would have
for ever estranged another, who might less know to prize the
greatness ofthe writer. That hard word about Gdtz — " Shakes
peare has quite spoiled you " — -was acknowledged by Goethe
in its full Tightness. The piece ,must, he writes to Herder
(July 1772), be entirely melted down, refined, and must be re
cast, with the addition of newer, better metal. It is a special
annoyance that all is so plainly schemed in Gotz — a reproach
that may be laid at the door of Lessing's Emilia Galotti also,
in which chance and caprice are not once allowed to work
their will ; in which any one with half a wit could tell the why
of every scene, one might almost say of every word. Yet he
thinks he may hope for himself that " when beauty and great
ness weave themselves more in thy emotion, then wilt thou
act, speak, write, what is good and fair,- without knowing why."
From Pindar, " in whom he now dwells," he has learned that
the essence of every mastership is to go deep into a thing,
and take firm hold (Drein greifen, packen, ist das Wesen jeder
Meisterschaft). Since he has felt the force of Pindar's words,
o-rfdos (the breast, heart, affections) and irpair iSes (the under
standing), a new world has risen within. During the last fort
night he has for the first time read Herder's Fragmente; he
rejoices to find that what is said there of the Greeks coincides
for the most part with his own view. The exposition how
Thought and Feeling mould Expression had descended on him
like a revelation of the gods. Of the bitter way in which
Herder had spoken about the Felsweihegesang 1 he declares his
opinion with complete frankness ; just before he has begged his
friend to let him hear his voice more often : — " You know how
you would clasp to your heart one who could be to you what
you are to me. Only, let not our knowing that we shall often
disagree be of force to deter us like cravens ; if our passions
shock, are we able to bear no shock? It is I more than
you who have reason to fear. Enough ; have you anything
1 See p. 143. See for Herder's mockery — " Hinangeflogen da
kam ein Specht; " Briefe Goethe's an Herder ; Herausgegeben von Diintzer
und F. G. von Herder; Seite 46-9. — Tr.

wetzlar, summer 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 151
against me, speak it out — direct and serious, or malicious,
sneering — as it comes." With Merck, he says further on, he
is now fast bound ; yet more through a common need than a
common aim. Notwithstanding all the furtherance derived
from Merck's friendliness and insight, he was without the
mighty afflatus-breathing genius of Herder.1
When, in the first week of August (1772), Lotte had gone
on a visit to acquaintances at Atzbach, a large village beyond
Garbenheim, Goethe was unable to restrain himself from going
to see her. He did so on the 8th, and informs Kestner of it
by note the same evening. He presses Kestner to go again with
him early on the morrow (Sunday), when they would probably
be greeted by faces friendlier than they had been to-day in
greeting him alone.2 On the 19th of August we find Lotte
at Giessen, at the house of Councillor of War (Kriegsrath)
Pfaff. Merck and Goethe had agreed to meet there on the
1 8th, at the house of Professor Hopfner, who was to be pressed
into the service of the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen. In a
highly ludicrous way Goethe introduced himself as a poor
awkward student. Professor Schmid, that voluminous scribbler
whom Herder had chastised, was most laughably mystified by
Goethe on this occasion. Two pleasant days the friends spent
with Hopfner. Merck, who now first saw the Lotte whom he
already knew through Goethe's praise, had to confess that the
praise was not too great. With Lotte and Goethe he was in
the evening at PfafPs house. With the latter he went on the
19th to Wetzlar, whither Lotte followed on the 20th. Prob
ably there Merck saw the stately dark-eyed Dorothea von
Brandt, a friend of Lotte, well-inclined to Goethe. She
was the second daughter of the Prokurator Hofrath who
lived in " das Deutsche Haus." Merck pointed Goethe to this
"Juno form" (^Junonische Gestalt"),3 to whom he ought to
divert the course of his affection, rather than waste in hopeless
love for the betrothed of another. Goethe was his companion
for another day to Giessen; but could not be induced — as
Merck had hoped he might — to return to Frankfurt, thence
to bring Cornelia to a ball at Darmstadt ; Lotte's magnetism
was too powerful.
1 See for this letter to Herder, Der junge Goethe, i. 307-310. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 310. — Tr.
* Dichtung und Wahrheit, xii. Buch (last page). — Tr.

152 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. ii.
Probably in August 1772 were written those articles for
the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, which appeared in its
numbers from the 25 th of August to the middle of September.
Especially noteworthy among them is the critique of the
Gedichte von einem Polnischen Juden (Poems by a Polish Jew),
in which Goethe sketches his ideal of the poet of Love;
whether he murmur dim foreboding of the joys of love, or
hope, or realisation, truth and living beauty should be in his
songs. "Yet, are there such maidens?1 — can there be such
youths?" he concludes. He was himself just then threatened
with a heavy loss, for his sister Cornelia had favourably received
the suit of J. G. Schlosser.
On the 27 th of August he sat almost all day by Lotte's
side ; slitting beans went on until midnight ; and the new day,
the 28th, his birthday, was ushered in with tea amid friendly
faces.2 Strange freak of destiny ! it was Kestner's birthday
too. Of course there were plenty of little gifts for both. Prob
ably on this occasion Goethe gave his friend the copy of
Goldsmith's Deserted Village (the edition put forth by Merck),
in which he had written the lines : —
" Wenn einst nach iiberstandnen Lebensmiih- und Schmerzen
Das Gliick dir Ruh- und Wonnetage gibt,
Vergiss nicht den, der — ach ! von ganzem Herzen
Dich und mit dir geliebt."
Probably he received, as Werther does from Albert, the little
Wetstein edition of Homer, for Werther not only has for birth
day the same day as Goethe, but leaves his Lotte, as Goethe
left his, on the ioth of September.
Goethe's birthday was always a day of self-examination,,
and after this one his state of mind grew rapidly more anxious
and painful ; several times he endeavoured to fly for safety,
but could not resolve. On the 5 th of September Lotte refused
to accompany her passion -tossed lover to Atzbach. Next
morning he writes to Kestner, murmuring at her refusal : —
" The morning is so glorious, and my soul so calm, that I
cannot remain in the town, I will go to Garbenheim. Lotte
said yesterday that she would to-day take a longer walk than
1 As the ideal maiden whom Goethe sketches in the critique. Der
junge Goethe, ii. 439-42. — Tr.
2 Goethe, writing to Charlotte Kestner, 27th August 1774, viz. two
years later, recalls this. Der junge Goethe, iii. 36. The ages of the three
at present are, Kestner 31, Goethe 23, Lotte 19^. — Tr.

wetzlar, summer 1772.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 153
usual Not that I expect you out there, — but do I wish it ?
With all my heart I"1 On Sept. ioth he dines with Kestner
at the garden inn. In the evening he comes to das Deutsche
Haus, firmly resolved to go away in the morning without leave-
taking. Lotte happened to bring the talk on the Future State.
Goethe, who sat at her feet and played with the skirt of her
dress, also spoke of the Beyond ; but speaking, thought not
of the clouds, but of the mountains, which would soon lie
between them. Lest his grief should break out and betray
his intent he went suddenly away. Later in the evening he
wrote, out of the oppressed fulness of his heart, lines of farewell
to Kestner and Lotte, still preserved ; in the morning adding
to Lotte's note a last word, enclosing some pictures for the
children, forgotten until then. " Always a merry heart, dear
Lotte, you are happier than a hundred — but not insensible !
and I, dear Lotte, am happy that I read in your eyes your
belief that I will never change. Adieu, a thousand times,
adieu !"2 Lotte and Kestner could only approve the step,
however they regretted his departure. Fled he absolutely had.
His great-aunt sent to Lotte to say : — " It was very impolite
of Dr. Goethe to go off in this way without taking leave ;" and
Lotte sent in reply: — "Why have you not brought up your
nephew better?"
In Wetzlar Goethe's soul had been stirred to the depths
by this maiden of such simple, "ingenuous goodness,"3 the
gentle, housewifely, pure, tranquil, tender Lotte, in whom he
could mirror his own personality, but who was never to be his;
elevation his spirit had gained in the study of Pindar, and in
the fair presence of Nature. It is probable that during the
summer he had .resumed his sketching, that he might receive
the full impression of the landscape ; but the present was too
intensely engrossing to leave him faculty for song. Not a
verse to Lotte's praise ; no trace of an effort to move her by
poetry; not even new words to old melodies, as with Friederike,
though Lotte also sang to the piano. He tore himself away
from Kestner's betrothed ; but soon he was drawn back irre
sistibly to her side, nor was his peace of mind to return until
her marriage irrevocably sundered them.
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 311. — Tr. 2 Ibid. i. 312-13.— Tr.
3 Goethe's own word — Ingenum Giite — when writing to Kestner [27th
October 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i. 323.— Tr.

CHAPTER ILL
FROM GOETHE'S DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR TO THE
MARRIAGE OF LOTTE.
September 1772-ApRiL 1773.
Goethe's dislike of Frau von Laroche had been overcome
through Merck's influence ; and he had probably received a
personal invitation to her house. Having left Wetzlar earlier
than was needful, he had time to calm his throbbing pain
before entering the circle of the woman of the world. To
that purpose should serve a short stay at Ems, after some
days of pleasant pilgrimage by the banks of the Lahn, whose
graceful windings, and delicate landscapes, and fertile moist
valleys, and shaggy castle-crowned heights, with the tender far-
off blue of mountain ranges, are still as then powerful to
gladden the heart. Had he not already often felt the healing
virtue of Nature ? He would prove it once more.
So with riven heart he wandered, in the early morning of
the nth of September (1772), down the right bank of the
Lahn, which flashed along in the sunlight at a considerable
depth below. He was ere long overtaken by his friend von
Born, riding to Braunfels. It will be remembered how he had
explained his feeling about Lotte to this friend before, and he
did not now conceal the cause of his hasty departure from
Wetzlar. From Braunfels he passed on to Weilburg and Lim-
burg, mostly alone ; only sometimes for a short time joining
others who went the same way. At Limburg he probably
stopped a night ; then leaving Dietz and Nassau one by one
behind he arrived at Ems. Goethe himself tells us of his
strange interrogation of fate in the presence of the lovely
landscape, the sacrifice in vain of his fine many-bladed pocket-
knife. He wished to learn whether he should ever attain to

sept. 1772-APRIL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 155
worthy portrayal of nature on canvas ; whether he was to be
poet or painter ; on which question he did not arrive at full
certainty until fifteen years later in Italy. From Ems, where
he " several times enjoyed the tepid bath," he pursued his' way
by boat down the Lahn, until old Rhine widened grand before
him. At length our fugitive landed at Thai, a hamlet which
lovingly clasps the feet of the great fortress -crowned rock
Ehrenbreitstein. The first of the expected guests, he was warmly welcomed
by the master and mistress of the splendid house perched
above the Rhine at the far end of the village. Frank von
Laroche, a man of four and thirty, had, in the beginning of
the previous year, entered the service of the Elector of Trier
as acting Privy Councillor (Geheimrath), and had settled down
here with electoral Coblenz facing him over the Rhine, and
the Residenzschloss, Philippsburg, close at hand. There were
few points of sympathy between Goethe and this excellent
man of business, this disciple of the rationalistic Aufklarung.
On the other hand, he learned to respect Frau von Laroche,
when he saw her the most careful and loving of mothers in
her domestic circle, which the presence of two angels adorned ;
and when he saw, too, the mild tranquillity she showed towards
every one, which just at that agitated time must have seemed
to him an unspeakable treasure. Her eldest daughter, now
between sixteen and seventeen, a dainty little thing with the
blackest eyes, such as Goethe loved, and of the sweetest
youthful bloom, how changed she seemed since he had last
seen her in Frankfurt. There was in her a sweet consoling
power to rouse his stricken heart again to life and courage, so
did she to free and charming culture unite withal a morning
freshness of body and soul, fair blossom in the noble Rhine-
land 1 where to the young wanderer the days seemed brighter,
and the evenings more glorious, than he had ever known before.
Of course the image of her whom his will but not his heart
had renounced was an amulet to prevent such love as had
suddenly kindled in the first meeting with Friederike or Lotte.
Yet he felt the maiden sweet, worthy of the best gifts of fortune,
was powerfully attracted to her. Her younger sister Luise
gave promise of even more loveliness.
Very soon after Goethe's arrival came a man whom he
had known since his Darmstadt period as one of the most

156 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. in.
wearisome of go-betweens, Rath Franz Michael Leuchsenring,,
about three years his senior. This man used to ransack
beautiful souls for their sentiment and exaltation, if by any
means he might thereby deck out the vacant nothingness of
his own being, and gain material to feed his love of intrigue
and tale-bearing. Very odious to Goethe was this cavalier,
who had once already sown discord between Merck and Frau
von Laroche, and who now strove to ply his trade with
Herder's betrothed. Still the young poet listened with great
interest to letters with which Leuchsenring regaled them,
revealing secret traits of the hearts of many whose names he
had long known.
Soon after Leuchsenring came friend Merck with his wife,
and his boy of six, Henri. Elective affinities soon displayed
themselves, Merck paired off with the Geheimrath Laroche,
Leuchsenring was the companion of the married ladies, the
boys played and ran together, while the two girls rejoiced in
the enthusiastic talk of the charming young poet, very tender-
mooded just then with the weight at the heart. A friend of
theirs was the nine year old daughter of the manufacturer,..!
D'Ester, in Vallendar near by. Goethe and Frau D'Ester
became close friends. With the Minister of the Elector of
Trier, the Canon von Hohenfeld, our poet also became ac
quainted. For some time Leuchsenring's communications had been
accepted in peace, but there was a natural incompatibility
between the guests. And this it was the harder to smoothen
away, because Leuchsenring was effusive in praise of the
brothers Jacobi, whom Frau Laroche too held high, but whom
Goethe and Merck could not abide. Happily the appointed
termination of the visit arrived without open rupture, for
Frau von Laroche was skilful. About the 1 9th, Goethe and
Merck left with feelings of warm friendship for their hostess,
Four months later (Jan. 1773) Goethe writes to the noble lady
— whom in 1774 he even came to call Mama : — " My imagina
tion never ceases to picture the moment at which I had to part
from you and your perfect daughters, and with heart full of
farewell kissed the last hand and said, ' Do not forget me !' Bl
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 346-7. For Goethe's letters to Frau von
Laroche, with a commentary, see G. von Loeper's Briefe Goethe's an Sophie
von La Roche und Bettina Brentano: Berlin, 1879. — Tr. ,

sept. 1772-APRIL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 157
With yearning he recalled those " scenes of the most deep-felt
tenderness," and the " glory of domestic maternal bliss, with
such angels adoring around."1
On the purposely slow voyage up the Rhine to Mainz,
according to Goethe's account he and Merck sketched many
of the finest views. In Frankfurt the Merck party stayed a
couple of days- in the Goethes' hospitable home. Kestner,
visiting Schlosser at Frankfurt, found Goethe and Merck there ;
this was on the afternoon of the 2 2d of September (1772).
" It was an indescribable joy to me," we read in Kestner's
diary. " Goethe fell on my neck and pressed me close."
They went together to the Rdmer, where they found Merck's
wife and Goethe's sister together. On the rampart, before the
gate, they were met by Charlotte Gerock. Merck had first
seen Charlotte and Antoinette Gerock in August; writing to
his wife, had described them as charming girls, according with
Goethe's ideal, all heart, full of naivete ; one of them (Antoin
ette) is bewitching. When Charlotte now saw Goethe after
four months' absence, " gladness lightened her face ; she sud
denly ran up to him and into his arms ; they kissed each other
heartily." Goethe brought Kestner in the evening to his
home. Goethe's mother gave the stranger a friendly welcome
" on the word of her son, which is everything with her ;" so
did Rath Goethe, who entered just then, and with whom
Kestner had a pleasant chat. At the wish of Merck's wife, Cor
nelia played the piano : she could play unusually well. She
begged Kestner to bring Lottchen, whom she already loved
far away, to see her. Next morning (September 23, 1772)
Kestner and Schlosser came to Goethe, and they went through
the house. In the afternoon, about three o'clock, Kestner
came again ; they went among the fair-booths, then to Antoin
ette Gerock, a passionate adorer of Goethe, who had often
spoken of her in Wetzlar. After the theatre Kestner supped
with the Goethes.
Goethe still ever thought on Lotte with yearning. Her
silhouette, hung on the wall of his sleeping-room, received
many a passionate greeting. From Kestner, taking leave on
the 23 d, he had obtained a promise of speedy tidings of
1 These expressions are from a letter of Goethe's [written November
1772] to Frau von Laroche, which is not in Der junge Goethe. See Loeper,
pp. 1-7.— TR.

158 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. in.
Lotte ; he had particularly wished to know whether she had
not dreamed of him. When he heard that she had not : — " I
take it very ill, and I will that she dream of me this night, and
what is more, that she do not tell you of her^dream."1 On
the 26th he again utters his yearning, yet he will not see her
again until he has fallen seriously in love with some one else.
The silhouette on the wall leaves him no rest. " If you were
only to see how diligent I am," he says in the same letter.
He wrote a little critique for the Frankfurter gelehrte
Anzeigen of the 29th ;2 he was pretty free at this time from
advocate work, at least from suits. Not until the 12th of
October did he draw up a short statement, then on the
2 1 st a second, in a case which had once been in his uncle's
hands, and five days later a petition (Bittgesuch). There legal
activity, so far as conducting suits is concerned, ceased for
more than six months. A brisk communication is kept up
with Wetzlar.
He looks after some purchases of draper's goods on Lotte's
behalf; he cannot get her out of his mind, though he often
thinks of her friend the dark-eyed Dorthel Brandt3 Lotte
prepared him a great joy when she sent him the ribbon which
she had worn that first evening (June 9th) when they drove to
the ball together. The betrothal of his sister, too, was at
length determined ; their father after long negotiating having
agreed to Schlosser's conditions.4 The marriage was to take
place next year, when Schlosser should have obtained an ex
pected appointment at Karlsruhe. This threatening of loss
disturbed Goethe's peace — the more because he feared every
moment to hear tidings of the betrothal of Lotte also. Of a
false report that Goue" had shot himself he observes, he
honours such a deed too, and pities human kind ; he hopes
hims.elf never to pain friendly hearts with such tidings.5
1 Goethe to Kestner, Friday [25th September 1772]. Der junge Goethe,
i. 317.— Tr. _
2 The critique is on Zwei schone neue Mdhrlein (they were by Zacharia).
See Der junge Goethe, ii. 454. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner [beginning of October 1772]. Der junge Goethi,
i. 319. — Tr.
* Goethe to Charlotte Buff [8th October 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i
320-1. — Tr.
5 Goethe to Kestner, Saturday [ioth October 1772]. Der junge Goethi,
i. -521-2. — Tr.

sept. 1772-APRIL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 159
During a few days of lovely weather, at the ingathering of the
grapes, he " thought more about Lotte than she thinks of him
in a quarter of a year." Yet he hopes, in course of time, to
be rid of this plague also.1
On his Name- Day came the friendliest greetings from
Kestner and all Lotte's circle, but just then, too, came word
how young Jerusalem had, in the night between Oct. 29th and
30th, shot himself; the cause an unhappy love. Jerusalem,
a friend of Lessing, had lived as Secretary of Legation in
Wetzlar. Goethe, more than two years his junior, had neither
on first knowing him in Leipzig, nor at second meeting
in Wetzlar, drawn very close to him. Jerusalem always
regarded Goethe as the coxcomb (Geek), though their common
friend, von Kielmansegge, had an uncommonly high estimate
of the young poet. Goethe had only called on him twice ;
on one visit borrowing a book which had not yet been returned.
Observing him often outside the town gates in the moonlight,
it had occurred to Goethe that the lonely fellow was in love.2
How deeply agitated must he then have been to think that
just that courage to take flight, which he himself had had, was
needed to save poor Jerusalem.
Yet now again he drifted back to Lotte's presence. When
Schlosser, on November 6th, had to start for Wetzlar on busi
ness, Goethe went with him. They stayed until the morning
of the ioth. Kestner, who went with them everywhere, was
yet very glad that Schlosser took his friend away with him
again, for the latter "by his original character only follows his
last notion, without troubling himself as to consequences."
And yet what strong instance had he to believe in Goethe's
ability of self-denial ! During this visit Goethe was much with
Lotte; also her friend Dorthel was visited. On the last
evening, sitting by Lotte on the sofa, he had, he confessed to
Kestner afterwards, "right villanous and criminal thoughts"
(rechte hangerliche und hdngenswerthe Gedanken). In the early
morning of the ioth, having yet taken no leave of Lotte, he
wished to make good the omission, but Schlosser purposely
hurrying the departure prevented him — to his vexation. They
stopped at Friedberg. Schlosser had to conduct an investiga-
1 Goethe to Kestner [October 21, 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i. 322.
— Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner. Der junge Goethe, i. 324. — Tr.

160 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iii.
tion there ; while Goethe had to make a personal inspection,
and to negotiate with a slater about repairing a castle. A
packet from his father came with a letter which draws from -
him these words : — " When I one time am old, shall I be like
this? Will my soul no longer yearn for what is good and
lovely ? Strange that while — one might think— man growing
old should also day by day grow freer from what is small and
sordid, he on the contrary grows always smaller and more
sordid." He had begged for silhouettes of the Buff family;
now he wants to get Lotte's old comb in exchange for a new
one.1 Kestner sent him the circumstantial account of Jeru
salem's death which he had asked for. 2
For the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen he wrote, beside
other critiques, one of Wieland's Der goldne Spiegel ; of the
Gottingen Musenalmanach 1773; and of Lavater's Aussichten
in die Ewigkeit ; all these critiques are in the numbers rang
ing from Oct 27 to Nov. 13 (1772).3 On his own account he
published anonymously the pamphlet Von Deutscher Baukunst
D. M. Ervini d Steinbach, written in the Hamann- Herder
style. Here he defends Gothic architecture against its Italian
and German contemners. A sketch of the previous year may
be the groundwork of this pamphlet.*
Most of his time was spent in drawing ; of legal practice
he would hear nothing. In the time of his extremest depres
sion came the offer of the Strassburg Legal Faculty to make
him a Doctor: this was Salzmann's work. He at once declined,
it. " The letter came at an unhappy time," he wrote to Salz
mann, "and then, not to speak ofthe ceremonial, all thought
of being a doctor is gone by. I am so sick of Licentieren, so
sick of all practice, that I at most only try to keep up appear
ances, and in Germany the one degree is as good as the other."
On the 1 6th of November (1772) he hastened to Darm
stadt to Merck, in whose company he hoped to go to Mann
heim, to renew the joy of seeing the antiques there. But Merck
1 Goethe to Kestner [Friedberg, ioth November 1772]. Der junge
Goethe, i. 325-6. See also : Goethe to Kestner [15th December 1772].
Der junge Goethe, i. 332. — Tr.
2 Goethe, writing from Darmstadt [29th November 1772], acknow
ledges it. Der junge Goethe, i. 329. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, ii. 455, 462, 467. — Tr.
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 204-214, and see: Goethe to Kestner £r3tb
November 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i. 327-8. — Tr.

sept. 1772-APRiL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 161
could not get away. Goethe stayed four weeks with him, dili
gently occupied in sketching and engraving. " Our good
Goethe is here," writes Caroline on Nov. 27, "lives and
sketches, and we sit at the winter table around him, and we
look and listen. Merck's house has become an Academy;
they draw, they etch. He has drawn a little landscape piece
for me with a mountain castle, and at the foot of the moun
tain a village." Eight days later we hear Goethe is teaching
Merck to draw ; and seems to have become more quiet and
refined. Goethe himself writes to Herder, December 5, 1772 :
— " I am now all draughtsman, I am courageous and happy.
I have been very glad to find you have been so interested in
Erwin " (the pamphlet Von deutscher Baukunst). " Merck is
making verses " (he was writing his satirical Guide to making
one's Fortune as a Poet, the Rhapsodie von Johann Heinrich
Reinhart dem Jungern), " and he is printing " (Merck had set
up a printing-press in Langen, near Darmstadt). " We mirror
ourselves in each other, and we lean on one another, and we
share the joys and tediums of this mortal life." He thanks
Herder for having in an essay on Shakespeare, though without
naming him, blessed him for Gbtz. " We are the ancients,"
he adds ; " a little modified here and there does not matter.
And when you come in spring [for his marriage] it will be
splendid. My father greets you, and you shall come
beneath his roof with the greatest welcome, that is under
stood ; now I have eased my conscience so far as he is con
cerned."1 About the nth of December (1772) he returned to
Frankfurt. He heard that Lottchen's sister of sixteen,
Helene, of whom he had heard a great deal, had returned to
her home, where she was to take Lottchen's place by and by.
In bitter mood he writes : — " I believe I would prefer her to
Lotte. By her portrait [sent to him by Kestner] she seems an
amiable girl — much better than Lotte, if not exactly like.
And I am free and love-needy. I must see to come ; yet
that would be no use either. Here I am again in Frankfurt,
revolve new plans and crotchets, all which I should not do had
I but a sweetheart." 2 Yet we hear three days later that he is
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 330. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner [12th December 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i.
332.— Tr.

1 6a THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. ih.
in tolerable spirits, and working stoutly.1 Drawing especially,
was carried on with great diligence. He had seven fine heads
after Raphael in his chamber, and in copying one of them he
found an aid to tranquillity. By this time it had been settled
that Merck was to withdraw from the editorship of the Frank
furter gelehrte Anzeigen, as, without asking his opinion, the
publishers had accepted articles which he did not approve of.
Schlosser followed Merck, and Goethe declared that he too
would have no more to do with the review. Yet two articles 2
which appeared — one on the 18th, one on the 25th — were
from his pen ; and two more appeared during the course of
January and February 1773, which were probably written in
December 1772.
He had not withdrawn altogether from his old merry
companions. On the 24th (December 1772) he went "with
some capital young fellows to the country," where "their
merriment was very noisy, shouting and laughter from begin
ning to end ; " but he drank no wine. When they came to
the bridge on their return, the winter sun had set, and darkness
ascending from the east covered north and south ; only in the
west there was a silent region of diminishing faint light. The
spectacle affected Goethe deeply ; and that he might not let
the impression go, he hurried to the Gerocks' house, got pencil
and paper, and sketched the whole picture " glimmering warm"
(dammernd warm) as it stood in his soul. The general
approval told him that he had done well ; in his good spirits
he wanted to have them all throw dice for the sketch ; but
every one insisted that it ought to be sent to Merck. Then
they spent a pleasant evening together. Next morning —
Christmas morning, 1772 — he rises very early; has coffee
made ; and writes a long letter to Kestner.3 A day or two
after, he writes that he has made up a Nachrede (epilogue) 4
for the publisher of the Frankfurter Anzeigen, in which it is"
stated that the critics whose work there had been most
complained of are retiring. He was pleased to find that he
1 Goethe to Kestner [15th December 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i.
332-4.— Tr.
2 On Sulzer's Die schonen Kiinste, On Joch Uber Belohnung und
Strafen nach tiirkischen Gesetzen. Der junge Goethe, ii. 470, 477. — Tr.
3 From which the foregoing account is drawn. Der junge Goethe,
i. 334-8.— Tr.

sept. 1772-APRiL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 163
succeeded in quizzing (turlttpinirt) both the public and the
publisher.1 His moods were as various as his occupations. In the
beginning ofthe new year (1773), we find him zealously urg
ing on his drawing. " I am excessively the artist just at
present," he writes to Kestner.2 But at the same time the
humour seized him to make his appearance as author under
the mask of a pastor. Following the precedent of Rousseau's
Lettre d'un vicaire, he wrote a Brief des Pastors zu * * *
an den neuen Pastor zu * * * Aus dem Franzosischen? In
this Letter a loving, earnest soul expounds — in opposition to
cold overweening rationalism— that true tolerance which arises
from faith in Christ — the only ground of salvation. So fervent
and beautiful is the pleading, that Lavater and his circle were
deeply moved. What Goethe had observed during his inter
course with the Klettenberg circle ; what he had himself felt
during his temporary mystic mood, is here exalted to poetry,
and clothed in clearly-outlined noble poetic form. The suc
cess of this attempt encouraged him to publish — under the
mask of a country clergyman of Swabia — two peculiar Biblical
expositions which he had long had in his desk. Already
Hamann had given eine Beilage von einem Geistlichen in
Schwaben to his Denkwiirdigkeiten des seligen Sokrates.* The
first of Goethe's Zwo wichtige, bisher unerorterte biblische
Fragen,6 discusses the contents of the Tables of the Law ; the
thesis maintained, that on the Tables were written, not the Ten
Commandments, but ten constitutions of the covenant of God
with Israel, had been already put forth in his Strassburg
Doctor's Dissertation.6 The second part, an explanation of
the phrase " speak with tongues," in the Acts of the Apostles,
1 Goethe to Kestner [December 1772]. Der junge Goethe, i. 338.
This Nachrede was first included in Goethe's Werke in the critical edition
lately brought out by Gustav Hempel of Berlin, Bd. xxix. S. 76.
It is in Der junge Goethe, ii. 480-83. — Tr.
2 "Ich bin sehr Kvinstler jetzt." Goethe to Kestner [18th January
1773]. Der junge Goethe, i. 342. — Tr.
3 Letter from the Pastor at  to the new Pastor at  . From the
French. Der junge Goethe, ii. 215-229. — Tr.
4 A Supplement by a clergyman in Swabia to his Memorabilia of the
dead Socrates. — Tr.
6 Two important hitherto undiscussed Biblical questions. Der junge
Goethe, ii. 230-241. — Tr.
6 See Exodus, xxxiv. 10-28. — Tr.

1 64 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. hi.
had also been long written. The tone of a simple believing
pastor is hit wonderfully well, and the clothing of language
and circumstance happily imagined and wrought out.
To the beginning of the year (1773) falls also the crack-
brained performance Concerto dramatico composto dal Sigr.
Dottore Flamminio detto Panurgo secondo. Aufzufuhren in der
Darmstadter Gemeinschaft der Heiligen 1 — a humorous reply to
a humorous collective letter from his Darmstadt friends. But
it is about this time that Goethe will have been more closely
meditating a great dramatic design — the Mahomet.2 He
desired to set forth how, in carrying out the details of a great
idea, the prophet is forced at length to artifice ; and so the
earthly by degrees chokes the divine. At the Wetzlar period
he had acquired some knowledge of the Koran, proved by his
using a text 3 from it in a letter to Herder written in July
1772 ; this text is in the extracts from the Koran which Goethe
made, and which are still preserved.
His grief for Lotte he sought to assuage as he best might,
little as he could quell his love. As he writes to Kestner,
late on the evening of the 18th of January (1773), he says
good-night to "sweet" Lotte before her silhouette; he has
to-day already wished her many a " good-day " and "good-
evening." "Wherever you may be," he says, "happy and
loved too, by me more than by any other here below. And I
too am happy, content in myself ; for I never have wanted for
anything external yet." Goethe's sister writes at the same time
that they are living a simple and contented life ; when they
sit round the fire chatting, or listening to Wolfgang read aloud,
they often wish for their Wetzlar friends. Among Cornelia's
friends were two daughters of Philipp Anselm Munch, a mer
chant living in the Dbngesgasse (the house is now No. 20);
the elder, Susanna Magdalena, had been born on the nth of
January 1753; Anna Sibylla on July 3, 1758. The humor
ous remark in a letter of the 26th (January 1773) to Kestner
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 197-203. — Tr.
2 The song of Ali and Fatema (see Der junge Goethe, ii. 30-33)
appeared in the Gottinger Musenalmanach for 1774, which was published
in autumn 1773 ; the song was one of those which, in March 1773, Goethe
would send to the editor through Kestner, if Merck had not already sent
it. — Duntzer in the Goethe-fahrbuch for 1880. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, i. 308 : — " Ich mSchte beten wie Moses im Koran :
' Herr mache mir Raum in meiner engen Brust.' " — Tr.

sept. 1772-APRIL1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 165
refers to the former of these : — " Tell Lotte : a certain girl here
whom I am heartily fond of, and whom I would certainly
choose if I were to marry, was born too on the nth of
January.1 It would be nice — two such couples. Who knows
what God's will is ? " 2 A fortnight later he says : — " The
maiden greets Lotte ; in character she has much of Lenchen ;
looks like her too, says my sister, judging by the silhouette.
If we loved each other so dearly as you two ! I call her mean
while ' dear little wife ; ' for lately in company when throwing
dice for us youths, I fell to her. She had to beat a throw of
seventeen ; had given up hope ; and lo ! she throws all sixes!"3
The ice was exceedingly good at the beginning of February
1773 ; he tells Kestner how the sun of the 4th rose and set
while he still skated. " And yet other matters of rejoicing
which I cannot speak of," he goes on. " On this make your
mind easy — that I am almost as^happy as people who love as
you do ; that there is as much hope in me as in lovers ; that
I even of late have felt some poems ; and what else accords
with all this. My sister greets you; they greet you, my
maidens ; they greet you, my gods — specially fair Paris here
on the right, golden Venus there, and the messenger Mer
curius " (the reference is to a picture), " who delights in the
fleet-footed, and yesterday bound beneath my feet his ' divine
sandals — the fair golden sandals that bear him over the barren
sea and the infinite earth with the wind's breath ' " (after
Homer). "And so the good beings in heaven bless you."4
The bright winter morning, and a letter from Merck announc
ing his coming early next day, had made Goethe thus high-
spirited. To this period, probably, belongs that bold and right
marking out of the true poet's power over language, the lines
beginning, " Was reich und arm ! was stark und schwach ! "
also the fable Adler und Taube, which expresses feelingly the
1 Lotte was bora January 13, 1753. See p. 146. Thus Goethe was
mistaken, according to Herr Duntzer. (I just note, however, that Herbst
in his lately published Goethe in Wetzlar (p. 1 04) makes Lotte's birthday
fall on January 1 1 . ) — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, i. 343. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner [nth Feb. 1773]. Der junge Goethe, ii. 349-5°-
— Tr-
4 Goethe to Kestner [5th February 1773]. Der junge Goethe, 1.
347-S-— TR.

1 66 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. iii.
thought : No inactive calm can bring content to a powerful
spirit1 Merck stopped from the 6th until the nth (February
1773). During this time roguish doggerel verses to Herder
were concocted ; the printing of the Zwo biblische Fragen was
decided on (they dated it " M. den 6. Februar 1773 "); and
the poem Der Wanderer was given to Merck, who would send
it to Boie, the publisher of the Gottingen Musenalmanach.
Influenced by Merck, he made up his mind to let Mahomet
stand by, and to remodel Gotz; then Merck would have it
printed and published — Goethe should only bear the cost of
the paper.2Steadily now did he labour at Gotz in his " watch-tower "
( Warte),3 almost altogether shutting himself up from society,
though it was Shrovetide. The re-shaping of Gotz was a
weighty task ; for entire new scenes had to be inlaid : the fifth
act especially had to be in large part re-written. The young
poet had sufficient self-mastery to omit many powerful scenes,
which had spoiled the unity of the whole. During all this
period he only once suffered himself to be much agitated —
the cause Kestner's writing that he was soon to leave Wetzlar.4
The remodelled play, in which judgment and vivid imaginative
power were equally displayed, was ready for the printer in the
beginning of March (1773).
The intercourse with Salzmann, too, was again resumed.
This good friend had sent his essay on Revenge — part of his
moralisch - philosophische Abhandlungen — to Goethe. The
Goethes, father and son, were much pleased with it Before
this, Salzmann had sent to him adaptations from Plautus " by
a friend," who wished to have them printed. The adapter was
Lenz, he had asked Salzmann to keep his name secret. Goethe
had commented on these adaptations ; the writer had declared
his agreement with the critic ; and, accordingly, in a letter to
Salzmann on the 6th of March (1773), Goethe gives further
1 Der junge Goethe, ii. 16-18. — Tr.
2 On the inaccuracy of the Dichtung und Wahrheit account of Gotz, see
Duntzer in the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1880. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner [22d February 1773]. " Alles tanzt um mich
herum . . . und ich sitze auf meiner Warte." Der junge Goethe, i. 35°-
— Tr.
4 Goethe to Kestner [25th February 1773]. Der junge Goethe, i.
350-1.— Tr.

sept. 1772-APRiL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 167
counsel on adaptation.1 Immediately after this, Lenz, who
(with good reason !) had long held back from Goethe, acknow
ledged the authorship and communicated direct with his friqnd.
Anticipation of Lotte's marriage kept Goethe in uneasy
tension of mind. Fearing that Kestner would tell him nothing
of it until all was over, he commenced to correspond with
Hans Buff, Lotte's brother, a schoolboy of sixteen.2 From
Hans he learned that Kestner had ordered the marriage ring
in Frankfurt ; immediately he himself took up the matter, and
as the rings submitted did not please him, he caused new ones
to be made.3 His extreme perturbation is evidenced by a
letter to Johanna Fahlmer. This lady, the rather young aunt
by marriage of the Jacobis, — she was but five years older than
Goethe, — had come in June 1772 to Frankfurt, in the com
pany of her mother (the daughter of a Frankfurt pastor), and
of Galeriedirektor Mannlich. Merck paid her a visit here in
August, and Goethe soon after his return from Wetzlar in
September (1772) made her acquaintance. But it is only
now that he seems to have become intimate with the lady,
whom J. G. Jacobi has sung under the name " Adelaide," and
whom Frau von Laroche held in high esteem. He began to
give her lessons in English : he used Goldsmith's Vicar as a
text ; but one morning, instead of going to her, he sends the
Vicar and a dictionary that she may work by herself; for he
finds himself in a "state of perturbation." And unmixed
though it be with anything of vexation or anxiety, yet she
would, for some days to come, have a negligent instructor.4
About the same time came the very unwelcome news that
Merck had decided to go with the Landgrdfin and the three
princesses to Berlin in the beginning of May (1773); was he
now to lose for such a long time this truest of friends — to lose
the hoped-for summer visit to Switzerland in his companion
ship. !
The news that Lotte's marriage had taken place on Palm
Sunday the 4th of April (1773), came as a surprise. With
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 351-4- — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner, enclosing a letter to Hans Buff [1 5th March 1 773].
Der junge Goethe, i. 354"356- — Tr-
3 Goethe to Kestner [end of March 1773?]- Der junge Goethe, 1. 357.
 TR# * Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [March I773J- Der junge Goethe, i.
356.-TR.

168 , THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iii.
deep emotion he writes to Kestner : — " I wander in deserts
where no water is, my hair is my shadow from the sun and my
blood is my well-spring of water. And yet your ship, safe, first
arrived in port, with coloured streamers, and rejoicing cries,
makes me glad too. I am not going to Switzerland. And
beneath or above God's sky, I am ever your friend and Lotte's."1
But at Easter he had a good day, so good that " Labour, and
Pleasure, and Endeavour, and Enjoyment all flowed in one."
In the " fair and solemn evening of stars," he thought sadly of
that last strange talk on the eve of his departure from Wetzlar.
Then follows an outbreak of the fretful humour born of his
loneliness. 2
But as his moods varied with extreme rapidity, he about
this time 8 concocted a comical Jahrmarkt, in which Leuchsen
ring figured, probably as a pedlar with letters and ribbons,
which he offers for sale to all persons of sentiment. Jacobi's
true-hearted half-sister, Charlotte, returned from a Hannover
boarding-school to the house of her aunt Fahlmer — whom
Goethe henceforward always called " Tante " or " Tantchen,"
as they called her in the family. To these two ladies, Goethe
sent a poem on the "high, holy" Easter morning; in this
poem he pours forth the feelings inspired by the beautiful
spring weather, when at his window early in the morning he
" heard the voices of the birds, and saw the almond-tree
blossom, and all the hedges green beneath the glorious
heaven."4 To this period we must ascribe probably single
songs of the Mahomet, one of which5 he at the end of the
month sent, with two other poems, through Kestner to Boie.
Though all his contributions appeared without his name, yet
his first appearance in the lyric ranks was thus through the
medium of the Musenalmanach.
On the 13th of April Anna Sophie Brandt, a girl of twenty,
who was one of Lotte's friends, came to the Frankfurt Fair.
She brought to Goethe Lotte's carefully kept bridal bouquet,
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 359. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner [nth April 1773]. Der junge Goethe, i. 361-2.
— Tr.
3 In the beginning of April 1773 Caroline Flachsland tells Herder
that "Junker Berlichingen " has lately sent a Jahrmarkt in verse to
Darmstadt. — Tr.
4 Der junge Goethe, i. 360. — Tr.
5 See page 164, note 2. — Tr.

sept. 1772-APRIL 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 169
and he placed it in his coat. Glad as he was to hear from
Anna Brandt the details of the wedding, an intense agitation
was roused by the vivid realising that Lotte was irreclaimably
gone to another.1 Frankfurt became unendurable : he hurried
(April 15) to Darmstadt on foot to see Merck once more
before the Berlin journey, and to be present at Herder's
marriage, though Herder was on very strained .terms with
Merck and Goethe. Caroline thought the young poet reserved,
but she was prejudiced in his disfavour through Herder.
A great shock during this stay was the death of Urania, to
whose death-bed Lila had hastened from Homburg. " Early
this morning she was buried," he writes to Kestner on the 21st
April, " and I am ever by her grave, and linger there to give
up my breath and warmth of life, and to be a voice from the
stone to the passer-by. But alas ! it is forbidden to me to
put up a tablet to her memory, and I am vexed that I may
not defy the gossips and tattlers."2 A rumour that Urania
was in love with him seems to have been current; it was
probably not unfounded, though Goethe himself had not
guessed the fact. " My poor existence has stiffened into
barren rock," he goes on. " This summer all depart. Merck
with the Court to Berlin ; his wife to Switzerland ; my sister ;
Caroline Flachsland ; you ; everybody. And I am alone. If
I do not take a wife or hang myself, then say that I am right
fond of life, or invent something even more to my honour."
On the 28th of April he breaks out shrill : — "God forgive it
to the gods, who play with us so." Yet he will forget all his
pain. And let Kestner forget everything in Lotte's arms,
work his daily work, enjoy the sun, and in hours of rest re
member how Goethe loves him.3 He had a sorrowful parting
with Merck, whom he saw depart with the Landgrdfin and the
three princesses. The youngest of these princesses Goethe
was destined to greet as his sovereign during more than half a
century.4 After her death he said that since he had seen her
long ago, a light slender girl, step into the carriage on the
Frankfurt Zeil, he had been faithfully devoted to her. Even
1 Goethe to Kestner [14th April 1773]. Der junge Goethe, i. 362-5.
— Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, i. 366. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner, Darmstadt, Sunday [28th April i773]._Tr.
1 The Duchess Luise of Saxe-Weimar died in February 1830. — Tr.

17° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iii.
worse than to part from Merck was to meet Herder, who was
and remained hostile. Through Leuchsenring's kind offices,
Herder, then in great anxiety about his call to Gottingen, had
become incensed against Goethe, who, however, was present
at the wedding (May 2), next day returning to Frankfurt, where
he awaited the coming of Herder and his young wife. Of this
visit we have no details. But Goethe's letter to Sophie Laroche,
1 2th May 1773, proves the grief felt at his friend's estrange
ment : — " I am alone, alone, and grow daily more so. And
yet I would endure it — that souls which are made for one
another meet so seldom, and are generally apart ; but that they
should misunderstand one another most in the moments of
most auspicious union ! that is a dreary enigma."1 For a
year and a half all intercourse with Herder ceased.
Before Kestner left Wetzlar, Goethe's grief for Lotte was
somewhat assuaged, but Kestner thought it needful to spare
him still, and the newly married people did not come to
Frankfurt. Before their departure Goethe wrote composedly :
— " May all good spirits bless your journey. I am occupied
enough and am content. My solitude well agrees with me.
So long as this endures ! Adieu ! dear Lotte, now for once
in right earnest, Adieu !"2
1 Not in Der junge Goethe. See Loeper, pp. 13-14. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner (May 1773). Der junge Goethe, i. 369.— Tr.

CHAPTER IV.
the publication of gotz — the beginning of famf,.
May-December 1773.
After his return from Darmstadt (3d of May 1773) he took
up anew his long discontinued legal activity. By the 7 th of
May we find him drawing up a statement in a case in which
he had been employed before ; between the 2 6th and the close
of the year we find him engaged on several cases, transferred
to him from his brother-in-law to be, who had gone to Karls
ruhe; But he got other clients too, so that at some periods,
in August and September particularly, his hands were pretty
full. He wished to please his father, who had always left him
so free, and who, even now, permitted him to regard his pro
fession as of subordinate importance. The wise and loving
mediation of his mother, with Fraulein Klettenberg for ally,
had hitherto availed to prevent an incurable division. Father
and son now made mutual concessions. The former, perceiv
ing how distasteful practice was to Wolfgang, would be content
if only it might not be altogether given up. He had had fine
plans about his son's Frankfurt life. But he had, by degrees,
grown familiar with the possibility that Wolfgang, instead of
settling down in the handsome parental house with a respect
able official position, would, at least for a time, find away from
home pleasures and labours more correspondent to his genius.
The fame which Wolfgang soon won as a poet made his
father patient towards many an irregularity, and the Frau
Rath was, as has been said, a wise and loving mediator.
Wolfgang's legal activity continued during 1774 and 1775
also, until the time came to leave Frankfurt for good.
When at last, on the 16th of June (1773), he can send to

172 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. iv.
the happy married couple in Hannover the first copy of Gotz,
we hear that he is dreaming and dawdling (gangeln) through life,
conducting detestable law-suits, vrntiagdramata, novels, and such
like, sketching and smudging, and driving
things on as well as he can. " The people
say that the curse of Cain is on me. But
I have slain no brother. And I think the
people are fools."1 Among the plans that
then hovered in his brain was that oi Faust.
On the 14th he had outlined his silhouette
for Lotte, on the back he wrote : — " Good
night, Lotte ! " With it he intended to for
ward the verses which we give in facsimile.2
Fig. 16. Silhouette sent A month later he writes to Kestner: — "I
by Goethe to Lotte. am r-,„-i,t diligent, and if Fortune is good you
From A. Kestner's ... ° . , . , . \
Goethe ujid Werther. will soon receive something else m another
manner. I wish Lotte were not indifferent to
my drama. I have already garlands of praise of many kinds
woven of all manner of leaf and flower — even Italian flowers;
garlands which, each in turn, I have tried on, and laughed at
my face in the glass. The gods have sent me a sculptor, and
if, as we hope, he can find work here, I will forget a great
deal. Sacred Muses reach me the aurum potabile, elixir vita
of your goblets ! I languish. What pain it is to dig wells and
build a cottage in waste places. And my popinjays, which
I have reared" (he means his thoughts and feelings), "which
chat to me, they too, like myself, sicken and hang their heavy
wings. This day last year it was very different ; I would take
my oath I sat with Lotte this day last year. I am working up
my situation in a play (Schauspiel) for the defiance of God and
of man. I know what Lotte will say when she sees it, and I
know what my reply will be."3 Thus all other plans were
subordinate to the dramatic presentation of his unhappy love;
as was his way he would free himself from his pain by dealing
with it as a material for a work of art.
He sent copies of Gotz in all directions, to revive the
1 Goethe to Kestner [16th June 1773]. Der junge Goethe, i. 372-3-—
Tr. --?
2 Reprinted Der junge Goethe, i. 381. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner in Hannover [July, 19th 1773]. Der junge Goethe,
>¦ 375-6-

174 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iv-.
memory of him in his friends ; to Hermann in Leipzig ; prob
ably to Krebel there too ; to Gotter in Gotha, who may bring
out an adaptation of it on the private stage of which he is
manager ; to Salzmann and Lenz in Strassburg ; to the French
Lieutenant Demars in Neubreisach (Neuf-Brisac). To the
last-named he writes that the play must make its fortune
among soldiers ; how it will get on among Frenchmen he is
doubtful.1 To the great names in literature he did not turn;
not to Lessing, whom he always held so high ; nor to Wieland,
who had been constantly going down in his esteem ; nor to
Nicolai of Berlin, the lover of strife. Nor do we hear of a
copy being sent to Herder ; who yet thought so much of Gotz
that he wrote to Nicolai he knew not " any Marionette of
modern manufacture as such that he would exchange for it."
Goethe had also been found willing to write for the Frank
furter gelehrte Anzeigen again. Of the articles now in Goethe's
works four were printed in the interval between April 9th and
May 7^(1773); only the earlier part of the last of these articles
— that on Lavater's Predigten iiber das Buch Jonas2 was written
by Goethe. On the 15 th of May he writes again after such 'a
long silence to Assessor Hermann in Leipzig, to beg his
counsel or aid in the matter of a fine incurred by the pub
lisher.3 On July 20th appeared Goethe's notice of the Lieder
Sineds des Bar den, on August 17 th that of Herr Holland's
philosophische Anmerkungen iiber das System der Nairn;*
And here he ceased for the present to occupy himself with
criticism. At the beginning of August (1773) he had the happiness
of a week of Sophie von Laroche's company. " She has given
us eight happy days," he tells Kestner. " It is a delight to live
with such beings. Oh, Kestner, how well it is with me ! if I
have not their actual presence, yet they stand ever before
me, my dear ones all. My circle of noble men and women is
the most precious thing that I have won for myself."5 Soon
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 374. — Tr.
2 Sermons on the Book of Jonah. Der junge Goethe, ii. 495-8.— Tr.
3 Of the Frankfurter Anzeigen ; Goethe to Assessor Hermann, 15th
May 1773. Der junge Goethe, i. 370-1. — Tr. .
4 Herr Holland's Philosophical Remarks on the Systime de la nature.
Der jmige Goethe, ii. 498 and 503. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Kestner [between 15th and 21st August 1773? — Tram-] .
Der junge Goethe, i. 377-8. — Tr.

may-dec 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 175
after came the bright young Helena Elizabeth Jacobi to fetch
Charlotte away from Johanna Fahlmer. Helena had been
for nine years the wife of Kammerrath Friedrich Jacobi, in
Diisseldorf. To Kestner Goethe (September 15) calls her "a
right dear worthy lady," whom he has "been able to live on
right good terms with ; " yet he has avoided all allusion to the
Jacobi brothers, has acted as though she had nor husband nor
brother-in-law; for he does not desire their friendship, despising
them so. Let them compel his esteem ; as they at present
compel his contempt, then he will and must love them.1
" Short as was the time I saw you," he wrote to this new friend,
even before her departure,2 " there hovers constantly about me
still a so thoroughly delightful impression of your presence,
and that you like me, even a little bit." Lotte Jacobi too he
had found very attractive. Their aunt went with the sisters,
and stayed some time at Diisseldorf.
In the company of his Frankfurt friends of both sexes he
found the summer of 1773 pass away with plenty of variety ;
though at the end of June he complains3 that he is painfully
holding together the dreary remnants of their delightful com
pany ; and wishes for kind winter's return, to make the water
solid, and hunt the maidens indoors again. Friend Crespel,
Horn — who in the spring had obtained a civic appointment —
and Riese doubtless contributed largely to the pleasures of
the time. Alas, there was a lack of friends of another stamp ;
Merck far away, there were none to sympathise with his
zealous efforts in art, to help him on by penetrating criticism
of his literary work, and by like aspiration.
Gotz von Berlichingen, that glorious reflection of the Ger
man spirit, the first German drama which could take a place
beside the first German comedy, Lessing's Minna, had mean
while been everywhere received with the greatest acclamation.
The sale of copies, however, which had fallen on its unnamed
young author's shoulders since Merck's departure, was giving
1 Goethe to Kestner, September 15, 1773. Der junge Goethe, i. 380.
(foot).— Tr.
2 See the letter (dated— erroneously, Herr Duntzer believes— [October
r773]) = t° Helene Elizabeth Jacobi, in Diisseldorf. Der junge Goethe, i.
390. The three ladies had gone when Goethe wrote that letter to Kestner,
September 15. — Tr.
3 In his letter to Demars, already quoted. Der junge Goethe, i. 374.
— Tr.

176 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. iv.
him a great deal of trouble. Praise did not dazzle him ; Gotz
he thought of as a mere trial piece of his genius, which must
pursue the ever-lengthening path of its development. Instead
of ransacking further the Middle Age Knightdom, to make it
live again in a drama like Gotz, he obeyed the impulse to
another literary form, to the moulding of material supplied by
his own experience. " Now I am at a novel, but it is slow
work," he writes on the 1 5th of September to Kestner. " And
a drama for the boards, in order that the fellows may see that,
if I please, I can observe rules, and portray morality and
sentimentality."1 The novel was to set forth his own position '
as a lover while at Wetzlar, which he had at first thought to
give a dramatic form to.2 What drama in accordance with
ordinary stage requirement he has in mind we do not know.
" Just a word in confidence as an author," he adds. " My
Ideals grow daily in beauty and greatness ; and, if my vigour
leaves me not and my love, there shall yet be much account
made of my loves, and the public, too, shall yield its sympathy."
After this one can understand what he had already said in the
same letter : — " I completely humour my father now; he tries
to enmesh me more every day in the civic affairs, and I let
be. While my strength is still mine, one tear ! and all seven
fold hempen cords are in twain." (Ein Riss I und all die
siebenfachen Bastseile sind entzwey.) Only while his genius
suffers it will he continue at the lawyer-work he dislikes so
much. He adds : — " I am much more easy- tempered, and
see that everywhere you can find the human, everywhere large
ness and pettiness, the beautiful and the hateful. And then
I am working away stoutly, and hope to push on in all sorts of
ways this winter." (Und denke den Winter allerlei zu fordern):
To the beginning of October (1773) falls the powerful poem ;
Prometheus, in which the Greek fable receives this turning:
that through the impulsion of his own genius the artist does
his great things.
What specially weighed on him at this period was the
threatening loss of his sister ; he writes to Kestner — " I lose
1 "Jetzt arbeit' ich einen Roman, es geht aber langsam. Und ein
Drama furs Auffuhren damit die Kerls sehen, dass nur an mir liegt, Regeto
zubeobachten und Sittlichkeit, Empfindsamkeit darzustellen. " Der junge
Goethe, i. 381. — Tr.
2 See the letter to Kestner of July 19, 1773, already quoted. — Tr.

may-dec 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 177
much in losing her, she understands and bears with my
humours."1 Then there was anxiety about her future, for
when Schlosser went to Karlsruhe the fixed appointment which
had been promised was not at once given to him : he was kept
in suspense. Of his own worldly advancement Goethe thought
least ; it was opposite to his disposition to hunt after connec
tions with powerful persons ; he sought only the intimacy of
really significant men, whose intellects and hearts could give
him the aid he desired, but he sought it only as he felt that
he was welcome. And it was a great joy to him that many
came to see him as they passed through Frankfurt : he always
counted it a special merit of his native city that through it
ran the best route of so many travellers.
Of his old Strassburg friends one that had again drawn
near to him was Lenz. Goethe had discussed with him the
adaptations from Plautus, and had introduced them to a
Leipzig publisher. (About his own writings he has as yet
treated with no publisher, he had not even applied to the
bd^sellers of his acquaintance. Now, after the success of
Gotz, came an offer from the Weygand firm, which he used, in
the first instance, on his friend's behalf.) When the copy of
Gotz came to Lenz, he sent to Goethe an essay On Our
Marriage (Ueber unsere Ehe), in which, after comparing the
genius of himself and of his friend with pretty and humorous
turnings, he urges that there should be the most intimate union
between them. The printing of the comedies from Plautus
had begun when Goethe wrote as follows to Salzmann : — " You
have not this long time heard anything of me from myself,
probably, however, all sorts of news of me from Lenz and some
of our friends. I push on continually with my task, for the
Plautine comedies begin to make their appearance. But won't
Lenz write to me? I have something for him on my heart."
Then he requests Salzmann to send a copy of Gotz to Sessenheim
addressed " An Msll. Brion ;" it will be some comfort to poor
Friederike that the faithless lover is poisoned.2 Salzmann
and Friederike were on friendly terms. Another connection
was that which Goethe now formed with the mystic-pious
1 In the letter of September 15, 1773, so often quoted already. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Salzmann [October or November 1773: — " Meine
Schwester heurathet nach Carlsruh." — Trans.] Der junge Goethe, i. 385.
— Tr.

178 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iv.
Lavater. Lavater knew by May (1773) that Goethe had written
the notice (see p. 160) of Aussichten in die Ewigkeit, and that
he was thinking of a journey to Switzerland. In Physiognomy
they were soon to find a special bond of union.
About the 10th of October (1773), Schonborn, the ex-
secretary of Count Bernstorff, the secretary at present of the
Danish Consulate in Algiers, came to Frankfurt on his way
to the scene of his new activity. Schonborn was a native of
Schleswig. He was twelve years Goethe's senior, and was on
friendly terms with Klopstock, Gerstenberg, and Claudius.
He had a letter for Goethe from Boie, whom he had just
learned to know in Gottingen. At the Frankfurt inn he met,
by chance, in the evening, Professor Hopfner, who was expect
ing Goethe. Thus was the acquaintance immediately made.
" We spend every day together," writes Schonborn on the 1 2th
to Gerstenberg. "His bearing is serious and melancholy,
through which yet often breaks sudden shimmer of comic,
laughing, satiric humour. He is very eloquent, and overflows
with ideas which are very witty. Indeed he possesses, so^far
as I know him, an exceedingly intuitive poetic power, which
feels its way through and through to the centre of objects, so
that in his intellect everything becomes local and individual.
Everything with him is metamorphosed into the dramatic.
He seems to work with extreme facility ; now he is working at
a drama called Prometheus, of which he has read to me two acts,
in which there are thoroughly noble passages springing from
the depths of Nature." (Gerstenberg thought from this that
the drama was not yet finished.) " He draws and paints well.
His room is full of beautiful casts of the best antiques. His
desire is to go to Italy to have a good look round at all the
works of art." Goethe also read to Schonborn the farces on
Wieland and the Jacobis, these, however, he would not print.
There was no talk of Faust, which as yet only hovered before
him. Schonborn met the friendliest reception in the Goethes'
house. He encouraged Goethe to enclose a few lines, dated
October 18, to Gerstenberg, and to send to Claudius some
little contributions for the Wandsbecker Bote.
At last, in October 1773, Schlosser was able to return as
Court and Government Councillor (Hof- und Regierungs-
rath) to the Markgraf of Baden. On the 13 th the formal
betrothal was celebrated. "You know what I had in my

may-dec 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 179
sister," writes Goethe to Tante Fahlmer in Diisseldorf. " Yet
what matters it ? an honest fellow must learn to bear every
thing." He also confides to her that he is working at many
things, but has nothing completed. So the work which was
to present the circumstances of his Wetzlar love had not
been getting on very well. But " A beautiful new plan has
developed in my soul for a great drama;" he will only first see
whether he can learn anything from the praise or blame awarded
to Gotz.1 The "new plan" was probably the now resumed
subject, Julius Ccesar, of which he had spoken to Schonborn.
But he found himself unable to dispose the mighty material.
Not so with a merry dialogue to pay off Wieland. Der
Deutsche Merkur had been founded at the beginning of the
year by Wieland and the Jacobis, to Goethe's mind only as
an unworthy money speculation. Goethe had, from time to
time, been much irritated by its articles, and was especially
enraged by the editor's letters on Wieland's operetta Alceste,
comparing it with Euripides's tragedy. On a Sunday afternoon
his mood impelled him to write the farce Gotter Helden und
Wieland, which he threw off rapidly with a bottle of Burgundy
beside him,2 and then sent to Lenz.
On the ist of November (1773) his sister was married.
There was no lack of bridal poems and festal addresses ; but
not from Wolfgang : he could not play the smiling congratulator
on an occasion so fraught with sad consequence to him
self; he was too deeply grieved. His correspondence with
Diisseldorf had meanwhile gone on briskly. He had expressed
his hearty sympathy in the birth of a little daughter to Betti.3
She thanks him with earnest friendship as soon as her health
allows ; but could not suppress the wish that her friend might
no longer stand in such opposition to her husband and her
brother-in-law. " I would fain not write to you, best lady, in
my present humour, and yet would fain say to you what
pleasure your letter has given me. I felt with intense vividness
your voice, your being about me ; and you must feel how dear
to me your presence is. Already have I stood an hour and
1 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer in Diisseldorf, October 18, 1773. Der
junge Goethe, i. 386-7. — Tr.
2 See the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1881, p. 381 (top).— Tr.
3 Goethe to Helene Elizabeth Jacobi in Diisseldorf, 3d November
1773. Der junge Goethe, i. 392. — Tr.

180 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iv. i
mirrored myself in your letter, and am at your bed-side, and
 but good-night, best lady. When I cannot speak with
you from the heart, better silence. " 1 It was impossible to
say to her that he must, notwithstanding so dear a mediator,
decline all connection with the Jacobis, because of what he
knew of them, and because of the way in which they had
spoken of him. His heart had not yet interceded for these
two men, though the women, his dear friends, might cherish
the firm conviction that they must and would love each other.
Thus this attempt to bring together Goethe and the Jacobis
was as unsuccessful as that of Johanna Fahlmer to bring
together Goethe and Wieland.
The departure of his sister on the 14th of November made
a great rift in Goethe's life. But then pleasant letters from
the dear ones thus removed, and the correspondence with Betti
and Tante, did much to cheer him. Still, as ever, drawing
and poetry filled up his best hours. Besides, he was working
at Erwin und Elmire — a comedy with songs, the subject of
which he borrowed from a ballad in Goldsmith's Vicar —
Edwin and Angelina ; he had almost finished the little piece,
and was in treaty with the players about it. As he himself
observes, it was manufactured without any great expense of
feeling or intellect for the horizon of the Frankfurt players and
stages, and yet they could not act it2 The silk-manufacturer,
Johann Andrd of Offenbach had undertaken to set the songs
to music ; his own operetta Der Tdpfer had been produced
with great applause in Frankfurt He was eight years older
than Goethe, who had grown intimate with him. Indeed,
Andr^ having ventured to publish his operetta in score, Goethe,
through Tante Fahlmer, had made a vain endeavour to get a
kindly notice from Wieland's Merkur of the modest little work8
Beside this comedy Erwin und Elmire, Goethe was brooding
on " some more important pieces," which " he was laying
down in their ground work," and " studying over." 4 Julius
Casar he found impracticable; the following in a letter to
1 Goethe to Helene Jacobi, November 7, 1773. Der junge Goeth,
i. 393. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kestner [end of 1773? Merck is back — Trans.] Der
junge Goethe, i. 383 (top of page). — Tr.
3 InaletterdespatchedOctober3i, 1773. DerjungeGoethe,i.^Sg. — Te.
* See the letter to Kestner last referred to. Der junge Goethe, i. 3 83. — Tr.

may-dec 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 181
Boie refers to this subject : — "The sacrifice is prepared; now
only flame and wind-gust is lacking ; but that depends on the
gods." To lyrical poetry he just now felt no impulse ; only a
few epigrams came unsought.
Still was the resolve to follow the voice of his genius, not
to spend himself in practical life, firm as ever. Kestner hav
ing expressed a hope that he will perhaps yet come to live near
them, he replies on Christmas morning, 1773 : — "Ah! that
has been my dream ever since you went away. But it will
probably remain a dream.' My father would indeed not
oppose it were I going into foreign service ; nor does either
love or hope of a civic appointment keep me here ; " (he could
not be a member of the Council so long as his uncle Textor
was one) " and so might I not, think you, venture to try once
more how things look out in the world. But, Kestner, the
talents and powers which I have I need far too much for my
own purposes ; it has been always my way to act only as my
instinct guides, and not thus can any prince be served. And
then how soon should I learn politic subordination ! They
are a cursed set the Frankfurters ; President von Moser will
say, 'You can't use their obstinate heads for any purpose.'
Even were this not so, of all my talents my jurisprudence is
one of the least ; my little stock of theory and human intelli
gence won't make up for that. Here in Frankfurt my legal
practice and knowledge advance hand in hand ; I learn every
day, and scrape my way along (haudere mich weiter). But in
a Justizcollegium ! I have always been careful not to play a
game when I was the least experienced at the table." x
To his extremest joy, Merck at length returned (December
1773) from his St. Petersburg journey. " He came eight days
earlier than I had expected," writes Goethe in the letter quoted
above, " and was sitting with my father in the room ; I come
home ; without knowing anything I enter, and hear his voice
before I see him. You know me, Lotte ! " Merck had come
back the old true friend still. What an infinite deal each had
to confide, and what prospects of enduring harmonious fellow
ship in work opened before them ! On the very first evening
they had a " strange scene." Lavater had sent Goethe a
1 Goethe to Kestner, Christmas Day [1773]. Der junge Goethe, i.
400-401. — Tr.

1 82 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. iv.
silhouette which was very like Lotte.1 The two friends went
on from this to talk of her in ardent passages of praise.
As to the publishing of Gotz, Goethe now took on him to
supply the booksellers ; in fact, to be himself the publisher.2
To compensate Merck, Goethe was probably to pay a part of
the cost of printing ; he had paid for the paper some time
before with borrowed money. The penuriousness of his
father compelled him to borrow small sums several times after
wards. The supply of copies was meantime exhausted, so that
a new edition was needed. Deinet undertook this. A large
honorarium was not in question ; in a starched preface, Deinet
promises a " quite correct edition," a promise which, alas ! he
did not keep. Only some printer's errors are set right ; some
new ones have intruded : the changes by Goethe himself are
but few.
At this time came the pleasurable news that Maximiliane
von Laroche was to marry the merchant Brentano of Frank
furt at the commencement of the new year (1774). "Her
future husband seems to be a man with whom it is possible to
live," Goethe writes in the cheeriest mood to Betti Jacobi;
" and so huzza ! another added to the number of worthy beings
who are anything but intellectual, as you indeed must guess.
For between ourselves, inasmuch as it is on this earth such a
very critical matter with acquaintanceships, and friendships,
and loves, (since often when you think you have it by the four
corners, slap comes the devil and tears a hole in the middle,
and spills it all out. As it has lately happened with myself,
which has put me out very much). And so, to return to my
text, I am far more active than before to seek out where any
thing of love, friendship, and goodness may lie hidden ; and
am in good humour because of all sorts of unexpected qualities
I find, etc. ; so that sometimes I have stood on the verge of
falling in love. But that God prevent ! On any falling-out of
misfortune, however, Mamagen shall be immediately written
to."3 The dreary tangle of jealousy and strife in which this
marriage would involve him he did not foresee. Nor does it
seem to have been forced on his mind what an incongruous
1 Der junge Goethe, i. 383. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Boie, January 8, 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 3. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Helene Elizabeth Jacobi, December 31, 1773. Der junge
Goethe, i. 403-4. Mamagen = Little Mama= Betti Jacobi. — Tr.

may-dec 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 183
couple were — through the matchmaking talent of Dean Dumeix
— to be joined as husband and wife.
The Milanese, Peter Anton Brentano, was a widower —
still young, indeed; but already the father of five children.
If he could, as Goethe once said,1 pinch all his friendliness tight
between his sharp nose and sharp chin, it was yet impossible
that he should satisfy the heart of the maiden of eighteen, who
loved bright cheerfulness and the pleasures of friendly living.
He indeed was in the best circumstances, and intimate with
the families of most consequence ; but a life in the gloomy
house, where you wound your way between casks of herrings,
and piled -up cheeses, and then the constant preoccupation
of her dry husband with business, — surely these things must
soon be an intolerable weariness to the young wife.
1 In a letter to Frau von La Roche, 26th November 1774. Loeper,
p. 85. A portion only of that letter is reprinted in Der junge Goethe, iii.
43, 44.— Tr.

CHAPTER V.
WER THER  LAVATER  JACOBI  GREAT DESIGNS.
THE YEAR 1 7 74.
Very odd must have been the feelings of the young doctor
(for doctor he was in general called, and he spoke of himself
by that title, even on an official occasion) when he went in
his scarlet, gold -lace coat to pay his New Year's visit of the
year of hope 1774 at the house of Brentano's relative, Mayor
Reuss. On the 8th of January he went to supper there ; there
was excellent eating, and a great deal of wine drunk ; he sat
until one o'clock in the morning, " between Houris," and they
" fed each other with spoons." On the 9th, the day on which
Max was married in the castle chapel of Ehrenbreitstein, he
went through the ice ; over this mishap he makes merry in a
letter written later in the day to Tante and Betti, in Diisseldorf.^
At last, on Jan. 15th, the newly-married couple, with.
Mama Sophie, came to Frankfurt. And Goethe was drawn into •
the topsy-turvy, motley, social gaiety which ensued. Merck, ;
who came to see the Laroche in Frankfurt, felt much anger
about this extraordinary marriage. " You should have seen
Frau von La Roche," he writes to his wife, " how she stood the
conversations and the jokes of these vulgar business people,, J
endured their expensive dinners, entertained their heavy selves. >
There have been horrid scenes, and I do not know whether ; j
she will not succumb beneath the load of repentance. Goethe I
is already an intimate family friend, he plays with the children |
and accompanies the young wife's piano-playing with his violon
cello. Herr Brentano, though pretty jealous for an Italian,
loves him, and thoroughly desires that he should continue to
visit the house." But immediately after this the young poet ¦
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 4. — Tr.

the year 1 7 74.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 185
was so grossly insulted by Brentano that he never crossed that
threshold again. On the other hand he wrote on Jan. 21st
inviting dear Mama to a " great sight." If she can come, she
and Brentano's urchins shall be fetched to-morrow immediately
after dinner by his mother, who will go in the coach for them.
To her surprise that he does not come to the house, he replies
on the same day : — " If you knew what went on within me
before I resolved to shun the house you would not hope to
lure me back, dear Mama ; I have in those terrible moments
suffered for all my time to be ; I am calm, and leave me in
my calm ! ' That I would not see you indoors, what all the
people would say, etc. '—I have made up my mind to the
endurance of all that. And God preserve him [Brentano] from
the only thing which would make me cross his threshold " 1
[cruel treatment of his young wife].
The " great sight " was a pantomimic dance on the ice,
performed in the presence of many ladies at the Rodelheim
meadows, by the Nidda. The ladies drove a good distance from
the town, then alighted and went along beside a wall across
frozen ground ; then followed a little water-course bordered by
willows, and suddenly heard music and exclamation. Imme
diately ten skaters flew across and gave them friendly hands to
help them over the dyke. There were little benches and
tables spread with plenty of chocolate, coffee, wine, and eat
ables ; there were planks on the ice to prevent the sitters' feet
from getting very cold, and there was lively music. All the
'skaters were in short fur cloaks, and wore cowled caps.2 At
this time, as on earlier occasions, Sophie gave the young'poet
some of her Briefe Rosaliens to look through for her; his
praise of them pleased her, and she profited by his critical re
marks ; he added some things which she had told him while
driving together, but which she had omitted from the Briefe.
Herr von Laroche came for his wife. Goethe welcomed the
influential husband of his motherly friend ; but not in Brentano's
house, which he never entered again. On the last day of
January (1774) the two left for Thalehrenbreitstein.
1 See Loeper, pp. 25, 29, for these letters. — Tr.
2 From Rosaliens Briefe, ii. No. 77, quoted in Loeper, p. 26. It was
on this occasion that the incident of borrowing his mother's cloak to skate
in occurred. See Dichtung und Wahrheit, xvi. Buch, at the close of the
section beginning : — " Gluckliche Kinder und Jiinglinge." — Tr.

1 86 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. v.
In the period of calm thus ushered in the misfortune of
the young wife, who might have made life so sweet to him,
pressed on his mind in all its dreadfulness, and impelled
him to the composition of Werther. He set to work on the
ist of February (1774), the very day after the departure of
the Laroches. In the first part of Werther he moulded into
vivid realisation ( Vergegenwdrtigung) and artistic form his own
Wetzlar love ; in the second he allowed his imagination free
play with the incidents of the story of poor Jerusalem. He
shut himself as far as possible from external intercourse, that
he might rapidly bring to completeness the poem that had
so long been growing in his mind. The young wife he only
met at a third place, — Dumeix's house generally. " Goethe
will not go to Switzerland," writes Merck gloomily to his wife
on February 14 (1774). " The great success of his drama has
turned his head a little. He is shut up from all his friends,
and only exists in the writings which he is preparing for the
public. He must have success in all he undertakes, and I
foresee that a novel which is to appear at Easter will be as well
received as his drama has been. Besides, he has to console
the young Frau Brentano for the smell of the oil and of cheese,
and the behaviour of her husband." Goethe had neither con
fided to • Merck exacter information about Werther, nor told
him of Brentano's base insult. In writing to Diisseldorf, too,
he gives no hint of the latter, rather he describes Brentano as
a worthy man of open, frank, strong character, keenness of
understanding, and excellent business acquirement1 To the
young unhappy wife he confided that he was writing a novel
with Jerusalem's fate as a basis. As he writes to Mama Sophie,
returning two Briefe Rosaliens, with criticisms on the better
disposal and connection of parts, he observes that after her
departure (in June 1774, he tells her the next day after) he
began the novel; that he had not before planned to make
a single whole out of the subject.2 Writing on the 13th of
1 Goethe to Helene Elizabeth Jacobi [February 8th or 9th? — Trans.
(Three weeks and a half from the \c,th of January 1774)]. Der junge
Goethe, iii. 5, 6. — Tr.
2 Letter not in Der junge Goethe. See Loeper, p. 35 : — "Das liebe
Weibgen hat Ihnen was von einer Arbeit geschrieben die ich angefangefi
habe seit Sie weg sind, wirklich angefangen — denn ich hatte nie die Idee
aus dem Sujet ein einzelnes Ganze zu machen." See also Loeper, p. 42>
"als Sie weg waren den andern Tag." — Tr.

the year I774-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 187
February to the friend most nearly concerned, to Kestner, he
. gives a dark hint of the task he is engaged at1 On the 1 2 th
he had sent to Burger a copy of the second edition of Gotz.
Burger's friend, the Liibeck Secretary of Council Tesdorpf, of
the same age as Goethe, had, when going to Wetzlar, called
on Goethe in Frankfurt, had been his companion on the ice.
"My heart is lost to that beautiful soul," writes Goethe to
Burger. What Tesdorpf had told him of Burger impels him
to break through the " paper wall of partition between them."
" Our voices have often met, and our hearts too," he writes.
" Is not life short and barren enough ? shall they not take
hand whose ways lie together?" He desires that henceforth
they lay their work before each other ; that gives courage.2 In
this period, from which a large number of letters have been
preserved, the first part of Werther was completed. And to
this period probably belongs the story in Dichtung und Wahr
heit? how one evening before going to rest he laid a well-
sharpened dagger by his bed, and tried, while the light was yet
unextinguished, whether he could plunge it into his breast.
Werther was at latest completed by the beginning of March
1774. Immediately he wrote to Lotte that she had been this
whole time of silence more with him than perhaps ever, and
he will have it printed for her as soon as possible.4 But
he did not make up his mind so easily for all that. Lenz
had meanwhile, without the poet's knowledge, had the farce
on Wieland printed at Kehl.5 Goethe sends a copy on the
6th of March (1774) to some Leipzig friend, probably Krebel.
' Gotz, he writes, shall as his trial piece remain unaltered. "If
I ever again write a German drama, which I think very doubt
ful, all true souls may then see how far I am improved. On
the whole, I am very busy, not to say diligent ; keep up my
advocate work, and yet put together many a bit of work of
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 9 : — " How often I am with you, that is in the
past, you will, perhaps, soon receive a document to witness." (March is
guessed at as the date of this letter in Der junge Goethe. In the first lines of
it Goethe remonstrates with Kestner for his tardiness in writing. "Only
to get on the 1 3th of February a reply to a letter -written on Christmas
Day." Probably, therefore, this letter is written on or very soon after the
13th.— Tr.)
2 Goethe to Burger, Feb. 12, 1774. Der junge Goethe, m. 8.— Tr.
3 xjjji Buch.  Tr. 4 Der junge Goethe, iii. 11. — Tr.
6 See the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1881, p. 381. — Tr.

1 88 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
good intelligence and feeling. Just now I have nothing ready
for printing. ... If you see Lessing, tell him that I had
reckoned on him, and I am accustomed not to make mistakes
as to my people."1 He did not guess how extremely ill-dis
posed Lessing was towards him, notwithstanding his genius.
In Werther, the second splendid revelation of his intellect
and soul, Goethe had once for all unburdened himself of his
whole gloomy life-weariness. But precisely at this time young
Frau Brentano excited a passion in him which he earnestly
combated, avoiding all places where he might meet her.
"Your dear ones I have not seen for some time back; I had
my heart spoiled. No, dear Mama, you have my hand on it,
I will be good."2 What strength of self-conquest speaks in
those words !
Drawing was practised now with the greatest zeal, nor did
there lack times of overflowing spirits, composition-impelling.
Then were written the Prolog to Bahrdt's translation of the New
Testament, and a farce on the Jacobis. Hopfner writes on
the 23d of April (1774) to Professor Raspe in Cassel : — "The
last time I stopped with the man in Frankfurt (for you must
know that he is my friend), he read aloud to me an excellent
thing he has begun, Das Ungliick der Jacobis. When finished,
you too shall have it. The two Jacobis are soundly chastised
in it. Would you get me some nice plaster casts of antiques,- \
for Goethe." Some lyrical poems, too, fall to this spring of
1774. About this time the much maligned Spinoza was beginning
to sway the young poet by an extraordinary attraction and in
fluence. His teaching : God Himself cannot change His laws,
His creatures cannot deviate from the laws of their being ; the
primary virtue is to maintain oneself in one's Being ; the dis
tinctions of good from bad are only arbitrary ordinances ; the
philosophers have taken the impress of their conceptions for
the thing itself — all this harmonised with Goethe's temper,
who felt impelled to the freest development of Nature working
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 15, 16 (this letter is there printed with the date
May 6, 1774, which must be a misreading of the MS. for March 6; for
Goethe tells his friend to look out for a certain comedy at the Easter fair;
now Easter Sunday 1774 fell on April 3). — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, March 1774. See Loeper, p. 37.
— Tr.

theyear I774-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 189
in him so mightily. The boundless, illuminating Disinterested
ness of Spinoza's Ethics was accordant with his way of acting
only as nature prompted. We do not know whether he was
first led to Spinoza at this time (it came about through the
hateful execration of the great philosopher by the Lutheran
preacher, Coler), at any rate it was at this time that what he
read himself out of Spinoza worked a great calm in the restless
soul yearning after a higher consolation.
So equipped, he could withstand with confidence all at
tempts to convert him. His pious friend, Fraulein Kletten
berg, did not plague him with anxious cares for his salvation,
for she believed that the Saviour would reveal Himself to her
young friend as the One crucified for his sins, as, eighteen
years ago, He had revealed Himself to her. But his Swiss
friends were more urgent, and most of all the confidential
friend and colleague of Lavater, Pfenninger. When Pfennin-
ger would by proofs convince Goethe of the truth of revela
tion, Goethe answers : — "All which seems opposition between
us is only a strife of words which comes of my perceiving
things in other combination, expressing their relativity after
other fashion, naming them by other names ; " the only evi
dences which he values, loves, ay adores, are those which bring
it home to him how thousands — or one — before him have felt
what now is to him bracing and strength. And so to him the
word of men is the Word of God, let who will have collected
it and enrolled it as a canon. " And with fervent soul I fall
on my brother's neck — Moses ! Prophet ! Evangelist ! Apostle !
Spinoza or Machiavelli ! yet can find it in me too to say to
each : — Dear friend, it is nevertheless with thee as with me !
in the single and particular thou dost feel powerfully and
gloriously, as little into thy head as into mine goes the stu
pendous All."1
Lavater's studies in physiognomy were very interesting to
Goethe, so long in the habit of drawing portraits and outlining
silhouettes. And now had come the bookseller Steiner, bring
ing from Lavater, his brother-in-law, greeting and message for
Goethe. Goethe had once sent to Lavater thirteen silhouettes,
among them one of Herder ; and Lavater had portrait-sketches
by Goethe too in his possession, before Herder directed him
1 Goethe to Lavater and Pfenninger, April 26, 1774, Der junge
Goethe, iii. 1 3- '5- — Tr-

19° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [BK. III. CH. v.
to Goethe as a draughtsman from whom to collect As
draughtsman Goethe is more the man, the painter Fiissli
more the poet. Now Goethe sends a sketch of the profile of
one who has been a pilot, who has endured much in slavery
at Tunis, and who wanders about endeavouring to rouse com
passion. He promises too to send a manuscript, the printing
of which is to wait a while ; it is the history of a dear young
fellow to whose actual afflictions the writer has lent his own
emotions, and thus it makes a strange whole. "I am not
slack," he says at the close, in vivid certainty that he is con
forming to his nature ; " so long as I am on the earth do I
conquer at least my pace of ground a day." 1
While the fame of the writer of Gotz rose ever higher —
the piece was performed in Berlin on April 14 and the five
nights following amid great applause — his Frankfurt life was
very happy. Now sprang up many fresh songs and isolated
Spruchgedichtc. Intercourse with Merck had, for the time, '
almost completely ceased. For the death of the Landgrqfin
on the 2 9th of March 1774 had been a great shock to Merck; .
his appointment as Councillor of War had imposed new work
upon him, and a little later he went to Switzerland to bring
home his family. But new members were added to Goethe's
little band of friends. The most important was Klinger.
When Klinger came back from Giessen he had failed to
obtain the appointment as actuary he had hoped for. Then
he gave himself altogether to poetry, disregarding his in-
comeless condition. The work of Klinger stands forth in sharp '
definite forms, is not sustained by intense energy of moulding'
imagination, or by profundity of soul. But a like impulse
towards freedom, towards the overthrow of conventional
boundaries, imbibed too by Klinger from the same source —
from Rousseau — a like instinct to give this impulse voice in
dramatic form, and, moreover, a serious, noble, self-reliant
way of thinking, united him with Goethe. The Doctor of
Klinger's play Das Leidende Weib represents Goethe. There
it is said of him — " The first of men, so far as I have yet seen
men. The only one with whom I can exist. He carries,
affairs in his bosom. Posterity will wonder that ever such a
man was."
1 Goethe to Lavater and Pfenninger, April 26, 1774, the letter already
referred to above. — Tr.

the year i 7 74.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 191
Beside Klinger we name Philipp Christoph Kayser, born
March 10, 1755, son of the Organist of the Church of Grey
Friars. After having pursued wider and higher culture
under Sorge in Lobenstein for a year, he had returned in 1770
to be a teacher of music in Frankfurt. He was a most inti
mate friend of Klinger. Lavater ascribes to him — "Purity
and stress of deep emotion, with the least affectation." He
was inspired with the greatest enthusiasm for Goethe, imitat
ing him in everything — even in handwriting.
Crespel was again an extremely active member of the circle
which throughout the summer assembled every Friday for little
excursions and picnics. We know from Goethe's narrative,1
how the Mariage-spiel which Crespel introduced, decreed that
the same young lady fell to Goethe several times running, at
whose wish he wrote Clavigo in a week. The maiden, Anna
Sybilla, the younger daughter of the merchant Munch, was
only on the verge of her seventeenth year; last winter her
elder sister, Susanna Magdalena, had won Goethe at dice, and he
had named her "little wife" (Weibchen).2 The day on which
he fulfilled his promise by reading the completed Clavigo
aloud was the Friday before Pentecost, the 2 oth of May 1774.
Though Clavigo cannot rank with Gotz and Werther, yet in
it the poet had done quite unexpectedly what he had long
intended, he had given a proof of his power working within
the traditional contracted form of the drama to touch and
rouse the spirit And however much he borrowed from the
Memoirs of Beaumarchais, on which his play is founded, he had
moulded the matter by his art to vivid effect, and in the
character of one creation quite his own — Carlos — had given
an imperishable masterpiece. The charming relation to the
maiden who was his consort on all their days of pleasure-
taking soon became well-known, and was very welcome to his
parents. For some time, too, he himself seems to have been
anything but averse to the thought of leading the dear maiden
a wife to the great parental house. A weight of anxiety had
been lifted from him when, shortly before the Clavigo episode.
word came that Lotte had been safe delivered of a boy.3
Mama Sophie came to Frankfurt on a three weeks' visit, which
began about the middle of May ; he saw her frequently at his
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xv. Buch.— Tr. 2 See page 165.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Kestner [May 1774J. Der junge Goethe, iii. 16-17.— Tr.

192 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
own home, where, on the sofa which was kept ready for her,
she had him read aloud and talk to her; and he met her, too,
at the houses of common friends, especially at Dumeix's house;
in the dean's fine garden he found much pleasure in sowing,'
and tying, and hoeing, and other garden tasks. Brentano's
house and young wife he avoided still as before.
On the 25th of May 1774 he was delighted to get a long-
letter from friend Schonborn in Algeria. One item in this
letter — that Klopstock was going to ask Goethe for some of his
works through Boie, caused Goethe to communicate immedi
ately direct with the famed poet. " Should I," he wrote, "not
address him while still living, whose grave, if dead, I would
visit as a pilgrim." He sent to Klopstock the farce Das
Ungluck der Jacobis, which was not to be printed, so that he
should be glad to have it back. And so soon as some things
now lying ready are printed, he will either send them to
Klopstock, or let him know of them at least.1
In the night between the 28th and 29th of May Goethe
gave manful assistance in putting out a fire in the Jews'
quarter ; here he grew strengthened in his conviction that the
so-called " common " people are the best human beings.2 On
the 30th of May he was at the golden wedding of the Schweit
zer- Allesinas ; he danced in the 3 1 st, the birthday of Max-
imiliane Brentano, to whom he only gave an arm once for a
few moments.3
On the ist of June Goethe writes to his friend in Algeria
an account of all his latest compositions ; besides he has in
vented some plans for great dramas, i.e. found the interesting
details for them in Nature and in his own heart. His Caesar
seems, too, to be forming, yet this will not please Schonborn* '
[because not treated as the mood of the " Freedom " advocates
would have it]. In an addition to the letter on June 8, Goethe
speaks with great enthusiasm of Herder's Aelteste Urkunde des
Menschengeschlechts, and writing further on the ioth, says
that Klopstock's Gelehrtenrepublik has infused new life into
his veins. In it " the holy wells of creative feeling flow pure
1 Goethe to Klopstock, 28th May 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 20.
— Tr.
2 Goethe to Schonborn, June 1, 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 21. — TR.
* Goethe to Frau von La Roche, beginning of June 1774. Loeper,^.
41. — Tr. * Der junge Goethe, iii. 22.— Tr.

the year I774-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 193
from the throne of Nature." In neither work did Goethe
make a stumblingblock (as many did) of the external form,
but filled himself with the spirit. He had given the first part
of Werther to Mama Sophie to read, and she, intent, as mostly
women are, on moral effect, thought this glowing presentation
of passion dangerous. " I have kissed your letter and pressed
it to my heart," he replies. " They are my own inmost feelings.
Yes, dear Mama, it is true : fire that gives light and warmth
you call a blessing from God ; that which consumes you call
a curse. Blessing then and curse ! Have I indeed greater
obligation to serve you than Nature considered it had to serve
me ? Am I not lighted, am I not warmed, and consumed !
Call me wicked but love me."
s " Un livre croyez moi n'est pas fort dangereux. The good
and the bad rustle by the ears which listen not. And is not
the Bad good and is not the Good bad ? Do I hate Wieland ?
do I love him ? It is in truth all one and the same ; he interests
me."1 When soon after she asked for the second part of the
novel he informed her that he had had to send it in haste to
be printed, nor had he thought her in a position to follow his
emotion, imagination, humours.2 The bookseller Weygand
had called immediately after the Easter Fair to ask whether
he had nothing original to be published ; this he regarded as
an intimation from Destiny to keep back his Werther no longer ;
but first Clavigo should go. Clavigo was the first work to
which he put his name ; he did not intend to put it to
Werther. So soon as the 16th of June he writes to Lotte,
who had sent him greeting through a friend going to the
baths : — "T will send you as soon as possible a friend who is
very like myself, and I hope you will give him a good recep
tion ; his name is Werther, and is and was — but that he may
himself declare to you."3
Lavater had already announced that he was coming soon, to
Goethe's delight And Merck and his family had come back ;
Goethe did not guess in what mood ! The poor husband had
discovered the unfaithfulness of his wife, but had softened to
1 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, June 1774. Loeper, p. 44. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, middle of June 1774. Loeper, pp.
46-7.— Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, iii. 27 (foot). — Tr.
0

194 THE "LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
receive the fallen one back to his home. Moreover since the
death of the Landgrdfin his place had become extremely un
pleasant, through the now complete power of the President
von Moser his enemy. Merck seriously thought of trying to
get an appointment in Berlin through Nicolai's help.
Meanwhile Goethe continued to avoid the unhappy Max
Brentano ; she felt it bitterly. " Believe me," he replied to
her mother, " the sacrifice I make for your Max's sake in see
ing her no more is worth more than the assiduity of the most
ardent lover, in that it is really assiduity. I will not reckon
up .what it has cost me ; for it is a capital which will yield in
terest to both of us."1 And the good Tante Fahlmer in whom
he had such great confidence, now a considerable time back
from Diisseldorf, he avoided in consequence of a report heard
from Mama Sophie. During Frau von Laroche's stay in
Frankfurt she had not visited this lady, whom Jacobi calls
" dear, loving, melancholy " (Hebe, liebevolle, schwermiitkige).
The poet remained in the closest communion with Fraulein
Klettenberg, whose portrait he drew for Lavater. " She will
be more to thee than I," he had written, " though she is as
much to me as to thee ; yet am I ever in my zealous unbelief the
Me! and, as I am, thy Brother."2 Fraulein Klettenberg had
said to Lavater (whose faith did not seem to her the right
faith, of inward experience) that she hoped Goethe too would
yet feel that God was in Christ. "He walks with Lavater
and with Goethe ; I know Him by His gait ; yet are their eyes
holden that they do not know Him."8
On the 23d of June 1774 Lavater accompanied by
Schmoll, his draughtsman of physiognomy, entered the
Goethes' house, heartily welcomed by the family. His ex
terior was repellent ; a flat chest which gave something crane
like to the bearing of the long lank man; a large nose; a
sharp chin; a brow bulging above, rather re-entrant below,
valleyed just over the nose, pushing forward above the eyes ;
a sweetly smiling mouth ; rolling eyes cast upwards ; such is
the catalogue. But all this was of no account before that
irresistible personality. Even Merck acknowledged that few
had made such an edifying impression on him as this extra-
1 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, June 16, 1774. Loeper, p. 50. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Lavater. 20th May 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 19. — TR.
3 Der junge Goethe, iii. 18. — Tr.

the year I774-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 195
ordinarily good man. Lavater himself describes his first
meeting with Goethe — " Are you he ? I am he ! Unspeak
ably sweet indescribable entrance of Reality — very like, and
unlike Expectation. All was mind and truth that Goethe
spoke with me. In a pretty large social gathering said Goethe
once to me : — ' So soon as one is in company, one takes the
key from the heart and pockets it ; those who leave it in the
door are dolts.' Much did he read aloud to me from his
papers, and read — read ! you would have sworn he was speak
ing these very things for the first time in the fire with me.
His work — oh scenes full of truth — of the truest human
nature ! indescribable ndivet'e and truth." Goethe conducted
Lavater to Fraulein Klettenberg. Her clear understanding,
her fineness of feeling, her deep piety and Christianity were
strong to attach Lavater to her. The difference between the
conceptions of Christ formed by these two believers was to
the young poet the more striking because each of them
talked the subject over with him in private. Lavater called
Fraulein Klettenberg the " Sabbath of his journey ;" compared
to her he was himself but " a chatterer, a hypocrite, an abomi
nation." He had much to tell of Goethe's sister, and of Lenz,
both of whom he had lately seen.
In so many quarters was this man of God's presence in
request — by crowds he was almost revered as a saint — that
Goethe was unable to secure the full intercourse he desired.
And so he was impelled to accompany his inestimable new
friend journeying — after a stay of five days in Frankfurt — to
Ems in a special carriage. Such an intimacy-fostering mode
of travel Lavater loved. During the two days' drive with
Lavater and Schmoll Goethe could freely utter all his heart.
Lavater himself tells us: — "On the weightiest matters of
Christianity and literature they talked and laid hold on one
another (saisirten einander). Goethe read and recited a great
deal from his own poems ; the thing recited and the recitation
— Drama, Epopoe, and Doggerel all bore but one stamp,
breathed but one spirit." They thoroughly discussed the con
templated work on physiognomy, in which Goethe was to take
active interest. When the young poet was at times carried
away by his careless reckless humour Lavater could bring
him to order without difficulty with a kindly " Bisch guet 1 "
After their seven days' companionship (June 23-29, 1774)

196 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
Goethe pronounced thus : — "When in his element he is un
wearied, active, efficient, decided ; and a soul filled with the
most glorious love and innocence. I have never held him a
visionary, and he has yet less imaginative power than I sup
posed. But because his feelings imprint on his soul the
truest relations of things in nature — relations so generally un
recognised — and accordingly he flings away every terminology,
speaks and acts out of a full heart, and seems to transport
his hearers to a strange world while but leading them to un
familiar corners of their hearts, he cannot escape being called
a visionary." x
Next day, returning to Frankfurt, Goethe brought Erwin
und Elmire almost to a conclusion as he sat in the carriage.
Soon after his return another guest of note came to Frankfurt
— Basedow, now fifty years of age, a disciple of Rousseau
as to educational reform. He had already given to the world
a completely new Orbis Pictus, his Elementarwerk2 in four
volumes, and was very shortly to open the Philanthropinum at
Dessau, of which he made such pompous announcement.
Basedow's Vermdchtniss fur die Gewissen oder Lehrbuch der
Religion, which demands a cultus based on natural religion,
was dedicated to Lavater, who held the author to be an
"honest weak hero." It was said then that Lavater had
invited him to a conference at Goethe's house, at which
Herder too should be present. He was collecting for his
Philanthropinum and for his Elementarwerk, and had just
come from Weimar. Of course the famous reformer visited ,
the famous author of Gotz and friend of Lavater. Intercourse
with Basedow was made uneasy by his whimsical pedantry,
his regardless headlong ways, his hard tone of mind, his rude
ness ; yet a certain good humour never left him, of which
Goethe knew how to take advantage to punish him for his
naughty behaviour. On the 12th of July Basedow arrived in
Ems; Lavater had been prepared for this by Goethe. To
neither Basedow nor Lavater did Goethe confide his own
intention of coming for some time to Ems. On the 15 th of
July he procured that the case in which he was engaged should
1 Goethe to Schonborn, July 4, 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 25. — Tr.
2 Elementarwerk, ein Vorrath der besten Kenntnisse zum Lernen, Leh-
ren, Wiederholen und Nachdenken = Book of Rudiments, a Treasury of the
best knowledge for Learning, Teaching, Repeating and Digesting. — Tr.

• the year 1774.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 197
be adjourned over four weeks, because he would visit the
baths. His purpose included not only the benefit of the
baths and free companion-life with the two reformers, but a
sudden and unexpected appearance before Jacobi at Diisseldorf.
For his heart now began to tell him that he should really
find in Jacobi the bosom friend so long promised by Betti and
by Tante Fahlmer. With boundless delight was he received
by Basedow and Lavater on the evening ofthe 15 th. The
cheery unconstrained living of the three in Ems, every one
trying to convert the others, has been vividly recorded by
Goethe.1 The beautiful mornings and evenings were passed in
fresh enjoyment ; there was immoderate dancing, and all sorts
of jests such as life at the baths favours were practised.
Lavater, who had already paid a visit of a few days to Frau
von Stein in Nassau, mother of the great statesman of Prussia's
time of need, went once to see her accompanied by his two
friends. They found a large company ; one of those present,
to Goethe's pleasure, was Mama Sophie, who had been a guest
there for a considerable time. How Basedow's rude babble
about the Trinity displaced the mirth, how Goethe on their
drive back inflicted merry punishment is known to the reader
of Dichtung und Wahrheit. Though the young poet probably
did not meet in Nassau the eldest daughter, Johanna Luise,
now married to Count Werther of Neuenheiligen in Thiiringen,
and just returning from her wedding-trip in France and Spain,
he did meet in Ems a fellow-townsman, the painter Kraus, who
had for a considerable time taught the young Countess draw
ing and painting, and who had just been invited by her to
visit Thiiringen. Kraus' pictures of scenes on the Lahn gave
Goethe much pleasure. On the 17 th of July (1774) the little
drama Des Kunstlers Erdewallen was written at Ems ; it
shows the artist of genius compelled by need of subsistence to
wretched work for hire.2 Next day Lavater, Basedow, Schmoll
and Goethe went with a large party down the Lahn to Lahneck,
and thence to Coblenz. Memorials of this wonderfully de
lightful trip are Lavater's diary, Goethe's noble ballad Geistes-
gruss,3 which strikes a quite original note, and the humorous
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xiv. Buch. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 198. — Tr.
3 " Hoch auf dem alten Thurne steht." Der junge Goethe, iii. 1 51.
(Thurn is the archaic form of Thurm.) — Tr.

198 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
verses about the dinner at the Coblenz inn Zu den drei Reichs-
kronen1 where the poet enjoyed his meal. In the afternoon
he went over alone to Vallendar, where he visited the D'Esters;
the daughter of the house gave him a bouquet, which he put
in his gray hat. The party reassembled at Bendbrf. On the
boat Goethe, while the sun was setting gloriously, composed
the drama Des Kiins tiers Vergotterung ; which was completely
re-shaped at a later period.2 So urged was he by the creative
instinct even on a pleasure -trip with friends! In Neuwied
they found glad reception at the house of a pious follower of
Lavater's ; but in the evening they had to go to the Court.
There of course the man of faith Lavater played the chief
part; but the author of Gotz, the irresistible friend of the
Laroche, was warmly received too by the counts and coun
tesses, and by the Princess of Isenburg — a princess of Anhalt
by birth — then stopping in Neuwied. July 1 9th was spent in
Neuwied, where neither the Court nor the Mennonites much
pleased the poet, who felt a world in his breast, and was long
ing to see Jacobi. He met here the officer, Isenburg von
Buri, of Philandria memory. The sometime Archon was not
now of much account compared' with our poet. Isenburg was
also a votary of the Muse ; and now- through Goethe's aid
sought to find a publisher. He heard some of Goethe's
newest poems, and received manuscript copies of several. At
six o'clock on the rainy 20th Goethe Lavater and Schmoll
set off for Bonn in the small river vessel belonging to the
community of Mennonites. The bad weather little affected
the youthful gladness of the poet; he delighted his friends by
reading to them newly-composed verse several times, among
other things Erwin und Elmire, at which he probably con
tinued to work ; but at last wearying in the persistent rain he
fell asleep under the deck-covering of the boat. From Bonn
to Koln (Cologne), still amid rain, our exhausted travellers
were conveyed by post-car. From Koln on the same day
they went on, Lavater to Mulheim — being invited to preach
there, and Goethe with yearning heart to Diisseldorf.
When, about eight o'clock on the morning ofthe 2 1st of July
1774, he presented himself at the door of the Jacobis' house
1 "Zwischen Lavater und Basedow." Der junge Goethe, iii. 152, — Tr.
2 See Loeper : Goethe-Laroche, p. 55-7, for its first form as written
" On the water the 18th of July. Approaching Neuwied." — Tr.

the year 1 7 74-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 199
he was met by the discouraging news that Betti was far away,
while the rest of the family were at Pempelfort close by; thither
he immediately hastened, but — the brothers Jacobi had just
gone on business to Elberfeld ! Then crept over him the
superstitious thought that Destiny intended to hold him apart
from Jacobi, and all the apparent reasons which had so long
made, him averse to the brothers again seemed good. But in
the Art Gallery the hardness of his heart was "softened,
strengthened, and therefore steeled." At about twelve o'clock
he wrote an account of what had happened to Betti,1 whose
mediating presence he would so much have desired. "What
next ? It rests with the gods," so he ends ; he did not tell
her how he intended to surprise her husband in Elberfeld,
where Jung Stilling now practised. In what odd companion
ship he presented himself before Jacobi, how at first sight they
felt united for ever, has been told by Goethe himself with
sufficient correctness as to essential things. He writes to Betti
in full glee a few days later : — " No introducing, marshalling,
excusing ; straight dropt from heaven in front of Fritz Jacobi !
And he and I, and I and he ! And were already, without
preliminary of a sister's glance, what we should be and could
be."2 In the hospitable Pempelfort home, the happiness
of the new alliance was realised through the most intimate
heart interchange with the two brothers ; with Heinse, poet of
a Utopia where life should be simplified to glowing sensuous
enjoyment, disciple of Wieland and Rousseau; and with
Werthes, the Wieland - inspired poet of gentle emotion. The
Laidion of Heinse Goethe had admired as a masterpiece of
its kind.3 Heinse was three years, Werthes one year older
than Goethe. Fritz Jacobi was six years his senior, slender,
handsome, fine-featured, with splendid blue eyes and dignified
bearing. And this man, whom Goethe had so long contemned
as untrtle to his own spirit and as an insipid worldling, now
opened freely his noble heart, full of a like energy, warm with
an unusual throbbing in presence of the young Apollo. Each
1 Goethe to Helene Elizabeth Jacobi, July 21, 1774. Der junge
Goethe, iii. 29. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Helene Elizabeth Jacobi [probably close of July 1774J
Der junge Goethe, iii. 29-30. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schonborn, 4th July 1774- Der junge Goethe, iii. 25.
— Tr.

200 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
found in the other what he had hitherto looked for in vain, —
the same ardent impulsion to the most complete development
of Nature effervescent within.
Spinoza formed a peculiar bond of union. In the arbour
at the hunting-seat Castle Bensberg Jacobi spoke to his new
friend never-to-be-forgotten words concerning the great lonely
thinker, penetrating to the heart of his philosophy ; above all,
expressing his conviction that the Spinoza condemned by men
as a denier of God has made it clear that Nature is Divine, is
God. Jacobi's conviction that Faith must make good the
inadequacy of human reason hardly came to be spoken of at
this time, and would have the less power to disunite because
of Goethe's high reverence before all genuine religious belief.
After the mild, mystical Lavater and the rude hard rational
ist Basedow, the clear philosophic conspectus of one who had
so pressed to the centre of Spinoza's teaching could not but
work on Goethe with highly stimulating effect, and he would
feel the more deeply the significance of such a friend.
But first in ancient Koln the union was to receive its high
est consecration. On the morning of the 24th of July a
carriage bore the two Jacobis and Heinse to the cathedral
city, where they alighted in the inn Zum heiligen Geist, which
looked out at the back on the Rhine hard by. To the little
band who passed through its streets in the intoxication of
friendship the gloomy city appeared very bright. The un
finished cathedral seemed to proclaim with mighty voice the
measure of achievement to which the daring human spirit may
attain. An even more affecting spectacle was a family picture
by Lebrun in the house of Jabach, now occupied by a single \
servant alone. Everard Jabach, the rich merchant, the patron
of art, the patrician, had long passed away and the blooming
family which had surrounded him, and the echoing house was
left untenanted; yet there he stood, with wife and children,
and gazed from the living picture. The spirit of Jabach
seemed to speak to the poet's soul, exhorting him to gather to
gether his forces and put them to their fullest use ; he could ;
not help giving his intense agitation words, even in the silent 4,
presence which had so stirred him, a presence which followed^
him for many days. In the inn that evening, as they watched
the daylight fade and the moon rise behind the Siebengebirge,
while Goethe sitting at the table repeated some of his own

the year i 7 74.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 201
poems with all the deep emotion of his soul, they felt strangely
drawn together : their spirits grew one. At midnight, after
they had all separated for sleep, Goethe once again sought
Jacobi in his room ; they fell on each other's neck, and Jacobi
"wept sacred tears on his breast"1 And in high spiritual
elevation, they promised each to stretch his utmost strength to
the most effectual working, that those best things of which God
and Nature had made them capable might be accomplished.
On the 25 th of July Goethe rejoined Lavater at Ems.
With Basedow they on the following day went to see Mama
Sophie; and the opponent of the Trinity, as was his wont,
honoured the good wine too much. On the 27 th Lavater
left. This endlessly good and energetic man was another
friend whom Goethe now believed inseparably grappled.
Goethe had promised to go over the Physiognomische Frag-
mente in manuscript, to change, to omit, to add, as seemed
good to him. On Lavater's return journey he again stopped
at the Goethes' house ; how cordial were his relations with
Goethe's parents is proved by their letters to the " dearest
best son," the " dearest friend," the " noble guest, whom it
was so easy to please."
Goethe remained a fortnight longer in Ems with Basedow ;
he must in that time have had plenty of the lively contention
he desired! On the 30th the poet was shaken by an occur
rence which he remembered many years later when writing
the Wanderjahre (Book II. Chapter xii., Wilhelm an Natalien).
Four boys catching cray-fish in the Lahn were drowned.
When Goethe wrote next day inviting himself and Basedow
to dine with Mama Sophie on August 2 — " My senses have
not yet come back : there were four boys drowned last night ;
not one saved. Only in such moments does man feel how
powerless he is, and he with hot arms 2 and travail and tears
1 Goetheto Jacobi, April 1775. The evening singing and the midnight
.meeting are recalled to Goethe's mind by Jacobi long after, in a letter dated
¦ December 28, 1812. One of the songs sung by Goethe was :— " Es war
ein Buhle frech genung," which see in Der junge Goethe, m. 581-4. — Tr.
, , 2 "Nur in solchen Augenblicken fuhlt der Mensch wie wenig er ist,
und er mit heissen Armen und Schweiss und Thranen nichts wirkt."
'¦ Loeper p. 59, conjectures for " heissen Armen" — heissem Athmen" '=" hot
breath." ' He thinks his reading supported by the following passage from
the Wanderjahre, ii. 12: — "Ich hatte etwas von Reiben gehbrt, das in
solchem Falle hulfreich sein sollte ; ich rieb-meine Thranen ein und belog

202 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. {bk. hi. ch. v.
effects nought." Probably, like his Wilhelm Meister; he had
laboured to restore life ; the " hot arms " points to the chafing,'
which is one of the means of restoration. His stay at Ems
was varied' by repeated visits to the Ehrenbreitstein lady, from
whom he begged wine, being "poisoned" with the liquids!
dispensed at Ems.1 And his father's economy compelled him ,-'
to borrow money from her.2 Before leaving for home the first
copies of Clavigo came ; he gave one to the Laroche, others
he sent to Jacobi, On the evening of August 1 2 he left on
the post-car.His new ardent friendship and the manifold impressions
of travel had infused fresh life into him. Jacobi and he wrote
mutual encouragement to be up and doing, and took pleasure
in each other's productions. Jacobi having urged him to visit
Johanna Fahlmer again, the old intimacy with her was now
resumed. Anna Sybilla Munch probably was one of those to
whom he gave a copy of Clavigo, her command having been-
at least the external occasion of the poem. But his four
weeks' absence (July 15-August 13, 1774) had chilled their
alliance, and even the more would it dwindle, mere graceful
fooling that it was at its best, beside his glowing friendship for
Jacobi, and the sudden and mighty start of his genius. On
the 2 7th of August he spent a happy day with Merck in Langen. ,
(Merck has been — in vain — offering Goethe's Puppenspiel to '
Nicolai.) The old friend had contented himself in his position
as he best could, though he had not given up thought of seek
ing elsewhere — in Berlin if possible — a suitable appointment, i.
The unrest and unhappiness of Max Brentano continued
to fill Goethe with sorrow,3 especially because she under
stood not why he held back from her society. In the extra
ordinary creative energy of this time the voices of dissent
roused by his Clavigo had no power to disquiet. To Jacobi,
mich mit der Warme die ich erregte. In der Verwirrung dachte ich ihm
A them einzublasen. " — Tr.
1 Goethe to Frau von Laroche (Ems, the 31st of July 1774). Loeper,
p. 58. — Tr. 2 See Loeper, pp. 63, 69. — Tr.
3 See for instance : Goethe to Frau von Laroche, Frankfurt, the 15th
of September, 1774 : — " I saw the Max yesterday at the comedy, she is
not pleased with me. Dear God, I am not pleased with myself J She
has headache ! I beg you to counsel her, and in your letter advise
Exercise 1 the poor little thing stays indoors too much." Loeper, p. 74-
— Tr.

the year i 7 74.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 203
with whose Epistel an die Akademisten the first-fruits of their
union he had been much delighted, he wrote thus : — " See,
beloved, that which, after all, is the beginning and end of all
writing, the reproduction of the world about me through the
inner world which seizes, binds together, new-makes, kneads,
and sets forth again in a form and fashion original — that,
thank God, remains ever a secret, which I indeed will not
reveal to the crowd of starers and chatterers."1
To this month and the next (August and September 1774)
fall the plan and first " Shreds " of the wild stormy Ewiger
Jude, the beginning of the great Faust so long a dream,
perhaps too Satyros oder der vergbtterte Waldteufel, a piece
of the broadest humour, a counterpart to Pater Brey. His
roused creative energy let him rest not day nor night.
The September Fair brought its tribute of important men
to Frankfurt. Through Mama Sophie's good offices Goethe
made the • acquaintance of Groschlag, late Minister of the
Elector of Mainz, but fallen, the Elector having suddenly died,
and now retired to live on his estate Dieburg. Here is the
plainest proof that in Goethe's acquaintanceship with people
of rank he was not at all bent on external advantage. Close
intimacy with men of ability, of whatever rank, he esteemed
the highest gain of life.
In the extremest agitation he about the 20th September
sent the first copy of Werther to Lotte. In a few lines directed
to her he begged that she would read the novel alone, and
Kestner likewise ; and then let each send him a little word
about it. This little note he accidentally omitted to send with
the book as intended. When on the 23d he did send it
he wrote to Kestner : — " The fair bustles and brawls ; my
friends are here, and past and future strangely mingle. What
will become of me? O you fixed (gemachten) people how
much better off you are !"2 He was strangely moved by the
thought that his friend now enjoyed a contented bliss yet
denied to himself.
Kestner did not conceal the pain which he felt thus to be
made with his wife the subject of scandal, for everything in
vented by Goethe or borrowed from the unhappy story of
Jerusalem would be taken by the world to be literally true of
1 Goethe to Fritz Jacobi [21st August 1774]- Der junge Goethe, iii.
31.4.  Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 39. — Tr.

204 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
Lotte and her lovers. By Kestner's unfortunately not un
grounded reproach Goethe was the more distressed because
of the infinite gratitude he felt himself to owe to both his
friends. Yet he believed that the issue would show their
anxiety more than was warranted; indeed he felt that fate
could only have permitted him to write the book that it might
bind their union closer.1
The second of the three special copies first received found
its way, on the 2 2d of September, to Thalehrenbreitstein.
Mama Sophie was, when she had read it, to send it to Jacobi
and to let the author know what she thought of the second
part, as she had already criticised the first in manuscript.2
There is a rumour that she was angry with him for inweaving
her daughter Max in the book; but such an inweaving is
totally out of question. Knowing Jacobi's fine moral feeling,
Goethe was extremely anxious about his judgment. Not to
disturb him in forming it, Goethe would for a time neither
write to him nor send him anything.3 He had indeed to
wait long in uncertainty, for Jacobi did not get the book until
the middle of October, and not until the 21st, having read it
thrice, did he write to describe its powerful effect. To the
poet's deep-felt joy, he spoke thus — " Thy heart, thy heart, is
everything to me. Thy heart it is by which thou art enlight
ened, strengthened, established. I know that this is so, for
I too hear the voice, the voice of the only begotten Son of
God, the Mediator between the Father and us. My soul is
too full."Goethe had meanwhile had a visit from Klopstock, whom
the Markgraf of Baden had summoned to Karlsruhe, desiring
to possess in his own territory the poet of religion and the
Fatherland. Klopstock had asked Goethe to meet him at
Friedberg on a day appointed and bring him on to Frankfurt ;
but, having delayed in his journey one day, he was not in
Friedberg when Goethe came there, and carriage and Goethe
had to return without the most famed man on the German
1 Goethe to Kestner and Lotte [October 1774]. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 40-1. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von Laroche, Monday, the 19th of September, 1774.
Loeper, pp. 77-78. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [end of September 1774]. Der junge i
Goethe, iii. 40. — Tr.

the year i 774.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 205
Parnassus. He did arrive in Frankfurt on the day following,
and was met with the warmest welcome by the Goethes
(Early October 1774). Klopstock was now fifty, of refined
manners, serious, formal, ceremoniously dignified, speaking a
quite distinguished German ; on the enthusiastic poet so
gladly subordinate he made a friendly impression, seeming
however more a prudent man of the world than an inspired
bard. Klopstock had just been with the Gottingen poets, and
tried to bind them yet closer to himself. In Gottingen he had
spoken "amazingly" (erstaunlich) for Goethe, had praised
Clavigo ; Werther was not yet issued to the trade. Klopstock
could not fail to see how far Goethe exceeded all those poets
in fire and genius ; and so with Goethe he condescended
somewhat from his peculiar prophetic elevation. He is "a
noble great man, on whom the peace of God rests," accord
ing to a letter of Goethe a month later.1 The scenes of Faust,
read aloud by the poet with all the fire of his soul, were what
most impressed Klopstock. He expressed himself in detail
on skating, on the best kind of skates — " Schrittschuh " not
" Schlittschuh " must the winged cothurnus be in future named.
Ecclesiastical Councillor (Kirchenrath) Bockmann, through
whose agency the Markgraf had invited Klopstock, now came
from Karlsruhe to fetch the honoured guest. With Bockmann
also Goethe found himself easily on the friendliest terms;
lending him Satyros, and begging his kind offices in getting
proper skates made. Goethe did not allow himself to be
deprived by Bockmann's presence of the pleasure of accom
panying his distinguished visitor part of the way, perhaps to
Mannheim. Returning in the post-carriage to Frankfurt on
the 10th of October his excess of life overflowed in the poem
An Schwager Kronos.2
On Oct. 15th he had a visit from Boie, who, returning from
Holland, had been with Jacobi and Mama Sophie on his way.
Boie was extremely delighted with the day that he spent undis
turbedly alone with Goethe, whose heart was " as noble and
great as his mind." " I have made him read to me a great deal,
completed work and fragment," writes Boie, " and in all is the
note of originality, independent power, and — not denying what
1 Goethe to "Frau von La Roche [November 20, 1774]. (Seethe end
of the letter) : Loeper, p. 84-6.— Tr.
* Der junge Goethe, iii. 159.

206 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
there is of bizarre and incorrect — everything is marked with
the stamp of genius." (So the Gretchen scenes too must
have been for the most part already written.) When a couple
of days after Boie returned at about two in the afternoon from
Darmstadt Goethe met him with open arms at the inn. " We
stayed together until midnight, and must at length lock the
door, only in order to be quite alone. He read something to
me ; we soon however let reading alone, and the talk fell on
the most important matters of thought and feeling, a region
in which our views were often the same."
Goethe's soul was that autumn in the most active fermenta
tion ; his mood extraordinarily varying. The future hung often
a gloomy cloud of presage above his spirit, while no determined
plans of life were yet formed. Least of all did he think of mar
riage ; not one of the many Frankfurt girls his acquaintances,
highly as he esteemed them after their merits, had deeply
moved his heart. He suffered for others ; there was his sister
— Schlosser having to go as Amtmann to Emmendingen the
settling down in Karlsruhe for which she had hoped so long
delayed And young Max Brentano's unhappiness grieved him
continually. " I am stormy, confused, and just cling to a few
ideas," he wrote about this time to Max's mother. " I have
been speaking to dear Max at the play. , I have again seen the
eyes; I know not what is in the eyes."1 When his motherly
friend told him her sorrow about the suffering of her son, then
lying almost beyond hope, he replied : — " I lay since in silence
and pondered and groped through all my soul if peradven-
ture there were strength within me to bear those things to
come purposed for me and mine (den Meinigen) by iron fate;
if anywhere I might find a rock whereon to build a tower of
refuge for me and my possessions (Habe) in the last ex
tremity."2 And to Tante Fahlmer he writes in October that
he cannot come because he is intolerable and intolerant (un-
ertrdglich und unvertrdglich) ; else has he all that is good ; is
however again brooding dragon-like.3
Beside literary work and sketching, especially portrait
1 Goethe to the La Roche [beginning of October 1774]. Loeper, p.
79.— Tr.
2 Goethe to the La Roche, 2ist October 1774. Loeper, pp. 81-2.— TR.
3 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [middle of October 1774]. Derjungt
Goethe, iii 41-2. — Tr.

the year I774-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 207
sketching, he in November (1774) enjoyed with the delight
of youth the pleasure of skating, to which Klopstock had done
such honour in verse. Beside a couple of letters of the time
which describe it 1 we have a memorial of this skating in the
overflowing merry lines written in an old album, dating from
1680, at Crespel's house in the evenings of the 13th and
14th.2 On the 15th he informs Tante Fahlmer that he is still
entangled (verfangen) in all kinds of drawing, and has besides
a quantity of stuff on hand of no significance ; he sends a
portfolio full of various sketches, that he may in some sort be
with her.3 Four days later he met the Brentanos at the
theatre ; the husband was extraordinarily friendly.4 Even did
he for a moment feel it possible to visit their house once more,
there was the instant fear of the threatening danger of a re
vival of his passion. As to his own destination he was just then
more than ever in doubt, for it often seemed to him that, with
his impulse to sensuous presentation, he ought to devote himself
not to poetry but to painting. At the house of the already-
mentioned painter Nothnagel he made his first attempts at
painting, announced solemnly to Mama Sophie on the 20th of
November as follows : — -" I shall this evening take in my hand
the oil-painter's brush ! with what humility, devotion, and
hope, I cannot express. My life's destiny hangs on that
moment It is a gloomy day ! We shall meet each other
yet in sunshine." We find him the day after in the studio
joyfully agitated by the arrival of a letter from Kestner, an
affectionate bearer of full pardon for Werther. " Werther had
to, had to exist!" he writes to Kestner with the most vivid
feeling of the artistic perfection and the clear truthfulness of
sentiment of the book. " You feel not him, you feel but me
and you, and what you call stuck on, but which — in spite of you
— and others — is woven in. If I am still alive you are he
whom I must thank for it— therefore you are not Albert."
"Within a year," he promises "whatever may remain of
suspicion, misinterpretation, etc., among the chattering crowd,"
he will, " after the loveliest, simplest, truest fashion, wipe away
1 See Der junge Goethe, pp. 42-3. — Tr.
2 Stammbuch Johann Peter Reyniers von Frankfurt ain Main, 1680.
Der junge Goethe, iii. 174-5.— Tr. 3 Der junge Goethe, iii. 43.— Tr.
4 Goethe to the La Roche [20th November 1774]. Loeper, p. 84-6.
— Tr.

208 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
as fog and smoke before a clear north wind." He alone can
invent what may deliver the two dear ones from windy sus
picion ; he has it in his power, only it is yet too soon.1
Thus was the noble creation through which he had rid him
self of his world weariness most lovingly forgiven by the dear
ones whom it had made the common talk. But a crew of
Philistine critics of Werther arose — moralising, hairsplitting
men — and plagued the author's life with wearisome nice ex
positions or shameful abuse, powerless though they were to
disable the working of the wonderful nature-breathing book.2
And alas ! he whom Goethe esteemed above all others — Less
ing — was rendered hostile to Werther as to Gotz by the
swarm of foolish imitators ; and, in the case of Werther, still
more by seeing the story of young Jerusalem, once his valued
friend, used as poetic capital. On the other hand Lavater
held Werther to be not at all dangerous — -to be the work of
our Literature. Among Goethe's countless admirers was the
famous physician Zimmermann of Hannover ; he wrote a letter
expressing his veneration for the novel in which everything
was so true. The philosopher Garve too thought Werther
the best thing Goethe had done yet, and foretold, in Engel's
Philosoph fur die Welt, that Goethe would obtain great in
fluence over his contemporaries, having heart, understanding
and audacity, favour with the public and desire to rule. Many
others, Sulzer being one, understood so little the intent of the
poet that they called him to account for what is said and done
by the Werther who left to his emotions the guidance of his
will. In Frankfurt the old friends pressed more zealously con
tinually around the now celebrated poet, whose name, as
author of Werther, the publisher had, contrary to agreement,
betrayed in a catalogue for the fair ; new friends were added.
As a poet Klinger stood next, in whom, however, desire was
not matched by power. The story runs that Goethe gave him
the Puppenspiel3 to do what he liked with, and that he printed
1 Goethe to Kestner, November 21, 1 774. Der junge Goethe, iii-
45-6.— Tr.
2 Yet it is true that many foolish heads gave themselves to the imitation
of Werther, and of the author whom they supposed to resemble Werther.
— Duntzer.
3 " The Puppenspiel," i.e., Des Kiinstlers Erdewallen, Jahrmarktsfesi
zu Plundersweilern, and Pater Brey. — Tr.

the year i 774.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 209
it It appeared in the earlier half of October (1774) almost
at the same time with the sentimental Werther, its bubbling,
wanton spirits strangely contrasting; here were the two ex
tremes of Goethe's nature. Heinrich Leopold Wagner, a
native of Strassburg, about two years' Goethe's senior, who
had been a tutor in the house of President von Giinderobe in
Saarbriicken, had come to Frankfurt during the fair ; fain to
distinguish himself as a poet, he clung to the author of Gotz
and Werther, now overtopping all the rest. Long, lean, good-
tempered, a trifle shy, he was a merry, social companion ; and
Goethe honoured in him, as in Klinger, the steadfast battling
with his low estate, though Klinger's was of course the far
more powerful and lofty nature. Wagner was going to the
Law, but had not finished his studies. As a poet he had skill
in versification rather than fresh feeling, more ingenuity than
natural humour. His Confiscable Erzdhlungen, just published,
was a play of deliberate frivolity. Merck, whose bitterness
. grew constantly more pronounced, was angry to see the throng
of " knaves " (Bubeh) who clung round his friend and flattered
him, that they might sun themselves in his fame.
When, on the ist of December 1774, Goethe received
Volume I. of J. G. Jacobi's Lris, he felt impelled, by the re
quest for contributions addressed to the " friends of the fair
sex," to write out from memory and send to Jacobi some of
his own earlier songs to do what he pleased with. Instead of
Goethe's name, though, he would have certain letters sub
scribed, that ladies and gentlemen might have food for specu
lation.1 He now gave himself passionately to sketching and
painting. He himself prepared a portfolio of drawings for
Merck, prefixing two poems, with the purport that living feel
ing is the basis of all Art ;2 an idea uttered in several lyrics of
this time with enthusiastic ardour.3 He painted a pretty
stove-screen for Hieronymus Schlosser, with the head of
Schlosser's favourite poet Virgil, and many ornaments all
having reference to Virgil. He was successful in other little
efforts, but when he tried to paint great things he felt his want
of power. And now an acquaintance was formed more full of conse-
1 Goethe to J. G. Jacobi, Dec. 1, 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 48.— Tr.
8 Der junge Goethe, iii. 156. — Tr.
s See, for example, Der junge Goethe, iii. 173.. — Tr.

210 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. oh. v.
quence for him than any that went before. On the evening
of December n, 1774, a tall thin man entered, whom he in
the twilight took for Fritz Jacobi, then expected to arrive at
any time. It was Captain Karl Ludwig von Knebel, just
turned thirty, tutor since July to Prince Constantin of
Weimar. The two young princes of Weimar were travelling
to Paris, taking Karlsruhe on the way. Karl August, the
elder, now seventeen, was accompanied by his tutor, the grave
and formal Count von Gbrtz-Schlitz, and by Stallmeister von
Stein -Kochberg. Knebel was well fitted to win Goethe's
affection and confidence; noble, ardent, gifted with poetic
power; in Berlin the friend of Ramler and his circle; in
Gottingen the friend of Boie ; he, too, in his turn, was quite
carried away by the lovableness of the author of Werther.
Goethe was c6nducted by Knebel, after a while, to the young
princes, who received him in a very friendly manner, even in
viting him to visit them in Mainz, the goal of their journey on
the morrow. It was a happy chance when the conversation
fell on the just published first volume of Justus Moseys
Patriotische Phantasieen, so that the young poet could show
his sympathetic insight into the question of the elevation of
the people. An echo of this conversation may be found in
the letter of thanks which he addressed a fortnight later to
Moser's daughter as the editor of these essays. " I carry
them about with me," he writes ; " whenever or wherever I
may open them all grows well with me, and a hundred various
desires, hopes, projects unfold within my soul." 1 The noble
young Hereditary Prince made a deep impression on Goethe.
Knebel stayed over the 12th in Frankfurt "in order," he
wrote to his sister, "to enjoy the best of all men."2 On the
13th the two proceeded together to Mainz, where they found
the princes at the inn Zu den drei Kronen. The Hereditary
Prince especially was captivated by the mighty personality of
the young poet. As the so well deserved farce on Wieland
was mentioned, Goethe represented it as a mere overflow of
1 Goethe to Frau von Voigt ne'e Moser in Osnabruck, 28th December
1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 56-7. — Tr.
2 This letter, with Goethe's continuation of it, is reprinted. Der
junge Goethe, iii. 50-1. Goethe's and Knebel's long correspondence of
nearly sixty years was reprinted by Brockhaus, edited by G. E. Guhrauer.
Leipzig, 1851. — Te.

the year 1 7 74-] ADVOCATE AND POET. 211
careless fun, and declared himself ready to make the first
advances in a reconciliation; this he accordingly did in a
postscript added to a letter which Knebel addressed to Wie
land from Mainz. He gave copies of many of his poems to
Knebel, who would, as occasion offered, read them to the
young princes ; one of them probably was Erwin und Elmire.
And now when he returned to Frankfurt quite full of the
confiding goodness of the young princes, of the Hereditary
Prince's excellence especially, the sad news met him that
Fraulein von Klettenberg, who had taken ill a short time
since, had died on the day of his departure, and was already
buried. " Died, buried in my absence, who was so dear, so
much to me," he wrote to Frau von Laroche. " Mama that
disciplines (picht) chaps and teaches them to hold their
heads erect. For me, I will stay a little longer."1 He felt
the blow the more keenly, because he had been hoping to find
in her heavenly clear look a kind of illumination thrown upon
his presentiment of important consequence from the visit of
the young princes. Though the upright Knebel had made an
extremely favourable impression on Councillor Goethe, the
old Frankfurt republican would fain know nought of sovereign
ties ; and it was even contrary to his liking that his son should
so soon have followed the princes to Mainz. Goethe made
use of his acquaintance with Knebel to discover how President
Hahn in Karlsruhe was disposed towards Schlosser ; how he
(Goethe) stood with Count Gortz. Knebel is to keep the
Hereditary Prince mindful of him.2 A great delight to him
was the cordial reply now received from Wieland; strange
though it seemed to be reconciled with those hitherto passion
ately hateful to him — with the Jacobis and Wieland. For, as
he told Knebel,3 after sending the greeting to Wieland, he
needed an ideal not less for scorn of the Worthless than for
admiration of the Noble.
Not only was drawing diligently pushed on, but many a
song sprang to the lips, and plans of dramas half-formed within.
With the spring he hoped, he wrote to Boie, to begin a new
1 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, 22d December 1774. Der junge
Goethe, iii. 52-4. Loeper, pp. 90-92. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, 28th December 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii.
55-6.— Tr.
3 One evening in Mainz. — Tr.

212 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. v.
production which, too, should have its own original tone.1
Some work quite different from what he had done hitherto
and of greater importance must have hovered before him;
probably it was Egmont. When, as was his use, he was
arranging and packing all the letters received during the year
(1774), many various thoughts passed through his head, and
the reflection was borne in upon him : — " When one has rolled
the ethical snowball of his Ego a year forward, he has gathered
a good deal on the way."2 With many a pain and grief the
departing year had brought him much love, much to further
him, and at its very close the unspoken foreboding of a union
with a noble, intellectual, practical young prince.
1 Goethe to Boie, December 23, 1774. Der junge Goethe, iii. 54-5. —
Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, January 3, 1775. (Not in Der junge
Goethe.) Loeper, p. 95-6. — Tr.

CHAPTER VI.
LI LI  SWITZERLAND.
January-November 1775.
On New Year's Day, 1775, the poet of Werther, lace-coated,
paid his visit to the Senior Biirgermeister. Whatever hopes
of a foreign connection he found in the late begun acquaint
ance with the Hereditary Prince of Weimar — to be Prince
Regnant next September — who could have prophesied this to
be the last of such visits for the young Frankfurter ? Still less
could one have guessed what threads of varied colour this year
would weave into his life ; how it would draw him hither and
thither, distract his soul more than ever with the almightiness
of love — even giving him to taste the sweetness of betrothal ;
lastly, after many a painful inward fight, lift and bear him
from the city of his birth to a new home.
When at a later time1 he writes to Burger that by the
fairy Hold — or Unhold — had come a New Year's gift — three-
quarters of a year most distracted, most entangled, most com
plete, most full, most empty, most forceful, most trifling, he
seems to mark New Year's Day as the beginning of the love
which dominated his life during this period. So probably the
evening of this New Year's Day was the evening on which he
was asked by a friend to come to the splendid house Zum
Libeneck, at the angle of the Cornmarket, next to the spot
where at a later period the German Reformed Church stood.
Susanna Elizabeth D'Orville, daughter of Johann Noe
D'Orville of the Reformed Church, had, in the year of Goethe's
birth, married a co-religionist of her father, the merchant and
banker Johann Wolfgang Schonemann. Her husband died
in 1763; seven years after his death — in 1770 — she rebuilt
1 October 18, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 118-9. — Tr.

214 , THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi.
the house after the new taste. The only daughter, Anna
Elizabeth, was born on the 23d of June 1758; two sons,
Georg and Friedrich, were some years older than their sister.
Every evening a select company assembled in this house, and
once introduced you were always welcome. Of course a
desire was felt to see the celebrated poet here even once;
he was in general supposed to be a strange fellow, whose
manners were quite at variance with the tone of good society.
He himself on one occasion, writing to Mama Sophie, sub
scribes "La grosse bite,"1 and probably by that time had got
fond of calling himself "the bear;" which, it will be remem
bered, was Madame d'Epinay's nickname for Rousseau. He
had long resisted the invitation of his friend, but at length
gave in, and went on this New Year's Day evening to a con
cert at Frau Schonemann's. At the moment of Goethe's
entrance a sonata was to be played by the daughter of the
house, a fresh blonde of sixteen, with great dark blue eyes,
expressing the pure goodness of the soul within, with gentle,
delicate features, and a mouth round which played constantly
a winning smile. It was some time before the young poet,
who stood at the lower end of the piano, could say a polite
word in praise of her musical talent, to which she made a
pleasant reply. When he was going away both mother and
daughter expressed a hope that they would soon see their
esteemed guest again. Liii, whose powers had been carefully
cultivated — she not only could draw and sing prettily, but had
made essays in graceful verse — grew more and more in capti
vating charm to the poet as his visits were repeated ; yet at
first it was only a brotherly affection, such as he had felt for
many " good maidens " — not love's disquieting.
Thus we find him pleasantly busied with sketching and verse-
making during the first half of January (1775) ; he wrote short
lyrics, also the poem Prometheus, setting forth the defiance to the
gods of the self-erected moulder of men. He sent Prometheus
to Merck on the 10th, just before going to his friend Andre1
in Offenbach, who was probably then composing for the songs
of Erwin und Elmire. " I have," he writes, " for three days
been working at a drawing with all my diligence, and have
not yet finished it. It is good to do, once in a way, all, that
1 Goethe to Frau von La Roche (end of May 1774). See Loeper, p.
39.— Tr.

JAN.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET.

215

one can do, so attaining to the honour of learning oneself
more nearly."1 His Stella was already planned. In writing it
he had in mind the strange tale of Swift's two lovers, Stella and
Vanessa ; and in the heroine he meant to show the power of
glowing passion. On the 13th he writes to Knebel: — "Am
I in good remembrance among you? Addio; I have had
some very good productive days."2

Fig. 17. Liii. After the photograph of the hest family picture, the photograph in the
monograph Liiiis Bild, by Count Ferdinand Eckbrecht von Diirckheim.
By this Fritz Jacobi had come to Frankfurt, where he
stayed four weeks — until the 5 th of February — in close com
munion with Goethe. They were " very dear, good, and vigor
ous " together.3 Goethe read his Faust to Jacobi, who was
deeply stirred by it ; confided to him all plans and introduced
him to his familiar social circles. Jacobi tried in vain to in
duce Wieland to come to Frankfurt. Nor could Jacobi's
1 This letter will be found Der junge Goethe, iii. 73. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 59- — Tr.
3 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, February 17, 1775. Loeper, pp.
98-99. — Tr.

216 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ijh. ch. vi.
efforts make Wieland kindly disposed to the young poet,
whose satire he continued to fear. A " good " letter from
Herder at this time gave Goethe vivid pleasure ; cordially did
he take the hand stretched out in renewal of friendship. He
answered Herder on the 18th of January; on the same day
he writes to Mama Sophie : — " We are now — I especially —
right glad of life ; there is a strong current of things."1
He had ere this called to see Liii in the early part of the
day, and had talked intelligently with her and her mother, so
that the latter came to trust him and gave him free admittance
to the house. So did the charming, sweet-natured maiden
captivate him by an artless account of her young life, that —
with deep disquietude — he felt his heart kindle again to love.
With what pangs had he renounced his love for Lotte, with
what violent struggle had he held aloof from young Max
Brentano ! And now should love anew overmaster the poet,
who felt a whole world in his breast, moving in darkness to
his destiny ? This time it was a maiden reared in a higher
social circle, highly accomplished, somewhat spoiled, only
just budding into womanhood ; her warm affection made
him happy ; he hoped to mould her after his desire, so to
secure the purest happiness of life — the perfect accord of
two hearts in one. Yet his old inward striving after Freedom
and Culture, how would it fare ? a question which held him
back from yielding up his soul as yet.
Just at this time, about the 20th of January, he received
overflowing letters of friendship from the two Counts Stolberg,
who adored Nature and Freedom, who felt some poetic stir
rings, and who were the personal friends of Klopstock Their
studies in Gottingen over, they had become Gentlemen of the
Bedchamber in Copenhagen ; they were about Goethe's age,
Christian being a little older, Fritz Leopold more than a year
younger. They also transmitted to him the letter of an
"Unknown One;" it was from their sister Auguste Luise,
now one-and-twenty, who lived alternately in Copenhagen
with her brother-in-law the Minister Bernstorff and in Ham
burg with the Countess Bernstorff. The loving tenderness of
the letter moved Goethe strangely, especially the anxious
question whether he were happy. He immediately wrote in
reply : her letter came on him at a strange hour ; but — he can
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 59. Loeper, p. 97. — Tr.

jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 217
say no more while so agitated. And when, eight days later, he
returned to his writing, he could only excuse his fragmentary
stammering style by alleging his condition; since the Reflection
of the Infinite moves within : " And what is that but Love P"1
Such exceedingly agitated moods were of course only
temporary, but his love -pain increased, until at length he
urged even Jacobi to go away and leave him.2 Jacobi left
on the 5 th of February. On the 4th Goethe dined with the
Hereditary Prince of Meiningen, who, with his younger
brother, with Oberhofmeister von Diirkheim and two tutors,
was on his way to Strassburg. The Hereditary Prince re
counts that Goethe, who sat next him, speaks a great deal,
speaks well, particularly original naive talk, is extraordinarily
amusing and merry ; has Faxons quite his own ; his own ideas
and opinions on all subjects, and on the people he knows;
his own language ; words of his own.
Immediately after this he had an enthusiastic letter about
Werther from Burger, who had only just read the novel. Yet
now, here he was in the toils of a quite different love ! — a
torment to him, for his beloved compelled him to be present
at the evening social gatherings, where the friendliness with
which she had to greet so many others, and the thought how
happy he would be alone with her, cut his heart. He ex
pressed his pain in imperishable form in the poems Neue
Liebe Neues Leben, and An Belinden.3 Nothing marks more
strikingly his condition than the last line of the former : —
"Liebe! Liebe! lass mich los!" The superscription "To
Belinde " was given to the lyric so named only after the few
lines dedicating Erwin und Elmire^ to his beloved were
written, in which he found the stock name Belinde to rhyme
conveniently.6 How, notwithstanding the fair eyes of the
1 Goethe to The Dear Unknown, begun probably on the 18th of
January,- continued on the 26th, and again continued, date unfixed. Der
junge Goethe, iii. 61-62. — Tr.
2 So Goethe mentions in a letter to Helene Jacobi, February 6, 1775.
Der junge Goethe, iii. 62. — Tr. s Der junge Goethe, iii. 176-7.— Tr.
* Erwin und Elmire was completed to appear in tine Iris. — Duntzer.
6 Den kleinen Strauss den ich dir binde,
Pfliickt 'ich aus diesem Herzen hier.
Nimm ihn gefallig auf Belinde !
Der kleine Strauss, er ist von mir.
Der junge Goethe, iii. 504. — Tr.

218 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
" dainty blonde," this society life oppressed him ; hunted in
lace coat from card-table to concert, from concert to ball, he
confided in a letter of the 13th of February to his "Dear
Unknown One " (whose name he had indeed learned in the
interval); but we hear too how he often, "in gray beaver,
coat, with brown silk neck-cloth and strong boots, fore-feels
the coming spring in the caressing February air;" and he is
able to say to his distant friend that he — " always living in
himself, aspiring and working, now expressing the innocent
emotions of youth in little poems, the strong seasoning of life
in many kinds of drama, sketching the forms of his friends
and of the familiar places, and of his beloved household
goods, with chalk on gray paper, after his ability, asks neither
on the right hand nor the left what is thought of his perform
ance, because he working rises always a step higher, because
he would fain — not leap at an Ideal, but, struggling or trifling,
let his emotions unfold themselves to capacities."1
A letter of thanks to Burger on the 17 th of February
confides that he has not been industrious just of late, yet the
spring breezes, which even already often come playing across
the gardens to his chamber, are working again upon his heart ;
and he hopes that some result will disentangle itself from the
fragrant confusion.2
Beside reading through Lavater's Physiognomische Frag-
mente, to which he in January appended an essay of his own,
he was constantly busy with his Stella. Fritz Jacobi, on a
second stay in Frankfurt (February 24 — March 2), heard with
great pleasure the beginning of this Schauspiel fur Liebende.
A little earlier Jung Stilling had made his appearance; he
came to operate for cataract on a Herr von Lersner. Jung,
like Jacobi, stopped at the Goethes' ; but a room in the
neighbourhood had soon to be hired for the much-sought-
after physician. The despairing lamentations which the pious
man uttered over his unsuccessful operation were extremely
trying to Goethe and his parents, with whom he was still a
daily guest. The young poet had his own annoyances. The
criticisms of Werther, whether the snarling of Berlin or other
places, had been always a plague to him;3 but his disgust
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 63-65. — Tr. 2 Ibid. iii. 67.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Auguste, Countess Stolberg [6th-loth March 1775] :"~
" Ich bin das ausgraben und seziren meines armen Werthers so satt. Wo

jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 219
culminated when Nicolai published his Freuden des jungen
Werthers. To ridicule Nicolai in coarse verses did not serve.
Even had not Werther been Goethe's own work, he would
have been excessively enraged by such shameful treatment of
a poem so deep in feeling, so perfect in art. Goethe's mother
tells us how on such an occasion he would gnash his teeth,
and vent his rage in some most ungodly oath, while his joy
in pure poetic beauty would break forth in tears. For the
second edition of Werther he wrote two mottos, the latter
warning the reader not to follow the unhappy example of the
hero.1 Just after Jacobi' s departure (March 2) Goethe revolted
at Lili's confidential friendliness to others. His thirsty soul
would fain have his beloved live for him alone, adore him
with glowing passion ; he would have her, love-inspired, pene
trate by a glance to the veiled recesses of his heart, be a
creature of his love and of his moulding. Liii did indeed
cling with deep affection to the youth who so bewitched her ;
but she was not capable of that devouring flame of passion
which the poet cherished in his breast, and which he breathed
into his Stella. And the wayward ill-humour, the jealousy
which often came upon him, were a very hard trial to the merry
maiden, the spoiled household pet. Then her mother and
brothers were repelled by many an eccentricity of Lili's lover ;
were prejudiced against him on account of his connection with
lower circles than their own ; and on the whole, did not think
him the husband that a rich banker's daughter might look for ;
they did not fail to urge her to put up no longer with his
behaviour. When on the 4th of March he spoke to Tante Fahlmer
of his trouble, she spoke comfort to him, and pressed him to
finish Stella ; she would make a copy of it for Jacobi. On
his way back his yearning drove him to Liii, who again
charmed him, as he cannot conceal from Tante Fahlmer next
day. " I hope to draw you into our circle," he writes ; " by
God, Tante, it can't be altogether amiss to you in it Liii is
ich in eine Stube trete, find ich das Berliner, etc., Hundezeug ; der eine
schilt drauf, der andre lobt's, der dritte sagt 'es geht doch an,' und so hetzt
mich einer wie der andere." Der junge Goethe, iii. 71. — Tr.
1 " Sey ein Mann und folge mir nicht nach." Der junge Goethe, iii. 17 '9.
— Tr.

220 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
very dear, and has a most sincere feeling for your worth."1
In the afternoon he went on a walk round the town with
Cornelia's friend Lisette Runkel, and her brother the Stadt-
stallmeister ; they met Liii with her mother in a carriage. He
confesses next day to Tante that he was very " foolish and
oddly-behaved " (dumm und toll) on this occasion ; and after
wards, instead of going to her, he spent two hours playing
ombre with Riese and a female friend, Loisgen.
On the rainy afternoon of the 6th March, after despatching
two pieces of legal work, he hastens to Andre1 in Offenbach.
Arrived, he turns in extreme agitation to Auguste : — " In the
country with very dear people," he writes ; " in suspense, — dear
Auguste — God knows I am an unhappy young fellow. . . .
Would that I could lie still upon your hand, repose in your
eyes. Great God, what the heart of man is !" Next morn
ing (March 7) he writes to his sister, who had presented her
husband with a little daughter in the preceding October. To
her also he must pour out his lamenting. In the evening he
goes on to confide to Gustchen : — " This was a strange day.
Have sketched ; written a scene ; O, if I did not write dramas *
now I should shipwreck. Soon I shall send you one in manu
script. ... I cannot have it printed ; for I will, God willing,
in future, bury in a corner my . . . and children, without
dangling it beneath the public nose."
On the ioth back in Frankfurt, he continues this diary-like
letter. His head is pretty clear, his heart tolerably free, but
immediately he breaks out : — " O best one, how are we to find
words to express what we feel." " Hold a poor young fellow to
your heart," he concludes. " May the good Father in heaven
give you many courageous and happy hours, such as I often
have; and then let the twilight fall tearful and blessed. Amen."2
Three days later he writes to Tante Fahlmer : — " I am quite
unbearable. And therefore busy at sensuous work [sketching]., §
I cannot come. May God give you to carry out something,
With me, things will come to no good end."3 She urged him
to go on with Stella. Then he was delighted to hear how
1 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [5th March 1775]. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 68. — Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 72. — Tr.
3 " Geb' Ihnen Gott was zu treiben. Mit mirnimmts keingut Ende."
Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [March 13, 1775]. Der junge Goethe, iii. 68.
— Tr.

JAN.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 221
Max Brentano, who had gone to her mother, had on March 1 2
borne a boy, and was doing well ; he might perhaps hope that
this new tie would draw the husband closer to the dear wife
whom he (Goethe) would be able again to visit in her own
house, without fear of being stirred to passion by her presence.
" Now I am going to Brentano to congratulate him," he writes
to Mama Sophie ; and in the letter he asks the " dear little
mother " : — " Is there a time coming which will see us influ
ence one another as friends?"1 On the same day (the 15th
March) he goes again to Offenbach; and thence (March 17)
sends to Tante the concluding act of Stella, about which he
had been very timid. He had meant to return to Frankfurt
on the 17 th for the concert, but hearing that Liii was coming
on a visit to her uncle, the rich manufacturer D'Orville in
Offenbach, he resolved to stay. Lili's self-will might torment
him — she was still almost a child, she was a pet, she was
used to the carefully polite manners of good society, it was
no wonder if she did not quite understand him ; but she had
an essentially noble nature, she had rich gifts, she was a
charming maiden who loved him well : and these things were
powerful to hold him fast. " Within me there is much that
is strange and new," he writes to Tante Fahlmer. " In three
hours I hope to see Liii. Dear Tante — until Sunday. Take
the maiden to your heart ; it will be well for both." The
Tante had expressed great pleasure in the first four acts of
Stella, which she- had transcribed for Jacobi; but Goethe
feared that the final issue of the story — the possession of both
Stella and Cacilie by the faithless Fernando — would be repel
lent to her. He writes thus in the same letter : — " I am weary
of lamenting the fate of our sex of people [those urged by fiery
passion], but I will present them, they shall know themselves,
if it mav be, as I have known them, and shall become — if not
more restful — yet in their unrest, stronger."2 His Fernando,
saved by the infinite love of the two women, is like Werther,
a morally weak " Stormer " knowing not self-control, set forth
like Werther, not as an example, but as a sign, to what passion
indulged without restraint leads. On the 19th he returned
1 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, March 15, 1775. Loeper, pp. 100-
1.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer, March 17, 1775. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 72. — Tr.

222 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. in. ch. vi
to Frankfurt, and at eleven o'clock, before going to bed; he
writes to Auguste : — " With me again for a while it has been
so between gladness and sadness, that I know not whether I
am on earth, — and then it is to me as if I were in heaven."1
On the 2 ist of March he writes beseechingly to Jacobi : —
" Stand by me, dear Fritz. I feel as though I were on skates
for the first time, alone, and stumbling along the path of life ;
and should all the time be striving for the prize, and for that
after which all my soul is yearning."2 On the same day he
speaks more hopefully to Mama Sophie : — " Daily I strive and
work to become more worthy. Have too, God be thanked, ,
relay-horses for my further travel."3 In the union with Liii
he hoped to find repose and happiness. Thus he says four
days later to Herder : — " It looks as though the threads by
which my destiny depends, and which I so long in rotating
oscillation jerk up and down, would at length unite. For the
rest, all kinds of circumstances make me pretty tame, not, how
ever, taking away the good young courage from me."4 But
that night (the 25th), writing to Auguste, far away, sick of
fever, a gloomy foreboding of a time of melancholy falls upon
him, a time in which he will flee her and all who are dear to
him ; then let her pursue him with her letters, save him from
himself ! 5
About this time he gave to Liii the first copy of Erwin
und Elmire, with the prefixed verses dedicating it to her;
he hoped that the pain of the true lover of the drama
would work beneficially on her ; but a stronger influence was
that of her family, which still grew more opposed to him.
Frau Schonemann did not care so much for a famous son-in-
law as for a rich one, good at business. How it stood with
her own affairs at the time we do not know ; a few years later
the house had to stop payment. On March 2 8th Goethe, in his
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 74. — Tr. 2 Ibid. iii. 73-74. — Tu.
3 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, March 21, 1775. Loeper, 102-3.—
Tr.
4 Goethe to Herder, March 25, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 75.— Tr.
6 " Jetzt gute Nacht, und weg mit dem Fieber ! — doch wenn du leidest,
schreib mir — ich will alles theilen — O dann lass mich auch nicht stecken,
edle Seele, zur Zeit der Triibsal, die kommen konnte, wo ich dich flohe
und alle Lieben ! Verfolge mich, ich bitte dich, verfolge mich mit
deinen Briefen dann, und rette mich von mir selbst !" Der junge Goethe,
iii. 75.— Tr.

Jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 223
dark mood, met friend Merck at Langen. On the same day
Klopstock, on the return journey to Hamburg, visiting Goethe
found him in "strange agitation."1
About the middle of March (1775) had appeared anony
mously the farce Prometheus, Deukalion und seine Recensenten.
This sharp satire on the critics of Werther annoyed Goethe
exceedingly, because it referred to his Mainz trip, and to the
reconciliation through Knebel with Wieland. Yet he thought
that nobody who knew him could deem so ill of him as to
suppose him capable of ridiculing that reconciliation which he
had himself wished for ; nor could any reasonable man attri
bute to him the jokes about the Iris, and about the garrulity
of his publisher Weygand. But he grew seriously disquieted
when he found that everybody — even friend Merck — thought
him the author. Even when he heard of Wieland's threat to
complain to Goethe's Hereditary Prince of this malicious
trifling, he would not consent to disavow the farce publicly ;
neither to Jacobi nor to any one else would he write anything
about the matter ; he would take no pains to discover who the
real author was.2 He had a short time before been again
disgusted with Wieland, because of a remark in the Merkur
about " geniuses ;" he had written to Tante Fahlmer : —
"Eternal enmity be between my seed and their seed."3 But
the remonstrance — that every one recognised his manner in
the farce, and that the suspicion founded on this must be
highly injurious to him in his relation with the Hereditary
Prince of Weimar — brought him at last to resolve on finding
out the author, — not far to seek, — and to clear himself at
least to his friends by letter; finally, he agreed to let a
Declaration to the public be printed. When he sent it 4 to
Tante Fahlmer about the 8th of April, he was again quite
bewitched about Liii. " She was as beautiful as an angel,"
he wrote, " and I had not seen her for four days. And dear
God, how much is she even better than beautiful."5 The
Declaration, on' oblong octavo, is dated April 9, 177 5 : — "Not
I, but Heinrich Leopold Wagner has written and printed the
1 Goethe to Knebel, April 14, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 79-80.— Tr.
2 Goethe, writing to Johanna Fahlmer [beginning of April 1775], makes
this declaration. Der junge Goethe, iii. 78. — Tr.
3 See the letter of March 13, 1775, already quoted. Der junge Goethe,
iii 08  Tr. 4 In MS. — Tr. 6 Der junge Goethe, iii. 79.— Tr.

224 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi.
Prometheus, without my participation, without my knowledge.''
The Declaration appeared in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen
ofthe 2 ist: — "I consider," it says, "this declaration due to
those who love me and believe my word. Otherwise, I should
be quite content to regard this as an opportunity of quietly
learning more exactly the characters of various people from
their behaviour towards me." He sent the Declaration to
Knebel on the 14th, unaware that Knebel, commissioned by
the Hereditary Prince of Weimar, had already made inquiry
of Salzmann about the farce. On the 15 th Goethe sent a
copy of the Declaration to Klopstock.1
Jacobi passionately lamented the denouement of Stella (the
play had been sent to him by Tante Fahlmer) as injurious
to morals, and earnestly urged that it should be changed.
Goethe was "wild" with him;2 he had hoped that his friend
would, in Stella as in Werther, recognise the warmth of the
writer's heart. Yet he soon grew composed, and wrote Jacobi
a "mystic" letter; which he7 however, did not send, not
deeming it worthy of the nearness of their friendship. Soon
he found himself composed enough to speak out his full soul
to his friend, who cannot desire to misinterpret him.
On the 14th of April, when sending the Declaration to
Knebel, he writes that : he falls from one entanglement into
another, and is again stuck fast with his poor heart unex
pectedly in all participation of the common lot of man, from
which he had but just rescued himself with difficulty. He
has been doing all kinds of things, and yet but little ; a play
\Claudine\ will soon be ready ; his civil functions he performs
with such mysterious stealth, as though he were engaged in
smuggling ! To Klopstock, in that letter written on the follow
ing day— the 15th April — he confides that he is pretty much
as he was when they last parted, only that it often grows
worse ; but then a dew-drop of the Universal Balsam, which
falls from above [he means his confidence in his destiny];
makes all well again. At this period he was looking forward
very eagerly to the coming of the Counts Stolberg.3 Beside
1 See for these letters and a reprint of the Declaration, Der jungi
Goethe, iii. 79, 81, 82. — Tr.
2 " Wild konnt' ich wohl iiber Fritzen werden ; bos nie." Goethe to
Johanna Fahlmer [April 1775]. Der junge Goethe, iii. 82. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Auguste Grafin Stolberg, 15th April 1775 : — " Ach Gott

Jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 225
Claudine he had on hands the reading through of Lavater's
Physiognomische Fragmente in manuscript; on the 19th of
April, just before setting out on a business-journey, he sent
the latter part of the first volume to the publisher ; he had
appended an essay on Rameau, and written a Lied eines
physiognomischen Zeichners. x
A quite unexpected turn in affairs was now brought about
through the arrival of the "merchant -spinster" (" Handeh
jungfer") Helena Dorothea Delph of Heidelberg. This lady,
now almost fifty, who, since 1761, had, with her elder sister,
carried on the business left by their brother, was on an inti
mate footing with Frau Schonemann and the Reformed
(" Reformirten ") families of Frau Schonemann's circle. She
had come to Frankfurt for the Easter Fair, which began on
the 1 8th of April 1775. No sooner had she observed the
odd situation of the two lovers than she — a sworn foe to all
" Langen und Bangen " — resolved to play the mediator. She
had herself introduced to Goethe's parents, and managed to
persuade away all difficulties with them and with Frau Schone
mann so skilfully that both sides gave her full power to act.
So one evening she came to the lovers as they sat together,
and exclaimed with triumphant joy:2 — "Join hands;" con
firming her authority by appeal to their parents' approval.
Liii did put her hand, however slowly, into that of the poet of
Werther ; a deep drawn sigh and the happy lovers fell into
each other's arms, and assured themselves in glowing kisses of
the happiness long expected yet so sudden in its coming.
This private betrothal must have been subsequent to Goethe's
business journey, from which he returned before the 23d April.
Just in the earlier time the young pair seem to have been to
gether a great deal at Offenbach, where Liii stayed with her
uncle D'Orville, whose great garden stretched down to the
Main ; Goethe with Andre' close by. Liii hung a little heart
Ihre Briider kommen, unsre Briider, zu mir ! — " Then in an addition of
the 26th April : — " Wie erwart ichunsere Briider !" Der junge Goethe, iii.
80-1.— Tr.
1 See Goethe's letter to Lavater, 19th April 1775. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 83-4. Goethe returns the original MS. to Lavater, having sent a copy
to Gotter.— Tr.
2 In Dichtung und Wahrheit, xvii. Buch : — " Exclaimed with her
magniloquent air of command." "Mit ihrem pathetisch gebieterisch
Wesen."—T&.

226 • THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi.
in gold by a ribbon from her lover's neck, and gifts were not
lacking on Goethe's side.
Their happiness remained but a short time at the flood,
A satisfactory relation could not be established between the
two families ; not the difference of religion alone, but also the
difference in mode of living, grew more and more prominent
to estrange. Lili's future was painted to her in no attractive -
colours; the singularities of her betrothed, whose life more
than hers had been passed in bourgeois circles, were insisted
on. Then her humours put him out of tune. That his be
loved should form herself by him, live only for him, be merged
in him, began to show as the futile dream of his jealous
soul; and thus was intensified the uneasiness which began
when the yoke of a new love laid upon him proved a fetter to
his genius. So the two, loving each other well, became yet
more and more divided. Then might the cold behaviour of
Lili's family have easily determined Goethe to attempt an
escape from the chains which lay heavy upon him. At prer
sent he rather held back from her society, which gave the
enemy the more advantage to occupy her mind with adverse
thoughts ; and thus each grew gradually stranger to the
other, for they lay passive — a dangerous thing when there: are'
under-currents. About the ioth of May the Counts Stolberg, by Gottingen
and Cassel travelling, came to Frankfurt, where they expected
their friend von Haugwitz from Paris. They slept at an
inn, but found hospitable reception in the Goethes' house.
What a life of freedom here developed, how merrily Goethe's
mother — he called her "Frau Aja" from a scene in the
Haimonskinder — entered into the youthful, high-spirited fun,
lives imperishable in Dichtung und Wahrheit.
As Goethe, sorrowing over the decline of Lili's affection,
longed to go away from home, he decided on visiting, at Em-
mendingen, his sister, of whom he had been so long deprived;
he would accompany the Stolbergs as far as Strassburg, even
already perhaps had planned to go on with them to Switzerland
The very intensity of his suffering for some time back was the
measure by which he now abandoned himself to fleet the
time carelessly. " It is a great joy to us," writes the elder
Stolberg, "that we are to travel with Goethe. A wild, un-
tameable, but very very good young fellow, full of soul and

Jan. -Nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 227
fire. And we love each other so well ; from the first hour we
were heart friends." Goethe had a comrade in sorrow in the
younger Count, Fritz Leopold, who was shortly to hear
whether the maiden whom he loved would be his or no.
Friend Klinger, too, drew close to the Stolbergs. Fritz
Leopold mentions the "new friendship with a young man
Klinger who has a good heart and is a grand poet, and has
taken up his quarters in our rooms."
Before leaving Frankfurt Goethe informed Herder that he
was going to visit his sister for some time. " It is with me as
with thee, dear brother," he says. " I play ball against the
wall, and shuttlecock with the women. I thought a short
time ago I was coming nearer the haven of domestic happi
ness and firm footing in the genuine joy and sorrow of the
earth, but am in miserable fashion flung out again on the wide
sea. . . . Thus I dance my life away upon the thread called
fatum congenitum [the destiny we are born with] ! Wilt shortly
see some of my fresco-painting [Claudine], in which thou wilt
be vexed to see side by side nature in true deep feeling (gut
gefuhlte Natur) and odious locus communis."1
Early on the morning of the 15th of May 1775, after
signing two memorials belonging to one of his cases, he drove
with his three companions to Darmstadt. All of them wore
Werther uniform — a blue coat, yellow waistcoat and trousers ;
and all had round gray hats. Merck, whom they visited in
Darmstadt, went with them to Mannheim. Though he did
not approve of Goethe's journey with the Stolbergs, he was
attracted by the noble presence of the younger, Fritz Leopold.
In Karlsruhe our travellers went to the court. There, stopping
with the Markgraf and Markgrafin, were the two Darmstadt
princesses ; the younger of them, Luise, the destined bride of
the Duke of Weimar, whom Goethe and we have seen starting
for Berlin in May 1773, talked with enthusiasm of Switzerland
and Lavater. The young poet was enchanted with her. " Luise
is an angel," he wrote to Tante ; " the gleaming star could
not prevent me from picking up some flowers which fell from
her bosom, and which I preserve in the pocket-book where
the heart is."2
1 Goethe to Herder [Frankfurt, May I77S1- Der junge Goethe, iii.
85-6.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer : "a quarter oi a league from Strass-

228 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
On the 21st of May the Weimar princes with von Gortz
and Knebel arrived ; for the betrothal of the Hereditary Prince
and Luise was to be concluded here, on which account Pre
sident von Moser also had come. The Hereditary Prince
had a bad cold. He showed himself favourable to Goethe, as
did the other princely and distinguished personages. With
Knebel Goethe had confidential intercourse ; Knebel disliked
France very much.
On the evening of the 23d of May our travellers reached
Strassburg. Here Goethe had the delight of intimate com
panionship with Lenz, who had matriculated last autumn, and
was now supporting himself mainly by private teaching. They
dined together on May 24th, at the inn to which they had for
merly so often resorted, on the 111, about a quarter of a league
from Strassburg. From this inn, after dinner, Goethe writes to
Tante, that he hopes something from the stage presentation of
Erwin, soon to come off in Frankfurt — not as an author.
He had asked her 1 to write telling him all about the perform
ance, and whether Liii were present ; for he hoped, as we
know, that the unhappy lover thus moving and speaking
before her on the stage would touch her heart " This old
place now so new again ! The Past and the Future." All
is better than he had thought ; he finds everything dear
and good — perhaps because he loves ? " So much this
time of the Bear broken free ; of the escaped Cat !  1
have seen a great, great deal. A grand book the world
to learn lessons of discretion from — if it only were of any
avail !"2
Next day he was witness how Friedrich Stolberg bore the
news that his Sophie merely felt friendship towards him, not
love. Goethe suffered with his friend;3 who esteemed his
loss greater than the death of his beloved would have been,
since now not death, but she herself deprived him of herself.
To Goethe, on the cathedral platform— where he found his
name uneffaced — all his own Sessenheim love must have been
burg," Wednesday, May 24, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 88-9. "The
heart " — the little golden heart which Liii had given him. — Tr.
1 Writing on May 16, 1775, from Mannheim. Der junge Goethe, iii.
86-7. — Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 88-9.— Tr.
3 Sec Goethe to Auguste Stolberg : Frankfurt, July 25, 1775. Der
junge Goethe, iii. 91. — Tr.

/an.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 229
vividly recalled to mind. Probably Lenz at this time gave
him by no means the best account of Friederike -,1 so that with
his Lili-burthened (lilischweren) heart he can hardly have felt
any desire to see her.
He stayed in Strassburg until the 27 th of May, detained
by old memories and old friends ; among the latter, the good
Salzmann, who had been his confidant in the love of five years
ago. Then he hastened, without companion, to his sister in
Emmendingen ; who could only advise him earnestly to break
off a connection, a sufficient objection to which, were there no
other, would be the inequality in external rank of the families.
And yet he could promise her nothing. Here he probably
first let his father know that he was going to Switzerland. To
Tante Fahlmer, who had given him such a nice account of
the performance of Erwin, he writes on the 5 th of June,
shortly before leaving Emmendingen : — "I am going to
Schaffhausen to see the Rhine Falls, to wrap myself in the
great idea ; for yet, I feel, the chief aim of my journey has
been missed, and if I return [immediately (Trans.)], it will be
worse with the Bear than before. I know well that I am a
fool, but therefore I am one yet. And why should one put
out the -tiny lamp that shines so prettily in front along one's
way of life, and makes the darkness twilight?"2 From
Emmendingen too he sent Claudine to Knebel, writing: —
" Read it to our Duke in a free hour. No transcribing ! I
beg particularly (gar schbn). Thanks for your note. It is a
real pleasure that you are not averse to me. To His Serene
Highness everything that is heartfelt from me."3 On the
7th, writing from Schaffhausen, before he has gone to the
Rhine Falls, he says to Tante : — " It is right well with me—
could I only plunge right deep into the world ! I suppose,
however, I shall soon be back with you again." i His constant
fellow-traveller, Love, would draw him homewards.
With the warmest joy he greeted his friend Lavater at
Zurich, on the 8th of June. In Lavater's paternal house he
1 Anything that Lenz said to Friederike's discredit was, however,
untrue. — Tr. . .
2 This letter will be found, Der junge Goethe, 111. 87-88 ; it is there
dated : [Strassburg, 22d Mai 1775]- — Tr- _ ,
3 Goethe to Knebel : Emmendingen, June 4, 1775. Der junge Goethe,
iii_ gn_  Tr. i Der junge Goethe, iii. 90.— Tr.

230 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi.
enjoyed the happiness of the purest family life; and as he
¦gazed from its roof at the wondrous view of lake and dis
tant snowy mountain-range, a heavenly peace stole over him.
The visit of the great poet was a high honour done to Lavater
in the presence of numerous secret enemies, who were
stirred to still greater jealousy when they found Goethe
restrict himself wholly to Lavater and his circle — among all
the celebrities of Zurich only visiting the patriarchs of German
Literature Bodmer and Breitinger, and Gessner the idyllic
poet, whose name was prized even in foreign lands. Those
of the opposition were very angry with Goethe for thus slight
ing them ; and after his departure many bitter things were
written in Zurich of the author of Werther. The close com
munion with Lavater did the love-sick poet a great deal of
good ; though Lavater's mild hortation could not blot out
the memory of Liii, nor yet produce in him a firm resolve to
hold her fast despite all hindrances.
One day after Goethe the Stolbergs arrived in Zurich,
where they too were warmly greeted by Lavater ; with
Haugwitz they took a country house on the Sihl. On June
1 2th Goethe informs Mama Sophie that he, in company with
Lavater, the Stolbergs, Haugwitz, and other good young
fellows, has been to see the peasant Jakob Gujer, called
Klijog, in his house at Wermetswyl ; and he sends her a piece
of bread cut for her at the peasant's table. How he rejoiced
to find in this man, whom Hirzel fourteen years before had
brought before the world's notice as a " moral philosopher
peasant :" — " No ideal from the clouds, thank God ! but one
of the noblest beings, as this earth from which we too have
sprung brings such forth."1 The "good young fellows" were
probably his fellow-townsmen — Passavant, a theological student,
now three-and-twenty, intimate with Lavater, and the teacher
of music Kayser, now living in Zurich.
As Goethe would not remain in Switzerland as long as
the Stolbergs, he set out with Passavant on a delightful journey
through the Lesser Cantons. How the love for Liii followed
him everywhere, troubling his full delight, — though without it
he would have no happiness, — causing him to begin his
journey back on the morning of her birthday, June 23, when
1 Goethe to Frau von Laroche : "At Lavater's desk, the 12th June
1775." Loeper, pp. 108-9. — Tr.

JAN. -Nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 231
at the summit of the Gotthard, has been charmingly told us
by the poet himself.1 On that morning of return he kissed
the little golden heart, Lili's gift, still hanging on his neck.
On his arrival in Zurich, on June 25, he again made
one of the cheery party of the Stolbergs. With Lavater, all
sources of depression or exaltation to either were discussed —
the Physiognomische Fragmente, the friends they had in com
mon, the petty opponents who only deserved contempt, also
repeatedly the relation to Liii. Of new personal acquaintance
ships formed by Goethe at this time, the most important were
those with Lavater's dear friend Pfenninger, and Frau Barbara
Schultheiss, praised by Lavater as "ever the same;" she is
greeted in Goethe's letters as " Ba.be." Before Wolfgang left
Zurich a letter from his mother, dated June 28, came to
Lavater ; in it she begs the Counts to whom she entrusted
her Wolfgang, to send him back to her now, since the time is
growing very long to Frau Aja by herself.
Not until the 5th July 1775 did Goethe leave Zurich ; the
Stolbergs had two days earlier left for the Lesser Cantons.
In Strassburg our poet was again in a very significant way to
have his thoughts turned on Weimar. He met there the
famous physician Zimmermann from Hannover, who last year
had written him an enthusiastic letter about Werther. Zim
mermann, who for a few days — from the ioth until the 14th
or 15th — was staying with his son, a Strassburg student,
showed Goethe ten silhouettes ; among them was one of Frau
von Stein, whose husband, in the retinue of the Duke of
Weimar, he was already acquainted with. Her face robbed
Goethe of three nights of sleep. He wrote under her por
trait : — "It would be a glorious spectacle to see how the
world mirrors itself in this soul. She sees the world as it is,
and yet through the medium of love. Thus, too, gentleness
is the general impression."
He had again a friendly time with Lenz and Salzmann.
On the occasion of ascending the cathedral he wrote the re
markable Dritte Wallfahrt nach Erwins Grab (Third Pilgrim
age to Erwin's Grave), which connects with the work formerly
dedicated to Erwin's memory.2 When he looked from above
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xviii. Buch (close) and xix. Buch (begin
ning). — Tr.
2 For the Dritte Wallfahrt see Der junge Goethe, iii. 694. Von

232 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
on the grand expanse, his glances roamed "homewards, love-
wards." On the platform he and Lenz talked of the neces
sity of true creative power for the production of genuine art
work.1 In Darmstadt, to his greatest joy, he found Herder, grown
much gentler in the two years of separation, and Herder's
wife ; joined by Merck, they all proceeded to Frankfurt to
gether. Their hearts were opened to each other again ; even
though Liii were a little forgotten. Herder submitted his
Exposition of the Revelation of John to Goethe.
To visit Liii, to excuse his unceremonious departure and
his silence was a hard task, but the compulsion of love was
irresistible ; he believed he could not live without the maiden.
She seems to have received her repentant truant with open
heart. Yet he was not happy; with all her warm affection
she, as we have noticed before, lacked that fire of passion
which his soul craved, and ugly forebodings crept over him
that the connection which her family disliked so was not
going to last. And in truth his temporary absence had made
it easier for his opponents ¦ to cast a slur on his fidelity.
Maximiliane Brentano, who during his absence had been
much in his mother's society, was now again visited by him at
her own house. There, on the evening of the 31st, they
" fiddled and piped," so he tells Frau von Laroche.2 Yet of
a letter to Gustchen the portion written on that very day of
" fiddling and piping " is full of melancholy.3
The three months which followed — the last that he spent
in his native city — were the most passion-tossed of all his life.
Writing on the 1st of August, he indeed informs Knebel —
from whom, and from the Duke, he would fain hear some
thing — that he finds himself a good deal better, quite content
with the Past, and full of hope for the Future ;4 but soon that
stormy unrest took hold on him again.
We find him at Offenbach on the 3d of August, Liii being
there then also. " I have given her thy greeting," he writes
Deutscher Baukunst, it will be remembered, is dedicated : — D. M. Ervini
a Steinbach. Der junge Goethe, ii. 204. — Tr.
1 These particulars from the Wallfahrt. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von La Roche, August 1, 1775. Loeper, pp. 114-
115.— Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, iii. 91-2. — Tr. 4 Ibid. iii. 92. — Tr.

Jan.-nov. 1773.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 233
to Lavater. " I will immediately send thee her silhouette —
womanly. Make something for her in verse which may
strengthen and confirm her in what is good. Thou canst do
good and thou wilt"1 The same day, in Lili's room, urged by
anguish, he opens his heart to his friend in Copenhagen. He
had not sent her any letter since the 26th of" April2 — three
months of silence : — " What depression ! O that I could see
everything ! Here in the chamber of the maiden who makes
me wretched, yet is not to blame, with the soul of an angel,
whose cheerful days I darken! I! ... In vain, that I
three months [so long did his journey seem to him !] have
wandered in the open air, and drunk through every sense a
thousand fresh impressions. Angel ! and I sit again in Offen
bach, simple as a child, limited as a parrot on its perch."3
They missed him in the house — D'Orville's house. Liii, to
her surprise, found him in her room, but begged him to
remain ; she would go and dress in another room. (Accord
ing to a family tradition Lili's mother took this piece of heed
lessness exceedingly ill.) In the afternoon Liii rode out ac
companied by D'Orville and Goethe. " You should have seen
the angel in riding-dress on horseback," he writes next day,
the 4th, to Lavater; and, after delivering to his friend the
greetings of Liii and the Princess of Waldeck, he proceeds : —
"And to me God will be gracious. N.B. — I have been for
a while back again pious, have my joy in the Lord, and sing
psalms unto His Name, thereof shalt thou very soon experience
a vibration (davon du ehstens eine Schwingung haben sollst)."i
Lavater is also to note down what he would desire Goethe to
see after for him in Italy. Here, accordingly, we find that
twelve days after his return he had the Flight to Italy in his
mind should a breach ensue. Yet he stayed a considerable
time longer in Offenbach with Liii.
1 Goethe to Lavater, August 3, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 96. — Tr.
2 The letter to Auguste, mentioned half a page back, written partly on
July 25th, partly on July 31st, was not yet despatched; it was lying in
Frankfurt at the present date, and was found afterwards and sent on. —
Tr. 3 Goethe to Auguste Stolberg [Offenbach], August 3, 1775. Der
junge Goethe, iii. 93-6. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Lavater, August 4, 1775. Der Junge Goethe, iii. 96-7.
(Is there a reference to the translation of the Song of Solomon in the
above ?) — Tr.

234 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
One member of the society around them there was the
second Reformed preacher, Johann Ludwig Ewald, two years
older than Goethe, and his betrothed, daughter of the Frank
furt merchant Dufay. It was in this time that Goethe fell
asleep one night on the Muhtberg (not the Rbderberg), an
incident which he has so charmingly described.1 Only
occasionally did he go even so far as Frankfurt.
On the 17 th of August we find him writing in D'Orville's
house, while Liii at the breakfast-table, in neglige", with her
back turned to him, sips her coffee. He is writing to the
Berlin poetess of nature, Madame Karschin, who thought
very highly of him. "Perhaps the invisible scourge of the
Eumenides will soon lash me out of my Fatherland, probably
not northwards."2 He speaks much more plainly a few days
later, writing to Merck from Frankfurt ; he is again miserably '
stranded, and could give himself a thousand cuffs for not
having gone to the devil when he was afloat [was on the
Gotthard]. He is on the watch for a new opportunity of
getting away ; he even thinks of flight against his parents' will,
if Merck will advance him some money ; at any rate Merck,
when next he sees Rath Goethe, must try to procure that
Wolfgang be sent to Italy before the year closes.3 His hope
of kindling Liii to passion like that which glows in Stella had
proved vain ; she seemed incapable of such passion, though
ready to do anything for her lover, and even — in their happier
moments — altogether bewitched by him.
The conflict between hope and desperation dragged on for
five weeks more. Writing to Tante Fahlmer at this period-
after declaring himself opposed to the publication of Fritz
Jacobi's novel, Allwills Papiere, in spite of the good things
in it — he goes on : — " And I — The Intricacies of Diego and
Julia, First Pari — talk always in the deepest melancholy to
myself and to my ass, while a whole little world occupies itself
with my affairs."4 (He refers here to Slawkenbergius' Tale in
Tristram Shandy — Bode had lately published a good transla
tion — the tale of the long-nosed Stranger, who, as he rides
from Strassburg to Frankfurt, talks, sometimes to himself,
1 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xvii. Buch. — Tr.
2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 97-9. — Tr. 3 Hid. iii. 99-100. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [August 1775]. Der junge Goethe, iii-
102.— Tr.

jan.-nov. 1775.] Advocate and poet. 235
sometimes to his mule, sometimes to his Julia : — " O Julia,
my lovely Julia." At the end of this tale another, " the tenth
of the tenth decade," " a tale indeed," is — not told — but de
scribed thus : — "It sets out with the first interview in the inn
at Lyons, when Fernandez left the courteous Stranger [Diego]
and Julia alone in her chamber and is over-written, The Intri
cacies of Diego and Julia.") Goethe's words signify that, , as
yet, only the First Part of his love-intricacies has been played,
causing as much excitement in Frankfurt as did the long nose
of that Stranger in Strassburg. In the last sentence he seems
to have mischievously chosen the Frankfurt dialect1
To this period falls the touching lament, Herbstgefiihl y2
autumn will ripen the grape-clusters round his window, but
not mature his love to bliss. We have no evidence of his
state of mind on his birthday — a day always of serious reflec
tion. Liii can hardly have made him happy with a gift as did
Lotte in Wetzlar ; he had sent her no token of love on her
birthday, though he probably had told her how, on that day,
the golden heart had turned his footsteps homewards.
At the beginning of September we find him in Frankfurt,
somewhat calmer. On the 2d or 3d he visited the Academi
cian and Professor Sulzer of Berlin, the famous Theorist on
Art — Goethe had left his theories far behind3 — a friend of
Zimmermann but of Nicolai too. The sickly man, deeply
prejudiced against the poet of Werther, could find little plea
sure in this "Original Genius," holding him to be a sort of
monstrosity (Meerwunder), however pleasant and winning in
social intercourse. Herder has spoiled Goethe — he wrote two
months later to Zimmermann — Goethe is destroying a hundred
others. Goethe was now urging Lavater to hurry on with the
second part of the Physiogfiomische Fragmente. They will
make a charming chapter to prove the real line of beauty in
the line of love, the point where strength and weakness unite.
1 "Weilst eine ganze kleine Welt sich nach mir beschafftigt." — Tr.
2 At first called simply Im Herbste, 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii.
191-2. — Tr.
3 See the essay on Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kunste (the
first essay which Goethe wrote for the Frankfurter Anzeigen ; it appeared
on February II, 1772), and the essay on Sulzer's Die schonen Kunste in
ihrem Ursprung. (appeared December 18, 1772). Der junge Goethe, ii.
405, 470.— TR.

236 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi.
He sends Lavater a description of the characteristics of Frau
von Stein, and of the Marchesa Branconi, who was so revered by
Lavater and Zimmermann ; the former is the more womanly ;
" conquers with nets," while the latter " conquers with darts."1
On the 7th of September, amid the confusion of the Fair Pro
cession, that word of Ariosto flashed on him, the People is
"worthy of death before birth."2 Contrasted with his own
mighty pain-begetting struggle, he could not but feel intensely
the pettiness, the aimlessness, of the drifting of lower natures,
only at whiles earnest in the pursuit of vulgar pleasures.
On the 8th he had once more to present a memorial in
court ; it was his last ; since his return from Switzerland he
had only appeared in court in this case and in one other,
undertaken at an earlier time — the dates of his appearance are
July 28 and August 7.
He had in this September the pleasure of a visit from
Pestalozzi, who was just then founding the institution after
wards so celebrated ; Pestalozzi was full of Lavater. Goethe
has negotiated successfully with the bookseller Deinet about
the printing of Lavater's drama Abraham und Isaak. Into
this piece, which will make a good wide impression, he would
breathe an aroma here and there of his own little cask3
Probably he wrote the touching prayer of Abraham before
the sacrifice.
On Sunday, the ioth of September, he was at Offenbach
with Liii at Ewald's wedding. He had written for the occasion
the Bundesliedf which was sung by four voices, probably
Andre" and his wife, Liii and the poet The conclusion can
not have been exactly as it now stands, yet it is possible that
Goethe, when the quartette had ceased, may have sung alone
the last sorrowful verse, which speaks his foreboding that
destiny is about to carry him far away. At night, about ten
o'clock, his heart felt so oppressed at sight of the happiness
of the new-married couple that he had to go out into the
night air; he was, as, writing exactly a week later, he tells
1 This letter, probably written towards the close of August 1775, will
, be found Der junge Goethe, iii. 100-2. — Tr.
2 See the letter to Lavater, written in the beginning of September -
1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 1 13-5. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Lavater (continuation of same letter). Der junge Goethe,
iii. 1 14-5. — Tr. 4 Der junge Goethe, iii. 185-6. — Tr.

JAN.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 237
Auguste, " in the most cruel, glorious, sweet condition " (in
der grausamst-feierlichst-sussesten Lage) of his life; through the
hottest tears of love he looked on the moon and the world,
and all around was full of soul and meaning. "And in the
distance the horn, and the loud joyance of the wedding
guests."1 Perhaps a passionate utterance of emotion that
evening in Lili's presence had given offence.
Back in Frankfurt on Sept. 1 ith, he begs Tante Fahlmer to
buy him something for Liii in the Fair : — " Galanterie, Bijou
terie, the newest, the most elegant ! You feel it alone and ,
my love too ! But sacred between us, not a word of it to
Mama. To the Gerocks not a word. I entreat"2 The
rich presents by which he sought to prove his love to Liii (as
Ferdinand seeks to prove his love to Ottilie in the Unter-
haltungen deutschen Ausgewanderten) compelled him to run in
debt ; probably he made at this time the loan of Jacobi, of
which he was reminded seven years later.3
The urgency of Lili's mother grew more and more
effectual. According to a family tradition, when no other re
presentation was strong enough, this unjust story was told to
Liii, that Goethe had betrayed and abandoned the pastor's
daughter of Sessenheim. As the Schonemann firm had close
business connection with Strassburg, the story of Friederike
might easily have reached the family. Lili's friendly con
fiding manner towards the numerous relatives and friends
whom the fair-time brought to the house excited Goethe's
jealousy. Fraulein Delph had indeed again appeared in
Frankfurt, but she prudently recognised how little her media
tion could effect while Lili's family opposed ; she invited
Goethe to Heidelberg. During this time, probably, was
written the humorous poem Lili's Park.*
In his distress he turned again on Sept. 14 to Gustchen;6
the never-seen friend whom he deeply loved ; a Countess of
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 107. — Tr. 2 Ibid. iii. 103. — Tr.
3 On October 2, 1782, Goethe writes to Jacobi about the matter ; so
breaking a long silence. — Tr. 4 Der junge Goethe, iii. 187. — Tr.
5 He wrote a long letter at intervals, from the forenoon of Thursday
the 14th of September until 8 o'clock P.M. on Tuesday the 19th. He
began another to Auguste, then, on Wednesday the 20th at 8 P.M. ; he
continues it on Thursday the 21st, Saturday the 23d; then a long gap
until Sunday October 8th ; then another leap to Weimar, November 22d.
Der junge Goethe, iii. 103-110. — Tr.

238 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iii. ch. vi.
the Empire,1 alas ! She had urged him, once, for all, to give
up the maiden who could not respond to his passion. But-
he felt too deeply that Lili's remoteness from him but drew
the cord of her bewitchment tighter. Continuing the letter a
couple of hours later, the thought had come : — " May it not
be excessive pride, this demand that the maiden should com
pletely comprehend thee, and so comprehending love thee?
I do not, perhaps, comprehend her j and where she is dif
ferent from me is she not, perhaps, better than me?" That
evening he writes : — " To-day a good afternoon, which is rare
— and with great folk, which is rarer stilL I have been able
to like and esteem two princesses in one room." Probably
the Princess of Waldeck and her daughter the Princess of
Nassau-Usingen. On Sept. 15 th he has a plan of appearing
at a masked ball, to take place on the 1 9th, in old German
costume in honour of Liii, for whom he is "booked" (" de-
klarirt ") ; but in the afternoon he hears that she will not be
at the ball. Her family wanted to avoid a public meeting
between the lovers. After a dream-tossed night he has, on
the 16th, "an open and good morning;" then he did some
thing " to give Liii a little pleasure " (probably he sent her
that present bought by Tante Fahlmer) ; then strangers
called on him ; in the afternoon he plunged into the tumult
of the fair.2 Then, however, he fled to Offenbach; hurt that
Liii should so plainly withdraw herself from his society he
will avoid seeing her either at the theatre that evening or at
the concert to-morrow — Sunday. At Offenbach, on Sunday
morning, he writes a scene of Faust ; probably AuerbacKs
Keller.3 Back on Monday morning to town, to the " sieve of
the Danaides;" arrived, he mixes with the merry crowds of
the Fair. Late at night he writes to Auguste : — " What is
the life of man ! And yet again the many good people who
1 In a letter of Goethe's to the Counts Stolberg he says : — " Gustgen.
is an angel. Devil take it that she is a Countess of the Empire." Der
junge Goethe, iii. 115. — Tr.
2 ' ' Chattering foolishly with acquaintances and non-acquaintances."
— Tr.
3 See the passage Der junge Goethe, iii. 107, in which Goethe likens
himself to a rat who has taken poison. Compare also the " altdettlsche
Tracht," Ibid. iii. 105, with Mephistopheles' attention to costume ; Goethe
in Lili's room, iii. 95, with Faust in Margarete's ; and many other points
in these letters to Auguste, already noted by commentators. — Tr.

jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 239
g^her to me ! the exceeding love which surrounds me ! Saw
Liii this afternoon [on a walk] ; saw her at the theatre. Have
had no word to say to her ; said nothing either I1 That I were
free ! O Gustchen, and yet I tremble to think of the time
when she might be indifferent, I without hope. But I remain
true to my heart and let the thought pass."
These were the days of the extremest crisis ; but one tear
more and they would stand asunder. On the morning of Sept.
19 there is again a stirring on Lili's behalf in his heart ; yet,
defying her, he will go to the ball in a light domino. "lam
wretched, astray, lost," he laments to Auguste. In the even
ing he goes first to the theatre. On his return, before dress
ing for the ball, at eight o'clock he writes : — " What a life !
Shall I go on ? or end with this for ever ? And yet, dearest,
on the other hand, when I feel that, in the midst of all this
Nothingness, there are so many sloughs being cast by my
heart ; that so the convulsive strainings of my foolish little
composition abate, my outlook on the world grows cheerier, my
intercourse with men surer, more solid, wider ; while yet my
secret soul continues ever, eternally, alone, dedicated to sacred
love, which, by degrees, purges all foreign matter by that Spirit
of Purity, which it is, and so at last shall grow pure as gold
that is spun — then I let things take their course — deceive my
self, perhaps, — and thank God." He went to the ball then,
and stayed at it until six next morning ; danced only two
minuets, but gave his companionship to a " sweet maiden "
who had a cough. On the afternoon of Sept. 20 he visits
the Princes of Meiningen. At the theatre he speaks seven
words to Liii. He had now conquered ; his heart had
spoken; he must give up his beloved since she was so entirely
subject to her mother's influence; she could never belong
exclusively to him.
Immediately after this Zimmermann, whom Goethe had
invited through Lavater, came to Frankfurt with his daughter,
a girl of nineteen, whom he had just brought from Lausanne.
This girl, yearning for her lover, was reserved towards Zimmer
mann himself, but Frau Aja knew how to win her affection and
confidence. Goethe says : — " She is not locked in, only has
1 " Hab' kein Wort mit ihr zu reden gehabt — auch nichts geredt."
Does "auch nichts geredt " mean "Nor did Liii say anything"? or does
it mean "Nor did I say anything"? — Tr.

240 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. in. ch. vi.
stepped back, and gently pushed the door to."1 At this
time, beside the Princes of Meiningen, who had invited
Goethe to visit them, the Duke of Weimar was in Frankfurt;
he had entered on his reign on the 3d of September (1775)
and was going to bring home his bride from Karlsruhe.
Zimmermann saw with his own eyes how the Duke was in
love with Goethe. Writing to Frau von Stein, he says that he
passed the happiest days of his life in Goethe's house, where
he observed with wonder the affectionate behaviour of the
great poet to his parents.2
Goethe might well feel deep gratitude due to those who
had borne with him so lovingly in the late time of perplexity.
The day after Zimmermann's departure he writes to Lavater:
— " I lay in bed this morning until ten o'clock, to nurse a
cold; still more to rouse to life again within me the home
feelings which the godless excitement of the last days had
quite flittered away. My father and mother came to the
bedside ; there was confidential chat ; I have drunk my tea,
and so all feels better. I have again a feeling of habitation
within my four walls, however long it lasts."3
But already a new life was provided him. When the
Duke of Weimar, whom Goethe had visited several times,
left for Karlsruhe, he had invited the poet to accompany
himself and his bride on their return to Weimar. Goethe
felt it a call of fate, for Liii being lost to him, Frankfurt,
notwithstanding its many~friendly faces, would be unen
durable. He did not, indeed, contemplate a very long stay
at Weimar; "there, too," he wrote to Merck, "all sorts of
Good, and Whole, and Half will be found;"* he also hoped,
as he tells Mama Sophie, to prepare something friendly for
Wieland's old days.5
In the interim, before the arrival of the Duke and his
1 Goethe to Lavater [end of September 1775]. Der junge Goethe, iii.
112.— Tr.
2 In this letter Zimmermann told Charlotte von Stein what Goethe, in
July 1775, had written under her silhouette. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, iii. III. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Merck [October 1775]. Der junge Goethe, iii. 116. — Tr.
s Goethe to Frau von La Roche, October 11, 1775. Der junge
Goethe, iii. 11 6- 117. Loeper, pp. 11 7-8. (Loeper calls attention t9
another Faust note in this letter : — " Dass das Schicksal den Miitteni
solche Schwerter nach dem Herzen ziickt.") — Tr.

jan.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 241
bride, Goethe remained quietly in Frankfurt ; he paid, too, a
visit of parting to Offenbach. There report will have him
present, playing merry pranks, at the baptism of a son of
Andre", who was born on the 6th of October; this boy was
afterwards a celebrated composer, theorist, and publisher.
The invitation to Weimar was a defence and shield against all
gossip. No law work at this time, except that, as proctor for
the heirs of Fraulein Klettenberg he, in October, drew up a
receipt for the effects ; even at Weimar the adjustment of the
affairs of his dear dead friend was to occupy him.
To this period probably falls his free translation of the
Song of Solomon ; " the most splendid collection of love
lyrics that God has made."1 Besides he looked more closely
into the sources of his Egmont, and tried to complete this
" Volk " drama which he liked so well. It was at this time,
too, probably, that the beginning of a novel which he brought
to Weimar was written.
Writing to his old friend Merck after a long silence he
asks the loan of ten carolins ; he had incurred debts lately,
and did not wish to make his father angry. Some time
earlier he, probably from lack of money, had given over his
Stella and Claudine to Merck, who was to find publishers for
them. For he had fallen out with all who had published for
him as yet, believing that they had treated him ill ; in general
had such a grudge against booksellers that he objected to
personal negotiating with them, and, strange enough, he would
not trouble Reich, his old Leipzig friend, with his writings,
because publishing was a business matter. Thus the poet of
Gotz and Werther found it hard to get a publisher for his
latest works !
The Duke of Weimar and his bride arrived in Frankfurt on
the 1 2th of October. When leaving on the 13th they begged
Goethe in the most friendly way to follow them to Weimar, in
the company of Kammerrath2 von Kalb, now left behind in
1 So Goethe tells Merck in the letter already once quoted, and referred
to again in the following paragraph. Der junge Goethe, iii. 116. See
the translation reprinted — fragmentary in Scholl, Briefe und Aufsatze
Goethes, 1846, p. 155-6— entire in Loeper, Goethe-Laroche, 127-139.—
Tr.
2 Kammerrath = Member of the Board of Finance. _ Not to confound
with Kammerherr = Chamberlain. Kammer has distinct meanings in
the two words. — Tr. R.

242 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. hi. ch. vi
Karlsruhe ; in a few days Kalb was to arrive with a new landau
from Strassburg. Goethe bade farewell to all his friends, that
he might be ready for departure at any moment He was to
take with him, as servant, the faithful Philipp Seidel. But
there was the most incomprehensible delay in the arrival of
the carriage, for Kalb was so thoughtless as not to write a
word of explanation. To escape the buzz of tongues Goethe
remained shut up at home, so that everywhere his friends
supposed him gone. Only at night, wrapped in a long cloak,
did he venture to roam about the city ; only on one maiden
whom he held dear — probably she with whom he had talked
at the ball on the 19th of September — did he venture to call;
where, in order to prevent recognition, he had to sit in the
children's playroom.
From this room he writes about six o'clock on the evening
of the 1 8th of October to Burger : — " The first moments of
collectedness, which by a crazy turn of things, by a lettre de
cachet of destiny, have fallen upon my heart," after that most
perplexed three-quarters of a year.1 How it shall fare with
him now God knows ; there will be yet greater disquietude, yet
more perplexity for him ; then will he think with pleasure of
the present moment. He has written all sorts of things that
will give Burger a good hour [he more particularly means
Stella and Faust] ; " yet are we one and all sinners, and fall
short of the glory which we should have in the presence of
our Mother Nature."2
The longer the delay, the more confident and annoying
grew his father's assertion that they were making fun of
Goethe to avenge the satire on Wieland. Meanwhile Egmont
grew rapidly ; so did his affection for the young maiden, the
only friend whom he saw in this uneasy time.
At last, since he would neither go alone to Weimar, nor
stay in Frankfurt, he yielded to his father's persuading, and
agreed to go to Italy. Before setting out he begged Knebel :!
to send him the letters and packets which might have come '
to Weimar for him;3 for he had told his friends to address
to him either at Privy-Councillor Karl von Kalb's, where he
was to have stopped, or at Wieland's house. He said nothing
to Knebel of the proposed flight to Italy, on which he set .
1 See ante, p. 213. — Tr. 2 Der junge Goethe, iii. 118-119.— TR.
3 Goethe to Knebel, October 1775. Der junge Goethe, iii. 118. — Tr.

JAN.-nov. 1775.] ADVOCATE AND POET. 243
forth October 30. How, beginning this journey, from which
a delightful fragment of diary is still preserved,1 he delayed —
hoping that the carriage would yet arrive in Frankfurt — some
days at the house of Fraulein Delph in Heidelberg, (where,
probably, he addressed to Lili's little golden heart that song2
which he erroneously attributes to the summit of the Gott-
hard) ; how Fraulein Delph would have him marry the
daughter of Landschreiber and Hofrath3 Wrede, father of the
Prince von Wrede of a later time ; how the timely arrival of
a courier from Kalb summoned him back to Frankfurt ; how
with difficulty he delivered himself from the importunity of
his hostess, who would fain have kept him for the Palatinate :
all is to be read in Goethe's charming narrative.4
Perhaps, before leaving Frankfurt, he got the twenty
thalers, the price demanded for Stella by Merck, and for
warded by bookseller Mylius of Berlin to Weimar, probably
accompanied by the remark that the price was rather high, an
opinion which Mylius had certainly signified to Merck already.
If so the strange coincidence must have seemed like a piece
of mockery to him ; Stella, now reckoned dear at a few thalers,
recalled the early time of love for Liii, in whom it had failed
to strike the passionate chord.
It is odd that shortly before he left Frankfurt, on the 2d
November, he wrote begging friend Reich to procure for him,
and send by post -car, eleven of Hamann's works.5 What
impelled him just at this moment to Hamann !
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 697-9. — Tr.
2 "Angedenken du verklungner Freude." Der junge Goethe, iii. 183.
Dichtung und Wahrheit, xix. Buch. — Tr.
3 Landschreiber=C\eik of a provincial court. Hofrath =Aulic Coun
cillor or Court Councillor. — Tr.
4 Dichtung und Wahrheit, xx. Buch (end). — TR.
5 Derjtmge Goethe, iii. 120. — Ta.

BOOK IV.
THE WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE
CHAPTER I.
from goethe's arrival in weimar to his appointment on
the council.
November 1775-JuNE 1776.
On the 7th of November 1775, at about five o'clock in the
morning, the Duke's landau, which had travelled all night
through with Kammerrath von Kalb, Goethe, and Goethe's
servant, Philipp Seidel, arrived in Weimar.
Johann August Alexander von Kalb was the son of
Efficient (wirklich) Geheimerath and Kammerprasident1 Karl
Alexander von Kalb, who, four years ago, had in vain sought
release from his post. The son had been a Kammerrath
three years. During the long drive Goethe had had time
enough to put many questions to his companion, who, thought
less and giddy, was yet well versed in Weimar affairs ; and
Goethe learned all that was useful for determining his conduct
on arrival. He found rooms for his reception prepared in
Kalb's father's house. To the first midday meal a large com
pany of guests had been invited in honour of the poet Here
Wieland, whom they set beside Goethe, first saw the poet of
Werther, and at once fell in love with the splendid youth,
nobly forgetting all his ridicule. The younger Kalb probably
conducted Goethe to the Duke, who brought him to the
Duchess. That evening there was free Assembly (Redoute)
1 Geheimerath = Member of the Privy Council. Kammerprasident^-
President of the Board of Finance. — Tr.

Nov. 1775-JUNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE.

245

at Court, and Goethe had an opportunity of making acquaint
ance with high life. Frau von Stein was just then staying at
her estate Kochberg, near Rudolstadt.
To the Duchess, now but three weeks in Weimar, the
careless, jolly life that her husband still kept up with the
crack-brained comrades of his youth, the lack of beseeming

Fig. iS. Karl August, Duke of Sachsen- Weimar-Eisenach. After an engraving
by Lips (1780).
house-room, the absence of court etiquette, were extremely
trying. The Castle of Weimar had been burnt down in May
1774, and so the House then being built for the Estates of
Weimar, had in the summer of 1774 to be hastily made into
the residence of the Princes, a purpose for which it was not
suited. There was much improvement to be desired whether
you regarded its accommodation of room -space, its hurried
fittings up, its decoration. At the time of Goethe's arrival,
the Duke had appointed no Chamberlains (Kammerherrn), to
the extreme annoyance of the Duchess and her Master of the

246 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
Household (Oberhofmeister), the grave Count von Gortz. The
Duchess was afraid that on Goethe's coming her husband's.
wild doings would become yet wilder.
The Dowager Duchess, now but thirty- six, very kind-
hearted, fond of fun, earnestly delighting in Literature and
Art, received the. famous poet with great cordiality. On the
other hand Prince Constantin, somewhat delicate, inclined to
quiet domestic enjoyments, was rather restrained in manner
towards the favourite of his brother. Prince Constantin
lived just then with his mother in the "Palais" on the
Esplanade ; not until the year following did he remove with
Knebel to the domain of Tiefurt, which had been made ready
for him; it lies about three-quarters of a league east of
Weimar. On the 8th of November we find Goethe dining at the
Court; as he is not of the nobility, and has no military or
civil rank, he has to sit at the Marshal's table. We meet him
there again on the ioth and 1 2th. He much preferred dining
with the Duke in his private room, or at Wieland's house, or
Knebel's, or even with the Duchess Amalia. Though his
vivacious frankness made Wieland a little timorous a few
times, they were soon on terms of the warmest friendship.
(Writing on November ioth to Jacobi, Wieland says : — "Since
this morning my soul is full of Goethe, as is a dewdrop of
the morning sun;" he was to Wieland unspeakably great, and
important, and dear.) Knebel, too, pleased Goethe. To his
delight he found his fellow-townsman, George Melchior Kraus,
here in Weimar, the head of the newly- established Drawing
School for boys and girls. He was soon on the best terms with
the friends of the Duke's youth, the inseparable comrades of
the present ; with the handsome, tall, drily witty Hof-und fagd-
junker von Wedel ; with the jovial Hof-und Regierungsrath^f
Hildebrand von Einsiedel, of fine culture, an enthusiastic
lover of poetry and music. And Goethe was soon intimate
with the Duke's private secretary Bertuch, two years his
senior, like himself a lawyer and a writer of drama !
Being the Duke's guest Goethe could not refuse to join in
the boisterous doings to which he was invited; indeed the
1 Hof-und Jagdjunker = Gentleman or Page of the Court and of the
Hunt. Hof-und Regierungsrath = Court Councillor and Government
Councillor. — Tr.

Nov. 1775-jUNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE.

247

Duke, thinking to give his new friend pleasure, grew for the
time noisier and wilder than ever. Thus the Duchess found
each day more cause to view the poet's arrival with disfavour,
even had not Gortz, of whom she thought so much, and other

Fig. 19. The Duchess Amalia. After the painting by Angelica Kauflmann.
courtiers, been enraged to see her husband on such familiar
terms with the young poet, to whose charge, of course, was
laid much that displeased them in the Duke's behaviour. In
any case her stiff, aristocratic pride would have felt hurt by
this close intimacy with one of burgher rank, though she re
cognised the intellectual merit of the splendid youth. The

248

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. IV. CH. I.

Duke immediately gave Goethe the familiar " Du" while the
latter replied to his " dear, gracious master '" with " Sie " —
only using "Du" in moments of the greatest familiarity — or
called the Duke his "KarL" His letters never ventured on
the familiar mode of address.
"Frau von Stein had returned about the 10th of November
from Kochberg ; she was at this time a great sufferer, life had
almost entirely lost charm for her. The Duke himself one
evening conducted his new friend to her ; her husband, Oberstall-

Fig. 20. Charlotte Albertine Ernestine von Stein (1790). After the photograph of
the portrait which she, between two mirrors, sketched herself.

meister von Stein, and several acquaintances were present. The
impression which she made at the moment on the young poet,
who had fallen in love with her silhouette, was not so great as
he had expected. For, though the high-born lady was not yet
three and thirty, she — already mother of seven children — was
drooping and ill ; besides, at this first visit, and in the presence
of a considerable company, she may have been rather restrained
in manner. Yet her soul looked out on him clear and sym
pathetic through her great powerful eyes.

NOV. 1775-JUNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 249
A fortnight of the most confidential intercourse with the
young Duke had passed, when Goethe wrote to good Tante
Fahlmer in Frankfurt : — " God knows what I am destined for,
that I am brought through schools so various. This one
gives my life a new impulsion, and all will be well. I can tell
you nothing of my doings : it is too complicated ; but all goes
as could be wished. It makes a wonderful sensation here, as
is to be expected. Wieland is very dear ; we are always to
gether, and I am only too fond of being with his children.
His wife is thoroughly worthy." He greets the "dear"
Gerocks and Maximiliane Brentano : — " Write me something
about the fortunes of these unhappy ones. Adieu ! We shall
have good times together yet upon this earth." 1
On the morning of the 27th he went with the Duke to
Erfurt to visit the Statthalter Dalberg. Kind-hearted, intel
lectual, cultured, a skilful statesman, this Catholic prelate was
one of the most confidential friends of the Weimar Court.2
He had gone to Weimar the day before Goethe's arrival in
order to make his acquaintance. Goethe felt much attracted
by him. On the previous evening (Nov. 26) the Stolbergs arrived
in Weimar, and were delighted to find Goethe with
the Duke. They drove over on the 28th with the whole
Court to Erfurt, where they greeted their "wolf" with vigor
ous rejoicing. During their stay, which lasted until the 3d of
December, the maddest doings went on : Fritz Stolberg espe
cially knew no limits in his wild self-abandonment. Christian
writes : — " We like our life here right well. We live with real
good people — with our wolf and the sovereign family of the
place, who are very good : we go with them to hunt ; we ride
and drive out, and go to the masquerade." And after they
had left, he writes : — " We were very happy there. Our
Goethe was there and is there still ; I have come to love him
even better than before. The whole ducal family is like no
other sovereign family. You can have intercourse with all of
them just as if they were human beings like ourselves. You
know Lowischen [the Duchess] from my description [in an
1 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer, Weimar, November 22, 1775. Der
junge Goethe, iii. 121. — Tr.
2 For a portrait of Statthalter Karl von Dalberg, see Duntzer's Life of
Schiller.— -Tr.

250 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
earlier letter]. Still the same angel ! The old Duchess the
image of personified good sense, and so charming, so natural
withal. The Duke is a splendid youth of great promise, and
so is his brother."
The Stolbergs wanted Goethe to go with them by Dessau
and Berlin to Hamburg ; but the Duke would not hear of it,
however much the poet may perhaps have wished to see his
Gustchen. He did not accept Karl August's invitation to.
visit the Rudolstadt Court with him ; he did not choose to
appear at a foreign court as the Duke's favourite. He used
the occasion to go and see Frau von Stein at Kochberg, where
still, on the inner surface of the simple writing-table, " Goethe.
den 6. Dcbr. 75," written by his own hand, can be read.
Here in her quiet domestic life the noble lady came much
nearer to him : she spoke with keen insight and warm feeling'
of the misunderstandings at the Court, especially of the un-
happiness of the Duchess ; and gave him a deep glance into
her own pure loving soul. And her exhortation to work on
the Duke that a better state of things might come about did
not remain unheeded, though he fully recognised how prudently:
he must act in the matter in order to do good.
He had read aloud his unprinted works to the Duke and
his friends, and had especially won great applause by his
Stella, Egmont, and Faust. Probably it was the Duke who
proposed the founding of a literary society to meet every Satur
day morning over wine and punch. Prince Constantin, Wedel,
Einsiedel, Knebel, Wieland, and Hofrath Albrecht (Jeru
salem's stepson, mathematical tutor to the Prince), all joined
this society. They amused themselves by composing satirical
verses on each other, which they called Matinees, because the
society met in the morning.
After the Duke's society, Goethe valued most that which
he found in Wieland's quiet family circle. Of Wieland he
made a complete confidant. If Goethe had been annoyed at
the Merkur, he now saw that it was unpleasing to Wieland
himself, who, however, needed the income it brought for his1
family expenses. So Goethe gladly contributed, and moved
his friends to sympathy in it.
The cause of his prolonged stay in Weimar was the ques
tion of appointing Herder as Superintendent-General. Being
asked by the Duke whom he would recommend to fill up this

Nov. 1775-juNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 251
post, now vacant for almost five years, Goethe proposed
Herder; and was at once commissioned to inquire of" Herder
" whether he would come.1 Herder's " yes " delighted Goethe
very much, who now felt it a point of honour to carry the
_ appointment despite all opposition — for the moment the clergy
heard of it they were tooth and nail against it.
The enemies of the foreign favourite were thus numerously
reinforced. In him was seen the Evil Principle, to blame for
all that they could have wished otherwise in the Duke — who,
in reality, from the beginning, always did just according to his
own will and pleasure. The leader of the party of opposition
was Count Gortz, who continually stirred the anger of the
Duchess to flame. But even Oberstallmeister von Stein and
his wife were among the malcontents; even Charlotte von
Stein failed to see that Goethe could not play the austere
Mentor with the self-willed Duke, but must at the first humour
his waywardness ; must wait until his fullest trust were won
before speaking unvarnished opinions, before venturing to urge
deliberation and quietness. Thus Goethe did not oppose when
the Duke invited the ex-Lieutenant-Colonel (in the Sardinian
service) Sigmund von Seckendorff of Baireuth, to come to
Weimar before Christmas (1775), in order to enter on the
office of Chamberlain and Privy Councillor of Legation, an
office promised to him before Karl August had become Duke.
In any case Goethe did not at this time purpose remaining in
Weimar.2 He indeed writes to Lavater on the 2 2d of Decem
ber (1775), that, in Weimar he feels as if among his own
people ; the Duke grows daily more valued by him, daily they
become more fast allied. But the Duke's confidence and
the free life were his only subjects of self-gratulation ; he is
" driven about in a dispersed kind of living, and in distrac
tion from morning to night " (" der ich in verbreiteter Wirth-
schaft, und Zerstreuung von Morgens zu Nacht umgetrieben
werde").3 Accordingly he did not go with the Duke on
1 Goethe to Herder [about the ioth of December 1775]- Der junge
Goethe, iii. 122. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Herder, Stetten near Erfurt, January 2, 1776: — "Ich
wunsche Dich meinem Herzog und ihn Dir. Es wird euch beiden wohl
thun, und — ja, lieber Bruder, ich muss das stiften eh' ich scheide." Der
junge Goethe, iii. 130. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Lavater, Friday, December 22, 1775. Der junge Goethe,

252 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
December 23 to the Court of Gotha, where, indeed, at this
time, our poet was not prized; Gotter, his friend of the
Wetzlar days, who owed so much to French influences, bore
the palm there.
A couple of days before Christmas Goethe rode with
Kalb, Einsiedel, and Bertuch, through Jena, to the hamlet of
Waldeck. They stopped at the house of Forester Slevoigt,
whose pretty daughter Bertuch and Kraus wooed in emula
tion. From this place Goethe wrote to the Duke;1 even
copying down some verses which he had sung softly to Liii in
the darkness as he and his comrades rode towards the pine-
forest. The verses express his yearning remembrance of his
beloved, who yet shall find true joy and calm only with souls
direct and honest like her own. (So Goethe had confided the
secret of his heart to the Duke.) Their merry time in Waldeck
is described in this diary-like letter. They skated. Goethe
had already been skating at Weimar with immense enjoy
ment,2 and stimulated others to imitation; his servant Philipp
instructed the beginners. In July 1776 we find Goethe's
father writing that Wolfgang has introduced skating and other
good fashions into Weimar.
The Duke wrote from Gotha reiterating his wish that
Goethe would come thither, as the people were only too
curious about him. Yet the poet could " not yield ; on the
other hand, he gladly went on the 30th with the Duke to see
Dalberg in Erfurt. Thence, in glad consciousness of his in
fluence over the Duke, he writes on Dec. 3 1 to Lavater, that
he is growing daily more skilled in steering on the ocean of
humanity; is far at sea.3 On New Year's Day (1776) he left
Erfurt for Stetten, the country seat of Frau von Keller, where1
he found Wieland. The latter wrote to Frau von Laroche, that
Goethe has been so good, so winning — so unspeakably win-
iii. 122-3 ; (Goethe erroneously dates the letter, Friday, December 21).—
Tr.
1 Goethe to Karl August: Waldeck, December 23, 1775, continued
on Sunday the 24th, and on Christmas Day. Der junge Goethe, iii. 124-
8.— Tr.
2 See the Eis-Lebens-Licd, composed when on the ice at Weimar in
December 1775, and, in truth, a record of more than skating. Der junge
Goethe, iii. 192. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Lavater, Erfurt, "the last day of the year 75." Der junge
Goethe, iii. 129. — Tr.

NOV. 1775-jUNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 253
ning — that they had all like fools fallen in love with him. So
it is with the Duke, too, whose all he is, who will never be
able to let him go.
The chief matter of interest now was Herder's appoint
ment; the Duke was as much for it as Goethe. To hurry
it the Duke at length commissioned Goethe to treat with the
councillors and the President of the Consistorium, which he
did in such summary fashion, that about the 20th of January
he could write to Herder : — " I have driven the fellows along
with tip-top scourges (trejflichen Hetzpeitschen), and without
much more delay you will receive your summons. . . . Per
haps I will stop a while too."1 This personal interference of
Goethe's must have roused bitter feelings. He was himself
just then inconvenienced by want of money, not having
reckoned on so long a stay. On the 5 th of January he had
begged Tante Fahlmer and his mother to consult whether his
father would not be moved " by all the reflecting grandeur of
his son" to give him 200 gulden or even less. If they think
he would not, will they get Merck to lend it2 Not until a
fortnight later (January 1 9) did he get the money from Merck.
When writing to acknowledge it Goethe says : — " I am now
quite entangled in all Court affairs and political affairs, and
shall hardly be able to get away. My position is advantageous
enough, and the Duchies Weimar and Eisenach are at any
rate a stage on which to try how the part of man of the world
becomes one. I am not over hasty in the matter, and free
dom and a competency (Genuge) will be the main conditions
ofthe new arrangement."3 He had by this time engaged the
Duke to order the President of the Supreme Consistory to
appoint Herder Chief Court Preacher, Chief Councillor of
Consistory, Ecclesiastical Councillor, ' and General Superin
tendent. But the Duke was not the only magnet to keep him in
Weimar. Since the middle of January 1776 a deep love for
Frau von Stein had been growing. He had explained to her
his relation with the Duke, whose extravagances he often
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 131. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [January 5, 1776]. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 132. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Merck, Weimar, January 22, 1776. Der junge Goethe,
iii. 134. — Tr.

254 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
joins in solely that he may retain influence; but it is his
fixed purpose to cultivate the Duke's excellent qualities to the
general benefit and to the happiness of their possessor; to
waken in him with all speed real interest in the country and
pleasure in practical activity. But one day calling on her,
Goethe allowed himself to be carried away to such a passionate
declaration of his love, that she felt it . needful not to see him
for several days : she did not even appear at the Redoute of
January 26. "The question keeps throbbing damnably in
heart and head — ' Shall I go or stay ? '" he writes to her on
the 29th, in great agitation.1 But he had made up his mind
long ago : he could not endure to be without Charlotte's
intimate trust ; and so he must submit to all that seemed to
her necessary to keep their relation one of the purest Platonic
love. These passionate outbreaks are best understood when
we compare them with those of the Wetzlar period. Though.
he had renounced Charlotte Buff in full recognition of Kest-
nei^s rights, yet, in the words of the latter, there had been
" many remarkable scenes." Charlotte von Stein had, by the
power of her pure womanhood, by her mild gentleness, by her
loving spirit, roused in him a passion the outbursts of which
she rebuked with the firmness she owed to her duty and her
honour, and punished by temporary withdrawal of her society.
To the last-named measure she was again compelled to resort
about the 1 oth of February ; this time, however, not only did
she absent herself from the Redoute, but just before Shrovetide
went without giving him a word of notice to Kochberg. On
Feb. 12, on the side of the Ettersberg, he made the little
poem Wanderers Nachtlied,2 a thrilling utterance of his yearn
ing for inward peace.
The Duke and he now traversed the country in all direc
tions ; there was no lack of crackbrained frolic on the part of
the young prince, whose freedom had not yet lost the charm
of being new. On the 14th of February Goethe writes to dear
Tante Fahlmer: — "Herder has accepted the call to be
1 We are now soon to lose the invaluable companionship of Der
junge Goethe. For a general collection of Goethe's letters hencefor
ward I have used Goethe's Briefe mit geschichtlichen Einleitungen und
Erlduterungen : Berlin, 1856. This, however, must be supplemented by
the many collections since published, and even by some previously pub
lished. — Tr.
2 " Der du von dem Himmel bist." Der junge Goethe, iii. 194. — Tr.

Nov. 1775-jDNE 1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 255
Superintendent-General. Probably, too, I shall stay and play
my part as well as I can ; and so long as seems good to my
self and to Destiny. Even were it but for a few years, it is
yet better than the inactive life at home, where, with the best
will, I can do nothing. Here, however, I have a couple of
Duchies before me. At present I am engaged in just learn
ing the country ; it is at any rate good fun. And the Duke
thus acquires love for work ; and because I know him entirely
I am perfectly easy on many matters. I am leading a
delightful home-life with Wieland ; I dine and sup with him
when I am not at Court. The girls here are very pretty and
nice ; I am on good terms with all of them. A noble soul is
the Frau von Stein, to whom I am, so one might say, fixed and
nestled (geheftet und genistelt). Louise [the Duchess] and I live
only in glances and syllables together ; she is and always will
be an angel. With the Duchess Mother I have very good
times, and we carry on all sorts of jokes and pranks. You
would not believe how many good youngsters and good heads
are assembled here : we keep together, are very cordial among
ourselves, and dramatise one another ; and hold the Court at
a distance." x Here indeed he shows only the bright side.
It was about this time that the Duke submitted the new
disposition of office in the Privy Council — the highest ad
ministrative body of the two Duchies — to Privy-Councillor
(Geheimerath) Fritsch, who had hitherto occupied the second
place in it According to the Duke's plan, Fritsch was now
to take the first place; the second was then to fall to a
Geheimerath Tabor, to be summoned from Kurmainz — prob
ably at Dalberg's recommendation. The fourth place was
to fall to Goethe, with the title Privy Assistant- Councillor
(Geheimer Assistenzrath). Fritsch made grave objection to
both the new appointments ; in particular he urged Goethe's
"unfitness for so considerable a post." For the time the
matter slumbered; but the Court party continued to grow
more bitter in its opposition to the favourite, who continued
to grow more dangerously powerful. On the 19th of
February we find Goethe himself compelled to write to the
good. Tante : — " Oberstallmeister von Stein is to pass through
Frankfurt very soon, and he will visit my father and mother.
He is a worthy man — deserves a friendly reception ; only let
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 135-6. — Tr.

256 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
no one appear tod enraptured 'with my position here. Further,
he is not altogether pleased with the Duke, like the greater
number at the Court, because he (the Duke) does not dance to
their piping ; and both in public and in private I am blamed
for it"1 Malcontent of the malcontents was Seckendorff, who,
indeed, found a hoped-for post of trust occupied by Goethe,
and who, besides, as a punctilious courtier, must have seen
much to desire in the Duke's behaviour. The Duke, Secken
dorff complained, does not come forth from the circle of per
sons who have had the art to win upon him ; and he faithfully
observes the principle of these counsellors — that there is no
such thing as propriety and decorum ; that all existing arrange
ments have merely been the issue of caprice, and must be set
aside by the head of the State. And yet in reality the Duke
was following solely his own regardless will, and Goethe
exerted his influence but to moderate or to encourage resist
ance to the lust of power of others !
At this time, Goethe, not wishing any longer to be a
burden to Kalb, took the so-called little Jager haus, then the last
house next the Frauenthor, on the same side of the Belvedere
with Wieland's house. The present town -hall (Stadtgericht)
was built on this site in 1836. Another entrance fee as citizen
of Weimar he paid on Shrove-Monday the 1 9th of February
by playing at the citizens' amateur theatre the part of Belcour
in Cumberland's West Indian. At the Redoute of the 23d,
the Temptations of St. Anthony were presented after a picture,
Goethe had charge of the arrangements for this display, which
cost the Court 120 thalers. He himself as the Devil of Pride
went on stilts, had wings made of peacock-tail feathers, and
was enormously puffed-out ; the Saint in the end drove away
all the devils with a rebuke. " All was natural and dreadful,
not absurd ; as good as two comedies," writes Philipp Seidel.
Not until Thursday the 2 2d of February did Frau von
Stein, who had returned on Tuesday to Weimar, receive
Goethe. In reading aloud a novel, however, he vividly con:
ceived himself into the hero's position, and again broke forth
in passionate self-utterance. -She lovingly rebuked him for
this extraordinary behaviour; for she earnestly wished to
maintain the beautiful relation of intimate confidence, which
1 Der junge Goethe, iii. 137. (This letter begins : " Liebe Tante, ein
politisch Lied ! ")— Tr.

l775-!776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 257
was impossible if he forgot what was her obligation as wife and
mother, and ventured to claim more than a sister's love from
her. How far he was from self-mastery is seen in his expres
sion : — " Thou only one, whom I can love so — and yet I live
ever half in fear " [that he would be carried away].1 She will
not wean him from his improprieties, he remarks, farther on ;
these would only " end with his unrest and his love in the
grave." With her dark presentiment that there was no endur
ing happiness in store for her, she must have had but little
hope that the confidential relation through which she desired
to exert a calming and guiding influence on the great poet
would not be shattered by the violence of his passion.
On the 6th of March Goethe writes to Johanna Fahlmer :
— " I remain here, have taken a nice lodging ; but an estab
lishment and a portion is due to me from my father. This
my mother may introduce after her own fashion, only she
must be no child2 as I am brother and everything of a prince.
The Duke has again granted me a hundred ducats — granted' —
given — what you will. I am to him what I can be, and he
to me what he can be ; — that may now continue how it can
and long as it can." 3 Gifts were not oppressive from such
a friend as Karl August; but this did not prevent Goethe
from claiming the material aid to his support which he
believed his father to owe. His sister, beside more than
1350 gulden of dowry, received annual interest of four per
cent on a capital of 10,000 gulden; and he thought that no
less was due to him. In a letter of the 1 8th of March he
tells Johanna Fahlmer : — " The Duke has ordered me to have
all my furniture secretly made, to be a gift from him to me on
our return. That, however, my father need not be told of." 4
His father did not relish what seemed to him an unnecessary
outlay ; was by no means in love with the prospect of losing
his son; and just at this time, having to pay many debts
incurred by Wolfgang, he proved inflexible.
Karl August, desiring that Goethe should be universally
honoured as his intimate friend, arranged that when the latter
dined at court, a compliance which had been but rare, he
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, 23d of February 1776 ; written at night,
after the Assembly in which he had played the Devil of Pride. — Tr.
2 Must not be timid and hesitating in her demands. — Tr.
3 Der junge Goethe, iii. 139.— Tr. * JHd. iii. 140.— Tr.
S

258 THE LIFE OF GOETHE, [bk. iv. ch. i.
should no longer be compelled to put up with the Marshal's
table. At that table we still find him at dinner, the ioth of
March, though he had already sat at the Duke's table at
supper, or when away from Weimar. But on the 21st he
even at dinner occupies the position of honour — in the
Duchess's absence indeed.
Karl August had planned to go by Dessau, where he would
visit the Prince of Dessau, with Goethe to Leipzig, but a
violent attack of rheumatic fever, brought on by a headlong
ride from Erfurt, laid him up ; and so Goethe, with a friendly
farewell from Charlotte von Stein, set off alone for Leipzig on
the evening of March 24. There he saw Kathchen again, now
Frau Doctor Kanne. " Mais ce n'est plus Julie," he wrote to
Frau von Stein.1 On the other hand, Corona Schroter, now
at the full unfolding of her sumptuous beauty and grace, made
a powerful impression. " The Schroter is an angel," he goes
on. " If God would but give me such a wife, that I could
leave you in peace — yet she is not sufficiently like you." On
Tuesday, the 26th of March : — " I have been with the Schroter
— a noble being in her kind ! Ah, if she only spent half a
year in your vicinity ! best of women, what would she become 1
Good-night ! And remain to me always what you are to me
now !"2
When he came back to Weimar on the 4th of April he
was unpleasantly surprised by the advent of Lenz, who made
an unendurable setting off to his position with the Duke.
Seckendorff complains that " these gentlemen seem to increase
in number day by day ; Lenz is come and other Heroes are
expected ; Stolberg, Herder, and Wagner, will soon put in an
appearance." (Stolberg had actually accepted the appointment
of Chamberlain offered to him through Goethe, the duties to
be entered on in spring; and his name had been officially
registered, but he did not keep his engagement.) Lenz played
all sorts of pranks for the amusement of the Court, at the ex
pense of which his inn charges were defrayed. But he must
have been an exceedingly inopportune presence for Goethe;
who has only just resolved to enter on a practical useful life,
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, March 25, 1776. — Tr.
2 On the 26th Goethe writes to the Duke : — " Your thrust at Oeser is
now doubly painful to me, for I have found the same old, dear, good,
human being, and genuine artist." Der junge Goethe, iii. 141. — Tr.

J775-I776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 259
and behold this " harlequin Genius " (" zappelndes Genie ")
arrives, and all his enemies rank the two together !
In reply to some news from Tante Fahlmer he writes : —
" Of Liii nothing further ; she is played out ; I have long
hated that family from the bottom of my heart The stroke
was just the keystone needed. Devil take them ! The poor
thing I pity, to be born of such a race."1 We do not know
what act of Lili's family so enraged him. In the beginning
of February 1776 he had sent Liii a copy of his Stella, with
eight lines addressed to her on the power of Love.2
On his return from Leipzig he had found Karl August still
unwell. The recurring attacks of rheumatism and vertigo
continued so long, and there was such interruption of the
course of state affairs, that extreme anxiety and discord pre
vailed, and the Duke's favourite was made the scapegoat to a
large extent. During this indisposition Goethe was the com
panion of the Duke's sick chamber; to him everything was
confided, with him everything talked over. A great pleasure
was prepared for him by the Duke in the allotment to him of
the Garden House (Gartenhaus) on the Ilm ; there was a pretty
garden purchased and put in good order for him, and a tiny
house in it with a high shingle roof, prettily and completely
though but simply furnished. Besides there was a care-taker's
hut, a dog-house, and bee-house, even a perch for a wooden
bird to practise shooting at. On Sunday the 21st of April
Goethe took possession of the Garden,3 where four days later
he received Wieland, and Charlotte with the children. He
made up a modest household by taking a cook, the "old
Dorothee," and beside Seidel one other servant, Christof Sutor
from Erfurt ; a third was added only at a later time.
On the 20th of April the Duke renews his request that
Fritsch will retain the first place in the Privy Council ; Tabor
is not coming : Fritsch knows what the Duke's intention is
regarding Goethe, who is to take the last place at the Council
with the title Geheimer Legationsrath — Privy Councillor of
1 Goethe to Johanna Fahlmer [April 1776]. Der junge Goethe, iii.
141-2. — Tr.
2 " Im holden Thai, auf schneebedeckten Hbhen." Der junge Goethe,
iii. 194. — Tr.
s He did not sleep there until the night of Saturday, May 18. See p.
264.— Tr.

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1775-1776.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 261
Legation. The first draft of the letter is preserved ; an ex
pression relating to Fritsch was changed by Goethe. On the
very next day came the declaration of the old statesman — who
regarded Goethe as an unprincipled misleader of the Duke, a
selfish minion — that he could not sit in any Collegium of
which Goethe was a member. Goethe himself, if he has true
attachment and love for the Duke, must beg to be excused
from the destined honour. The fitting reply from the Duke
dates the ioth of May : — " Were Dr. Goethe a man of dubious
character, there is none but would approve of your decision.
But Goethe is honest ; of an extraordinarily good and feeling
heart. Not I alone, but men of insight [probably one was
Dalberg] congratulate me on possessing this man. His brain
and his genius is well known. You will yourself perceive
that such a man would not endure the tedious and mechanic
task of serving his way up in a provincial Board by slow
gradation. Not to use a man of genius at the spot where his
pre-eminent talents can be best applied is to misuse." Fritsch's
declaration that he will not sit in the same Collegium with
Goethe is a wrong equally to Goethe and the Duke; for
Fritsch must know that Goethe is the Duke's friend; that
he has never done anything deserving contempt : but on the
contrary deserves the love of all honest folk.
As Fritsch, however, did not yield, declaring that he could
not hold Goethe just yet to be a useful member of the highest
Collegium of the State, Karl August called in the interposition
of the Duchess Amalia. The good Princess pleaded in the
noblest way on Goethe's behalf, as to whom after due trial
she has formed her final judgment. His morals, his religion,
are those of a real good Christian ; they teach him to love
his neighbour, and to endeavour to make him happy, which
after all is the first and chief commandment. On the 15 th
of May Fritsch took back his resignation. The very next day
the Duke employed the younger Kalb (whom -the Duke fully
trusting, designed to make Kammerprasident), to write to
Goethe's parents. He begs them to consent that their son,
" retaining entire freedom — freedom to take leave of absence
when he likes, to leave the service altogether when he likes—
shall enter the Ministry as Geheimer Legationsraih with a
salary of 1200 thalers."
This honourable appointment with such freedom secured

262

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. IV. CH. I.

could not but please even Rath Goethe, much as he disliked
the service of princes, and disappointed as he must have felt
at having to give up all his great plans for Wolfgang's future,
and inhabit alone the fine house intended for two families.

Fig. 22. Goethe. After the painting by G. M. Kraus (1776). From the
Gedenkblatter an Goethe.
His son's high honours were an ill destiny for him. Mean
while, Goethe was enjoying his first days in the little Garten-
haus. There in those first days Kraus painted him, sitting at
the simple pinewood table.

1775-177°.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 263
Goethe's relation to Charlotte von Stein had all the spring
remained a most difficult one, as his passion only too often
flamed up, and each time he underwent temporary banishment
— either by her command or his own self-denial. And then
she was by no means content with what he had wrought as yet
in Weimar : if after the great upsetting at Court through him
he could again restore order, it would be better for his genius,
she thought ; but however good may be his purposes, he has
as yet too much youth and too little experience. Of course,
in this remark uttered to Zimmermann, and in her dreary
picture of the Court, we may hear the accent of temporary
depression ; yet she did indeed fear that Goethe was not equal
to the task before him.
The dreadful slanders of their Weimar doings, which were
spread abroad by enemies, backbiters, and chattering go-
betweens, had come even to Klopstock's ears ; he thought he
had it on credible authority that the Duke to strengthen his
frame was accustomed to drink himself sick ! Accordingly, to
Klopstock it seemed a proof of friendship to address a solemn
warning to the young poet. " The Germans have hitherto
complained with justice that their princes would have nothing
to do with their men of letters. The Duke of Weimar is now
excepted from this reproach. But how great a justification
will the other princes have who continue in the old tone of
behaviour (in dem alten Tone fortfahren) if that shall happen to
us which I fear will happen.1 The Duchess is perhaps as yet
able to subdue her pain, for her intelligence is very manly
(sie denkt sehr mannlich). But this pain will become grief,
and can that, think you, be subdued? Louise's grief!
Goethe ! " Finally, Klopstock threatens that unless things
improve, Stolberg shall leave Weimar soon after arriving there ;
he even hints that he will advise Stolberg not to keep his
promise — advise him not to come to Weimar at all.2 Goethe
replied admirably on the 21st of May. It has been a
moment's pain to the Duke that Klopstock should hold him
capable of such actions ; Goethe himself has no answer to
make, for he must confess his fault like a schoolboy, or
sophistically excuse it, or defend it as an honest fellow ; and
perhaps a mixture of all three would in truth come out. It is
1 The death of the Duke through hard drinking ! — Tr.
3 Klopstock's letter to Goethe is dated May 8.— Tr.

264 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
quite plain from this letter that the reports had been gross
exaggerations, and that he knew well his duty towards Karl
August I And when he concludes : — " But let Stolberg come.
We are not worse ; and, please God, we are better than when
he saw us," it is plain that the mad conduct which the Stol
bergs' presence (November 26-December 3, 1775) had made
so much madder, and in which they had taken such delight,
was now tamed down, and Fritz Stolberg might come without
danger. But Klopstock, spoiled by the blind reverence paid
to him, trusted Goethe so little as to believe him capable of
the most shameful forgetfulness of duty, and felt insulted by
his frank declaration of independence; he broke off all
further communication in a rude letter, forbade Stolberg to
keep his engagement, and sent the little correspondence to
the Markgraf of Baden as evidence of a noble deed !
In May (1776) we find Goethe occupied with the arrange
ment of his Garden ; he slept there for the first time on the
night of Saturday the 18th of May. In the Duke's company,
or on the Duke's business, he now rides about the country a
great deal. He takes zealous interest in the ducal amateur
theatre, where the Duke himself would sometimes act. His
love for Charlotte von Stein is "an enduring renunciation,"1
for he foresaw himself always being banished anew from her,
on whose confidence and sympathy depended all his peace.
On one occasion he incurs severe rebuke, because his thought
lessness is making her the theme of common talk ; she even
threatens to break off their intercourse entirely. And then
we hear him lament : — " And so this relation, the purest, most
beautiful, most true, that I have ever had to any woman but
my sister, this too to be destroyed ! ... If I have not your
society your love is as little aid to me as the love of my dear
absent ones, in which I am so wealthy. Personal Presence in
the moment of need decides all, alleviates all, strengthens all"2
The completion of the Duke's new appointments was de
layed until June 11 (1776). Not until the 19th did Goethe
receive the formal notification. Karl August paid him from
the privy purse the salary of the half-year just closing, as he
had done good service during the period. When the appoint-
1 "Eine anhaltende Resignation :" Goethe to Frau von Stein, Thurs
day, May 2, 1776. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Friday, May 24, 1776. — Tr.

I775-177°.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 265
ment was at length made public all Goethe's enemies were
bitterly incensed. To Charlotte von Stein it seemed an ex
pedient moment for speaking out plainly to him about his
position and his love for her. He replies that she is much
dearer, that her goodness toward him is become much more
precious in his estimation ; but also a relation, over which it
would be so easy and pleasant to glide [into some wrong
relation], about which it would be so easy and pleasant to
deceive oneself, has grown much clearer and deeper.1
In this period falls the presentation of Cumberland's West
Indian at the ducal amateur theatre. Goethe played Belcour
here too; the uncommonly beautiful and alluring Frau von
Werther played with remarkable fire Belcour's sweetheart ;
Charlotte played the part of the young Charlotte Russport.
The Duke and Seckendorff were actors also.
It was a great regret to Goethe that Frau von Stein was
soon to leave for the Pyrmont Baths. " Presence it is alone
which works, which comforts, builds up ! " — he wrote to her
on the 22d of June. " Even though it often torments —
torment also is love's sunshine-rain." When he dined with
her on Sunday, the 23d of June, she gave him a satirical
composition (Scherzgedicht) of hers — three dramatic scenes—
in which he figured under the Ossianic bard-name Ryno.
Besides, there were Adelheide, the Duchess Mother : Thus-
nelde, the everyday nickname of the somewhat deformed
Luise von Gochhausen, the witty companion of the Duchess
Mother : Kunigunde, Frau von Werther, and Gertrud, Char
lotte herself, whose lively interest in the poet of Werther is
expressed. That he is, as we know him, serious, ay gloomy,
comes out in the first, scene ; in the second Gertrud complains
that on the track qf all women he is what is called a coquette ;
she seems to be indifferent to him herself; in the third she
remarks that the eyes of the fair carry him away, he is not
master of himself, and thereby he pains many a faithful heart;
but when Thusnelde boasts of the many billets she has from
him, it turns out that all the other ladies have as many, if
not more. No wonder he wrote to Frau von Stein that she
has hit him hard, yet he is glad to say that he is not what she
makes him out. Charlotte did not think him yet strong
enough in self-control, and so did not let him see the diary
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Saturday, June 22, 1776. — Tr.

266 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. i.
which she had kept since they had been acquainted. Also
she forbade him to come to her on the 25 th, the day of her
departure, as she feared a scene at leave-taking. He had a
surprise on the 24th in the arrival of Klinger, whom he re
ceived with all cordiality, though he foresaw that his enemies
would misuse the occurrence to cast contempt on himself, and
on Karl August, who drew all mad geniuses unto him! On
the morning of Tuesday, June 25, Charlotte left for Pyrmont
On fhe same day Goethe was admitted to the Privy Council
and took the oath. At noon he dined at the ducal table;

CHAPTER IL
PROM GOETHE'S APPOINTMENT ON THE COUNCIL TO THE
SECOND SWISS JOURNEY.
JUNE 1776-SEPTEMBER 1779.
Preliminary. — To Goethe's personal relation with Karl
August we must ascribe his decision to devote himself to the
service of the little state. It was our poet's great desire to in
fluence the young prince — whose love and trust were so com
pletely yielded him — in development to mature manhood. Yet
to live on at Weimar Court without any determinate post and
function seemed to him unworthy, as with his eager and rest
less spirit of activity it certainly would have been impossible.
But before he submitted to the yoke, he required the full
assurance of his freedom, that, true to his principle— " All
from love," — he might enter on a calling so adverse to the
poet in him only through love for the prince, his friend.
Needful, too, was the firm conviction that Destiny had chosen
this strange-seeming lot for him as the only suitable one : offer
ing the needful counterpoise to his excitable heart : the ex
perience of the world and of men, the basis which his imagina
tion lacked : for his active powers a definite goal to be surely
attained through earnest continuance of effort. And no hap
pier position could the young Doctor of Laws, whom the in
compatibility of his profession, and of the narrow and sluggish
circle of Frankfurt burgher life with " the breadth and swift
ness of his being " 1 would have driven mad at last, — no
happier position could he have found than that influential one
1 See Goethe's letter to his mother, August 11, 1781 : — "Das Un-
verhaltniss des engen und langsam bewegten biirgerlichen Kreyses zu der
Weite und Geschwindigkeit meines Wesens hatte mich rasend gemacht."
— Tr.

268 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
of Privy-Councillor (in reality if not in name), under the young,
gifted prince of a state small enough to be easily surveyed and
ruled !
The more general the denial of his fitness for this position :
the more vehement the demonstrations of hatred and jealousy :
the more absolutely he recognised the difficulty of his task —
the more was it a matter of honour and duty to put forth all
his strength. So we see him devote himself straightway with
so much zeal to the heterogeneous business of the Council,
that he wins the good opinion of the externally rude, hard,
obstinate Fritsch — in whose house the lively young Legations-
rath is soon a welcome guest. He missed none of the Council
meetings — there were generally two a week ; he read diligently
all the documents bearing on matters of discussion, and tried to
form a positive decision from them. He laboured hard to
acquire the necessary information on various subjects ; and he
felt attracted by single departments of administration. But
beside the business of the Council, the Duke gave him many
other commissions out of special confidence in him; and
always, if the Duke were absent or engaged, Goethe was the
ready substitute.
Section I. Goethe's Activity in Public Business,
1776-9. — Let us now, in the first place, follow his business
activity during the first three years. One of the earliest cares
of the Duke was the revival of the Ilmenau mining, which had
languished for many years. Already, when at Ilmenau for
the first time, in the beginning of May 1776, Goethe had col
lected manifold information on the subject ; had visited the
mine and the foundry; had viewed with regret the old
furnaces ; and he did not rest until the Duke brought in the
question of working the mines again. As an expert on whose
counsel to rely, the Vice -Director of Mines, von Trebra of
Marienberg was invited to Weimar : we find him there by the
1 ith of June. The Commissioners appointed to examine the
matter — Goethe, Kalb, and Hofrath Johann Ludwig Eckard,
opened their sittings on the 13th of July. Five days later
they went with the Duke to Ilmenau to see things with close
personal observation. On the 20th, Goethe went with Karl
August down the still open Treuefriedrich Shaft. The Com
mission declared for re-opening the mines, and sketched in
detail a plan of how to go about it This declaration was

1776-1779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 269
signed on the evening ofthe 20th of July. As Trebra stayed
on until the 2d of August, Goethe had opportunity to get
information on many points. On August 4 he is occupied
with the Henneberg Mining Regulations, for Ilmenau be
longed to the county of Henneberg. Johann Gottfried
Schreiber, whom Trebra had brought from Marienberg, was
introduced as Juror (Geschworner) at the Kammerberg coal
mine at Ilmenau. And Trebra persuaded Johann Karl
Wilhelm Voigt, a law-student of five-and-twenty, to take up
the profession of mining, as there was a prospect of an
appointment for him in Ilmenau, and assistance from the
Duke was promised to enable him to study in Freiberg and
on mineralogical tours.
Goethe was also appointed on the Commission of Build
ing. Thus he directed the putting to rights of the parsonage
to receive Herder. In the following year (1777) it is his
business to look after the new official location of Oberstall-
meister von Stein, which was to be in the so-called Saddle-
Room in the upper story of the right wing of the old stable.
What remained ofthe burnt-down Castle was examined (March),
the plan on which it should be rebuilt was talked over, the
carrying it out put aside for the present.
Of matters that came before the Council, he was chiefly
interested by those connected with finance — though there
was nothing in which he was not interested. Now it was
not all fair sailing at the council-board. Thus it came to
differences with Kalb, who did not on the whole justify the
Duke's great hopes of him. In the negotiations with the
Estates of Weimar at Weimar town, in July 1777, and with
the Estates of Eisenach at Eisenach town, in September 1777,
Goethe was very much employed. The most favourable
testimony as to Goethe's business activity is given by Merck,
who has been his guest at the Wartburg for a week, begin
ning September 21, 1777 ; they had lived on the most con
fidential terms. " Goethe is all-important and all-directing,"
Merck says, " and every one is content with him, because he
serves many and injures none. Who can resist the disin
terestedness ofthe man?" Goethe himself, however, thanks
Destiny, which has most lovingly led him to emotions and
situations before unknown to him.1
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Friday, November 7, 1777. Compare

270 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
One of the reasons which concurred to send him on a
journey to the Harz, towards the close of November 1777,
was a desire to investigate, undisturbed, the mining system
there. Then he wanted to enjoy the people, the lower classes,
simple, kindly-natured, happy in their limitation ; he was tired
of courtiers and men of business. And there was a young
fellow at Wernigerode,1 suffering from the weariness of Hfe so
common then, who had written to Goethe, and the latter
wished, without revealing his name, to try whether he could
not do something towards a cure. One result of this journey
was that his belief in the destiny which led him so wondrously
was strengthened, since it crowned this adventurous journey
with complete success. And what seemed to every one impos
sible he performed ; in the middle of winter he got to the
summit of the Brocken (Dec. 10); in the evening, after the
ascent, he went to the door ; above the dark pines rose the
Brocken, white, moonlight-bathed ; and he recalled how that
day with joyful tears he had offered his warm tribute of grati
tude to the Eternal Love which governs all life in its own mar
vellous way.2
In the beginning of the year following (1778), the laying
out of the Park in the so-calied Star, after the fashion of the
Worlitz Park, was begun earlier than he had purposed, in
consequence of a sad occurrence. A Fraulein von Lassberg
had been driven by unhappy love to seek death in the Ilm
waters, not far from the poet's Garden. That one might
henceforth be able to view in the deepest seclusion the last
places that her feet had trodden, and the spot where she had
died, Goethe himself, with the court gardener, hollowed out a
great piece of the rock.3 Thus was begun the work which
the entry in Goethe's Tagebuch, prefixed to the month of November 1777,
an entry dated November 14. Keil, Goethe's Tagebuch, p. 130. — Tr.
1 Plessing. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von Stein, December 11. See also the Tagebuch,
p. 138. This journey of 1777 is Die Harzreise im Winter. — Tr.
3 Fraiilein von Lassberg drowned herself on Jan. 16th. Her body was
found on the 1 7th, and brought to Frau von Stein's house ; Goethe and
Karl August were on the ice when the body was found. See Goethe to
Frau von Stein, January 19, and Goethe's Tagebuch, January 17, '8>
1778. (The ballad Der Fischer, written about this time, expresses the
glittering weird allurement of the dark water, described in that letter to
Charlotte.)— Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 271
went on during the spring and summer of 1778, under his
zealous and skilful direction. Another such work was occa
sioned by the festival with which he sought to give the
Duchess Luise pleasure on her Name Day, July 9, 1778.
That the rain just before had flooded the whole meadow was
not enough to stop him ; with quick decision he prepared a
spot which lay somewhat higher for the festival, and built
there a Hermitage, in which the Duchess and her train were
to be received by a train of monks, with a poem of greeting
composed by Seckendorff and himself, and then to be enter
tained there.1 Starting from this point,? all the paths con
structed at a later period on the declivity towards Oberweimar
were laid down. To the Duke, the Hermitage became so
dear a spot that he followed out his humour by having his
"Kloster" suitably fitted up for sleeping in.
On the ist of October 1778 Goethe, at the Duke's wish,
undertook the management of the theatre, for which he re
ceived advances, which he then kept the account of. He,
too, was to sketch a plan for the rebuilding of what had
hitherto been the Hauptmann Assembly Room as the Ducal
Theatre of Weimar. He made many sketches, with the design
of forming a model on some of them at last.
As the Duchess would be a mother about the beginning
of the New Year (1779), some alterations in the Furstenhaus
were needed, and at the same time a great deal in the hastily
run up building had to be renewed ; it was a regret to Goethe
that with all pains no very good job could be made of it.
The more pressingly needful was it, therefore, that the old
Castle should be rebuilt ; already the clearing of the ruins had
begun. The question, What quarries of the Ettersberg should
supply the stone? was considered by Goethe. To gain in
sight he read in Blondel's great work, Cours de I' Architecture;
from which, in December 1778, when the weather and various
annoyances made him unfit for anything else, he began to
make architectural sketches.
Alas ! he saw more and more how much frivolousness and
stupidity there was in the Ministry. A mean vote from
Kammerprasident Kalb, on a question about the mines, roused
1 See Goethe's Biographische Einzelnheiten for an account of this
Louisenfest, and for a reprint of SeckendorfPs " Dramolet." — Tr.

272 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. n.
his contempt and anger.1 And he was extremely ill-pleased
with Fritsch, too, because of many occurrences which seemed
to warrant an unfavourable view of that statesman's honour.
At length Goethe spoke his mind on the subject to the Duke.
And he repeatedly declared against the harsh flogging to which
Rittmeister von Lichtenberg, a great favourite of Karl August,
subjected the soldiers. The shameful negligence in the War
Department, of which Fritsch was head, roused Goethe's
anger, and his repeated representations at length caused
Fritsch to request the Duke to relieve him of the office, which
then passed to Goethe, January 1779. Goethe underwent the
new burthen of duty with the conscientiousness which accom
panied all his action, without claiming any extra salary ; he
even defrayed from his own pocket the expenses of the official
journeys entailed. Heavy as this addition to his burdens fell
on him, he drew courage from the conviction " By tranquillity
and dexterity all will yet be overcome" (" Durch Ruhe und
Gewandtheit geht doch alles durch."2) His strict parcelling out
of time, his keen sense of duty, and his power of rapid ob
servation and rapid acquirement, made him able to master
such a number of unfamiliar labours — which were indeed more
burdensome to him with his almost self-torturing conscien
tiousness, than they would be to mere men of business.
On the 5th of January 1779 the War Department was
offered to his care, and accordingly his thoughts are, for the
present, altogether bent on military economics ; he " bathes "
in labour, he writes in his Diary (January 13), and has good
hopes of being able to endure. On the 9th he receives the
officers who are now his subordinates. He "labours in
silence " on his new department ; it does not indeed escape
him how difficult it is for his " withdrawn " spirit to hit on the
right decision in these common things, yet, during the few
years past he has grown much clearer in judgment and very
cautious ; often, indeed, too distrustful.8 After the 13th, on
which day he formally undertakes the discharge of the duties
of his new post, he does hardly anything else for the time.
His first care was to introduce order into the confusion of
the military Repositur. Unfortunately, just at this time, came
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, p. 170, December 15, 1778. — Tr.
2 Ibid. p. 171, December 15, 1778. — Tr.
3 See all this in the Tagebuch for January 9, 1779. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 273
the irruption of - the Prussians into the district Grossrudestedt,
to obtain recruits. The choice was, alas ! merely between
two evils — to resist in vain, to submit. A courier was sent to
the King of Prussia, on whose decision all waited. Of
Goethe's extreme distress we have evidence in the very pene
trating and excellent letter which he wrote to the Duke on the
subject.1 " February 1. — Council Stupid atmosphere there. Fatal
humour of Fritsch. The Duke spoke too much. . . . Dined
with the Duke. Afterwards let fall some observations about
speaking too much ; about forgiving ; moderating one's ex
pressions; and about bringing things to discussion while in anger
which should not be spoken of. Also concerning the military
Macaronis. The Duke remains still an unmoved adherent to
Form. False attribution to his position what one finds good
and great in others. Bedazzlement by external whitewashing.
I have fallen into just this mistake in the Building Depart
ment. I will manage the War Department well, because in
business I have no imagination at all ; don't want to make out
that anything is which is not ; do want exact knowledge and
order."2 He goes on to say that he does not let the proposals
of various changes, which come from many quarters, disturb
his judgment, knowing how often self-interest hides in such
occasions. As the care of the War Department compelled him to
travel about the country, he also undertook the Department
of Public Roads, hitherto neglected like the other. In his
new labours he had a great support in the somewhat rough
and ready Artillery-Captain De Castrop. Weimar put but 600
soldiers in the field indeed — beside 50 hussars who attended
the Duke — but there were many abuses and anomalies in the
mode of levying them. Goethe tried to make the burthen
less oppressive, and to practise the strictest justice ; he even
thought of the possibility of lessening the number. When
the young men of Weimar town, who were to serve, had been
chosen on the 26th and 27th of February (1779), he set out
on his first journey of soldier-levying, by Jena, in Castrop's
companionship. He returned on the 12 th of March, to leave
1 See Briefwechsel des Grossherzogs Carl August ,. . . mit Goethe
1775-1828 ; Neue Ausgabe, Wien, 1873. — Tr.
2 Goethe's Tagebuch, February 1, 1779. — Tr.
T

274 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
on the 1 6th for Ilmenau, on a like errand. The poet of
Iphigenie — with which he was just then occupied1 — must
have been a strange figure in his own eyes, arranging the
young men according to the Method of the Rhine ; but he
was conscious of his good purpose ; and amid all that was
disagreeable and wearisome, he had the pleasure of becoming
more closely acquainted with the People, so worthy of respect
in its own way.
At length the recruits assembled, on the 15 th of April.
A week later Goethe visited the University of Jena with the
Duke and Herder, and they dined with the professors. This
university, so important to the little state, lay constantly on
his heart ; and though he was not directly concerned in the
administration of its affairs, his advice was always important
in determining Karl August's decisions.
In May 1779 (which to Goethe's joy brought the conclu
sion of peace), the long premeditated change of the Assembly
Room into a theatre was begun under his direction. At the
same time his thoughts were occupied not only with the
country and its inhabitants (especially with a plan for lighten
ing taxes), but with the question how to turn the State
Domains to better account, Merck, whom he had on a
fresh yisit at the end of May 1779 — a visit which lasted
many days2 — brought him a valuable coadjutor of great
experience, the Englishman George Batty ; who in order to
collect materials on which to base proposals of reform, travelled
the country over. He was appointed Commissioner of Lands
(Landkoinmissarius), with a salary of 300 thalers. During
Merck's visit, Goethe was carefully thinking over schemes of
diminishing taxes ; of the levy of soldiers ; of establishing fire
men and police; and many other things indeed he had in
his head. In 1779 he had brought an unfortunate man,3
who had applied to him in 1778, to Ilmenau, where he may
be said to have supported the poor being out of his own
slender means. This man was to keep him informed on
Ilmenau affairs; and thus not only was provided with a
1 He began, as the Tagebuch informs us, lo dictate Iphigenie on the
14th of February 1779 ; (from a letter to Charlotte von Stein we learn
that he brooded all that day upon it). — Tr.
2 Merck left on July 13, 1779. — Tr.
3 Known under the (assumed) name of Kraft. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 275
pleasant occupation, but was a material aid to Goethe in
carrying out his plans.
Merck, on this occasion also, was extraordinarily pleased
with Goethe's position and effectivity. Merck's presence was
no hindrance, as we learn from Goethe's Diary ^ only stripped
off a few dry husks, and confirmed him in everything good.
That this is the only man who quite understands what Goethe
is doing, and how he is doing it, and that he yet sees it
from a quite different standpoint, gives delightful certainty.
These visits of his clear-sighted friend were to him glimpses
of his good destiny.
After Merck's departure, Batty's judicious report of his
excursion gave Goethe the highest satisfaction ; here, indeed,
was a master in his own department who did not (as Goethe
once in plastic art) indulge in vague general dreaming, but
went straight to the point Agriculture seems to Goethe
a very delightful occupation, because in it everything gives
such exact reply (weil hier alles so rein antwortet) ; but his
occupation it is not to be, as his Being (Daseyn), once for all,
is not Simple. Only his desire is — that by degrees all that is
presumptuous in him may dry away, but beautiful strength
may remain sufficient to pump the genuine fountains of his
life to equal height beside each other.2 The report occupied
him for a long time.
At a great conflagration which broke out soon after (July
25) in Apolda, where he was "all day alternately roasted and
boiled," his opinions about a fire-brigade system were con
firmed — opinions which the Duke, too, began at length to
entertain. " No man knows what I do," he confides to the
Diary, "and how many enemies I combat to produce the
small result. At my striving and contest and toil, I beseech
ye not to laugh, spectator gods! At least ye might smile
and give me aid." At this moment he was expecting "sharp
trial perhaps within four weeks."3 It was a discord with
Fritsch, who had sent in his resignation, which the Duke
would not, in the long run, accept ; though Goethe thought
that it would be well if Fritsch left the Council. In order to
console Goethe for not following his counsel in the matter,
1 July 13, 1779, the day of Merck's departure. — Tr.
2 See all this in Goethe's Tagebuch, July 14, 1779. — Tr.
3 See Goethe's Tagebuch, July 25, 1779.— Tr.

276 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
the Duke promoted him and his colleague Schnauss— who,
during the considerable absence of Fritsch, had, with Goethe,
devoted himself most zealously to the discharge of the extra
work falling on their shoulders — to be Privy-Councillors.
Goethe had prepared a great pleasure for the Duke in a
public Exhibition for Prizes at the Drawing Academy on the
Duke's birthday, September 3, 1779; the exhibition showed
what a quantity of good work had been done in this institu
tion which the Duke had founded, and over which Goethe
had cared. Kraus was now formally appointed Director.
Section II. Goethe's Work on Karl August,
1776-9. — If we turn from Goethe's business activity to his
work on Karl August, we find here likewise the noblest
success to record. Nothing could be less his desire than to
prompt the young Duke to many journeys, — the desire which
was attributed to him by the crowd of gossip-mongers. On
the 15th of August 1776 he has to expressly assure his friend
Kayser in Zurich, that they are not going to Italy. (Kayser
would seem to have offered himself as a travelling-companion;
to this Goethe's exhortation to stay quiet in Zurich points ; an
exhortation by no means welcome to the recipient, who had
probably hoped some advance through his friend's influence.1)
Goethe sought to moderate the princely excess of Karl
August's demands on life, the craving of his nature for the
extraordinary; sought to lead him to a well-considered activity
towards his country's welfare, to waken in him those interests
and sympathies which fecundate the mind and withdraw one
from idle and shallow conversation. He did not indeed
succeed in restraining the Duke entirely from crack-brained
behaviour; he himself, as we know, plunged into the wild
student-like life of the early days of their friendship, especially
when they were at Ilmenau, or hard by at Stiitzerbach, which
had become a shaking of the head through their extravagances ;
but these were mere outbursts in enjoying free nature of his
hot-blooded spirit of youth, so long reined in to sadness and
gravity. And even here probably Goethe was not lacking in
admonitions, such as we find in a letter written before his
appointment, where it is represented to the Duke, that through
1 For Goethe's letters to Kayser, see Burkhardt's Goethe und der
Komponist Ph. Chr. Kayser, Leipzig, 1879. See also a good precis of
the letters in the Goethe-Jahrbuck for 1880. — TR.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 277
being too hot and headlong he often wastes his own strength
and the strength of his servants to unjustifiable or unnecessary
purposes.1 To the older friend's intense joy, he saw that
Karl August's confidence in him was constantly increasing and
developing ever purer and clearer (sich immer reiner entwickele).
" The Duke and I grow daily dearer to each other, daily are
more entirely of accord ; he is happier (ihm wind's wohler),
and is a being whose like is nowhere to be found," writes
Goethe to Merck, October 22, 1776.
One chief longing of Goethe was to restore a loving under
standing between the Duke and Duchess;2 it was first needful
that he himself should gain the trust of Luise, who long stood
aloof from him. But the high opinion of him which her
brother the Hereditary Prince of Darmstadt formed in Sep
tember 1776 began to work a change in the Duchess's feeling ;
and so we find her drawing nearer to him — as when, November
1776, she asks him to lend her his play Die Geschwister, and
to see after skates for her. For her next birthday (January
30, 1777) he provided an excellent performance of his Lila —
a little piece which celebrated wedded love, and pointed to
the fond union of the noble and gifted pair. But the passion
of the Duke for the lovely Kammersdngerin Corona Schroter
was to give Goethe trouble before that performance of Lila;
he remonstrated earnestly with the Duke. The Duchess now
grew more cheerful, took pleasure in skating, an art in which
she was a mistress, and in the extremely pleasant and well-
arranged fetes on the ice, of which Goethe was the manager.
In the spring of 1777 Goethe often has the Duchess with him
at his Garden ; he too visits her in her summer residence at
Belvedere ; and soon a warm friendship is established with the
noble princess; a friendship through which he strives to restore
the harmony between her and her husband. Frau von Stein,
too, as the most intimate friend of the Duchess, co-operated in
this effort
Among the Duke's friendships Goethe tried to cherish
especially those with Dalberg and the gentle, gifted, and
thoroughly cultured Prince Franz of Dessau, friends from
whom the most beneficial influence might be expected. In
1 Goethe to Karl August [May 4, 1776]. — Tr.
2 Goethe writes to Lavater, so early as Sept. 16, 1776 : — " Concerning
Carl and Luise be at peace." — Der junge Goethe, iii. 144. — Tr.

278 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
September 1777 Merck, on his eight days' visit, could see how
nobly the Duke was developing. He whom unprincipled
tattle had made out to be a weakling completely led astray by
Goethe, has an iron will, is one of the most to be respected,
the most discreet of men. Goethe's society has been full of
benefit for him, and if the intimacy between master and ser
vant goes very far, it is only because the latter is not of the
nobility that objections are raised. Goethe had not indeed
been able to wean the Duke from his arrogant tendency to
make the natural into the extraordinary (aus dem Natilrlichen
etwas Abenteuerliches zu machen) ; nor, to Goethe's regret,
would he renounce his princely passion for the chase ; yet in
these things, too, Goethe hoped that coming times would
bring good changes. In the March of 1778 the longing for
war shown by Karl August caused Goethe much disquiet, but
a letter of the Prince of Dessau gave welcome aid to him in
his endeavours to abate the fever. When — Prussia and
Austria being apparently about to fall out — the Duke resolved
to go to Berlin, " the fountain of the war j"1 Goethe welcomed
the "master-stroke of the gods,"2 for he thought nothing
fitter to quench martial desire in one so intent on effectivity as
Karl August, than a revelation of the unimportance ofthe
individual in the iron game. Still the great reviews at
Potsdam and Aken interested the Duke and Goethe himself,
and they probably kindled in Karl August his delight in soldier
life, if not in war. The observations which Goethe made in
Berlin were equally important to him as a statesman and as
poet, for he appropriated everything as materials for his
growth. He was pleased with his visit to the Opera House.
In Prince Heinrich and his Captain of Engineers Boulet, he
found sincere admirers. He met in Berlin the Minister
Zedlitz; the old Chodowiecki ; the poetess of nature, Madame
Karschin ; the Academician Wegelin ; and the old friend of
Offenbach days, Andre, now appointed director of music here.3
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Berlin, May 17, 1778. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Leipzig, May 12, 1778. — Tr.
3 On May io, 1778, Goethe left Weimar at six in the morning, and
came to Leipzig at half-past nine in the evening. Karl August came on
the nth to Leipzig, and asked Goethe to go with him to Berlin and
Potsdam. On the 13th they set off early from Leipzig, and were in
Worlitz by three o'clock in the afternoon. On the 1 5th they came to

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 279
When they returned to Weimar even the irritated Wieland
acknowledges that he finds the Duke noble, good, honest,
princelike in his whole behaviour ; and pronounces the con
viction that Goethe has led the Duke aright. Toward the close
of the year, Goethe marks with deep joy that the Duke is con
stantly developing more and more : with him budding is
accompanied by a detonation, which people always would take
amiss.1 Immediately after this, Karl August's passion for
Corona Schroter again troubled Goethe, and he had a " radical
explanation" on the whole matter with the Duke.2 But Corona
seems to have been wounded by the sternness of Goethe's in
terference; yet he had done nothing hostile to her personally;
he himself felt a passion for her which he subdued It was a
great disappointment to him, in his endeavour to bring the
married couple into harmony, when the Duchess gave birth
— on the 3d February 1779 — to a princess instead of the
hoped-for heir. He tried to console Karl August, to awaken
his love for his little daughter. " Only wait until the tiny
human creature has grown a bit," he writes to the Duke four
weeks later ; " circumstances educate all of us, and let a man
do what he will, them he cannot alter. Let it never lack
paternal care, that at least we may keep it healthy. Until it
can understand a human voice, we shall have occasion to think
and talk much about it. God give us inward and outward
peace, and there are yef good times in store for you and your
land." 8 Though he was unable to celebrate as he had hoped
the churching of the Duchess by the performance of Iphigenie
— that lofty presentment of the sublime power of pure woman
hood — he delighted his revered princess with it on Easter
Tuesday (April 6, 1779).
In the earlier part of June Goethe writes in the Diary : —
" The Duke will soon be quite over the grand crisis. I have
fair hope that he will climb this rock too, and roam a while in
Berlin by Potsdam. On the 23d they left Berlin and arrived in Worlitz
by five o'clock. They came to Dessau on the 28th, and finally arrived
in Weimar, unexpected, on June 1. — Tr.
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, December 15, 1778. "Der Herzog immer
sich entwickelnd und wenn sichs bey ihm aufschliesst, krachts, und das
nehmen die Leute immer iibel auf." — Tr.
2 On January 10, 1779. See Goethe's Tagebuch of that day. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Karl August : Buttstedt, March 8, 1779.— Tr.

280 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
the open plain." We indeed soon after hear him complain of
the Duke's inexperience in estimating men;1 here, too, he
sought to work a change. At the beginning of August, we
learn from the Diary, they discussed the internal government,
the Court, and the Duchess. The conversation came on true
knowledge of men, and Goethe pointed out why the Duke
found many a thing so hard ; especially exhorting him not to
attempt to go into details so much. They indeed agreed as".
little on these matters as on the dismissal of Fritsch, to which
gratitude made the Duke averse. On the other hand, he
entered with all his heart into Goethe's plan of making a
secret adventurous journey to Switzerland. Goethe hoped
that the contemplation of nature in her grand style, and inteH,
course with the pious and simple-hearted family of Lavater,
would refresh and calm the prince, whom the life of Court
and business was drying up, and to whom the pure feeling for
nature was so little known. Goethe had as yet been able to
awaken but one intellectual amateurship in him — probably*
through Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. He had begun
to love paintings, especially Rembrandts, and had begun to
collect. The amateurship, too, would meet rich nourishment
on the journey. >
Section III. Other Relations with the Court,
1776-9. — One of Goethe's greatest difficulties was the relation
between the Duke and his brother. * Prince Constantin was
delicate, gentle, and full of feeling, had fine musical gifts, but
suffered much from melancholy. He had not been won over
completely by his brother's favourite. Constantin's heart
was given to the portionless Caroline von Ilten, to whom his
mother and Karl August were passionately opposed, and
Goethe was with them. Goethe often went to Tiefurt, where
the prince and Knebel lived, and often received visits from
the prince in return, yet there was no establishing a real
intimacy ; he had to satisfy himself with keeping ,the rift from
growing wider. 2 Goethe thought the prince " poor " as a
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, July 30, 1779. — Tr.
2 In Goethe's Tagebuch the Prince is meant by the sign of the gloomy
Mars « ; the Duke is Jupiter % ; Charlotte von Stein is the Sun © ; the
Duchess Amalia is the Moon l ; Wieland is Mercury $ ; the Duchess
Luise is a Star * ; the Earth is perhaps Fraulein von Waldner. — Duntzer.
Countess Werther is Venus 9 . — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 281
lover,1 as he was entirely absorbed in himself. Even when he
had apparently given up his love, no confidence grew between
the brothers. Once Goethe, dining at the Duke's table, was
witness of a " painful explanation " (leidliche Erkldrung) be
tween them.2
With the Duchess Mother Goethe had no such difficulty
in forming an alliance ; for this kind-hearted, easily -friendly
princess loved and esteemed him extremely : her interest in
art and science ; her infinite brightness and humour (by no
means terrified at a spice of coarseness), made intercourse
with her delightful. At her wish, he had been the agent in
¦• getting Corona Schroter appointed singer in the Court Chapel.
He was always ready to contribute to her amusement, whether
at Weimar or at her summer residence at Ettersburg, where
so early as 1777 an open air theatre was instituted. In his
own little pieces, which the Duchess loved, he often acted.
Her demands on him were indeed occasionally very burden
some, as when at Ettersburg, in October 1778, he had not
only to appear himself in his Jahrmarkt and in Moliere's
Medecin malgri lui, but to manage everything connected with
the representation. Still, though the interference with his
business and with his favourite occupations was sometimes
unwelcome, it was more often a refreshing change; and it
rescued him from absorption in himself and his own aims.
Occasionally he reminded the Duchess Mother frankly that he
was not there for mere social entertainment. In Ettersburg,
in the very last days in which he indulged extravagant spirits
(August 1779), there was the most humorous fooling, during
which Goethe once, in a circle of merry companions, was
carried away to parody the termination of Fritz Jacobi's
Woldemar, and make the devil carry off the hero. Woldemar
had appeared a short time before ; the sentimental philosophy
that exhaled from its pages disgusted Goethe. After the
parody he proceeded to give the book the " exaltation of the
cross," — that is, he climbed a tree, and nailed the book to the
trunk by the extremities of the covers, " as a well-deserved
penalty and a startling example."
As he managed everything at the Court, even its festivals
1 "Der Prinz in seiner Verliebschaft hochst arm." Goethe's Tagebuch,
December 15, i778- — Tr-
2 Goethe's Tagebuch, July 14, 1779.— Tr.

282 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. il
were his care ; he aimed at making them of merit in point of
art, and giving them deeper significance ; and he knew that
this would please the Duchess Luise. In the first months at
Weimar, before his appointment, he had not only worked in the
management of the Duke's private theatre, but had acted amid
the greatest applause. In November 1776 he thought that
Die Geschwister, a piece which sprang from his relations with
Frau von Stein, as the last birth of his Muse ought not to be
denied to the Court. The charming Amalia von Kotzebue
and Goethe himself played the two leading parts of the play.
The Duchess's first Weimar birthday (January 30, 1776) had
been celebrated merely by a state dinner, a court reception,
and a ball. Goethe thought he ought to honour the next
one (January 30, 1777) with some important new play, and so
produced in the first year Lila (which, it will be remembered,
bore reference to the Duchess) ; in the second year (1778) he
mocked the sentimentality1 which he had formerly sublimed
to material for poetry, but which had now become the un
pleasant fashion ; in the third year, when the birthday could
not be celebrated because the Duchess was soon to be a
mother,2 he created a nobler piece of art, to the spiritual eleva
tion of all : the Iphigenie* of Goethe made the Ettersburg
stage memorable for ever.
Though the two former pieces were but occasional, with
out high poetic value (except the lyric monodrama, Proserpina,
introduced as an intermezzo in the performance of Die Emp-
findsamen), they were serviceable as practice for his dramatic
talent ; and as he breathed his spirit into all he wrote, they
were no mere spending of the time. Yet Goethe's share in
the Court festivals went farther. There were plenty of Car
nival drolleries (Possen) and extempore compositions in verse;
thus we hear of a tragi-comedy given at Shrovetide in the year
1777, Leben und Thaten, Tod und Elysium der weiland
beruhmten Konigin Dido von Karthago, a piece in which he
1 Die Empfindsamen ; altered afterwards ; now called Triumph der
Emfindsamkeit. — Tr.
2 Her first daughter was born on February 3, 1779. See p. 279.—
Tr.
3 Iphigenie was acted first on the 6th of April 1779 ; again on the
1 2th ; and on July 12, Merck being a guest at Ettersburg, it was acted for
the third time.— Tr.

.1776-1779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 283
at least had a hand ; and at Ettersburg, on the 5 th of January
1778, we read in Goethe's Diary, amid " every kind of folly"
a comedy was extemporised. There were theatrical representa
tions, too, at the Redoutes.
Section IV. Literary activities ; personal circum
stances, 1776-9. — To his joy he observed that amid all his
business and all distractions much " blithe imagination "
(frohliche Imagination)1 was left him. " The pressure of busi
ness is very beautiful for the soul," he notes in his Diary,
January 13, 1779, thinking of himself; "when the burthen is
gone the soul's play is freer, and life is found a joyous thing.
Nothing is more pitiable than the easily circumstanced man
without work." He indeed confesses soon afterwards, when
engaged on Iphigenie, that he sees that he is treating this good
gift of the Heavenly Ones [Imagination] a little too cavalierly,
and must be somewhat more careful of his Talent if he is
ever to produce anything ; 2 but how completely this was still
at command is shown by his successfully finishing the play
before the month had run. In the early part of 1777 had
been begun Wilhelm Meister ; the hero, the son of a rich
merchant, was to be impelled by love for an actress, and by
the idea of founding a National Theatre, to take to the stage,
for which, as he must himself at length perceive, he has no
aptitude whatever. The author, indeed, remained fast at the
Second Book, as the development of another novel attracted
him, which, however, came to as little result as his drama Der
Falke, which he had projected on the lines of a tale of Bocc
accio. But during the Frankfurt time, too, he had left many
a thing unfinished as the impulse died, and he was so far
from giving up his Wilhelm Meister that he zealously gathered
material for it everywhere.
The praise which he lavished on Wieland's Oberon shows
how receptive he was for genuine poetry. When the Duchess
of Wurtemberg expressed a wish that Goethe and Wieland
should sit for the painter, HofrathMay, both of them thought
it right to comply. Goethe sat in the forenoon and the after^
noon of July 26, 1779, and Wieland did him the pleasure of
reading aloud from Oberon, five cantos of which were finished
at that date. Wieland tells Merck that he had never before
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, February 12, 1778.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August ; Buttstedt, 8th March 1779. — Tr.

284

THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.

seen a man take such delight in the work of another. In
May's picture can be felt, one might say, Goethe's happy
mood, and the pleasant impression which the charming poem
made. He writes in his
Diary that Oberon will
be treasured by children
and by connoisseurs ;
Wieland is safe from
imitation here. Very
deep was his gladness
that his friend had thus
succeeded in producing
a poem perfect in its
kind; fulfilling all the
requirements of Art ;
very entertaining withal.
His own fame as a
poet did not trouble .
him; he let things be "
when the piraters, with
out hindrance from his
original publishers, ped
dled his books every
where; the Berlin book
seller Himburg actually published J. W. Goethens Schrij ten in
three volumes; a reprint of this appeared in Karlsruhe. When
publishing the third edition in 1779 Himburg added a fourth
volume containing, besides smaller things overlooked before,
a collection of Goethe's scattered lyrical poems. Himburg,
with shameless politeness, sent the poet some copies of the
fourth volume, boasting of the service rendered him in collect
ing his poetry, and offering some Berlin porcelain as an acknow
ledgment of his own profit by Goethe's works. Goethe revenged
himself after his manner by writing some sarcastic verses,1
shown only to his most intimate friends, and by contemptuous
silence towards one whom lust of gain had prompted to collect
his trifles before he was dead.
Plastic Art, no less than Literary, had still the old charm.
1 The verses beginning " Lang verdorrte halb verweste Blatter
vor'ger Jahre :" See Goethe's Briefe an Frau von Stein, July 1779-
In Dichtung und Wahrheit, xvi. Buch, an altered version is given. — Tr.

Fig. 23. Goethe. From a photograph of May's
painting.

I77C-I779-J

WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE.

285

He drew, he painted, he etched, and especially delighted in
portrait sketching. Frau von Stein, Corona Schroter, the
Waldner, and old Dr. Siewers of Oberweimar, were drawn by
him. He succeeded best
with Wieland's likeness,
drawn on the 24th of June
1776 at the Garden, better
than any painter yet had
drawn it, and still he would
fain do it over again. "The
main thing is that Goethe
and con amore painted it,"
wrote Wieland to Merck. In
his comprehension of paint
ings he gained every day
fresh insight, and he medi
tated on all varieties of
Art. Then his business part of
life led him to new, hitherto
all but unthought of, kinds
of knowledge ; the chief be
ing mineralogy and botany,
which were to be of such im
portance later on. Physiog
nomy he now gave up almost entirely, though the third volume
of the. Physiognomische Fragmente went through his hands.
For a while so interested was he in craniology that the Duke
procured, six skulls for him, but his pleasure in the subject
faded fast, as mountain, field, and wood engrossed him more
and more.
Unfortunately nearer knowledge estranged him more and
more from those of the Court and those whom he met on
business; he buried himself in himself.1 But he was not
therefore a misanthrope; amid all that he suffered and en
dured he felt happier than any one he knew, in the hand of a
Destiny whom he believed propitious. In melancholy moods,
at times indeed, he views all his life up to the present
gloomily, he laments that he has, as yet, made no way ; but
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, October 8, 1777 ; February 12, 1778; January
9, 1 779-— TR.

Fig. 24. Wieland. From the sketch by
Goethe, preserved in the Ducal Library
at Weimar ; here reproduced for the first
time.

286 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
this reproach is true only of his youth — the time before the
new life that broke in Weimar ; that he had not yet ventured
to review.1 The calmest content speaks in the letter of
August 9, 1779, which announces to his mother that the
Duke and he are coming: — "I have all that a man can
desire, a life in which there is daily exercise of my powers,
and in which I grow daily ; and at this time I come, healthy,
free from passion, free from entanglement, free from dark
ill-understood workings, like one of God's Beloved, half whose
life is spent, who hopes from pain that is over many a good
in the time to come, while sure also of a heart tested to
meet the pain to come." 2 At this time, too, he found him
self in good bodily health, partly owing to diet; he and the
Duke had given up coffee altogether, he only drank half as
much wine as he had before, and often in merry company
took neither wine nor punch. He, like the Duke, was content
to sleep on a sheet spread over a straw mattress, with a hght
bed covering. He loved cold water bathing even in winter;
thus we find him in February 1779 bathing with Frau von
Stein's boys. Then, too, he delighted in exercise, at first
chiefly on horseback, afterwards on foot, and he did not
neglect fencing and other physical accomplishments.
Section V. Goethe and Charlotte von Stein,
I776-9- — On the 2d of June 1778 Goethe writes to Frau von
Stein : — " That you love me I believe and feel. You and the
Duke are set above me (wohnen iiber mir) as the nail and
cord by which frame and picture hang." Much pain had come
with his deep love for Charlotte, but he must open his heart
to her, and his trust in her had grown deeper and deeper.
We left Charlotte setting out for Pyrmont on June 25, 1776.
After her return to Kochberg she delighted the yearning poet,
then with the Duke at Ilmenau, by announcing that she would
stop a night there on her journey from Kochberg to Weimar.
This she did in the first week of August 1776. Goethe con
ducted her on the 6th to his favourite spot in the Hermann-
stein Cave, where, holding her hand, he traced an S. in the dust
(after she had gone he came there again and chiselled the same
1 Goethe's Tagebuch ; the long entiy of August 7, 1779. — Tr.
2 For letters to and from Goethe's mother, and even about her, see
Robert Keil's Frau Rath, Leipzig, 187 1. A good translation of this
book has been published in the United States. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 287
letter in the rock for a memorial) ; he accompanied her part
of the way to Weimar. Alas ! this day did not calm him as
Charlotte had hoped it would. When back in Weimar he
was so restless, so passionate, that she forbade his visit on his
birthday (August 28, 1776), fearing an outbreak, nor did she
delight him with" a birthday present. Though, during the
days imjnediately following, he was able to preserve his self-
control in her presence, he draws an earnest exhortation from
her on the ist of September ; he replies fretfully that if matters
go on thus they will become living shadows. When, within
the next ten days, she goes to Kochberg she forbids him to
visit her there, while she gets Lenz to come to give her lessons
in English. That this "distracted soul" (" zerstorte Seek"1)
should be honoured by intercourse with her awakened his
bitterest envy ; yet she did not fail to send little messages and
letters, in which is expressed the conviction that he will never
learn to control himself in her presence. During her absence
his greatest pleasure was to draw for her, but so deep was his
pain at being forbidden to come to Kochberg that he never
forgot it. She came to Weimar for a short stay on the 5 th of
October, and she had to reproach him for fresh indiscretion.
"For some time back you have come before me like the
Madonna, who is going to heaven," he wrote with deep yearn
ing ; " in vain he who is left behind stretches out his arms to
her ; in vain his tearful gaze of farewell longs to meet hers
once more ; she is absorbed alone in the glory around her ; is
filled alone with longing for the crown that hovers above her
head."2 In reality, Charlotte was intensely affected by his lament,
at the same time was full of anxious doubt whether her wifely
duty did not demand that she should entirely break with him.3
However, she felt strong enough to keep her faith to her husband
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, Tuesday, September 10, 1776.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Frau von Stein, October 7, 1776. In the Diary for that
day Goethe writes : — " After dinner the Stein ; gloom !" She went back
to Kochberg on the 8th. — Tr.
3 On the back of the letter of Goethe last quoted, the following
remarkable lines are written in pencil in Charlotte von Stein's hand : —
" Ob's Unrecht ist was ich empfinde,
Und ob ich biissen muss die mir so liebe Siinde,
Will mein Gewissen mir nicht sagen ;
Vernicht' es, Himmel du, wenn mich's je konnt' anklagen. " — Tr.

288 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
intact ; and she recognised it as her mission to keep the great
poet true at the same time to her and to virtue, by determin
ing him to renunciation, to a pure love of soul for soul.
After her final return to Weimar (October 31), he showed
such self-control and calm that she ventures, November 7
(1776), the first anniversary of his arrival in Weimar, to show
him the diary which she had kept since they were acquainted
He had already pronounced his renunciation in poetic wise in
Die Geschwister — acted November 21. On the evening ofthe
1 6th, after trying the piece over with Amalia Kotzebue, he
goes to see Corona Schroter, just arrived; as the agent in
bringing her to Weimar, he had carefully looked to the pre
parations for her accommodation. On the evening of Novem
ber 1 8, he made a waxen model for a sleigh which he intended
for Charlotte ; and he gives orders next morning for its manu
facture. In the afternoon of the same day (the 1 9th) " dis
quiet has him again by every hair," 1 so that he has to get a
horse and ride out. This disquiet was the stirring of his love
for Charlotte ; the arrival of even lovely Corona Schroter. was
powerless to make him forget Charlotte. Next day found him
in the same condition, and he grew calmer only on the 21st,
after the performance of Die Geschwister. A few days later,
Lenz read out a comic poem, which made mocking reference
to Charlotte von Stein in her relation with the poet, and to
the Duchess Amalia. " Lenz's donkeyism " (" Lenzens Eselei")
is noted in Goethe's Diary under November 26. One need
only remember with what care Charlotte had been striving to
escape becoming the theme of vulgar tongues, to understand
how deeply incensed Goethe was at this desecrating act of
the crack-brained fellow, who had received such generous
treatment. There was no appeal ; go he must who had
pained the noblest heart — the heart of the beloved. Goethe's
intense pain showed Charlotte how deep and genuine a love
he cherished for her.
When he returned from the journey, in which he accom
panied the Duke to Leipzig and Dessau (December 2-21,
1776), he found the most affectionate welcome in Charlotte's
house. To his great joy she gave him a keepsake, probably a
ring; and he gave her a walking-stick. Unfortunately, the
1 From his letter to Charlotte at half-past four in the afternoon on
that day. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 289
journey and the inclement December weather had tried his
health so much that medical treatment was necessary. (It
was then that he conceived the thought of putting up in his
Garden a stone dedicated to Fortune.) When he visited
Charlotte with birthday congratulations on Christmas morning,
there was a violent scene,1 which brought him to despair and
embittered the close of the year for him, though he sought in
every direction means to divert his thoughts from his pain.
The cause of disagreement was probably the sleigh, his intended
Christmas gift, which she refused with decision, because it
would make her the subject of gossip. On the last day of
1776, Charlotte dines at the Duke's table, and then goes with
the Court to Tiefurt Goethe dines with Wieland, and then
follows to Tiefurt on the unlucky sleigh, which breaks down
on the journey. The Diary of that day closes with the words:
— " Strange doings in the arbour. Feverish melancholy."
Charlotte had threatened to break off with him altogether.
How if she did what she threatened ? He could have endured
Weimar no longer then, and yet how he felt chained to the
spot! Corona Schrbter's beauty drew him powerfully; but
she had no heart on which he could repose, no depth of intel
ligence or emotion to elevate or sustain.
The two years that followed were not lacking in the " sun-
showers of love " — in " torment." 2 Still did Charlotte find it
necessary to use the well:proved remedy of banishment from
her presence when Goethe was carried away by passion, or
when she feared — and especially on important anniversaries —
from his excited manner that an outburst was imminent. Nor
must her tendency to gloomy reflection be forgotten ; her
faith in the frequent dreams that disturbed her ; and her fear
that no real happiness is ever to be her lot, that accordingly
Goethe will one time be untrue to her — will not continue in
the beaten way of virtue. And he frequently found himself
unwell, or ill-matched with circumstance, and his spirit would
grow very dark and mournful ; so that even in her presence he
was moody and impatient, that she at times could not help
1 In Goethe's Diary for December 25 we read: — "To the Stein;
suffered much. Dined alone. Again at the Schardts' [Charlotte von
Stein's relations] ; deep, deep suffering." — Tr.
2 " Das Plagen ist der Sonnenregen der Liebe," wrote Goethe on
June 22, 1776, to Charlotte von Stein (already quoted on p. 265). — Tr.
U

290

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. IV. CH. II.

doubting his love. In March 1777 she was poorly, and he
was much with her : he sketched her picture. On the whole,
they were happy in the consciousness of their true love, and of
the entire worthiness of each other. In the evenings he "rests
in her eyes," as he says,1 from many a weariness, from all the
burden and painfulness of the day. Charlotte's love was the
thread — so he puts it — by which all his other " little passions,
pastimes, and flirtations hung." 2 In the last quotation we are

Fig. 25. Corona SchrSter. From a photograph of Anton Graff's painting.
reminded of a remarkable characteristic of Goethe; that he
always needed a number of feminine hearts, of more or less
personal interest to him, in which to mirror himself. We have
already heard of the witty and keen Fraulein von Gochhausen,
of the loveable Amalia Kotzebue, and of the charming and
intellectual Frau von Werther. Of nearer intimacy was the
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, between the dates April 21 and
April 27, 1777. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 12, 1777. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 291
Maid of Honour to the Duchess Luise, Adelaide von Waldner-
Freundstein, whose pleasant sociable nature, though wanting
in depth, attracted him, and made him a frequent visitor to
Belvedere; but later on she seemed to him to grow constantly
more coquettish. Then he had a high estimate of Charlotte
von Stein's sister-in-law, Fraulein von Stein, Maid of Honour
to the Duchess Amalia. She was deep and serious, but very
reserved. These and the other ladies of the Court were far outshone
in beauty, dignity, and artistic feeling by Corona Schroter.
He became aware of a passion for her stealing upon him — a
passion strong enough to disquiet and excite, yet he overcame
it ; and the more easily since she was anything but disposed
to meet any advances from him, and since the Duke himself
fell passionately in love with her — for if Goethe was to move
the Duke to self-control, he must begin by mastering himself 1
So, too, he felt a barrier between himself and Caroline von
Ilten — though she liked him, and showed it — because he had
had to oppose her union with Prince Constantin.
In March 1777 he is delighted at being commissioned to
look after the official residence of Charlotte von Stein's
husband. A few months later Charlotte and Goethe were
brought nearer by mutual sympathy in each other's sorrows.
His sister Cornelia died June 8; he knew it June 16.1 In
Charlotte he found comfort ; and he soon after was able to
assuage her deep grief at the death of one of her friends. In
the following year (1778) the family relation between the
Steins and Goethe grows. He dines every Sunday at Char
lotte's table, and during the week he occasionally has dishes
brought across from her house in a vessel, on which he had
got Kraus to put the motto " All from Love ; " occasionally,
too, he sends some eatable to her. He takes the most loving
interest in her children, especially in her favourite the four-
year-old Fritz. She shows herself more freely out of doors in
his company, even goes walking with him in the evenings;
yet he troubles his happiness by jealousy at times, though we
have come just to the point at which Corona had grown more
important to himself. Charlotte's elder brother brought
1 In his Diary the day is marked "dark, distracted day" (" dunkler
zerrissener Tag"), and the three days that follow "sorrowing and dream
ing" ("Leiden und Trdumen "). — Tr.

292 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
her in the spring of 1778 a very dear sister-in-law, the ex
tremely charming, fine -feeling, highly -cultivated Sophie von
Bernstorff, then in her twenty-fourth year. She had lived a
considerable time with her aunt, the widow of the famous
Danish statesman, Bernstorff. To this aunt Charlotte wrote
that it was high time that she (Charlotte) had been met by an
angel ; her heart had been just closing. Bearing companion
ship to her new sister was a large claim on her time ; Goethe
found himself unpleasantly shut off by it, especially since he
might not visit Kochberg. Charlotte's stay there this autumn
(1778) was unusually long.1 When she returned he was
estranged from all society and very melancholy.2 "She
appears more and more loveable though more reserved, as do
others too " — he confides to his Diary on the 9th of Decem
ber. On the day following he writes to her : — " Love me still
even through the ice crust, perchance it is with me as with
frozen wine."
From this time forward their relation is deep and un
troubled. At the very beginning of the year 1779 he plans
how he will honour her Name Day, the 5 th of July, with a
table of his own invention, the separate parts of which he will
look out and put together himself. There is a breach with
Corona Schroter,3 yet, after a considerable time, when she ex
tends a hand of amity, he takes it with unfeigned gladness,
feeling that he has not been blameless. And their relation of
friendly good-will was henceforth firm and decided. Before he
goes to Jena, at the end of February, to look after the levies,
Charlotte gives him a waistcoat. He writes from Dornburg
on Tuesday the 2d of March 1779 : — "Something more you
should have been able to give me, one talisman more, for I
have, indeed, things of all sorts and yet not enough." She
1 She left Weimar September 8 ; Goethe rode to Kochberg on
October 11, and rode back October 12 (Diary); Frau von Stein visited
Weimar October 14 ; in a letter, dated November 21, Goethe is glad to
hear that she will soon return ; on December 5 was with her in Weimar
(Diary). — Tr.
2 << \yas frozen against all men " ( War zugefroren gegen alle Menschen)
is his entry beginning the Diary for December 1778. "Knebel's hypo
chondria," noted at the end of November, was doubtless one cause of this.
Another cause was overwork. — Tr.
3 It will be remembered that in January 1779 Goethe had a "radical
explanation" with the Duke — about Corona Schroter. Seep. 279. — Tr.

I776-I779-] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 293
was his Muse as he brooded his Iphigenie ; the calming in
fluence of her presence during the two years past was on him
as he wrote. The triumph of Corona acting with Goethe in
this glorious play, was a source of the most genuine pleasure
to Charlotte. She urged him earnestly to go on with Egmont ;
and Wilhelm Meister, too, interested her extremely.
As, in spite of all efforts, the table was not ready for her
Name Day, he gave her instead an engraving of a Saint
Cecilia. Before going to Kochberg on the nth of August
she again gave him a waistcoat, to his great delight. He visits
her in Kochberg eleven days later ; it is the first time, he
thinks, that he has felt happy there ; and he cannot even now
feel quite on friendly terms with the place and its neighbour
hood, for remembrance of the pain three years before, when
she forbade his coming thither. To his regret a quite unex
pected necessity summoned him to Weimar. On his birthday
he had another gift from her.
Six days later, September 3, 1779, he tells her that he is
very soon going with the Duke on " a journey he had wished
and hoped for; " as to whither he had to be as secret as two
years before when about to go to the Harz ; even the Duchess
did not know. When, on the 6th of September, he received
his appointment as Geheimerath " the eddy of earthly affairs
took hold upon him, also all kinds of thronging personal
emotions (anstossende persbnliche Gefiihle)," emotions which,
however, it becomes not to record.1 No doubt the thought
may have come to him that, notwithstanding all the good
things Weimar had brought, he was still without a wife and
a home, but he probably reflected, too, how far from attain
able such happiness was as he stood at present;2 and he
gave thanks to Fortune who had given him such a woman as
friend and confidant. When on the same day he notes a
politic defect in himself, one hard to eradicate, we must think
that he means the fundamental seriousness and truthfulness of
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, September 6, 1779. — Tr.
2 It may be noted that some have thought — both of those who
knew Goethe living, and of those who have since been familiar with the
story of his life — that such happiness was by no means unattainable — that
Corona Schroter, beautiful, pure, intellectual, would have been a true and
loving wife  that Charlotte von Stein did Goethe and Corona grievous
wrong. — Tr.

294 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ii.
his character. Immediately before departure he said yet once
more farewell to Charlotte, and thanked her for the new
"talisman" just sent him. "We are going to Frankfurt," he
writes ; " I know that you will rejoice in the joy of my old
parents.'' He left behind with her tlie keys of his house and
garden.

CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND SWISS JOURNEY  THREE YEARS OF MULTIPLYING
CARES.
September 1779-JuNE 1782.
On the morning of September 12, 1779, Goethe and Karl
August left Weimar. They were accompanied only by the
kindly and helpful Chief Ranger (Oberforstmeister) von Wedel
and by a few servants, one of whom was Goethe's trusty
Sekiel. In Cassel they looked up the great traveller Georg
Fdrster, who was a teacher of Natural History there. Wedel,
who introduced himself as Kammerherr von Wedel, and
Goethe, who remained unnamed, called on Forster, and invited
him to meet the Duke, whom they called Oberforstmeister von
Wedel. Not until Forster questioned him did Goethe tell
who he was. Goethe was serious, talked little, asked Forster
about the South Sea islanders — as did the Duke too — was
pleased with their simplicity, for the most part merely listened
to the others' talk. Forster led the conversation on Jacobi,
whom he had lately begun to know, and on Woldemar, men
tion of which must have been painful to Goethe. The Duke,
as he asked many questions, but nothing foolish, pleased
Forster. All the Landgraf's Collections, and the Weissen-
stein (now Wilhelmshohe) were visited. Goethe refreshed
his spirit in the picture gallery.
One of the happiest moments of his life was that in which
he led the Duke into his father's house in his native city. A
meteor signalised the entrance of our travellers into Frankfurt.
What a number of visitors had been there since Wolfgang
had left it — Lenz, Maler Miiller, the Kraftapostel Kaufmann,
Wieland, and the Duchess Amalia, with the witty Fraulein
von Gochhausen, and others. The maternal heart of the

296 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
Frau Rath beat 'high when she saw her " Hdtschelhans " so well,
and in such joyous excitement lead his Duke to her ; it was
the fairest fulfilment of her most daring hopes ; to use the
words of his letter of announcement, he had brought her such
a good day as none before. On the other hand, his father
could not receive him with full heart. That Wolfgang far
away was leading a brilliant but difficult life at the Weimar
Court — that all his paternal schemes of a distinguished life
together in the handsome Frankfurt house were gone to the
winds, was a bitterness in his cup. " God has not willed,"
wrote Wolfgang with resignation to his mother when announc
ing his coming, " God has not willed that my father should be
able to enjoy the fruits so earnestly desired, now that they
are ripe; He has taken away appetite, and so be it"1 Nor
was his father pleased that Wolfgang's larger literary activity
' had now been so long suspended, though so much hostility
had been aroused by it in old days. He called Wolfgang " a
second Colomesius," referring to that Colomies who earned
the title : "l'auteur des petits livres."2 He was silent aid
dull, his memory was failing, while Frau Aja " was in her old
power and lovingness still."3 All the old friends and acquaint
ances streamed into the house with the three lyres — the casa
santa as Wieland called it — and rejoiced in their fellow-towns
man ; Merck, too, came from Darmstadt. The only thing to
trouble Goethe's pleasure was a letter from Jacobi, complain
ing of Goethe's treason to their friendship ; distorting rumour
had brought to Jacobi's ears the story of the ridicule of
Woldemar. In Frankfurt as in Cassel, the Duke was Ober
forstmeister von Wedel, but his incognito was very transparent.
They pursued their journey, hoping soon to return.
From Frankfurt Merck accompanied the travellers as far
as Eberstadt on his gray horse. When they were opposite
Speier waiting the ferry, Goethe wrote to Charlotte (September
24), confiding that they were going to Switzerland to move
about among the earth's great forms, and to bathe their spirits
1 Goethe to his mother, August 1779. — Tr.
2 Herr Duntzer kindly explains further in a letter : " Wolfgang's
father desired to see works actually published; and, moreover, thought
that his son ought to be a great writer on jurisprudence and fill shelves
with stately calf-bound volumes. " — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, September 20, 1779. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 297
in the majesty of nature. It is a great joy the repeating of
his life on this journey, the seeing all his old acquaintances
again. In Speier they visited the cathedral and the picture
gallery of the Canon Beroldingen.
At Selz Goethe left the Duke and rode to Sessenheim
(evening of September 25), where he met a "thoroughly good
and friendly " reception. Friederike, whom he had left " at
a moment when it almost cost her her life," — thus he writes to
Charlotte — passed lightly over that to speak of the deli
cacy which still clung to her from an illness of that time. She
behaved exquisitely, with such cordial friendliness from the
instant at which he unexpectedly met her on the threshold ;
nor did she make the least endeavour to waken the old feeling
in him, though she led him into every arbour. They talked
a great deal about Lenz, who had been taken back to Riga
three months before, having lost his wits ; Karl August had
been paying for the unfortunate fellow's keep.1 Friederike
said that Lenz had pretended to be in love with her, and had
sought to make her think ill of Goethe.2 He had visited her
again after his banishment from Weimar. Goethe found that
she had all the songs he gave her safe, indeed everything from
him she treasured still. Her parents were friendly ; he was
thought to have grown younger. They spent the evening
beneath the great full moon, recalling sweet memories of
eight years ago. Next morning he left with a good-bye from
friendly voices, glad at heart that he could think again with
tranquillity of the place of his purest youthful love, being
reconciled with her whom he had wounded so.
Friederike, "who had in days gone by loved him more
beautifully than was his desert, and better than others on
whom he had wasted much passion and truth "3 — Friederike
Brion and Goethe never saw one another again. She lived on
in faithful remembrance of the lover of her youth, after whom
there could be no other for her. When her father died (1787)
she, with her sister Sophie, opened a small shop at Rothau in
the Steinthal, where her brother was pastor, and took pleasure
1 At Schlosser's house. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's Biographische Einzelnheiten. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein; Emmendingen, Tuesday, 28th
September 1779 (the letter from which the account of this meeting with
Friederike is mainly derived). — Tr.

298 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii. -
in preparing young girls for domestic service. Gervinus has
it that she spent several years (this can have been only between
1788 and 1792) in the house of a sister of Weyland, who had
married the Alsatian Rosenstiel. Rosenstiel was Jurisconsulte
du Roi at Versailles; in 1789 he followed the King to Paris,
where he lived in complete privacy. That Friederike lived
with the Rosenstiels is gravely doubted by the Weyland family.
It is certain that when, in 1801, her brother was transferred
from Rothau, Friederike went to her brother-in-law Pastor
Marx, of Diersburg in Baden, and when, in 1805, Marx was
transferred to Meissenheim, near Lahr, she accompanied him
thither. Here she lived, universally beloved for her kindness,
cordiality, and beneficence, known as " Tante " in the neigh
bourhood. A lady, the kindness of whose mother, dead,
Friederike, while in Diersburg, sought for a time to supply,
tells how, when a child, she could for a long time only imagine
an angel as Tante Brion in a white garment. Friederike
died on the 3d of April 1813. The First and Second Parts
of Dichtung und Wahrheit had appeared, the Eleventh Book,
which contains the chief part of the account of her and Sessen
heim, was written before her death. A Life of Goethe must
tell with deep reverence the story of his purest, truest, young
love. This maid of twenty had strength to renounce the
splendid youth, in her belief that she must not fetter him, yet
holding him fast locked in her heart for ever — one of the most
glorious of Love's patient ones. On the 19th of August 1866,
a well-devised memorial was erected in Meissenheim church
yard to her who had fallen asleep so long before, and thus a
debt of honour redeemed for the German People. No por
trait of Friederike has been preserved, and Hornberger, in the
figure on the monument, was guided only by his imagination.
As we are without her picture, let a facsimile of some lines
written by her hand give us a feeling of personal drawing near
to the Beatrice of Goethe's life.
On Sunday, the 26th of September, Goethe rejoined the
Duke ; by noon they were in Strassburg. " I went to Liii,"
he writes to Charlotte, " and found the lovely ' Grasaffe'
playing with a baby of seven weeks, and her mother by her.
Here, too, I was received with surprise and joy. Inquired
after everything and looked into all corners. So I found to
my delight that the good thing is right happy in her marriage.

si

^M I s

"^ il» ^

ti

3oo THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
Her husband, from all that I hear, seems worthy, sensible, and
industrious; he is well off; a handsome house; a respectable-
family; good burgher rank, etc. AH that she desired, etc.
He was absent. I stayed for dinner. Went afterwards with
the Duke to the Cathedral ; in the evening listened for an
hour to Paesiello's beautiful music in D Infante di Zamora.
Then supped with Liii and went away in lovely moonlight."
What a different figure from Friederike is Liii — well off,
happy in her married life, having found everything that she
needed ! Yet already disappointments had been frequent to
discipline her. The loss of Goethe had cost her a struggle,
lightened, indeed, by her family's misrepresentations of his
character. In June 1776 she had been betrothed to a
merchant of Strassburg, named Bernard, a relative of her
Offenbach uncle. The shattering of Bernard's fortunes de
termined him to emigrate to Jamaica. When Liii was told of
it the shock brought on a severe illness. She had now been
married since the 25th of August 1778, to the Strassburg
banker Bernhard Friedrich von Turckheim. Her nature had
been deepened by misfortune and by memories of Goethe,
whose influence upon her heart and mind had been very
powerful. She became one of the noblest women, the best of
wives and mothers. After the proclamation of the French
Republic heavy blows fell on her, beneath which she showed
heroic courage and endurance. In the days of her sorrow
she sent a greeting to her old friend Goethe from Erlangen;
later still she recommended to him a protege' of hers for whom,
to his deep regret, he was unable to do anything.
Before entering Switzerland there was one other very dear
and very sad spot to visit. On September 27 the travellers
rode from Strassburg to Emmendingen. " Here now I am
by my sister's grave ; her household is like a tablet on which
a beloved form used to be that now is wiped away. . . . Her
children are handsome, bright, and well." Schlosser had
married Johanna Fahlmer. When, in November 1777, Goethe
received a letter from her announcing their betrothal, he had
replied : — " That you can be my sister makes my insupport
able loss new again." And now it must have moved him
strangely that she could thus have stepped into the place of ,
the beloved dead. She spoke to him about the Woldemar
affair; he represented his ridicule as merely playful fun,

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 301
which would not have annoyed Jacobi had he been himself
present. A peculiar dislike to the discussion of such a matter
by letter prevented Goethe from attempting directly to pacify
his old friend. His brother-in-law Schlosser he found very
good ; Schlosser rejoiced in his Goethe, and in the Duke for
the sake of both, because he deserved to be a Duke and
to possess Goethe. Two Frauleins Gerock were at Emmen
dingen on a visit. Schlosser, his wife, and these ladies, ac
companied our travellers as far as the Hollenthal.
At Mechel's house in Basel they saw excellent paintings.
Their way then lay through the glorious Munsterthal to Biel ;
they visited St. Peter's Island, made famous by Rousseau's
sojourn ; it was the season of vintage — a great source of plea
sure to our travellers, as in Baden the unusually bountiful
fruit harvest had been. They reached Murten (Morat) after
a difficult ride through a moss ; Goethe brought away from
the charnel-house part of the skull of one of the Burgundians
who had fallen in the battle of 1476.
Then followed an excursion through the Bernese Ober-
land in the loveliest weather. Karl August displayed his
tendency to attempt, without aim or necessity, dangerous
and laborious feats. This determined Goethe to go neither
as high nor as deep as he would otherwise.1 There were
other passions of the hot-blooded young Duke which gave
his companion anxiety. On the other hand he had a
good kind of observation, sympathy, and curiosity.2 In
Berne3 all collections and important people were visited. To
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein ; Thun, 14th October 1779 ; Abends
7.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, 14th October 1779. — Tr.
3 I here give an abstract of a portion of the journey :¦— They arrived
in Berne from Murten first on the 8th of October. Then followed an ex
pedition to the Bernese Oberland by Thun, Unterseen, Lanterbrunnen, the
Oberhasli Pass, Brienz, Thun again. Back to Beme on October 15, when
there were visits to collections, short excursions, etc. They left Berne
finally on October 18. Then by Murten, Payerne, Moudon to Lausanne.
Arrival in Lausanne October 22. After an excursion to Vevay, set off by
Rolle for Geneva. A side-spring to La Vallie des /oux, and they arrrived
in Geneva on the 27th of October. They left on the 3d of November —
Wedel went with the horses through the Vaud into the Valais— Goethe
and the Duke followed the Arve past Bonneville, Cluses, Sallanches, to
Chamouni Valley ; then over the Col de Balme to Martigny ; then to St.
Maurice down the Rhone to meet Wedel with the horses at Bex ; then up
the Rhone valley ; through the Furka Pass — and Goethe was at the Gott-

302 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
the great naturalist Wyttenbach Goethe paid a three hours'
visit. In Lausanne the bewitching Marchesa Branconi laid
her spells on him ; Lavater, who knew the strange fortunes of
this Venetian lady, secretly wedded to the Duke of Brunswick
and ennobled by him, honoured her as one of the noblest and
purest of women.

:--' - :

na

isgjgjijip
Fig. 26. The Marchesa Branconi.
Engraved by A. Weger of Leipzig : from an oil-painting.
It was the Duke's earnest wish to travel from Geneva,
through the Savoy ranges, into the Valais. There were many
voices to. dissuade, but the great naturalist, De Saussure,
declared the enterprise as safe as at an earlier seasoa So
they passed beneath Mount Blanc and over the glaciers into
the Valais, and having traversed all its length they came
hard for the second time ! From the Gotthard down the Reuss to Luzern
Lake ; then a sail by Schwytz to Luzern ; whence they rode to Zurich and
Lavater. See Goethe's letters to Frau von Stein, and the Briefe aus der
Schweiz. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 303
through the Furka Pass at its head to the Gotthard. This
time, too, Goethe repressed the longing for Italy ; he saw that
the Duke would not derive good from the journey thither, and
it would not be prudent to remain so long away from home.1
Charlotte had been enjoying the admirable descriptions, the
loving confessions of his letters of travel, but he had heard
from her only seldom in comparison. At Zurich he received
his first Weimar letter from her — the others she had written
from Kochberg. She had been delighted with the writing-
table, his gift, which she had found awaiting her in her
Weimar home. Her fear that it was too costly was waived by
Goethe's2 simply pointing to the true mode of estimating its
value ; from the beginning of the year it had been the object
of his loving anxiety ; this, if friendship can be reckoned, seems
to him the only way which God and men approve.
In Zurich 3 they stopped at the finely situated inn, Zum
Limtnat, and had a very good time in the society of Lavater,
around whose brown table they often assembled. They saw
all the "cabinets, drawings, men, and animals"4 of Zurich.
Intercourse with Lavater was, as Goethe had hoped, " the seal
and highest point of the whole journey, and a feast at Heaven's
table." 5 " It is to all of us a Cure to be with a man who
lives and strives in the household service of Love ; who finds
joy in activity, and with incredible painstaking supports, nur
tures, guides, and gladdens his friends." 6 Goethe hoped
1 Goethe writes to Frau von Stein on Saturday, the 13th of Novem
ber, from the Capuchins' Hospice on the Gotthard: — "At the turning-
point of our journey. Until Geneva was reached we were moving farther
and farther from you ; since we left Geneva we have in our diagonal course
remained at somewhat the same distance ; and from the morrow eveiy
step will bring us nearer home. For the second time I am in this room
on this summit ; what my thoughts are I say not. This time, as before, I
overcome the charm of Italy. That a journey thither would not now
benefit the Duke, that it were not good to stay away from Weimar so
long, that I shall see you soon again — all make me turn my face a second
time away from the Promised Land, which I yet hope to see before I
die."— Tr.
2 Writing from Zurich, Tuesday, 30th November 1779.
3 They arrived in Zurich about November 20; they did not leave
until December 2. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Herr von Stein, 30th November 1779. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, in a continuation, written at Zurich,
ofthe letter already quoted, which had been begun on the Gotthard. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein : Zurich, November 30, 1779. — Tr.

3°4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
much benefit from this society for the Duke, who could not
be content at home and in his family — always impelled
towards something high and special. And the love for old
engravings and woodcuts which Goethe had fostered in him
found rich sustenance here.
Kayser was still in Zurich. Two years ago Goethe had
taken some trouble to find a publisher for the Gesdnge mit
Begleitung des Klaviers ; but Kayser had fallen out with him
self, his music not having produced the great effect which he
had hoped : he lacked the right inward moral self-support
(Halt). Goethe tried to inspirit his old friend to fresh effort,
and already meditated writing a Singspiel for him, a dramatic
Swiss idyll, the music of which would make Kayser a name in
Weimar, where it should as soon as possible be acted, and a
name in Switzerland too. From Zurich our travellers went to
Schaffhausen. Lavater could not deny himself the pleasure of
seeing once more those who had grown so dear, and surprised
them by his arrival on the 6th of December. On that day
they viewed the Rhine Falls together, and there was an
earnest talk about the Sublime. " It is with Lavater as with
the Falls," writes Goethe to Charlotte on the 7 th ; " him too
when you see anew you think you have never so seen before :
he is the flower of humankind — the best of the best"1
After all, the Duke could not deny himself the pleasure of
visiting Courts on his return through Germany. They stayed
a week in Stuttgart. Though the incognito was strictly
observed, Schiller's Duke showed every attention to Karl
August, and was very polite to his retinue. They were present
at the annual distribution of prizes of the Military Academy
(December 13). There Goethe and Karl August saw how
one pupil — a red-haired youth of twenty — carried off three
prizes in medicine, and did not take that for German language
and literature only because the drawing of lots was against
him. It was Schiller — who thus for the first time saw the poet
of Werther and Clavigo in the company of his Duke.
Goethe was at the time engaged on his Swiss idyll,
Jery und Bdtely ; the restored Weimar theatre should not
come short because he went travelling ; on the contrary, he
hoped that this Singspiel with its reminders of their Swiss
journey — the poetic fruit, as it were, of that journey — would
1 They left Schaffhausen on the 8th of December. — Tr.

A779-I782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 305
have a remarkable effect. He also meditated the plan of
erecting in the Park at Weimar a monument to the journey
which, as he writes to Lavater, a good spirit had guided, which
the fairest fortune had crowned ; and as he desired to have
something thoroughly worthy of this first ramble alone with
the Duke in the free world, he begged Lavater to get a design
from the painter H. Fiissli, whose last things Goethe had seen
at Lavater's house in December.
Much less important than the ever-memorable and instruc
tive stay in Stuttgart, were the days spent at the Court in
Karlsruhe, where they were indeed treated politely, but the
Duke met with no friendly warmth, and there was an intel
lectual poverty which makes Goethe write : — "God in heaven,
what a paradise is Weimar ! " Then they passed on to Frank
furt, whence, on the 29th of December, Goethe sends Jery
und Bdtely to Kayser, who is to compose to it rapidly, for pre
sentation at Weimar. Then they dragged through a dull
round of courts — Darmstadt, Homburg, Hanau, and Zwingen-
berg; five years later, Goethe could not think of this time
without aching twinges in his limbs : 1 they were frozen ; they
were bored ; they got wretched food and worse drink.2 The
Duke indeed was better off among his relations ; but Goethe
knew no content until he got back once more to the fleshpots
of his mother. They rested a few days in Frankfurt, and
strengthened themselves with good wine. Frau Aja again
beamed with cheerfulness and joy, nor did her hospitable hus
band allow his depression to be seen.
On the 14th3 of January 1780, after an absence of four
months, our travellers entered Weimar, and appeared the
same evening at the Redoute. The journey had cost — includ-
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, December 8, 1784. — Tr.
a Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Homburg, January 3, 1780. — Tr.
3 The generally received date of their arrival is January 13. This is
founded on the dating of Goethe's letter to Kraft on that day : " Weimar,
13 Januar 1780." But it is well known how easily a slip about the day of
the month is made in dating letters. Therefore, Herr Duntzer thinks,
when Wieland mentions Friday as the day of the travellers' arrival, we
have stronger testimony to the 14th than that above mentioned is to the
13th. The travellers would be glad to surprise all the Court at the
Redoute on Friday evening. There is a doubt, Herr Duntzer also thinks,
about the reading of the date of the letter to Kraft, perhaps " 15th"
would be correct. — Tr. X

306 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
ing the price of the objects of art purchased— more than 8900
thalers. People had been enraged by the appointment of
Goethe as Geheimerath, and still more by the secret journey
to which the minion had allured the Duke ; the longer the
journey lasted, the less the information of it that leaked out,
so much the more was it feared that the Duke had been per
haps entrapped into going to Italy. And thus the administra
tion, they said, is being neglected I Others must do the work
of the over-paid stranger ! Enormous sums are being spent !
So the blaze of wrath rose high, and was only appeased when
word came that the Duke was visiting among the little Courts.
Of course, when on his return the Duke was seen to have
grown more contented, more tranquil, more exact, and the
precise truth about his Swiss travels was known ; when the
new Geheimerath — who after all was . there, and could not be
got rid of — was found more free, open, and cheery, people
began to reconcile themselves with the journey, at last even
began to praise it as a masterstroke, now that it had come to
a successful close ! 1
The first days after return were so engrossed by visits and
by various matters of business that Goethe chafed a little.
One of his chief personal affairs was to get made Freemason;
for that he did not belong to the Society had often on his
journey hindered close acquaintance with important men.
Accordingly, only three days after his return, he applied to
Bode, who had now been a year in Weimar as man of business
of the Countess von Bernstorff, and had zealously devoted
himself to the spread of the Order of Freemasons, an order
which he esteemed very high as. a means of furthering true
culture and humanity. Goethe was convinced that this was
an honest man.2 Yet four weeks passed before he wrote to
the Master of the Lodge — no other than his colleague, Fritsch
— petitioning for admittance; he did not conceal that he
would not have written but for desire to join the Society.3
The reception did not take place until the 23d of June, the
date ofthe Midsummer Lodge of 1780.
Great exertion was now necessary in order to cope with
the arrears of business which had accumulated during the
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, January 17, 1780. — Tr
2 Goethe's Tagebuch, January 17, 1780. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Fritsch, February 13, 1780. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 307
journey. The finances had fallen into great disorder through
Kalb's carelessness and incapacity. Goethe was sternly re
solved to bring more order, clearness, and sequence into
every department. But in the midst of his labours he found
himself extremely wretched and feverish with influenza (close
of January). Then he could not entirely renounce literary
and scientific work. It was indeed a hard task to satisfy all
demands, though he had long disciplined himself to pursue
Art and Science as a recreation from business, and knew how
to make social intercourse yield its intellectual tribute. In
the period immediately following his return, he works up the
letters written to Charlotte von Stein from Switzerland into a
methodical account of travels;1 he pushes on with Wilhelm
Meister; and busies himself with a life of Bernhard the Great
of Weimar, which was to present a living picture of a great
ancestor of Karl August, to indicate the noble original germ
of the Weimar dynasty.
Of his own special departments the most pressing at this
time were the War Commission, the construction of highways,
and the management of Crown Lands. In the last-named of
these he had in Batty an admirable force at his disposal. All
that Batty did was sure to give Goethe the most welcome
instruction, was just as sure to be the best thing for bringing
about the desired results. And as to the Roads he could
depend on Castrop in the main. Still, it was his desire to see
everything with his own eyes, to learn by personal contact
with things. In the War Department, Kriegsrath Volgstedt
was a hindrance so great that Goethe did not rest until he
was shaken off.
That indisposition prevented him from taking part in the
Redoutes of the early-closing Shrovetide of this year (1780), or
in the Duchess's birthday fete. Not until the 1 ith of February
could he resume steady work. Two days later he went with
the Duke to the Gotha Court for the- first time ; he was well-
pleased with his visit After his return he is busy about the
transformation of the theatre — busy already with the still far-
off opening of it. A new piece had to be chosen for this
opening. Goethe himself had none ready; for Kayser was
very slow in his composition for Jery und Bately. So he had
to agree that SeckendorfFs poor tragedy Kallisto (properly
1 See in Goethe's Works Briefe aus der Schweiz, Zweite Abtheilung. — Tr.

308 THE LIFE OF GOETHE [bk. iv. ch. iii.
Kalliste), founded on an adaptation of one of Rowe's plays,
should be chosen for this honour.1
On the nth of March he goes with Batty into the district
Grossrudestedt, where everything that his right-hand man had
done seemed good : the way in which the people had been
dealt with good beyond improvement. On March 19, the
new piece was read at Seckendorff's house, and the parts
allotted ; next day took place the illumination of the theatre
with the candelabrum of Oeser's designing. On March 28,
Goethe speaks with the architect of mistakes in the construc
tion of the theatre, and of the way to remedy them.
For all his self-mastery and endurance in business, he feels
at times oppressed. The alternation of good and bad days
struck him — an established round, he believed; so too Passions,
Fidelity (Anhdnglichkeit), the impulse to do This or That,
Invention, Performance (Ausfuhrung), Order, as well as Cheer
fulness, Gloom, Strength, Elasticity, Weakness, Self-Possession
(Gelassenheit), Inordinate Desire (Begier), all followed in
regular circuit, and he desires to discover in what time and
sequence he thus circles around himself2
At the end of March 1780 he is pleased to find that he
seems successful in his endeavours to shake off many odious
conditioning circumstances which had clung around his ad
vance.3 The matters in hand then were the behaviour of
Volgstedt — whose dismissal was accomplished at the close of
the year, and Kalb's administration of finance. On March
31a letter from Kalb had caused Goethe " momentary agita
tion." On the 2d of April he is visited by Kalb ; how sadly
the minister has fallen stands out plain after an interview of
1 Herr Duntzer has shown (Archiv fur die Literalurgeschichte, vi.
551) that Seckendorff in Kallisto worked on a German translation (1770)
of Rowe's play, The Fair Penitent. — Tr.
2 Goethe's Tagebuch, March 26, 1780: — "Ich muss den Cirkel der
sich in mir umdreht von guten und bosen Tagen naher bemerken, Leiden-
schaften, Anhanglichkeit, Trieb dies oder jenes zu thun. Erfindung,
Ausfuhrung, Ordnung alles wechselt, und halt einen regelmassigen Kreis.
Heiterkeit, Triibe, Starke, Elasticity, Schwache, Gelassenheit, Begier
eben so. — Da ich sehr diat lebe, wird der Gang nicht gestort und ich
muss noch heraus kriegen in welcher Zeit und Ordnung ich mich um
mich selbst bewege." The punctuation is Goethe's own. — Tr.
3 Goethe's Tagebuch, March 31, 1780. Immediately after he writes :
— " Nemo coronatur nisi qui certaverit ante. Sauer lass ich mir's denn
doch werden." — Tr.

1779^1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 309
two hours. Goethe writes in the Diary of that day : — " It
dizzies me, the height of fortune I stand on compared with
such a man. Many a time I would fain, like Polycrates, fling
my dearest jewel into the sea. All that I undertake succeeds.
But now to undertake also be not slack ! " Soon after this
the levies engaged him for four days. In the latter half of
April he again feels somewhat agitated — " suffer in Prometheus
wise" (" litte Prometheisch "), he writes in the Diary,— yet he
can say that his glance is growing surer, his skill in everyday
living is increasing ; only it is with him as with a bird
entangled in a thread — he feels that he has wings, and cannot
use them. For recreation he has recourse sometimes to
history, sometimes to trifling with a new novel or drama.1
A laurel wreath sent to Wieland was the indication of his
warm unenvious delight in Oberon. Walking to Tiefurt,
March 30, 1780, the conception of Tasso had occurred to him :
the relation of the poet to the Princess attracted him ; it
would be a mode of expressing in poetry his own earlier pas
sionate love for Charlotte von Stein. His drawing began to be
more successful ; he continued to approach precision, and to
gain a more vivid feeling of the Image. " I don't draw much,
but continually a little, and lately once from the nude," he
writes on the 29th of March to Merck. " I seek to exercise
sometimes in the rapid delineation of form, sometimes in cor
rectness ; again, I seek to habituate myself to the more various
expression of attitude, partly from nature, partly from draw
ings, engravings, from imagination too ; and thus always more
and more to work forth from vagueness and twilight." Side
by side he zealously pushed on the enlargement and arrange
ment of his own and of the Duke's collection of paintings,
engravings, and drawings, a task in which Merck gave willing
help as agent. The Duke desired to have only the best in
his collection. Goethe in the letter already quoted tells
Merck: — "For Diirer himself, and for the collection [of
Diirers] in the Duke's possession, I gain more respect every
day. So soon as I find time I will set down a thought or
two about the most noteworthy sheets (Blatter) ; not so much
about invention and composition as about the expression and
the pure gold of perfect execution."
His concernment with the mining had led him continually
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, during the latter half of April. — Tr.

310 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
deeper into Mineralogy and Geology. The surveyor, Johann
Gottfried Schreiber, had been brought to Ilmenau, and had
made a map of the neighbourhood and of the mine. But
negotiations with the Saxon Court about taking up the mining
remained for the time without result. The young Voigt was
a great aid to Goethe in the study of mineralogy. Buffon's
Epoques de la nature, not to him as to Forster " a hypothesis
or a romance," occupied much of his attention.
The Duke improved daily, and Goethe held this ample
reason for content. Only it is a necessary evil that a prince can
never see things from below upwards, and often though he
sees what is wrong knows not how to remedy it1 Karl
August had grown very much more mature in his judgment of
men and things. Not seldom they had delightful mutual ex
planations. Thus we read in the Diary of April 3, 1780 : —
" Got on our old ethical chargers, and had a right good
tourney on them. One clears oneself and others infinitely by
such conversations." His only trouble at this time was the
ill-health of Charlotte von Stein. In her pure faith he found
rest, to her he came for relief every evening when the day's
burden was put off. His own health was not indeed perfect;
the bad climate came against him often.
Then came a journey with the Duke to Leipzig on the
2 2d of April, and some days following, better than medicine.
On this journey Goethe had the real pleasure of meeting the
Prince of Dessau. The particular object of the Duke and
Goethe was the collecting of engravings and woodcuts. Goethe
writes with delight in the Diary that he is " gaining much
territory in the earth." At the beginning of May 1780 he
rode with Castrop to Erfurt, and thence on to Dietendorf to
examine " bad roads, on which much has been expended, and
which yet are not better nor to be made better." 2 Goethe
and the Statthalter Dalberg talked on many matters — political,
philosophical, and literary. Dalberg's narrations from a varied
political life lifted Goethe's spirit " out of the simple web which
I spin around myself, and which, although it has many threads,
yet tends too much to fix me at length to one central point"3
As — if not in name, yet in fact — Goethe was House
1 Goethe's Tagebuch, end of April 1780. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein : Erfurt, May 5, 1780.— Tr.
3 See the letter just quoted. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 311
Minister at Weimar, it fell to him to adjust the disagreement
which broke out after his return between Prince Constantin
and Knebel. Knebel was extremely angry because his pupil
had informed the Duke of a desire to travel to Italy, France,
and England, begging that his tutor's companionship on the
journey should be dispensed with. Goethe found it hard to
appease his easily-angered friend, and to persuade him to take
a journey to Switzerland, for which money would be advanced.
It was also arranged (May 1780) that the prince's establish
ment should be diminished ; that he should come to live in
the town in winter : the Jagerhaus had to be fitted up for him.
The theatre had meanwhile been finished, and after many
tiresome rehearsals was opened on the 26th of May with the
miserable Kallisto. Goethe acted with Corona Schroter. If
Seckendorff and Corona had been discontented with his act
ing in rehearsal, because — as he writes on March 30 to Char
lotte von Stein — he only " half opened the ^Eolus bag of the
Passions," they must now have been appeased. He played
" a poor part with great diligence and with considerable suc
cess," and, on the whole, produced the impression he had
desired. " The theatre is one of the few things left in which
I still have both a child's and an artist's delight." Kayser's
composition to Jery und Bately was unfortunately not forth
coming, and that which Seckendorff produced was a failure.
Goethe could see this May go out with the feeling that he
now had order in all his affairs, only he desires that full ex
perience and ready skill may be added unto him also.1
On the 5th of June 1780 he went on a visit to Gotha
Court, where he now felt among friends. Before his return
Charlotte von Stein went to join her sister at Morlach, near
Niirnberg. A short time before this she had given him a
ring, but had not allowed him his desire that her initials
(C. v. S.) should be graved thereon ; this token of her fullest
confidence awaited him on his return. Her absence left a
void, as he writes in the Diary ; so had " a love and confidence
unlimited become his daily fare." 2 There was, of course, no
1 See most of the foregoing in Goethe's Tagebuch, two long entries
at the end of May 1780. — Tr.
2 "Eine Liebe und Vertrauen ohne Grdnzen ist mir zur Gewohnheit
geworden." Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Friday, June 30, 1780 : (the
sentence thus in italics.) — Tr.

312 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
lack of activity and diversion ; but the thread that connected
all things was missed. Beside the usual Council business
there were the new paths to be laid out in the Park ; there
was the War Department, the trial of a fire-engine, and many
other things to claim his attention. Voigt's mineralogical
description of Weimar, Eisenach, and Jena was of great
interest and satisfaction to Goethe, who had sent Voigt
through the country for the purpose. For Goethe himself
Voigt had collected and classified specimens of the rocks of
Weimar and Jena.
Very animated was his connection with Ettersburg during
this summer, where Oeser was engaged in an endeavour to bring
about a more satisfactory state of things in the scene-painting.
Oeser having asked for a piece to paint to, Goethe chose to
carry out a plan which had long floated before him — an adap
tation of the first act of The Birds of Aristophanes, which
he dictated in a few sittings to Fraulein von Gochhausen at
Ettersburg.1 The Duchess Amalia had procured an electric
battery, and there was great fun getting shocks from it. To
Goethe's pleasure the Duke had begun to take an interest in
Physics ; Hofrath Albrecht entertained him with experiments
and instruction in it for three hours every Sunday. Jery und
Bately was at last presented on July 1 2 with music by Secken
dorff. The welcome return of Charlotte von Stein nine days
later proved no interruption to the frequency of intercourse
with Ettersburg. On the 2 2d, Goethe and Einsiedel won
applause in a rehearsal of Scapin und Pierrot. Six days later
there was another performance of Jery und Bately in the pre
sence of Charlotte von Stein. "Wedel played Thomas capi
tally," wrote she to Knebel, " the whole hung together very
well." The rehearsal of The Birds, which the Duke was very
eager about, engaged Goethe's time and thoughts excessively.
On the 1 8th of August the performance came off amid great
applause. The Marchesa Branconi came to Weimar just before
Goethe's birthday (August 28); her marvellous loveliness
moved him to wonder as before.2 He spent a happy birthday
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 14 and June 26, 1780. — Tr.
2 He writes to her — " In Ihrer Gegenwart wiinscht man sich reicher
an Augen, Ohren und Geist, um nur sehen und glaubwurdigvmd begreiflich
finden zu konnen, dass es dem Himmel nach so viel verungliickten Ver-

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 313
with the Steins at his Garden ; the birthday of the Duke
(September 3) was passed quietly at Belvedere.
On the 5 th of September business compelled him to
Ilmenau, whence he made a very instructive excursion through
the mountains. In the Hermannstein Cave he kissed the
S which he had made there in August 1776, and which was
" as clear as if only cut yesterday." J The Duke too came to
Ilmenau, and was soon overtaken by the temper of mad frolic
of former days, while Goethe felt his spirit exalted, purified.
He gained during their stay light on many points of geo-
genesis. And he began his Romance on the Universe in
letters. On the 1 ith, with the Duke, Batty, and Stein, he set out
from the Stutzerbach, with its painful memories, on a journey
of inspection through the Oberland. Batty's improvements in
the meadow-land of the district gave Goethe high satisfaction.
With the Duke he had " vivid and luminous conversations ; " 2
but he saw with regret that the Duke, notwithstanding his fine
judgment and the best purposes, was easily carried away by
passion. Goethe did not always remember that the Duke
was eight whole years younger than he.
About this time he writes to Lavater : — " The labour
which is laid upon me, which grows continually both lighter and
heavier, exacts my presence, — waking or dreaming; this duty
becomes daily dearer to me, and in its discharge I wish to act
like the greatest men, I wish in nothing to act like the merely
greater. This desire — to make the Pyramid of my being, the
founded basis being given to me, soar as high as can be in the
air — outweighs all else, and permits hardly a momentary for
getting. I may not linger, I am already far in years, and
perchance destiny will come and break me off in the middle
of my building, and Babel Tower will stand unfinished,
blunt. At least it shall be said, — It was a bold design ! and
if I live my strength, God willing, shall suffice to carry it into
execution. And very powerful is the talisman of a beautiful
suchen auch einmal gefallen und gegliickt hat, etwas Ihresgleichen zu
machen." — Tr.
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, " On the Gickelhahn," September
6, 1780.— Tr.
2 See Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Ostheim, September 21 (No.
12) ; and then look back to his letter of September 9. — Tr.

3T4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
love, such as the Stein seasons life with for me. She has by
degrees succeeded to my mother, my sister, and my former
loves, and a bond has formed between us as strong as are the
bonds of Nature." x Thus was he clear and firm in the con
sciousness of his striving, and perfectly sufficient to himself.
He went on with the Duke to Meiningen Court, where they
had the most cordial reception. The Duke bought four ex
cellent paintings ; Goethe secured some beautiful drawings.2
Returning by the Wartburg, he could not overcome his impa
tience, and ieft it on the second day of his stay, the 3d of
October, for Kochberg. For the Duke arriving on the 9th of
October, Goethe had prepared a reception humorous as it was
simple in device. Clad as an honest countryman, he pre
sented an address in doggerel verse : the good Sebastian
Simpel begged the Duke to interest himself in the "true
peasant blood," which always would be his best possession, on
which he may congratulate himself rather than on his horses
and studs.3 This was, so to speak, the moral of the journey
just over. Before this, on the 4th, Goethe had again written
on the edge of Charlotte's writing-table: he is "The Same"
(" Ebenderselbe "). But even in Karl August's presence, he
allowed himself to be carried away in a mad fit of jealousy at
the friendliness of Frau von Stein towards the Duke, a friend
liness which she showed to all. On the following morning, as
she accompanied him up the hill to the road by which he was
about to travel to Weimar, she reproached him for his be
haviour so earnestly that he almost broke forth in tears. Not
till three days later did he receive comforting words from her ;
but her return on this occasion was long delayed by illness in
her family, and still she did not seem appeased. (At this time,
too, she was rendered anxious by fear of monetary embarrass
ment ; her husband's many and various schemes did not turn
out well.)
Notwithstanding the quantity of business which awaited
Goethe on his return to Weimar, he found time for the study
of mineralogy and geology. He planned to write a little
essay on the relations of position of various rocks. On the
20th of October he went to meet Merck at Miihlhausen, and
1 Goethe to Lavater, Ostheim vor d. Rhon, September (?) 1780. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Merck, Weimar, October 11, 1780. — Tr.
3 See it reprinted Hempel's Goethe's Werke, Bd. iii., s. 317-18.— Tr.

1779-1782.]' WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 315
spent a very good day and a couple of nights there. Now for
the first time he seriously dubs Merck — even before his com
ing — "Mephistopheles;"1 and writing to Frau von Stein after
wards, he says — " The old dragon always makes me bad blood;
it is with me as with Psyche when she saw her sisters again."2
Goethe had indeed in jest already given him this nickname
in Frankfurt, because of the mocking sharpness which made
Merck like the Mephistopheles of Faust. Merck must have
been reproaching him by letter for meddling with so many
different kinds of work, and for wasting his power on so many
commonplace things, and these reproaches had now prob
ably been repeated in person. Ten months later, Goethe
observes in a letter to his mother that Merck has eyes only for
what he (Goethe) is sacrificing, no eyes to see what he is gain
ing — to see how daily he grows richer, while daily giving away.3
Merck perhaps made him re-consider certain isolated points in
his conduct of life, but did not at all shake his general convic
tion that the only right path for him was that which he pursued.
Merck brought him news that his father was very ill (it is
said had grown weak-minded) ; yet at this time it was impos
sible for Goethe to leave Weimar. The Duke had sent a bust
of himself to Rath Goethe in grateful acknowledgment of his
hospitality; and without Wolfgang's knowledge had indemnified
Frau Aja for the heavy expense at which that hospitality had
been exercised.4
Towards the close of the month Goethe had a good deal
to look after in his capacity of Hausminister, especially the
arrangements for the new domestic establishment and the
journey of Prince Constantin. Yet amid all, he found time
and energy to begin Tasso.6 Not until the 4th of November
could he visit Charlotte at Kochberg in company with the
Duke. There was a perfect reconciliation. For the third
time he wrote his name on the edge of the writing-table.
Thus he was again perfectly content; Charlotte is "the one
Ideal of his soul."
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, October 20, 1780.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, October 25, 1780.
3 Goethe to his Mother, August 11, 1781. — Tr.
* See Robert Keil's Frau Rath, p. 163, note. — Tr.
5 " Began to write Tasso," is an entry in the Diary between the 14th
and 31st October 1780.— Tr.

316 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
When she at length came back after the anniversary of his
arrival in Weimar — the 7 th of November — his chief effort for
the time was to push on with Tasso, the first scene of which
he read aloud (November 10) to Charlotte and Knebel, "his
best and only public." Soon the first Act is finished, and, at
Charlotte's earnest desire, the second begun ; but no exhorta
tions could avail to push this Act forward, and at the end of
the month he has to lay it aside.
Towards the close of the year 1780 he became right
weary of his load of business. Charlotte was his one consola
tion. The Court on the other hand grew colder. " Yester
day evening I grew very sad — sad from the bottom of my
heart," he writes to Charlotte on the last day of 1780 ; he will
tell her more when they meet. The cause of his pain was the
drawing back of the Court, which was due, he felt, to his not
being of the nobility.
In the New Year (17 81) he found the amount of work in
the War Department much increased by the dismissal of Volg-
stedt ; he had become the centre from which all directions
must radiate. In this year he founded a spinning and knitting
school for poor soldiers' children, laying out to admirable ad
vantage the 100 thalers advanced by the State. The superin
tendence of this school he gave to Seidel, who set up besides
a linen-spinning establishment on his own account. In all
the other branches of his practical activity, Goethe laboured
" ohne Rast." Yet he found time not only for social life —
for skating especially — but time to contribute to the entertain
ment of others.
Friend Kayser, then in Weimar, he sought to bring under
public notice in the most advantageous way, hoping for Kay
ser that in Weimar, besides seeing and hearing a great deal
of his own art, he would grow more pliant and dexterous.
Kayser had shortly before published a Christmas Cantata;
Goethe subscribed for twelve copies.
The bright little Song of the Three Kings ' was written for
Twelfth Night evening, 1781, and was sung by Corona
Schroter and two professional singers, to the delight of the
Duchess Amalia and her guests. For the Duchess Luise's
1 See Epiphaniasfest in Goethe's Gedichte. Corona Schrbter sang the
part of the First King: — "Ich Erster bin so weiss und auch so sehbn
. . . werd ich sein Tag kein Madchen mehr erfreun." — Tr.

l779-'782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 317
birthday (Jan. 30), in the absence of any new play, it was
resolved to repeat Iphigenie, and Goethe, though poorly, had
to act. In the first week of the year he had written a Gesprach
iiber die deutsche Literature moved by the unjust depreciation
of German literature in the essay De la litt'erature allemande,
published by Friedrich of Prussia towards the close of 1780.
Then for the Redoute of the 2d of February, the first after the
birthday of the Duchess, he had to arrange a masquerade
congratulating her. On the 4th of February it was planned
to have another at the next Redoute (Feb. 1 6), with Charlotte
von Stein and her husband, the Prince, Knebel, and other
persons of rank, as actors. If, hitherto, it had always been
Charlotte von Stein who hesitated to appear in public with her
friend lest the tongue of slander should be loosed, on this
occasion it is Goethe whom we find so anxious, that he pro
poses to give up to the Prince his part of " Sleep," who was to
appear leading "Night" — Charlotte — by the hand. But
Charlotte's faith in the steadfastness of their pure relation was
too great to admit of the least uneasiness. And so Goethe
appeared in the masque Winter, which was presented amid
the greatest applause on February 16.2 But Goethe opposed
the Duke's desire to have a picture of the masque taken ; he
did not wish so dear a remembrance to be desecrated.
Winter was repeated on March 2. That all this time he felt
very unwell he would betray to nobody, that he might " not
lose his credit."3
The devotion for Charlotte had now grown to a very noble
emotion, pure from baseness and distrust. Before he started
1 Dialogue on German Literature. Goethe sent this Dialogue to
Merck, who praises it in a letter to Georg Forster. It was not published,
because Moser anticipated what it had to say in his Schreiben iiber die
deutsche Sprache und Literatur. It was lost, and has not, I believe, been
yet found. — Tr.
2 On the 15th of February 1781, the day preceding this representa
tion, Lessing had died at Brunswick. Goethe knew of the death on the
20th; he writes to Charlotte von Stein: — "Not a quarter of an hour
' before the news came I had made a plan of visiting him. We lose much,
much, in him, more than we believe." — Tr.
3 So, writing on February 19, 1 781, he tells Lavater. He adds :—
" I hold on often with my teeth when my hands fail me ... I take
upon me almost too great a burthen, and yet I cannot do otherwise. Any
man who has to do with matters of State ought to devote himself to them
wholly  and there is so much that I want not to let drop."— Tr.

318 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ih.
with the Duke for Neuenheiligen on March 7, to visit the
Countess Werther, Charlotte gives him a night-jacket "The
repose of assured love and of firm confidence " makes him
happy in absence as well as in presence.1 She it is who has
restored his openness and calm of heart, and his friendly
sympathy with life. The Duke's childishness' in the modes of
self-indulgence — a childishness so strangely united with good
judgment and understanding — vexes Goethe.2 All hope of
seeing him live happily with the Duchess had now proved
quite vain, and Goethe was glad that the Countess Werther
was the object of his passion ; a noble being whose love for
the Duke was of much rarer quality than the Duke's love" for
her.3 Their relation resembled that of Goethe and Charlotte,
only the young prince was not so easily governed, and his
rapture in the tender devotion of the Countess was by no
means of that deep inward kind — content in itself. He had
nothing but ridicule for the submission, the self-renunciation,
of Goethe's love.
Goethe, in his " Reiseandacht " for Charlotte, falls into the
intimate "Du " when writing on the 12 th of March. With the
ribbon she had sent around his arm, he speaks his desire to
grow like her in goodness, wisdom, moderation, patience : —
" I pray thee on my knees, complete thy work, make me right
good ! Thou canst do it — not only through loving me ; thy
power will be infinitely enlarged if thou believest that I love
thee." On his return to Weimar his business cares were pressing
as ever, yet he found leisure moments to devote to science and
art, and was very happy in the pure love of Charlotte von
Stein. He is, however, tormented by the weather ; he was
the " Dezidir teste Barometer."^ At the close of March 1781,
the meeting of a Freemasons' Lodge being at hand, he peti
tioned the Master of the Chair to advance him as soon as
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Sunday, March 11, 178 1. See the
close of the letter. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Saturday, March 10, 1781. — TR.
3 So Goethe tells Charlotte, writing on March 12. In the letter of
March 1 1 the character of the Countess Werther is described in a passage
which must be considered one of the most delicate and sympathetic that
Goethe has anywhere written. It may be compared with Dr. Newman's
character ofa gentleman, in the Idea of a University. — Tr.
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, 27th March 1781.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 319
possible to the rank of Master-Mason — a promotion which he
desires not only for his own sake, but for the sake of his
brethren, who are often embarrassed by having to treat him as
a stranger. His admission probably followed at no long
interval. In the following year (1782), before the Midsummer
Lodge, Goethe wrote to Kayser, a zealous Mason : — " I am a
Master in the Order, that does not mean much ; a kind soul
let me through anterooms and chambers extrajudicialiter, and
I know the fncredible."1
That happy harmony of soul in which he felt inspired to
take up and continue Tasso2 was unpleasantly disturbed by
an invitation from the Duke to be the companion of a journey
to Dessau, Halle, and Leipzig. Already, during the Neuen-
heiligen visit, had Goethe declined to go to Kassel with the
Duke ; now he wrote a reply, which he enclosed to Frau von
Stein (April 27, 1781), writing : — " If you think well, send the
letter to the Duke, speak to him, and do not spare him. I
desire nothing but repose, and that he should know how he
stands [with me]. And you can say I have declared to you
that I will never travel with him again." Thus did matters
stand ; Charlotte was the mediator between Goethe and the
Duke, no doubt with wise moderating influence.
In the beginning of May 1 7 8 1 we find him much agitated.
On May 3 he writes to Charlotte — now regularly addressed
with "Du:'' — "I am busy and dreary. These days make
another of my epochs. Everything tends to fix certain con
ceptions firm within me, and to impel me to certain decisions."
To Lavater, on May 7, he writes: — "There is an infinite
purification going on in me."3 From the Court he at this
time held entirely aloof, and is so buried in himself — his own
business and favourite pursuits — that on May 14 he remains
indoors unmoved when two cannon shots signal a fire, a self-
control which he had never before exercised. One of the
occasions of work to him was the meeting to take place in
1 Goethe to Kayser, June 4, 1782  Tr.
2 He was working on Tasso on the 19th April 1 781, as he tells Char
lotte von Stein. On the 20th he writes to her : — " I have, even while
writing at Tasso, adored thee." — Tr.
3 "And yet," he adds, "I confess frankly that God and Satan, Hell
and Heaven — all which are so excellently defined by thee— dwell within.
. . Write to me often, and steal a quarter of an hour for me. My name
is Legion, in doing good to me thou doest good to many." — Tr.

320 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
• summer at Ilmenau, of delegates from the Saxon Courts, for
deliberation on the question of the conjoint conduct of the
mines. With this meeting in view Goethe drew up an exhaus-,
tive memoir, in which the expenditure of the House of Weimar
on the mines was clearly set forth. It was a great distress to
him when, about the 20th of May, Charlotte overtrod her foot
— an accident which made her a sufferer for a considerable
time. On the 24th of May departed Kayser, whom Goethe
had wished to help in some way ; but application to the Duke
on his friend's behalf was impossible while their present rela
tion continued.
With the Duke he has again, on the ist of June, "a very
weighty conversation " (sehr sinnige Uberredung), and gains
new insight into the Duke's soul : — " And the wise say, ' Judge
no man until thou hast stood in his place.'"1
About the end of May 1781 the philosopher Garve from
Breslau, travelling for health, came to Weimar. He visited
the Duchess Amalia, whom he found extremely polite, obliging,
and approachable. " In Weimar they are more German [than
in Gotha]," he writes ; " the language is spoken, the literature
is known above all others ; each follows more freely his natural
bent, even in what is remarkable ; there are not so many
accepted customs as at other Courts. If there is anything
universal it is a certain blending of metaphysics and poetry,
rather in the forms of expression of many people than in their
thoughts ; it is easy to see whence this peculiarity springs.
There are even certain words current which one does not often
hear elsewhere. And often their language is obscure, because
they try to think and feel beyond their depth. Nevertheless
they are very good people here."
Goethe seems to have had Garve one evening at the
Gartenhaus when Herder and Knebel also were present.
Goethe writes to Charlotte von Stein, June 1, 1 7 8 1 : — " Herder
was very good ; if he were oftener like this one would not
desire anything more delightful."
Any constant relation of friendship was at present impos
sible owing to Herder's bitterness of mood ; his wife often
helped to turn that bitterness in the direction of Goethe — the
fortunate, the universally sought after. Garve visited Char
lotte von Stein also ; twenty years later she wishes that she
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 1, 1781. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 321
had come to know him better. On June n Prince Con
stantin, accompanied by Hofrath Albrecht, set off on his
travels, from which Goethe hoped good results ; he had had
care of the preparations.
On June 25 Goethe went with the Duke to Ilmenau.
The conference on the mines now took place, and closed
with. general unity on June 30. On the 2d of July Goethe
went in pursuit of health and knowledge on a three days'
journey in the mountains, accompanied by Knebel. After
wards business detained him in Ilmenau until the 1 ith of July.
He was very much depressed at this time; writes on July 8 : —
"An evil genius abuses my remoteness from you, paints to
me the most unendurable side of my position, and counsels
me to save myself by flight ; soon, however, I feel that a
glance, a word from thee can scare away all these vapours."
The darkness of such moments was deepened by apprehension
about Charlotte's hurt foot, and her children's coughs.
Back in Weimar on July 1 2, he writes : — " To-day I am
invited to Court, and before going have to put my affairs in
order. Thus again beneath the old yoke I traverse the fami
liar path. But also in good hours the familiar path again to
thee." He is much interested at this time in an endeavour to
bring Kayser into personal intercourse with Gluck ; means to
send 200 thalers for the journey to Vienna; yet the letter is
only written, is not sent, remains lying in his desk.
At the beginning of August 1781 he feels brighter,1 and
also draws nearer to the Court again, especially to the Duchess
Amalia, who lives in Tiefurt, now that Prince Constantin has
left it, and who is having the Park improved. Goethe medi
tates an operetta, Die Fischerin, for Tiefurt, but at present only
gets the airs collected. He draws closer to the Duchess Luise,
too ; with her next birthday in view he begins Elpenor.2 Now,
at length, he moves the Duke to apply to Gluck on Kayser's
1 Goethe had ceased to write in his Diary, broke off on January 17,
1781. He, however, begins again on August I with this entry : — " I am
sorry that I have neglected to write. This half year has been a very note
worthy one to me. From to-day I will continue." Keil, Goethe 's Tage
buch, p. 239. — Tr.
2 According to Goethe's Diary he began this tragedy on August 11,
1781. According to the Tag- und Jahreshefte "the two acts of Elpenor
were written in 1783." The statements are easily reconcilable. Elpenor
remains a fragment. — Tr. Y

322 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
behalf1 He joins in some little hunting parties, and in the
Harvest Home festival at Tiefurt on the nth of August In
this month the Duchess Amalia founded the Tiefurter Journal,
for private circulation in manuscript, and Goethe was one of
those who promised contributions. The Duchess Amalia,
celebrated her poet's birthday, August 28, 1781, by a repre
sentation in ombres chinoises of the Birth of Minerva ; warm
praise of Goethe's greatness as a poet was introduced. The
usual round of duties occupied the greater part of his time,—
the War Department, and the Department of Mines, the Build
ing Department, the Park, the Theatre, the Drawing Academy,
all contributed to his labours. A great deal of restoration had
to be done on the Fiirstenhaus, and the Paradeplatz had to be
planted. He is very glad to find that he has brought the
affairs of the War Department to a good footing, and , he
believes in his ability to manage even greater things than
this.2 On August 13 he arranges what sum shall be expended
on the education and maintenance of the little Princess.
His letter of the nth of August 1781 to his mother gives
a large and clear view of his position. His mother had been
alarmed by reports, not unfounded, of his ill-health, and his
letter is to calm her fears. His physical health suffices for
the duties laid upon him, at least for the greater part of them.
His position, notwithstanding many inconveniences, has a great
deal of what is most to be desired for him ; " of which the
best proof is this, that I can figure to myself no other into
which I would at present willingly pass." Then farther on: —
" You see how far I am from the hypochondriac disquietude
which sets so many men at variance with their place in life ;
and you see that only the weightiest consideration, or quite
extraordinary, unexpected occurrences, could move me to leave
my post. And now that the trees that I have planted begin
to increase, and there is hope of a time of ingathering when
the wheat shall be sundered from the tares, how unjust to
myself would it be to let some slight uneasiness move me to
depart, and thus lose the shade, the fruit, the harvest for
which I have laboured." 3 The Duke, on his own birthday,
the 3d of September, gave an increase of 200 thalers per
1 Goethe to Kayser, Weimar, Sept. 10, 1781. — Tr.
2 Goethe's Tagebuch, August 15, 1781. — Tr.
3 This important letter has been quoted already, see pp. 267, 31 5- — ' "•

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 323
annurn^ to the poet-minister, whose activity in his service had
been so restless and so fruitful of results
The general hope of an heir was again disappointed ; the
Duchess, on the ioth of September 1781, bore a dead girl
infant. Karl August was more quickly consoled than the
Duchess, whose grief was deep and lasting. Goethe's relation
to Charlotte was now the most intimate, loving, and pure one.
He had for a considerable time felt unable to address her
otherwise than with " Du," and probably she had by this
time granted him the like reciprocal token of her perfect trust,
which he esteemed his crowning happiness. In this period,
too, Herder and he began to draw near each other again.1
On September 22, 1781, Goethe started for the Court of
Dessau to be present at the birthday festival of the Princess
of Dessau ; he took Charlotte's eldest boy, Fritz, with him ;
they visited Leipzig Fair before their return. So cheery is his
mood on this journey that he makes Anacreontic verses 2 for
the Tiefurter Journal. On his return to Weimar (September
30) he finds Charlotte absent in Kochberg, and an invitation
to Gotha awaiting him ; he could not refuse to go.3 Gotha
had grown dear to him by this time. When returning to
Weimar he turned aside from Erfurt to visit Charlotte (October
12), who was still in Kochberg.
The three weeks of absence had been very pleasant and
profitable; yet it was with sincere pleasure that he settled
down again (October 15) in the fair Ilm valley. " The
thought of thy love within and this sunshine without together
made me perfectly happy. . . . When I have endured the
first waves of emotion which pour in upon me after such an
absence I will write more to thee," are words from his letter
of Monday, October 15, 1 781, to Charlotte von Stein. Busy
as he was he could not refuse to go, towards the end of
October, to Jena, in order to perform a " labour of love "
(Liebesdienst) for the Einsiedel family.4 The Cabinet of
1 Goethe to Knebel, September 21, 1781. — Tr.
2 Der Becher, which see among Goethe's Vermischte Gedichte ; An die
Heuschrecke, now known as An die Zikade, see in the section called Aus
fremden Sprachen. — Tr.
3 The philosopher Grimm was at Gotha ; to meet him Goethe was
invited. " Acquaintance with this ami des pkilosophes will certainly make
an epoch with me, as my state of mind is at present." — Tr.
4 "Liebesdienst" is from a letter to Charlotte, October 29, 1781. The

324 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
Natural History, which owed to his sympathy that it had been
considerably enlarged of late, and Loder's demonstrations on
the bones and muscles, filled with interest any time he had
to spare. For, while his researches in mineralogy were pushed
on with unabating zeal, he had in addition begun the study
of human anatomy and physiology. And now the Duke grows
interested in the same subject, and will as soon as possible
hear lectures on physiology from Loder. Having disappointed
Goethe twice by putting off her return, Charlotte at length
arrives on the 5th of November. On the evening of the 7th
(the anniversary of his coming to Weimar), Goethe begins to
deliver to the teachers and students of the Drawing Academy
a series of bi-weekly lectures on the human skeleton, after
each of which the hearers were expected to draw the parts
treated of. The concluding lecture of the series was delivered
on the 1 6th of January 1782. The desire for personal com
fort and the need of more space for his growing collections
determined him at length to rent a house in the town. He
had the good fortune, in November, to obtain a house on the
Frauenplan?- built seventy-two years before by one Helmeis-
hausen • through the garden attached there was easy access to
the Steins' house. He could not enter into possession until
Easter 1782. The Duchess Amalia, who had not been con
tent to see her son's minister and friend live beneath a shingle-
roof, was glad, and promised furniture for the new dwelling.
She also informed him that on account of his close relation
to the Court the Duke must and would raise him to the
nobility. "I spoke my opinion very plainly, and did not
attempt to conceal something which I will tell you too,"
writes Goethe to Charlotte on November 17. Nor had he
probably refrained from speaking what he thought of the
slighting way in which the Court had so long treated him.
Towards the Court he now indeed sought to show himself
pleasanc and obliging at every point; on December 3, 1781,
he arranges with Kraus for a picture on the subject, German
Literature (he hoped to amuse the Duchess Amalia on Christ
mas Eve by expounding this picture himself, got up as a quack
old Privy Councillor, Einsiedel, had become crazed ; Goethe brought him
back to his family. In a letter to Karl August, dated November 4, 1781,
Goethe explains the affair. -XTr.
1 This is now the Goethe-Platz. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 325
doctor), and at this time he was devising a ballet for the
Duchess Luise's birthday ; but the cold ¦ treatment which he
received continued to pain him.
He does not follow the Duke direct to Eisenach and
Wilhelmsthal in the first week of December, but visits the
friendly Gotha Court first, is there on St. Nicholas' Eve, and
comes in for his share of the saint's gifts. "The favour
accorded to me in Gotha makes a stir," he writes to Charlotte
from Eisenach, December 10, 1781 ; "I am glad for my own
sake and for the sake of the good cause. And it is fair that
through a Court I should get back what through a Court I
have lost. For the passive attitude which has hitherto been
mine was not adequate, and the undisguised indifference of
our people towards me in my retirement has also had, I can
see, the inevitable effect on the public." In Eisenach he
separated from everything in order to live only for himself
and Charlotte. As for the Duke, he was happy and good,^
" only I think the game too dear ; he is feeding eighty men
in the wilderness and the frost, has not got a boar yet, because
he will hunt in the open, which is no Use ; torments and
wearies his own people, and entertains a couple of parasite
nobles from the neighbourhood who give him no thanks for
it. God knows whether he will learn that fireworks at noon
are without effect I cannot bear to be always playing the
bogey [of advice and reproof], and the others he neither asks
for their counsel, nor even tells what he is going to do."
However, the Duke after his duke-fashion is not bad.1 The
misfortune is that he is not happy in his home, and so takes
delight in Court life. Goethe's hope of awakening the
domestic sense in him had been disappointed ; even the ,
household and piety of Lavater had failed Goethe's letters
to Frau von Stein reach a very high pitch of devotion in the
years 1781-2; they are at no time more remarkable than in
the short absences to which he is compelled. During this
little round of travel and visit he felt a sudden pain one day
when he eagerly opened one of Charlotte's letters and found
that she had gone back to the Sie and Lhnen of polite distance ;
having written a page of remonstrance, he turns, while his
ink..is drying, to the offending letter and strikes every lhnen
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, December 12, 1781 ; "und doch
bin ich nach seiner Herzoglichkeit mit ihm zufrieden." — Tr.

326 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. hi.
in, it out1 Npt waiting for the great hunt and the ball, he
left on December 14, for Gotha, and two days later returned
to Weimar and Charlotte.
With numerous duties pressing him, he had besides to com
pose the Birthday Ballet, Der Geist der Jugend, and the Quack
Doctor explanation of Kraus' picture.2 He played this part
on Christmas at the Duchess Amalia's, to the high delight of
those present. He was severe on the weak points of the latest
German literature, not omitting to censure the inundation of
foolishness let loose by the imitators of his own Gotz and
Werther. " Everywhere good fortune and expert dealing,1'
so closes the diary of our year 1781. " Quiet and order at
home. Anxiety because of the Duke's too expensive extrava
gances. With the Stein a calm and happy intercourse."
Whatever his feeling towards the Court, he had in the
New Year 1782 to give more aid than ever as purveyor of
entertainment for the Redoutes ; for not only the Duke but the
two Duchesses asked for a masque ;3 then the Birthday
Redoute (that which immediately followed the Duchess Luise's
birthday) had to be provided for,4 and our poet's help was in
request in many matters other than authorship. There were
rehearsals of the Birthday Ballet,5 and Goethe, beside a
manager's troubles at these rehearsals, had to practise his own
parts. Then there were two repetitions of Das Neueste von
Plunder sweilern. But he was repaid for all, when on the 8th
of February, the masque Winter being again acted, he could
appear by the side of Charlotte, almost all whose January had
1 Goethe to Frau von Stein, December 12, 1781. — Tr.
2 Das Neueste von Plundersweilern. In Goethe's own preface (181 6)
to this piece, he ascribes it to 1780. Riemer first combated this; and
Herr Duntzer in his Frauenbilder aus Goethe's Jugendzeit settled the matter.
See Goethe to Frau von Stein, December 20, 1781 : — "Meine Verse
zu der Zeichming sind bald fertig." — Tr.
3 The masque which Goethe wrote at the request of the Duchesses was
Die Vier Weltalter, acted on February 12, 1782. See Goethe's Tagebuch
for that day.— TR.
4 On the ist of February — the Birthday Redoute — was acted the
masque Die weiblichen Tugenden, from which is preserved the song : —
"Wir, die Deinen."— TR.
6 Panlomimisches Ballet untermischt mit Gesang und Gesprikh, acted
January 30, 1782. Hempel's edition of Goethe's Werke was the first
which reprinted this graceful fairy-tale ballet. It had been reprinted in
Lewald's Europa, Band I. 1843. — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 327
been spent in ill-health. Sometimes he felt bitterly the loss of
precious days and hours. Thus he writes to Charlotte von
Stein on the 1 4th of January : — " I am uneasy amid this ex
cessive distraction, this trifling away the time ; and yet I see
that it is very necessary that I should take my share in these
matters. I see that one finds an opportunity of doing good /
while appearing but to jest."
And while thus sacrificing his private moments to provide
public amusement, the most unpleasant duties were thrust
upon him. On January 3, 1782, Kalb came to him and
told him about the bad condition of the finances. On January
1 1,' we read in the Diary : — " Dined with the Duke. Once ,
more a radical explanation."1 Eight days later (Jan. 19), j
Goethe speaks "very seriously and urgently" with the Duke
about economy, and about " a number of false conceptions "
that the ducal mind does not seem able to abandon — " every '
order has its own circle of limitation." On January 20 he
reads Kalb's statement of considerations on the finance diffi
culty, which is brought still more unpleasantly near by
Bertuch's complaints. On the 16th of February he has "a
long and satisfactory conversation " with the Duke. Eight
days later he consults with Kalb on various matters.2 If we
add the numerous current duties of office, the lectures at the
Drawing Academy, Loder's demonstration of anatomy, the
Court life, the visits of Dalberg and of the Gotha Court, and
the ordinary social life, we shall find it hard to understand how
the ailing poet, whatever the medicine of Charlotte's affection,
endured his burthen. And such was the clear harmony of
his spirit withal, that, at the beginning of February 1782, he
plans his noble poem to the memory of simple Theatermeister
Mieding,3 whose source of happiness had been a passion for
his art, in which he had possessed complete mastery, and who
had performed a difficult task, like the statesman, more for de
light in it than for gain. Here spoke the lofty'souled burgher
whose birth was not distinguished enough for the Court, but
who felt and knew that personal merit alone ennobles a man.
1 Compare p. 279. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's Tagebuch for the preceding quotations. — Tr.
3 Mieding died January 27, 1782. Karl August writing to Knebel on
February 8, 1782, mentions that Goethe has begun "a garland a safacon
to his [Mieding's] memory." — Tr.

328 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
Shrove Tuesday over, he had some quiet weeks of steady
industry. On the 14th of March 1782 he set out by Jena
on his necessary round of soldier levying. He planned to
complete Mieding 's Tod on this journey, and to turn again to
Egmont, about which Charlotte had shown herself very solici
tous. He had the pleasure of a visit from the Duke at
Dornburg (March 1 6), and the great delight of a meeting with
Frau von Stein at Osmannstedt ; both friends showed deep
and sincere interest in his poem on Mieding, with its extremely
beautiful tribute of praise to Corona Schroter.1
He got back to Weimar on the 25 th of March, and, after
a short rest, started on the 28th for Gotha, where he spent
pleasant Easter days. The inscriptions in the Park at Gotha
set him thinking of the like for Weimar, in the style of the
poems in the Greek Anthology. From Gotha to Eisenach,
" where the Cares fall like hungry lions upon me. Had I the
affairs of our Duchy of Weimar on as good a footing as my
own," he continues, writing to Charlotte von Stein on the 2d
April, " we might talk of good fortune. . . . The greater part
of that which fell within my personal scope of power I have
brought to the highest summit of success, or else can see that
it will be so."
From Eisenach he rode with Batty, through the Oberland,
to inspect the arrangements of his lieutenant there, then
through the Thuringian Forest to Meiningen. From Meinin-
gen he writes on the 12th of April to Charlotte: — "It isa
wonderful and sublime panorama as I ride over mountain and
plain ; the manner of beginning of our earth, and the story of
its shaping afterwards, and how it affords sustenance to man
on the outside of it — all at the same time grow plain to mental
and bodily vision ; when I come back you will let me lead
you after my own fashion to the summit of the rocks and show
you all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them."
He was delighted to find that his theory agreed with the prac
tice of Batty, who had no theory ; so he tells Knebel, writing
1 In which occurs the well-known line : — " Als eine Blume zeigt sie
sich der Welt. " The final four lines of Corona's praise are : —
" Es gbnnten ihr die Musen jede Gunst,
Und die Natur erschuf in ihr die Kunst,
So hauft sie willig jeden Reiz auf sich,
Und selbst dein Name ziert, Korona, Dich." — Tr.

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE; 329
from Ilmenau on the 17 th. Then comes a sad confession of
the weary lot of the peasant, whose labour but procures him
what is needful for sustaining life; and yet he would have
enough and to spare but that in the higher ranks always more
is wasted away in a day than in a day tan be produced by the
toilers below. In Meiningen he had a friendly welcome.
The two newly-enthroned Dukes were having earth turned up
and old walls thrown down, and other follies they were com
mitting, all of which he pardoned them, remembering his own
follies. " They ask me for advice and I have learned not to
advise more than I see can be performed." 1
Never had he, he believed, a happier time with Charlotte
than the days which followed his return to Weimar on April
18, 1782.2 But on the 9th of May he leaves home again,
this time on a diplomatic embassy to Meiningen and Coburg.
As he rode to Gotha, his first stage, he planned a poem of
farewell to his Garden, which he is soon to leave just when it
is most beautiful. Still he thought with real gladness of his
new abode, which Charlotte would help to arrange and keep
in order. From Meiningen, on Sunday, May 12, he writes : —
" As ambassador, I have had a formal audience with the two
Dukes, liveried servants in the hall, the Court in the ante
chamber, at the folding-doors two pages, and their Graces in
the Chamber of Audience." The matter was neither important
nor difficult ; perhaps it was the confirming of the partnership
in the Ilmenau Mines. " To-morrow I go to Coburg to play
the same comedy, will also present myself at Hildburghausen
Court, and will go towards the end of the week to Rudolstadt
now that I am once under weigh, and thus clear off all debts
so far as Thiiringian Courts are concerned." He composed
humorous verses on the haughty progress, with six horses, of
a poet be-stared by people.3 However, the fact remains note
worthy that the Burgerlicher before he had received any certi
ficate of nobility was recognised at Courts as an ambassador.
On the 1 8th of May 1782 he got back to Weimar.
The oversight of the education of Charlotte's son, Fritz,
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Meiningen, 12th April 1782. — Tr.
2 During this period the Abbe Raynal was at Weimar. See Goethe
to Knebel, Weimar, 5th May 1782. — Tr.
3 Der Dichter im Staatswagen, Den 15 Mai, 1782. Hempel's edition
of Goethe's Werke, iii. 49. — Tr.

33° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iii.
now became one of Goethe's chief cares; they had a very,
strong objection to the boy's growing up among the pages of
• the Court. News of the death of Rath Goethe on the 24th cast
a shadow over the last May days of 1782 — the days in which
the change from the Gartenhaus to the new home on the
Frauenplan was being carried out ; it could not but be felt
that the death was a release to the old man himself — so dull
and weak-witted of late — still more to Frau Aja who had been
unable to leave his side. Yet Goethe must have heard the
news with sharp pain, though he might not speak of it to
others, for he felt deeply how little he had contributed to
gladden the life now passed into the great darkness ; how by
his resolve to stay in Weimar he had. brought to naught plans
long brooded and dearly cherished of the good father who had
loved him well.
The transfer to the new house was completed on June 1,
1782. To be so near Charlotte was a great delight, though
he missed the sweet loneliness of the Garden. Two days later
he received his certificate of nobility (Adelsdiplom). He writes
to Charlotte, June 4 : — " Here you have the Diplom, that you
may know at any rate what it looks like. I am so curiously
fashioned that I am absolutely without reflections on the sub
ject How much happier for me it were, my beloved, could
I, removed from the elemental strife of politics, by your side
give my mind to the sciences and arts for which I was born."
But he might not before the time abandon his post of duty,
where, too, he had found so much human profit; and how
should he have remained in Charlotte's neighbourhood with
out some definite occupation there ?
Even when he wrote the words above quoted he knew that
an increase of his burden was at hand. Kalb was dismissed
for want of faithfulness in office; he was also excluded from
the position of Deputy of the Order of Knights of Jena. On
June 11, 1782, the sixth anniversary of Goethe's appointment
on the Council, the Duke requests that he will, so far as per
mitted by his other duties, take part in the sittings and delibera
tions of the Chamber of Finance. To avoid jealousy and to
secure greater freedom, he had declined being named President
of the Chamber ; but it was plain to every one that he was to
take Kalb's place and bring order into the financial affairs
which had been so shamefully neglected. And Regierungsrath

1779-1782.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 331
Voigt, who had come to Weimar in 1777, says simply, so early
as July 1782 : — Goethe is undertaking the direction of the
Kammer; while the Duke himself speaks of him as his Kammer-
prdsident. This promotion, as well as his elevation to the
nobility, the crowd held to be skilful chess-moves of the push
ing favourite ; who yet was longing to give up political life !
who had been such an instance of an upright, honourable
citizen, faithfully guarding the common, welfare of the people,
the prince, the court — conscientiously sacrificing to it his
dearest wishes !

CHAPTER IV.
FOUR YEARS OF GREAT LABOUR IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS — WIDE
AND FRUITFUL STUDY OF NATURAL SCIENCE.
1 782- 1 786.
Preliminary. — Two full years must be sacrificed, wrote
Goethe on July 27, 1782, to Knebel, before the threads be
so gathered together that either staying or departing may be
with honour. For nothing could be less his thought than to
spend his life in labour on things so foreign to his nature.
But the two years grew to four ; not until all was set in order
— a task which so exhausted that he needed a new revivifica
tion — did he fly to the land of Art, of Nature at her loveliest.
The. deeper he went into the condition of the exchequer
and the whole economy of its administration, the plainer did
he see how important it was that he had undergone this new
burden. Notwithstanding his increase of work, he felt happier
than ever. " Now no longer, at least in this department, have
I to wish the good and half do it, and hate the bad and suffer
it entire," he confides to Knebel in the letter above quoted
"What happens now I must ascribe to myself, and nothing
operates obscurely through a third and a fourth, but clear
direct to me. That I have heretofore in silence pursued my
labours with such fidelity and industry is an infinite aid; I
now have clear practical notions of almost all needful matters
and minute inter -connections, and so I get easily through."1
The feeling of duty gave him new energy, though often, when
his labours weighed heavy upon him, he could not help utter
ing bitter lamentation. It was but the escape-valve of that
1 It is perhaps well to quote the passage following : — "As you may
suppose, I talk on these subjects with no one, and accordingly I beg you
to make no use of this — not even to benefit me." — Tr.

1782-1786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 333
depression which gathers round all painful and protracted
endeavour, and the more easily in his case because the tasks
in which he disquieted himself were so opposite to his inner
nature, and quite other objects drew his passionate spirit after
them. Once, when it grew too hard for him, he wrote : — " I
am by right created a private person, and cannot understand
how destiny could have foisted me into a princely family and
the government of a State."1 Another time he writes :2 — " In
Weimar, too, I remain dedicated to my old destiny, and suffer
where others enjoy, and enjoy where others suffer." Dejection
carries him away to the excessive statement : — " During the
whole year not one pleasant task has sought me out."3 At
times he is "seethed and roasted with business;"4 for he
attacked everything that he engaged in with all the earnestness
of his nature, and often thought the most various matters so
intensely over that his head ached. Often, too, he found the
harsh Thiiringian climate a cause of suffering, especially in the
last two months of the year, and in January ; and not seldom,
to add to his burthen, Charlotte was in ill -health, and out of
sorts. But to these complaints, very natural in one who enjoyed
and suffered so keenly, we may oppose his frequent statements
of his complete happiness, and of the conviction that he can
imagine no position more congenial, and more calculated to
further him. " I were the most unthankful of men," he writes
to Kestner, " not to confess my situation much happier than
I deserve. Of course the heat and toilsomeness of life do not
spare me, and it may accordingly happen that one at times
grows very weary and faint, and even disheartened and sore."5
We find him still, amid all his anxiety and nervous distraction,
kind and sympathetic as ever. He still gives the children
their annual Easter party — the Haseneiersuchen. In the year
1783 Matthisson witnessed how "the fine-looking man, in
brown gold-fringed riding suit, in the midst of the petulant,
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, 17th September 1782. — Tr.
2 Goethe to F. H. Jacobi, 17th November 1782. The long silence
with Jacobi was broken by Goethe in a letter dated 2d October 1782.
To this Jacobi replied, and the letter here quoted replies to that reply.
— Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, April 24, 1783. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, 31st January 1783. — Tr.
* Goethe to Kestner, March 15, 1783.— Tr.

334 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. -[bk. iv. ch. iv.
quicksilver group of children [among them were Fritz Stein,
and children of Herder and Wieland], was like a kind but
serious father, who compelled their reverence and love;" how
he stayed with them until after sunset, and finally gave them
a pyramid of dainties. And what generosity he shows towards
the poor man whom he has provided for in Ilmenau ;J how he
compassionates the poor bookbinder who has a petition to the
Committee of Taxes, and every word from whom is to him
weighty as gold !2 with what ardent kindness does he interest
himself in the poverty-stricken poetess of Nature — Frau Bohl,
in Lobeda.3 I. Goethe's Activity in Public Business, 1782-6.-^
Yet let us return to his official activity. To make good the
deficiency in the finances was his first labour, one accompanied
by much unpleasant circumstance. His infinite diligence, his
painful attention, his strict economy, and the sense for order
inherited from his father, triumphed, and by April 21, 1783,
he can write to Knebel : — " My finance gets on better than I
had hoped a year ago. I have fortune and success in my ad
ministration ; hold my ground, however, in the firmest manner
as to my plan and my principles of action." Seven months
later he observes to Jacobi, after having spoken of the multi
tude of interests that made life difficult : — " And I have still
my old disposition that brings me through everything."4 On
February 16, 1784, he writes to Knebel: — "I am diligent,
and my affairs progress well, and, though we have all sorts of
ups and downs in our circumstances, our Economicum stands
on a sure basis, and that is the main thing. Personally I am
happy." Great was the lightening of his burthen when, in
July 1784, Privy Councillor of Legation Schmidt obtained a
voice in the Council — a man seriously intent on what was
useful and right, resolute to do his utmost in lessening the
public expense. A very momentous undertaking was the
parcelling-out (Zerschlagen) of the public domains which, with
careful use of Darmstadt experience (1785), was now at last
1 Kraft. See p. 274.— Tr.
2 See Goethe's letter to Charlotte von Stein, November 11, 1785.
He had called in the bookbinder to stitch the MS. of a book of Wilhelm
Meister in his presence. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Jena, April 25, 1786. — Tr.
* Goethe to Jacobi, November 12, 1784. — Tr.

i/o^-i/ou.j vv j^iiviAjx. xr.m-x.o ur O.E..K. v ±uii. 335
accomplished.1 Goethe sent out officials to each locality, who
learned the precise facts on the spot.
One of Goethe's most tiresome duties was that of treating
with the Estates of Weimar and of Eisenach. In the beginning
of August 1783 it actually falls on him to represent the Duke,
and receive the Estates of Weimar, to whom, through the
Chamber of Finance, he was now brought much nearer than
formerly. In the Right of Assent to Supply which belonged
to the Estates, he saw only a cause of embarrassment to any
good and powerful government, not remembering what security
it would give against a wasteful and unconscientious prince.
" Our business progresses tolerably," he writes when, in the
June of 1784, the Estates of Eisenach are sitting, "only, un
fortunately, of Nothing comes Nothing. I know well what
ought to be done instead of all this racing and chasing, and
all these Propositions and Resolutions."2 To Herder he writes,
June 20, 1784: — "In our business just one point interests
me, and that is now settled. In all that remains there is no
joy to be culled. The poor people must always bear the bag,
and whether on the right side or the left is pretty indifferent."
Among those tasks which did not belong to the ordinary
course of official duty, that which lay nearest his heart was
the restoration of the Ilmenau Mines. Eckard's Account of
the mining formerly carried on in flmenau, and Proposals to
revive it by a new Company, was published by the Commission
of Mines. Goethe, fond of making important beginnings on
days already significant, had it dated from August 28, his
birthday. The needful capital was estimated at 200,000
thalers; it was divided into iooo shares. Immediately after
this Eckard vacated his place on the Commission, and Regie-
rungsrath Christian Voigt entered as co-director ; his brother,
Johann Voigt, already mentioned (p. 269), with whom Goethe
was intimate, became Secretary. The energy with which these
two brothers got to work relieved and gladdened Goethe.
Proposals for taking up the shares were sent out everywhere.
On the 15th of February 1784 he writes to Knebel that five
hundred shares are already disposed of, and the new shaft, to
be called St. John's Shaft, will be opened next Shrove-Tide.
On the 24th of February, Shrove Tuesday, from old time
1 Goethe to Merck, February 13, 1785. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Eisenach, June 9, 1784. — Tr.

336 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
celebrated among the Ilmenau mining folk with a pageant, the
Duke's Commission was solemnly waited on by the miners,
who proposed conducting it to witness the festivities. Goethe
greeted the procession in the name of the Commission in an
excellent speech, his bearing marked by calm and serious
dignity. Then they went first to the church, and when ser
vice was over, to the mine, where Goethe, having first made
over to the new Company the old Martinroder Gallery, with
everything that belonged to the earlier Company, took a new
pick and struck the first blow. And the work prospered, for
they had good labourers, and no untoward accident befell,
while the Commission worked zealously in the cause, and
cost nothing. Away from home, the Company gained
people's trust, while in Weimar itself were circulating mali
cious and untrue stories of mishap. Goethe visited Ilmenau
in October 1784, stayed from the 2d to the 15th. "We found
many things to be done there," he tells the Duke ; " and as
we were intent on getting at the inner truth, we could not
unduly hasten our proceedings, which is possible when mere
mechanical paper-expedition is desired. I hope this work
will prosper and give you great pleasure, so much is done
already with but little expenditure, and in a short time. In a
few weeks they will be through the wet region, and before
Easter will be at the gallery." 1 The account with which he
goes on shows how his solicitude extended to the minutest
details. In this undertaking, as in others, he trusted in his
good fortune.2 The First Report on the Progress of the new
Mine at Ilmenau dates February 24, 1785. In it is told in
detail all that has been done in the first year of work at the
new Shaft of St. John, and the old Martinroder Shaft. A maga
zine of corn for the workmen had been formed. In the June
and the November of 1785 he was again at Ilmenau, where
he finds plenty of work both out of doors and in his room.
During the latter stay, 9th of November, he writes: — "That
which I have founded prospers, and will improve every year.
If I hold out and endure a while longer, it will be able to go
ot itself."3 And again, " It is the way with occupations, they
1 Goethe to Karl August, Oct. 18, 1784. Karl August was travel-
, ling then on the matter of the Fiirstenbund. See p. 352. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, October 5, 1784. — Tr,
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Nov. 9, 1785.

1 7.02- 1 78b. J WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 337
increase as you press deeper into them. They give me plea^
sure, because I can work on many sides. And if one but
bring light anywhere, already is a great deal accomplished."1
There was no second Report indeed next year, yet not the
least obstacle had shown itself; everything went its prescribed
course; and for tlie rest, said he, let the gods care.2 In June
1786 he finds everything in such good order that he can go
away with a mind at ease, though he would have liked to stay
a good deal longer on account of business.
The War Department and the Department of Public
Roads were also constant claimants on his attention and time.
Much more pleasant were his agricultural inspections; here he
was gladdened by seeing how well judgment, skill, and indus
try were rewarded. Only no one may devote himself to cul
tivating the land who is not of the land ; whoever brings
imagination to farming will come to grief — a notable instance
of which he had in Charlotte's husband.3
He completely withdrew from theatrical managership,
which had grown burdensome, nor did he appear on the stage
any more. When, on the birth of an Hereditary Prince (Feb.
2,17 83), every Weimar poet made his Pegasus caracole bravely,
Goethe contented himself with one simple lay, which was sung
at the next Redoute (Feb. 15, 1783), at the hour of the birth,
as a serenade.4 At the great masked cavalcade procession of
March 13, which the Duke himself led, Goethe, who without
doubt had taken part in the ordering of it, appeared in old
German garb ; he was mounted on a white horse, and accom
panied by boys clad in white and yellow, and bearing torches ;
he wore a purple cloak over white satin garments, and a small
hat with a plume. The year following (1784) he charmed the
Duchess at the Birthday Redoute, with the beautiful masque
Planetentanz, hailing her as the happy mother of the Heredi
tary Prince.
In the autumn of 1783 they treated with Bellomo — a
il
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Nov. 10, 1785.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Herder, November II, 1785. — Tr.
3 See Goethe's letter to Knebel, 19th May 1783. More than a year
before, on April 12, 1782, Goethe wrote to Charlotte von Stein; "Man
muss ganz nah' an der Erde geboren und erzogen sein, um ihr etwas
abzugewinnen. " — Tr.
* See in Goethe's Gedichte in the section An Personen, the verse;
beginning, " Vor vierzehn Tagen harrten wir." — Tr.
7.

33S THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
Vienna manager — about undertaking the theatre for three
years ; and in January 1784 Bellomo's company began to play
three times a week, until spring. Goethe held back from all
co-operation ; the Prologues usual at the special representa
tions before the Ducal family he calmly left to Einsiedel.
Only once (on March 4, 1785) he was present at a rehearsal
of his Clavigo, which had been cruelly misused in a representa
tion a month before. When the Duchess Amalia, at Christ
mas 1785, wished to revive the amateur theatre, he yielded
a promise to play Orestes in his own Iphigenie ; but the
Duchess's project fell through.
Goethe took less share in the Park improvements during
this .period, as the Duke had grown zealous in the matter ; the
Duke looked after the planting at Belvedere also, and had
trees brought from England for it. Goethe sketched the plan
on which the Duchess Amalia proceeded in autumn 1782 to
improve Tiefurt Park, but he took no part in the execution of
the plan. On the other hand he zealously urged on the works
rendered necessary by the ice -choke which flooded Jena in
the last days of February 1 784. He had immediately hastened
to the spot with the Duke, who writes to Merck that Goethe
was very brave in the danger, and took the best measures.
The works thus rendered needful brought him to Jena fre
quently. He had to decide as to the arranging of the great •
library which Hofrath Biittner made over to the Duke in
exchange for a dwelling rent-free, and an annuity. On May 7,
1784, Goethe writes from Jena to Charlotte : — "My business
goes on well ; I have as much money, power, judgment, per
sons, and skill thereto as is needful ; and so it can hardly fail."
Later on he left the work mainly in Castrop's hands. Also the
care of arrangements of police— fire organisation, for example,
and the fire engines especially, which were admirably good in
Weimar — fell to Goethe ; and many other matters defying
classification, such as the rebuilding (Oct. 1 7 84) of the Grim-
menstein into a spinning-house for the poor.
Not less did he exert himself on behalf of the University
and its arrangements. The choice of a man to fill the vacant
Chair of Law occupied him a good while. Even the empty
matter of titles gave him trouble. The Professor of Theology,
Doderlein, had come to Jena in 1782 with the understanding
that he might look forward to the title Gelieimer Kirchenrath

i/oz-i/ou.j wci.aLn.L-i. YJiAKS Ut SliKVlCJE. 339
(Ecclesiastical Privy Councillor). When in 1784 they deter
mined to confer it on him, Herder felt injured, and refused to
accept the same title after Doderlein ; Goethe tried to pacify
Herder,1 who was at perpetual variance with the Supreme
Consistory ; Herder's place and condition he was indeed un
able to improve. But Goethe did not stop at the University,
the Schools too he took on his shoulders ; only the supplies
of money were insufficient, and an increase was not at present
to be thought of. At the end of August 1783 he writes to
Herder : — " I beg you accordingly at the beginning of my new
year to put together your thoughts on our entire School system,
and to talk with me about it when I come back. I will gladly
do my part towards carrying out what you think practicable."2
But where the Supreme Consistory opposed all effort proved
unavailing; the only point carried by Herder was the substi
tution of money rewards for the Honorary Commons (then
fallen into disuse) of the students at the Weimar Gymnasium.
The Duke approved of the general scheme of School Reform
laid before him by Goethe and Herder, but the means of
paying the new teachers moved for was not. On January
6, 1786, Goethe writes to Herder: — "As I hear that a
Rescript has been issued to the Supreme Consistory on the
subject School Reform agreeable to your propositions in
the matter. ... I request you to extend your plan to include
the Military School, disposing therein as pleases you." But
precisely in School Reform Goethe had neither untrammelled
power of action nor the needful money ; what the Duke was
able to spare from private resources did not go far.
II. Goethe and Natural Science, 1782-6. — Mean
while, those scientific studies, which had in large measure
sprung from his official duties, and which still linked on to
them, grew constantly wider in range and more fruitful. He
strove to discover in all things the single law by which the rich
variety and diversity of phenomena proceeds. On November
21, 1782, he can write to Knebel as follows: — "Cosmogony
and the latest discoveries in that field, Mineralogy, and in the
most recent period my calling to make myself familiar with
1 See Goethe's admirable letter to Herder's wife, dated May 1 784. — Tr.
2 This letter was written on August 29, 1783, the day after Goethe's
birthday. He is about to start on the second Harz journey (he did so ten
days later), from which he returned in the beginning of October 1783. — -Tr.

34° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
Economics — the whole History of Nature surrounds me like
Bacon's great House of Solomon, that Herder and Nicolai
dispute about." He gets Voigt to extend Charpentier's
mineralogical map to include the whole region from the
Harz to the Fichtelgebirge, and from the Riesengebirge to
the Rhon; and he already thought of carrying through a
mineralogical map of Europe.1 He is fully convinced that the
bone remains found in the upper sand of the earth are of the
latest epoch, "which, however, compared with our ordinary
reckonings of time, is of vast antiquity;" and that fossils are
of great value in classifying the rock-strata.2 With passionate
zeal he through the following years pursues the indications of
the laws of rock-formation (litho-genesis) at Ilmenau, on the
Harz, on the Fichtelgebirge, and finally at Karlsbad. At the
Harz, in August and September 1784, the most important
rock forms are sketched by Kraus, and briefly determined ;
the days were spent in the open air, hammering ; stones and
specimens were gathered and brought to Weimar, where they
were studied and arranged.3 An essay on granite 4 as the
basis of the known crust of the' earth was begun, part of a
Theory of Rock -formation 5 written. And the farther he
pushed his researches, the more certain did he feel that he
was on the right path.6 He thinks he has discovered that
masses of stone of considerable size sunder into parallelo-
1 Goethe to Merck, November 1782. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Merck, October 27, 1782 : — "The time will come when
fossils will no more be thrown confusedly together, but will be classified
with reference to the ages of the earth." See Herr Kalischer's interesting
comments on this passage, Hempel's Goethe, Bd. xxxiii., Seite clix. — Tr.
3 See, beside letters of the time to Herder and Charlotte von Stein,
Goethe's Geognostisches Tagebuch der Harzreise, 1784, first printed in
Hempel's edition of Goethe, Bd. xxxiii. S. 438. This was Goethe's third
journey to the Harz. — Tr.
i Goethe writes to Charlotte von Stein, Jan. 18, 1784 : — " Early this
morning I began dictating at my Abhandlung iiber den Granit." This
essay is first printed entire in Hempel's Goethe, Bd. xxxiii., Seite clxii.
clxvi. Goethe wrote a good deal about granite in that letter to Merck
of Nov. 1782, already quoted. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Ilmenau, 7th June 1785: — "Ich
habe wieder einige Capitel am Wilhelm diktirt und etwas an meiner
Gebirgslehre geschrieben." — Tr.
8 Goethe's letters, 1783-5, passim, but the phrase, "auf dem rechten
Wege," occurs in a letter to Charlotte von Stein, Jena, March 8, 1785.
— Tr.

i/oi-i/uu.j vvriiiviiijs. ir,Ais.a u* OJCtiVlUC 341
pipeds, which split easily along any of their diagonals.1
Charlotte and Knebel felt warm interest in these studies,
while Herder makes fun of such " hammering at deaf stone."
But after Goethe's first visit to Karlsbad (1785), he put
mineralogy aside, believing a knowledge of chemistry to be
indispensable for his further advance.2 Into the last-named
science he could find no entrance, though he thought seri
ously of beginning it, and planned about having the needful
laboratory ;8 something held him back — perhaps remembrance
of the gloomy alchemic experiments in the invalid period
after his return from Leipzig University.
Osteological studies ran a parallel course to mineralogical.
His particular endeavour was to follow up the type of bone-for
mation in brutes and men and find it identical, — an endeavour
in which the bones of extinct species must of course draw his
attention. Merck's letters, a visit from the famous anatomist
Blumenbach, the Anatomical Theatre at Cassel, where he con
verses with Forster and Sbmmering, and especially Loder in
Jena, brought him on his way. And on the 27 th of March
1784, when, in company with the last named, he compares
the skulls of men and animals, he makes to his great joy the
discovery, pregnant with result, that the intermaxillary bone of
the upper jaw (os intermaxillare) exists in Man as in Animals ;
thus sweeping away the theory which found precisely in that
bone's supposed absence in man the characteristic by which man
is defined from all animals, a theory adverse to Goethe's way
of conceiving Nature. He saw plainly how the bone, so extra
ordinarily prominent in animals, was contracted to a very
small size in man, through the influence of his physical history
and habits. Passionately then did Goethe with Loder investi
gate the varying formation of the intermaxillary in different
animals. When in Eisenach (meeting the Estates) in June
1784, he procures the elephant's skull from Cassel, and after
wards takes it to Weimar with him.4
When about to visit Brdnswick in August 1784, he plans
1 See in Hempel's Goethe, Bd. xxxiii. S. 447, the essay Gestattung
der grossen anorganischen Massen. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, August 16, 1786. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Karl August, Oct. 18, 1784; Goethe to Charlotte von
Stein, Oct. 26, 1784.— Tr.
4. Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 7, and June 17, 1784. — Tr.

342 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
to examine carefully the elephant foetus there, and to have a
good talk with the physician Zimmermann.1 Herder and
Charlotte took the warmest interest in his important dis
covery. All that passes through Goethe's mode of conceiving
and presenting, wrote the latter, becomes extremely interesting,
even hateful bones and the dreary mineral kingdom. Not
until October 1784 could he get his essay2 worked out; its
illustrative references were made to admirable sketches, sup
plied by one of the pupils of the Drawing Academy 3 under
Goethe's guidance. It is admirably written. Herder thought
it "simple and beautiful." Goethe himself, when sending it
to Loder through Knebel, writes to the latter (in November
1784): — "I have refrained from indicating the logical out
come of the discovery — it is a truth to which Herder has
already pointed in his Ideen, viz. that the distinctness of man
from the brute is not to be looked for in any single point of
difference. On the contrary, man is most closely related to
the brute. Every creature is what it is through the unity of
its whole being, and man is man as much by the form and
nature of his upper jaw, as by the form and nature of his little
toe. And so, too, every creature is a note, a shade, in a great
harmony, and the study which apprehends this harmony as a
whole and in its vastness is alone fruitful ; each isolated thing,
otherwise taken, is a meaningless letter." How high Goethe's
merit in this remarkable, and by no means easy, discovery is,
may be estimated from the fact that the great men of science,
Sommering and Camper, to whom he sent his treatise 4 (in a
careful Latin translation), refused to accept his conclusions.5
And at first Merck, too, was sceptical. Not until 1788 was
the discovery incorporated into received scientific knowledge
by Loder ; but it was still long before it won ground. Goethe
learned by painful experience that (as he writes to Merck,
April 8, 1785) a savant by profession renounces his five
senses. "They are concerned rarely about the living con-
1 Goethe to Merck, August 6, 1784.
2 Dem Menschen wie den Thieren ist ein Zwischenhiochen der olern
Kinnlade zuzuschreiben. Not published until 1820. — Tr.
3 Named Waiz. See Goethe to Merck, Dec. 19, 1784. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Merck, December 19, 1784. — Tr.
6 See as to Sommering, Goethe to Merck, Feb. 13, 1785, and April
8, 1785.— Tr.

i/oi-i;ou.j vv ax\LS\L-x I J1AJS.3 (JT O JiK. V ll^Ji. 343
ception of the matter, but about what has been said on it.
The admirable essay was not published until thirty years later.
And now osteological inquiry became subordinate to
botanical ; if he was late in entering this new field, he did so
with the greater ardour. His observation of trees and plants
was not confined to the familiar places around him — to the
garden and park which he had planted, but in his manifold
traversing of mountain and forest the collection of specimens
was always a main object He did not exclude the mosses1
from his interest, but endeavoured to gain clear notions of
their differences of species by an ample gathering. Though
we find him in June 1782 enjoying Rousseau's "delightful"
(allerliebste) letters on Botany,2 not until January 1785 does he
occupy himself after scientific fashion with the world of plants.
On the 12 th of that month he tells Jacobi that he has a micro
scope set up in his room ; for it is his intention when spring
comes to follow up and check the recent discoveries of F. W.
Gleichen, called Russworm.3 He grew especially interested
in the conception of the seed as the basis of all development.4
He has conversations with Biittner at Jena on botanical
matters ; they dissect cocoa-nuts together, and observe the
beginnings of the remarkable tree.5 Another Jena botanical
friend was the young Master of Arts, August Johann Batsch,
who had studied medicine and natural science at the Uni
versity there, and, besides, had published some poetic attempts.
He was living at Weimar in difficulties when Goethe made his
acquaintance on the ice. His delicate precision and quiet
zeal attracted Goethe, who prompted him to return to Jena —
there to devote himself entirely to natural science. And now
Goethe found scientific talk with him very pleasant. In
Weimar Charlotte is called to sympathise in the " right
beautiful revelations"6 resulting from examination of seeds
1 See Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Oct. 31, 1778.— Tr.
• 2 Goethe to Karl August, June 16, 1782.— Tr.
3 F. W. Gleichen, genannt Russworm : Auserlesene mikroskopische
Entdeckungen bei Pflanzen Blumen und Bliithen u.s.w. Nurnberg, 1771-
81.— Tr.
4 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, April I, 1785. Goethe to Knebel,
April 2, 1785.— TR.
6 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Jena, March 8, 1785. (Goethe
calls Biittner "the old living encyclopaedic Dictionary.") — Tr.
6 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, April I, 1785.— Tr.

344 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iV.
through the microscope. On the 2d of April Goethe says : —
" Perhaps we will write at the little botanical treatise for
Knebel this evening." On the journey of this summer of
1785 into the Fichtelgebirge he takes with him, as a help in
collecting flowers and plants, Friedrich Gottlieb Dietrich of
Ziegenhain — a lad of seventeen — who had considerable know
ledge of botany, and whose fresh, simple personality pleased
him. When at Ilmenau in November 1785 he is so in love with
the vegetable kingdom that he makes a vow " this time not to
touch a bit of rock." 1 He reads the Philosophia Botanica of
Linnaeus regularly through ; until now he had but dipped in it
And he writes that he has " some pretty ideas again." In the
January of 1786 he discusses all sorts of botanical matters
with the Court-gardener Reichardt in Belvedere,2 and in April
1786 at Jena he and Batsch talk about "plants, infusions,
etc."3 In May he dictates Botanica to Fritz. When he writes
as follows in June from Ilmenau, he at any rate mean's to
include the vegetable kingdom : — " How plain the book of
Nature is becoming, I cannot express; my long spelling- out
has served me ; now all at once a rapid progress begins, and
my silent joy is unspeakable. Much new knowledge as I gain,
yet none unexpected ; everything tallies and coheres, because I
come with no a priori system, and desire nothing but the truth
for its own sake. How that ability to read Nature will increase
it delights me to think on."4
When in July 1786 he sees himself detained in Weimar,
contrary to his desire to get to Karlsbad, the plant-world takes
hold of him with passion; it " rages " within him.5 The delight
which fills him speaks in the following avowal in a later part
of his letter : — •" Everything forces its meaning on me ; I no
longer think a subject over ; everything, everything comes to
meet me, and the vast kingdom simplifies itself in my soul,
that I soon shall be able to read the hardest exercise straight
off. If I could only communicate to any one the prospect and
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, November 8, 1785:— "I have some
pretty botanical ideas again, and have made a vow, this time not to touch
a bit of rock."— Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Jan. 20, 1786. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, April 25, 1786. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 15, 1786.— Tr.
5 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, July 10, 1786. — Tr.

I7S2-1780.J WJilMAK YEARS OF SERVICE. 345
the joy ; but it is not possible. And this is no dream, no
fantasy; it is a growing aware of the essential Form, with
which Nature but keeps playing ever, as it were, and playing
thus brings forth the manifold Life. Were but the short
period given to man longer, I believe that I could extend
this to all the kingdoms— to the whole great kingdom of
Nature." Thus in occupation with Nature had a whole new life
risen upon him ; the clear insight which he gained cheered
him ; " the Consequence of Nature made bounteous amends
for the Inconsequence of Men;"1 the steadfast precision of
her being, for all the inaptness, the uncomprehending, the
unprofiting, which he had to encounter day after day. That
calm observing glance, piercing always to essentials, always
seeing things in a vivid real way, by which the characters of
men and their complicated action and interaction had been
made plain to him, now turned on external Nature and her
laws by no light caprice, but by a deep inward compelling.
Compared with the study of the Three Kingdoms, the other
parts of natural science engaged him but little ; astronomy,
however attractive, was less easy to overtake, and meteorology,
while he did not remain completely a stranger to it,2 seemed
yet too unreliable to reward application. Experimental physics
only occupied him transitorily, chiefly in connection with the
ascent of air-balloons.3 If he gets instructed at Jena in the
first four rules in algebra,4 it remains a barren bit of learning,
for he had no organ for mathematics.
III. Goethe's Literary Activity, 1782-1786. — The
study of nature had pushed drawing and painting into the
background ; besides, we read, " the sketching fever has been
driven away by the bitter bark of life's timber."5 Still worse
fared the practice of engraving, of modelling, and of casting
in bronze. For the art towards which his deepest being
strove — for poetry — the needful collectedness was wanting.
1 Goethe to Knebel, April 2, 1785. — Tr.
2 See for instance, Goethe to Karl' August, Oct. 18, 1784, and Die
Ilalidnische Reise, Sept 8. Goethe suffered so much from the Thuringian
climate, that he had a special personal interest in weather. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Knebel, Dec. 23, 1783 ; Goethe to Charlotte von Stein,
May 19, 1784, with the footnote. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, May 21 and May 23, 1786. — Tr.
. 5 Goethe to Knebel, March 3, 1783 (the close ofthe letter).— Tr.

346 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
Yet she stood at his command whenever the impulse came
to give to inward emotions a living form. Witness the poem
Ilmenau1 the various lyrics and epigrams scattered through the
years, and, above all, though alas ! unfinished, Die Geheimnisse?
For Wilhelm Meister, with its wealth and breadth of life and
thought, he was gathering perpetually fresh materials in the
manifold activity of this period. Steadily urged by Charlotte,
Goethe succeeded in bringing to completion six books of the
novel by November 1785.3 But he could not get the seventh
book done ; he stuck fast as he had in Tasso, and in Elpenor
later than Tasso. The pressure of business prevented the
free current of creative genius ; the impossible was the impos
sible to him as to other men. But though the growth of many
a flower of verse was stifled in the arduous pre-occupation
with business and practical affairs, there was yet great gain in
this period ; it was a time of transition needful for the develop
ment of the man Goethe, not to be sundered from the
development of the poet; without the Weimar Years of Service,
without the mastery of self, and the deep and wide experience
which they brought, Goethe would never have been the richly
fraught World Poet, the complete reporter and interpreter of
German soul and intellect.
An accident led Goethe's attention to the further develop
ment of the comic opera. Friend Kayser, after a consider
able time of silence, surprised him in the spring of 1784, by
1 Ilmenau, dedicated to Karl August, and dated " 3d September 1783."
— Tr.
2 Die Geheimnisse begun August 1784 ; see Goethe to Herder and
Herder's wife, August 8, 1784. On March 27 and 28, 1785, we find
him doing his two stanzas daily. On April 2, 1785, he tells Knebel that
forty-eight stanzas are written. — Tr.
3 We have seen that Goethe was dictating at the first book of Wilhelm
Meister's Lehrjahre in February 1777. On January 2, 1778, he writes in
his Diary 1 — "Early to-day finished B. i. of Meister." Book ii. was
finished in August 1782 ; Book iii., Nov. 12, 1782 ; Book iv., Nov.
12, 1783 ; Book v., Oct. 16, 1784 ; Book vi., at Ilmenau, Nov. 11,
1785. See Goethe's letters of the dates mentioned, and passim. The
present division into books by no means corresponds with this earliest
division. For instance, Goethe writes to Charlotte von Stein, June 20,
1785 : — " Hierbei ein Liedchen von Mignon aus dem sechsten Buche."
And the last line of his next letter to her is " Ach ! wer die Sehnsucht
kennt! " The song sent is thus evidently the song, " Nur wer die Sehn
sucht kennt," now in Book iv. See in Hempel's Goethe, Band xvii.,
Duntzer's introduction to the Lehrjahre.— Ty..

1782-17S6.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 347
announcing that — mainly induced by a longing for the old
Italian music — he was accompanying a young merchant in
Italy. To think of Kayser treading the Promised Land, which
" I, like a prophet who has sinned, only see lying before me in
the indistinctness far away,"1 awakened, of course, a feeling of
sadness ; but at the same time, the old desire to stir his friend
(now to Goethe's joy emerged from the gloom which was
destroying all his power and activity) to the production of
some work in which they should be partners. On the 24th
of June 1784 Goethe writes from Eisenach to Kayser, "Even
though I be at present in unpoetic circumstances, the sleeping
genius can yet be awakened." On the 28th of June he tells
Kayser that since the beginning of the year he had seen the
Bellomo company [just then in Eisenach] play [in good trans
lations] a dozen of the best Italian comic operas. " Life,
movement, seasoned with feeling, all forms of passion, find
there their scene. Especially am I charmed with the delicacy
and grace by which the composer, like some heavenly being,
as it were, hovers above the earthly nature of the poet." If
not earlier, he was at any rate, by some letter received from
Kayser between June 24 and June 28, moved to think of an
operetta ; for referring to such a letter, he writes (beginning the
letter last quoted) : — " That you love the comic opera, and
long for work, are two good things I am glad to hear. I have
always liked the opera buffa of the Italians, and wished some
time or other to bring out in fellowship with you a little work
of the kind."2 So far back as 1777, the performances of
Intermezzos, which a German Buffo, Anton Berger, with his
wife, used to give in a room, had interested Goethe ; he would
add a third voice mediate to the former two, and thought over
several subjects, one of which he at length began to develop
into the operetta, Scherz, List und Rache. By August 14, 1784,
he can write to Charlotte that it is nearly ready ; yet after this
— Goethe having seen an admirable performance of Salieri's
Scuola di Gelosi in Brunswick — it remained for more than half
a year unprogressing. Not until April 1785 was it sent to
Kayser, who found a certain Italian quality in its form.
Goethe thought it a considerable advance on his earlier
operettas. Kayser set about his work with thorough relish.
1 Goethe to Kayser, June 24, 1784. — Tr.
2 Burkhardt, Goethe und Kayser, S. 21. — Tr.

348 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. ,iv.
By September 1785 the music of the first act had arrived.
On December 4, 1785, Goethe tells Kayser how he has been
going through the piece with the singers ; it gives him great
delight, and they will have it brought out on every German
stage. But in truth Knebel's account of the Miinchen stage had
been by no means encouraging. The moral taste prevailing
there seemed to Goethe the most unfavourable for artists, the
most favourable for bunglers. But he meant to stand to his
friend, and, at the same time, elevate the " miserable German
lyric theatre," which " every one, who can sing or play, leaves
for the Italian, and with right"1 And he thinks that even
for the Mtinchen palate, he can prepare something acceptable ;
he meditates another piece in which the effect desirable shall
be cared for ; he means to give to a material (Die ungleichen
Hausgenossen) already thought out, a wider compass. On
December 23, 1785, he tells Kayser of his plan, which some
persons of taste have approved. The performance (Dec. 1785)
of the first two acts of Scherz, List und Rache at Court won
general applause, Herder being one of those most pleased,
whom Goethe held the most reliable judge among all the
lovers of music then near.2 But the composer himself was
the least content with his work ; the piece was, he felt, too
full of action, too much extended, — was too great a task for
three actors ;3 he complained also of the difficulty which the
language gave him, the poet having intentionally taken pecu
liar liberties. Goethe sent emendations (Dec. 23, 1785) for
single passages in the fourth act ; urged, however (Jan. 23,
1786), that no corrections should be made in the first act
until the whole piece was completed. He has at length
regretfully to acknowledge the justness of Kayser's fear that
the piece is not suitable for representation on the stage; and
he will not ever again write such a piece with but three per
sons — though he has another delightful subject, almost richer,
almost madder. He has thoughts of recasting Claudine and
Ei-win und Elmire.^ His thoughts clung in a morbid, excited
1 Goethe to Knebel, Dec. 30, 1785. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kayser, from Riemer's Mittheilungen iiber Goetke. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Kayser, Jan. 23, 1786: — "Die andere Bemerkung ist
leider eben so richtig, dass das Stuck fur ein musikalisch Drama zu ange-
zogen, zu angestrengt ist. Zu viel Arbeit fur drey Personen." — Tr.
4 Burkhardt, Goethe und Kayser, S. 29-34. — Tr.

I7»2-I7»b.j WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 349
way to his poor operetta ; he pities the good Kayser who is'
" wasting his music on this barbarous language." 1 Kayser's third
act was performed on the 5th of February 1786. The latter
part of the composition receives from Goethe the same gener
ous praise as the earlier. He writes to Kayser on the 5 th of
May,2 that what he (Goethe) has learned in this their first
partnership shall be proved by the piece that is coming, from
which, too, something new will be learned, and so on, always
learning. His mind was troubled as he wrote this letter, for
he could not reveal to his friend how soon he was going to
Italy. Yet he was impelled, by conscience one might say,
to speak of a journey to Italy — " Had I the Italian tongue at
my command, as I have the unlucky German, I would invite
you straight to a journey beyond the Alps." The attempt at
opera had failed, and that single airs or acts might be given
was a poor comfort to Kayser, who immediately began to
compose the operetta afresh, in order to attain his first ambi
tion. To Goethe the effort, first prompted by affection foi
his friend, had proved a lively stimulus, and he had gained
clear insight into a new form of his art.
Thus, beneath the overwhelming load of many affairs,
which, to use his own words, cultivated him while he culti
vated them,3 the restless poet continually found time to give
to literature and science, " for which he was born."4 Nay,
precisely through his occupations he had been brought so
very near to the natural sciences ; and them for a time he
wooed more ardently than poetry, to which in a future of
riper accomplishment, of artist insight from a higher vantage,
his soul was yet to yield her complete homage. His creative
genius was but fallen in a short slumber, to wake with strength
renewed, nor had the slumber been unbroken : — " But at the
heart of all my plans, designs, and enterprises, I remain
mysteriously true to myself, and manage to re-unite the
diverging threads of my social, political, moral, and poetic.
life, in a knot concealed from common ken."5
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Gotha, Jan. 26, 1786.— Tr.
2 He has received the music of the fifth act from Kayser. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Knebel, Dec. 30, 1785 : — "Meine Geschafte gehen ihren
Gang, sie bilden mich, indem ich sie bilde." — Tr.
4 See p. 330. — Tr.
5 Goethe to Knebel, Nov. 21, 1782. — Tr.

35° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
IV. Goethe's Relations with the Duke and the
Court of Weimar, 1782-1786. — But how did he stand
-with the Duke and the Court during these years? Immediately
after his appointment on the Chamber of Finance in the
summer of 1782, the life of the Duke and Duchess together
grew happier than it had been, while the Duchess Amalia
enjoyed life in her Tiefurt very much. In Tiefurt, on the
night of July 22, 1782, Goethe's operetta, Die Fischerin, was
performed, and gave great pleasure. To the Duchess Amalia,
who had always been his good friend, he presented a fair
copy of his unprinted writings ; he had already given one to
Charlotte von Stein. Karl August, indeed, has the old faults
still, but Goethe seems to find a sort of general consolation in
regarding them as " a prince's obliquities " (furslliche Queren),
which one must put up with. " The Duchess is as charming
as any one can be," he writes on the 27th of August 1782 to
Charlotte ; " the Duke is a good fellow, and one could love
him dearly if he did not make social intercourse curdle
with his impertinences, and by his headlong plunging into
danger did not compel his friends to become indifferent to
his welfare or his misfortune." Vexatious as it is, that the
Duke should be so attracted by the playing at soldiers of
drill and parade, that he should " have his existence in cours
ing and hunting,"1 and should pursue trivial objects with
passionate eagerness ; yet Goethe is glad that " he takes a
willing and reasonable share in affairs, and is now and then
anxious about some good thing." True, " the illusion — that
the fair germs which ripen in my own being and in my friends,
must be sown in this soil, and that those heavenly pearls could
be set in the earthly crowns of these princes — is departed."
Goethe saw that Karl August and he must move beside each
other on different paths. For a time he holds aloof from
the Court, and often allows the Duke to travel without him.
And when, in December 1782, he follows the Duke toNeuen-
heiligen, and then is with him in Dessau and Leipzig, he
secures his freedom by leaving Neuenheiligen earlier, and by
staying in Leipzig later than his companion.
The birth of a hereditary prince (Februaiy 3, 1783) was
followed by a remarkable change for the better in Karl
1 Goethe to Knebel, Nov. 21, 1782. From the same letter are taken
the two quotations that follow. — Tr.

1/o.s-i/ou.j vvhilviaj^ viiAKb U* HJEKVICK. 351
August, who, in reply to Merck's congratulations, writes :— -
" Whatever tendencies to goodness lay within me, there was
as yet — by force of circumstances — no sure point where they
could centre and connect. Now, however, a firm hold-fast is
driven by which I can hang my pictures. With Goethe's
help, and the help of good fortune, I will so paint them that
those who come after shall say : Ed egli fu pittore."
The time which followed was one of gladness for Wei
mar, marred only by the perplexity and shame which the
adventures of Prince Constantin abroad brought on the
Court. Much good had been hoped from this journey, — by
Goethe among the rest, — but their expectation had been
brought to nought by the Prince's amour with a Madame
Darsaincourt, whom he, when wearied of her, had sent to
Weimar 1 without further ceremony. By Goethe's advice she
was placed in the house of the chief forester at Tannroda,
and she declared herself enceinte, which rendered the deep
annoyance of the matter deeper. Soon the wastefulness and
debts of the Prince became known, and Goethe, who had the
task of meeting difficulties, was exceedingly distressed. We
find him at Tannroda on the 4th of May 1783, looking after
the accommodation of Mme. Darsaincourt. After the birth of
her infant she was sent back to France under the charge of
trusty Philipp Seidel. But Prince Constantin was not done
yet. When met by Chatoullier Ludecus at Wiesbaden, he
was found to have an English mistress with him. It was
at once decided to send her to Marksuhl, to order the Prince
to Wilhelmsthal. To Wilhelmsthal went Goethe and the Duke
to await the arrival of the Prince. Thence he writes, on June
16, 1783, that Ludecus has told him things of the Prince
than which nothing more pitiful can be imagined. The
greater is the pleasure with which he turns to the Duke, who
is "in very good paths." "We have had real good talk on
many things," the letter goes on ; " there is a great dawn of
light in him, and he will certainly grow happier himself, and a
greater blessing to others." When Constantin, after some
delay, has arrived in Wilhelmsthal, Goethe writes, June 18,
1783 : — "The entanglement of the Prince has several knots
still left, which need patience in the untying." Meanwhile, a
1 He met her in Paris, took her to London with him, thence sent her
to Weimar. — Tr.

352 THE LIFE OF GOETHE, [bk. iv. ch. iv.
shelter must be found for the English mistress ; she became
unwell, and her deportation had to be put off. So Goethe
applied to his old friend Riese in Frankfurt for help in the
matter. He returned to Weimar with the Prince on June 20.
The Duke took his brother to Ilmenau, then went with him to
Wiirzburg (July 21), and behaved admirably throughout the
miserable affair. What high hope he inspired in Goethe at
this time may be read in the noble birthday gratulation,
Ilmenau, composed on the 3d of September 1783 at the
Gickelhahn. But soon after the lively interest which the Furstenbund
(Bund or Alliance of German Princes) roused in the Duke
became a cause of disquiet to Goethe. He would have Karl
August confine himself to being a good father (Hausvater)
to his own dominions ; but Karl August held it a paternal
duty to oppose the encroachment of Austria, and to secure
the freedom of the German princes. .Active negotiation
with Baden, Gotha, Brunswick, and Mainz was being
carried on by the Duke and the Prince of Dessau, when the
death of the little Princess Luise, on March 24, 1784, plunged
the Court in grief. The Duke felt it deeply; but far more
the Duchess, who withdrew into still greater retirement. In
the sad days that followed, Goethe did much to comfort her
in her sorrow ; many extra cares fell on his shoulders. Mean
while, Prince Constantin had, through the Duke's influence,
obtained a Lieutenant - Colonelcy in the Saxon army — an
arrangement which Goethe did not altogether approve ; but he
knew how to content himself with the part of silent looker-on
at these family affairs. In August 1784 he could not refuse
to go with the Duke to Brunswick, though he had hardly, as
he writes to Merck, worked off the arrears which had gathered
in June and July during his absence at Eisenach. At Bruns
wick the Duke worked for the Furstenbund, and was com
pletely successful; how admirable was his demeanour amid
the polite court ceremonial, so alien and distasteful to
his nature, is observed by Goethe with great satisfaction.
Goethe refused, however, to go on to Zweibriicken, where
Karl August was to pursue the same eagerly-desired object.
In order not to betray the purpose of his journey, the Duke had
to extend it far; to the discontent of his subjects he went
even to Zurich. Writing from Frankfurt, where Frau Aja

I702-I700-J W.K.1MAK. Y.EARS Of SERVICE. 353
gave him a breakfast, he asked Goethe to come and fetch
him home ; but Goethe abode firmly by this answer — that for
more than one reason he cannot at present leave Weimar.1
When the close of 1784 found Karl August still delaying his
return — kept back in his coming, notwithstanding the general
displeasure, by hunting-parties — Goethe is disappointed and
vexed. On the 26th of December 1784 he writes to the
Duke : — " I desire that all you do on this journey, and all
that befalls you, may tend to your use and profit. The
delight in the chase also I grant you with all my heart, and
cherish the hope that you, on the other hand, on your return,
will free those who look to you (die Ihrigen) from the dread of
a threatening evil." The preserving of wild boars on the
Ettersberg had proved an injury to the whole neighbourhood,
and had roused the bitterest anger. " I have seen you renounce
many such things," runs this letter, remarkable equally for its
frankness and its delicacy, "and I hope that you will make us
a New Year's gift of this partiality ; and for the disquietude
which I have endured through the colony since its planting,
only compensate me with the skull of the general mother of
the hateful brood, which I can thus place in my museum with
a twofold pleasure." Not until the evening of January n,
1785, did the Duke return. Then, notwithstanding all rea
sons for discontent, Goethe was glad to find awakened within
him a love for natural science, and for the quiet, certain path
which the student of nature travels.
Unfortunately, for the time the affairs of the Fursten
bund dominated over every other interest in the Duke's mind.
That its secrecy might be preserved, Goethe had with his own
hand to make copies of the several communications with the
Courts ; this service he had performed at an earlier period
also. Meanwhile, the general hope had been set on the birth
of a second prince — the Hereditary Prince was very weakly —
but the son whom the Duchess bore on the 27th of February
1785 died immediately. A month later Goethe fell into great
anxiety when the Duke took the side of Prussia against Austria,
— nay, had made up his mind to join in the possible war. He
asked Goethe's advice indeed, who knew only too well that
temper had already decided the course of things. "The
1 See Goethe to Karl August, December 26, 1784 (the beginning of ¦
the letter).— Tr. 2 A

354 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
delight in war which works beneath the skin in our princes
like a kind of itch," writes Goethe to Knebel, April i, 1785,
" wearies me like a bad dream, in which you must fly, and
you try to, but your feet deny you service. To me they
appear like dreamers of this fashion, and it is as though I
dreamt with them  . Leave them their pleasant delu
sion. The prudent dealing of the big ones will, let us hope,
spare the little ones the action which they would fain engage
in at the cost of other men's blood and suffering. On this
head I have no longer either mercy and sympathy, nor hope and
forbearance." And Goethe's conviction that there was misfor
tune for the country in this interference with external politics
was so earnest, that a coldness with Karl August resulted, —
nay, in our poet's ailing condition, and the vexation thus
intensified, the thought of leaving Weimar returned.1 The
affectionate words of Knebel, with whom in Jena, at the end
of April, he took refuge, brought serenity and courage back.2
And his relations with the Duke were soon on a tolerable
footing again. In May Goethe writes to Charlotte : — " The
Duke, who, as is well known, is a great believer in salvings of
conscience, gave me before his departure [for Pyrmont] a rise
of 200 thalers, and sent me 40 louis d'or for the Karlsbad
journey." Goethe's salary was thus brought to 1600 thalers.
After a June, July, and August of travel, Goethe, back
from Karlsbad, is ill-pleased with the instability of things in
Weimar. " Here all goes on after the old fashion," he writes
on the ist of September 1785, to Knebel; "Alas for the fair
building which might endure, and be lifted high, and spread
wide, and can find no solid ground to rest on." There was
great discontent because the Court Table was given up ; only
three maids of honour and one male outsider dined each day
with the Duke and Duchess, in the Duke's private room. The
courtiers received board-money. On the 5 th of September
1785 Goethe writes to Charlotte von Stein: — "The Duke is
happy in his pack of hounds [a present from Oberkammerherr
von Pbllmtz]. I do not grudge it him. He puts away the
courtiers, puts on the dogs. It is always the same — a great
hubbub merely to hunt a hare to death. And it gives me
almost as much trouble to keep a hare alive!" Some days
later — " Now and then I see the Prince [the little Hereditary
1 See page 321. — Tr. 2 See Goethe to Knebel, April 30, 1785. — Tr.

1782-1786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 355
Prince] and our royal personages — where life is pleasantly
spent these days. The new arrangement continues, and
dining in the small room is found wretchedly uncomfortable.
. . . Thus is it, my Lotte, when people do not know the
right time to put off old ways, or to begin new. And there
is more to come."1 Goethe declines to accompany the Duke
on the considerable journey to Berlin. But he does go to
Gotha (November 1785), because circumstances may require
the presence of a third,2 the business on hand being that of
the Fiirstenbund. All through, the Furstenbund was disliked
by Goethe, while the Duke, as one of the body of princes, and
as a good son of the Fatherland, felt a genuine enthusiasm for
it. In the beginning of the new year 1786, Karl August, to
Goethe's annoyance, entered the Prussian service. In the
beginning of May 1786 we find the two living once more
" after forest fashion" at Ilmenau; but it is added, "pretty
restrainedly."3 However bitter Goethe's complaints might
often be, he always in calmer mood was ready with full re
cognition of the splendid gifts and warm affectionateness of
disposition of the Duke.
V. Goethe and Charlotte von Stein, 1782-1786.
But the life of his life remained ever the tender high union of
soul with Charlotte. And yet, just when by becoming a
member of the Chamber of Finance, he seemed to have drawn
closer the chains which bound him to Weimar, came a dis
turbance of that union which agitated him dreadfully. Char
lotte was very ill and depressed at the time (July 1782);
something that Goethe said wounded her, she shut herself
from him ; her misinterpretation of a note from him made
matters worse, she immediately forbade him to visit her for
several days ; but his reply, " that he has not deserved it,
that he feels it, and is silent," opened her eyes to her injus
tice.4 This discord indeed, soon was gone ; but a heritage
of pain throbbed long in Goethe, who was then by no means
strong to bear it. At Charlotte's wish he had placed in his
garden a stone seat, which he called after her (August 1782).
When, in the beginning of October 1782, Goethe receives
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Sept. 8, 1785. — Tr.
2 Goethe wished, too, to see Tischbein's painting. Conradin. — Tr
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, May 5, 1786. — Tr.
* See Goethe's letters to Charlotte von Stein, July 18-24, 1782.— Tr.

356 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
"an excellent letter" from his mother, he writes to his "only
one : " — " So long as I have you both, there is nothing lacking
to me." From this time on, the most cordial family life
developed, and Goethe strove continually to render it more
affectionate and intimate. He visits Charlotte twice in Koch
berg during the autumn of 1782. At the fortnightly teas by
which he released himself from further duties to society,
she is the hostess. In the evenings he is with her regu
larly, and has nothing concealed from her, as he writes to
Knebel.1 On November 7, 1782, he writes : — "Seven years it is to
day since I came ; would that to-day also might begin a new
epoch of my life and being, whereby I might grow continually
more acceptable to thee." But she, always a prey to gloomy
foreboding, feared this eighth year. Still their union grew
closer. On April 14, 1783, Goethe takes Fritz Stein with
him to Ilmenau as Charlotte's "image." In May 1783 he
proposes to take the boy to live with him entirely, and Stein
assents. After Fritz had unpacked his belongings, he was
taken (May 27) by Goethe to Jena; " Fritz is very good, and
will be a common source of joy to us," writes Goethe on June
1 , after their return. Charlotte writes to her sister-in-law : 2 —
"Goethe has taken Fritz to live with him, and in educating
him shows such kindness and clear understanding of the
matter, that one may well learn from him. He is one of the
few who can comprehend education in Rousseau's deep inter
pretation of it ; and as Fritz by nature has a charming mental
symmetry, it is a delight to Goethe himself to deal with him."
Goethe accustomed his pupil to the simplest diet, and furthered
his education after the most loving and wise fashion. In Sep
tember 1783 Fritz is brought on the journey to the Harz;
on the 6th, before starting, Goethe writes : — " Now adieu, my
dear Lotte, and thank you for your dear leave-taking, never to
be forgotten. Here are three keys — of the chest, the press,
and my writing-table; except a few business matters, all is
yours." All his private letters were shown to her; in all hei
1 Goethe to Knebel, Nov. 21, 1782 : " Alle Woche gebe ich einen
grossen Thee, wovon niemand ausgeschlossen ist, und entledige mich
dadurch meiner Pflichten gegen die Societat aufs wohlfeilste. . . . Abends
bin ich bei der Stein und habe nichts verborgenes vor ihr." — Tr.
2 Frau von Schardt. See p. 292. — Tr.

1782-1786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 357
anxieties he shared with warm sympathy. He was indeed
often mute and reserved even in her presence ; she playfully
named him fl penseroso ; but she felt that it was the oppres
sion and weariness of his load of business. Very sadly passed
the days on which they were both unwell ; but their evenings
of companionship were the happier, when they lived entirely
for each other in the exchange of confidences, or together
enjoyed books on natural history and the history of the earth,
or listened to Herder reading aloud from his Ideen. At the
end of the year 1783 Fritz is set to write to Goethe's mother,
with whom, in January 1784, Charlotte also opens a correspond
ence. In February 1784 Fritz, and Fritz's elder brother
Ernst, are taken to that opening of the new shaft at Ilmenau,
which was so weighty an event to Goethe.
His love for Charlotte now enters on a strange phase of
passionate yearning ; it is impossible to satisfy his craving for
assurance, and tokens that her heart is his. Her disquiet at
this increases his fervour. When he goes to Brunswick in
August 1784 she begs him, as he has to converse in French
at the Court, to write to her in French, hoping that the ex
pression of his yearning would thus be moderated. His
enthusiasm of passion finds outlet in Die Geheimnisse1
Charlotte had now resolved to undertake herself the man
agement of her estate. Goethe will not oppose ; he even con
fesses that the way in which she goes about it makes him love
her afresh,2 though he cannot help the remark that by burden
ing herself with the cross of domestic economics she is, only
sharing an evil without being able to remove it.3 He now
makes up his mind to adopt Fritz Stein, and sends to Frau
1 On August 23, 1784, Goethe sent to Charlotte von Stein the fol
lowing stanza of Die Geheimnisse; it is one of the half-dozen which he
omitted from the poem as published in his collected works : —
" Gewiss, ich ware schon so feme, ferae,
So weit die Welt nur offen liegt, gegangen,
Bezwangen mich nicht ubermacht'ge Sterne,
Die mein Geschick an Deines angehangen,
Dass ich in Dir nun erst mich kennen lerne,
Mein Dichten, Trachten, Hoffen und Verlangen
Allein nach Dir und Deinem Wesen drangt
Mein Leben nur an Deinem Leben hangt." — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, June 28 and July 7, 1784. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Karl August, October 28, 1784. — Tr.

358 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
Aja two miniatures of his pet, that she may have the boy al
ways before her ; hitherto she had possessed only a silhouette
likeness of him.
During 1785 Goethe's love grew calm again, without
losing depth and force. Illness and anxieties, however,
darkened their " heaven." 1 Charlotte had made up her mind
to seek recovery in Karlsbad this time, and thither Goethe too
purposed to resort, taking the Fichtelgebirge on his way. But
soon disgust with his lot takes such a hold of him that he
buries himself in his thought, and even love cannot open his
heart. " We will ever remain together, love. As to that be
without uneasiness," he writes on the 20th of April 1785;
but a few days later he hurries in despair to Jena.2 In the
early weeks of May lingering indisposition kept the lovers
apart. At this time, too, Charlotte was grieved about her son
Karl, who had contracted debts in Helmstedt, where he was
studying, and had suddenly left Helmstedt and gone to Got
tingen, in the middle of a Semester, without his parents' leave.
The July spent by the lovers in Karlsbad was composed
of happy days. " The dear Stein was in general well when
here, and every one wished her well," writes Goethe, shortly
before his own departure, to the Duke. Towards the end of
August 1785 Fritz Stein travelled to Frankfurt under the care
of an Eisenach merchant, to visit Goethe's mother. On Octo
ber 6, 1785, Goethe writes to Charlotte : — " Fritz is merrier
than ever. He has in Frankfurt for the first time learned to
know what Freedom is ; and my mother is the first who has
taught him the philosophy of a joyous life in detail. You will
be astonished to see how he has improved in everything."
And elsewhere Goethe is right jubilant over the good derived
from the journey by Fritz. How paternal his feeling towards
the boy was, witness his words to Jacobi : — " Do you know
what ? I will bring him up for your girl. She will not get a
prettier nor better fellow." 3 When in the latter part of Sep
tember the Princess Galitzin, commended by Jacobi, came to
Weimar, accompanied by the freethinker Hemsterhuis, and
by the strictly orthodox Vicar-General von Fiirstenberg from
1 On January II, 1785, Goethe writes : — " Every one seeks his heaven
outwards ; how happy I am that I have mine so near ! " — Tr.
2 Where he found consolation in Knebel's friendship. See p. 354. — Tk.
3 Goethe to Jacobi, September 11, 1785. — Tr.

1782-1786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 359
Munster, Goethe found it quite possible to be frank and
natural with her. Without any invasion of Charlotte's power,
the poet was powerfully attracted by this charming and grace
ful woman, whom Hemsterhuis celebrated as " Diotima." In
education she was a follower of Rousseau ; in religion she was
a Pietist. She was at this time separated from her husband.
She had already heard much from Jacobi of Goethe's relation
to Frau von Stein, whom she visited in October.1 In the
evening the two women met at Goethe's house. " This noble
soul has awakened and strengthened us to manifold good by
her presence," writes Goethe to Jacobi (October 21, 1785);
"and your friends have brought us sweet joys and hours."
Later he wrote to the Princess, begging that a correspondence
of friendship might be opened between them. He enclosed
a letter from Charlotte ; this letter he had himself drafted.2
He wished to get a look into the inner life of this lady, who
was so strangely composed of enthusiastic faith and fresh intel
lectual clearness. But she remained silent ; she could look
for no good to her soul, she thought, in such a connection,
and probably she felt, too, that Charlotte had entire possession
of Goethe's mind and heart. \
Meanwhile, to the behaviour of Charlotte's son Karl, whom
she could no longer trust, was added another great anxiety; her
second son, Ernst, was laid up with a neglected wound in the
knee. At Christmas it grew so bad that Charlotte could not
leave him. Goethe felt painfully the constant separation from
her; add to which that she was pressed by many cares, that
he was frequently gloomy and ill, seldom revealing his inner
self — indeed often quite mute. Once he begs Charlotte to be
patient, and even though his mood often grow desperate, not
to draw mistaken inferences.3' His deep-rooted superstition
that every important resolve fails if confided to others, pre
vented him from telling Charlotte of his intended flight to
Italy ; and this too gave him pain. Ernst Stein grew better,
but Karl's behaviour continued to give his mother great
1 Frau von Stein was at Kochberg during September and the first ten
days of October. It was after her return to Weimar that she received this
visit. — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Frau von Stein, December 4, 1785. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, February 18, 1786 : — " Habe dunur
mit mir Geduld und lass dich nicht irren wenn mir's manchmal fatal wird."
— Tr.

360 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
anxiety. At her desire Goethe wrote to Karl in his father's
name, urging economy, and demanding an exact account how
and why he had incurred the debts. Frequent illness and
Goethe's various absences from Weimar kept the lovers apart
again for a long time. " Let me ever find thy love the same !
there is so much else that will not go on right," he laments
to her, writing from Ilmenau, May 5, 1786. He had set his
hope on Karlsbad, where he hoped to enjoy some happy weeks
in Charlotte's society.
VI. Goethe and Old Friends, 1782-6.— In the little
band of friends who made life brighter for him, the first place
since the autumn of 1783 had been occupied by Herder.
Herder at the time specified was working on the early part
of his fdeen zu einer Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit,1
which so happily fell in with Goethe's speculations on nature
Herder recognises in Goethe one of the few who have heart
and head in the right place, one who is in every step in life a
man; while our poet knew how to estimate Herder's acute-
ness, profundity of soul, large intellectual grasp. Another
friend to whom Goethe continued heartily attached was the
dejectedly vacillating Knebel. He was away from Weimar
for a considerable time. Of him Goethe was glad to make a
confidant, and rejoiced in mutual encouragement and com
forting. And amid all changes a friendly relation with the
kindly, gifted Wieland stood firm. Wieland saw how Goethe
suffered beneath the burthen which he had taken on him for
the good of the land, and rendered the due tribute of esteem
to the upright courtier and minister.
As to friends at a distance — Merck did not indeed come
to Weimar during the period now under review, but Goethe
had many points of union with him, and rejoiced in his
occasional good luck the more heartily as manifold want of
success had made Merck constantly more bitter and weary of
life. With Schlosser too Goethe remains on good terms;
even if he cannot encourage the Duke to bring Schlosser
to Weimar, but gets the decision left to Fritsch, who declares
against it. Nor did the connection with Kestner break off;
though they wrote but seldom they felt how dear they were to
each other. When Kestner in 1785 writes to Goethe a
detailed account of a great loss of means, Goethe replies : —
1 Thoughts on a Philosophy of the History of Mankind. — Tr.

1782-1786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 361
" Be assured of my heartfelt sympathy, for my manifold life in
the world has made my old friends still dearer to me. I
thank you for your circumstantial letter and for your sureness
that I would feel with and for you."1 A Dr. Riedel, who
came to Weimar, introduced by Kestner, and who after
wards married Lotte's youngest sister, pleased Goethe so well
as to be recommended by him to the Duke and Duchess as
Landkammerrath, with the prospect of becoming tutor to the
young Prince.2
His relations with the two friends who in old times had
been the most ardently clasped to the heart — with Jacobi
and Lavater — had been changing in ways the most opposite.
In 1782 Jacobi — still so bitterly offended that he doubted
whether Goethe had any heart, and would hear nothing of
the good which Knebel had to tell of Goethe — had men
tioned to Schlosser an old loan not yet repaid by Goethe.3
The Schlossers coming home through Frankfurt had told Frau
Aja of this ; she told Goethe, and he asked her to settle the
matter, at the same time did not omit to write to Jacobi,
October 2, 1782. He regrets the delay in repayment of the
loan, acknowledges the kindness which had by this loan helped
him out of a great perplexity, and yields heartfelt thanks for
it and for all the goodness of his friend in time past. He
also alludes to the circumstance which had wounded Jacobi :
— " When we grow older and the world grows a narrower
place, we think often with pain of the days when we jested
friends away for pastime, and laughed in thoughtless in
solence at the wounds we inflicted — which we could not feel
ourselves, and which we took no trouble to heal." The
tender-hearted, emotional Jacobi could not, for all his piqued
vanity, resist the generosity of this confession — which indeed
is anything but a softening down of the fault confessed. The
friendship was soon renewed in all its intimacy, and was not
disturbed later on by the difference of their views on Spinoza.4
Jacobi after the death of his wife, an event which called forth
1 Goethe to Kestner, Dec. 4, 1785. — In this letter occurs that great
word : — "Wenn der Mensch sich selbst bleibt, bleibt ihm viel." — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Kestner, June 16, and July 21, 1786. — Tr.
3 See p. 237.— Tr.
4 See letters of Goethe to Jacobi in the years 1785-6. See especially
that of June 9, 1 785. Goethe was reading Spinoza's Ethics with Charlotte
von Stein in November 1784. — Tr.

362 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
Goethe's deepest sympathy,1 came with his sister Charlotte to
Weimar to Goethe, and they found each other again completely
(September 1784). With deep emotion Jacobi parted from
the noble friend whose heart he had misjudged so long.
While the friendship with Jacobi was knit anew, the con
nection with Lavater was loosed. And precisely through a
personal meeting their separation was as it were finally
sealed. The agreement, desired by Goethe, to peace and
mutual tolerance in religious matters was not established.
On the contrary, Lavater declared that whoever hated his
Pontius Pilcttus2 — a work which disgusted our poet as a
" Capuzinade"— must hate himself. In the third part of this
work, certainly, Goethe found thoroughly good things, and
believed he saw that humanity was by degrees becoming
revealed to Lavater. He sent greeting to Lavater by the
Duke so late as October 1784. But when the friend once so
dear was more and more carried away by zeal for illuminat-'
ing and converting, when he excited society by his magnetic
cures, and made a progress through Germany as a prophet and
worker of miracles, Goethe's bitterness deepened to see any
one lead astray men's common sense with such vagaries. At
the moment when Goethe himself had gained insight into the
depths of Nature creative and active in accordance with eternal
laws, was this to be his experience — his friend once so human
in sympathy, now quite fallen from his old self, imposing his
fables on the world as the only salvation? Goethe would
gladly have avoided the ecstatic prophet, the distortion of the
genuine human image of Lavater, that visited Weimar in
July 1786. But he was compelled by the unusual delay in
the lying-in of the Duchess to linger away in Weimar the time
which he had thought to spend delightfully in Karlsbad by
Charlotte's side, and thus to await the arrival of Lavater, who
came about seven o'clock in the evening of July 18, — the
very day on which a little Princess was born. The prophet
came with the Prince of Dessau, who was still a reverential
1 Goethe to Jacobi, March 3, 1784. Helene Elizabeth Jacobi had,
it will be remembered, been a dear friend of Goethe's. See pp. 175 and
179.— Tr.
2 For Goethe's feeling about this work see his letters to Charlotte von
Stein, April 6, 1782, and July 9, 1784, and his letter to Lavater July 29,
1782.— Tr.

1 782- 1 786.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 363
follower: he stopped with Goethe, who invited the Duke,
Herder, Wieland, and Bode to meet him. Goethe was per
fectly cold and reserved; not a single word of confidence
passed between them.1 Every one else was charmed with
Lavater, especially Wieland and the Duchess Amalia, also
Fritz, in whose album he wrote some verses. Lavater could
not, as far as Goethe was concerned, have come at a less
favourable moment; the poet was longing to get away to
Karlsbad, and had, too, to keep concealed the resolve which
filled him with restlessness — the resolve to go away to Italy.
That Lavater should appear precisely at this moment he looked
on as a work of the gods, who desired his complete separation
from the prophet who denied the God in Nature in whom he
believed. Already, two years earlier, he had said : — " Of unions
which do not sound the depth of Nature there can be no
solid result;" still to bring about a separation so complete
though tacit as was this one, the actual presence of Lavater
was necessary. It was a dreary last meeting, where Goethe
broke off an intimate connection twelve years old with a stern
coldness deeply painful to himself.
How much happier was the meeting with the two Counts
Stolberg, who ventured, in May 1784 — with indeed the
charming accompaniment of their wives — to visit the Weimar
Court, though Fritz Stolberg and Klopstock had so insulted
the Duke and his friend Goethe eight years before. " It was
a very pleasant reminder of old times, and a new confirm
ing of old friendship," writes Goethe to Kestner (June 24,
1784). He was especially attracted by the wife of Fritz Stol
berg, the little, " cheery, sympathetic personality," the Countess
Agnes. Christian Stolberg pleased him better on this occa
sion than did Fritz ; he would have been glad to live awhile
with Christian.2 Goethe's correspondence with their sister
Auguste (who in the previous year had given her hand to her
brother-in-law, the noble Andreas Peter Bernstorff, then three
1 See Goethe to Frau von Stein, July 21, 1786 : — " Kein herzlich ver-
traulich Wort ist unter uns gewechselt worden, und ich bin Hass und
Liebe auf ewig los. Er hat sich in den wenigen Stunden mit seinen
Vollkommenheiten und Eigenheiten so vor mir gezeigt, und meine Seele
war wie ein Glas rein Wasser. Ich habe auch unter seine Existenz einen
grossen Strich gemacht, und weiss nun was mir per saldo von ihm ubrig
bleibe."— Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Gotha, June 5, 1784.— Tr.

364 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. iv.
years an ex-Minister) was broken off, and under the changed
circumstances he could feel no desire to renew it. All femi
nine friendships had given room to the one great love for
Charlotte von Stein ; only his union with his mother, who,
although he had been unable to visit her for six years,1 was his
pride and comfort, remained unimpaired.
1 The following is interesting in this context : Goethe to Charlotte
von Stein, Eisenach, June 11, 1784 — " I am told Frankfurt is but thirty-
one hours away, and I am yet unable to entertain the most fleeting thought
of going thither. So hast thou drawn my nature to thee that not a nerve
is left for my other heart obligations." — Tr.

CHAPTER V.
THE YEARNING FOR ITALY.
On each return of the memorable days of his life — among
which he counted the 7 th of November — Goethe used to con
sider in serious retrospect the time just past, used to form
resolves for the time to come. When in his new house in
November 1782 he had all letters and papers of the last ten
years stitched together he grew hot at the sight. " But I will
not desist, I will see these ten years lie before me as from a
hill the long valley just traversed." 1 Two years later he
reviews the numerous and differing epochs in his way of think
ing during his life at Weimar, seeks to make the past right
explicable to himself, to obtain a clear notion of the present,
and to imagine what he would do if he at that moment came
to that place and that service.2 With still more intensity he
must have brooded over past and future when in November
1785 his tenth year in Weimar had drawn to its close. The
feeling that by his excessive labours in the harsh Thiiringian
climate the early elasticity of spirit had fled, could not but
impel him to deliberate seriously whether it were not now time
to shake off the load of business, to recruit ere too late, and
to yield to the instinct of his artist nature. True, he had to
thank the Karlsbad springs for "an altogether new existence,"8
and he hoped much from a new visit in the coming summer ;
but the narrow Weimar circle, with Weimar official business
straining all his energies, had grown terribly oppressive ; he
was in need of a new life for his refreshing. When he was in
Leipzig at the end of 1782 he wrote to Charlotte (Dec. 28) :
" I will stay here some days longer, and for thy sake as for my
1 Goethe to Knebel, Nov. 21, 1782.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August, Dec. 26, 1784.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Knebel, Dec. 30, 1785. — Tr.

366 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. v.
own ; I could at last bear it [the ennui of Weimar] no more ;
there was no use trying. If I do not constantly get new
ideas to work I become, as it were, ill." The short flights
to Ilmenau, the Harz, Karlsbad, and other places, could not
permanently satisfy ; the tension of all his life, and the weari
ness of some of it, had worn so many furrows in his soul that
nothing but a bold excursion on new paths into an unexplored
world could save him. And where could he hope to find what
he desired if not in Italy ? Into Italy he had already twice
looked down from the Gotthard Pass, thither before he had
known Weimar he had planned to travel, he saw Italy by
the magic mirror of his father's memories of it, Kayser's fresh
letters had lately brought it near to him, Tischbein's Conradin1
spoke to him with alluring persuasiveness of the land beyond
the Alps, where it was painted. When, so early as April
1785, he thought for a moment of flying from Weimar, the
visit to Italy must have been in his mind. Thenceforward the
secret hope to find in Italy healing for body and spirit grew
constantly stronger. In January 1786 occurs his bitter com
parison of the rude German tongue with the melodious
Italian 2 He was then working at Italian with Fritz Stein.
As he grew surer of the necessity of flight, it behoved him
more and more to consider the external arrangements wliich
should make flight possible. He felt sure that the Duke
would allow him to be absent a considerable time without for
feiting his salary ; but his salary would not suffice for the ex
penses of an enjoyable stay of the duration hoped for. He
resolved to raise the needful sum by issuing an edition of
his collected works ; those writings which were still fragment
ary he could get ready in Italy at his leisure. All that he had
as yet done by way of preparation for such an issue was some
slight alteration of Werther, and a transcription of fphigenie.
But now not only should everything already printed and the
pieces given on the Weimar stage undergo fresh revision; what
was yet incomplete should if possible be brought to a conclu
sion — Egmont, Elpenor, Tasso, Faust. Only Wilhelm Meister
was excluded from the plan ; to thoroughly remould the part
1 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Ilmenau, Nov. 10, 1785; to Herder,
Ilmenau, Nov. 11, 1785. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, Gotha, January 26, 1786. He is talk
ing about his " poor unfinished operetta," Scherz, List und Rache. — Tr.-

flight.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 367
already written and to develop the work farther would demand
time. Early in June 1786 Goethe is at work revising; in the
middle of the month he takes some of his work to Ilmenau
with him. At the mines he sets many things in order, that he
may go on his travels free from uneasiness. On June 16 he
writes to Charlotte : — " Der Triumph von Empfindsamkeit is
ready, all but the first act, which I have left to the last. . . .
Now I am thinking of Stella, and will not rest until it also is
to my mind. You shall see and judge all. To go through
these things and renew them within makes me half merry, half
sad. Only that I must I should not do it." When back in
Weimar he took up Werther and fphigenie, and very valuable
was the aid received from Herder and Wieland. Charlotte,
who transcribed his shorter poems, left Weimar for Karlsbad
on July 2, 1786. Just after her departure Goethe came to
a final arrangement with the Leipzig bookseller, Goschen.
For the proposed eight volumes the poet was to have 2000
thalers, to be paid in instalments as each volume appeared.
Goschen had the right to issue a special edition on Dutch
paper. Goethe meant to complete the first four volumes
before leaving Germany; thus he would have iooo thalers to
help him on to Easter 1787. He had arranged with Coun
cillor of Commerce Paulsen of Jena, that in Rome and Venice .
sums of money should await the Leipzig merchant, Johann
Philipp Moller ; under this name he meant to travel,
But now ensued that delay in Weimar. The illness of.
Ernst Stein contributed to the worry of the time. (Karl Stein ,
had found a place as Kammerjunker and Auditor in Mecklen
burg.. " Light by nature, he will come through life's diffi
culties lightly," writes Goethe to Charlotte on July 6, 1786.)
At length on July 24 he gets away with Chancery Secretary
Vogel, whom he had long employed in transcribing. A week
later the Duke followed. Herder also with wife and son came
to Karlsbad again. Goethe and Charlotte were together until
August 14, when she left, Goethe accompanying her as far as
Schneeberg, where he remained a day or two collecting minera
logical specimens. He now revised the latter part of Werther.
Every evening he read aloud from his works. Iphigenie,
which he had had written down in the external semblance of
verse by Vogel, produced great effect.

368 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. v.
' He had hoped to leave for Italy on his birthday, August
28, 1786, but he soon saw that a few days more must be
given up. On August 23 he writes to Charlotte: — "And
then in the free wide world I shall live with thee, and in
happy loneliness, without name, without rank, draw nearer to
the old earth whence we are taken." Whither he was about
to travel he kept secret from her, as in the winter of 1777 the
journey to the Harz. His birthday was kept by his friends
and acquaintances after the cheeriest fashion ; he received
several poems in the name of his own unfinished ones. Herder
once mora commended Iphigenie to his attention ; instead of
" hammering deaf stone " (he thought that Goethe was going
on a mineralogical excursion), let him get " his tools to this
labour." x Immediately after this the Duke left Karlsbad ; his
humour and cheeriness had made the time very pleasant for
the company gathered there, though he had somewhat spoiled
the good effect by rough jokes. Goethe was with him as far
as Engelhaus : there a troop of maidens greeted him with
merry farewell verses of his friend's composing.2 Only unde
cidedly did Goethe on this occasion speak of his purposed
travel. But on September 2, 1786, the day before that on
which he started, he wrote to the Duke, begging leave of
absence for a considerable time, and declaring himself more
precisely. " You are happy," he said ; " you are going to an
appointment [in the Prussian army] that you have desired and
chosen. Your affairs at home are in good order and in good
train ; and I know that you now permit me to think of my-
myself — nay, you have often called on me to do so. In
general business [the Treasury and the Council] I can cer
tainly be done without at present ; and as for the special tasks
with which I am charged, I have so ordered them that they
can go on awhile without me ; even though I died, indeed, no
hitch would occur. Many other fortunate concurrences of these
stars I pass over, and beg you only for unconditional leave of
absence. The use of the baths two years running has done
much for my bodily health, and I hope the best for the elasti
city of my spirit also, if, left to itself, it but may for a time
enjoy the free world. The first four volumes are at length in
1 Die Italianische Reise, September 8, 1786 (the close of the entry).
— Tr.
2 The lines beginning " Ist es denn wahr, was man gesagt ? " — Tr.

flight.] WEIMAR YEARS OF SERVICE. 369
order ; Herder has stood by me with untiring fidelity. For
the last four I need leisure and a mind in tune. I have con
sidered the matter too lightly, and only now do I see how
much is to be done if we are to have no botching. All this
and yet many other concurring circumstances impel me and
compel me to wander and lose myself in regions of the earth
where I am yet unknown. I travel by myself under a name
that is not mine, and from this enterprise that seems so strange
I hope for the best result. Only, I beg, let no one know that
I am to stay away. All those who work with me and under
me, or who in any other way have to do with me, expect me
from week to week, and it is well that this should so remain,
and that I being absent should influence as one always expected."
That it was the beautiful land of Art which drew him irre
sistibly he had to conceal from the Duke, in order to avoid
betrayal. He writes in his Diary .-1 — " On this journey I shall,
I hope, gain calm satisfaction of soul as to the fine arts, im
print their sacred image durably on the soul, and preserve it
there for silent enjoyment in the future." Nay, he hoped now
at length to ascertain whether he were designed to be a poet
or a worker in plastic art. In order "to be healed of the
physico-moral evils which plagued him in Germany, and at
last made him useless,"2 he would completely put off the Privy-
Councillor, the Minister, the master, he would have no ser
vant, would enjoy a careless student life, unfettered by eti
quette, would become a simple human being again. But he
felt indissolubly united with Weimar, with his gracious Prince
and master, with his noble Princess, with Herder, Knebel,
Wieland, with Charlotte and her Fritz, in whose society he
hoped to spend a beautiful old age in communion of intellect
and heart. The relation with Charlotte, often painfully pas
sionate, often troubled by many anxieties, had indeed con
tributed to the gloom which the happiness of a wife and home
would have tended to lighten and disperse ; still his best con
solation was his faith in the noble woman who on her part
so fully recognised his worth ; and by a family life accordant
1 This passage is preserved in Riemer's Miltheilungen. _ It is one of
those which did not pass into the Italidnische Reise as published. See in
Hempel's Goethe, Theii xxiv., S. 626, Duntzer's guess that it was written
at Miinchen. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August, January 25, 1788. — Tr.
2 B

370 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. iv. ch. v.
with his position his circle of labours and studies would have
been sadly contracted. The main causes of that oppressed
state in which Italy seemed his sole refuge were — the burden
of business, so ill accordant with his genius ; the narrowness
of the intellectual horizon of Weimar ; and the rude Thiirin-
gian climate. And he hoped indeed that this journey would
make Charlotte and himself much happier in their love ; he
writes from Palermo, May 18, 1787 : — " Now that far distance
and absence have, as it were, purified away all that stagnation
which of late had come upon our intercourse, the fair flame of
love, of truth, of remembrance, again blazes up and shines in
my heart." In his last letter to Charlotte before departure he explained
himself as we have heard him in his letter to the Duke ; to
Charlotte he left the use of his garden ; his pet Fritz remained
in his house, expecting him to come back soon. The only
person who knew his plan was his faithful Philipp Seidel, who
was to rule in his house during his absence. No birthday
congratulation to the Duke on this 3d of September ; his
celebration of that day consisted in this, that on it, about three
o'clock in the morning, without confiding his purpose to any
one, he left Karlsbad. He drove alone in a postchaise, his
sole luggage a portmanteau and a knapsack, in which were his
unfinished writings, maps, guide-book, and a Linnceus. Char
lotte's ring was his talisman of travel.

BOOK V.
ITALY.
CHAPTER I.
the journey southward  venice  rome.
iphigenie.
September 1786-February 1787.
Southward through Bavaria and the Tyrol he hastened, the
goal of his longing ever present to his soul. The country
and the people he surveyed as he passed with clear, free glance.
He finds his speculations on rock-formation confirmed j1 as to
the classification of plants he sees what a mere beginner he
is;2 he has too long disused looking at pictures, and his eyes
need to train anew.3
In Innsbruck he loads himself with specimens of rock.
On the Brenner Pass he takes Iphigenie from the packet of
his writings, and he completes (September 9) the first portion
of that Diary of his journey which he means to send to Char
lotte von Stein. In Roveredo (September n) he is glad at
hearing the dear Italian tongue. At Torbole at the head of
Garda Lake, as the strong south wind drove the waves on the
beach, he moulded anew the first soliloquy of his priestess
yearning on the Tauric shore for her distant home.4 In
1 Die Italianische Reise, Mittenwald, September 7, 1 786: — "Hiev
wircl uns die Arbeit der Strbmungen des alten Meeres fasslich." — Tr.
2 Ibid., Padua, September 27, 1786.— Tr.
3 Ibid., Miinchen, September 6, 1786. — Tr.
4 This Goethe tells, Die Italianische Reise, Rome, January 6, 1787.
Strehlke calls attention to the lines : —
" Und gegen meine Seufzer bringt die Welle
Nur dumpfe Tone brausend mir heriiber." — Tr.

372 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. i.
Verona (September 14-19) he gave most of his -time to the
Roman amphitheatre. While at Verona he wrote short letters —
to the Duke, to Charlotte, to Herder, and to Voigt. The letter
to Voigt was concerned with the affairs of the Ilmenau Mines.
In none of these letters did he betray where he was. In Vicenza,
the birthplace of Palladio, whose art is there displayed in so
many of his most celebrated buildings, Goethe stayed a week
(September 19-26). He admired Palladio's deep judgment in
art, his noble simplicity, his unaffected earnestness, and con
trasted this seriousness with the extravagance of modern style.
The beauty ofthe position of Vicenza impressed him; this city, it
will be remembered, is the home of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister.
In the Botanic Gardens at Padua a fan-palm gives the
clearest notion of the series of the metamorphoses of the
plant. He induces the gardener to cut for him a set of
leaves, from original simple leaf to flower, and these he carried
like a fetish with him, between pasteboards. Amid the multi
tude of new flowers the conception of the development of
all plant-forms from one grew more and more vivid.1
The charm of Venice detained him three weeks (Septem
ber 28 — October 14), during which he gained a clear and full
impression. He thought with deep emotion of his father, who
would so gladly and lovingly talk of the days he had spent
long ago in the wonderful sea-girt city. The popular Italian
comedy gave him pleasure, but the tragedy and opera left him
cold. The whole tragic stage seemed empty because the acting
was not acting — because it sought to produce effect, not through
being the artistic imitation of action and passion, but by the
very things said and done before the audience. A collection
of casts from the antique carried him back to those old glori
ous days ; he feels how deficient he is in knowledge, but he
will go forwards, at least he knows the way. A bit of the en
tablature of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome
reminds him of the capital of the Pantheon, seen fifteen years
ago in Mannheim;2 he thanks God that he is now delivered
from the "Gothic pipe- shank columns, sharp little towers,
flower-tracery." Iphigenie, which he had pushed on with con
tinually, he leaves aside during the last week of his stay in
1 These details from Goethe's Geschickte meines botanischen Studiums.
See Hempel's Goethe, Theii. xxxiii., S. 70-71. — Tr.
2 See p. 125.— Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. 373
Venice, for, restless as he is, his time hardly suffices for
accomplishing what is most important; in the fourth act,
too, he finds a knot that he cannot loosen. Before leaving
the City of the Lagoon, on October 14, 1786, he writes —
still without indicating the place — to the Duke, to Charlotte,
and to Herder; to Charlotte he promises his Diary, which,
with all collected as yet on his journey, he entrusts to carriers,
that it may not arrive in Weimar before his first letters from
Rome. In desolate Ferrara (October 16), where he is filled with
uneasy sad memory of the splendid Court that once abode
there, of Ariosto discontented there, of Tasso unhappy, he
feels a kind of deprivation of joy. As he drives in the early
morning of October 17 to Cento, brooding between waking
and dreaming the development of his Iphigenie auf Tauris,
there rises to him the conception of an Iphigenie in Delphi.
The pure beauty of the catastrophe — the recognition of Iphi
genie by Electra — draws tears of joy from the poet. In Cento,
the native city of Guercino, he is astonished and delighted by
the simple, mild greatness of the many pictures of this old
master, and by the easy, neat, and finished quality of his
touch. In Bologna (October 18) he rejoices in the St. Agatha
of Raphael ; the painter has given his saint a healthy, secure
maidenhood, without, however, coldness or harshness.1 But
precisely in Bologna, where so many hitherto unfamiliar mas
ters are revealed to him, he feels how sadly lacking he is
in knowledge and judgment. To Paderno, hard by, he rides
(October 20) for the sake of its celebrated spar, and returns
with a heavy load.
Through the Apennines he now travels fast, gathering on
his way specimens of limestone and granite. On the road
from Lojano to Giredo the thought of writing an Ulysses auf
Phaa occurs. The restless longing for Rome permits but a
three hours' stay in Florence (October 23). Outside Foligno
he leaves his vetturino, meaning to wander on foot to the
church of Santa Maria di Minerva on the hill at Assisi ; in juxta
position with this church as its facade a Roman temple of the
time of Augustus is preserved. This, the first perfect monu-
1 "To her," writes Goethe, Die Italianische Reise, October 19, 1786,
"I will in spirit read aloud my Iphigenie, and my heroine shall say
nothing that this saint might not utter." — Tr.

374 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. i.
ment of the classic age which he had seen, impressed him
deeply with the power of ancient architecture.
. All the inconveniences of the journey, the bad inns; the
treacherous vetturini, dismay him not. "Were it on the
wheel of Ixion that they dragged me to Rome I would
not complain."1 As from Spoleto, a town blessed with a
huge number of churches and ecclesiastical institutions, he
drives in the company of a priest to Terni, he meditates
on the uncouth heathenism which has disfigured the kindly
Christianity of the apostles. Thus his Ewiger Jude2 was
brought to mind ; he had meant in his never written epic to use
that word " venio iterum crucifigi" spoken, says legend, by
Christ to Peter flying from Rome to avoid martyrdom.3 In
the wretched inn at Terni on October 27, 1786, he addresses
a " prayer to his dear guardian angel," to Charlotte, now not
seen for ten weeks. " For the first time I feel how spoiled I
am ; to have lived by thee, to have been loved by thee, ten years
— and now in a world that is strange to me ! — I foretold it
silently, and only the highest necessity had compelled me to
this resolve. Let us have no other thought than to spend
the close of life together."4
Two days later, on Sunday, October 29, 1786, exactly
eight weeks from the day of leaving Karlsbad, Goethe drove
through the Porta del Popolo, his heart beating high to think
that his dearest wish was now fulfilled — he was entering the
Eternal City. The unusually cold weather, and the unpleasant
news that his banker in Rome had failed, were unremarkable
trifles in this mood of lofty joy.
His chief hope was in Tischbein. Johann Heinrich
Wilhelm Tischbein was born at Haina in Hesse on February
15, 1751. After a short residence in Italy he had settled in
1 Die Italianische Reise, October 25, 1786 (last sentence). — Tr.
2 See p. 203.— Tr.
3 And of that legend he is reminded, because he thinks that were
Christ to return to seek the fruits of his labours, he would be in danger of
a second crucifixion. Die Italianische Reise, October 27, 1786. — Tr.
4 This is part ofthe original entry for October 27, 1786. It did not
pass into Die Italianische Reise as published. When Charlotte von Stein
was giving back to Goethe the diaries and letters sent to her from Italy,
she made copies of some of the passages which were specially important
to her. This is one of them. Another, p. 392. See Duntzer's edition of
Die Italianische Reise, p. 670. (Hempel's Goethe, Theii. xxiv. ) — Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. 375
Zurich, and had gained the affection of Lavater there. Several
years before the time of which we now write Goethe had recom
mended Tischbein to the Duke of Gotha, who, supplying the
money necessary, had sent him to Italy. The great picture
Conradin1 sent from Italy to the Duke of Gotha, had won the
highest praise, yet the Duke gave him no commission for a
fresh picture, but only continued to pay a yearly sum for his
maintenance, and promised to take him after a time into
regular service. As Goethe could do no more with the Duke
of Gotha, the closer union with the painter relaxed. Even to
Tischbein he must not betray his intention of coming to
Rome, yet he had put his hope after the "long weariness" of
the journey in the " good " Tischbein.2 Tischbein had just
sent to Weimar to Goethe a collection of specimens of the
marble used by ancient and modern Roman architects,3 and
had also engaged in preparing for Goethe a series of copies of
the best masters in chalk, sepia, and water-colour.4
A very joyful surprise it was to the painter when the poet
of Gotz, his inspiring genius,5 stood before him, and in a
mood of such simple unalloyed friendliness, so anxious for
deep and cordial intimacy, that Tischbein could hardly realise
it ! Goethe desired of the painter a little chamber for sleep
ing and working in, and a plain daily fare, which Tischbein
easily managed. Tischbein's lodgings were on the Corso, on
the left from the Porta del Popolo, opposite the Rondinini
(also Rondanini) Palace, at the corner of the Vicolo della
fontanella, which leads to the Pincian Hill, and down to
which run the yard and garden of the house. (In 1872 the
Common Council of Rome put up a memorial tablet on the
house; it is now No. 20.) Beside Tischbein Goethe had for
fellow-lodgers two young painters. One, his fellow-townsman
Johann Georg Schiitz, born 1755, whose gay and easy dis
position earned him the title " il Barone," had now spent two
years in Rome ; the other, Friedrich Bury of Hanau, born
1763, had been in Rome since 1780, was of a very sociable
1 See pp. 355 and 366.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Philipp Seidel, Venice, October 14, 1786. — Tr.
3 Die Italianische Reise, November 18, 1786. — Tr.
4 Ibid., December 29, 1786. — Tr.
6 One of Tischbein's pictures was Gotz von Berlichingen leading
Weislingen into his room. — Tr.

37° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk, v. ch. i.
and cheery though stormy nature, and completely naturalised
in Rome, having come thither so young. Thus was Goethe's
inner circle composed. Tischbein lived on the first story; on
the second Goethe had a small sitting-room commanding a wide
prospect over the Pincian Hill, off this was his bedroom So
full of interest and delight were the first few days, that only
by the second post after his arrival did he confide to his
mother that he was in Rome.1
In a week he had gained a general conception of the city.
" We go busily hither and thither. I make myself familiar with
the plans of ancient and modern Rome, survey the ruins, the
buildings, visit this villa or that ; the things most worthy of
note are treated very slowly : I but gaze attentively and go and
come again."2 The Pantheon, the Cathedral of St. Peter,
and the Apollo Belvedere, especially moved him ; of none of
them can drawings or casts give a notion ; 3 but when he saw
the Colosseum in the twilight all else seemed small.4 In con
trast with the haste of the journey and his former passionate
yearning, he now felt an unused calm and clearness, "a serious
ness without dryness, and a composed frame with joy."5 Yet
it pained him to think that all he saw was in ruin. He read
deep in Vitruvius on architecture, and in Palladio, in whose
time many buildings now ruined were still entire. And the
gladder, less interrupted plant-life of Italy attracted him. He
made some very "pretty observations."6 His source of high
est pleasure was the intercourse with Tischbein, in whom he
saw not merely a gifted and experienced artist, but a good and,
wise man,7 and who adhered to him with deep and earnest
friendship. In the drawings and sketches of Tischbein,
especially those which depict the first stages of the human cul
ture, Goethe notices the vivid and fruitful mode of treatment ;
there was a good deal of discussion between them of the plan
of producing a work of art in co-operation.8
So early as the third day (Nov. 2) after his arrival in Rome
1 Goethe to his mother, Rome, Nov. 4, 1786. First published
in Goethe-Briefe aus Fritz Schlossers Nachlass, 1877, S. 99. — Tr.
2 Die Italianische Reise, Nov. 5, 1786. — Tr.
3 Ibid., Nov. 9, 1786.— Tr. i Ibid., Nov. 11,. 1786.— Tr.
* Ibid., Nov. 10, 1786.— Tr.
6 Goethe to Knebel, Nov. 17, 1786. — Tr.
r Goethe to Karl August, Dec. 12, 1786. — Tr.
8 Die Italianische Reise, Nov. 7, 1786. — Tr.

1786-1787.] ' ITALY. 377
Goethe had become acquainted at the Quirinal with the Swiss
painter, Heinrich Meyer, and . afterwards felt constantly more
drawn towards him by the thoroughness of his knowledge and
by his honesty of heart. Meyer, born at Zurich in March
1760, and furthered by the instruction of Fiissli, had, two years
before the time of which we now write, come with his friend
Colla to Rome, where the two studied the best works of art,
read diligently in the history of art, and copied successfully
from antiques and from paintings, not omitting, however, to
attempt original work also.
Not so intimate and genial was Goethe's connection with
the antiquary, Aloys Hirt of Baden, of a somewhat dry nature,
remarkable rather for his scholarship than for original power.
Hirt was now twenty-six ; in Vienna seven years ago he had
devoted himself to art; he had been in Italy since 1782 ; he
was hard-working and inspired with the best purpose. Goethe
did his utmost to help Hirt, who was without means, to
employment as a cicerone.1
Another resident in Rome was the poet and painter, Fried
rich Miiller, born at Kreuznach, half a year before the birth of
Goethe, with whom during the Sturm und Drang period he
had had intercourse. When in 1778 Miiller went to Rome,
Goethe undertook to send him every year a sum subscribed
by Weimar friends. In November 1780 Goethe writes to
Miiller, asking what truth there is in the report that he has
become a Catholic. " It makes no change in our relations,
only if it is a fact I should like to be able to tell those who
inquire what the real circumstances are, and if it were not true
to be able to contradict with authority." The pictures which
Miiller afterwards sent to Weimar pleased no one, and Goethe
wrote in June 1781, finding fault and counselling in the friend
liest way. Then came a breach between them. Miiller's high
self-esteem made reconciliation impossible ; nay, his grudge
deepened when he heard of Goethe's helping Tischbein with
the Duke of Gotha ; and now was he actually to see Tischbein
Goethe's most intimate friend, and the poet besides con
descending to young painters whom Miiller considered far
beneath himself in merit.
Another with whom Goethe became acquainted in the
earliest period of his life in Rome, was Hofrath Johann
1 Goethe to Wieland, Nov. 17, 1786.— Tr.

37« THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. i.
Friedrich Reiffenstein, the business man of his friend the
Duke of Gotha. Born in Prussian Lithuania, on the 2 2d of
November 1729, Reiffenstein had lived in Rome since 1762.
He had known Winckelmann there, and since Winckelmann's
death had been the chief cicerone. Since 1780 he had been
a Hofrath, not only of Gotha but of Russia; he stood in
high repute at the Russian Court. In the History of Art he
was a staunch follower of Winckelmann ; in the Theory of
Art, of Sulzer ; in the practical rules of Art, of Mengs. He
reverenced Raphael above all other painters, whereas many
artists of that time gave Michael Angelo the palm. To this
man, of such significance in the art-life of Rome, Goethe drew
very close, accommodating himself wisely to his peculiarities.
Reiffenstein had a large villa at Frascati, close to the ancient
Alba. There Goethe visited him on November 14, 1786, and
spent a few delightful days in a neighbourhood full of all that
was new and charming.
It was not until after his return from Frascati that he held
himself a naturalised citizen of Rome ; and only then did he
write (Nov. 17, 1786), telling the Duke, Charlotte, Herder,
Wieland, and other Weimar friends, where he was. He added
a few lines to Fritz Stein, who is to make himself comfortable
in Goethe's room. All these letters were enclosed with that
addressed to the Duke, who should be the first, after Goethe's
mother, to know that his Privy Councillor was in Rome. The
Duke was just then in Berlin ; thence, on December 2, 1786,
he sent the Weimar letters to Charlotte von Stein, who thus
did not hear the news until December 4, 1786. Hencefor
ward Goethe wrote to her every Sunday, generally to Herder
also, who of all friends understood him best. (By accidental
delay, the Diary of the journey as far as Venice did not come
into Charlotte's hands until the middle of January 1787.)
Goethe only now became acquainted with Karl Philipp
Moritz, although Moritz had come to Rome a couple of days
earlier than he. The author of the novel Anton Reiser (based
on the strange story of his own life) had, in his Reisen eines
Deutschen in England1 written a book so successful, that the
publisher Campe advanced him money for a visit to Italy, that
Moritz might produce a like book on this El Dorado of Nature
and Art. He was very powerfully impressed by Goethe, whose
1 Travels ofa German in England. — Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. 379
junior he was by eight years. On the 20th of November 1786,
Moritz writes that a few days ago he had a walk to the Villa
Pamfili, in company with Goethe and some artists who live
with him, and this walk " has introduced me to a new world
of ideas and noble impressions. Intercourse with him [Goethe]
brings fulfilment of the fairest visions of my youth, and his
advent ... is to me as to others — an unhoped-for piece of
good fortune. For with all the beauties of Nature and of Art,
there is yet nothing higher than the harmonious interchange
of thought, by which alone obscure feelings gain expres
sion and conscious existence." There were in Moritz good
qualities which attracted Goethe — pleasant social frankness,
warm sympathies, clear perception, an earnest endeavour after
insight into the reality of things, which last, indeed, often
over-refined into useless minuteness. And Moritz's studies
in history and antiquities were helpful to Goethe, who used
himself to read diligently in the Livy which he had ere this
bought from one of the booksellers on the Corso, who expose
for sale all the classics in tiny volumes at a moderate price.
Feeling his deficiency in technical knowledge, Goethe used
generally to view buildings, antiques, and paintings, in the
company of architects, sculptors, and painters. (Among the
sculptors, he chiefly esteemed Alexander Trippel from Schaff
hausen, who, born five years earlier than Goethe, and having
spent a considerable time in Copenhagen and Paris, had now
been ten years in Rome.) Yet, after all his efforts to enter
into the spirit of the works of art, he felt not yet able to cope
with them ; their splendour dazed him, they kept his powers
on the stretch, and yet he could find ho entrance into the
secret life of them ; they afforded him no joy.1
It was about this time that in the morning hours 2 of each
day he again began work on the re-writing of Iphigenie. But
in the midst of this task a " sad domestic trouble " (" baser
Hauskreuz") came upon the little circle of friends. When
Goethe, about the 6th of December 1786, with Tischbein and
two other artists (probably Bury and Schiitz), drove to the
Fiumicino mouth of the Tiber, they were accompanied by
1 Goethe to Knebel, November 17, 1786 : — "Doch ist's Anstrengung
statt Genusses, und Trauer statt Freude." — Tr.
2 See in Hempel's Goethe, Theii. xxiv. S. 698, Duntzer's quotation
from a letter of Tischbein's, dated December 9, 1786. — Tr.

35° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. cii. i.
Moritz and another friend on horseback. On their way
home, when they were near the Porta Sixtina, Moritz fell from
his horse and broke his left arm. Goethe proved himself a
true friend ; he had the sufferer brought home in an arm
chair, cared for his wants, visited him more than once every
day during the month of lying still, watched by his bedside
several nights, and arranged that this office should be per
formed every night by one of the German artists in turn (thus
Moritz was hardly ever left without a friend at hand), and also
wrote to Campe for him. Notwithstanding all this anxiety,
Iphigenie was completed by the 12th of December 1786.1
He would never have ventured on turning his prose into
iambics without the guidance of the treatise, Versuch einer
Deutschen Prosodie, published by Moritz in that year.2
He continued to traverse the city almost to weariness.
He thought that his schooling in Rome should close for the
present at Christmas 1786. In the beginning of the new
year he would go to Naples, accompanied by the " good, the
noble (and yet so sagacious) the cultivated " Tischbein ;
there in the glories of Nature " to wash my soul clean from the
Idea of so many dreary ruins, and to assuage the too severe
conceptions of Art"8 Then, immediately after Easter 1787,
he thought he should turn his steps homewards.
In Rome at that time, accompanied by a certain Abate
Tacchi, was stopping the Prince Karl Borromaus von Liechten
stein, a brother of the Countess von Harrach, whom Goethe
honoured. The Prince was but twenty-one. He had met
Goethe in Karlsbad, and when he heard that the poet was in
Rome, he begged Hirt to bring them together. Their meet
ing took place in the Doria Gallery, but Goethe adhered to
his incognito, though he was persuaded into dining a few
times with the Prince. Thus it was that he met the Abate
Monti (born 1754 in the Duchy of Ferrara), whose new
tragedy, Aristodemo, was soon coming out. Goethe had
to listen to the author reading this aloud. Though he did
not conceal his doubt that the excellent piece would be
well received in a theatre, he promised to come with his
friends to see it and to pay the poet the deserved ap-
1 Goethe to Karl August, December 12, 1786. — Tr.
2 Die Italianische Reise, January 10, 1787. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Karl August, December 12, 1786. — Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. 381
plause.1 Abate Tacchi would fain have translated Iphigenie
into Italian.2
All intercourse with persons of rank — Prince Liechten
stein excepted — was refused by Goethe. He wished to live
a free human life in Rome, and certainly nothing could
be further from his desire than to exhibit himself as a nota
bility. Thus we find him firmly declining to be introduced
to the daughter of the English Pretender (who then lived in
Rome as Count Albany). Goethe could not, indeed, but
rejoice to observe that he was known in Rome beyond all
expectation, the Germans especially being taken with him.3
But when they seriously proposed to crown him at the Capitol,
he forbade the farce.4
Though by the middle of December 1786 he had several
times seen what was most significant and what was best in
Rome, he yet felt — unlike the greater number of travellers: —
how little in such matters to have seen means.5 Beside the
mighty buildings, the Apollo of the Belvedere and Raphael's
Loggia, must be mentioned the colossal heads of the so-called
Smiling Jupiter, the Juno Ludovisi, and the Medusa Rondi-.
nini, which had so won his love that he did not rest until he
possessed casts of them. The stupendous creation of Michael
Angelo on the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel overpowered and
possessed the poet, and after it he could not find delight in
Raphael's Loggia.6 And beside these single and peculiar
great works he was met at every step by so much else of sig
nificance that he had simply to yield himself up, to let all
work upon him while the due, growth proceeded within.7
1 Die Italianische Reise, November 23, 1786. — Tr.
2 Ibid., January 4, 1787. — Tr.
3 Besides Die Italianische Reise, January 4, 1787 (end), see Goethe
to Karl August, December 12, 1786. — Tr.
4 Die Italianische Reise, January 4, 1787, and see Duntzer's quotatioa
from a letter of Tischbein to Lavater, December 9, 1786, in Hempel's
Goethe, xxiv. 698. Goethe can hardly be said to have rejoiced in his
notoriety when he writes: — " Wie das Alles zusammenhangt und wie
ich ein grosser Thor ware zu glauben dass das Alles um meinetwillen
geschahe, dereinst mundlich." — Tr.
6 Goethe to Karl August, December 12, 1786. — Tr.
6 Die Italianische Reise, December 2, 1786. See M. . Theophile
Cart's remark on this in his Goethe en Italic, p. 59- — Tr.
t Die Italianische Reise, this thought three or four times repeated in
the entries of the beginning of December 1786. — Tr.

382 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. r.
Striving after that all-sidedness from which alone proceeds
perfect knowledge, his attention was engaged by many things
— by the history of Rome, by the history of ancient Art, by
the study of antiquities, of coins, and what not.1 Even Roman
politics and administration could not escape the Weimar
statesman.2 December, a month which had always been so
unfavourable to him in Weimar, sent him to botanical obser
vations again — his first southern December, when grass and
herbs sprouted for the second time, meadows and squares
grew green again, and the many evergreens refreshed the
sight. And through this stimulation of all his powers of
thinking and acting, he felt a. strong current of life penetrate
his whole being; he thinks that he is changed to the very
marrow — in truth born again.3
The impossibility of leaving Rome so soon had impressed
itself on him, when a "gracious sympathetic letter"4 from the
Duke of Weimar granted him unlimited leave of absence;
besides his friends wrote exhorting him not to hurry. Accord
ingly he made up his mind not to start for Naples until
the first week in Lent ; he would get back to Rome be
fore Easter, visit Florence in the summer, and in the autumn
of 1787 commence his homeward journey. Sicily, too, he
had thought of, but it seemed to him that he could only go
thither, after considerable preparation, in the autumn, and
must then stay there until the end of the year, a plan which
would only bring him home in the spring of 1788. But these
plans were deranged by news that the Duke had had a fall
from his horse in Berlin.5
Meanwhile Tischbein had designed a great painting —
Goethe outside Rome. The poet was to appear clad in a great
white mantle, a large soft hat on his head, reclining on an
overturned Egyptian obelisk, before him a broken Greek
relievo, and behind that the capital of a Roman pillar. In his
glance, wandering over the Campagna, one should read the
1 Die Italianische Reise, December 29, 1786, January 4, 1787. — Tr.
2 See, for instance, Goethe to Karl August, January 10, 1787. — Tr.
3 The following references will here be found interesting — Die Italian
ische Reise, December 2, 3, 13, 20, 1786; Goethe to Duke Ernst of
Gotha, February 6, 1787, Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, December 21,
1787.— Tr.
4 " Einen giitigen mitfiihlenden Brief," Die Italianische Reise, January
4, 1787. — Tr. 6 Die Italianische Reise, January 4, 1787. — Tr.

1/OU-1/07.J 11A1_Y. 3S3
thought of the perishable nature of all earthly splendour ; and
in the distance were to be seen the tombs that border the
Appian Way, and other Roman ruins against the background
of the Alban Mount.1 When Goethe first speaks of this
design (Die Italianische Reise, December 29, 1786) Tischbein

¦8

had already stretched the canvas, and on the 18th of Febru
ary 1787 Goethe notes how Tischbein has procured a small
bronze model which he covers with the mantle, and how he
is working diligently that the picture may be brought to a
1 See the contemporary description of this design quoted by Duntzer,
from Wieland's Merkur ; Hempel's Goethe, xxiv. 707-8. — Tr.

384 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. cm 1.
certain point before they leave for Naples. On June 27,
1787, Goethe notes that his portrait is going on well; it was
not finished until a later time. Karl von Rothschild bought
it in Italy and brought it to Frankfurt. The relievo represents
Orestes and Pylades before Iphigenia. We give an engraving
of the picture as it finally stands. There are copies of Tisch
bein's first design in existence ; the relievo is different, and on
the obelisk you see hieroglyphic writing. Tischbein had also
begun a picture, Hector and Paris, for the Duke of Gotha,
probably at Goethe's prompting.1
In the meantime the Custode of the ancient, sadly declined
Arcadian Academy of Rome 2 had been setting in motion every
agency which couid help to persuade the great German poet
to join the society. The influence of the Prince von Liechten
stein was brought into service. To escape the Capitoline
laurel, about which they continued to plague him, the poet
yielded himself to be an Arcadian shepherd. On January 4,
1787, he appeared in the Academy's Hall of Session, was sum
moned forth by the name " Megalio,"3 and the fields of Mel
pomene were assigned to him. On the same day he begged
Charlotte to call a council of those who loved him (Herder
and Knebel), to decide whether he should return to Weimar
at once, a course to which he himself inclined. " The strong
est influence to keep me in Italy is Tischbein ; never, even
though it were my fate to visit this beautiful land again, can I
learn so much in so short a time as I can at present in the
society of this man, cultivated, experienced, fine in feeling,
just in judgment, and devoted to me soul and body. I say
not how the scales, as it were, fall from my eyes. He who
dwells in the night takes the dawn for day, and a gloomy
day for brightness ; what is it then when the sun appears !4
1 Goethe to Duke Ernst of Gotha, February 6, 1787. Hempel's
Goethe, xxiv. 730. — Tr.
2 English readers will find a delightful account of this Academy in
Vernon Lee's Italy in the Eighteenth Century. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Fritz Stein, January 4, 1787 : — "And I received the name
Megalio per causa delta grandezza, or grandiositd delle mie opere, as the gentle
men were pleased to express themselves." (Note how in the Zweiter Rb'mis-
cher Aufenthalt Goethe mis-dates by a whole year this reception.) — Tr.
* " Wer in der Nacht steckt halt die Dammerung schon fur Tag und
einen grauen Tag fur helle ; was ist's aber wenn die Sonne aufgeht."
Die Italianische Reise, January 4, 1787. — Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. 385
Then I hitherto have altogether withheld myself from society,
which thus by slow degrees gains a hold upon me, and
which, too, I probably was not unwilling to observe with
hurried glances."
He did not guess that Diplomacy had already been mak
ing itself busy about him. It was supposed that Goethe being
the minister of the Duke of Weimar must know of Prussia's
moves relative to the election of Dalberg as Coadjutor of the
Elector of Mainz. Accordingly, endeavours were made to
steal his letters. The Austrian Cardinal von Herzan had in
structed his German secretary to do this ; and the secretary
pressed himself into Goethe's acquaintance, but did not, how
ever, win very far in his confidence. He actually did steal from
Goethe, we do not know how, one of his mother's letters.1
Another of the numerous acquaintance of Goethe in Rome
was the Prince Christian August von Waldeck ; in Karlsbad
they had known one another already. The Prince was a
general in the Austrian service. Five years older than Goethe,
he was now visiting Rome for the fifth time. He possessed
a great collection of coins, to complete which he was making
large purchases. A beautiful Bohemian lady accompanied
him ; her old husband was one of the party.2 The Prince was
extraordinarily friendly to Goethe, to whom his manifold know
ledge of art and wide acquaintance were of great service. When
visiting the Prince one evening, Goethe was asked what literary
work at present occupied him? He mentioned Iphigenie, and
gave the Prince a detailed account of its contents, but did not
find much interest awakened.8
On January 10, 1787, Goethe writes to the Duke of
Weimar : — " I wait painfully until I hear that you are again at
home and that no bad results are to be feared, and I entreat
you, recall me if you think I am in the least wanted. As
surely as I could remain here with profit for years, so surely
have I already plucked the topmost blossoms of the Great and
Beautiful, and can go in the strength of it all my life. And
the results have, I feel, been blessed to my spirit also, which
1 The innocent letter turned up in 1868 in Sebastian Brunner's Die
theologische Dienerschaft am Hofe Joseph II. Keil has it, p. 254- — Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August, January 10, 1787. (Hempel's Goethe, xxiv.
716-8.) Die Italianische Reise, March I, 1787. — Tr.
3 This Goethe tells only in the entry, March 1, 1787. — Tr.
2 C

386 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. i.
grows gladder, more open, more ready to give and receive
sympathy. . . . The most important subject on which I at
present exercise eye and intellect is the styles of the various
ancient peoples, and the epochs of each style, as to which
Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst is a trustworthy guide.
With the help of friendly artist eyes and my own talent for
combination, I seek as far as possible to discover and supple
ment many a thing which Winckelmann himself would give us
if this year he could prepare a new edition."1 In studying
Winckelmann after this fashion he received especially valu
able aid from Meyer; this man's worth grew constantly
more clear to Goethe. A little farther on the letter which we
have been quoting- refers thus to Meyer: — "I have been
repeatedly thinking about our Drawing Academy, and I
have found a man of the kind we shall need after Kraus's
departure if we are to get to more solid work. As to the
influence which I had on the Academy, I used always to
feel that I did not understand it ; now I know the why and
wherefore." A Swiss had copied out Iphigenie in clean manuscript foi
him. This play Goethe now read aloud to the circle of more
intimate artist friends, but, owing to its repose, it had not the
fine effect on them which he had hoped.2 As he read aloud
he underlined verses which did not yet flow well; some of
these he altered, others he left to receive touches from
Herder's pen. He directed Seidel (January 13) to submit
the manuscript of Iphigenie to Herder before it passed on to
the printer.
About this time it was that Goethe made one of his most
resultful acquaintanceships, that of Angelika Kauffmann.
Born at Bregenz on the 30th of October 1741, she was
already a distinguished painter in Rome in 1763. In 1769
she went to London and stayed there until 1780, when she
returned to Rome. To escape her state of single loneliness
she married the painter Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian advanced
in years. Angelika (thus she was generally spoken of) was
indeed an angelic soul, full of tender womanhood, sympa
thetic, pure, ardent ; and Goethe felt a deep and exquisite
1 Compare Die Italianische Reise, January 13, 1787. — Tr.
8 Die Italianische Reise, January 10, 1787. The young artists had
expected " etwas Berlichingisches," Goethe tells us, — Tr.

1786-1787.] ITALY. .387
attraction in her. She worked in her art rapidly and rest
lessly; her pictures were remarkable for lightness of touch,
grace, brightness. One day when Goethe and Reiffenstein
were at her house, she expressed the wish to hear Iphigenie
read aloud ; on this occasion Goethe was only able to give
an abstract, but the ardour of his manner affected deeply
even Angelika's husband.1
With the thorough earnestness of his nature, which every
where desired to press to the essence of things, he now strove
to appropriate to himself in all its aspects that Rome which
had grown so familiar. He laboured diligently to discover
the rules after which the ancient sculptors have developed
from the human figure the perfectly concluded circle of
divine form, to discover their technique in the treatment of
the body ; he supposed that they had proceeded by the same
laws as did Nature,2 nay, he believed himself to be now on
the track of Nature, only he found something in her which he
could not express. The skeleton was to him no longer a
cluster of bones cunningly grouped together: he contemplated
it together with the clothing of flesh and ligament which gave
it motion and life.3 In the evenings he studied perspective.
And now with the warm spring weather waked anew the
delight in sketching the fair landscape. A fortnight was spent
in going " through the depths and heights of the villas," out
lining on small sheets striking, characteristically Roman,
views ; to the outlines he afterwards strove to give light and
shade. " It is very strange that one may see and know
clearly what is good and what is better; and let him try
to make it his own — it disappears as it were under his
hands, and we seize not that which is right, but that which
we have been used to hold . . . Meanwhile, however, I
feel myself greatly improved by the fortnight of passionate
endeavour."4 The theatres — seven opened with the beginning year —
profited him little ; he visited them hardly at all, only in
1 Die Italianische Reise, January 22, 1787.' — Tr.
2 Compare the letter of September 6, 1787, Zweiter Romischer Auf-
enthalt.—Tw. 3 Die Italianische Reise, January 20, 1787. — Tr.
1 Ibid., February 17, 1787. See also Goethe to Knebel, February
19, 1787.— Tr.

388 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. i.
Aristodemo1 and some comedies did he find any pleasure. The
Grand Opera seemed a " monster without the vigour and sap
of life;" even the opera buff a lacked finish and completeness,
but a new intermezzo by Anfossi was " happily composed,"
and was played with great applause.2 He asks Kayser how
it stands with the composing of Scherz, List, und Rache, and
when the piece can be published, and he mentions that he
thinks of writing a new opera.3
The friendship with Angelika grew closer. When he
read aloud fphigenie she received it with "incredible depth of
feeling," and she promised him a drawing from it4 From her
he parted with regret ; though he longed to leave Rome, the
endeavours of the latter part of his stay to see as much as
possible of the exhaustless scattered fragmentary city having
been very wearying. The mad doings of the Carnival, espe
cially noisy in the streets about his lodging, had only a
historical interest for him ; he could not find anything in them
to sympathise with ; his approaching departure weighed upon
him ; and amid all the tumult of the festival it was evident
that real light-heartedness was absent, and under that bad
government the Romans had not money enough to give vent
to the little bit of pleasure they might feel.5
He hoped that when next he saw Rome he should have
new strength and hope, and thus should gain a deeper and
clearer impression of the Eternal City, and take away with
him to his home the perfect idea of antique art, to serve for
the joy and profit of himself and his friends in future years.
1 Aristodemo was after all acted amid great applause. Die Italian
ische Reise, January 15, 1787. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kayser, February 6, 1787 ; Goethe to Karl August,
February 10, 1787.— Tr.
3 See the letter which Burkhardt (p. 37) dates November 25, 1786,
Goethe und Kayser, 64-65. — Tr.
* Die Italianische Reise, February .15, 1787. — Tr,
6 Ibid., February 21, 1787.— Tr.

CHAPTER II.
naples and sicily.
February-June 1787.
On the morning of February 22, 1787, a carriage drove out
of Rome, bearing Goethe southwards. Tischbein, who had
been a few times to Naples already, was his companion. The
four days spent on the road were, notwithstanding the bad
inns, rich in manifold enjoyment They reached Naples on
February 25. At sight of the wonderful scenery Goethe was,
" after his fashion, perfectly quiet, only making, when it
became too mad, great, great eyes." " I pardoned all who
lose their senses in Naples, and thought with emotion of my
father, who had retained an indelible impression especially of
the objects which I to-day saw for the first time. And as it
said that one to whom a phantom has appeared never again is
glad, so might it be said of my father that he could never be
altogether unhappy, because he was constantly thinking him
self back to Naples."1
The easy, joyous life of Naples was very welcome to one
so exhausted as Goethe had been by his toils in Rome, but his
" German turn of mind, and desire rather to learn and to act
than to enjoy,"2 did not permit him to lapse into the divine
indolence of the place. Through Tischbein he learned
to know the painter Lodovico Venuti, a great favourite with
the King. Tischbein, too, it was who conducted Goethe to
Philipp Hackert, a celebrated landscape painter. Hackert,
a native, of Prenzlau, was now in his fiftieth year. He
had come to Rome in 1768, and in 1785 left Rome for
1 Die Italianische Reise, February 27, 1787. Compare September
28, 29, November 1, 1786, for mention of Goethe's father. — Tr.
2 Ibid., March 22, i787.^Tr.

390 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. h.
Naples, at the invitation of the King, into whose service he
was taken. Another with whom Goethe became acquainted
was Gaetano Filangieri, the author of La scienza delta legisla-
zione, a work long known and valued by Goethe. Filangieri
was now two and fifty ; he had been appointed First Coun
cillor of Finance by the King. At Filangieri's house Goethe
met Filangieri's sister, the Princess Belmonte, a type of charm
ing Neapolitan frivolity united with unaffected goodness of
heart. He visited Pozzuoli on the ist of March 1787, in the
company of the Prince of Waldeck. Vesuvius was three
times ascended (March 2, March 6, and March 20). The
churches and most of the art treasures of Naples were seen,
and Pompeii, and the island of Ischia, so full of interest to
the mineralogist1The Prince of Waldeck pressed Goethe in vain to go with
him to Albania and Dalmatia. The poet could not withstand
the longing for Sicily, where the ruins of Greek temples testi
fied to the beauty and greatness of ancient Greek architecture.
The doubt whether he ought to go or stay troubled with dis
quiet a good deal of his stay in Naples. It was also a grief
to him that in his journey to Sicily he could not have the
companionship of Tischbein, who was forming the friendships
and connections which should at a future time procure him
an appointment in Naples, which had grown very dear to
him. Tischbein recommended to Goethe as a companion the land
scape painter, Christof Heinrich Kniep, a native of Hildesheim,
half a year older than the poet, of whom he was an enthusiastic
admirer. The gifted and industrious artist, working for insuffi
cient prices, was in needy circumstances. On an excursion by
Salerno to Paestum, the ancient Posidonia, Goethe was struck
by Kniep's great talent for correctly and rapidly sketching
buildings and landscapes, and learned to value his kindly,
sociable nature. The severe style of the Doric ruins, the
" blunt, coniform, closely congregated masses of the pillars,"
at first shocked the artistic sense of the poet, habituated to a
more ornate architecture. Yet he soon reflected, called to
mind the history of art, thought- of the time whose spirit was
1 On the visit to Ischia see Duntzer's edition ai Die Italianische Reise.
Hempel's Goethe, xxiv. pp. 571, 813. — Tr.

1787.] ITALY. 391
consonant with this art, and in " less than an hour " felt
reconciled with it ; nay, he blessed his Genius for having
brought before his eyes the very ruins themselves, as no picture
can give a notion of them.1 The glimpse of Pompeii enjoyed
in Tischbein's society, and the museum at Portici,2 helped to
complete the picture of the antique, perished world. Full of
brightness and of solid gain were three days (March 14-16)
spent with Hackert in his pleasant rooms in the old castle
at Caserta. There Goethe drew, under the supervision of
Hackert. This painter was remarkable for his correct eye,
delicate treatment, for naturalness and a vivid sense for the
line of landscape. He granted that Goethe had talent, but
that he could produce nothing because he lacked definiteness
in touch, clearness, certainty in treatment. " Stay with me
eighteen months," said the painter, " and you shall pro
duce something that will give pleasure to yourself and to
others." The old English ambassador, Sir William Hamilton, was
the possessor of a splendid art-collection. Goethe visited him
and saw his beautiful mistress, Emma Harte, who, then but
twenty-five, had already known strange fortunes. The ease
with which this lady assumed all the positions and gestures
that many artists toil after in vain, astonished Goethe,
though he felt that the " beautiful entertainer " was without
soul.3 What he had long ventured to hope — that in this beauti
ful Italy his observations on plant life would receive confirma
tion — did really happen. On March 25, 1787, as he walked
by the sea in a calm and pleasurable frame, " a good illumina
tion " came to him. " I beg you to tell Herder that I shall
soon have the type-plant, only I fear that no one will recognise
the rest of the vegetable kingdom in it. My famous doctrine
of the cotyledons is so sublimed that it will be almost impos
sible to go farther." * And he gained clear elucidation of the
rock and lava formations of Vesuvius. All disposition to
creative, poetic activity was absent during his stay in Naples.
When, at noon on the 29th of March 1787, he went with
1 Die Italianische Reise, March 23, 1787. — Tr.
2 Ibid., March 11 and March 18, 1787.— Tr.
3 So he notes Ibid., May 27, 1787. — Tr.
* Ibid., March 25. Part ofa letter to Charlotte von Stein, — Tr.

392 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. ii.
Kniep on board the corvette that was to convey them to
Palermo, he took with him the two acts of Tasso1 written in
Weimar. The Diary which Goethe kept for Charlotte von Stein
gives the most vivid picture of this journey to Sicily. As a
landscape-painter he gained altogether new thoughts from the
" great simple line " of the sea-boundary. When he felt sea
sickness approaching, he went to his cabin, and lying there,
shut off from the external world, let the mind have full sway,
thinking the new plan of Tasso " over and over, through and
through, in sleep and in half waking." The sight of Palermo,
with " the most beautiful of all the promontories in the world,''2
overpowered him. He felt constrained to read the Odyssey,3
which in Sicily for the first time became to him "a living
word."4 In the Public Gardens of Palermo he brooded over
the conception of a drama, Nausikaa ; he wrote down the
plan, and even began its execution, but in the presence ot"
the rare southern plant life " the old whim " came upon him,
might not he discover the type-plant amid the throng? And
as the garden of this world revealed itself, the garden of
Alcinous vanished.5 On April 12, Goethe derived much plea
sure and profit from a visit to the collection of medals of
Prince Torremuzza,
Never in his life, he writes to Fritz Stein on April 17, had
he spent so many consecutive days so bright and happy as
the sixteen spent in Palermo. On the same day he wrote to
Charlotte : — "What joy does my little bit of knowledge ofthe
things of nature bring me every day, and how much more
ought I to know that my joy .might be full. That which I
prepare for you prospers in my hands. Already have I shed
tears of joy to think that I shall give you joy. ... My heart
is with you."
1 See pp. 309, 316, 319, 346.— Tr.
2 So Goethe calls Monte Pellegrino ; Die Italianische Reise, April 3,
1787.— Tr.
3 Die Italianische Reise, April 7, 1787 : — " Die schwarzlichen Wellen
am nbrdlichen Horizonte, ihr Anstreben an die Buchtkriimmungen, selbst
der eigene Geruch des diinstenden Meeres, das Alles rief mir die Insel der
seligen Phaaken in die Sinne so wie ins Gedachtniss. Ich eilte sogleich
einen Homer zu kaufen . . ." — Tr.
4 Goethe to Herder, Die Italianische Reise, May 17, 1787. — Tr.
6 Die Italianische Reise, April 16 and 17, 1787. — Tr.

I787-] ITALY. 393
On the 1 8th of April 1787 our travellers left Palermo,1
to traverse by no very direct route the fruitful land, and take
ship finally from Messina. On the way Goethe observed the
Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, and was pleased with the
excellent cattle. But the chief interest of the journey was, of
course, the architecture of the ruined Greek temples at Segeste
and Girgenti (Selinus they did not visit), the antiquities,
statues, and coins in Catania, and the Greek theatre at Taor-
mina. By the advice of the celebrated naturalist, Gioeni,
they only ascended Mount ^Etna as far as the Monti Grossi.
Messina, which not long before (February 1783) had suffered
by an earthquake, was reached by our travellers on May 8,
1787. On May 14, after a tedious and dangerous voyage,2
Goethe arrived in Naples again, "right happy to have the
great, beautiful, incomparable idea of Sicily, so clear, so per
fect, so unmixed with baser matter."3 The numerous sketches
which Kniep had made during the journey were divided ;
some of them the painter was to finish at a fixed price for
Goethe. In Naples he heard, through a letter from Seidel, that in
Weimar many people thought that Goethe would not return,
and accordingly uttered their minds upon him freely. He is,
they said, wasting the good salary on this journey while others
are sweating under his work. Tischbein and Hackert were
not in' Naples at the time of Goethe's return ; they had gone
to Rome for a short stay.
On May 15 Goethe and Kniep visited Paestum a second
time. Of the temple ruins there he writes (May 17) : — " It is
the last, and I might almost say noblest, Idea which I now
can bear northwards in its perfectness. And, in my opinion,
. the central temple is superior to anything at present to be
seen in Sicily." In Kniep's company he revisited Pozzuoli
(May 19), in order to discover, if possible, an explanation of
the present condition of the ruins of the temple of Jupiter
1 A memorandum of the chief places touched on is not amiss here.
They are — Alcamo, Segesta, Castel Vetrano, Sciacca, Girgenti, Caltani-
setta, Castro Giovanni, Catania, Taormina, Messina. — Tr.
2 In Mr. Hutton's Essay on Goethe there is admirable comment on
Goethe's behaviour in the danger. It is perhaps a pity that Prof. Duntzer
passes over the incident, and over another almost as interesting — the ad
venture at Malsesina on September 13, 1786. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Herder, Die Italianische Reise, May 17, 1787.— Tr.

394 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. ii.
Serapis : he formed a remarkable theory.1 Portici also was
visited a second time. The theatre, which hitherto during
his Italian journey had given him so little pleasure, now
did amuse him, yet he sees that he is too old for these
jests.2 He derived great pleasure from a letter of the Duke's which
now came, announcing the election of Dalberg as Coadjutor
of the Elector of Mainz, and acknowledging in the most
flattering way Goethe's diligence in office during the past ten
years. The Duke announced his intention of appointing
Schmidt3 Vice-President of the Board of Finance, leaving
Goethe the direction still. Goethe thought Schmidt very fit
for the post, but thought it not well that one member of the
Privy Council should be subordinate to another in his capacity
as member of the Board of Finance. Would the Duke relieve.
Goethe of his burden of financial cares, and appoint Schmidt
President of the Board formally or informally. " My single
desire was, to know you master of your own. All that you
do towards ordering things after your own pleasure cannot be
other than pleasurable to me. Make this change when you
think fit, and as you think fit ! By the beginning of Septem
ber I shall, I hope, be in Frankfurt. If I can then remain
awhile with my mother, bringing the last four volumes of my
Works into order, perfecting the observations made on my
journey, perhaps labouring on Wilhelm and some other ideas,
I shall find myself lightened of a great burden ; for these tasks
must, after all, be left behind me some time. . . . My rela
tions with business have their origin in my personal relations
with you ; and now, after so many years, let a new relation
with you proceed from these relations of business which have
subsisted hitherto. I am ready for each and every use that
you wish to make of me. Question me concerning the sym
phony that you have a mind to play ; I will gladly at any
time speak my opinion. . . . Already I see what service the
journey has done me, how it has enlightened me and glad-
1 Of this visit Goethe makes no mention in Die Italianische Reise.
He tells of it in the essay, Architeklonisch-naturhistorisches Problem, in
the portion of his writings called Naturwissenschaftliche Einzelnheiten
(Hempel's Goethe, xxxiv. 223). His theory is not the true one. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August, May 27, 1787 ; from this letter is also
derived the main substance and the quotation of the next paragraph. —
Tr. 3 See p. 334.— Tr.

I787-] ITALY.

395

dened my existence. As you have borne with me to the
present, care for me further and benefit me more than I can
myself, than I dare to wish and desire. Give me back to
myself, to my country — give me back to yourself, that I may
begin a new life, and with you ! I have seen a great and
beautiful portion of the earth, and the result is, that I can
only bear life with you and in your land (in dem Ihrigen). If
I can live there less overwhelmed with details — for which I
am not born — I can live to your joy and the joy of many
men!" Goethe's departure from Naples was delayed by the arrival
of the Prussian ambassador, the Marchese Lucchesini. There
was a great deal of pleasure in acquaintance with this accom
plished man of the world,1 who told the poet the last political
news, and enlightened him as to the world's affairs. Many
other interesting persons were met by Goethe at this time
but, attractive as they were, he felt that in Naples he was
growing continually more inactive, and was swerving from the
path that led to his real goal.2 At length he tore himself with
an effort from the bewitching city, though he would have been
only too glad to remain and observe close at hand the lava
stream that at length began to pour down towards the sea
from the summit of Vesuvius. He overcame, also, the endea
vour of Venuti to delay him, who had indeed a special reason in
so doing, as he at length explained. Shortly before Goethe's
departure he had another friendly letter from the Duke, urging
him not to over-hasten in his return. And from that time
forward he had made up his mind to remain in Rome until
his birthday. He parted with much sadness from the worthy
Kniep. At the custom-house of the Chiaja, on June 3, 1787,
as Goethe waited for the vetturino, he with surprise saw Kniep
emerge from the coffee-stall bearing a cup of coffee, which he
offered to Goethe, meaning by the act a symbol of what was
due from him to Goethe for all his " love and goodness, and
beneficial influence on my whole life."
1 Goethe says of Lucchesini, Die Italianische Reise, June I : — " He
appears to me one of those men who have a good moral stomach, thus
retaining always a power of sympathetic enjoyment at the table of the
world ; a contrast to one of our sort, who at times, like ruminant animals,
fills himself to excess, and then can take in nothing more until he has
finished a process of repeated chewing and digesting. — Tr."
2 Die Italianische Reise, June 1, 1787.— Tr.

396 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. ii.
They were never to see each other again, but Kniep,
until the end, thought with love and reverence of the poet
who had lifted up his life so. He never left Naples, became
a Professor of the Academy there, and there died seven years
before Goethe.

CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND RESIDENCE IN ROME.
June 1787-JUNE 1788.
Goethe tells us that what had above all rendered him
obstinate in resisting the allurement of Naples was the cele
bration of the feast of Corpus Christi in Rome, and in that
the splendid tapestries after Raphael's cartoons, which it was
customary to hang in the Vatican. On Wednesday, the 6th
of June 1787, the day preceding that on which the feast
was celebrated, he reached Rome, having spent four days
on the way. Now having purified and strengthened his
spirit in the radiance of Naples and Sicily, he could command a
greater calm to develop his knowledge of art and his " small
talents " for plastic art. Hackert and Tischbein were still
in Rome. Tischbein's picture of Goethe was progressing
well. Goethe spent a few days of the earlier half of June
in Tivoli with Hackert, who gave him lessons in landscape-
painting. On June 20, 1787, Goethe writes : — "Now I have been
again looking at excellent works of art here, and my spirit
clarifies and settles. Yet I should need at least a year more
alone in Rome in order to profit by the stay after my own
fashion." After this he spent three glorious days at Albano,
Castel-Gandolfo, and Frascati, where there is an ever-joyous,
pure atmosphere. " There is a Nature to study ! " On June
27 he tells how he has been with Hackert in the Colonna
Gallery, where hang works of Poussin, Claude, and Salvator
..Rosa. Hackert was copying some of these, and studying
others very thoroughly ; his remarks did not change Goethe's
conceptions, only widened and determined them. " If one
now could look on Nature, and again find and read what they

398 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. hi.
[the great painters] have found, and more or less imitated, it
could not but enlarge and purify the spirit, and give the
highest perceptive notion of Nature and Art. And I will not
rest until nothing is any longer Word and Tradition but living
Notion."1 The Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul fell on the last days
of June 1787 ; Goethe was filled with admiration by the
vast illumination of the Dome of St. Peter's, together with the
fireworks from the Castle of St Angelo. Immediately after
the Feast Hackert went to Albano. With Hackert Tischbein
meant to go to Naples, to remain some time there. Goethe
therefore rented for the summer Tischbein's great room, in
which was the almost finished portrait Henceforward those
who exercised the most powerful influence over him were
Heinrich Meyer and Angelika Kauffmann. Every Sunday
Goethe visited a picture-gallery with Angelika, and dined at
her house. Each confided to the other his and her whole
position and mood. Angelika was not happy, as her husband,
notwithstand ng their good means, wished her to go on
painting for sale, while she desired purely to follow her artist
bent. She was mild towards Goethe's breaches of etiquette,
he had a " General Pardon." 2
Moritz, Bury, and Schiitz remained close companions.
Moritz's knowledge of history and antiquities was very useful
to Goethe. Since "all artists old" and young helped him to
polish up and to enlarge his little talent," s he made rapid
progress in drawing. And in spite of the heat the comic
opera was visited with eager interest. Cimarosa's new inter
mezzo L 'impresario in angustie is noted under the 31st July
as " thoroughly excellent and likely to give us pleasure many
nights." One evening, in order to give pleasure to Angelika,
who had an unconquerable dislike to visiting the theatre,
Goethe improvised in his large chamber a grand concert by
the members of the comic opera. This concert drew general
attention on "the quiet lodgings opposite the Rondanini
Palace."4 At the house of the lover of art, Count John von
1 Die Italianische Reise, June 27, 1787. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Angelika, February 1788. Duntzer's edition of Die
Italianische Reise ; Hempel's Goethe, xxiv. S. 934-5. — Tr.
3 Zweiter Rbmischer Aufenthalt, July 27, 1787. — Tr.
4 Ibid., the Bericht for July 1787. — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY. , 3gg
Friess, a Viennese advanced in years, who had shown himself
extremely friendly to Goethe, our poet met in July the
Austrian Court poet, Abate Giambattista Casti. Casti, born
at Prato in 17 21, was the author of // Re Teodoro in Venezia,
a favourite opera with Goethe. Casti recited a tale, Der
Erzbischof von Frag, as yet unprinted, not very respectable,
but composed in beautiful ottave rime. The recitation was
excellent, light and charming and intellectual.1 In the
evening, Goethe attended the course of lessons in perspective,
which young Verschaffelt from Mannheim gave to a numerous
assembly.2 Notwithstanding the great heat which made it
necessary to stay within doors during the greater part of every
day, Goethe worked hard during July and August at Egmont,
not a little stimulated to think that just then in Brussels
were being enacted scenes the counterpart of those of
Egmont's time.3 He wrote the play, as he says himself, with
great freedom of spirit and conscientiousness,4 in the certain
prospect that the stage would immediately adopt it.
Meanwhile Goethe had become convinced that in the short
allotted time he could not perfect the artistic training which
he had hoped from Rome. Accordingly, on the nth of
August, having shortly before received a friendly letter from
the Duke which put him at ease as to his future position,
Goethe wrote begging permission to stay in Italy until the
Easter of 1788. "My spirit is capable of advancing fo.r in
the knowledge of art, and on all sides I am exhorted to culti
vate my small talent for drawing, and thus these months would
suffice to make my insight and my dexterity (Fertigkeit) perfect.
Now I am studying architecture and perspective, the composi
tion and colouring of landscape. I should like to devote
September and October to drawing in the open air; November
and December to perfecting this at home, making it ready and
finishing it; the early months of the coming year to the human
figure, face, etc. ... By Easter I shall have brought it so far
as to* be able thenceforward to go on by myself — for there are
certain things which must be learned and adopted from others.
. . . Yet another epoch I have in mind to close at Easter;
my first, or rather my second, literary epoch. Egmont is done,
1 Zweiter Rbmischer Aufenthalt, July 17, 1 7^7-
2 Ibid., Bericht for August 1787. 3 Ibid., July 9, 1787. — Tr.
i Ibid., the entry immediately above the date Nov. 24, 1787. — Tr.

400 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
and I hope with the New Year to have completed Tasso, with
Easter Faust, an achievement only possible in this seclusion.
. . . This working up of my older pieces is a wonderful
benefit to me. It is a recapitulation of my life and of my art,
and while I am compelled to go back and mould myself and
my present mode of thinking, my modern manner after my
former one, to develop anew what I had only sketched, I
learn to know myself aright and my limitations and amplitudes.
... If it is permitted here to add as a conclusion a wish which
I have for that time [after his return to Weimar], it would be
this : — To traverse your collective dominions immediately after
my return, as a stranger, that I may criticise your provinces
with altogether fresh eyes and as one habituated to gazing on
land and the world. I should, as is my fashion, make a new
image and gain a complete notion, and qualify myself anew,
as it were, for every kind of service to which your goodness
and confidence destine me. If Heaven second my wishes,
I will thenceforth for some time devote myself exclusively to
administration as now to the arts. I have been long groping
and experimenting, it is time to lay hold and to act efficiently."
The Duke was forced to smile when, in reading this letter, he
came on the sudden flash of longing to re-enter the Govern
ment again. Goethe might without further ceremony take
permission as accorded
The interest above mentioned in the comic opera had not
remained without result On August 14, 1787, Goethe com
municates to Kayser the plan of a new comic opera; the
material he found in the famous incident of the Diam'ond Neck
lace, which, says Goethe, seems to have actually occurred for
the purpose of being made into an opera buffa. Kayser shall
see by the mechanism of this opera that Goethe has learned
something in Italy, and that he now understands better how to
subordinate the poetry to the music. In an earlier part of the
letter Goethe speaks of sending Egmont in manuscript to
Kayser. " Would you then compose, say, the symphony, the
entr'actes, the songs, and some passages of the fifth act which
require music ; thus your setting could appear with this addi
tion, the public would grow used to seeing your name side by
side with mine, and it would perhaps pave the way for our
opera." One may note how intent Goethe was on helping his
friend.

1787-1788.] ITALY. 401
Nor were his botanical theories forgotten at this period.
He was deeply interested by a gilliflower, out of the primary
blossom of which four other blossoms had grown. He made
an exact sketch of the flower, seeing in it a triumph for his
theory, and in doing this he gained more and more insight into
the fundamental idea of metamorphosis.1 On the 17th of
May 1787 Goethe had written from Naples to Herder: —
"Further, I must confide to you that I am very near the
mystery of plant generation and organisation, and that it is the
simplest thing imaginable."
On the 23d of August 1787 Goethe writes: — " Now at
last the Alpha and Omega of all that we know, the human
form,2 has seized me and I have seized it and I say, ' I will
not let thee go except thou bless me, even though I become
lame in the strife.' The sketching will not suffice here, and
accordingly I have made up my mind to modelling, and that
seems to get on." Goethe's intimacy with the sculptor Trippel
was now of importance in this connection. Trippel was com
missioned by the Prince of Waldeck to produce a marble bust
of Goethe (a picture of which we give as frontispiece), and
during the preliminary modelling Goethe enjoyed the most
instructive intercourse. Goethe believed now that he had dis
covered the principle of the ancient sculptors ;3 he sketched
a little alabaster head in order to test this, and people could
not believe that the sketch was his.4 The perfect works of art,
of which there are too few, now began to seem to him
" the highest of Nature's works, produced by human beings
according to true and natural laws ; all that is arbitrary, all
that is the creation of fancy, perishes ; here is Necessity, here
is God."5 On September 5, 1787, Egmont was at length perfected.
On the 1 4th of September Goethe writes : — " Erwin und
Elmire is already half rewritten, I have tried to give the piece
more interest and life, and have thrown out altogether the very
1 Zweiter Romischer Auf ent halt, July 1787, " St'drende Naturbctrachl-
ungen ;" also Goethe to Knebel, August 18, 1787, October 3, 1787. — Tr.
2 Compare " I am now thoroughly engaged in the study of the human
form, which is the non plus ultra of all human knowing and doing."
Zweiter Romischer Aufenihalt, January 10, 1788. — Tr.
3 Zweiter Romischer Auf enthalt, September 6, 1787. — Tr,
4 Ibid., September 15, 1787. — Tr.
* Ibid., September 6. — Tr. 2 D

402 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
flat dialogue." On October 4 Goethe received — beside the
continuation of that " most precious Evangel,"1 Herder's Idem
— the first four volumes of his own Works. Neither the paper
nor the type pleased him, and there were many printer's errors
and omissions.2
A very joyous letter is that which Goethe wrote to Kayser
(September n, 1787) on receiving word that the composer
meant to come to Rome soon in order to bring out his opera
in person. " Drive straight to my quarters when you arrive, I
will put you up for a while. . . . You are giving me a great
pleasure, and you shall grow healthy and merry in this country,
as I have grown. You shall in no foreign land find yourself
so at home as here in Rome living with me." A few months
later Goethe gives a right cheery account of the domestic
establishment of which we have heard him thus invite Kayser
to become one: "Our old woman cooks, our old man crawls
about, the hindering maid-servant does far more gabbling than
work, a man-servant, who is an ex-Jesuit, mends our clothes and
waits table, and the kitten brings in many larks' heads which
are often eaten."3 At this time, too, the son of the landlord
lived in the house. Bury and Schiitz remained good com
rades, for whom Goethe faithfully cared ; indeed, he writes to
the Duke, January 25, 1788 — "My existence has again run
into a regular Wilhelmiade ; " he was like Wilhelm Meister,
burthened with the fortunes of strangers.
On September 25, 1787, Goethe and a few artists went to
Reiffenstein's villa at Frascati, where " all day and on into the
night went on painting, drawing in Indian ink, glueing, trade
and art in fact ex professo."^ In the evenings they would go
to see the villas in the moonlight, and note the most striking
motives. As the Duchess Amalia meant to come to Italy
next year, Goethe talked with Reiffenstein of the arrange
ments necessary. The Duchess had proposed at first to come
in the present year ; from this Goethe had dissuaded her.
He alleged valid reasons for delay, but he had, besides,
1 Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, Goethe to Herder, Castel Gandolfo,
October 12, 1787. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Goschen enclosed in a letter to Seidel of date October 28,
1787, then forwarded by Seidel. See on this matter letters of Goschen
and Bertuch lately published in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, Band ii. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Fritz Stein, February 16, 1788.— Tr.
4 Zwdter Romischer Attfenthalt, Frascati, September 28, 1787. — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY. 403
a personal motive. The presence of a circle of friends
would have narrowed Rome to him, and done away with the
peculiar benefit of a life among strangers and strange sur
roundings.1 On October 7, 1787, Goethe betook himself to the Ville-
giatura at Castel Gandolfo, where he stayed at the hospitable,
thronged house of the Englishman Jenkins, a dealer in art
objects. Goethe found that Angelika also was at Castel
Gandolfo. Her beneficial influence remained ever the same.
As to his landscape-painting, what Angelika said was so flatter
ing that he might not repeat it. He had given up his thought
of going to Naples to study under Hackert, especially as
Angelika did him so much good in every way.2 A Milan
maiden came with two Roman ladies— a mother and daughter
well known to Goethe — to spend a week at the gay and
bustling spot. Goethe was attracted by the naturalness, the
simple and unpretending ways, of the Milan girl, as opposed
to the dignified bearing of the Roman ladies, demanding
homage. So he drew very near her, gave her lessons in
English ; but the love thus budding was suddenly checked by
the intelligence that she was already betrothed. He felt a
good deal of pain, yet soon mastered it. Though he liked
making the acquaintance of so many people in such an easy
way at Castel Gandolfo, the life of disquiet there soon palled.
On October 21, 1787, he came back to Rome. Here he
reviewed the sketches he had been making in the country,
and began a completely new development of Claudine. He
writes on October 27 : — " I have again entered this magic
circle [Rome], and immediately I feel as though again be
witched — content, silently working away, forgetting all that is
external to me; and the forms of friends come in peaceful
and friendly visitings."
An altogether new life begins with Kayser's arrival in
Rome, at the close of October 1787. A piano was procured
immediately ; trying and tuning, and placing this piano, and
arranging about Kayser's lodging, took some time, and Goethe
had himself to prepare for change. Tischbein having an-
1 Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, October 5, 1787 ; also the Bericht for
October 1787, final page or two ; and Goethe to Karl August, November
17. I787--TR.
2 See Duntzer's edition oi Die Italianische Reise, pp. 864-5.

404 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. hi.
nounced his return to be close at hand, either at the time
of Kayser's settlement or soon after it, Goethe engaged
the second storv again. Kayser's interpretation of his own
opera delighted Goethe ; moreover, he was glad to observe
the thoroughness and earnestness of the young composer,
his kindly and natural ways in intercourse. Writing on
November 17, 1787, Goethe tells the Duke: — "Through
him [Kayser] I for the first time enjoy the Italian music,
because of course nothing in the world is enjoyed aright
without genuine inward knowledge."
In the same letter Goethe mentions how, a few days before,
he has sent to Weimar, to the Duchess Amalia, an Italian,
who would be a kind of Maitre Jacques to the Duchess,
would look after the mechanism of her journey to Italy, and
would be a source of information always at hand. This Italian
was the son of Goethe's landlord. Further on in the same
letter, Goethe speaks of politics, in which he feels lively
interest. " To me it seems a grave matter for friend and foe
that France is so far from her old power. If, on the one
hand, the plans of the Prussian-English-Orange Alliance are
more easily carried out ; on the other, Catherine and Joseph
have an unfettered game, and can, mayhap in a moment,
establish an enormous preponderance southwards and east
wards, while the States of the north and west, and here I
include France, are at variance with each other. Writing
from these regions, I can say that in silence and among indi
viduals Russia and the Kaiser are feared, and it is believed
that the Kaiser can, under no conditions, favour those vast
expectations and designs of Catherine on Constantinople,
unless the possession of Italy be guaranteed to some descend
ant of his house. This is certain, that the States .of the
Church and the two Sicilies could, like Holland, be seized
without drawing a sword. Let a couple of ships of the line
be stationed in the Gulf of Naples, and two of the gates of
Rome be beaten in, and the thing is done. From various
symptoms, I believe that the Papal and Neapolitan Courts
are on the scent of some such design, though the general
public dreams nothing of it. The people are discontented,
especially the ecclesiastics ; the monks are inclined to the
Kaiser. Only yesterday said an old monk of seventy, ' If I
could but see it in my old days, the Kaiser coming and

1787-1788.] ITALY. 405
hunting us all , from our convents ; even religion would be a
gainer.' "
Yet what at this time is most noteworthy is the extra
ordinary fascination which the human form exercised over
Goethe. Writing a little later (January 25, 1788) to the
Duke, he describes how first he drew the head and its parts,
and thus began for the first time to understand the antiques.
So passed November and December 1787, and in January
1788 he passed to the human body. His old studies of
osteology and anatomy were very useful, and in the third week
of January he finished with the human hand.
To the Sunday regularly spent with Angelika was now
added one evening every week, on which he saw her. She
remained always the same true friend to whom he could com
pletely unbosom himself; she almost filled the place of
Charlotte. In the beginning of December 1787 Herder's
translation of the Skaldic Zaubergesprdch Angantyrs und Her-
vors was prepared for representation by Kayser. Drawing
continued to be diligently practised. In the evenings he
studied perspective. In the second week of December, feel
ing rather wearied and unable to do any work, Goethe went
on a short walking tour in the loveliest weather, through the
volcanic range that extends from Frascati to Nemi. At this
time the younger Camper1 was in Rome ; he promulgated his
father's views on the culture of man and the Greek ideal in
art. Goethe writes on January 10, 1788: — "The younger
Camper is a Strudelkopf, who knows much, apprehends easily,
and skims over things."
On December 21, 1787, Goethe replies to Herder: —
" My drawing, and art study is an aid to the poetic faculty,
not a hindrance ; for one should and must write only a little,
draw a great deal. I would that I could only communicate
to' you the notion of plastic art which I have now; subor
dinated as it is, it is delightful, because it is true and ever
points onwards." On December 25, 1787, he writes : — "The
splendour of the great works of art dazes me no more;2
I walk now in light (Anschauen), in genuine discriminating
1 Gilles Adrian Camper, son of Peter Camper, the great Dutch
anatomist. See Duntzer's edition of Die Italianische Reise, p. 900,
footnote. (Strudelkopf '= a hot-headed, hasty fellow.) — Tr.
2 See p. 379.— Tr.

406 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
knowledge. How much in this matter I owe to a silent,
solitary, diligent Swiss named Meyer, I cannot say. He first
it was who opened my eyes as to detail as to the properties
of individual forms, who initiated me into the actual Making."
(Meyer had been one of the party in which Goethe went to
see the statues of the Capitol and the Vatican by torchlight
Goethe has inserted in the Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt a
paper of Meyer's in which it is pointed out how many statues
are only by this means to be seen in the proper illumination.1)
Farther on in the letter of December 25, Goethe says : —
" Meyer has a heavenly clearness of conception, and an angelic
goodness of heart. ... In his companionship, in the course
of time, I hope to come to a degree of excellence in drawing
which I myself dare hardly think of." But Bury too had
helped him not a little. The letter which we have been
quoting says farther on : — " Yes, I must say, I have had a
great deal of spoiling in matters of morality this year. Alto
gether cut off from society, I have for a time stood alone.
Now a narrow circle of friends has again formed around me,
all of them good, all on the right path ; and this is now the
token, that they can endure to be with me, they like me, find
happiness in my presence the more they, both in thought and
action, are on the right path. For I have no mercy for, no
patience with, any who dawdle or stray on their path, and yet
desire to pass for messengers or travellers. . . . Two men
there are who thank me for the change wrought in mind and
life — ay, three [Moritz, Bury, and Kniep] 2 — and will continue
to thank me until they die."
Goethe's only source of disquiet at this time (the close of
December 1787) was in the objections raised by his Weimar
friends to many things in Egmont. He was consoled to find
that Angelika had a much tenderer and finer feeling than
Charlotte and Herder for that which he had desired to bring
out in his portrayal of the hero. About the 8th of December
1787, Goethe had written to Seidel : — "The high opinion of
my brain, which they profess in Weimar, I hope to combat as
Sophocles refuted a like complaint : he wrote his Osdipus at
1 See on this party Duntzer in his edition of Die Italianische Reise,
pp. 889-890.— Tr.
2 Compare Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, March 15, 1788 (the close),
and Duntzer's note. — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY.

407

Colonos, and — though I will not exactly compare my Egmont
with that masterpiece— the play will be enough to convince
the public that I am still in my senses."
Having finished his study of the human head, he began
in January 1788, as before mentioned, to draw the other parts
of the human form; on January 24 he finished by drawing
the hand. Probably to this month falls the beginning of a
connection which he formed with a beauty who was perhaps
in the first instance his model. In this he but conformed to
the pretty general custom of artists living in Rome. When
Herder was in Rome, Goethe said playfully to Herder's wife
that her husband would not be happy there until he fell in
love.1 Had not Goethe himself enjoyed there the most
splendid life, while this happiness in love lasted.2 The
poetry ofthe Roman "triumvirs of love,"3 Catullus, Tibullus,
and Propertius, and of Horace and Ovid, had probably long
ere this been read by Goethe, who would seek by them to
make old Rome live to him again. In the Romische Elegien
this Roman love of Goethe's is a sort of glorified background.
We know nothing of the personality of his mistress ; she is
said to have been of no exceptional beauty,4 she must how
ever have had no small power of captivating, as she afterwards
became the wife of a wealthy English settler in Rome, and
ruled him skilfully.
In the very beginning of this blossoming of sensual love
came a letter from the Duke (by courier on January 24)
which expressed the desire that Goethe would await the
arrival of the Duchess Amalia, and be her guide in the land
now so familiar to him. The Duchess's visit to Italy had
1 Compare—
' ' Eine Welt zwar bist Du, o Rom ! doch ohne die Liebe
Ware die Welt nicht die Welt, ware denn Rom auch nicht Rom.'-
Romische Elegien, I. — Tr.
2 Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, March 15, 1788. — Tr.
3 The last lines of No. V. of the Romische Elegien are : —
" Amor schilret die Lamp' indess und denket der Zeiten
Da er den namlichen Dienst seinen Triumvirn gethan."
Joseph Scaliger called Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius triumviri
amoris. See also Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, the account of the
Arcadian Academy. — Tr.
4 By Wilhelm von Humboldt. For a brief abstract of what is known
of this matter, see Goethe's lyrische Gedichte Erldutert von Heinrich
Duntzer, iii. 46. — Tr.

4°8 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
ere this been fixed to take place in the summer of 1788.
Goethe was much disquieted by this proposal, and the more
because he could not openly object to it. He replied at
length the next day, January 25, 1788. If he is to stay later
than Easter, when he will have attained all that is at present
his object in Rome, he will subordinate the rest of his
existence to the duty of serving the Duchess. " It will at
first seem strange, and yet as concerns the future will be
salutary to be compelled again to live among all kinds of.
men." Earlier in the letter he writes : — " Hitherto I have
resisted all who would fain draw me into society, because my
first care was for the main interests of my own being, because
society does not give but takes, and because I daily feel greater
dislike to doing things by halves. But now I will equip
myself, hire a servant, get better quarters ; in fine, make such
personal arrangements that I can publicly appear as your
minister, and nothing lacking the fitting dignity. First I will
visit Cardinal Herzan and the Senator [of Rome], then go to
the Cardinal Secretary of State [Buoncompagni] and Cardinal
Bemis. With this 1 the sluices are lifted and the rest follows
of itself. I will devote the month of April [1788] altogether
to this expansion (Ausbreitung), for I must inure myself again
to it, and treat the life of intercourse with many men, no less
than the retired life, as a study and an exercise. ... As to
my outlay, let the following serve for an account. I have been
ali along drawing the sum for which I have to thank youi
kindness and thoughtfulness, and, after deduction of what my
living from day to day costs, have spent it on travel, in which
also I have used up iooo thalers that the first four volumes of
my works brought in. Living as I have done, I should have
come off at a cheaper rate, but that my existence has again
run into a regular Wilhelmiade. . . . My Easter quarter and
the produce of the fifth volume had been meant to pay for
my return journey, and I should have resumed my old house
keeping at Weimar without the smallest hitch." He goes on
to say that he will continue to pay away his salary and the
rnoney brought by his works, and will only ask the Duchess
Amalia for what is needed above this, " that I may remain
unembarrassed (rein) and without anxiety." Farther on he
says : — " I repeat it again, should you find me necessary on
1 Reading Somit not So weit.- — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY.

409

your return to Weimar, I am ready to come at any hint.
Very many things make going home attractive to me. Living
apart from intercourse with you, apart from intercourse with
tried friends, is a matter to consider. In a foreign land the
heart, I perceive, fast grows cold and hard, because there
is so seldom any loving and trusting. I have gained so
much in knowledge of art and of nature, that a further
study would be much lightened by the neighbourhood of
our Academy Jena."
" Next week," writes Goethe, in the letter from which we
have been quoting, " the chief statues and paintings of Rome
shall be viewed with eyes washed clear." In the Korrespondenz
for February 1788, we find him, besides, pushing on with
Claudine, and considering the contents of the three final
volumes of his works. On the 5th of February the Carnival
of 1788 terminated. The displeased feeling which the festival
aroused in Goethe in 1787 was now replaced by the interest
of the student and artist. He noted the several incidents,
and asked Georg Schiitz to make coloured sketches of the
masks. He hoped to publish a description of the Carnival
with illustrations.1 On one of the days of tumult Goethe saw
Angelika's carriage on the Corso, and went up to it to greet
his friend. He was surprised to find her accompanied by
the sweet young Milan maiden of Castel-Gandolfo memory.
Since we last saw her she has had trouble — her betrothed has
proved faithless, and she has been very ill in consequence.
Goethe had shown a tender interest in her welfare during her
illness, and she now thanked him for it. He went away full
of silent content, and of gratitude to Angelika for her delicate
and generous goodness to the maiden. On February 9, 1788,
he sent off the last act of Claudine, and thus was done with
the fifth volume of his works. He now let the three others
alone for a while. At this time he wrote to Angelika : — " It
seems as if in the Studio de' Tedeschi incontro at Rondanini we
1 Das Romische Kameval, with illustrations, appeared in 1789.
Goethe printed it, without the illustrations and the passages having refer
ence to them, in the 1792 edition of his works. In 1829 Goethe, when
preparing his Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, placed the essay on the
Carnival after the Bericht for January 1788, and before the Korrespondenz
for February. See Duntzer's edition of Die Italianische Reise, pp. 475
and 924, and Strehlke's Introduction to Das Romische Kameval, Hem
pel's Goethe, xvi. 291-6. — Tr.

410 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. hi.
are going from one extreme to the other. Last week we drew
men as God made them, and this week we want to clothe
them from head to foot in steel and iron." Moreover, when
writing to the Duke on January 25, he had announced his
intention of beginning some sketches of landscape, and of
drawing and colouring some perspective views (veduti). On
February 1 6 he writes to Fritz Stein : — " Yovl wrote lately
about the grave of a Miss Gore in Rome. One evening a few
days ago, when I had gloomy thoughts, I sketched mine at
the Pyramid of Cestius."1 On March 1 he writes that he has
been indulging in all sorts of speculation as to colours, and
we learn elsewhere2 that Angelika gave valuable aid. Thus,
as he asserted blue to be no colour, she painted a little land
scape without any blue.
During the later part of February 1788 the plans of
Faust and Tasso were thought over and perfected. Nay, in
the noble environment of the Borghese Garden, a new scene
of Faust was written — the madly humorous Hexenkiiche scene.
As his return to Germany was in prospect — Herder and Char
lotte were urging earnestly for it — he went once more over all
in Rome that was of most significance, and saw much that
was new to him besides. He made several acquaintances of
distinction. One was the Senator of Rome, who, having come
back from Germany lately, had called to see Goethe. In the
second week of March 1788, after careful study of the bones
and muscles, Goethe modelled a foot with success. On most
Sundays the music of the Sixtine Chapel was enjoyed.
On March 15, 1788, in the midst of the stir of Passion
Week in Rome, Goethe received a letter from the Duke which
relieved him of the duty of awaiting the Duchess Amalia and
conducting her Italian journey. The Duke had perceived
how unwelcome the office of Reisemarschall was to his friend
Goethe writes, March 17, 1788 : — "To your cordial, friendly
letter I at once cheerily reply 'I come !'" After speaking of
the plan of his return-journey he goes on : — " Since with these
objects in view I cannot be in Weimar before the middle of
June, I would add one request — that you will grant me, while
present, the leave from duty which you have already granted
1 August Goethe was buried near the Pyramid of Cestius in 1830. — Tr.
2 In the Confession des Verfassers, appended to Goethe's Geschichte der
Farbenlehre. — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY. 411
me had I decided to stay away. My desire — with this strange,
unsubduable spirit of mine, that even in perfect freedom and
in the moment of enjoying the earnestly desired good fortune,
has brought me many a grief — my desire is, at your side, among
your subjects, in your land,1 to find myself again, to cast up the
account of my travel, and to clasp in the last three volumes of
my Works the mass of many memories of life and meditations
on art. I can say, to be sure : ' In this eighteen months' soli
tude I have found myself; but in what sense? As an artist !
All that I am over and above the artist you will criticise and be
of use to. By your continuous (fortdauerndes) active life you,
as I can see by every one of your letters, have been always
widening and rendering finer the prince's knowledge of the
uses that can be made of men ; I submit myself gladly to this
judgment. Receive me as a guest, let me by your side fill
out the whole measure of my existence and enjoy life, and
thus my force will be like a new-opened, concentrated, purified
water-spring, easy to guide from its source here or there as you
desire." The Duke wished that Goethe, in order to remain in
steady connection with the Chamber of Finance, should be
authorised to attend its meetings from time to time as his
business permitted, and that he should then occupy the chair
placed at such meetings for the Duke. As to this Goethe writes
further on in the same letter: — "The relation in which you
wish me to stand towards the Chamber of Finance is, I repeat,
so honourable, that in accepting it I shall feel shame at my own
unworthiness, as in refusing it I should feel myself arrogant."
Karl August found fault with some things in Egmont.
Goethe writes, March 28, 1788: — "Remarks such as those
in your last letter are indeed not very consoling for the author,
for the man, however, they are very weighty ; and he who has
not divided these two lives in himself knows how to treasure
and use such memories." At the close of this letter he men
tions that Lila and Jery und Bately sxe ready. The little
poems had been written down afresh in a collection, and so all
that remained to be done during the coming winter was Faust,
as he hoped to complete Tasso during the summer of 1788.2
1 "Mich an ihrer Seite, mit den Ihrigen, in dem Ihrigen, wieder-
zufinden. " — Tr.
2 On February 16 Goethe writes to the Duke that "the hill Tasso and
the mountain Faust" are nearly all that he has not done with. — Tr.

412 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
Although he feels a very special longing to be at work on
Faust, he cannot repress the sigh, " May I but succeed in
performing half what I wish and hope." On April ii, 1788,
Karl August appointed Geheimerath Schmidt to be President
of the Chamber of Finance, summoned Voigt to be a member
of the Chamber, and formally proclaimed that Goethe should
take in the Chamber the position of honour already spoken of.
The last days in Rome, like all last days, were very sad.1
He writes on April 10, 1788 : — " I am still in Rome — in the
body, not in the spirit. Once I had made up my mind to
departure I felt no more interest, and I should have been
glad to get away a fortnight ago. In truth, I only remain for
the sake of Kayser and of Bury. The former has still some
studies to finish, which he can make only in Rome, has still
some musicalia to collect ; the other has to perfect a sketch for
a painting of my designing, and in this needed my counsel."
On April 1 1 he writes again : — " The days pass, and I can
do nothing more. I can indeed scarcely bear to go look at
anything. My trusty Meyer stands to me still, and I enjoy
to the last his instructive society." Modelling and botanical
speculation occupied him until the end. In the garden of
Angelika's house he sowed a pine-seedling of his own rearing ;
it grew and flourished many years, and travellers told Goethe
of it, until, after Angelika's death, the new possessors of the
house destroyed it. Some little date-palms, likewise raised by
Goethe from seeds, were more fortunate. They were planted
by " a Roman friend " in the garden of the Villa Malta, on
the Pincian Hill, a garden bordering on Angelika's, frequently
visited by Goethe, probably indeed already selected as the
residence of the Duchess Amalia. King Ludwig of Bavaria
saw these palms when they had grown to a man's height.
One of them is still living.2
Very bitter was parting from one who had grown into his
life as Angelika. Bury, too, he left behind with great pain ;
Moritz, who owed a great deal to Goethe, was to visit him in
Weimar when returning to Berlin. In his visits of farewell,
the young Milan maiden was not forgotten. He had been
hearing of her growth in intimacy with Angelika, and other
1 Goethe, after his return to Weimar, told Herder's wife that during
the last fortnight in Rome he had cried like a child. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer's edition oi Die Italianische Reise, pp. 953-4. — Tr.

1787-1788.] ITALY.

413

good things, and indeed she occupied no unimportant place
in his thoughts. The parting was very affectionate. We do
not know whether the connection with the Roman mistress
was dissolved now or earlier in the spring.
When, on the last night in Rome, he passed with a few
friends under the full moon through the massive lights and
deep shadows to visit Capitol and Colosseum for the last time,
he felt strange, deep emotion. Again, as so often before,
the northern barbarian owed a measureless debt to the
Eternal City. Yet Goethe did not then think that he was
to see Rome no more. On April 22, 1788, in the most
sorrowful agitation, he set out northwards with Kayser by his
side. The poetic companion of his journey was Tasso. In the
public gardens of Florence he wrote passages which afterwards
would recall that peculiar agitation. Florence was thoroughly
explored on this visit. On May 6, 1788, Goethe tells the
Duke that almost all the art treasures of the city have been
visited. From Milan, on May 23, he writes : — " The parting
from Rome has cost me more than is right and fitting for my
years; however, I have not been able to master my spirit,
and on the journey have left myself complete freedom, and
accordingly I have, every hour, at least seven changes of
mood." Earlier in the letter he writes : — " Yesterday I was at
the cathedral, to erect which a whole mountain of marble has
been forced into the most tasteless forms. The poor stones
are still daily tortured, for the madness is yet far from its
period — poverty of thought, indeed, rather than madness."
The passion for mineralogy awoke again. On May 24
Goethe tells Knebel that he is going to buy a hammer and
break pieces from the rock on his homeward journey, in order
to drive away " the bitterness of death " [the pain of moving
farther and farther from Rome]. At Constanz, in the begin
ning of June, he was dreadfully disappointed to read in
Schubart's Vaterlandschronik that Herder had gone to Italy with
Canon Dalberg. Immediately after this announcement, our
poet read the following discerning praise : — " Goethe also, one
of the most brilliant stars in Germany's crown, has made a
vast impression in Italy. He entered the best circles, adorned
with German force and the dignity of German genius, and
everywhere his great knowledge, his deep perception of the

414 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. v. ch. iii.
beautiful, and his noble bearing were admired." It was not
true that Herder had gone to Italy.
Ere leaving Rome, Goethe had given up the thought of
visiting his mother and his brother-in-law Schlosser on his
return ; his longing for Weimar was intense. By Augsburg,
Niirnberg, Gotha, and Erfurt, he travelled ; and at length, at
ten o'clock, June 18, 1788, as he had bidden farewell to
Rome beneath a full moon, beneath a full moon entered the
little capital on the Ilm, that was now grown so dear.
[Note. — Goethe's Last Night in Rome. — Near the close of Goethe's
Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, he writes: — "Three nights before my
departure the full moon shone in the clearest of skies," and then goes
on to speak of the magic charm of the great city and its influence ou
their minds. Then in a new paragraph he begins : — "After days spent
distractedly, some painfully, I made the round of the city with a few
friends once through a perfect solitude." Herr Prof. Duntzer believes
that this was on the last night, though not so stated with exactness. I
think that most who examine the passage must agree with him. — Tr.]

BOOK VI.
HOUSE AND HOME.
CHAPTER I.
from goethe's return from italy to the birth of his
son. the romische elegien— tasso.
June 1788-December 1789.
After an absence of nearly two years (September 17 86- June
1 7 88), Goethe returned to Charlotte von Stein with the old,
true love, of firm purpose to live a life of close union of heart
and soul with her and her Fritz. We have seen how, through
out his sojourn in Italy, he had frequently had the boy in his
thoughts. Yet intellectually and spiritually he was a new
man. He was now an Artist, penetrated with the sensuous
apprehension of life, fresh, clear, objective in treatment ; he
had attained a new stand -point, a higher insight. And
Charlotte had not advanced, and the only change was, that
she had grown older-looking in the interval. In Goethe's
eyes she sought in vain the old, passionate yearning ; she was
disconcerted and dismayed by their new, strong, beaming
gaze. She felt that he needed consolation and advice from
her no longer ; and it wounded her that even by her side he
could not suppress the longing for the south, that in rude,
gloomy Thiiringen, in the petty capital of a German Duchy,
he missed Italy and Rome. She grew cold and reserved, she
nourished bitterness, she reproached him for want of sym
pathy — whom her frigidity was repelling ! She jealously
observed his demeanour and his actions, to find by them her
suspicions of his falseness justified. She was physically ailing,
and she brooded on gloomy dreams. Add to all this that

416 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
Goethe, in the first days at Weimar, drawn hither and thither
by the most diverse claims, especially on the part of the
Court, could give her but little of his time ; while the cordiality
of his friends made Charlotte's coldness the more striking.
Twelve days after Goethe's return, she writes to her sister-
in-law (who had gone on June 24 to Karlsbad), that she
(Charlotte) had been with the Duchess, Herder, and Herder's
wife, at Goethe's house, where they had been shown engrav
ings from Claude Lorraine, and gems : — " We had not been
long with him when Knebel too came in, and thus our old
group was again assembled; hardly, I believe, with the old
spirit." Goethe was now free from the thraldom of business; he did
not even attend the Council. In the Commission of Mines
alone he took a lively interest. It was, unfortunately, just
then necessary to put up an hydraulic engine in order to
drain the mine of water that had broken out in the previous
year. To the Duke Goethe was the old bosom-friend, with
whom to take continual counsel, to whom to entrust many
commissions which implied special confidence. Thus on
Goethe was laid the task of reform in the University of
Jena, and he soon after engaged in it, aided by C. G. Voigt,
who had proved himself an invaluable man of business.
On the 6th of July 1788 the English family Gore, who
already in 1787 had visited the Court of Weimar, came for
the second time. Charles Gore had succeeded his father in a
large mercantile house, and now, having retired from business,
went travelling 'with his daughters.1 He and his daughters
Elise and Emilie were remarkable for fine culture and a
feeling for art. But Goethe now found their views in Ethics
and on Art so limited that, in a certain sense, he found talking
with them impossible.2 The Duke felt a passionate attrac
tion to Emilie ; Elise had a warm heart for Goethe. Mean
while Charlotte's coldness and rancour were making Goethe
extremely unhappy. The more she held aloof the more
irresistibly did he feel how wide a gulf was fixed between
them through the difference in age and the change in his
views. He felt himself bound to her by gratitude, and hy
1 Goethe has prefixed to the Life of Philipp Hackert a notice of the
life of Charles Gore ; see Hempel's Goethe, xxxii. 20-25. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, August 12, 1788. — Tr.

1788-1789.]

HOUSE AND HOME.

417

his promise to live in union with her and her Fritz, but her
trust, through which alone the relation was possible, had given
place to its opposite. It was a dreadful overthrow of hope.
At this juncture it happened that the poet, driven to despair
by Charlotte's coldness, met and fell in love with a maiden of
humble rank. Christiane Sophie Vulpius, then just turned
two and twenty, was the daughter of the Amtsarchivar Johann
Friedrich Vulpius, dead since March 1786. Some years
before his death Vul
pius had had to give
up his post. The
girl was a winsome
little blonde with
beautiful blue eyes,
a pretty nose, pouting
lips, a round full face,
and long fair hair.
The story runs, that
she met Goethe in
the Park and handed
him a petition from
her brother. This
brother, Christian
August Vulpius, two
years older than Chris
tiane, after studying
law, history, and di
plomacy at Jena, had
begun trying to sup
port himself and two
sisters by authorship ; he had printed some tales, besides
poems. When Goethe, who gave him some aid, was away
in Italy, Vulpius had been compelled to accept the post of
secretary to the Circle Ambassador von Soden in Niirn-
berg, a man who had also made his appearance as a poet.
As von Soden, ostensibly because he could get a more suit
able secretary, dismissed Vulpius, the young fellow sought
help from his former patron, of whose return from Italy he
1 Prof. Diintzer cannot tell the exact date of this drawing. It belongs
to Christiane's later years, and gives no notion of the young girl who met
Goethe in the Park.— Tr. 2 E

Fig. 28. Christiane Vulpius. From a photograph
of an Indian ink drawing.l

418 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
heard. It is said that Goethe, at an earlier time, had seen
Christiane in Bertuch's flower-manufactory, where she was re
markable among the other women and girls employed by her
youthful freshness, but drew Goethe's attention especially by
her smart reply to his companion, the Darmstadt prince, who
asked her what flowers bloomed under her hand. Goethe
probably established Christiane in his Gartenhaus. All we
know is that on Sunday, July 13, 1788, not four weeks from
the day of his return, he concluded his marriage of con
science with her.1
Goethe was completely captivated by her personal charms,
her amiability, her Thiiringian naivete, and by her evident
happiness in having won the love of the great man whom she
had looked on as so far above her. Probably the memory
of his Roman amour also played through his joyous intoxica
tion. Yet anticipation of the storm which the discovery, at
length, of his secret would call forth, and the thought of that
promise to Charlotte, now broken by his marriage, were
certainly sources of great disquietude ; while the endeavour to
betray his fortune in no wise by his personal bearing was a
dissimulation very opposite to his nature. He had written a
friendly letter to Christiane's brother, promising to use influ
ence on his behalf. This promise was fulfilled, only Goethe
kept Vulpius from coming to Weimar. 2
Externally the relation to Charlotte still subsisted in so
far that Goethe occasionally visited her, and they paid each
other little attentions ; but Fritz Stein, though with Goethe
a good deal, was no longer an inmate of his house. On July
20, 1788, Charlotte, when sending something, begs for a
visit. Goethe replies that he will try to get away from Court
betimes in the afternoon, and will besides call for a moment
in the morning early. " Gladly will I hear all you have to
say to me, only I must beg you not to judge too rigidly my
distracted — I will not say shattered being. You will under
stand when I say that my inner self is not as my external
1 We know this from the last words of Goethe's letter to Schiller,
July 13, 1796 : — " Heute erlebe ich auch eine eigne Epoche : mein Ehestand
ist eben 8 Jahre und die franzbsische Revolution 7 Jahre alt." This passage
Goethe omitted when preparing his correspondence with Schiller for
publication in 1824. Seep. 482. — Tr.
2 See on Vulpius Goethe's letters to Jacobi, September 9, October 3,
and October 31, 1788.— Tr.

1788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 4i9
semblance."1 Before she left for Kochberg on July 22,
Charlotte sent Goethe a breakfast, and commended Fritz to
his care. " Fritz shall be dear to me," Goethe replies. " I
am always glad of his presence, and to be any use to him.
. . . May you be happy and very strong in quiet Kochberg."
He says not a word which implies desire to visit Charlotte in
Kochberg; he only lays stress on the dreariness of life in
Weimar. " I will live on as I can, though it is indeed a
special exercise. Kayser is going away again with the
Duchess [Amalia] . . . and thus I am cut off from all hope
as to the beautiful art of sound. The gloomy sky swallows
up all colours. Herder also is going now, and — a thousand
times, farewell !" Charlotte herself tells her sister-in-law that
she had delayed her setting out for Kochberg solely for the
sake of Goethe and of the Gores, but both had dismissed her
as if she were a stranger, and only tediousness had been
exchanged between them.
On August 6, 1788, Herder started for Italy. Thus
Goethe lost for a long time his best consolation and support,
for Knebel was at that time extremely depressed and, more
over, had not the deep insight of Herder. With Herder
Goethe had talked over the discoveries in physiognomy which
he had made when considering the creation of ideal characters
in plastic art,2 and had found his clear sympathetic compre
hension delightful. Goethe stood by Herder's wife as a true
friend during her husband's absence.
Since the previous year Weimar had had a noteworthy
new resident in Charlotte von Kalb. This lady, now five
and twenty, had hoped to procure in Weimar a divorce from
her husband in order that she might become Schiller's wife ;
but there had been difficulties in the way of procuring the
divorce, and Schiller's heart had found a dearer bondage.
Her unhappy lot had frightened her back on herself; her
emotions were violent ; there was in her character a passion
ate precipitateness, an enthusiastic excitability, and all repelled
rather than interested Goethe, which she probably perceived.
At this time Goethe was disappointed in the Duke. The
1 " Dir darf ich wohl sagen, dass mein Inneres ist nicht wie mein
Aeusseres." — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Herder, December 27, 1788; see also Goethe's
letter to Herder, Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, August 23, 1787. — Tr.

420 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [BK. vi. ch. I.
military service in Prussia, which withdrew the Duke so
frequently from Weimar, was a worse thing, as Goethe now
came to see it, than it had appeared when viewed from the
distance of Italy. Then the Duke's regardless self-abandon
ment to the passion for the beautiful English woman dis
pleased Goethe, and the Duchess was bitterly mortified when
Karl August persuaded the Gore family to prolong their stay
in Weimar. When after this the Duke hurt his foot, Goethe
had to spend the greater part of every day with him and the
Duchess.1 The Duchess showed remarkable good sense in
these circumstances, and she was more friendly to Goethe
than ever. Notwithstanding the hurt foot, the Duke would
go to his regiment at Aschersleben, but soon had to return,
and Goethe must again give up most of his time to the
invalid. The poet's mood was very variable ; now he felt happy in
his love, now he was almost in despair.2 Once he told
Herder's wife that not affection but despair had driven him
to come see her ; he had just left the Duke. On his birth
day he said bitterly to her that if on that day a year ago he
had received Herder's God3 he this year believed in God
no longer. At this time he was putting together his eighth
volume — that containing the shorter poems ; he began to work
at Tasso without getting very far,4 began also his essay Die
Metamorphose der Pflanzen, and made extracts from the letters
and diary of his travel to give to Wieland, with whom he was
on very good terms, for the Merkur. The most important of
these was the treatise Einfache Nachahmung der Natur, Manier,
1 See Goethe to Herder, September 4, 1788. — Tr.
2 For instance, Goethe writes to Herder, September 4, 1788 : — "The
weather is still very gloomy, and slays my spirit : when the barometer is
low, and the landscape has no colours, how can one live."
September 22 : — " Oh my brother, what evil spirit urged thee to call
me back from Italy ! I could have been the entertainer, and we should
have laughed at them all. May all be for the best to thee ; only for God's
sake none of that easy good-nature which, pelican-like, tears her own
breast to nourish bastards ! I live very strangely. Very much to myself,
and await the time and the hour." — Tr.
3 See Goethe's letter to Herder, Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, Rome,
August 28, 1787. The full name of Herder's book is Gott, Einige
Gesprache iiber Spinoza's System. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Knebel, October 11, 1788 :— " Tasso advances but slowly."
— TR.

1788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 421
Stil,1 in which he expresses with clearness and decision the
fundamental principles of his theory of art.
On September 5, 1788, accompanied by Herder's wife,
by Fritz Stein and by Charlotte's sister-in-law, Frau von
Schardt, Goethe drove to Kochberg. The day was lovely.
At Kochberg they were welcomed by Lotte von Lengefeld
from Rudolstadt, and by Charlotte. The former, now one-
and-twenty, had been known to Goethe since 1 783. Charlotte
treated Goethe with coldness, and this rendered him very
gloomy, but also the thought of the change in himself since
he had last seen Kochberg threw a dark shadow over his
soul. He could not now write " Ebenderselbe " on Charlotte's
desk.2 He showed various drawings that he had brought, and
read aloud from the extracts which he had been preparing for
the Merkur. On September 7, they drove over to Rudolstadt
to visit Oberhofmeisterin von Lengefeld, Lotte's mother. There
they found Schiller, who loved Lotte. Schiller had long been
looking forward to acquaintance with Goethe, and had already
greeted him through Charlotte von Stein. They had friendly
talk together, both indoors and on a stroll beside the Saale,
yet there was none of that intimate converse which reveals soul
to souL Goethe told with passionate love about Italy, in lan
guage "flowing, full of soul, alive." Schiller thought that they
would never draw very near one another, as Goethe was so
much farther on than he was, and besides their natures even
in the beginning were essentially diverse. That evening, driving
back to Kochberg in the moonlight, Goethe repeated aloud
his poem Die Geheimnisse (which he had again taken up in
order to prepare it for the eighth volume of his works), and he
spoke of the plan of his Tasso. As they drove from Kochberg
to Weimar on September 8, Schiller's Gotten Griechenlands
being the occasion, Goethe talked of the veritable ideals of
the ancient sculptors in their gods and heroes ; he had found
the clue to these ideals, and in ten years, if he could live in
Rome with an income of ten or twelve thousand thalers, he
would demonstrate them.
The visit to Kochberg had cooled Goethe still more ; but
how happy he was in Christiane's arms. He loved the girl
with such warm affection that ten years later, when on a jour-
1 On the simple Imitation of Nature, on Manner, on Style. — Tr.
2 See p. 314. — Tr.

422

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. VI. CH. I.

ney, he writes to her regretting that he has with him nothing
of hers, not even a slipper ! A pleasant week was procured to
him by a visit to Gotha with Prince August of Sachsen-Gotha,

during which he succeeded in perfecting Kiinstlers Apotheose^
for his eighth volume. And now Goethe heard with bitter-
1 A pendant to Kiinstlers Erdewallen. See p. 197. — Tr.

1 788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 423
ness that his friend Kayser had left the Duchess Amalia, his
direct, honest, and rather stiff temper having brought him into
collision with some of her train. Thus Goethe might as well
not have given up Kayser to the Duchess, had indeed better
not, as the abrupt breach made further connection with Weimar
Court impossible for the musician. At times Goethe feels so
unhappy in Weimar that he only "waits the time and the hour"
to leave.1 By frequent short flights he sought to be rid of the
inner unrest ; he feared the coming storm. Towards the end
of September 1788, anxiety about the mines drew him to
Ilmenau ; it was only with great labour that the water could be
subdued. After his return he went hard to work on Tasso.2
In the Literaturzeitung a paper on Egmont had appeared,
which seemed to Goethe to treat the poetic side inadequately3
(he did not know that this paper was by Schiller). Thus the
two plays,4 that he had laboured on with such conscientious
ness and such clear artist insight, had met but small present
favour ; yet there was no diminution of his ardour to per
fect Tasso, in which we read so much of Goethe's own
heart's history. The pain of the alienation from Charlotte,
who had once suggested the drama to him, fed the poetic
flame. In October 1788, business taking him to Jena, he spent
some time there during the ingathering of the grapes in the
company of the Hereditary Prince. That the Duke, through
carelessness, had again a fall near Dresden, and thereupon went
with the Gores to Dessau, displeased Goethe. On the other
hand, a letter revealing Merck's almost mad despair moved the
deepest pity in Goethe, who wrote to Merck,6 begging the full
est confidence ; he had already been enlisting the Duke's help
on his friend's behalf. But Goethe himself, just after receiv
ing the letter from Merck, was so out of tune that he could
perfect nothing; so, for occupation's sake, he arranged his
sketches in books.6 Christiane's love alone brought him

1 Goethe to Herder, September 22, 1788. See p. 420.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, October 1, 1788 :— " Nun bin ich eifrigan Tasso,
er geht von statten." October 1 1 : — " Tasso riickt nur sehr langsam." — Tr.
3 Goethe to Karl August, October 1, 1788.— Tr.
4 Iphigenie and Egmont. — Tr.
5 Goethe to Merck, Jena, November 10, 1788. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Knebel, October 25, 1788. — Tr.

424 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. I.
happiness ; let the poem Morgenklagen witness.1 Charlotte
von Stein now returned from Kochberg;2 she remained cold
and reserved, accusing him of faithlessness in her heart
With the Duke, who was at length back in Weimar, Goethe
spent a great deal of time, but they could not lighten each
other's troubles.
The first of the Friday Assemblies fell on November 7.
There Goethe, in order to avert suspicion of his secret love,
put on extreme mirthfulness, and was very amiable towards the
younger ladies, and thus drew on himself the anger of Charlotte's
little sister-in-law, who was hostile to him already ; her account
is that he hardly spoke a word with any woman of discretion,
but kissed every young girl's hand in turn, said pretty things
to each, and danced a great deal. At heart he was very far
from being what he seemed. On November 9 he went with
Fritz Stein to Jena, where he stayed until November 22. He
attended Loder's lectures on the muscles, learned and thought
a great deal, and in order to silence the uneasiness within went
to concerts and parties.3 On November 30 he went with the
Duke to Gotha Court for a few days. There he spoke to Karl
August and the Gotha Minister, von Frankenberg, of appoint
ing Schiller as Professor Extraordinary of History at Jena, a
project of which Voigt and Charlotte von Stein were the eager
supporters. The Duke and Frankenberg agreed, and Goethe
was charged to communicate the matter to the Privy Council
of Weimar. A great joy it was when, on December 4, the day of our
poet's return from Gotha, the "excellent"4 Moritz arrived in
Weimar to stay there eight weeks in Goethe's house. Moritz
not only brought fresh life to a multitude of Roman memories,
but entered with sympathy into all thoughts in pleasant, interest
ing converse. Goethe introduced his friend to the Duke, who
was delighted with him and took lessons in English from him.
Moritz was soon " the Prophet "5 of the chief Weimar ladies, of
Charlotte von Stein above all, notwithstanding the deifying
reverence with which he regarded Goethe. At length Moritz's
1 " O du loses leidig liebes Madchen.'' Sent to Jacobi October 31,
\1%%. — Tr. 2 About October 20. — Tr.
8 See Goethe's letter to Fritz Stein, November 18, 1788. Fritz had
gone back soon to Weimar. — Tr.
4 " Grundguter," Goethe to Herder, December 27, 1788.— Tr.
5 This is from one of Caroline Herder's letters, December 25, 1788. — Tr.

1 788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 425
communication of his treatise, Ueber die bildende Nachahmung
des Schonen, produced division. Charlotte with others, especially
Knebel, declared against it ; Schiller adopted an intermediate
view. On December 9 Goethe formally reports to the Privy
Council on the matter of Schiller's professorship. The Uni
versity will profit by this appointment, and the Duke favours
it, observes Goethe's Promemoria. Schiller's "bearing is grave
and courteous, and it may be credited that he will have good
influence on young people." On December ir, 1788, the
Duke sent forth to the three Courts, Gotha, Coburg, and Mein
ingen, partners with Weimar in Jena University, recommend
ing the appointment of Schiller. On December 12 Goethe
received the visit of Schiller, who had wished to meet him alone
in order to derive from the interview some intellectual and
spiritual profit. " In the evenings the Duke is almost always
there," wrote Schiller to his betrothed, Charlotte von Lenge
feld, "and in the forenoon he is besieged with business."
Goethe was friendly to Schiller, and urged him not to be
deterred from accepting the professorship by the fear that he
was too ignorant for it ; his appointment would be a gain to
himself and to the University. But the alliance which Schiller
hoped for was not yet to be formed ; Goethe wished to be
Schiller's benefactor, not his friend, and indeed felt how far
apart they stood.
At this time Goethe finished his description of the Roman
Carnival,1 and laboured at Tasso with such zeal that he hoped
to complete it ere Moritz should leave ; but about the middle
of January 1789 it came to a standstill. He found himself
unable to celebrate the birthday of the Duchess by any poem.
Meanwhile, to his other responsibilities was added that of
arranging for the building of a new Castle for Weimar ; his
fellow-commissioners were Voigt and Wedel.
On February 1, 1789, the Duke started for Berlin with
Moritz ; he did not return until three weeks had passed.
Meanwhile Goethe found more joy than ever in his hidden
love. On February 19 Charlotte von Stein was present at
a performance of Gotter's farce, Der Schwarze Mann, and,
strange enough, the leading incidents reminded her so
strongly of Goethe's faithlessness, which had robbed her life
1 See p. 409. — Tr.

426 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
of charm, that she was overcome with agitation, and almost
became ill. She could not receive Goethe when he called to
see her after the performance. When he had her explanation
on the following morning, he wrote : — " It has grieved me
very much that the tasteless, miserable piece has pained you
so by its reminder of a dreary reality. I will expect you this
evening. Let us as friends unite our joy and sorrow, that the
few days of life may be happy. . . . Farewell, and love me."
But how could the interview to which he looks forward here
have done anything towards reconciliation ! The secret, which
he could not man himself to tell her, was soon after discovered.
In the first instance, it is said, through Fritz Stein, who found
Christiane, a stranger to him, in the Gartenhaus. Herder's
wife knew of it from Charlotte on March 8, 1789. Charlotte's
love was now transformed to the most active bitterness ; she
could not find words cruel enough to speak of Goethe's mis
tress. She did not know (how should she ?) what an enduring
union had been formed But Charlotte's loss was a dreadful
one. Her ideal of an austerely virtuous man, lifted above the
common sensual needs of human nature, was gone ; gone her
hope of a happy, intellectual life by the side of her supreme
friend, her Fritz's second father. All the women of rank of
Weimar pitied Charlotte and condemned Goethe, all except
one. The Duchess Luise judged with a larger humanity the
eminent man whose noble and moral nature she had had so
much occasion to prize through many years. She felt how
great his suffering after his return from Italy had been, how
the prolongation of the relation with Charlotte would have
galled him more and more. As for Goethe, the more violent
the ardour of hatred of the poor girl to whom he had vowed
his faith, the more lovingly did he clasp her to himself.
Wonderfully lighter he felt, too, now that his secret was, out,
and the storm broken that had oppressed his spirit in the
coming ; let it rage ! The perfect rapture of his love found
utterance in the Romische Elegien, where the background is the
happiness that had been his in the Eternal City, where the
model is the poetry of the Roman "Triumvirs of Love,"1 where
the inspiration is the warm throbbing of his own ecstatic
heart. 1 See p. 407. — Tr.

1 788-1 789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 427
The Duke heard the earlier Elegies read aloud before his
departure on April 1, 1789, for Aschersleben. He had ere
this, probably at Goethe's instance, appointed Fritz Stein, who
was not yet sixteen, to be Hofjunker and Kammerassessor.
With gladness Goethe heard that during the last few weeks
Merck had rallied his spirit, and in the kindly Frankfurt circle,
with Goethe's mother and Goethe's friends, again felt some
happiness. During the Duke's absence more Elegien were
written ; Tasso progressed ; a successful endeavour was made
in encaustic painting (an art learned at Rome) ; Kraus was
prompted to work at a landscape after a special method ; the
building of the Castle and the affairs of the University were
attended to. Goethe thought at this time of going in the
autumn of 1789 to join the Duchess Amalia in Italy, return
ing in the summer of 1790.
On April 13, 1789, the quiet was disturbed by the pre
mature confinement of the Duchess, whose infant died a few
minutes after birth. The Duke, who returned immediately,
showed himself very good and kind, but nevertheless the
Duchess's sorrow was very great. Herder being at this time
invited to Gottingen University, Goethe urged that he must
be kept for Jena at all cost.
Shortly after, Goethe put the finishing touch to his un
popularity. Capellmeister Reichardt of Berlin, the composer
to Claudine, had announced a month before that he was
about to visit the poet. Now he came,1 and Goethe, though
prepossessed against him, was so pleased with him as to
receive him into his house ; and this disgusted all Weimar.
With Reichardt's music to Claudine, soon to be performed
in Berlin, Goethe was delighted. The Weimar ladies were
invited to hear the separate acts rehearsed, but they would
only praise parts of the composition, because they hated
Reichardt. When about this time Goethe received a letter of
reproach from Charlotte, he replied in a tone of the greatest
moderation, without approaching the main subject of her dis
pleasure, for he was not going to give up Christiane. When
Charlotte set out for the Rhine watering-places on May 5,
1789, she left behind a letter, whose sharp accusation wounded
him so much that he could not summon resolution to reply.
1 April 23, 1789. See Diintzer, Aus Goethe's Freundeskreise, for an
account of Goethe's relations with Reichardt. — Tr.

428 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
During the time immediately following Goethe devoted
himself to the Duchess, with faithful sympathy endeavouring
to assuage her pain. He worked on at Tasso, a poem in
which the Duchess felt much interest, and was as usual
diligent in many occupations. Christiane's love made him
very happy. His only annoyance was the delay of the archi
tect, Arends of Berlin, who had been summoned to under
take the rebuilding of the Castle. " In the evenings I play
the host of your Promenades," writes Goethe merrily to the
Duke, " and endeavour, now with tea, now with sour milk, to
win the favour of the women while the men are fettered by
mighty Destiny to the gaming-table."1 The women were still
bitterly hostile. Goethe interested himself in every possible
way in the Hereditary Prince. They went together to Bel
vedere on May 20, 1789, to stay some time, Goethe hoping
to finish Tasso there. Thither, on May 31, came Herder's
wife and Charlotte von Kalb, and enjoyed the few hours spent
with the poet very much. He read aloud from Tasso, now,
at length, nearly finished. Charlotte von Kalb was deeply
moved. " Pan has waked again," she said.
On June 1 Goethe could no longer put off answering that
last letter from Charlotte. " How much I love you, how well
I know my duty towards you and towards Fritz, I have proved
by returning from Italy. If the Duke had his will, I should
be there still. Herder was going thither, and as I did not
foresee that I might be useful to the Hereditary Prince, I had
hardly anything to regard but you and Fritz. What I have
left behind in Italy, I may not repeat ; you have received my
confidences on that head with sufficient unfriendliness. Un
fortunately, when I came back you were in a strange mood,
and I confess plainly that the way in which you and others
received me pained me very much. I saw Herder and the -
Duchess depart ; I saw in the carriage an empty place that I
was urged to take. I remained for the sake of my friends, as
for their sake I had returned ; and at that very moment I must
hear it obstinately repeated that I might as well have stayed
away, that I had no human sympathy, and so on. And all
this, before there could be any question of a relation which
seems to wound you so much. And what kind of relation is
it? Who is made poorer by it? Who claims the feelings
1 Goethe to Karl August, May 12, 1789. — Tr.

1788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 429
which I give to the poor thing ?1 [Observe that he does not
venture on Christiane's name.] Who claims the hours that I
spend with her ? Ask Fritz, ask the Herders, ask every one
who is intimate with me whether I am less willing to hear con
fidences, less willing to confide, less active for my friends than
before ? Whether, on the contrary, I do not now for the first
time belong to them and to society aright ! And it must be
through a miracle, if I should have lost only the best and
deepest relation of all — to thee. How vividly I have felt that
it still exists, when on one occasion I found you willing to
talk with me on interesting subjects. But, I confess frankly,
the way in which you have hitherto treated me I cannot
endure. When I was disposed to talk, you have closed my
mouth ; when I was communicative, you blamed me for
indifference ; when I was active for friends, you blamed me
for coldness and neglectfulness. . . . Unhappily, for a consider
able time you have despised my advice about coffee, and have
adopted a regimen which is very bad for your health. As if
it were not hard enough, morally, to conquer certain impres
sions, you strengthen the hypochondriac, torturing power of
dreary imaginings by a physical agency, the harmfulness of
which you have been aware of for some time, and which, out
of love for me, you had avoided for a while, and with good
result to your health. May the baths, the journey, do you a
great deal of good. I do not altogether give up the hope that
you will come to know me again. Farewell. Fritz is happy,
and often visits me."
Meanwhile Charlotte had met Goethe's mother in Frank
furt. She was greatly pleased with Frau Aja, and tells Fritz : —
" I could love her right well and live with her. . . . She loves
you well ; write to her constantly, for to hear about her son is
• her whole life. The ring with his head [which Fritz had sent]
has delighted her extremely ; she had it on her finger." When
Charlotte arrived at Wiesbaden and found no letter from
Goethe awaiting her, she felt great pain. After long, almost
despairing waiting, she went on to Ems, and there she received
his letter of June 1. Over it she wrote O ! ! !
On June 7, 1789, Goethe returned to Weimar. On the
8th he wrote a second letter to Charlotte, of whose visit to
1 Das arme Geschiipf— not in contempt but in pity ; she is so much
slandered by the fine Weimar ladies. — Tr.

43° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
Frankfurt he had heard from his mother. He acknowledges
how grieved he is, in the dreary outward circumstance of
Weimar, through which she, no less than he, suffers, to have
added to her trouble. " Help me," he appeals to her, " that
the relation to which you are adverse may not degenerate, but
may remain as it is." But of what avail were all friendly
words beside this distinct declaration that he could not give
up Christiane. It was like mockery when he appealed to her
to look at the matter " from a natural point of view." The
breach was not to be healed.
Meanwhile Goethe had been treating with Arends about
the Castle ; and found it delightful to have an artist near him
again. He now strove to bring from Rome another artist,
the draughtsman and engraver Lips. All that he could offer,
indeed, was the money to pay for the journey. Lips need
not, wrote Goethe, fear that he will starve on Art in Ger
many. When Lips declared that he would come, trusting
to this assurance, Goethe replied that he could not give
any pledge on the subject, and then had precise informa
tion as to the current Leipzig prices of engravings forwarded
to Lips, who might make his calculations by them. Notwith
standing the heavy rain at the close of June 1789, Goethe
found the time very happy in his quiet, domestic life. As he
might expect to be a father at the close of the year, he gave
up his plan of going to Italy in the autumn. He also desired
a larger and better house, standing in more open space, for
the reason above indicated ; besides, being near Charlotte von
Stein was now as unpleasant as it had once been delightful.
His wish was fixed on the little Jagerhaus near the Frauenthor,
where, it will be remembered, he had lived for a short time
in 1776.1 This house belonged to the Duke, but was prob-.
ably tenanted at this time. Voigt seems to have arranged
matters so that Goethe was able to take possession late in the
autumn of 1789.
During the close of June and the early part of July 1789,
Goethe was engaged in revising the two last acts of Tasso.
He also brooded on Fruit, which he now resolved to publish
as a fragment,2 even leaving the interstices between scenes
unfilled. On July 5, 1789, altogether unexpectedly, he
brought Tasso to a conclusion at Belvedere, where a few
1 See p. 256. 2 Goethe to Karl August, July 5, 1789. — Tr.

1788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 431
weeks ago he had been working on it so diligently. On July
6, Charlotte von Stein returned to Weimar; she declined all
intercourse with Goethe.
On July 9, 1789, Herder came back from his Italian
journey. His ill-humour could not withstand the ardent
friendliness of Goethe's welcome. Goethe delighted to talk
with Herder about Italy, and especially to exchange thoughts
on the antiques and the discovery of their ideals.1 The
improvement of Herder's position in Weimar, as to which
Charlotte also showed such friendly zeal, lay on Goethe's
heart. The two last acts of Tasso were submitted to Herder,
and the Romische Elegien were read to him. Herder praised
the Elegien.On July 22, Goethe went by the Duke's invitation to Wil
helmsthal Castle ; he was accompanied by the Hereditary
Prince, the Prince's tutor, and Herder's boy August. At
Wilhelmsthal he spent two days modelling in wax the pro
file of a bearded, curly-haired Jupiter. And now he put the
final touches to the last two acts of Tasso, which Herder
had praised.2 From the watering-place Ruhla, whither Goethe
followed the Duke,hewrites to Herder on August 10, 1789 : — "I
am very glad that Tasso has pleased you. . . . Now we are free
from all desire to undertake any consequent composition like
that. The fragmentary nature of erotic trifles pleases me better.
Some more of these have been done." Earlier in the letter
Goethe tells Herder that the Duke is becoming very fond of
August, which is important for the boy's future. Of his own
domestic longings let the following witness : — " Here we are
in the land of the famed mountain nymphs, and yet I can
assure you that I long earnestly for home to find again my
friends and a certain little eroticum, whose existence your
wife will probably have confided to you." Goethe returned
to Weimar about a week later.
In Weimar his first efforts were directed to the final
settlement in the matter of Herder, who was appointed Vice-
President of the Consistory ; to procuring support for young
Facius as an engraver ; and to the matter of bringing Meyer
from Rome to Weimar. Goethe writes to Meyer, August 21,
1789 : — " If you wish to stay in Rome two years more, I can
promise you a hundred scudi [per annum]. . . . When the
1 See p. 419. — Tr. 2 Goethe to Herder, August 2, 1789.— Tr.

432 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
two year- are over, come to us. I will see to the cost of the
journe},and that you find a situation here adapted to your
tastes and views (Gemuthsart). If I can promise you no great
pension, you shall have what you need." Already in the
spring of 1789 Goethe had advised Christiane's brother to go
to Leipzig, and had written to Goschen on his behalf, sending
him a letter through Goschen. " From Vulpius's letters," says
Goethe, " I must suppose that his spirit has suffered through
his distressful lot"1 Writing to Goschen on June 22, 1789,
Goethe recurs to Vulpius ; perhaps the publisher could em
ploy the young man in some of the numerous branches of the
book-trade ; and Goethe is prepared to contribute to his
support. When, in August 1789, Vulpius had arrived in
Leipzig, Goethe wrote to his old friend, J. G. Breitkopf: —
" Confiding in the friendly relations of former times, I take
the liberty to commend to your attention a young man who
will hand you this letter. He wishes to stay in Leipzig, that
he may find there better fortunes than have been his hereto
fore. I hope that he will not be burdensome to you. Be so
kind as to allow him to see you often, and to open his mind
to you. Provide him, if possible, some acquaintances and
connections, that he may earn something by literary work."
Vulpius now began to print away stoutly.
The events of the autumn in France roused no sympathy
in Goethe, who in this differed entirely from Gleim, Klop
stock, and so many who saw in them the dawn of liberty. It
was still in Goethe's mind to treat the story of the Diamond
Necklace as a comic opera under the title // Conte, and of this
project he had spoken to Reichardt. Meanwhile Reichardt had
brought out Claudine at the Court of Berlin, and on the Crown
Prince's birthday at the National Theatre, and its reception
had been very good. Beside studies in natural science, putting
Faust in order occupied the time ; this he found a harder task
than the composition of Elegies, which had not yet ceased.
On September 15, 1789, Goethe went to Jena with the famous
Freiberg mineralogist, Werner. Werner explained his new
theory of volcanoes, and Goethe thought it very acute and well
considered. On September 29, 1 789, at the wish of the Duke,
Goethe went with the Duchess and Fraulein Waldner to
Aschersleben, where he could see Karl August in his military
1 Goethe to Goschen, April 23, 1789. — Tr.

1788-1789.] HOUSE AND HOME. 433
splendour. The Rosstrappe was ascended during this visit.
Hardly had Goethe returned to Weimar ere he sU «ed, on
October 10, 1789, for Leipzig, where Vulpius was. The news
of the October riots at Versailles 1 filled Goethe with horror ;
in them he saw what the unchained passion of a nation long
oppressed may lead to. After a couple of days in Leipzig
Goethe returned to Weimar, where he found a. letter from
Kayser awaiting him. Kayser, having been ih ^ a good
while, had, on recovery, begun to compose Scherz last und
Rache for the third time. Goethe writes that he wishes Kayser
to finish the music as speedily as possible ; then in Goethe's
seventh volume, to appear at Easter, the announcement of
Kayser's music may accompany the text of the operetta.
Goethe has spoken to Breitkopf about publishing Kayser's
proposed composition, Romische Nebenstunden?
Goethe's official activity was now engaged by the Ilmenau
mines, which had been making them uneasy of late, and by
the breaking out of the Saale at Jena. Writing to the Duke
on November 5, 1789, Goethe announces that Faust is ready
so far as it will be made ready on this occasion.3 In the same
letter he says that he is working diligently at Greek, and has
good hopes. This is remarkable, if we consider how busy and
anxious he then was. The change of house was at hand, and
anxiety about Christiane's confinement had already begun to
oppress his thoughts. In November 1789, in the middle of
the bustle of changing, arrived Lips, whom he had longed so
much to see. "We are now gently working ourselves together,"4
writes Goethe to the Duke, November 20, 1789. "Mean
while, I have been spurred on to write down my thoughts on
Botany. It looks as though a book which I see announced to
appear at Easter may anticipate me. Then I will, at least,
come in at the same time."
On November 28, 1789, the Duke returned to Weimar;
1 On October 5, 1 789, the Menads of Paris, led by shifty Usher Maillard,
"amid wild October weather, a wild, unwinged stork-flight, through the
astonished country wend their way " to Versailles. On October 6, the
Royal Family was brought into Paris. — Tr.
2 Roman Hours of Idleness. Goethe to Kayser, October 18, 1789,
Burkhardt, Goethe und Kayser, S. 73_5- — Tr.
3 " Faust ist fragmentirt, das heisst in seiner Art fur diessmal
abgethan." — Tr.
4 " Wir arbeiten uns nun sachte zusammen ein." — Tr.
2 F

434 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. i.
three days later Goethe went with him to visit Dalberg in
Erfurt. On Depember 4 the Duke, Dalberg, and Goethe went
to Jena, when the presentation of the professors took place.
One of the professors since Easter 1789 had been Schiller, of
whose betrothal to Lotte von Lengefeld Goethe knew. Dal
berg endeavoured to make Goethe and the Duke decide on
paying, a salary to Schiller. On December 5 Goethe dined at
Court. Dalberg was present and Schiller's Lotte. Christiane
was at this time very ill, Goethe very anxious and depressed.
But Christiane's condition improved after a couple of weeks,
and Goethe could go to Jena on December 21, 1789, to talk
with Batsch of the botanical essay already mentioned : the essay
was now begun ere leaving Jena. (Batsch had been appointed
Professor Extraordinary in Jena, and through Goethe's influ
ence was allowed a small salary, with the use of a part of the
/Prince's Garden for scientific purposes.) Goethe had meant to
give a great tea-party on the evening of December 25 in his
spacious new house, but on that day (Charlotte von Stein's
birthday) Christiane brought forth a son. The Duke was
the god-father. The birth of this son was a great joy to
Goethe, who had a deep sense of the responsibility. On
December 2 7 Julius August Walther Goethe was baptized in
his father's house by Herder. On December 2 8 Goethe was
visited by Schiller's betrothed and by Wilhelm von Humboldt ;
he showed them beautiful impressions of gems. Of the six
last days of the year there was but one, December 28, on
which he did not dine at Court ; three times Herder was also
present. His friends at Court were glad in his gladness, and
he did not permit any extraneous considerations to mar his
joy in his own fireside, his own Christiane, his own son
August.

CHAPTER II.
VENICE  SILESIA  THE DUCAL THEATRE — OPTICS —
THE NEW HOUSE.
January 1790-JUNE 1792.
In the two years that follow Goethe entered on a new official
activity and a new scientific field. The third year brought
him a house of his own as a gift from his prince, whom he had
had to follow into the tumult of the war ; an excursion on
which the dangers threatening Western Germany were brought
near him with painful vividness.
After all, the conflict with society had tried Goethe very
much ; he was again in need of the bracing and refreshing in
fluence of travel. But, in the beginning of 1790 the question
war or peace? was in the balance. Accordingly, the Duke
hastened to Berlin, accompanied by Voigt, whose admirable
business powers have been already spoken of. Goethe was
left in charge of many affairs, which fully occupied the two
first months of the year. Every preparation was made so that
the building of the Castle might begin immediately upon the
return of the Duke. In telling the Duke of this Goethe praises
the skill and good sense of the architect Arends. Then the
Ilmenau mines were a source of trouble ; a second machine
for keeping down the water was necessary. Baldauf, the
mining expert from Schneeberg, was expected. The tran
scription of Faust and the essay Metamorphose der Pflanzen
were placed in the printer's hands. Of the latter, Auguste de
St. Hilaire says that it is one of those few books which not only
render their authors immortal but are immortal themselves.
On February 5 Goethe wrote the first Elegie of the year 1790.1
1 Goethe to Karl August, February 6, 1790. — Tr.

436 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii.
Soon after he went to Ilmenau, where, with the help of Baldauf,
who had at length arrived, he " hopes to conquer the subter
ranean Neptune."1 Besides, the levying of taxes and many
other things fell on Goethe's shoulders.2
The Duchess Amalia, who had lingered a good while in
Naples, now caused her Oberhofmeisler, Einsiedel, to write to
Goethe pressing him to come to meet her in Italy. This
invitation reached Goethe at the close of February 1790,
The beautiful weather seemed also to invite to travel. He
wrote immediately (February 28) to Berlin, begging of the ,
Duke the needful six weeks' leave of absence. "Without
expense I should thus secure a great bit of pleasure, for I
must once more see something foreign. And I will certainly
be useful to your mother. . . . Send me also a word to say
how you are, and when the reviews take place this year, if
there is not war. I should like to spend '90 as much as
possible in the open air." On March 1 Goethe writes that
they must not, however, be late for the crowning of the
Emperor in Frankfurt; these are pleasant things to look
forward to.
Certain that the Duke would give permission, Goethe
began at once to prepare. He started about the close of the
first week of March 1790, travelling with his servant Gotze
in the little Bohemian chaise in which the Duke had made
so many journeys.3 In his passionate longing for travel he
had at first forgotten that he would leave wife and child
alone. The parting from them made him "quite soft;"4
and he felt sorrow, too, in bidding farewell to Herder's boy
August In Jena he was detained several days by " a complicated
mischief," as he tells Herder. Writing again to this steadfast
friend on March 12, 1790, he says : — "As towards the end
one begins to grow tender and anxious, it then first struck me
that after my departure my maiden and my little one are left
altogether alone, should anything befall them, in which she
1 Reading Neptun instead of the incomprehensible Stegbau of the
reprints of Goethe's letter. In German writing characters the two words
are like each other. — Tr.
2 See the letters to Karl August in this period. — Tr.
8 Goethe to Karl August, July 1, 1790. — Tr.
4 " Ganz miirbe." Goethe to Herder (Jena, March 1790]. — Tr.

jyyw-x/yA.j nuuor, nrtLj nuivir.. 437*'
could not help herself. I have told her, in such an extreme
case, to turn to you. Pardon ! " The " abomination of
discordances," which Goethe could only " cloak over," 1 hav
ing detained him so long in Jena, he used the more speed
in his journey afterwards. On the Wednesday before Easter,
March 31, 1790, he arrived in Venice, where he was to await
the Duchess.
The old enthusiasm for Italy had altogether passed away.
He felt very intensely now how much unseemliness and wrong
¦ there was in Italian life ; and no doubt the thought of home and
Christiane had much to do with the uneasiness and bitterness
of his mood. He began to write Epigrams in the manner of
Martial. Thus on April 3, 1790, he writes to the Duke: —
" My Elegies have attained their highest sum, and the little
book would be closed. On the other hand, I am bringing
a Libellus Epigrammatum back with me. " The delay in the
arrival of the Duchess was annoying. Still, though so much
in this " Stone and Water-nest"2 displeased him, he was able
to find much to amuse and instruct during his stay. Indeed,
the delay led to a fruitful discovery.
On May 4, 1790, Goethe writes to Herder's wife : —
" During the past month I have seen, read, thought, written [the
Epigramme had grown to a hundred] more than in a year at
other times, when the neighbourhood of friends and of my good
treasure makes me quite comfortable and happy. ... By a
strangely happy chance — that Gotze, for a jest took up an
animal's skull at the Jewish cemetery, and jokingly presented it
to me as a Jew's skull — I have made a great step forwards in
the explanation of animal development. Now again I stand
before another door until fortune hands me the key." The
skull which Gotze picked up had split in so happy a way as to
make plain to Goethe's eyes the truth of his prevision that the
skull is a metamorphosed vertebra. The letter continues : —
" Nor have I neglected to contemplate the sea-monsters, and
on them too have made some beautiful observations." He also
writes : — " The old Zucchi [Angelika Kauffmann's husband]
is very friendly. He gives me lectures on the Directory,3 and
explains to me the strange constitution of this state, while I
1 "Greuel der Missverhaltnissen," Goethe to Herder, Jena, March 12,
1790: " Bem'anteln," Goethe to Herder [Jena, March 1790]. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Herder, April 15, 1790. — Tr. 3 " Adresskalender." — Tr.

438 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk.vi.ch. ii.
run through the Venetian history. I have almost looked myself
sick at pictures, and really must pause for a week." On April
15 he had written to Herder that he was studying the history
of Venetian painting with great delight. Moreover, from the
artists employed at the academy for the restoration of paintings,
Goethe learned much as to the methods employed by the
old masters in priming and laying on tints. The arrival in
Venice on May 5, 1790, of Heinrich Meyer, who was but a
short time recovered from a dangerous illness, was a great joy
to Goethe. And next day came the Duchess, accompanied
by his dear friend Bury. A busy time of sight-seeing followed,
first in Venice, then in Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Mantua. In
the city last named Bury stayed, while Meyer went thence to
Switzerland for the benefit of his health.1 In Augsburg Goethe
received from the Duke an invitation to the Prussian camp in
Silesia.2 For the King of Prussia, seeing that the negotiations
with Austria were paralysed, meant to try whether his personal
presence in Silesia with an army ready for battle would hurry
matters ; and the Duke of Weimar was charged with the
inspection of the Magdeburg cavalry regiments.
On June 20, 1790, Goethe returned with the Duchess
Amalia to Weimar, glad at heart to be with his dear ones
again. The Duke repeated his invitation, but his happiness in
his home, the need that he should wait to see the Duchess
Amalia comfortably settled, the building of the Castle and
other business, detained Goethe a considerable time. The
last volume of his works, with Faust and the Metamorphose der
Pflanzen, now lay printed before him. He writes to the Duke
on July 1, 1790: — "The little botanical work gives me joy,
for on every walk I find new vouchers for it. And I will now
write together what I have thought as to the formation of
animals." (On July 9 he tells Knebel how he will work
on the approaching journey at the second part of the
Metamorphose der Pflanzen, and at the essay on the develofj-
ment of animals.) Earlier in the letter to the Duke
he says : — " I am copying at my Epigramme. Many of
them, indeed, are completely local, and can only be enjoyed
in Venice." From Kant's Kritik der Urtheilskraft, just pub
lished, shone a clear light for Goethe. Of the earlier works
1 Goethe to Herder, Mantua, May 28, 1790. — Tr.
2 This was received about June 10 or 11, 1790. — Tr.

1 790-1792. j inuusii AJND tiUM.il.. 439
of this great philosopher, who pressed on his path with such
steady, logical sequence, Goethe had but a general knowledge.
But the great central thought of this book — that Nature and
Art are two altogether distinct worlds, whose creatures have a
perfect right to existence in themselves, and further, the rejec
tion of final causes, made a very direct appeal to Goethe, and
excited vivid interest. As formerly from Spinoza, so now from
Kant he read forth only such things as were correspondent with
his mode of thinking, as illuminated it and confirmed it.
Accompanied by his servant Gotze, he again set out on
July 26, 1790, in the Duke's little chaise, five weeks after his
return to Weimar. In Dresden, last seen three and twenty
years ago,1 he arrived on July 28, and was delighted and re
freshed by the paintings, the antiques, and the casts ; and, be
sides, he made many interesting acquaintances in his two days'
stay. Thence he travelled to the camp at Grebischen before
Breslau. The Duke, whom he now met after seven months'
parting, was " strong and stout"2 With the camp as a central
point, Goethe traversed the beautiful country on all sides, and
gained many new views and conceptions. When the King
of Prussia arrived on August 1 1, the Duke of Weimar took up
his quarters in the city of Breslau, and Goethe went with him
as guest. Goethe kept eye and ear open in every direction, hop
ing for increase of knowledge and wisdom. Among the persons
whom he met, the one who pleased him most was the excellent
business man Oberbergrath von Schuckmann. Already probably
he planned to gain Schuckmann for Weimar. Alone, he made
an excursion through the county of Glatz ; on a week's journey
with the Duke, he visited the mines of Tarnowitz ; thence they
went on to Cracow; the ancient place of crowning of the Polish
kings, now decaying more and more ; then the salt-mines of
Wieliczka and the place of pilgrimage, Czenstochowa, were
visited. On this journey Goethe widened his knowledge of
mining. He was comforted to find that in Tarnowitz they had
to combat a flow of water still greater than that in the Ilmenau
mine. Several Epigramme were composed or sketched during
this period ; the comic opera // Conte was continued, and the
treatise on animal development begun. On September n,
1 In 1767. See pp. 71, 72.— Tr.
2 " Stark und dick," Goethe to Herder : Before Breslau, August 10,
1790. — Tr.

44° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii,
1790, having returned to "noisy, muddy, evil-smelling Breslau,"
Goethe writes to Herder : — " Everywhere there is roguery and
vagabondism, and I shall certainly pass no really happy hour
until I have supped with you and slept by my girl's side. If
you continue to love me, if a few good folk continue friendly,
if my girl is true, if my child lives, and my big stove gives good
warmth, I have nothing essential left to desire. The Duke is
very good to me, and is happy in his element." Still Goethe
enjoyed the week of delay in Dresden on his homeward
journey. He had a great deal of intercourse with Schiller's
friend Korner, to whom he spoke with earnestness and
depth on the teleological part of Kant's Kritik der Urtheils-
kraft, on Nature, and on Art. Some of the Romische Elegien
were repeated to Korner. On October 6, 1790, the Duke,
with whom Goethe travelled, was met at Jena by the Duchess
and the Court with festal rejoicing.
On October 9, 1790, the roof of the new Castle of Weimar
was put on. Immediately on Goethe's return, he fell to dictat
ing at the essay begun in Breslau. When towards the end of
October it came to a standstill, he went with Lips to Jena for
a couple of weeks, in order to hear Loder lecture on the muscles.
During this stay he visited Schiller. " The conversation soon
came upon Kant," writes Schiller. " It is interesting how he
clothes everything in his own way and manner, and renders
back surprisingly what he has read ; but I would not like to
dispute with him on things which interest me very much. He
completely lacks that hearty fashion of confessing to any
opinion; to him the whole of philosophy is subjective, and
that puts an end to both conviction and dispute. And I can
not altogether approve of his philosophy ; it derives too much
from the world of the senses, where I derive from the soul. In
general his mode of conceiving is too sensuous, and handles
(betastet) too much for me. But his spirit works and seeks in
all directions, and strives to build for itself a whole, and to me
that makes him a great man."
When Goethe was back in Weimar the Romische Elegien
and the Epigramme occupied him for a time ; he thought of
printing the former, but Herder counselled against it.1 By
Goethe's influence the Duke was moved to invite Schuckmann
1 Goethe to Knebel, January 1, 1791. — Tr.

1790-1792.] HOUSE AND HOME. 441
to a seat in the Privy Council of Weimar.1 The close of the
year 1790 found the lower rooms of Goethe's new house still not
perfectly ready. It was about this time that an important
event in the scientific history of his mind occurred. A con
siderable while before he had borrowed some prisms from
Biittner in order to perform the experiments of Newton. Now
Loder sent entreating that these prisms should be given to the
returning messenger, as Biittner was quite unhappy at not
having received them after several requests. Goethe had
never unpacked them, and now had brought down the box
in which they lay undisturbed, when it occurred to him to
take one look through a prism. But what was his amazement
when the white wall on which the rays were directed from the
prism instead of showing several colours remained white,
colour showing only where something dark edged the white,
showing brightest of all on the window frames. Immediately
he conceived that he had here discovered the Newtonian theory
of light to be false, and that in order to colour a boundary was
necessary. He could not think of sending back the prisms ;
he sent begging for a prolongation of the loan. It escaped
him, that Newton distinctly says that colour is only manifest
when one looks from a certain distance on a white surface of
small extension.
Goethe's vivid feeling of the importance to painters of the
distribution of light and shade, the importance, too, of the
dark medium, contributed to hurry him into the belief that
Newton's explanation of the origin of colours is erroneous. A
great deal of delight, but also a great deal of pain, during half
a lifetime was to proceed from the study of optics that now
began. So much did he take to heart the methodic exposition
of his theory, that many a time he was ready to set this per
formance of his above all the other things in which he had
been successful.
Busy as he was in official and scientific activity, there was
no lack of the cheery social life to which Christiane had the
art to incline him. Evidence of this we have in the humorous
reply to Reichardt, who had asked him for a great opera.
Goethe asks Reichardt to send half a dozen or half a hundred
airs for either English dances or quadrilles, only let them be
1 Goethe to Schuckmann, November 25,- 1790. — Tr.

442 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii.
characteristic ; as for the figures they would make them out.
" Around me now," remarks Goethe, " thefe is neither music
nor song that is not fiddling for the dance. ... If it goes
tolerably with me in the dance and in life probably a tune will
soon be heard again."1 There were social evening gatherings
at the Duchess Amalia's 2 in which Goethe gladly took part
At these assemblies there was reading aloud from the works
of Shakespeare, Lessing, Wieland, and of Goethe himself.
The Duchess Amalia, who possessed the earlier books of
Wilhelm Meister, now persuaded Goethe to begin work
ing on the novel;3 but only too soon he gave it up again.
Goethe was on the friendliest terms with the Duchess Luise.
She was very bitter when she thought of the humiliation of the
French monarchy beneath a disorderly democracy, almost
more bitter with those Germans who applauded the event.
Goethe and Charlotte von Stein, like her, execrated the mad,
unrestrained delirium about freedom.
In the beginning of 1791 the Duke engaged in the task
of founding a Court Theatre, the management of which he
offered in vain to the actor Beck of Mannheim, who was then
giving successful representations in Weimar. Already in 1 7 90,
in Berlin, the Duke and Reichardt had had much discussion on
' the elevation of the German Theatre, and both of them were
very hopeful, but Goethe thought it hardly possible to effect
any good, such was the bad taste prevalent. " Of originality,
invention, character, of the unity and perfect finish of a work
of art, the Germans have not the least notion," wrote Goethe
to Reichardt at that time.4 And again : " The ruder class
of spectators you captivate by variety and extravagance, the
more cultivated by a kind of propriety. Knights, Robbers,
Benefactors, Grateful Benefited Persons, an honest, direct
Tiers-Etat, an infamous Aristocracy, and so on, and pervading
all a well-sustained mediocrity of thought and language, out
of which one by chance but ventures a few steps downwards
into dulness or upwards into absurdity — here you have the
ingredients and the tone of our novels and plays during the
last ten years." But now when the Duke offered Goethe the
1 Goethe to Reichardt, October 25, 1790. — Tr.
2 On Mondays. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Knebel, January 1, 1791. — Tr.
4 Enclosed in a letter to Karl August, February 28, 1790. — Tr.

I790-I792.J HOUSE AND HOME. 443
control of the theatre, he would not refuse it ; for, after all, he
could at least raise the theatre from the condition to which it
had sunk under Bellomo's management, and he might hope
to find in his work a new stimulus to dramatic poetry. The
details of administration were to be under the care of Franz
Kirms, a man just turned thirty, a Landkammerrath, and
Assessor of the Marshal of the Household. Negotiations for
the formation of a company, and the necessary preparations
in Weimar, were immediately begun, and all haste was used.
For they hoped to open in May 1791, then a month later
to go to the near watering-place Lauchstedt, then in Erfurt to
give the company further practice in playing together, and at
last in the autumn of 1791 to attempt higher tasks. Goethe
himself began to work up his Conte into a comedy, hazardous
though the material seemed.
He was also busy with the affairs of Ilmenau at this time.
The machine which Baldauf built had proved inadequate to
subdue the water in the mine ; Baldauf declared that two
more were needed, and the money for these could not be
procured until a meeting of shareholders had granted it. On
February 24, 1791, the anniversary of the opening of the
mine in 1784,1 Goethe concluded the Fourth Report on the
Progress of the new Mine at Ilmenau.
Nor had his optical inquiries been forgotten. When, in
the beginning of March 1 791, he went to Jena with the Duke,
he expounded his new theory to Professor Voigt, who in vain
strove to show him its wrongness. On this occasion Goethe
visited Schiller, then recovering from a severe illness. Goethe,
as we have seen, had known and liked Schiller's wife for
some time. The loss which the University would sustain in
Schiller's death weighed on Goethe.
On April 5, 1791, Bellomo concluded his representations ;2
a month later those of the Ducal Theatre were to begin.
That this might be in some measure worthy what a vast
amount of labour was needful ! The famous manager
Schroder came to Weimar on April 20, 1791. From him
Goethe gained information on many points. Shortly after
this, ' at the close of April, poor Moritz, very ill, came to
1 See pp. 335, 336.— Tr.
2 Begun in January 1784; see pp. 337, 338. — Tr.

444 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii.
Weimar. With this friend Goethe spent a few delightful
days, talking of almost every matter of art or science upper
most in his thoughts, and profiting in many ways by Moritz's
remarks.1 On May 7, 1791, the Ducal Theatre of Weimar was
opened with Iffland's play Die Jdger, and a prologue by
Goethe. It was at first necessary to adhere to well-known
pieces. On May 30, 1791, Goethe can write to Reichardt : —
" On the whole, our theatre gives me pleasure ; it is already
far better than the former one, and now the task is to get
them to play in unison, to attend to certain mechanical advan
tages, and to bring them by degrees from that lazy manner in
which German actors comfortably drawl. I will write a few
pieces myself, approaching in some measure the taste of the
present moment, and will try whether by degrees people can
be trained to enjoy a play in verse and richer in art." Un
fortunately the resources of the theatre were so limited that
even the chief actors had to undertake several parts, had
sometimes to appear as supernumeraries, and to sing in the
choruses in operas. The very servants, the tailor of the
theatre and the machinist had to appear. Pupils from the
Gymnasium served in the chorus ; and the supernumeraries
were chiefly these and other young persons.
On May 17, 1791, Goethe tells the Duke that he has
written out the theory of blue colour, and will insert it in some
journal. And to his lively joy an objection of Herder's strikes
the spark which lights up for him the simple principle of the
tints of the prism, of the rainbow, of magnifying glasses, etc.
He tells Jacobi on June 1, that in a quarter of a year he
hopes to have completed a new theory of light, shade, and
colour. At this time Knebel with his sister came to Weimar.
Goethe received both with friendliness. Knebel was, how
ever, most unpleasantly infected with the French ideas about
freedom, and aired them even at Court with complete regard-
lessness. On June 6, 1791, Goethe attended the meeting of share
holders in Ilmenau, which, happily, granted the sums to pay
for the new machines. The Ducal company now betook
themselves to Lauchstedt, where all went well. On June 12,
1 Goethe to Reichardt, May 30, 1791. — Tr.

1790-1792.] HOUSE AND HOME. 445
1 791, Goethe on behalf of the Duke offered Schuckmann the
place in the Council which Goethe's resignation left vacant.
But Schuckmann would not leave the Prussian service, a great
disappointment to Goethe and the Duke. At this time,
beside the building of the Castle and fresh improvements
in Weimar Park, the entertainment of the Duchess Amalia
occupied Goethe. He now sketched the plan of an evening
assembly of cultivated people to take place during the
winter on the first Friday of every month at her house.1
Amid all the various claims on his attention the study of
optics was continued with the happiest result; wonderful
experiments were thought out and performed, the rainbow
brought to great perfection.2 He had a good deal of trouble
about mechanical matters of fabrication; for instance, about
the cardboard pages on which for convenience' sake he wished
to publish the numerous tables needful to establish his
theories.3 In the quiet happiness of Goethe's life at this time came
a great shock. Merck, by whose friendship through more
than twenty years he had been benefited and sustained,
tortured by bodily suffering and by the illusion that the
military chest of which he had the control exhibited a deficit,
had put an end to his life with a bullet.4
In the second week of July 17 91 Goethe left Weimar,
and travelled by Erfurt to Gotha, where the appliances for the
study of physics were of great service to him. From Gotha
he visited Eisenach, and also the Court at Wilhelmsthal."
On this excursion he finished the third act of his comedy
// Conte. After his return he brought his treatise on the
formation of colours rapidly to a conclusion, so that on his
birthday, August 28, 17 91, he was able to announce that the
first part of his Beitrdge zur Optik 6 would soon appear. It
was printed at Weimar in September 1791, first having
been submitted to Herder. It only ran to four sheets.
During September Goethe was besides engaged in finishing
his comedy (to be called Der Grosskophta, not 77 Conte as at
1 The plan is reprinted in the appendix to the volume Goethe's
Briefe an Christian Gottlob Voigt. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Karl August, July 1, 1791. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Karl August, July 8, 1791. — Tr.
4 June 27, 1791. — Tr. s Contributions to Optics. — Tr.

44° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ir.
first designed), and in planning how to give his theatre an
impetus. The theatre was to reopen at Weimar on October
i, 1 791. Goethe wrote a prologue. The manuscript of
Der Grosskophta, after having been read with pleasure by
Herder, was forwarded to Berlin for printing. Immediately
after this a domestic misfortune befell which pained Goethe
deeply. Christiane bore a dead boy on October 14, 1791,
Goethe threw himself lamenting on the ground, and tossed
to and fro in unspeakable grief.
The first of the Duchess Amalia's Friday evening assem
blies took place on November 4, 1791, the Duke being one
of those present. Goethe, as President, opened it with a very
luminous exposition of his new observations in optics, connect
ing these with the essay that he had lately published. The
necessary diagrams he had sketched beforehand on a black
surface. He argued against Newton's theory, and showed
how blind adoration can strike deep roots even in good minds.
Goethe was followed by Herder, Voigt, the Court physician
Hufeland, and the Jena professors Batsch and Lenz, each of
whom delivered a short essay on some subject. Besides those
here named, we know two others who were present — the old
Biittner, and the Councillor of Consistory Bottiger. The latter
had now been a month at work as Director of the Weimar
Gymnasium. He had been appointed through the agency of
Herder. Just turned thirty, gifted and erudite, he was a great
gain to the intellectual life of Weimar, though one needed a
little time to grow accustomed to his excitable, vivacious
nature, and voice of the deepest bass.1
Now at length Heinrich Meyer, completely restored to
health, came to Weimar ; and this was to Goethe a beginning
of new life. For Meyer possessed a knowledge of Art and of
the history of Art so fine and deep, that Goethe could think
of no one to put by his side.2 People in Weimar might laugh
at the broad Swiss accent of Meyer, but they could not help
liking him. He took up his abode in Goethe's upper story,
and became like a member of the family. It was perhaps in
the beginning of this residence that Meyer painted in water-
1 From a letter of BSttiger's is derived our knowledge of that first
Friday evening assembly. See it quoted in Duntzer's Goethe und Karl
August. — Tr.
2 Zweiter Aufenthalt in Rom, December 25, 1787. — Tr.

1790-1792.] HOUSE AND HOME. 447
colour Christiane with her August in her arms in an attitude
admirably modelled on that of the Madonna della sedia. This
painting was a great favourite with Goethe, and was always
kept carefully under a curtain.1
At this time Goethe was completely possessed with con
fidence in the fruitfulness of his theory of colour, yet he saw
that he could not hope to subdue this province of Nature
singlehanded. On November 17, 1791, he writes to Reich
ardt: — "I have already entered into close union with a painter
[Meyer] and with a mathematician [Professor Voigt of Jena ?],
and hope to form near and genuine intimacies in the other
departments also." Earlier in the letter he proposes that
Reichardt shall be his associate as to acoustics.
He now ventured to prepare Shakespeare's King Johti for
the stage. Christiane Amalie Louise Neumann, then but
twelve years old, he trained in the part of Arthur. This girl
had appeared in Bellomo's company in her ninth year, and
with great applause. The Duchess Amalia had committed
her to the instruction of Corona Schroter, and after the death
of her father had become her protector. With what passionate
artist delight " and partiality Goethe strove to cultivate this
" beautiful talent," 2 is known to readers of Euphrosyne,3 the
elegy that glorifies her memory. Her Arthur was played
with wonderful truth and perfect art. Goethe worked hard to
bring the other actors into accord with it ; as his effort, in
deed, always was to secure a harmonious whole.4 After this he
ventured on a performance of his own comedy, Der Gross-
kophta, in which Fraulein Neumann played the effective part
of the Niece with great success. The comedy was represented
first on December 17, 17 91 ; then on December 26, 1791 ;
then on March 10, 1792, and again at Lauchstedt on July 15,
1792. Reichardt was present at the last of these performances.
Goethe writes to Reichardt on July 29, 1792 : — "I am glad
1 Riemer, Mittheilungen iiber Goethe, i. 358, expressly states that from
this picture only can one gain a notion of the freshness and charm of
Christiane's appearance in those early days. — Tr.
2 " Wiinsch' ich dein schbnes Talent gliicklich vollendet zu sehn," is a
line in Euphrosyne. — Tr.
• 3 Euphrosyne conceived on the Swiss journey of 1797 ; written 1798.
— Tr.
4 King John was first played in public in Weimar on November 29
1 79 1.— TR.

4^8 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii.
that you have not lost your old partiality for the Cophta, and
that the representation in Lauchstedt has not altogether dis
pleased you. I will repeat it at least once every year as a sign.
For more than one reason the other German theatres will keep
aloof from it." The epilogue for the last performance of the
year 1791 was composed by Goethe for Fraulein Neumann,
who spoke it on December 31, 17 91, in the midst of many
children. In the beginning of the new year, 1792, the year that con
cealed war in its bosom, the theatre and optical inquiry en
grossed the poet. In the second part of the Beitrdge zur Optik,
which was now prepared, he did not advance beyond the sub
jective phenomena of colour ; he desired, as he told Reichardt
on November 17, 1 791, to make a methodic advance, to add
experiment to experiment, not to promulgate his doctrine until
it could and must be deduced from his experiments by any one.
Meyer was at this time engaged on a painting, The Rape of
the Daughters of Leucippus, and in the colouring conformed to
the results of Goethe's prism experiments. Being exhibited at
one of the Duchess Amalia's Friday Assemblies, this picture, to
Goethe's triumph, won the highest admiration from all, as well
for colouring as for composition (Auffassung) and presenta
tion (Darstellung).1
An important event in the history of the Weimar stage
was the performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni on the birth
day of the Duchess Luise (January 30, 1792). On January
28 Hamlet was performed; on February 28 Schiller's Don
Karlos, which the author had worked over afresh; both
plays were very successful.
The second part of the Beitrdge zur Optik was to appear
at Easter, but the difficulty of packing the coloured card
which illustrated the text delayed the booksellers in sending it
out. The publication of a third part, which was to have
appeared at the same time as the second, did not take place
at all owing to the supplements. Towards the close of April
1792 Count Christian Stolberg stopped for awhile in Weimar;
J he was going to Karlsbad, leaving his wife Luise in Weimar
with the Countess Bernstorff. Christian Stolberg visited
Goethe, and saw Goethe's " curly -golden -haired little boy." A
1 This Friday fell on February 17, 1792. We know of it from
Bottiger. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 55. — Tr.

1790-1792.]

HOUSE AND HOME.

449

The Countess Stolberg, who abhorred Goethe's natural marriage,
was very repellent to the latter because of her unrestrained

tendency to censoriousness.1 Christian Stolberg and Goethe
never met afterwards. 1 Goethe to Jacobi, June 15, 1792. — Tr,
2 G

45° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. ii.
Before going to Aschersleben the Duke commissioned
Voigt to buy the house on the Frauenpldn that Goethe had
occupied from 1782 to 1789. The Duke purposed to make
a present of it to Goethe. After a considerable time spent in
bargaining, the house was bought for 6000 thalers.
While these things were going on in Weimar, Prussia, as
the ally of Austria, was preparing for war with France. Goethe
kept hoping that there would be no war, since " in these times
of calculation we have seen a great deal of this kind of weather
pass off."1 The birth of a healthy prince on May 30, 1792,
was a joy to the Duke ; for good omen he gave the child
the name of the great Weimar soldier Bernhard ; the whole
Weimar regiment stood godfather in the person of the Obrist-
wachtmeister von Weyrach. During the stay of the Duke in
Weimar, the rebuilding for Goethe of the newly-purchased
house at the Duke's expense was sanctioned. After the
Italian fashion, the six- win do wed lower story was to contain,
besides a large, gently-ascending staircase, only one great room
with recesses. Goethe planned to live in the summer of 1 792 in
the little Gartenhaus, while his collections should be stored in a
part of the lower story of the new house, which was to be made
ready at once. Here, too, he had a new camera obscura, and
all kinds of instruments for his experiments. The " freedom "
vertigo, which grew ever more distasteful, stirred him to com
position ; he began a tale, the Reise der Sbhne Megaprazons,
but lost the humour for it before he advanced far. He
tells Reichardt, towards the close of July 1792, that he is
working on a couple of pieces not to be brought on the
stage, but to attain their end by being printed, since in that
way the thinking part of the nation, in truth no small part, can
be reached. Without doubt these were political pieces, prob
ably sketches for the plays Der Biirgergeneral and Die Auf-
geregten. Alas ! his hope of working on the thinking part of
the nation was completely disappointed ; even his greatest
friends were so little able to appreciate Der Grosskophta, that
they compared it with fphigenie and Tasso ! (and even these
had failed to kindle enthusiasm), and received it with coldness
and shrugging of shoulders.
Since the middle of June 1792, German regiments had
1 Goethes Briefe an Voigt., S. 146. — Tr.

1790-1792.] HOUSE AND HOME. 451
been moving towards the Rhine. Weimar was feverishly
excited by their march through. The Duke was soon to
depart, and had many charges to lay on Goethe, and this,
added to the confusion of house-changing, deprived the poet
of all quiet. On the morning of June 22, 1792, the Duke left
Weimar, after having received from Goethe the promise of a
visit at Coblenz. Later, the Duke expressed a wish that
Goethe, instead of remaining on the Rhine, should accompany
him (the Duke) on the campaign into France ; Goethe did his
best to avoid this. Then he was tormented by long delay in
the arrival of the Duke's decisive reply. As Karl August re
mained steadfast in his desire, Goethe set forth from Weimar
in the second week of August 1792, leaving with a heavy heart
wife and child, and his true friend Meyer, who was to superin
tend the rebuilding, and to counsel and support Christiane.

CHAPTER III.
THE CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE— JACOBI  THE PRINCESS GALITZIN 
REINEKE FUCHS  THE SIEGE OF MAINZ  FICHTE  VOSS —
SCHILLER. August 1792-SEPTEMBER 1794.
The Duke's little chaise again bore the poet and his servant
Gotze from Weimar ; their destination now was the German
army of invasion in France. Goethe took with him his MSS.
on optics, the third volume of Gehler's Physikalisches Wbrter-
buch, and a careful map of the seat of war. His first
stopping-place was his native city, where he had planned to
remain until the end of the month, only making short excur
sions in the neighbourhood.1 He arrived in Frankfurt on
August 12, 1792. The Frau Rath received her dear Wolf
gang with infinite joy ; she had now been a long time yearn
ing in vain to see him ! She thought him stronger and fuller.
Her maternal heart exulted as she once more pressed to her
heart her dear son, whose fame brought so many strangers to
her ; for all the world was longing to see the mother of the
famous poet, but she ascribed to God alone the gift of great
ness. It was indeed a source of regret to the Frau Rath that
her son instead of a church-wedded wife had only a Liebchen,
and that she could not advertise the birth of his children, but
her grandmotherly love for his August was not the less, and
she could not be harsh towards the poor unfriended maiden
whom Wolfgang loved so welL On August 18, 1792, Goethe
writes to Jacobi : — " My old friends and my increasing native
city I have seen again with joy ; only it is impossible to avoid
tedium in all the social circles, for where two or three are
gathered together you hear the song now four years old being
1 Goethe to Herder, August 13, 1792. — Tr.

I792-I794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 453
strummed pro and contra, and not even with variations — but
the crude theme. . . Unfortunately the newspapers come
everywhere ; these are now my most dangerous foes." The
newspapers spread so much that was false that Goethe could
not endure them. He was pretty impartial himself, and speaks
in the same letter of his indifference to the fate of either
"aristocrat or democrat sinners." On August 16, 1792, the
Duke's summons to the camp had arrived. On August 20
Goethe went on to Mainz, where he spent two pleasant evenings
with his friends Forster and Sommering.
On August 27, 1792, the eve of his birthday, Goethe
reached the marshy camping ground of the Prussians outside
the town of Longwy, which had surrendered after a short
resistance. He was glad to find the Duke of Weimar in right
good health. On August 28, 1792, his birthday, he visited
Longwy, accompanied by the Duke and some friends. In the
inn they drank the health of the Duke and of his son the
god-child of the Weimar Regiment, and probably he whose
birthday it was did not lack kindly remembrances. When on
August 29 the Weimar Regiment passed before the King of
Prussia, Goethe preceded it in the Duke's chaise.1 The King
rode up and asked in kingly laconic fashion to whom the
carriage belonged. Goethe answered in loud clear voice,
"The Duke of Weimar." Soon after he left the chaise, and
mounting the white horse allotted to him, rode on with the
van. On August 3 1, outside Verdun he observed in a meadow
pond of spring water one of the most attractive phenomena
of colour. At midnight that day meeting Prince Reuss,
whom he had long known, amid the batteries outside Verdun,
and being asked what new thing he had on hand, Goethe tells
the surprised prince not of tragedies and novels but of his
recent researches in Colour. Verdun yielded on September
2, 1792, to the second summons; on September 3, the
Duke of Weimar's birthday, Goethe and many others rode
into the city. Goethe sent thence to the dear ones at home
by a courier a box of costly sugar-plums, bonbons, and
liqueurs. And now the great mistake of delaying in Verdun was made.
1 The Weimar Regiment went first, so that Goethe in his chaise led
the army of invasion as it moved on to conquer France ! — Campagne in
Franknich, August 29.— Tr.

454 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. m.
Moreover, the boldness of the King of Prussia, who counselled
marching at once on Paris, was overruled by the caution of
the Duke of Brunswick ; and the army moved down the Aisne
laboriously on the deep road until (September 1 2) it reached
Landres opposite Grandpre", where Dumouriez had occupied
the heights. The rain poured without ceasing, the tents
gave but little shelter. Still Goethe dictated to Kanzlei-
sekretar Vogel an elucidation of the colour-phenomenon ob
served at Verdun.1 With the aid of the Austrian General
Clerfayt, Dumouriez was dislodged, but the army, instead of
following him, passed a couple of days in inactivity.
When the Weimar Regiment — the van of the army — broke
up from Somme Tourbe on September 20, 1792, Goethe
accompanied the first squadron, which rapidly pressed on in
advance of the rest. But the squadron soon received orders
to go back and take position in front of the forework La Lune.
In their wild ride they had crossed the highroad from
Chalons to Paris, as Goethe saw by a signpost, a disquieting
reminder that they were between Paris and the French Army.
This day, September 20, 1792, was the day ofthe Cannonade
of Valmy. The day ended without profit to the allies, because
the Duke of Brunswick lost the advantage that offered of
attacking Kellermann. Goethe, desiring to know the peculiar
nature of the cannon fever, rode, in spite of the warnings of
officers whom he knew, to a point where the balls played
around sufficiently, but were less dangerous than at other
places, because they remained embedded in the wet ground
In the night after the cannonade Goethe said : — " From this
place and day begins a new epoch in history, and you can
say that you have been there."2 In truth, remarkable
words ! He saw that the power of the allies was broken, and
that the Republic would hurl itself with irresistible rage on
Germany. The French afterwards dated their calendar from
this day.
That night the Prussians scooped trenches in the earth and
lay in them cloak-enwrapt ; thus reposed the Duke of Weimar
and his Minister Goethe. On the evening of September 21
the headquarters were removed back to Hans, where Goethe
was overjoyed to find his little chaise. Dumouriez managed
1 Campagne in Frankreich, Sept. 12, 1792. — Tr. 2 Ibid. Sept. 20.— Tr.

I792-I794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 455
to protract negotiations over several days, thus detaining the
allies under circumstances the worst for them ; they could not
get bread enough, and the weather was fearful. On September
27, 1792, Goethe writes to Knebel: — "They begin to think
something of the enemy whom heretofore they despised, and,
as is usual in such changes, to think more of the enemy than is
right. Some decision will be shortly known. There are only
a few ways of emerging from this condition. The Duke is
right well ; so am I, though I diminish in stoutness daily, as
my waistcoats and coats indicate. I am after my fashion
diligent in silence, and think out many things; in opticis I have
made some beautiful advances. I am reading French authors
whom otherwise I should never have seen, and so I use the
time as well as I can. If the weather were good all would be dif
ferent, and many experiments might be tried, and more men seen;
but, as it is, one has to spend days without leaving the tent."
On the evening of the day on which this letter was written,
September 27, 1792, they were talking seriously in the Duke's
tent of the gravity of the situation. Goethe, who amid all dis
tress was ever ready with observations grave or gay, felt the
impulse to remind them of the Crusade of St. Louis. On that
crusade, when the Christian army was in the most dangerous
position and had suffered dreadful losses, the Count de Soissons
said smiling to the Sire de Joinville : — " Seneschal, let the
pack bark and brawl ! By God's throne ! of this day we shall
yet speak in the hall with ladies !" After telling this story,
which made some smile, Goethe went on to speak of the con
dition of Attila after his defeat, which had occurred in that
very neighbourhood, a condition far worse than that of the
Prussian army, and yet Attila had not been destroyed. After
wards Goethe read aloud to the Duke until nearly morning
from an amusing French book.1
On September 29, 1792, in the evening, the army of in
vasion began its retreat. Every day was full of weariness and
wretchedness. Goethe during the first days travelled in the
chaise, but at length left it to relieve the four little horses of
his weight ; but the riding horses were nowhere to be seen, and
the poet mounted into a commissariat waggon that came by, the
only other occupant of which was a sulky kitchen-maid. How-
1 Campagne in Frankreich, September 27. — Tr.

456 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. iii.
ever, he read in his Gehler and tried to forget her.1 When,
by and by, they came upon the saddle-horses, Goethe in
mounting vowed that he would not easily again enter on such
an expedition. On the evening of this day, October 4, Goethe,
his companions said, was for the first time low-spirited and
taciturn. He now became very uneasy about the fate of the
chaise and his trunk with his portfolio, his papers, money, and
clothes.2 The distress of the regiment came to its height at
Consenvoy, where they spent the night of October 7, 1792;
Goethe describes his grim method of tiring himself into enjoy
ment of the wet, cold ground as a resting-place. On October
8, 1792, the Duke, pitying Goethe's condition, offered him the
fourth place in an ambulance which was being sent with a
couple of invalids to Verdun ; Goethe could procure a few
days' rest in that city. As they drove to Verdun they overtook
a little vehicle drawn by four small horses ; it was Goethe's
chaise, and in the charge of friends ; everything was safe.
The good servant had fought through all difficulties. From
Verdun, on October 10, 1792, Goethe wrote home to tell of
his welfare.3 But on October 1 1 they had to set forth again,
as the Prussians could not hold Verdun. From Luxemburg;
on October 16, 1792, Goethe writes to Herder: — -"I for my
part sing unto the Lord the merriest Psalm of David since
He hath delivered me from the mire that went over my soul.
When you, my dear ones, thank God in silence for all kinds of
unacknowledged benefits, forget not to praise Him for having
placed you and your best friends in a position where you can
not commit follies on a grand scale. ... I am hurrying to the
fleshpots of my mother, there to awake as it were from a bad
dream which has held me prisoned between dirt and distress,
want and anxiety, danger and painfulness, corpses, carcasses,
and heaps of ruin. Farewell, and know yourselves to be as
lucky as you are."
Goethe's hope of a return through Frankfurt was to be
disappointed. He arrived in Trier on October 22, 1792.
Soon after word reached him that his prediction about the
fate of Frankfurt had proved true. After the capture of
Mainz by Custine, the French under Neuwinger had occupied
1 Campagne in Frankreich, October 4, 1792. — Tr.
2 Ibid., October 6, 1792. — Tr.
3 Riemer's Mittheilungen, ii. 334. — Tr.

I792-I794-1 HOUSE AND HOME. 457
Frankfurt and levied contributions. It was in Trier that
Goethe received a letter from his mother, which had been
much delayed in transmission, informing him of the death of
his uncle Textor on September 19, 1792. His mother went
on to say that Goethe had been chosen to fill the Councillor's
chair thus vacant, and she was commissioned to inquire
whether he was willing to do so.1 But nothing could have
been more unlikely than that the poet should give up the
well-founded good which he had earned by years of patience
and labour in Weimar.
While awaiting in Trier the coming of the Duke, Goethe
occupied himself in considering the important reliques of
Roman antiquity to be found in Trier, and the monument at
Igel near Trier, which dates from the age of the Antonines,
and which he had already seen on his journey to the army.2
On October 29, 1792, the Duke arrived in Trier; on the
following day he entertained a large company at dinner :
Goethe was present.
When Goethe saw the sick of the Weimar Regiment being
sent, by the kindness of the Duke, down the Moselle in a
vessel a desire to travel by water came upon him. He
hired a boat and went down the river to Coblenz; there
strange memories of former days in the Ehrenbreitstein
valley possessed him. At Coblenz he stopped at the post-
house in the quarters destined for the Duke of Weimar. Karl
August arrived in the night of November 5, 1792, but could
give only odd hours to his friend. As Goethe declined to be a
spectator of the operations of war any longer, he must sacrifice
his desire to revisit his native city, round which the war would
rage. He felt a longing to see Jacobi, to rest in the friendly
Pempelfort home. To avoid the roads thronged with troops the
long way from Coblenz to Diisseldorf was traversed in a Rhine
skiff. Late on a dark winter night he arrived at Pempelfort3
1 Campagne in Frankreich, October 29, 1792. — Tr.
2 On August 23, 1792. See Goethe's Essay on the monument,
Hempel's Goethe, xxviii. 415. — Tr.
3 Goethe himself in the Campagne in Frankreich gives us no precise
date for this visit. But lately published letters have established the
following. — Probable arrival in Pempelfort November 7, 1792. Three
weeks' visit brings Goethe's departure to November 30, 1792. Arrival
in Munster December 2, 1792. See Appendix, Art. 41. — Tr.

45s THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. iii.
His unexpected appearance filled Jacobi with joy. Though
their views in many matters differed — Goethe's conception of
art had undergone transfiguration in Italy, Jacobi had visited
constitutional England — the hearts of the friends, who had not
met for eight years,1 found each other again at once. Jacobi
felt that he must be indulgent towards Goethe, who had suf
fered so much in mind and body during the last few months.
The gloom of the poet was dispelled by the warm friendli
ness of the household ; his heart was more susceptible than
ever to the " blessed family-scenes " that surrounded him.
He charmed the attention of young and old by his delight
ful stories of Italy; on the other hand, his Reise der Sbhne
Megaprazons found no response, and the experiments in optics
which lay so near his heart aroused hardly any interest.
Beside the half-sisters on whom Jacobi's domestic happiness
so largely depended, Charlotte whom Goethe had known long
ago,2 and the austere " Mother of the Church " 3 Helene, and
beside Jacobi's son and daughter, Goethe met at Pempelfort
the librarian Hofrath Heinse,4 who had fled hither from
Mainz, and Jacobi's dear house-friend Heinrich Schenk.
Diisseldorf was visited frequently, and there were important
conversations there with Count Nesselrode, with von Dohm
the Prussian plenipotentiary at the Court of the Elector of
Koln, and with von Coudenhoven, General in the service of
the Elector of Mainz. The wives of the latter two were a
charming part of the company. At the Diisseldorf Picture
Gallery Goethe's especial endeavour was to thoroughly learn the
peculiar merits of the Netherlandish painters. Very anxious
about the fate of the Lower Rhine, but very glad in the con
sciousness of revivified friendship with Jacobi, Goethe after a
stay of three weeks left hospitable Pempelfort in Jacobi's
heavy travelling-carriage, his own little chaise not having
arrived. After leaving Pempelfort Goethe visited Plessing5 in
Duisburg. He then spent a very happy week (December
1792) in Munster in the little circle of the Princess Galitzin,
1 Jacobi had been in' Weimar in September 1784. See pp. 361-2. —
Tr. 2 See p. 168.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Jacobi, April 17, 1793. — Tr. * Seep. 199. — Tr.
6 Goethe, in his Campagne in Frankreich, here pauses to give an account
in detail of his first meeting with Plessing in 1777. See p. 270.— :Tr.

I792-I794-J HOUSE AND HOME. 459
who had now been a member of the Catholic Church for six
years. She was attracted by the noble mind and heart of the
poet, and by the harmony of his being. He was not in the
mood to communicate anything from his literary compositions,
and could not bring forward the studies in optics, but here as
elsewhere his accounts of Italy charmed all hearts. Hemster-
huis, who accompanied the Princess when she visited Weimar in
1785, had died two years before this visit of Goethe's. His
beautiful collection of gems was a pleasant starting-point for
discursive talk on plastic art. Only with an effort did Goethe
tear himself from this circle of gentle and pious people. Beside
the noble Fiirstenberg there were many worthy Catholic clergy
men and gifted young men striving after the ideal life.1 The
Princess herself gave Goethe the Hemsterhuis gems to take
with him in order to make a more precise examination of them,
and she accompanied him to the end of the first stage of his
journey.2 When after an absence of four months Goethe came one
December midnight to his home again, there was a wonderful
joyous family scene. Christiane, who loved him with a
passionate faithful fondness, his boy, now almost three years
old, and his true and anxious friend, who had never before
been so glad on being awaked from midnight rest, were all
healthy .and happy ; and to think that he possessed a sure and
steady centre of happiness in home, whatever changes and
storms shook the outer world, filled the poet with exquisite
joy. He found the hall and stairs of his new house well
advanced, though he is said to have thought the stairs not
proportioned to the size of the rooms. For the rest, the
house was "still tolerably uninhabitable,"3 had only emerged
"from the very roughest stage,"4 thus he had the pleasure
of arranging many things himself. Only now did he find
quiet in which to answer the letter that he had received
from his mother in Trier. He gratefully declined the honour
1 "Heranstrebendejvinglinge." Goethe, Campagne in Frankreich. — Tr.
2 In the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1882 have been published some letters
from the Princess Galitzin to Goethe, and from Goethe to the Princess,
ranging between 1793-1801. See Appendix, Art. 41. — Tr.
3 "Ziemlichunwohnbar." Goethe to Jacobi, December 31, 1792.—
Tr. 4 "Aus dem rohesten eingerichtet.'' Goethe to Jacobi, December 19,
1792. — Tr.

460 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. hi.
offered by the Frankfurt citizens.1 Now too he wrote to
excuse himself for having journeyed home direct from Munster
without attempting to see the Duke. During Goethe's
absence Heinrich Meyer had drawn and painted a good deal,
in some of his work having regard to Goethe's theory of
colour. The theatre, which had so long been without Goethe's
oversight, was now his most pressing care, for most of the
actors and the Regisseur Fischer were to leave at Easter 1793,
and, moreover, the Duke, compelled to limit his expenditure as
much as possible, could not promise to give a subsidy in 1793,
as he had in 1792. Goethe favoured the bringing out of
operettas, as they drew audiences best, and he liked them
himself. In his scorn for the doings of men at that time he
was attracted by the Low German epic Reineke Fuchs, that
"uncanonical Bible,"2 which had been long known to him;
he felt the impulse to make a free translation into German
hexameters, a task which would be good practice in that kind
of verse, a verse very suitable for the poem. The union with
Herder remained still close and intimate, and with Knebel
Goethe was on the best terms. His official activities at this
time were — beside the theatre — the building of the Castle,
the " Roman House " in the Park (which the Duke begged
Goethe to urge on to completion as fast as possible), and the
Ilmenau Mines. He also gave special attentiveness to the
two Duchesses and the Duke's children. The Duchess
Amalia showed great interest in the Hemsterhuis gems.
In spite of all the stress of work Goethe felt very well, and
grew, to use Herder's words, " young, corpulent, and round."
His "little one," as he called Christiane, was a very careful
and diligent housekeeper, his boy grew gaily, Meyer was in
dustrious and sympathetic,3 and a bond of deep affection
clasped the little group. Writing on February 18, 1793, the
Duke had asked him to come to Frankfurt in the spring,
he could thus quite easily be present at the investment of
Mainz. By the beginning of April 1793 Goethe had made up
his mind to go. Before departure it was especially necessary
1 Goethe to his mother, December 24, 1792. — Tr.
2 " Unheiliger Weltbibel " is Goethe's expression, Tag- und Jahtes-
Hefte, 1793.— Tr.
3 These things in Goethe's letter to Jacobi, February 1, 1793. — Tr.

1 792- 1 794-1 HOUSE AND HOME. 461
to set the affairs of the theatre in order ; again, as in 1 7 9 1 ,
a number of new actors had to be drilled. The office of
Regisseur, which he had come to dislike, he had now done away
with, and had instead introduced a so-called Wochner1 regularly
alternating. On April 16, 1793, the actor Beck had excited
general delight in the part of Schnaps in Die beiden Billets,
an adaptation from the French of Florian. Goethe resolved
to use Schnaps and the other figures of the comedy in a
humorous satire of those swindlers who for their own selfish
purposes were smuggling French " Freedom Ideas " into
Germany. A carpet-bag with Jacobin cap, national cockade
and uniform, had been picked up on the French frontier by
Goethe's servant Paul Gotze.2 This carpet-bag played its part
in the little comedy which Goethe wrote in three days.3 Der
Biirgergeneral was produced on May 2, 1793, and had toler
able success. At this time Reineke Fuchs had been examined
by Herder and Knebel, and only awaited the final touches.
In April 1793 Goethe, to the best of his ability, looked
after the establishment of Jacobi's son Max in Jena University,
and there visited him. Max was always a welcome guest in
Goethe's house. A few days before departure for Frank
furt Goethe made a pen-and-ink sketch, a charming indication
of his joy in quiet home life. On May 12, 1793, Goethe left
Weimar. He took with him his manuscripts relating to optics
and anatomy, Reineke Fuchs, and Der Biirgergeneral. His
mother, of course, rejoiced to receive her Wolfgang again
beneath her roof. Sommering's presence in Frankfurt was a
great advantage to Goethe ; they had delightful and instructive
talk together on the development of animals. As the siege of
Mainz proved a slower operation than expected, Goethe only
left Frankfurt on May 26, 1793,4 for the camp of the Duke at
1 From Woche, a week. Each actor would thus be a Regisseur for a
week.— Tr.
2 See the close ofthe Campagne in Frankreich. — Tr.
3 In Eckermann's Gesprache mit Goethe, February 4, 1829, Goethe
will be found to state a week as the time occupied in writing the Biirger
general. But Professor Duntzer calls attention to Goethe's letter to Herder
of June 7, 1793 : — "Von dem Moment in dem ich die erste Idee hatte
waren keine drei Tage verstrichen, so war es fertig." — Tr.
4 Goethe's letter to Jacobi — " To-morrow I am going to the army " is
by mistake dated May 26, 1793 ; it should be May 25, 1793. Diintzer,
Goethe, und Karl August, ii. 100. — Tr.

462

THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. iii.

Marienborn. He occupied a spacious tent in the front part
of the Weimar Regiment Here he saw the two Princesses of
Mecklenburg (betrothed, one to the Crown Prince of Prussia,
one to Prince Louis); when they visited the camp, "two
heavenly apparitions," 1 he watched them from his tent,

and did not present himself for introduction, though they
had stayed at his mother's house2 and had been won to
love her.
l. Belagerung von Mainz, May 29, 1793- — Tr.
2 In September and October 1790. Duntzer, Frauenbilder aus Goethes
Jugendzeit, 530-1. — Tr.

,1792-1794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 463
After carefully observing the state of the Allies before
Mainz for some time, Goethe felt Unhappy. He was impressed
with the absence of union, and the inadequacy of the measures
for reducing the city. He writes to Herder on June 15, 1793 :
— " My life is very simple. I hardly ever leave my tent now ;
I correct at Reineke and write optical formula?. I have repeat
edly surveyed the situation on our side ; but have not yet crossed
the water except on a delightful party to the Rheingau. We
went [on June 9, 1793] by water to Riidesheim, explored the
vaults, went to the Mouse Tower, then to Bingen, and back
to camp by land." The more wretched he felt in witnessing
the destruction of war, the more earnestly did he work at his
theory of colour; he wrote down parts of it in detail, and made
a general sketch of the whole. A couple of times he exposed
himself to the enemy's fire in the charnel house at Weisenau,
where he went with Gore and Kraus to look for diseased bones
in order to pathological study.1 During the negotiations for
the surrender of Mainz, Goethe brought his essay on Coloured
Shadows to a conclusion. On July 24, 1793, at mid-day, the
evacuation of Mainz began. Goethe, with Kraus and Gore,
watched the passing French from the windows of a toll-house
that formed part of the quarters of the Duke of Weimar. The
road was lined with hostile Germans, who lavished taunts and
threats on their late invaders. On July 25 Goethe rushed from
the toll-house, and saved from the mob one who was recognised
as the architect " who had plundered the Deanery and then set
it on fire." Goethe peremptorily demanded that the peace
should be kept in the precincts of the Duke's quarters.2
Popular justice was indeed always distasteful to him. On July
26, 1793, he rode into the desolated city.
Immediately after this Goethe begged the Duke for leave
to depart, having seen enough of the sights of war. In Heidel
berg, in the house of his old friend, Fraulein Delph, who
eighteen years before had brought about his betrothal with Liii,
he met his brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser. Their
intercourse was friendly. Goethe observed how tender
1 See in Goethe's Belagerung von Mainz, the " Liicke" that follows
June 1793, and the entry of July 15, 1793. — Tr.
2 Belagerung von Mainz, July 25, 1793. This is another of those
remarkable occasions on which Goethe showed extraordinary power of con
trolling a number of excited human beings. See p. 393, footnote. — Tr.

464 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch, hi.
Schlosser's nature really was for all his austerity. In Frank
furt1 he had the pleasure of more of those thorough con
versations with Sommering. There, probably, he first
heard the sad news of the early death of his good friend
Moritz.2 The long-desired wanderer was welcomed in his home with
passionate joy.3 The Frau Rath had begun to correspond
with Christiane. Goethe's boy was a source of exquisite delight
to him; he writes from Marienborn to Jacobi, July 7, 1 793 : —
" My boy is a happy existence (gluckliches Wesen), I hope that
with his beautiful eyes he will see much that is good and
beautiful in the world." During his absence the new house
had advanced towards completion, and he found much pleasure
in ordering and beautifying it. He was not long in gliding
back to the old habits of official activity. His own private
work at this time was the chemical part of the Theory of
Colour, and the polishing of Reineke Fuchs. He was now
the most trusty counsellor that the Duchess had. And
the intimacy with the Dowager Duchess continued without
break. But there was ere long a sad disturbance of the quiet
pleasantness of things in Weimar. On September 6, 1793,
Prince Constantin, whose conduct had of late justified the best
hopes, succumbed to dysentery. On September 1 1 the news
was known in Weimar. "Strain all your powers to support my
mother," wrote the Duke to Goethe.4 On October 11, 1793,
Goethe writes to Jacobi : — " In my old capacity of helper in
need, I have, during the time past, helped in preparing many
kinds of distractions for the Duchess Mother, and in doing
so have been distracted myself." At the Duke's request
Goethe had, moreover, sketched a design for a monument to
the officers shot at Mainz; it pleased the Duke, who only
enjoined that its execution should not cost more than 100
ducats. For the opening of the Weimar Theatre in the beginning
1 Goethe arrived in Frankfurt about August 10, 1793. Duntzer,
Goethe, und Karl August, ii. 116. — Tr.
2 Karl Philipp Moritz (see p. 378) died June 26, 1 793, in Berlin. — Tr.
3 The precise date of Goethe's return to Weimar is not known.
4 " Spanne alles an, um meine Mutter zu unterstiitzen," Karl August
to Goethe, Pirmasens, September 8, 1793. — Tr.

I792-I794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 465
of October 1793 Goethe did not write a prologue, but he did
write one for the representation of Goldoni's piece Der Krieg1
The prologue was spoken by the sometime Christiane Neumann,
who had lately married the actor Becker. It speaks of the
blessings of peace, and of the joy which will greet the Duke's
return to Weimar.
Goethe had now communicated with the Gottingen physi
cist Lichtenberg, who was friendly at first, being pleased with
the poet's exposition of the subjective phenomena of colour.
Goethe laboured to give the verse in his translation of Reineke
that "aisance and daintiness which it should have."2 Towards
the close of the year he had to send the translation to the
printer ; it was to appear as the second part of Goethes neue
Schriften ; Der Grosskophta, with Cagliostro's pedigree, and
Das Romische Karneval appeared as the first part. " In order
to undertake something infinite,"2 he planned to busy himself
in Homer again ; Homer would satisfy the yearning for a higher
ideal world of art.
But soon a domestic sorrow fell upon him. On No
vember 22, 1793, Christiane brought forth a daughter; on
December 3 the child was taken away. Goethe's grief was
passionate and lasted long. When on December 5, 1793, he
writes a few lines to Jacobi, inquiring about an actor's merits,
he thus excuses his brevity : — " After the New Year I will
say more ; for the dark season has brought me dark fortunes,
we will await the coming back of the sun."
After this he betook himself to Ilmenau, to be present at
the meeting of shareholders fixed for December 9, 1793. It
was necessary to make the unpleasant communication that
from the mine (which had now been worked since September
2, 1792) and from the foundries there was a poor yield.
The meeting was so badly attended that they had to appoint
a new one to take place in the spring of 1794.
The return of the Duke on December 15, 1793, was a
great joy to Goethe. An oppression was lifted from him too
by the Duke's resolve to leave military service, and to devote
himself solely to the government of his country. The want
of union between the two chief German Powers made success
1 Goethe's brother-in-law, Vulpius, had made a new adaptation of
Goldoni's La Guerra, commedia di tre atti in prosa. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Jacobi, November 18, 1793. — Tr.
2 h

466 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. iil
impossible,, the Duke thought His decision remained for
a time a closely guarded secret It was not until February 6,
1794, that the King of Prussia completed the dismissal ofthe
Duke, with an expression of regret at losing so valuable a
general In December 1793 Mozart's Hochzeit des Figaro (Le
Nozze di Figaro) had been produced on the Weimar stage.
On January 13, 1794, followed with great success Die
Zauberflbte (El Flauto Magico), and, on the birthday of the
Duchess, Paisiello's Konig Theodor in Venedig.1 There was
besides no lack of important new plays in the prevalent taste.
In February 1794 Goethe called the Duke's attention to
the bad condition of the nursery of young trees, and of the
botanical arrangements at the Prince's Garden (Furstengarten)
of Jena. The Duke ordered minute investigation and a
report. Goethe communicated with Professor Batsch (who
in 1793 had founded in Jena a society for the study of
Natural History, naming as honorary members Goethe,
Herder, and Schiller, beside others). Goethe also begged
the Duke to appoint a formal commission in order to more
effective action, and to give him Christian Gottlob Voigt as
fellow-commissioner. Voigt and Goethe reported in accord
ance with the opinions of Batsch. But as the Court gardener
had a right to the profits of the greater part of the garden,
the commissioners could only procure that Batsch should
be given a house and a moderate portion of the upper
garden. The theatre (which at Easter 1794 was again to lose a
number of its trained actors), the building of the new Castle,
the completion of the " Roman House " in the Park, his own
scientific labours and many other things, so engaged the poet
that he writes : — " I am carrying on a regular Quodlibet of
industry."2 In concert with Voigt, Goethe dissuaded the
Duke from parcelling out his estates ; if this were to take
place, it would be much more profitable after some time.
Goethe, to his great regret, was unable to be present at the
1 II Re Teodoro in Venezia, written by Casti. Cp. Goethe's Zweiter
Romischer Aufenthalt, July 17, 1787, and p. 399 of this book. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Sommering, February 17, 1794. See also Goethe to
Schiller, December 30, 1795 : — "Mein Leben ist, diese vier Wochen her,
ein solches Quodlibet." — Tr.

1 792- 1 794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 467
meeting of shareholders at Ilmenau on April 28, 1794,
because of some rebuilding at the back of his house, besides
an expected actress had broken her engagement, and he was
in difficulty about the theatre. (In the back part of the house
lived Christiane, and with her, we do not know from what
date precisely, her sister and an aunt.) The shareholders
resolved on suitable measures for the improvement of the
mine, but a good many withdrew.
Shortly before this Heinrich Meyer had gone to Dresden
in order to study the gallery, and to make a copy of some
important picture for the " Roman House." Reineke Fuchs was
now in print ; it interested even Schiller. But it was a much
more important matter when Goethe resolved to publish in the
following volumes of his Neue Schriften a completely revised
Wilhelm Meister. This work, the first six books of which had
been completed in a long lapse of years,1 and as to the con
tinuing and enrichment of which he had thought and planned
so much, still lay upon him as a heavy burthen that he must
be free from before he could rise to a new work of signifi
cance. Fichte had lately made himself known as a bold untram
melled thinker, and now, through the ardent mediation of
Christian Gottlob Voigt and with Goethe's approval, had been
summoned as professor to Jena.2 On some day later than
the middle of May 1794, he called on Goethe, who expected
a great deal of result from his coming to Jena, but who
recommended him to be very prudent. And on June
2, 1794, Voss, the translator of Homer, came to Weimar by
Wieland's invitation. Wieland invited Herder and Voss to
dinner ; an invitation of Goethe had been prevented by Voss
himself, who feared Goethe's "ministerial countenance" and
" haughtiness." But Herder and Wieland urged that he
must not omit to see the poet, who was formal rather than
haughty. Goethe, recognising the importance of Voss and
desiring to learn of the great Homeric, the master of
hexameter, asked him even before he called to come and
dine on June 5. Herder and Wieland were invited also.
"The noble house, splendid with the statues and paintings
1 See p. 346.
2 It was however to Hufeland that in the first instance this was due.
See Diintzer, Goethe und Karl August, December 1793 (ii. 128). — Tr.

468 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. hi.
of old times," surprised the rector from Eutin. " We seated
ourselves at table and talked of Italy and Greece. I noticed
that Goethe often observed me acutely. He grew livelier by
degrees. After dinner we moved to his Garden Room and
drank coffee. He read letters from the painter Meyer, a
noble being. . . . Then he showed some of Meyer's pic
tures, enchantingly beautiful. The conversation became very
cordial and intimate, Goethe turned to me and asked why I
was going away so soon ; I might give him one more day. I
gave him my hand and promised to stay a day longer."
Goethe invited him to come and see the statues and paintings
next morning, and to dine in the same companionship.
That evening Voss went to Herder. " We were summoned
to tea and found the Wielands, Goethe, Bbttiger, and von
Knebel. All came round me and desired to hear this or that
about my researches in Homer." At the general desire Voss
read aloud from his new translation of the Odyssey, which
had not hitherto pleased in Weimar. But now, delivered by
its author, it had a wonderful effect Goethe came up to
Voss and pressed his hand for such a Homer ! At tea
Goethe sat beside Voss and was unusually cheerful ; the con
versation centred in Homer. On June 6, 1794, Voss, with
Herder and Wieland, spent a happy day at Goethe's. In the
afternoon Goethe took Voss to the Furstenhaus and showed
him paintings, and then introduced him to the Duchess, whom
he thought very attractive. "Voss has been here," writes
Goethe on June 9, 1794, to Meyer; "a right worthy amiable
man, and one who is really serious about what he does, for
which reason his affairs will not thoroughly prosper in
Germany. It was a great pleasure to me to have seen him
and spoken to him, and to have heard from his own lips the
axioms by which he works. Thus now through the medium
of his personality that is comprehensible which on general
grounds we find inharmonious." Voss had spoken very un
favourably of the hexameter of Reineke, had indeed condemned
altogether the plan of translating the poem in that metre.
Voss failed to recognise Goethe's purpose, which demanded a
light kind of verse. That Reineke needed a great deal of
filing was acknowledged by the author himself, and he would
have been glad of detached hints from the master of hexa
meter ; but that condemnation prevented further discussion.

I792-I794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 469
Immediately after this visit of Voss, Herder, whose trans
lation of Balde had pleased Goethe, received the first book
of Wilhelm Meister, "which now as re-written still needs
many a stroke of the pen, not to make it good, but only that
it may, a sort of pseudo-confession, be lifted from my heart
and neck." To Knebel also a transcript was sent. Goethe
invited these two friends to dine with him on the coming
Sunday, June 15, 1794.
But before that Sunday an incident occurred to which is
due the wonderful alliance which gave to Goethe's life and
to German literature an impulsion such as no other external
fact before or since has given. A spirit of equal birth
advanced towards him, one incapable of underprizing him,
one thoroughly aware of his incomparable worth. On May
15, 1794, Schiller with restored health had returned to Jena
from his home, whither he had gone last year to recruit.
He had discussed with Cotta the publishing of a periodical,
from which he hoped the most extraordinary result. Already
he had enlisted as co-workers Fichte, the historian Woltmanh
lately summoned to Jena, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, when
on June 13, 1794, he sent the prospectus of the projected
review, Die Horen (Horae) to Goethe, accompanied by a
request for aid. Schiller's personal appeal to Goethe was
extremely respectful Goethe replied on June 24, 1794.
In the interim he had felt the chill of Herder's ethically
narrow criticism of Wilhelm Meister, and had read with warm
interest the first sheets of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. " I
will, with joy, with my whole heart, be of the company," he
writes. And again : — " A close alliance with such excellent
men will certainly bring again into active current and circula
tion much in me that has fallen into stagnation." He ends
by saying that he hopes soon to talk over face to face the
principles on which the contributions sent in are to be judged.
Six days before Goethe wrote this letter Voigt writes to
Hufeland that in future Goethe will come to Jena more
often and make longer stay there ; and Goethe, on June
28, 1794, tells Charlotte von Kalb that Schiller since his
return has been much more friendly and trustful towards the
Weimarians. Meantime Goethe worked steadily on Wilhelm Meister
and at natural science. He made new experiments on colour,

47° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vi. ch. iii.
and classified them, and already the whole began to seem to
him no longer infinite.1 At this time he suffered a good deal
by the " Freedom " vertigo of Knebel, Herder, and Wieland,
whose conduct seemed to him to border on insanity. Not
until about July 21, 1794 (by which date Herder also had
joined the Die Horen enterprise), did Goethe come to Jena
There he found in a penetrating conversation with Schiller on
the Beautiful and on Art intellectual enjoyment such as had
been long unknown to him. An unexpected harmony of ideas
between them, Schiller tells Korner, had been found, while
there was the greatest difference in their points of view ; each
had been able to give the other something and receive some
thing in turn. Fichte also was visited by Goethe ; the poet
set forth the philosopher's own system with a conciseness and
clearness such as Fichte himself could not have excelled.
On July 25, 1794, Goethe had to start with the Duke for
Dessau. Thence he went on to Leipzig and Dresden ; in
Dresden he spent a delightful week with Meyer, and derived
thorough benefit from his visits to the Gallery.2 When back in
Weimar, Goethe received a remarkable letter3 from Schiller, wit
nessing the deepest reverence and an ardent longing for closer
league together. Goethe wrote a friendly reply from Ettersburg
on August 27, 1794. "How great a gain for me your sym
pathy will be, you will soon perceive when, on closer acquaint
ance, you discover in me a kind of obscurity and hesitation that
I cannot master, clearly aware as I am of their existence. . . .
I hope soon to spend some time with you, and then we will
thoroughly discuss many things." Meantime they wrote often
to each other letters of mutual confidences. The bad news
from the Rhine frontier made Goethe anxious. His mother
had already packed up and sent her belongings to Langensalza.
Some rooms in her son's house were prepared for her.
On September 4, 1794, Goethe asks Schiller to come on
September 14, and stay with him for a while, as the Court
is going to Eisenach. Schiller shall be perfectly free to work
and live as he pleases. In the beginning of September 1794
1 Goethe to Sommering, July 16, 1794. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl
August, ii. 142. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Jacobi, Weimar, September 8, 1794 : " Ich war auf acht
Tage in Dresden und habe mir auf der Gallerie was rechts zu Gute
gethan." — Tr. 3 Schiller to Goethe, August 23, 1794. — Tr.

I792-I794-] HOUSE AND HOME. 471
Goethe visited Charlotte von Stein again after a silence of
some. years.1 (Of late he had been writing to Fritz, who was
gone to London.) The purport of Goethe's visit was to request
Charlotte von Stein to manage with Schiller's help the intro
duction of a writing-desk, a gift from Goethe to Charlotte
Schiller, into the room of the latter while she was away from
home. The interval between September 14 and September 27,
1794, was passed by Schiller and Goethe in the most intimate
exchange of confidence. Goethe read the Romische Elegien to
Schiller, talked of many literary plans, of contributions to the
Horen, of the nature of poetic composition, showed beautiful
pictures, did not forget his own scientific studies, urged Schiller
to finish the tragedy Die Malteser, begun long ago, urged him also
to retouch Fiesko, and Kabale und Liebe, and Goethe's Egmont
for the stage ; entered on the project of establishing a Musen-
almanach, and by his genuine good-will and cordial frankness
won Schiller's entire trust Now, when Goethe was happy in
his house, his family life, his true art friend Meyer ; when
Herder was following an altogether different aesthetic bias ;
when the French freedom madness was alienating many, no
better fortune could have been his than the alliance with such
a mighty spirit as Schiller ; an alliance destined to produce a
perfect Art-Poetry, to send forth exquisite lyrical blossoms of
varied form, to idealise German burgher life in an epos that
can never die, to elevate and inspire the German stage, to give
new solidity and matter to the aesthetic estimate in literature
and art. 1 Herr von Stein had died in December 1793. — Tr.

BOOK VII.
THE DIOSCURI.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF UNION WITH SCHILLER. THE
HOREN— WILHELM MEISTER— HERMANN UND DOROTHEA-
BALLADS. THE THIRD SWISS JOURNEY.
October 1794-NovEMBER 1797.
Poetry, plastic art, the theatre, natural science, family life,
the Court, official duty, still interwove through Goethe's life ;
but now the ever-closening union with Schiller was like a fresh
stream, whose current, directed over dry and unfruitful tracts,
fills with a new life things that had seemed to languish, and
brings from the soil many a growth unthought of before.
Schiller, it is true, did not agree with Goethe in everything, but
he was tolerant, and always recognised his greatness as an artist,
as a man of science, as a human soul. The rich Correspondence
that sprang from the friendship is its imperishable memorial.
Goethe would have been glad to remain on the old inti
mate terms with Herder, not only because of Herder's own
worth, but for the sake of the Duke and on account of Die
Horen ; cordiality was, however, rendered impossible by the
continual divergence of their views and by Herder's jealousy
of Schiller. The starting of a new periodical was a severe blow
to Wieland, for the Merkur would certainly be injured. But
in this matter pacification was easier.
About the middle of October 1794 came the welcome
return of Heinrich Meyer from Dresden. On November 2,
1794, Goethe went with Meyer to Jena. He had there free

I794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI. 473
use of the rooms on the first story of the Castle, which earlier
had been allotted to Knebel. These were the first on the left
hand looking into the courtyard, and a couple adjoining that
now contain part of the collection of minerals. For many
years they were to be the hallowed place of his meditation and
invention. His simple fare was served to him in them. On
this visit in November 1794 there were manifold conversa
tions with Schiller and the two brothers Humboldt (for Chief
Director of Mines (Oberbergmeister) Alexander von Humboldt
of Freiberg was at this time in Jena). With Schiller Die Horen
was discussed, and another periodical, Der Musenalmanach,
which a young bookseller at Neustrelitz had offered to publish
on good terms. For the sake of readers who desire amusement,
Goethe had it in mind to write a series of tales for Die Horen
which should be connected by a thread running through them
all ; these he hoped to contribute beside his Wilhelm Meister,
whose printing had just begun. The plan of bringing out
Schiller's play Die Malteser on the birthday of the Duchess
had to be abandoned, as Schiller was absorbed in other things.
In Weimar the Friday Society had been reopened on
October 31, 1794; the meetings were now held weekly in
Goethe's house. At each meeting Goethe read a canto from
Voss's translation of the Iliad, and this would suggest many
and various observations. Beside his literary work, he toiled
hard at optics ; he now had gathered a really valuable stock
of apparatus. His zeal for optics was the more ardent because
there his intellect found a many-sided exercise such as no other
pursuit could afford.
At the Duchess Amalia's he continued to be a frequent
and welcome visitor. There he met and was charmed by the
young Maid of Honour, Henriette von Wolfskeel-Reichenberg,
who had come last year from Stuttgart. She was graceful and
tender ; she sang with inspiration, and played with exquisite
finish on the harp. Goethe found it pleasant to trifle gaily
with her; he would call the merry little Swabian "Kehle"1
and "Kehlchen" and " Kamerddle." In the year i83o2he
1 Kehle means the throat, then the voice the "pipe." " Sie hat eine
herrliche Kehle" would mean — "She has a sweet voice." Kehlchen
is the diminutive oi Kehle. — Tr.
2 Goethe's Unterhallungen mit Kamler von Miiller, March 1, 1830.
See the note on the passage. — Tr.

474

THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.

recalled the pleasant hours at the Duchess Amalia's, when
the "pretty being the 'Kehle' tripped about and said 'Silly
Geheimrath ;' " he used often then to improvise a tale of some
merit. We give an engraving of the sketch in colours by

Kraus of the evening circle at the Duchess Amalia's. The
Duchess is painting ; to her left is Charles Gore, who has just
been reading aloud, and is looking over his spectacles at the
Duchess ; then comes Elise Gore, also painting ; Emilie Gore,

1 794- 1 797.] THE DIOSCURI. 475
stitching, has looked up at a sketch which Herder is holding
before her, and at her side is Fraulein Gochhausen very busy
with her sewing. On the other side of the table Meyer leans
to watch Goethe, who is probably sketching or painting;
beyond them is Fraulein Wolfskeel, who seems to be making
some saucy remark. The figure nearest us is Einsiedel, who
is bent over a book.
On January 11, 1795, Goethe came with Meyer to Jena,
where he stayed until January 23. In this time, beside
Die Horen, Schiller and he discussed the Third Book of
Wilhelm Meister, and many matters in aesthetics. With
Meyer and the two Humboldts Goethe used to wade through
deep snow to hear Loder lecture on Syndesmology from
eight to ten o'clock in the almost empty Anatomic Theatre.1
At the instance of the Humboldts he dictated the Erster
Entwurf zu einer allgemeinen Einleitung in die allgemeine
Anatomie.2 He was present at Professor Gottling's experi
ments on the burning of phosphorus in nitrogen.
When back in Weimar Goethe was busily occupied by the
Theatre and the Court Redoutes. Not until Palm Sunday,
March 29, 1795, could he get away for any considerable
time. He stayed in Jena until May 2. Wilhelm Meister
and the contributions for Die Horen were the chief subject of
conversation. Goethe felt a passing inspiration to higher
poetry : he wrote the very fine beginning of a Prometheus
Unbound in the antique style.3 He had a great deal of inter
course with Batsch, Loder, and Gottling. During his stay he
had a forcing-house erected in the gardens, and works to
confine the Saale to a straight course among the meadows
were urged on. Of the dreary politics of the time Goethe
desired to know nothing.
When he returned to Weimar on May 2, 1795, he found
his family healthy and happy ; his domestic existence at that
time turned quietly on its axis, so that — his intellectual life
1 In the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1 794 Goethe misdates this attend
ance on Loder's lectures and Gottling's experiments. Duntzer, Goethe
und Karl August, ii. 156. — Tr.
2 First Sketch of a General Introduction to General Anatomy. See
Hempel's Goethe, xxxiii. 189. — -Tr.
3 See Duntzer's monograph Prometheus und Pandora ; and Duntzer,
Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, i. 229. What Goethe wrote has been lost.
— Tr.

476 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
also being provided for — he had nothing left to desire.1
Meyer had been very diligent ; his design and his execution
were better every day, Goethe thought2 For a few days after
his return Goethe suffered a good deal from a swollen cheek ;
during the lonely sleepless hours he meditated all his Theory
of Colour over, and already thought that he could draw the
main threads. He worked on at his novel also, and minutely
revised the Romische Elegien, which were to appear in the
Horen. Claudine, with music by Reichardt, was diligently
rehearsed, and was performed on May 30, 1795, but without
any remarkable success.
On a short visit to Jena in the beginning of June 1795,
Goethe made the acquaintance of the great Halle philologist
Friedrich August Wolf. Wolf was a friend of Wilhelm von
Humboldt, through whom we hear how interested Goethe
was in Wolf immediately, how attracted by the critical acute-
ness and the thoroughness of method of the epoch-making
Prolegomena ad Homerum. Immediately upon his return to
Weimar (June 4, 1795) Goethe was tormented by a new
swelling in his cheek ; the great pain and the means of cure
resorted to affected him very much, yet he laboured on with
out ceasing. To fortify his system against the recurrence of these
attacks he resolved to visit Karlsbad, where the baths ten years
before had done him so much good under like circumstances.
On the journey to Karlsbad Goethe enjoyed a few days of
interesting intercourse with Schiller (June 29 — July 2). In
these days he hit on the idea for the Mdrchen that concludes the
Unterhaltungen deutschen Ausgewanderten. Amid bad weather
he pushed on to Karlsbad, shortening the way by brooding
over some Mdrchen that hovered in his mind. In Karlsbad
there was so much society and excitement that he found
literary work impossible. It gladdened him to see so many
human beings gathered together from all German lands.
And with the lovely Marianne Meyer,3 daughter of a rich
1 Goethe to Jacobi, February 2, 1795. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, May 12, 1795. — Tr.
3 Marianne Meyer, afterwards Frau von Eybenberg, was at Karlsbad
in the company of Rahel Levin. Her sister, Sara Meyer, afterwards Frau
von Grotthus, was also a friend of Goethe's. Both sisters were exquisitely ,
graceful and charming. See Duntzer, Schiller und Goethe, 82 and 136.
Strehlke, Verzeichniss von Goethe's Brief en, i. 174, 226; Fiirst, Henriette
Herz, 150-155.— Tr.

I794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI. 477
Jewish banker in Berlin, he played a little romantic love
drama. On his return he delayed but a few hours in Jena.1 Now
he heard from Schiller how the Duke thought that the Romische
Elegien ought not to have been published in the Horen. Goethe
must have been strangely moved to find the Duke in his letter
to Schiller denying to these anxiously wrought and polished
poems " the most perfect degree of finish," and calling the pub
lication of them one of the freaks which should be proscribed
by " all those who by the name which destiny has bestowed
on' them are marked out to be the leaders and forefathers
of the literary race." The Duke was annoyed because he
had formerly dissuaded Goethe from publishing the Elegien.
Herder, it will be remembered, had opposed their publication
at the same time, and he, too, was annoyed ; and many
others who denied the ample poetic right in the matter which
Goethe asserted. For the sake of Schiller Goethe now under
took to translate for the Horen the greater part of the Auto
biography of Benvenuto Cellini, nay, he actually thought of
giving Schiller parts of Faust.
After his return to Weimar (August 1795) Goethe's first
occupation was to arrange the Venediger Epigra?nme for the
Musenalmanach and to continue Wilhelm Meister. Meyer
was to go to Italy very soon ; Goethe meant to follow in the
August of 1796, for he had planned to join with Meyer in the
production of a great work on Italy. Starting from a con
sideration of the peculiar characteristics of the country, they
meant to unfold the political and intellectual history of the
people, and Natural History was not to be omitted.
Now came word that the water had broken out anew at
Ilmenau. On August 24, 1795, Goethe hastened with Voigt
to the unlucky spot, where he found an extraordinary quantity
of work to be done, especially as Voigt soon had to go back to
Weimar. Goethe had brought his five-year-old August with
him, and very cheering was the companionship of the boy, who
observed with fresh childlike interest all that Goethe was tired
of looking at and thinking about during the past nineteen
years.2 August interested and delighted his father with his
1 About August io, 1795. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August. — Tr.
2 Tag- undJahres-Hefte for 1795.— Tr.

478 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
naive talk and questions; it was like Felix and Wilhelm
Meister. A little ideal miner-costume was made for August,
and was for a time his ordinary dress. On the Duke's birth
day (September 3, 1795) August marched with the miners,
but he would not enter the church.
On September 6, 1795, Goethe returned from Ilmenau
to Weimar. Beside his Meister, the Mdrchen, and other con
tributions to the Horen, he had the preparations for Meyer's
journey to Italy and the plan of the work on Italy to con
sider. " Meyer is preparing for departure," writes Goethe to
Schiller on September 14, 1795, "and is still engaged on a
drawing in colour of the Pares, which you must see. I wish
him only health, he has every other good thing. He is a noble
being. As for me, I too, as you probably feel, have of late
stood but with one foot, with the other have been moving
towards the Alps. The mineralogic and geologic basis, the
beginning and growth and decay of civilisation, I have sought
to attack from below, sometimes going to the bottom of the
matter, sometimes treating with a rapid glance; and in my
attack from above, too, from the Art side, have a common
understanding with Meyer on everything. And yet all these
are but school preparations. May a good spirit help us to see,
to understand aright, and bring about a joyful meeting."
On September 23, 1795, Goethe tells Schiller that the
Mdrchen is finished. Immediately after this very bad news
came from the Rhine. The fall of Mannheim and the retreat
of the Imperial army from the Lahn caused general dismay.
The Landgraf of Darmstadt came with two hundred horse to
Eisenach ; the French emigres, who had hitherto found refuge
in Darmstadt, now threatened an invasion of Central Germany;1
already the Elector of Mainz had left his temporary resting-
place in Aschaffenburg, and was expected in Erfurt. Mean
while to Karl August had come the thought of sending Goethe
to Frankfurt for a few weeks, that he might report on all occur
ring in the neighbourhood, and on the negotiations for peace
there pending. While awaiting more exact instructions as
to this very disagreeable task, Goethe laboured on Meister,
for which the publisher was eager, and aided in fitting out
Meyer, the Duke having contributed a hundred thalers to
1 Goethe to Schiller,.September 26, 1795. — Tr.

1 794-1 797.] THE DIOSCURI. 479
that object On October 2, 1795, when Meyer starts, we
find Goethe so busy that he cannot go as far as Jena with his
friend. On October 5, 1795, Goethe rode to Jena and spent a few
hours with Schiller On October n he went to join the
Duke at Eisenach. But on October 16 the Duke said that
he need not go to Frankfurt, retaining him, however, for a
time in Eisenach. " What an empty life the life of distraction
is," he laments to Schiller on October 17, 1795. And the
complaisance which the Duke and Duchess showed to the
French aristocratic refugees had long spoiled the Court for
Goethe. On October 21 he hurried back to Weimar, fearing
that Christiane was about to be prematurely confined.
In Weimar he busied himself with his Italian papers,
especially those about architecture. In reply to his observa
tion of October 25 that in his house a new citizen of the
world was expected to arrive any day, Schiller writes : — " Let
it be a girl, and thus we shall yet be related as fathers-in-law."
On November 1, 1795, Goethe writes : — "Instead ofa pretty
girl a tender boy has arrived, and thus one of my cares is laid
in the cradle. Now it is your business, in order to the father-
in-lawship and the increase of the poetic family, to provide a
girl." Four days later Goethe went to Jena and stayed there
a week, joining in the celebration of Schiller's birthday. He
expounded his views on architecture with remarkable clearness
to the interested and delighted Schiller; and they talked a
great deal of his labours in optics and morphology, which he
wished to be done with before his new visit to Italy. The
thought of Greek literature and art was made so vivid and real
by their talk that Schiller resolved to resume the study of Greek.
Goethe promised a new Mdrchen for the Horen, and tried to
cheer Schiller, whom the many attacks on his periodical had
made downhearted.
On November 17, 1795, Goethe's youngest child — his
second boy — died. An agony of sorrow rent his soul. The
deep sympathy of Schiller, the friendly reception of the third
volume of Meister and of the Mdrchen, and the hope of Italy
helped this time to lift and sustain his spirit. For a short
time there was a total ebb of literary inspiration and desire.
But the anger excited by Friedrich Stolberg's Christian preface
to a translation of Selected Dialogues of Plato, and again by

480 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
Lichtenberg's attitude towards his own scientific work 1 had a
salutary effect. He now read with great pleasure the first part
of Schiller's essay On the Sentimental, in which he was himself
spoken of with great reverence. Only towards the close of
November did he resume work on Meister. It now became
his chief anxiety to complete this novel. And he advanced
rapidly, though in December 1795 he lost a great deal of time
through the gaiety of life at Court. At this time Goethe
endeavoured to procure some representations on the Weimar
stage from Iffland, but without success. The management of
the theatre brought so much that was unpleasant on him, that
in a moment of disgust he wrote to the Duke begging to be
relieved. But the Duke promised to do his best to make
matters pleasanter, and Goethe consented to go on.
Herder's ill-will towards Goethe had now grown so bitter
that he would not write to him, but procured what he might
want of him through Knebel.2 And Wieland's feeling towards
the two great allied poets was a very bitter one, though they
had treated him with marked respect in the Horen.
Goethe, always planning aid for Schiller's enterprises, now
hit on a remarkable scheme. Instead of meeting the sharp
hostility of the critics of the Horen by counter criticism, they
would make a number of epigrams in the manner of Martial's
Xenia for insertion in all periodicals, and afterwards publish a
selection of the best in the Musenalmanach. On the 23d of
December 1795 we find him sending a few distichs to Schiller,
three days later a dozen fresh ones; "with a hundred like
these we could recommend ourselves to the public as well as
to our fellow-contributors." Schiller entered enthusiastically
into the project ; only, to complete the century it would be
necessary to attack individual works, and what a rich material
they would have there ! Further, if they were not particular
about sparing themselves, they might grapple with things sacred
as with things profane. Goethe writes on December 30,
1795 : — "We have only to put into verse what the fools say
about us and so be sheltered beneath the form of irony."
Thus before the close of the year 1795, the tribunal was
1 Goethe to Schiller, November 21, 1795. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 175, 178. See also
Knebel's and Goethe's correspondence in the three last months of
1 795-— Te.

'794-1797-] THE DIOSCURI. 481
established by which the two poets working in fellowship
purified the atmosphere before proceeding to their greater
creations. The gradual development of the Xenien is a
remarkable story.
Meyer was now in Rome; his communications thence were
giving Goethe a great deal of pleasure. "We will pursue our
way very quietly but very obstinately," Goethe writes to Meyer
on December 30, 1795. Meyer was to him in art what
Schiller was in literature.
In the beginning of the New Year 1796 he succeeded in
getting away to spend with Schiller a couple of happy weeks
(January 3-14), during which he ran through the whole circle
of Schiller's labours in the theory of aesthetics, thus fortifying
himself for his own work in science. The theatre and the pre
paration of a masque for the Duchess's birthday Redoute
hastened his return to Weimar. He found the distraction very
trying. On February 12,1796, three days after Shrove Tuesday,
he writes to Schiller : — "I am still suffering indescribably by the
Carnival " — being the master of ceremonies — " by the repeated
arrival of foreign princes our theatrical and dancing merry
makings are confused and increased." The partiality of the
Court for the exiles, to whom the Duke had now opened the
whole land, grew more and more displeasing to Goethe. He
clung closer than ever to Schiller, who was sorely tortured just
then with spasms. Goethe spent the interval from Febru
ary 16 to March 16 in Jena. During that time Wilhelm
Master's Lehrjahre and plastic art were zealously discussed.
But the most important thing to note of this visit is that Goethe
urged Schiller earnestly to go to work on Wallenstein, and the
latter began to devote his best time to the play. Charlotte
von Stein came one day to Jena and visited the Schillers
(February 24); she wrote to Fritz afterwards that Goethe has
become "horribly stout," " has regularly become earth," while
the invalid Schiller looked "like a heavenly genius," "the
pallid repose of his countenance made him interesting."
After Goethe's return to Weimar he drew near to Wieland
for a time, aiding him to revise Oberon. Iffland had at last
found it possible to promise a series of representations in
Weimar. In order to be present at these the Schillers came from
Jena on March 23, 1796, to spend a few weeks, — Schiller
with Goethe, Charlotte Schiller and her two-year-old boy Karl
2 1

482 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
with Charlotte von Stein. During their stay Goethe's August,
as Karl's playmate, used often to go to Charlotte von Stein's
house. She was interested in him. "I can often," she writes
to Fritz Stein, " distinguish in him the more noble nature of
the father and the baser of the mother." The Weimar theatre
had no boxes. Goethe had one erected for the sufferer Schiller,
who was then brought thither in a carriage. A certain number
of the assemblies at Goethe's house during Iffland's stay were
invited in Schiller's name. The great actor appeared in
Schiller's Die Rduber on April 16, 1796. As Goethe wished
to see him in Egmont also, Schiller had been employed
in preparing that play for representation, which was done
with relentless mangling.1 Iffland's very conscientious and
finished presentation of the hero pleased Goethe so well that
he resolved never to entrust the part to any other actor. He
offered the managership ofthe theatre to Iffland, who refused,
saying, however, that on certain conditions he would accept
the post oi Regisseur. Goethe, writing about April 18, 1796,2
tells Meyer that Iffland has "brought to life again the almost
lost conception of dramatic art." Egmont gave such pleasure
to the enthusiastic Charlotte von Kalb that she could not help
expressing her warmest gratitude to the poet. Such an instance ¦
of fresh, ardent, friendly sympathy would be the more precious
to Goethe as the Court, devoted to its emigr'es, was then rather
cold towards him.
On May 3, 1796, Goethe hurried to Jena, where he hoped
to finish Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre in peace. He found
there Schiller's friend Christian Korner and his family, on a
visit to Schiller. Goethe had pleasant intercourse with them.
When Korner's sister-in-law, the painter, Dora Stock, casu
ally asked him why he did not marry, he replied gravely
that he was married, only not ceremonially. And perhaps
with this incident we are to connect his bringing Christiane
and August once to Jena during his stay there. Some weeks
later, on July 13, 1796, he writes to Schiller : "To-day, I too
live to see a remarkable epoch ; my marriage-state is just
eight years and the French Revolution seven years old." In
the same letter he excuses his non-appearance at the christen-
1 Ueber das Deutsche Theater; Hempel's Goethe, xxviii. 719. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 182, — Tr,

I794-I797-J THE DIOSCURI. 483
ing of Schiller's second son by saying that these ceremonies
depress him too much.
Wishing to contribute to the Musenalmanach some more
worthy offering than the stinging rhymes of the Xenien, he
brooded over lyric poems of the most various kind, for his
creative energy continually craved new forms and new notes.
The noble idyll Alexis und Dora was finished in a few days.
The delicious parody Musen und Grazien in der Mark was
another product of this time, beside a number of earnest and
tender Spriiche. The project of writing a ballad Hero und
Leander was not carried out. Goethe was also during this
visit to Jena very busy with science, particularly optics, and
even with many official duties. At length he had to set hard
to work at Wilhelm Meister, which progressed so well that he
stayed on in Jena For the passage of the French over the
Mincio had put an end to the delightful hope of seeing Italy
again in August.1 One whom Goethe now met for the first
time was August Wilhelm Schlegel. Goethe tells Meyer that
Schlegel is with them as to the fundamental ideas of aesthetics,
is a very good head, awake and active and skilful, only he
seems to have a democratic tendency.2 During the prolonga
tion of his stay Goethe was cheered by the presence of his
little August, who used to play in the Castle courtyard beneath
his father's windows with the daughter of the University
Stallmeister. This little girl, born in Jena, May 15, 1786,
was Luise Seidler, afterwards a well-known painter. From
her we learn 3 with what infinite love the poet hung on every
act and word of the beautiful little fellow in the charmingly
becoming miner-costume. Father and son used to feed the
pigeons together; and when the two children were playing
beneath the window Goethe would lean out and let some
sweetmeat dangle by a string to the children, and when at
length they succeeded in capturing it he would laugh heartily.
When Goethe returned to Weimar i he laboured steadily
at Wilhelm Meister; his studies in science held on a parallel
course ; and there were Spriiche of many kinds composed.
1 Cp. Goethe to Jacobi, Weimar, June 12, 1796. —Tr.
2 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, May 20, 1796. — Tr.
3 See the delightful book Erinnerungen und Leben der Malerin Louise
Seidler . . . bearbeitet von Hermann Uhde. Berlin, Wilhelm Hertz. (2d
Edition 1875).— Tr. * On June 7 or June 8, 1796 — Tr.

484 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
It was a great relief that the Court was at Wilhelmsthal, for
this gave him complete leisure, as the Duchess Amalia, who
was stopping in Tiefurt, did not require any attendance from
him. On June 17, 1796, Goethe met Jean Paul for the first
time. Jean Paul had come to Weimar at the urgent in
vitation of Charlotte von Kalb, who was one of his most
enthusiastic admirers. Knebel conducted him to Goethe,
with whom he dined twice during his stay. Goethe writes
to Schiller on June 29, 1796: — "I am glad that you have
seen Richter ; his love of truth and his desire to learn have
made me feel well towards him. Yet the sociable man is a
kind of theoretic man, and if I judge aright I doubt that in
the practical sense Richter will ever draw near to us, though
in the theoretic he inclines much to our way." On June 26,
1796, Goethe sent the last Book of Wilhelm Meister to
Schiller ! During the ten or twelve days following he had
so much business to overtake that he could hardly leave the
house. Yet he managed to think over the ballad Hero und
Leander. And a material that some years ago had attracted
him now began to seem very well suited for treatment in a
form hitherto untried by him — the Burgher Idyll. Any one
who reads the letters of Goethe and Schiller of this period
will be struck by the wonderful earnestness and thoroughness
with which the last book of Wilhelm Meister is analysed;
Schiller's criticism induced many changes, not always, indeed,
improvements. The several hints at a sequel were thus
inserted. As the Schillers were expecting the birth of a
child, Goethe pressed them (July 9, 1796) to send Karl to
Weimar for a while : August would have a welcome playmate,
and Karl would be very happy in the companionship of many
children who assembled in Goethe's house and garden.
Evidently he wanted to see Schiller put away his prejudice
against the household of which Christiane was mistress. But
Schiller politely refused the invitation.
On Monday, July 11, 1796, Charlotte Schiller bore her
second son.1 At the end of the week Goethe came to Jena^
and stayed for a few days. He returned to Weimar on the
19th of July.
1 The child was christened on Thursday. Goethe would not go to
Jena for the christening. See pp. 482-3. — Tr.

I794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI. 485
Very bad news from the seat of war now filled Goethe
with anxiety. After a violent bombardment, Frankfurt-am-
Main had fallen into French hands, and had been laid under
heavy contributions. The only hope of Thiiringen now lay
in a cordon of neutrality. The treaty between the Electorate
of Saxony and the French securing this was concluded success
fully on August 13, 1796. In the meantime Goethe tried to
forget political troubles in natural science and in the final
reyision of the last book of Wilhelm Meister, — tried, too, to
quiet the longing for Italy. Meyer had gone to Florence, and
there Goethe hoped to meet him next spring.1 An "arrogant"2
remark of Jean Paul's in a letter to Knebel prompted Goethe
to the satirical lines Der Chinese in Rom; no one then guessed
that these lines referred to the poet from Hof. At this time
Goethe was much worried by Iffland's indecision.
But now, on August 18, 1796, began a wonderful six
weeks of happiness in Jena by Schiller's side. During this
time the first four cantos (afterwards moulded to five) of
Hermann und Dorothea — the projected idyll that had widened
to an epos — were composed in nine days. Every evening
what had been written during the day was read aloud at
Schiller's and was received with Warm delight by worthy
hearers. Goethe, who was in the most exalted mood, would
shed tears of joy when he came to passages of genuine poetic
beauty.3 Yet even in Jena all kinds of business sought him
out. But the affairs of the theatre alone had power to annoy
him. This was not merely because of Iffland's conduct, but
because the Duke did not approve of offering to Iffland the
post designed for him by Goethe. Goethe still continued to
wish that Iffland would undertake the entire management of
the theatre. He writes in his excitement: — "For all our
efforts we have neither from above nor below a shadow of
gratitude to expect, and in the main I daily perceive more
clearly that the relation, for me especially, is thoroughly
unbecoming."4 1 Goethe to Meyer, August I, 1796. In the Goethe -Jahrbuch for
1882 are published four of Goethe's letters to Heinrich Meyer, ranging
from July to September 1796. One of them had been published in frag
ment by Riemer, whose omissions, as Ludwig Geiger observes, are un
accountable. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, August 10, 1796. — Tr.
3 See Duntzer, Schiller und Goethe, S. 98. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Kirms, Jena, September 6, 1796. — Tr.

486 ' THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
On October 3, 1796, he was summoned to Weimar; the
exhibition of the pictures of the Drawing Academy was nearly
at an end, and the Duke wished for his presence at the distri
bution of prizes. And he accordingly returned on October 5,
1796. The cantos of Hermann und Dorothea that had been
written in Jena were now carefully revised. His other chief
occupation for a time was Natural Science, the subject of most
of the lectures that he delivered at the Friday Assemblies,
which recommenced then. All hope of Iffland was gone,
the National Theatre at Berlin had secured him.
At the end of October 1796 Goethe had suddenly to go
to Ilmenau, the water having broken out afresh in the mines
on the night of October 24. He took with him his little
August, who had lately been making a great friend of Char
lotte von Stein. (She tells her Fritz that August is a very
sensible (besonnenes) child, though there is something dreary
about him.) At Ilmenau Goethe remained, notwithstanding
wretched weather, until all needful measures were taken.
During his stay he was again attracted to the mineral kingdom
by the mineral cabinet of Bergrath Voigt,1 but he wrote no
poetry, although he had hoped some gain in the "great solitude"
for Hermann und Dorothea.2
After his return he was detained in Weimar by various
kinds of business, the most onerous being the affairs of the
theatre, where the Regie 3 was now rearranged. The study of
Natural Science continued its unceasing course. And the
polishing and perfecting of the written cantos of Hermann und
Dorothea still occupied him. All to whom he read this poem
were moved and charmed, even Bottiger, in whose criticism
he felt secure that emotion would not overrule judgment.4
This success of his epic already among his friends was a
keen pleasure to Goethe. Meanwhile the Xenien had roused
against the two poets a swarm of enemies, many of whom did
not hesitate to use coarse and unjustifiable means of attack.
1 The brother of the Minister, Christian Gottlob von Voigt. See pp.
269, 310, 312, and 335.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, October 29, 1796 (before departure for Ilmenau);
November 12, 1796 (very soon after return to Weimar). Goethe did not
see Ilmenau again until August 1813. — Tr.
3 The function of the Regisseur. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Jacobi, December 26, 1796 (footnote). — Tr.

I794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI. 487
This moved Goethe to the Elegy called Hermann und Dorothea,
announcing the appearance of the epic Hermann und Dorothea.
The Elegy is a poem of dignified vindication of his own life
and works, and in -it he does not shrink from speaking of
that domestic happiness which slanderers had tried to bemire.
He sent it to Schiller on December 7, 1796; he would like
the new year of the Horen to open with it. Schiller, however,
dissuaded him from this, fearing that to publish it so soon
would draw fresh personal attacks. It was Goethe's design, as
he tells Schiller in the letter of the above date, to begin with
this poem a new Book of Elegies ; the second of the series
should utter his longing to cross the Alps a third time, and
thus he would continue either at home or on his journey.
Schiller had now, to Goethe's delight, flung himself upon
Wallenstein, and several scenes were already finished.
On December 28, 1796, Goethe started with the Duke for
Leipzig to be present at the New- Year Fair. Schiller had just
been roused to great anger by an attack of Reichardt's, who,
referring to the Xenien, wrote in the periodical Deutschland, of
which he was editor, to this effect : — " That it was sad to see
such a great genius as Goethe so profane his greatness by
descending to take part in deliberate calumny. On the other
hand, the part which Herr Schiller might have in the matter
could trouble the editor of Deutschland very little, his con
tempt for Schiller's worthless and base conduct being quite
unmixed, as Schiller's literary gifts and exertions were by no
means to be classed with the genuine genius of that other."
Goethe promised Schiller a "counter-manifesto."1 The visit
to Leipzig refreshed Goethe. "There were some very interest
ing persons amid the throng, old friends and acquaintances too
I have seen again,2 besides some noble works of art which have
washed my eyes clear." 3 From Leipzig they went to Dessau,
where they stopped a week that the Duke might enjoy the
hunting. Though the Prince of Dessau 4 had been annoyed
with Goethe on account of the attacks on Lavater in the
.~'1 Goethe to Schiller, Leipzig, January I, 1797- — Tr.
3 The old Oeser was still living ; Goethe probably visited him, and
probably, too, his old friend, Christian Gottfried Hermann (p. 61); we
know that he visited Christian Felix Weisse (p. 7°)- Diintzer, Goethe und
Karl August, ii. 205. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, Leipzig, January 1, 1797- — Tr.
4 See p. 362.— TR.

488 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
Xenien, there was friendly intercourse. Goethe returned to
Weimar on January io, 1797, well content with his journey,
which had been without literary fruit except that he
had completely schemed the conclusion of Hermann und
Dorothea} Soon after his return Goethe spent a day in Jena, the
" manifesto " against Reichardt was discussed and all that was
near to the hearts of the two poets. There was a cordial
meeting with the two Humboldts also. After this the Theatre
made extraordinary demands on his time and thought. He
had the fortune to secure for it a perfectly endowed singer in
Caroline Jagemann, who was then just completing her twentieth
year. Her father was Librarian to the Duchess Amalia,'
through whose kindness she had been sent to Mannheim for
training. Another important business matter concluded by
Goethe during the latter half of January 1797 was the sale of
Hermann und Dorothea to the publisher Vieweg. Goethe
gave a sealed cover to Bottiger, containing this declaration : —
" For the epic poem Hermann und Dorothea I demand one
thousand thalers in gold." Bottiger was not to open this,
was not to know the sum demanded, until some publisher
should agree to the purchase whatever the sum might be.
Vieweg at once accepted the condition. On January 22,
1797, Charlotte von Stein (who, though she and little August
were good friends, had not yet forgiven August's father) once
more entered Goethe's house ; she dined there with the
Duke's children, her own sister, and her sister's children, and
some others. Goethe had invited the Duchess Luise to come
in the evening. The Court had grown friendly again.
On February 22, 1797, began a stay of more than five
weeks in Jena, five weeks of the most earnest, most many-
sided, most fruitful activity. By March 21, 1797, not only
was the former portion of Hermann und Dorothea revised
anew, but all the rest of it written except the concluding
speech. Schiller, who watched the progress of this poem with
intense interest, was himself busy on Wallenstein, and was
reading in Shakespeare and Sophocles, and thus all the ideas
about epic and dramatic poetry came to be eagerly discussed.
One result was that Goethe planned a second epic poem of
an altogether different character ; he chose for it a material
1 Goethe to Schiller, January II, 1797. — Tr.

I794-I797J THE DIOSCURI. 489
that he had long ago thought of, only the suitable form had
hitherto been lacking. He writes to Knebel on March 28,
1797 : — "Schiller is hard at work on Wallenstein, the elder
Humboldt is at a translation of the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus,
the elder Schlegel at one of the Julius Casar of Shakespeare,
and thus — while I have [on account of Hermann und Dorothea^
reason to meditate the nature of the Epic Poem — I am led
[by sympathy with friends] to be attentive also to Tragedy, ,
whereby many remarkable relations come to be discussed.
Besides, the presence of the younger Humboldt — sufficient in
itself to fill a whole life with interest — brings into activity all
[in me] that can only be of importance with regard to
Chemistry or Physics or Physiology, so that I often find it
very hard to return to my circle. If you only add that
Fichte begins to publish in the Philosophical Journal a new
exposition of his theory of the sciences, and that when I live
amid a set of people of speculative tendencies I cannot avoid
taking at least a general interest in this, you will easily per
ceive that it is often hard to tell where one's head is, particu
larly when rich suppers shorten the night and do not favour
the moderation so needful for studies." Plastic art alone was
absent from their discussions, though not absent from Goethe's
thoughts ; he often longed to be with Meyer in Italy, to find
new life and refreshing in the contemplation of the many
glorious forms.1
On March 31, 1797, Goethe returned to Weimar, accom
panied by the brothers von Humboldt. With both he had a
great deal of intercourse ; and with Wilhelm von Humboldt
held a prosodic court of justice on the later cantos of
Hermann und Dorothea2 On Easter Monday, April 17,
1797, the first four cantos went to the printer. Already
he was attracted by a third perfectly different subject, the
Journey of the Children of Israel in the Desert. He studied
the Books of Moses to discriminate the original tradition of
this journey from later additions.3 Writing on April 19,
1797, he tells Schiller that he is studying the Bible and
Homer, and while so doing the most wonderful light has
dawned on him as to the nature of epos. Thus he was again
1 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, March 18, 1797. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, April 8, 1797.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, April 12, April 15, 1797. — Tr.

49° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
brought to Consider his second epic poem,1 and he sketched
its plot. In the last week of April 1797 came news of the
conclusion of peace, which calmed and cheered him, notwith
standing the heavy sacrifices that bought the peace. He felt
very happy in his home affairs.2 His. little August was now
being taught by a certain young Eissert under the superin
tendence of Professor Kastner.3 His only source of anxiety
was news that Meyer was in bad health. He writes to Meyer
on May 8, 1797, that he, Goethe, will probably go to Frank
furt in July, and will probably go thence to Italy. He there
fore begs Meyer to stay where he is, but if he must return to
Switzerland for the sake of his health let him write to Goethe
where to meet him. On the 19th or 20th of May 1797,4
Goethe hastened to Jena, hoping that there the poetic mood
would return and enable him to complete his epic. The
four weeks then spent in communion with Schiller are
memorable in the history of German Literature. Hermann
und Dorothea was perfected, and in the finest of all rivalries
the two great poets produced a whole group of noble poems.
The most important among these poems were ballads, and it
was Goethe who first led Schiller to this kind of poetry.5
On June 16, 1797, Goethe returned to Weimar suddenly.
He then spent a restless, unsatisfactory time. The Duke had
written on June 13 begging that Goethe would await his
return, which could not take place before the beginning of
July. And Goethe had not made up his mind whether his
own projected journey should be a long or short one. At
length, on July 7, 1797, came a letter with the welcome news
from Meyer that he had returned to his home in Switzerland.
Goethe writes to Meyer on July 7 that it does not matter about
1 This poem Die Jagd was never written. See Eckermann, January
15, 18, 29, 1827.— Tr.
2 See the elegiac poem Der neue Pausias und sein Blumenmadchen,
which was probably in hand by this time. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Fritz Stein, April 26, 1797. — Tr.
4 See Diintzer, Goethe u. Karl August, ii. 215 (top and footnote).- -TR.
5 During the four weeks May 19 — June 16, 1797, Goethe completed
Der neue Pausias, wrote the ballads Der Schatzgraber (May 21-23), Die
Bfaut von Korinth (June 4-6), Der Gott und die Bajadere (June 7-9),
the lyric An Mignon (" Ueber Thai und Fluss getragen "). See Goethe's
letters to Schiller during this period, and Goethe's lyrische Gedichte;
Erldutert von Heinrich Diintzer, Band i. S. 242-245. Schiller's first
ballad, Der Taucher, was begun June 5, finished June 14, 1797. — Tr.

I794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI. 491
that plan of theirs. " Care only for your health, and arrange
what you have collected according to your own pleasure. . . .
I am going immediately to Frankfurt with my family to intro
duce them to my mother, and after a short stay I will send them
home and come to seek you on the shore of the beautiful lake."
Meanwhile Goethe, after "attacking many things and doing
nothing,"1 had made up his mind to grapple with the greatest
of his unfinished labours, with Faust2 On July 1 he tells
Schiller that he has advanced with good speed as to the
scheme and general oversight of the poem. But his Roman
friend, Aloys Hirt, who had been summoned to a professorship
in Berlin, arrived in Weimar just then, and Faust was laid aside
for a time ; " the northern phantoms have been driven back
by memories of the south."3 Hirt led Goethe's thoughts to
architecture, and discussion of an essay of Hirt's on the Laokoon
caused Goethe to put together his old thoughts on the group.4
By Goethe's urgent invitation Schiller came to Weimar (July
1 1- 1 8), and the friends talked over all that was near to their
hearts, and besides had a great deal of intercourse with Hirt
and Bottiger.5
At this time Goethe entertained the design of getting
a more becoming theatre substituted for the miserable struc
ture of wood at Lauchstedt. The first thing needful was
the permission of the Elector of Saxony, in whose territory
Lauchstedt was situated. The hopeless condition of his
beloved actress, Christiane Becker, grieved him ; she was now
plainly in consumption; her acting must cease for ever.
Schiller had been gone a week when the Duke at length, on
July 2.5, 1797, arrived in Weimar.6 Goethe had many things
to discuss with him, the chief, perhaps, the building of the new
castle. So it was not until the fifth day (July 30) from the
1 Goethe to Schiller, June 21, 1797.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, June 22, 1797.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, July 5, 1797.— Tr.
4 On July 14, 1797, Goethe sends Meyer an essay on the Laokoon.
And see p. 125. — Tr.
6 Goethe had it in mind at the time to write a ballad on The Cranes
of Ibycus. So we have seen him dally with the subject Hero and Leander,
and soon we shall find him struck with the legend of William Tell. — Tr.
6 Marianne Meyer came to Weimar about this time. Goethe in a
letter to Schiller (July 26, 1797) regrets that she had not come a few days
earlier .  « I should have liked you to know this singular being." — Tr.

492 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
Duke's arrival that he started with Christiane and August
for his native city,1
When, after four days spent on the way, they arrived in
Frankfurt, the Frau Rath greeted with a very joyous welcome
her Wolf, her daughter-in-law, and her grandson. All Goethe's
friends, older and younger, were very glad to see him. During
his stay he paid remarkable attention to the theatre, to the
inner circumstances of his mother city, and to the prevailing
public feeling. Before leaving Frankfurt he renounced the
journey to Italy ; the political condition of that country just
then was hateful to him.2
On August 25, 1797, he took leave of his mother, whom
he never saw again. He travelled by Heidelberg, Heilbronn,
and Ludwigsburg, and arrived in Stuttgart on August 29, 1797,
He stayed there nine days, chiefly occupied with the theatre
and with plastic art. With the young professor, Nikolaus von
Thouret, Goethe thoroughly discussed the subject of ornament
in relation to castles, having the new castle at Weimar in his
mind He sent to the Duke reports which enter minutely
into detail, and evidence the most exact and many-sided obser
vation. On August 31, 1797, he tells Schiller that he has
thought of a new genre of poetry, Conversations in Lyrics3 On
the 7 th of September Goethe left Stuttgart and came to
Tubingen, where he stayed until the 16th. On the evening
of September 17 he arrived at Schaffhausen. The Rhine
Falls were studied with great reverence and care.4 To Schiller,
from Stafa on September 25, 1797, Goethe writes: — "I had
almost forgotten to say that the line — ' es wallet und siedet, und
brauset, und zischt ' [from Schiller's ballad Der Taucker] has at
the Rhine Falls signally proved its rightness."5 On September
1 For the history of the following journey see in Goethe's Works — Aus
einer Reise in die Schweiz . . . ivi Jahre 1797. Before starting Goethe
burnt the letters of the last twenty years (Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1797),
only excepting those that came from his most intimate friends. Duntzer,
Goethe U7id Karl August, ii. 221. — Tr.
2 On August 10 he writes to Knebel : — " I have no desire towards
Italy ; I do not wish to observe the caterpillars and chrysalids of freedom j
I had far rather see the French butterflies." — Tr.
3 During his journey Goethe composed three poems, which are speci
mens of this genre : Der Edelknabe und die Mullerin, Der JunggeseU und
der Miihlbach, and Der Mullerin Reue. — Tr.
4 See Goethe's Reise in die Schweiz, September 18, 1797. — Tr.
* Schiller replies on October 6, 1797 : — "It is no small delight that,

¦794-I797-] THE DIOSCURI.

493

!9> J 7 97, an ivy-entwined apple-tree on the way from Schaff
hausen to Jestetten originated in Goethe's mind the elegy
Amyntas. Goethe arrived in Ziirich on the evening' of Sep
tember 19, and went to the inn by the lake which he had
known so long; he visited no one in Zurich. In the afternoon
of September 20 Meyer came, and on the following day
Goethe and Meyer sailed in bright pleasant weather up the
lake to Stafa, Meyer's home. Here Goethe spent some days
examining his friend's collections, which gave occasion to the
most searching talk upon the current rhetorical style of books
of travel, and on the necessity of fixing some terminology for
describing works of art. On September 28, 1797, Goethe
set out in Meyer's company on a short tour through the
mountains. The grand impression which the scenery of the
Lake ofthe Four Forest Cantons had made in former years1
was renewed. The Hospice on the Gotthard Pass was the
turning-point of the excursion, which terminated with their
return to Stafa on October 8. It was a time of immense
happiness, disturbed only by the sad news that Christiane
Becker, of whom Goethe had been so proud and fond, had
died on September 22, 1797. His grief was not the less deep
because her death had been long expected. He afterwards
wrought out a noble elegy in honour of her memory.
Meanwhile Hermann und Dorothea had been published,
and had charmed all readers, as nothing of Goethe's had done
since the appearance of Werther in 1774; for, like Werther,
it was a perfect work of art.2 And now Goethe had found a
new epic material on this his third and last Swiss journey ;
the fine popular legend of Wilhelm Tell was eagerly studied
and carefully considered during his stay in Stafa after the
according to your observation, my description of the whirlpool agrees with
the phenomenon. I have never had the power of studying this manifesta
tion of Nature except in the water near a mill, but I have studied Homer's
description of Charybdis minutely, and this has perhaps kept me true to
reality."— Tr.
1 Goethe had seen Luzern Lake twice before, with Passavant in June
1775, and with the Duke in November 1779. See pp. 230, 301 (foot
note).— -TR.
2 To explain the popularity of a poem we must not, however, look
to its perfection as a work of art. The people, Goethe himself testifies,
look always to matter not to form in literature. Werther was popular
because of its subject rather than because of the treatment ; Iphigenie,
perfect also, was unpopular because of its subject. — Tr.

494 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. i.
excursion in the Lesser Cantons. At length the case arrived
which contained Meyer's copy of the celebrated painting, the
Aldobrandini Marriage. Thus all Meyer's treasures were safe
gathered together, and on October 21, 1797, our remarkable
pair of friends could set out on their journey to Weimar,1
where, in alliance with Schiller, they would devote themselves
to the pure service of true Art. In the old German city of
Niirnberg they lingered nine days (November 6-15). At
midday on November 20 they arrived in Jena, and spent a
few hours with Schiller, who, to Goethe's joy, had made up
his mind to spend the winter in Weimar, hoping profit for his
Wallenstein in daily familiarity with the theatre. On the
evening of the same day the house in the Frauenplan was the
witness of a very loving and joyful welcome.
1 On their return they stayed a few days (October 22-25) m Zurich.
Goethe did not visit Lavater. On February 17, 1829, he tells Eckermann
that he had last seen Lavater when in Zurich. Lavater had not recognised
him, because he was in disguise. This was probably in September 1797.
— Tr.

CHAPTER II.
FROM THE THIRD SWISS JOURNEY TO THE DANGEROUS ILLNESS
OF 1 80 1  A TIME OF GREAT LABOUR, IN UNION WITH
SCHILLER, FOR THE ELEVATION OF THE THEATRE AND OF
THE CONCEPTION OF ART IN GERMANY.
November 1797-jANUARY 1801.
For some time after his return from Switzerland Goethe
found it impossible to labour steadily at anything. One
cause of this was the after excitement of the journey, a
second was that familiar cause — excess of business. The old
enumeration will serve — there was the theatre (now really
getting on well), the Redoutes, the building of the castle, and
new improvements in the park. He was occupied with plans
of all kinds, one being an epic poem on the Death of Achilles ;
but none of them was carried out, and his only important
systematic labour during this winter was the exposition of
the Theory of Colour and of its history, in which he was
encouraged by the earnest sympathy of Meyer and Schiller.
For the birthday Redoute of the Duchess (Jan. 26) he arranged
a masquerade on the apposite theme, Peace ; six young ladies
and six children had to be suitably equipped and trained.
Fraulein- Wolfskeel, who represented Peace, spoke the noble
expository stanzas written by Goethe.1 Schiller had, on
account of his health, to put off until March his coming to
Weimar. Towards the end of February 1798 Goethe received into
his charge the library of Jena and the ducal collection of coins,
Geheimerath Schnauss, their former keeper, having died in
December 1797. Goethe now succeeded in having Thouret
1 See Hempel's Goethe, xi. 299. — Tr.

49° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. , [w. vn. ch. ii.
summoned to superintend the building of the castle. During
his Swiss journey they had, to his annoyance, applied to a
Leipzig architect. Meyer was working hard in setting forth
their views on plastic art.1
In the early part of March 1798 Goethe was kept in great
anxiety for a time by a purchase of some property that he
had had in mind since last year. The place was a freehold
property (Freigut) at the friendly parochial village Oberrossla,
on the right bank of the Ilm. It was about a league from
Osmannstedt, where Wieland had taken up his abode in April
1797, in a manor property (Rittergut) that he had bought.2
Goethe concluded his purchase on March 10, 1798 ; the price
was 14,000 thalers, of which 6000 were to be paid down.
He had not seen the property himself, and probably depended
on the judgment of his faithful Seidel, who, as district-steward
of finance (Rentamtmann), would know the circumstances
minutely. When Goethe visited Oberrossla on March 1 1 he
saw that he had made a pretty good purchase, though the
price seemed too high considering the yield of the place
hitherto. But what Goethe really wanted was a pleasant
country residence for himself and his family. This incident
was a fine opportunity for Weimar gossip. Some said, part
of the money he has from his writings, part from his mother;
others said, the price was too high, he has been compelled to
this purchase because through his relation to Christiane his
social position is so unpleasant.3 Precisely at this time, how
ever, Goethe began to receive in Weimar, and though he felt
how unseemly it was that his wife could not be the hostess
in his house, he managed matters so that his guests were at
their ease. On the evening of February 20, 1798, he had a
party to meet the Swedish Secretary of Legation, von Brink-
mann, who was known as a German poet Von Brink-
mann was seated with Frau von Wolzogen on one side, and
on the other Amalia von Imhof, a lady gifted both as poet
and artist
Not until March 18 did Goethe find it possible to leave
Weimar. He stayed three weeks in Jena. The first three acts
of Wallenstein were read to him ; he thought them excellent,
1 Goethe to Schiller, March 3, 1798. — Tr.
2 See on this Goethe's letter to Schiller, June 21, 1797. — Tr.
3 See Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 243. — Tr.

I797-i8oi.i THE DIOSCURI.

497

in some passages " astonishing ;" still to make the play fit for
the limited German stage, a " cruel shears " must work upon
it. Schroder as the hero would be, Goethe thought, the
noblest possibility of a German theatre.1 His own two epic
plans2 were talked over with Schiller. And for the Musen-
almanach, the Weissagungen des Bakis, intended to excite
the curiosity of a riddle-loving world, were begun,3 while the
elegy on Christiane Becker was considered. Goethe wished
moreover to have a monument erected to her memory;4
to be paid for by voluntary contributions and by the pro
ceeds of a representation at the theatre. As for the work
on Art that Goethe and Meyer had planned, Schiller too
thought of taking part in it. It should consist of detached
treatises on Art issued in four small octavo volumes, and
they would append a complete imprint of Goethe's translation
of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini, with notes elucidating the
history of politics and art in Italy in Cellini's time.
Goethe returned to Weimar on April 6, 1798. Beside
the various familiar official toils and distractions, he had on
hand the preparations for the coming of Iffland, who had
promised to play in Weimar if his expenses were paid.5 At
this time Goethe took up his Faust, and found it possible to
advance with it.6 Meyer was to make outline sketches in
Indian ink on grayish brown paper for this "barbarian com
position " 7 (barbarian contrasted with his Greek epic material
the Achilleis), the outlines to be set off afterwards with the
brush. Now, too, Goethe took out the camera obscura again
and other apparatus for the study of colour.
Schiller's ailing condition prevented him from coming to
Weimar during Iffland's eleven days' stay,8 and Charlotte
1 See all this about Wallenstein in Goethe's letter to Heinrich Meyer,
Jena, March 23, 1798. — Tr.
2 A Wilhelm Tell and an Achilleis. — Tr.
3 Riemer, Mittheilungen iiber Goethe, ii. 528. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, March 23, 1798. — Tr.
5 "I ask for no honorarium whatever. What I see and feel there is
the noblest honorarium." Iffland's letter to Kirms, March 30, 1798.
Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 245. — Tr.
6 Goethe's letters to Charlotte Schiller, April 14, 18, 21, 1798.
During Schiller's illness Charlotte wrote to Goethe, and received letters
from him. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 246.— Tr.
1 Goethe to Schiller, April 29, 1798. — Tr.
8 April 24-May 4, 1798.— Tr. 2 K

498 T HE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
Schiller saw only the performance of May 3. Iffland could
not play Egmont because, to Goethe's annoyance, he had
forgotten the words. During this delightful little dramatic
season Goethe gave a series of d'ejeuners at his own expense,
to which Iffland, with his ugly wife, and between twenty and
thirty of the people of most consequence, were invited. Char
lotte von Stein was at the first of the series, and all the royal
personages of Weimar, the Hereditary Prince of Gotha and
many ladies. Fraulein von Wolfskeel was asked to the
dejeuner that fell on her birthday, the ist of May.
Goethe had hoped to get away to Jena soon after
Iffland's performances had come to a close. But it was
needful that he should await the coming of Thouret, who
delayed longer than had been expected. In this time of
suspense Faust was laid aside for the Achilleis1 At length
(May 20, 1798) Goethe hastens with August to Jena. Karl
von Stein, and his bride, and three other couples, were to be
married in Charlotte von Stein's house on that day, and Goethe
wished to avoid being present. His August had a dear play
mate in Schiller's boy Karl, who was very proud of a gay
little hunter costume. Goethe spent most of the evenings of
this stay in Schiller's garden. After consultation with Schiller,
he wrote for the bookseller Cotta an exact account of the
purpose of the work which he and Meyer meant to bring out.
It should consist of the speculations on Nature and Art, of
friends whose minds were in harmony ; (in " Nature " he was
at the moment only thinking of the Theory of Light and
Colour. )
Before the close of May 1798 the arrival of Thouret
drew Goethe back to Weimar. But June 4 saw him again
with Schiller for a stay of two weeks and a half. At first
articles for the new work occupied him ; then, as he had to
provide for the Musenalmanach, he worked on lyric poetry.
Between June 13 and June 17 he completed the Elegy
on Christiane Becker (Euphrosyne), Die Metamorphose der
Pflanzen, Das Bliimlein Wunderschbn, Der Mullerin Verrath,
Die Musageten, Deutschen Parnass. And during this period
he grew interested in experiments in magnetism. On June
21, 1798, he went to Oberrossla to take possession of his new
1 Goethe to Knebel, May 5, 1798; Goethe to Schiller, May 12,
1798.— Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 499
property, and to induct the new tenant. He had meant to
return to Jena, but was summoned unexpectedly by business
to Weimar. Here, during the last week of June 1798 and
the early part of July, and during another short stay in Jena
(July 4-1 1), his projected epic Wilhelm Tell was closely
thought over. Then he was fully occupied by the matter of
rebuilding Weimar Theatre, and by the new work undertaken
by Cotta. They had decided to give it the name Die Propy-
laen1 significant of its purpose. On July 25, 1798, Goethe's
noble Introduction to Die Propylden was sent to Cotta,
Meanwhile Goethe's interest in magnetism had not died.
On July 14, 1798, the pieces of iron cast in Ilmenau by his
directions have arrived in Weimar. The experiments for
which he wanted them have turned out as he expected, and
a few new phenomena of which he had not thought, very
remarkable ones. He draws up a scheme of all effects due
to polarity.2 (The presence in Weimar of the Dutch physicist,
von Marum, is a great help to him.) And he is successful
in an endeavour to imitate wood engraving with copper.3
The pleasure of these successes was marred by the Duke's
re-entering the Prussian service, a step by no means likely to
benefit Weimar.
In the beginning of August 1798, Goethe being again in
Jena, Schiller read to him the two powerful last Acts of
Wallenstein so far as they, were yet complete. But Goethe
did not believe that these would be of use for the stage within
any short time ; and he planned to write " a kind of fore-
piece and a prologue " for the opening of the new Weimar
Theatre.4 Schiller had now to get the Musenalmanach ready,
and only when, this labour over, he came to Weimar on
September 10, 1798, did Goethe succeed in moving him
to give Wallensteins Lager for the needed fore -piece, and
to make of Wallenstein itself two distinct plays. And
still it was with great difficulty that the fore-piece, and the
prologue (also undertaken by Schiller) were obtained in time.
The opening performance was fixed for October 12, 1798.
' See Schiller to Goethe, June 28, 1798.
2 Goethe to Schiller, July 14, 1798. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, June 15, 1798. Goethe to Schiller, July
21, 1798.— Tr.
4 Goethe to Kirms, August 14, 1798. — Tr.

500 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch., ii.
Very toilsome for Goethe were the days preceding this. But
he had a great reward. His new theatre and Schiller's fore-
piece were universally praised. The admirably spoken pro
logue and the fresh life and movement of the Lager charmed
all. Never probably before or since has one poet expended
so much sympathy and enthusiasm in bringing on the stage
the work of another. And now at any cost the first part of
the Tragedy of Wallenstein must be ready for the next birthday
of the Duchess, that Schiller's triumph might be full. From
Schiller's dramatic labours Goethe expected the very highest
result. For Schiller would continue to advance with all the
endurance of his strong nature on the path which had proved
such a happy one. Goethe himself had indeed a great part
in this. On October 14, 1798, the two poets went to Jena together.
Thence Goethe sent to Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung a notice of
the late opening of the theatre,1 designing to forestall Bottiger,
who was very fond of communicating news in all directions.
After about a week's stay Goethe left Jena, having to prepare
for the first Redoute of the season, which was to take place on
October 26 in the theatre. At the same time he began
anew to work passionately on his Theory of Colour, and
resolved not to desist until he was quite done with it.2
Schiller's praise of the first number of Die Propylden gave him
keen pleasure. Through Die Propylden Goethe hoped to
work for ideal Plastic Art, as Schiller worked for the Drama.
But the periodical would be also a real good to himself, for it
would compel him to give expression to ideas and experiences
that he had long borne about with him.3 In the first week
of November 1798 Goethe had to spend a few days in
Oberrossla, during which he considered the whole Theory of
Colour. On the 1 ith of November began a long visit to Jena,
and the same subject occupied his thoughts. Of course
Schiller and he talked a great deal about Die Piccolomini, to
finish which was so pressingly needful. For Die Propylden
Goethe was preparing the important letters Der Sammler und
die Seinigen in the novel form. On November 29, 1798, the
Duke wrote to Goethe that Count Friess and Lerse (Goethe's
1 See this reprinted, Hempel's Goethe, xxviii. 630. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, October 31, November 7, 1798. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, October 31, 1798.— Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 501
honest Strassburg friend of old times) had come to Weimar ;
their visit was partly to the Court. Goethe returned to
Weimar on the evening of the 2 9th.
Lerse, after having with Pfeffel conducted the Military
School in Colmar, had in the Revolution times been for two
years Commandant of the Garde Nationale there ; but finding
no satisfaction in this, turned to the labour of collecting the
scattered Archives and Monastery Libraries of Colmar, and
had shown therein remarkable patience, skill, and knowledge.
After this Count Friess (the Viennese connoisseur and col
lector whom Goethe met in Rome) had chosen Lerse for
his son's companion. Lerse in this capacity spent two years
in Leipzig, and was now a man of wide learning in art and
antiquities. In Numismatics especially he was well versed,
witness his criticism of the works of Eckhel and Sestini. To
meet again this dear friend, direct and honest as of old, and
to call to mind with him the happy youthful days, must have
been a rare joy to Goethe.
December was generally a bad month with Goethe, and
in the December of 1798, his time was miserably wasted by
"polypus-like"1 tasks. On December 24 he had the
pleasure of hearing from Schiller that a copy of Die
Piccolomini had been sent to Iffland, and also that in the
course of the week the transcript of the play for the Weimar
Theatre would be properly finished. At Schiller's wish Goethe
had ere this arranged that when he came to Weimar to look
after the rehearsal of his play, he should have the rooms
in the Castle lately occupied by Thouret. (Thouret, having
quarrelled with Wolzogen, Schiller's brother-in-law, had left
Weimar.) After all pressing, it was only on December 3 1
that the copy of Die Piccolomini at length arrived.
While the theatre was thus moving on to a higher develop
ment, an undertaking which during twelve years had lain
close to Goethe's heart had come to an unhappy close.
There had been a new outbreak of the water at Ilmenau ;
and all hope of profitable mining was at an end ; it was just
possible to keep the shafts and drifts open for thoroughfare.
Goethe, whose regret was deep, did not revisit Ilmenau until
1 On July 27, 1799 — it was a time of great worry — Goethe writes to
Schiller : — " Business tasks are polypus-like ; if you cut them into a
hundred pieces each single piece becomes living again." — Tr.

502 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
fifteen years later.1 It was in this year of misfortune, 1798,
that his friend Knebel, whose marriage with a former
Kammersangerin had rendered it impossible for him to live
in Weimar, took up his abode in Ilmenau.
On New Year's Day, 1799, Goethe, wishing to keep the
players in good humour on account of the great efforts before
them, gave them a little breakfast. On January 4 came
Schiller, in time to dine with Goethe. It was a January full
of labour and enjoyment for the friends. Many social dis
tractions enlivened the time. On January 16 there was a
great dinner in honour of Schiller at Goethe's house. Her
der, Voigt, Meyer, and Bottiger, and others, were present.
Herder was somewhat milder at this time ; he had received
from Die Propylden "a peculiar, pure and great attuning."2
The reading- rehearsals of Die Piccolomini took place in
Goethe's house. Schiller was too ill to attend the acting
rehearsals. At length the representation on the Duchess's
birthday came off, and with the greatest success; Goethe
had a rich reward for the trial he endured in teaching the
actors to speak the unaccustomed iambics. To Goethe's
regret, the Duke's aesthetic judgment of the play (in a letter
of January 31) was altogether from a French point of view:
he was pleased only by " the exceedingly beautiful language,"
finding in the play numbers of mistakes in other respects.
However, on February 1, he invited the author to come with
Goethe to dinner, and he rewarded the two chief actors.
The second representation (February 2, 1799) was even more
successful than the first. Goethe was not at it, being too
weary after the birthday Redoute. " It may be considered,"
he writes, " what, after a pause, can be done to urge the
third representation further."3
On February 6, 1799, Goethe accompanied his friend to
Jena and remained three weeks there, working on the Theory
of Colour, and engaged in all sorts of business, the most
important matter being the' threatening ice-choke. As to
Schiller's alterations in Die Piccolomini, and the third piece
1 August, 18 1 3.— Tr.
2 " Eine eigene reine und grosse Stimmung." Knebel's Nachlass, ii.
276. See also in this connection, Goethe to Knebel, March 22, 1799- —
Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 273, 275. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, February 3, 1799. — Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 503
that was gradually forming, he showed the old cordial fruitful
sympathy. At the end of February he returned to Weimar.
In the gloomy distracted winter days he was not happy.
"It is very strange," he writes on March 6, 1799, to Schiller,
"that my position, which, speaking generally, could not be
more favourable, is very much in opposition to my nature."
Schiller exhorted him to courage and cheerfulness, and
Goethe turned again to the Achilleis, which he hoped to finish
by the end of September.1 When he receives the concluding
acts of Wallensteins Tod, sent to him on March 17, 1799, he
congratulates his friend heartily ; as for his own work, "extorted
by violence from the Muses,"2 he does not yet know whether
it will be worth anything. He clings with ardour to the
thought of working for the elevation of Plastic Art ; thinks
about prize tasks for painters and sculptors, in which the
principles set forth in Die Propylden shall find practical
illustration. The Duke intimated that as the competing
works were to appear in the Weimar Art Exhibition, he was
prepared to pay the greater part of the thirty ducats to which
the prizes would amount.
On March 21, 1799, Goethe, in order to gain freedom
for the Achilleis, went to Jena. Here he learned with pleasure
that Schiller, in order to develop a new tragic material, would
not for a time write any lyrical poetry, and instead of produc
ing the Musenalmanach for the year, would edit a poem by
his young friend Fraulein von Imhof, Die Schwestern von
Lesbos.3 Goethe even relieved Schiller of the trouble of read
ing this poem through, and planned to write an introductory
elegy to heighten its effect4 The completion (April 2) of
the first canto of the Achilleis filled him with courage. But
alas ! when he made a short pause in order to assure himself
exactly as to the '' motives " next to be developed, his glow
of inspiration chilled, the poem stood still.
During the winter 1798-9 an affair had been going on
which, though altogether unconnected with poetry or the
1 Goethe to Schiller, March 9, 1799. — Tr.
2 "DenMusen abgetrotzte," Goethe to Schiller [March 18, 1799].
— Tr. 3 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, March 21, 1799. Schiller's new tragic
material was Die feindlichen Briider, afterwards Die Braut von Messina.
— Tr. 4 Goethe to Meyer, Jena, March 27, 1799. — Tr.

504 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
drama, interested Goethe and Schiller very much. In
December 1798 the Elector of Saxony had written to the
Duke of Weimar touching certain articles in a number of
Fichte's Philosophisches Journal which savoured of atheism.
The Elector begged that the authors and editors of these
articles might be made responsible, and pointed out that
otherwise it might be " Our " unpleasant duty to forbid the
children of " Our " state to resort to Jena University and the Gym-
nasien of the Duchy Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Before Fichte
knew that any such request had reached the Duke, he had
printed a pamphlet defending himself conclusively against the
charge of atheism. So far, of course, his action was perfectly
justifiable. But many of his subsequent words and acts were
rather those of a hot, indiscreet man than of one concerned
chiefly about Truth and Liberty of Speculation. The Weimar
Government was very anxious to befriend him, but he seemed
unable to believe this, and at length threatened that if he
were censured he would resign, and that some of his friends
who thought as he did were resolved to follow him. This of
course precipitated matters. Fichte was censured and his
resignation was accepted March 1799. 1
On April 10, 1799, Goethe returned to Weimar, accom
panied by Schiller ; on the two following days the rehearsals of
the trilogy Wallenstein took place, and the three pieces were
publicly represented, Wallensteins Lager on April 15, the
Piccolomini on April 17, and Wallensteins Tod on April 20,
1799. Even the most insensible spectators were stirred to
enthusiasm by Wallensteins Tod. Goethe's heart was full of
joy in this the first decisive success of his dear friend and
brother-poet, "who has opened new paths for author and
actor by his ideal Drama."
We find him again in Jena from May 1 to May 27, 1799.
He has a carriage of his own with him, in which he daily goes
out driving with Schiller. Enabled by his friend's active
sympathy, he completed by May 12 the group of letters
entitled Der Sammler und die Seinigen, which were intended
to gain for the Propylden the interest of a wider public.
Schiller had ere this begun printing a collection of his poems.
Now Goethe, too, resolved to publish the lyrical poems of his
1 Diintzer, Goethe und Karl August, Theii ii. 278-280, 285, 287,
290-293. Duntzer, Aus Goethes Freundeskreise, 396-408. — Tr.

I797-«8oi.] THE DIOSCURI. 505
later years as the seventh volume of his Neue Schriften ; those
written in elegiac form he meant to submit to sharp prosodic
scrutiny. Schiller undertook to get the publisher Unger to
introduce the matter and ask for the poems.
When Goethe returned to Weimar the pressure of busi
ness prevented him from doing steady connected work. Re
vising the poem of Amalia von Imhof according to the stand-
dard of a more searching criticism gave him a great deal of
trouble. Meanwhile Meyer had finished his beautiful design
for a monument to Christiane Becker; its execution was
entrusted to the Gotha sculptor Doll. On June 8, 1799,
Goethe went with his wife and child to Oberrossla. So
urgently did his own affairs there claim him that he ex
cused himself when the Duchess summoned him to Weimar
to renew old acquaintance with the Prussian Minister von
Haugwitz, the companion of the Stolbergs on the Swiss
journey of 1775. Soon after, however, Goethe had to
return. The Duke had invited the King of Prussia when
visiting Erfurt to come to Weimar, which was by no means
prepared for a royal visit, as the ducal family were themselves
living very economically. How unwelcome the prospect of
this visit was may be read in- Goethe's letters to Schiller.
" External circumstance makes our existence and plunders
our existence at the same time," he writes on June 19, 1799,
" nevertheless it is a man's concern to see that, things being
so, he yet comes through; for to isolate one's self entirely
as Wieland has done, is not to be counselled."
About this time, too, Goethe was again wearied by his
eccentric fellow-townsman Johann Isaak Gerning. Gerning,
a son of the famous entomologist, was born in Frankfurt-am-
Main in 1767. When in 1790 the King and Queen of
Naples, on the occasion of the coronation at Frankfurt, had
stopped at the house of Gerning's father, they had taken so
great a liking for the young fellow, then twenty- three, that they
invited him to Naples. When he went there in 1794 the
Queen was said to have treated him like a son. Radiant
in the distinction of this favour, he came in the autumn of
1794 to Weimar and Jena, thinking that his acquaintance
with the Neapolitan royal pair, his being Goethe's fellow-
townsman, and his gift for poetry, would procure him the best
treatment. He gained the entree at the houses of the Duchess

506 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
Amalia, of the Weimar celebrities, and of the good Knebel.
Goethe was rather cold; he saw that the new-comer was
designing, and really not worth much. Gerning attended
lectures in Jena during the winter 1794-5. Afterwards he
sent contributions of verse to Musenalmanachs and monthlies,
Schiller and Wieland being among the editors thus made
happy. When in the summer of 1797 he was about to visit
Italy, he offered himself to Goethe as a travelling companion ;
Goethe could politely avoid this, being unable at the time to
decide about his own journey. Gerning was now back again
and had been paying Knebel a visit in Ilmenau. From
Knebel he came to Goethe as to a brother-poet ! To him
that remark refers in Goethe's letter to Schiller, June 22,
1799 : — " I have lately had a dilettante in poetry with me, who
would have brought me to desperation had I not been in
the mood to contemplate him as a contribution to Natural His
tory, to gain once for all a right objective notion of the species."
This dilettantism in poetry was precisely the evil that the two
great allies were combating with all their powers.1 A better
reception than Goethe's was found by Gerning with Herder.
On June 30, 1799, Schiller came to Weimar to be present
at the performance of Wallensteins Tod, which the King of
Prussia had desired to hear when given his choice by the
Duke. (Schiller was by this time at work on Maria Stuart?)
After levee at Court on July 2 all went to the theatre. Wal
lensteins Tod had a great success. Schiller was summoned to
the royal box, and the King praised the piece ; and the Queen
talked for a long time with both Schiller and Herder. We
do not hear that Goethe rejoiced in any special mark of favour.
The Queen's disposition towards him was not friendly, nor
was his external appearance at this time remarkably engaging ;
he had grown much too stout Yet the Queen loved and
honoured Goethe's mother, with whom she had stayed in the
coronation time in 1790,2 and to whom four years later (1803)
she gave a golden necklace. It was only in subsequent trouble-
darkened days that the Queen felt the power ofthe tragedy and
pathos of Wilhelm Meister? That the sun of royal favour shone
1 See, beside Goethe's and Schiller's letters at this time, the scheme in
Goethe's Works of an Essay Ueber den sogenannten Dilettantismus. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer's Frauenbilder aus Goethe 's Jugendzeit, 530-532. — Tr.
3 See Carlyle's Essay on Goethe, and its quotation from Kunst und
Alterthum for 1824. — Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 507
not on him was a matter of small concern to Goethe ; did not
his friend profit by its rays ? Schiller was now recognised as
the first of German dramatists, and Goethe was happy.
But how discouraging just at this time was Cotta's announce
ment that he had sold hardly 450 copies of the Propylden,
being already at a loss of 2500 gulden by it ! Goethe con
cealed this from Schiller in order not to trouble the pleasure
of the days of his success. When Schiller on his return to
Jena read in a letter of Cotta's how far from prosperous was
the undertaking by which the friends had hoped to work
some reformation, he was passionately stirred to think of the
"unheard-of pitifulness " 1 of the public — much more than
Goethe, who only felt a deep regret that noble seed had fallen
on unreceptive soil. And though he strove for a time so to
arrange that continuation might be possible,2 the enthusiastic
confidence of the beginning was gone.
And now he could not get away to Jena. The betrothal
of the Hereditary Prince to a Russian princess having been
planned, the Duke desired to get the Castle finished as soon
as possible, and he believed Goethe's presence in Weimar to
be necessary.3 The poet was low-spirited and disquieted to
think how the precious time was passing without durable
results. He writes moodily to Schiller on July 27, 1799 : —
" Our latest experiences have convinced me anew that men
desire, not any kind of genuine theoretic insight, but phrases
by which their mode of thinking and acting may acquire some
seeming."4 In such a state of intellectual " debasement " he
was able to meet with calm composure, nay, even with perfect
friendliness, his old friend Mama Laroche, who with her
grandchildren (two daughters of poor little Max Brentano, who
was now dead six years) had come (July 15) to visit Wieland
in Osmannstedt. Goethe met Frau von Laroche first at Tie
furt, then when staying for a short time at Oberrossla went
over to Osmannstedt to see her, and finally invited her and her
1 Schiller to Goethe, July 5, 1799. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, July 10, 1799. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, July 9, 1799. — Tr.
4 He goes on as follows : — "A few friends who visited our collection,
the presence of our old friend [Frau von Laroche], and, above all, the
amateur theatre lately constituted, have given me terrible examples of that
truth, and the walls which I have already drawn round my existence shall
now be carried a couple of feet higher." — Tr.

508 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. n.
granddaughters to dine at his house, on July 26, 1799. The
good old friend, who could now be nothing to Goethe, was as
it were intoxicated by the delightfulness of this "sentimental
dinner."1 And reading her minute account of the entertain
ment, it must be acknowledged that the whole was admirably
thought out with the design of lifting her to the third heaven
of happiness. The company was sentimental ; Wieland was
there, and Charlotte von Stein, and Caroline von Wolzogen,
and Amalia von Imhof. And at the end — while soft music
came in from the garden through the beautiful shrubs —
appeared an Amorino, no other than Goethe's nine-year-old
August.2 On the preceding day, July 2 5,3 Goethe had
had the poets, Tieck, Hardenberg [Novalis], and A. W.
Schlegel, to dinner. The " trippers and askers " who swarmed
round the great poet in his later years reported him cold and
haughty, but to genuine merit he was open and friendly as
ever. Goethe had hoped that he could at any rate get away to
Jena on July 27 or 28. But he had to await the return of
the Duke and Voigt, and his hope proved vain. In order to
escape the bustle and noise of his house in the town, he takes
refuge at the end of July in his Garden,4 where he lives solitary,
having sent Christiane and August to Jena. August, like
Wilhelm Meister's Felix, showed much readiness in writing,
in languages, and in all objective acquirements (zu allem was
angeschaut werdeti muss), and had moreover a good memory.
Goethe desired only to develop what really lay in him, and
to secure accuracy and thoroughness in what he did learn.5
In his garden solitude Goethe now spent six happy and
industrious weeks. He wrote the Erste Walpurgisnacht, a
1 Charlotte Schiller, ii. 337. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August. — Tr.
2 Frau von Laroche's account is quoted at length in Duntzer's Frauen-
bilder aus Goethe's Jugendzeit, pp. 548-550. — Tr.
3 Duntzer observes that the letter No. 633 in Goethe's and Schiller's
published correspondence is misdated July 24, 1799. It should be July
25. Tieck directed Goethe's attention to Ben Jonson, urging him to read
Volpone. — Tr.
4 The trees and shrubs sown twenty years before had now grown so
much as almost to deprive the house of light and air. "Thus does it
often happen," remarks Goethe, "our own wishes grow over our heads."
— Tr. 6 These details about August are from Goethe's letter to Knebel,
September 17, 1799. — Tr.

i797-i8°i-] THE DIOSCURI. 509
ballad of a peculiar kind — dramatic in form, and intended to
be set to music ; laboured at collecting and revising his poems
for that Seventh Volume which Unger was to publish ; con
tinued the revising of Die Schwestern von Lesbos, (it had ere
this been determined to publish the poem in the Musen-
almanach) ; studied Winckelmann's life and writings j1 and
planned to wri^e with Meyer's aid the history of Art during
the eighteenth century.2 On August 21, 1799, he tells
Schiller that, contrary to his custom, he has been staying up
until midnight to await the moon, which he looks at through
the Auch3 telescope. Meanwhile the building of the Castle
went on briskly, and drew Goethe into the town several times.
(He was not content with the plan.) He took a house in
Weimar for Schiller, who meant to spend the winter there in
order to be near the theatre. Meanwhile the number of
drawings sent in to compete for the prizes offered in the spring
was growing very large, and Goethe spent some time examin
ing and discussing them with Meyer, beside arranging about
exhibiting them.
The Duke's return did not, after all, release Goethe. About
September 13, 1799, Schiller came to Weimar for a few days.4
The friends criticised the drawings together. It was at this
time that Schiller received the gift of silver plate which the
Duchess had resolved on as a token of gratitude after the re
presentation of Wallenstein in July 1799. Now came the
Duke's reply to Schiller's petition for an increase of salary to
enable him to live in Weimar during the winters. The Duke
added two hundred thalers to the salary, and hoped that
Schiller would in future, before finishing his plays, submit them
to the Weimar lovers ofthe drama. Here Karl August is think
ing especially of himself; he did not consider Goethe a sufficient
counsel to Schiller. He had become very enthusiastic about
the theatre ; this may be largely ascribed to his passion for Car
oline Jagemann, the remarkable prima donna and actress. His
partiality for the French drama may be seen in his expressing to
Goethe a wish to have Voltaire's Mahomet on the Weimar stage.
1 Goethe to Schiller, August 21, 1799. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, September 17, 1799. — Tr.
3 Auch was a Weimar mechanician. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl
August. — Tr.
4 Schiller was returning with his family from Rudolstadt. — Tr.

510 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii-
Schiller having returned on September 15, 1799, to Jena,
Goethe followed him thither next day, intending to remain a
fortnight. He went through his elegiacs and hexameters with
A. W. Schlegel, and towards the end of September began at
length to translate the Mahomet ; and for the sake of this
translation obtained leave of absence until the 13th of October.
His intimacy with the two Schlegels, who visited him fre
quently, vexed many people, even Schiller was a little put out
by it. Goethe visited no one1 except Schiller and the old
Ecclesiastical Privy Councillor, Griesbach (a native of Butz-
bach, but brought up from babyhood in Frankfurt). In the
night between the nth and 12th of October 1799 a daughter
was born to Schiller ; Goethe was one of the sponsors.
According to his promise Goethe returned to Weimar on
October 13. There the old throng of official duties pressed
in upon him, and the collectedness needful for literary labour
was totally unattainable. He had half resolved to go back to
Jena in the beginning of November 1799, when he received
a letter from Schiller bearing word that Charlotte Schiller was
dangerously ill. Goethe felt that he could be no use to
Schiller in Jena, and would himself but spend the time in dis
quiet2 In order to divert and compose his thoughts he went
with his family to Niederrossla for a few days, where he was
present at the dedication of a church. There he heard from
Schiller that Charlotte was growing better, was out of danger.
When the fever subsided, however, the state of the sufferer's
mind caused deep anxiety. Meanwhile Goethe was occupied
with the report on the allotment of the drawing-prizes, and
1 Dorothea Veit (Dorothea Mendelssohn by birth, afterwards Dorothea
Schlegel) was one of those disappointed by Goethe's secluding himself.
It was dreadful, she thought, to be in Jena and yet not see Goethe. See
this and other details of this stay, Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii.
313-316.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, October 26, 1799. Goethe's brother-in-law,
Johann Georg Schlosser, had died on October 17, 1799. Goethe tells
Schiller of this on October 23. When the French were approaching
Frankfurt Schlosser was outside the walls in his garden ; he found the
gate nearest his garden closed, hurried to the next gate, which was a good
deal farther away, and, thus heated by exercise, heated himself further
by entering a warm room. From this he was summoned to the Council,
where he caught cold, then fever came, and he was carried off very fast.
The reader will probably care for these details of one of the old intimate
Frankfurt circle, now fast dwindling. — Tr.

17971801.] THE DIOSCURI. 511
with the announcement of a new competition. It was a great
pleasure when, in the midst of his labours, his Roman friend,
the painter Bury, arrived for a visit of considerable length.
The Court of Weimar gave Bury a friendly reception. On
November 6 Schiller, weary of watching in the house of sick
ness, sought refreshment and rest in a few hours' visit to
Weimar ; he left his Karl behind with August Goethe. On
November 7, 1799, Professor Doll came with the monument to
Christiane Becker. Goethe received it and had it temporarily
deposited in the Castle Yard. The Duke promised to con
tribute to the cost of erecting it properly.
On November 9, 1799, Goethe went to stay some weeks
in Jena ; " If my presence can bring no positive help," he writes
to Schiller on the 8th, " the diversion of the thoughts in an
enduring sorrow is at any rate always something." He suc
ceeded during his stay in finishing the translation of the
Mahomet. But this was not the important event of the visit.
In the earlier part of it, before the Mahomet was finished,
Goethe read the first volume of the Memoires historiques de
Stephanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti, lent him by Schiller. On
November 18, 1799,1 he conceived from the perusal of this
book the idea of a drama, Eugenie, afterwards called Die
Naturliche Tochter. In this piece Goethe hoped to free him
self of the mighty material of the French Revolution. He
.would show the monarchy, which the crimes of king and
of noblesse had destroyed, restored on the firm basis, of
reverence for the liberty of the people on the part of the ruler
and his ministers, and of confidence in and harmonious co
operation with the Government on the part of the people.
The project lay so near his heart that he kept it secret even
from Schiller. And during this visit to Jena Goethe wrote
his first sonnets ; they were sharp ridicule of dilettantism in
Art. He was led to the sonnet-form through his intimacy
with A. W. Schlegel.2 On December 2, 1799, Goethe is able
1 Riemer's Mittheilungen iiber Goetlie, ii. 557- — Tr.
2 The sonnets which Goethe wrote in 1799 have been lost. The
earliest preserved sonnet of Goethe's is that which closes Scene xix. of
Was wir bringen, written June 1 802. Next in order comes the Sonnet
spoken by Eugenie in Die Naturliche Tochter, Act ii. Scene iv., written
at the close of 1802. Next comes Das Sonnett, now the first poem in the
division of Goethe's poems headed Epigrammatisch ; this was probably
written in 1806, it appeared in the Morgenblatt for January 5, 1807, and

512 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
to write to Gottlieb Hufeland : — " During the three weeks
of my stay here I have at last put together the scheme of
the whole Theory of Colour. You know from your own
experience what a great gain that is." On December 3, 1799,
Schiller, with his wife, now convalescent, went to Weimar, but
Goethe stayed on in Jena, where on December 6 and 7 1 he
framed the plan of the first two pieces of his trilogy Eugenie.
He left for Weimar on December 8.
When back in Weimar he used the remnants of time not
devoured by business in giving his translation of Voltaire's
Mahomet a final revision. During this winter, 1799-1800, a
young student of medicine, Nikolaus Meyer of Bremen, who
lodged near, spent a great deal of his time in Goethe's house.
He was writing his Doctor's Dissertation, the subject — the
Anatomy of the Mouse. He was welcome to the use of
Goethe's anatomic collections. The investigations sometimes
took place on the kitchen-hearth, to Christiane's horror!
Meyer was also the good friend of Christiane and August;
with Christiane he often went to dancing assemblies, a fact
which was greedily pounced on by scandal. Schiller had
taken up his abode in his new dwelling earlier than his wife,
soon after in a volume of Goethe's poems which he had arranged for the
printer before going to Karlsbad in 1806. Then in December 1807, at
Jena, he begins writing, in competition with Riemer and Zacharias Wer
ner, the group known as the Sonnette. (The two sonnet-translations in
Goethe's translation of Benvenuto Cellini's Life (1796) are by A W.
Schlegel.) Diintzer, Goethes lyrische Gedichte erlautert, iii. 244-246. — Tr.
1 Riemer's Mittheilungen, ii. 557. During this time Goethe heard
Tieck read his Genoveva, and was much interested by Malone's essay on
the probable order of Shakespeare's plays, by a tragedy and a comedy ot
Ben Jonson's, and by two of the apocryphal Shakespeare plays. (Goethe
to Schiller, December 6, 1799.) During this time, too, Dorothea Veit
had her desire, and met Goethe. She was out walking on November 14,
1 799, with the brothers Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel, Hardenberg [Novalis]
and his brother, in a public walk called " Paradise." Goethe unexpectedly
appeared, seemed not to wish to meet the large party, then they executed
a skilful manoeuvre, half the party retired, and the Schlegels went forward
with Dorothea Veit, whom Wilhelm introduced as Moses Mendelssohn's
daughter. She did not mean to talk at first, but, seeing that Goethe and
Schlegel were not talking, thought : " Devil take shyness! If he is bored
now I am irrecoverably lost." So she immediately began to ask him about
the destructive floods in the Saale ; he replied, and they got on pleasantly.
Of all his works his presence made her think most of Wilhelm Meister.
See Dorothea Schlegel's Letters recently edited by Dr. Raich. — Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 513
who stayed with Charlotte von Stein until December 1 6 ; he
spent many of his evenings with Goethe. On December 17,
1799, Goethe at length could read Mahomet to Schiller, the
Duke, and the Duchess. The Duke took a remarkable interest
in the representation of this play, and discussed it thoroughly
with Goethe. On December 1 8 Goethe invites Schiller's wife
to his house for the first time. On December 23 a large
evening party (one of his guests being Herder) assembled at
his house to hear Mahomet read. On December 27 Schiller
and Goethe dined with the Duke. We find Goethe taking a
warm interest in the three first acts of Maria Stuart, and,
though in the closing days of 1799 not very well, spending
New Year's Eve in the most cordial intercourse with Schillei.
During the last year of the eighteenth century1 the two
great poets continued their labours towards the ennoblement
of the German stage. Schiller not only trained the actors in
his own plays, but would take Goethe's place in the rehearsals
of the plays of others, sometimes, in cases of sheer necessity,
in the rehearsals of operas, though he knew nothing of music.
They found it impossible to exclude Kotzebue, who had come
to Weimar in 1 799. He stood in high favour with the Duchess
Amalia, and required no payment for his plays. The first
theatric task of the year was the preparation of the Mahomet.
It demanded special care, as it was admired so much by the
Duke, and was to be given on the Duchess's birthday (January
30, 1800). Schiller undertook to write a prologue, stating
that the classic French Drama was here produced on the
German stage not as a model for imitation, but as an example
of a distinctly characterised national Form of Art. And the
two friends agreed (January 6) that Shakespeare's Macbeth
should be prepared by Schiller, and Goethe's Iphigenie by
Goethe, for stage representation. The barometer was low, and
in this kind of weather Schiller could work, while Goethe felt
well only when the barometer was high. Accordingly two acts
oi Macbeth were ready by January 20, 1800, while Goethe on
that day despaired of adapting Iphigenie. The performance
of Mahomet on January 30, 1800, excited Goethe's enemies
to extravagant abuse. However, before the performance
1 Note how Schiller in the first letter of 1800 makes the mistake that
Heine made, calling 1800 the "new century." — Tr.

5'4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
Goethe had written : — "To me it is indifferent, whether the
piece pleases, and whatever may result from its representation.
I regard it as an experiment in which author, actor, and public
may learn many a good lesson."1 The Duke had the piece
repeated, and endeavoured to improve the future representa
tions by his criticism.
Just after the middle of February 1800 Schiller had a
severe illness. We find him six weeks later, on March 24,
1800, still suffering from its consequences. Goethe and
Meyer visited him constantly, and showed their true and
anxious sympathy. We know little of Goethe's activity during
the time. On February 26 he sends the Romische Elegien to
A. W. Schlegel to receive his final corrections.2 On March
5 we find him thanking Schlegel for these corrections, the
greater number of which have been adopted, and enclosing the
Second Book of Elegien ; the Epigramme shall follow (they
did on March 20); "my present condition is as unpoetic as
it is uncritical," and such aid is therefore very valuable. All
desire to continue Eugenie flagged.3 At this time Bury finished
painting a half-length portrait of Goethe, a little more than
life size. Though somewhat idealised it was a very good
likeness, and gained general praise. After this Bury began
to paint Goethe seated, with the attributes of the stage. At
length, on April 10, 1800, Goethe was able to despatch to
Unger the final poems of his Seventh Volume,4 in the arrange
ment of which Schiller's sympathy had been a valuable aid.
On April 28, 1800, Goethe followed the Duke to Leipzig
Fair. He had found that he must seek some refreshing
influence. In Leipzig he met the celebrated metrist Her
mann,5 and had a long talk with him ; on suggesting that
he should write on German metre, Hermann replied that
1 Goethe to Knebel, January 30, 1800. — Tr.
2 He had spoken of sending the Romische Elegien to Schlegel, Jan. I,
1800, but seems to have delayed, hoping to see Schlegel. — Tr.
3 See Goethe's reference at the end of a letter to A. W. Schlegel, dated
April 2, 1800, to "a work that I have begun," which Professor Duntzer
(Goethe und Karl August, ii. 332) believes to refer to Eugenie. — Tr.
4 The treasures of this wonderful volume of lyric poetry are reckoned
by Duntzer, Goethes lyrische Gedichte erlautert, i. 270-274. — Tr.
6 Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann. The name of Goethe's friend
of old times was Christian Gottfried Hermann. Oeser had died before
this visit to Leipzig. Goethe probably visited Friederike Oeser. — Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 515
Goethe .must first create German metre. Another whom
he met in Leipzig was Cotta, to whom he promised text
to match the caricatures of women in the Pocket-book for
Ladies. Goethe had his Christiane and August to Leipzig
also, that they might enjoy the bustle and life of the Fair,
that " world in a nut."1 They left Weimar on May 9. With
them Goethe returned on May 16, 1800. Schiller was away in
Ettersburg finishing Maria Stuart ; having brought his adapta
tion of Macbeth on the stage with success, he had started the
day before Goethe's return. On June 9, 1800, Schiller came
back to Weimar with Maria Stuart finished; its rehearsals began
at once. The performance on June 14 was a new triumph for
Schiller. He had carried through what the Duke viewed with
grave doubt, and Goethe too — he had the Holy Communion
represented on the stage. In this summer died suddenly the
good true Lerse, to whom had come in his very last days a
cordial greeting from his friend of the old Strassburg time.
For a long time Goethe felt out of tune, hardly got his con
tribution to Cotta's Pocket-book done ;2 he turned to Faust,
but could not advance aright, while Schiller had already
taken firm grasp of a new subject3 At length he could bear
it no more, and on July 22, 1800, suddenly made up his mind
to fly to his abode in the Castle at Jena. There he had
indeed some business, but not so much as to prevent literary
work. On arrival he began immediately translating the last
three acts of Voltaire's Tancrede. Of this he had already
spoken to Schiller, but he now planned to make a freer
adaptation, and to add a Chorus. On August 1 he " unties
a small knot" in Faust — he discovers how to introduce
Helena ; he could do a great deal if only he had a fortnight
longer in Jena, "but unfortunately I imagine myself to be
needed in Weimar, and to this imagination I sacrifice my
most vivid desire."4
He returned on August 4, 1800, and was engaged by the
building of the Castle and the drawings competing for the
prize, as they gradually accumulated; but literary work was
1 Goethe to Schiller [end of April 1800]. — Tr.
2 Die guten Weiber — The good Women — to counterbalance the carica
tures of women. — Tr.
3 Die Jungfrau von Orleans. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Schiller, Jena, August 1, 1800.— Tr.

516 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
almost impossible. So on September 3, the anniversary, so
important in Goethe's life, of the Duke's birthday, he hastened
back to Jena, and there succeeded in beginning Helena. He
was visited on September 2 1 by Schiller and Meyer, and the
allotment of the prizes was decided, and the new prize theme
fixed on. Goethe read aloud the beginning of Helena : Schiller
felt that in it breathed the lofty spirit of ancient tragedy. But
Goethe was now withheld from poetry for a while by having
to draw up a critical report on the drawings, by conversations
on higher physics with Ritter, by conversations on philosophy
with Niethammer and Friedrich Schlegel.1 It was his way
to derive from intercourse with men of eminence in any kind
that which profited his own being, as from the books of great
philosophers he culled the thoughts harmonising with his own.
This enjoyable stay came to an end with his return to Weimar
on October 4, 1800.
Goethe was now attracted by the circle of the Duchess
Amalia. A comedy by Gotter, Die stolze Vasthi, was played
in masks in the Duchess's private theatre. Goethe wrote an
epilogue, an address to the Duchess.2 In the epilogue he
refers to " something new " which she may hear in a few
days. This was his Paldophron und Neoterpe, a masque in
which the change of century is celebrated. It was composed
very rapidly, dictated to Henriette von Wolfskeel, and then
rehearsed as rapidly under Goethe's guidance. When per
formed,3 there was no voice but praise of the author and the
actors. Goethe turned ardently to the Theatre then, he
resolved to publish in union with Schiller a prize theme for
dramatic pieces, and to celebrate the passage from the old to
the new century by a series of festal performances. The last
number of the Propylden (iii. 2) was now printed without
indication of the resolve to publish no more.
About the middle of November 1800 Goethe again
sought in Jena the rest and collectedness needful for literary
work. Again men of science and philosophers claimed him,
and "poor Poesy"4 had not her perfect rights. One of the
1 Goethe to Schiller, September 30, 1800. — Tr.
2 Hempel's Goethe, xi. 232. — Tr.
3 On the Duchess Amalia's birthday, October 24, 1800. See Duntzer,
Schiller und Goethe, ii. 205, and the footnote. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Schiller, November 18, 1800. — Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 517
philosophers was Schelling, who had returned to Jena for the
winter. Goethe was drawn back to Weimar for a short time,1
by the building of the Castle and by the Theatre. When in
Jena again he at first began on Faust. But word came from
Iffland that he would play Goethe's translation of Tancrede on
the next Coronation Day, the 18th of January 1801. Goethe
wrote to Iffland on December 16, 1800, promising to do his
utmost. The piece would serve also for the birthday of the
Duchess Luise, January 30, 1801. Unfortunately he had to
give up the plan of a free translation and of introducing a
Chorus. In order to finish his work in time he stayed on in
Jena, alone in his room ; only on one fine day did he go out
walking. And he succeeded; on December 25, 1800, he sent
the last two acts to Iffland, proposing at the same time lyric
episodes for the piece. The old damp Castle was not a good
December residence, and Goethe had caught a violent cold,
which by the advice of a young doctor, a friend of his, he
repelled with Peruvian balsam with opium and myrrhs.2
Meanwhile the Duke, to the annoyance of Goethe and Schiller,
had declared against their plan of celebrating the new century ;
he was particularly displeased that the Direction of the Theatre
had not been treated with. Schiller instantly gave up all
dealing in the matter. 3
On December 26 Goethe returned to Weimar, bringing
Schelling with him to spend the Christmas holidays in his
house. They opened their minds freely to each other on
nature and art. On the last day of the eighteenth century
there was a Redoute, for which Goethe had arranged a pageant.
After midnight Goethe, with Schiller, Schelling, and his enthusi
astic admirer the nature philosopher Steffens,4 withdrew to a
1 From about November 24 to December. 1 2, 1800. Duntzer, Goethe
und Karl August, ii. 349. — Tr.
2 See the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1 801. The doctor was certainly a
young Harbauer. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 352. — Tr.
3 See the undated letter No. 779, in the third edition of the Brief
wechsel zwischen Goethe und Schiller (No. 780 in the second edition).
— Tr.
4 The Norwegian Heinrich Steffens, in his autobiography Was ich
erlebte, tells us that in 1798 he spent a few days in Weimar as Goethe's
guest. He met Goethe first in Jena at the house of the bookseller From-
mann, then at LodeiJs. But Steffens's account is not quite correct See
Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 273. — Tr.

518 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ii.
side-room, where a little later they were joined by Chr. W.
Hufeland, and there they celebrated the close of ' the century
in flowing champagne. Steffens gives an interesting account of
the party : — " Goethe was unrestrained in his mirth even to
excess, while Schiller grew more and more serious and de
livered himself in ample doctrinaire aesthetic expositions . . .
and did not let it put him out when Goethe by some brilliant
objection tried to confuse him in his discourse. Schelling
steadily maintained his calm bearing ; I could hardly observe
any change in him. The physician Hufeland was on the eve
of departure to an appointment in Berlin. He joined us some
what later, and beloved as the excellent man was, the general
dislike of Prussia was pretty freely expressed, and he very good-
naturedly put up with the jokes of which he was the object"
On January i, 1801, the century was worthily begun with
the performance of Haydn's Creation, and of Goethe's fphi-
genie to Gluck's music. It was on the following day that
Lavater, that faithful champion of justice and order, was after
long suffering set free by death.1 On the same day Goethe
was prostrated by violent illness, stated by Herder's wife to
be a cold brought on by his presence at the theatre on the
previous evening, and by Goethe himself2 considered the
result of that ill-judged treatment of the cold caught in the
Castle at Jena. Erysipelas with fever and a convulsive cough
were now added ; on January 5 it had become necessary to
keep him in an erect posture, breathing being impossible in a
recumbent one, a repetition of the experience of thirty years
ago in Frankfurt. His left eye was endangered by a tumour
that formed on his whole head and neck, and the physician
feared for his brain. Christiane related that in his ravings
the old Pagan broke forth into the most moving, heart-piercing,
genuinely passionate appeals to the Saviour.3 During five
days he was without personal consciousness. " Charlotte
Schiller4 and I have shed many tears over him during the
1 In September 1799 Lavater, heroically endeavouring to save the
people of Zurich from the excesses of Massena's soldiery, had received a
gunshot wound which, though not immediately fatal, caused him great
suffering and ultimately death. — Tr.
2 Tag- und-Jahres Hefte, 1 80 1. — Tr.
3 Riemer's Mitllieilungen iiber Goethe, i. 121. Christiane used to
repeat this whenever that epoch of Goethe's life came to be talked of.
— Tr. * " Die Schillerin."— Tr.

1797-1801.] THE DIOSCURI. 519
last few days," writes Charlotte von Stein on January 12 to
Fritz. All Weimar was subdued to anxious sadness ; now at
last it was perceived how much all owed to the self-sacrifice
of the sufferer. But on January 1 3 recovery had begun ; he
was able to send word that he was in a good way. In con
valescence he was very low-spirited, weeping especially at
sight of August. He was penetrated with the thought of the
desolateness of his unwedded Christiane and her child had
he died ; he felt that until now he had never known what a
deep disinterested love for him they cherished. On January
15 he sent to thank Charlotte von Stein for her sympathy,
and to say that he hoped soon to go out of doors. On
January 19 he was able to thank the Duke by letter, who
then came to see him. Not to remain unemployed, he turned
to translating the little book of Theophrastus on Colours. 1
His friends Schiller, Heinrich Meyer, Voigt, Einsiedel, and
Loder,2 did their best to make the time of recovery pass plea
santly. It was not long ere he felt the need of music.3 On
January 22, 1801, there was a little concert at his house, in
which probably Caroline Jagemann and her younger sister
sang as they did in one in April. On January 24 Goethe's
left eye at length opened. And now he had the pleasure of
receiving the Duchess Amalia with Fraulein von Gochhausen
and Fraulein von Wolfskeel. The Duchess Luise was at the
time unwell. When, on January 26, Charlotte von Stein and
Schiller's wife visited him he begged anew for their friendship
as though he had just returned to the world. Schiller mean
while superintended the rehearsals of the adaptation of
Tancride, though on January 29 Goethe was able to go over
the part of Amena'fde with Fraulein Casper. On the evening
of January 29, after the last rehearsal, Schiller supped with
him, and on the following evening was able to tell his friend
of the success of the performance.
1 Tag-undJakres-Hefte, 1 801. The translation (finished at Pyrmont),
is incorporated in the Geschichte der Farbenlehre. See Hempel's Goethe,
xxxvi. 25-44. — Tr.
2 Add Herder from the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte. But see Duntzer,
Schiller und Goethe, S. 217. — Tr.
3 "The first higher need that I felt after my illness was that of
music.'' Goethe to Reichardt, February 5, 1801. — Tr.

CHAPTER III.
from goethe's dangerous illness of l8oi to the 'death
of schiller.
February i8oi-May 1805.
It was with no common pleasure that Goethe, while recover
ing, received the hearty congratulations of Capellmeister Reich
ardt, whom the Xenien had hit very hard. He replied on
February 5, 1801, in a letter in which thrills deep pleasure
at the friendliness called into manifestation by his illness.
After mention of the kindness of friends, and a few particulars
of his illness, he goes on : — " It is told of Haller that one day
having fallen down a stair and on his head, he immediately
on rising repeated in their order the names of the Chinese
Emperors, wishing to try whether his memory had suffered.
Let it not be taken amiss in me if I institute similar tests.
I, too, had time and opportunity during the last fortnight to
make present to my consciousness many of the threads which
unite me to life, to business, to science and art. Not one, it
seems, is snapt asunder ; Combination proceeds as of old, and
Production, too, seems to lurk in a corner, soon perhaps to
delight me by her effects."
Very deeply was Goethe impressed with the general ad
vantage of his position in Weimar, notwithstanding its occasional
oppressive circumstance. He did not hide from himself that
his union with Christiane had, in some measure, set him at
odds with society ; as little that with her — however dear she
was — he could not know the happiness born of community of
soul, that her influence on August could not be the ripening
and elevating influence exercised by an intellectual mother on
her son ; but love and integrity and manliness forbade that

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 521
the least thought of dissolving their union should cross his
mind. On the contrary, he felt a strong impulsion to do all
that could improve her position, even to seize opportunity and
make his peace with offended morality by a legal marriage.
In a letter of February 1, 1801, to his mother, he says: —
" How good and careful and loving my dear little one has
shown herself you will imagine ; I cannot praise her unwearied
activity enough. August also has been very good, and the
two on my re-entry into life give me much joy."1 The duty of
procuring for August legal recognition as his son, and of gain
ing the boy's confidence and friendship by companionship in
excursions, was felt by Goethe.
By February 7, 1801, the productive impatience had
begun, on that day he turned again to Faust. On February
1 1 Goethe sent his carriage for Schiller, and had the rare
pleasure of hearing him read the first three acts of Die Jung-
frau von Orleans. He was soon again concerned in the
affairs of the Theatre and the building of the Castle. He
went over the part of Amenaide with Caroline Jagemann in
his own room ; and on February 20 conducted in person the
rehearsal of Tancrede at the theatre. The affairs of the stage
were indeed soon to be a cause of great annoyance. First, in
the beginning of March 1801, there was a quarrel between
Fraulein Jagemann and Capellmeister Kranz about the music
of Don Giovanni, which ended in the dismissal of Kranz ; a
little later there was a quarrel between Fraulein Jagemann and
Frau Vohs, one of whose side results was to compel Goethe
to maintain against the Duchess Luise the authority of the
Direction of the Theatre ; indeed Charlotte Schiller, who with
some other ladies was furious on the Duchess's side, almost
managed to bring Goethe and Schiller into conflict. This
was avoided by Goethe's self-command, remarkable as exer
cised in spite of an irritability that clung to him after his ill
ness, for which neither the Duchess nor Charlotte Schiller
made any allowance in their acts.
On March 25, 1801, Goethe went with Christiane and
August to Oberrossla, intending but a week's stay, though it
grew longer. He had an unpleasant enough matter to settle
1 Robert Keil, Frau Rath, S. 341-2. (In this letter Goethe mentions
that his illness had been long coming on ; he ought to have gone to a
watering-place in the summer of 1800.) — Tr.

522 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
— the eviction of a thriftless, non -paying tenant. Yet the
days spent in the open air, the dealing with the common
things of country life, made the time in this pleasant spring
residence enjoyable. Plenty of visits relieved the quiet of the
place. And work at Faust proceeded. Only in response to
the repeated wish of the Duke, who had a good deal to talk
over with him, did he return after a three weeks' stay.1 On
April 15 it happened that Schiller finished Die Jungfrau von
Orleans ; he came to see Goethe in the evening, and soon after
sent him the manuscript of the play. Goethe returned the
manuscript on April 20 with warm praise. He now ventured
to go out in Christiane's company, and at a dinner which he
gave to the Hofmarschallin Countess Egloffstein, and the
Duchess's Maids of Honour, Christiane received the guests.2
Goethe stayed only ten days in Weimar, then hurried back to
Oberrossla, and at length got rid of the old tenant, but as two
months would elapse ere the coming of the new tenant there
were many things to be looked after. He found the tempta
tion to lay down a walk during this delay too strong to resist ;
hitherto no dry footing in wet weather, no shade in sunny
weather, had been available ; and the enterprise called forth in
him the old Park love of trifling in winding paths, in tiny
sociable nooks, and led him further than he had intended,
so delaying a little his return to Weimar.3 During this
absence Goethe was annoyed to hear how the Duke, out
of consideration for his mistress, Caroline Jagemann, pre
vented Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans from being acted on
the Weimar stage.4
Goethe returned to Weimar probably about the close of
the first week of May 1801. A good deal of his time was now
taken up in arranging about the building of the Castle with
Professor Gentz from Berlin, and in looking after the new
improvements in the Park of Weimar. And he procured the
legitimation of August, in whose companionship, being urged
by his friends and by his physician, he started on June 5, 1801,
1 On April 15, 1801.— Tr.
2 See Duntzer's Charlotte von Stein, ii. 139. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, April 28, 1801 ; Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1801.
— Tr.
4 " Der Herzog furchtete wohl besonders die Spottreden welche man
auf diese Jungfrau machen werde die mit ibm in so vertraulichem Verhalt-
nisse lebte." — Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 367-9. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 523
for the Pyrmont Baths.1 August's companionship brought the
same kind of delight as Fritz Stein's and August Herder's
on former occasions ; and he observed with joy how the
boy himself was profiting. In Gottrngen Goethe derived
great pleasure from the sympathy of the students, who
assembled in front of the inn and cheered him ; and a
deputation came asking permission to visit him in Weimar
at Michaelmas. He spent several days full of instruction
and interest in Gottingen, and on June 1 2 left for Pyrmont.
There he was rendered unfit for work by the strong action of
the Pyrmont cure; he even found it hard to work on the
Theory of Colour. On July 9 Karl August arrived, ailing
exceedingly ; his feverish excitement rendered intercourse with
him difficult. Thus Goethe looked forward with pleasure
to departure from Pyrmont, which took place on July 17,
1 80 1, and the happiness of the four weeks that he spent in
Gottingen was heightened by contrast. The whole Corpus
Academicum streamed in upon him. His main object — collec
tion of details for the History of the Theory of Colour — was
fully attained, and his old love for osteology and botany found
nourishment, while August became an enthusiastic student of
mineralogy.2 Goethe and August left Gottingen on August
14, 1801. At Cassel Christiane and Heinrich Meyer joined
them, and on August 2 1 all left Cassel together ; but Goethe
alone arrived in Gotha. There he spent some days of
•friendly intercourse in a strictly private circle in the charming
summer residence of Prince August ; nor was the celebration
of his birthday forgotten.
Cured in mind and body, he returned to Weimar on
August 30, 1 80 1. He found there the architect Rabe, who
had undertaken to conduct the building of the Castle. Now
that two men like Gentz and Rabe co-operated in this difficult
work, Goethe felt at length some ease of mind on a subject
which had long been a trouble to him. The building pro
ceeded, under the guidance of Rabe, according to a design
1 Of the trip that follows Goethe gives a more than ordinarily full'
account in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1801. — Te.
2 Goethe tells in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte how in Gottingen they were
' annoyed by the barking of a crowd of dogs at night. Everything missile
was laid hold on,, and many an ammonite that August had brought with
toil from the Hainberg flew from their windows. — Tr.

524 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
once for all fixed on as best adapted to the needful ends.
The pieces competing for the Art Prize were hung in two
rooms at the theatre, and, with some pieces by old masters,
made a very interesting Exhibition ; it was on this occasion
possible to raise the prices and yet secure a large recourse of
visitors. A series of representations by the famed actress
Madame Unzelmann having been arranged to begin on
September 21, 1801, Goethe was very busy for a while with
the preparations for them, and for Madame Unzelmann's
receptions in society during her stay ; and the personal
presence of the actress laid no less a claim upon his time.
This visit had the best formative influence on the Weimar
audience and the Weimar actors.
On October 8, 1801, Goethe's friend old Hofrath Biitt
ner died in Jena, and his library now became the property of
the University.1 The task of putting in order this library and
the papers of Biittner fell to Goethe, whom we find going to
Jena on the matter on October 18,2 the celebration of the
Duchess Amalia's birthday on October 24 drawing him back
to Weimar only for a short time. In the cheerful spirits of this
interval in Weimar he arranged for the assembly of an evening
circle at his house every second Wednesday, in which thirteen
persons beside himself should take part, seven ladies and six
men. The standing members of the society were the Countess
von Egloffstein, (who was Goethe's partner), Schiller and Lotte,
Schiller's brother-in-law von Wolzogen and his wife, Amalia
von Imhof, the Maids of Honour Fraulein von Gochhausen
and Fraulein von Wolfskeel, Voigt, Meyer, and Captain von
Egloffstein. When Goethe was in Jena he saw a good
deal of his young nephew Schlosser,3 a student there. " My
brother-in-law's son seems a worthy son of his father [now two
years dead] ; it appears to me that he has a good direct
character, and takes pleasure in actual experience."4 Besides
this young Schlosser, his two cousins, the sons of Hieronymus
1 See page 338. — Tr.
2 Goethe's first visit to Jena in 1801. — Tr.
3 This lad was not Goethe's nephew, properly speaking. He was the
son of J. G. Schlosser, by his second wife Johanna Fahlmer. His name
was Eduard. He died in 1807. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Jacobi, November 23, 1801. From the same letter are
derived the two quotations following. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 525
Schlosser,1 were studying in Jena. "The youngest son of the
Sheriff Schlosser is a little enrage for the newest philosophy,
and that with so much intellect, heart, and character (Geist
Herz und Sinn), that Schelling and I are struck with wonder."
Two sons of Voss completed " one of the strangest young
groups that I have ever known." One of the Vosses seemed
to Goethe somewhat overstrained (uberspannt), the other some
what obscure (dunkel). Goethe returned to Weimar finally on
November 10, Schiller's birthday. On the following evening
the first of the meetings of their circle or Krdnzchen took place ;2
Goethe had composed for it the burlesque Stiftungslied, in
which the popular manner is admirably caught. The Duke,
the Princes, and the Princess were invited ; but their presence
did not chill the meeting : all went merrily. The measles
prevalent in Weimar prevented the second meeting from being
held on the appointed day. On November 28, 1801, Less-
ing's Nathan, as fitted' for the stage by Schiller, was presented,
and made a deep and splendid impression. Since it was
Goethe's desire to cultivate audience and actors by habituating
them to all art forms, he now ventured on the fon of A. W.
Schlegel, a drama in the antique style. On December 1
Schiller's household was attacked by the measles ; and not
until December 14 can Schiller propose a walk to Goethe.
The rehearsals of fon were superintended with great care by
Goethe. He was, besides, occupied with a report on the
prize pieces, and in fixing the prize theme for the coming
year. As the Propylden had ceased, the communications to
the public on the subject would in future appear in the Allge-
meine Liter aturzeitung. It was found possible to offer a prize
twice as large as last year's. Goethe found himself in the mood
for poetic labour also, notwithstanding December weather ; the
first act of Eugenie, still a secret from every one, was now com
pleted. On December 27 Schiller finished the adaptation of
Gozzi's Turandot, which was to be the birthday piece of the
Duchess Luise ; yet illness prevented him from being present at
1 Page 127. The names of these two sons were — the elder Fritz,
the younger Christian. With Fritz Schlosser Goethe was afterwards
on particularly friendly terms. — Tr.
2 Krdnzchen literally means a garland. Stiftungslied = a poem for
the foundation of an institution. See Goethe's Gesellige Lieder, "Was
gehst du, schbne Nachbarin, Im Garten so allein?" — Tr.

526 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
the second Krdnzchen on New Year's Eve. Goethe composed
for this Krdnzchen a beautiful lyric on the change of year, which,
with all its gaiety and rapid movement, is full of thought and
suggestion.1 Very cheerily did Goethe begin the second year of the
nineteenth century. To the disgust of Charlotte von Stein, he
went out sleighing with Christiane.2 On great sleighing parties
he usually offered the place at his side to some noble lady.
fon was acted on January 2, and aroused loud outcry on the
ground of immorality. Bottiger, who bore a grudge against
the brothers Schlegel, wrote an article for the Journal des
Luxus und der Moden, in which the representation was praised,
but the bitterest remarks made about the piece and its author.
When Goethe got word of this, the number of the Journal not
being yet published, he procured from the editor the sheet
containing Bottiger's article, and having read it he declared
that if it were published he should go straight to the Duke
and resign the direction of the Weimar Theatre. He added
that he was ready to supply reports of the theatre himself,
The article was not published. Most of the evenings were
spent with Schiller (who was one of those hostile to Schlegel
and Ion). Before going (Jan. 17) to Jena he committed the
superintendence of the rehearsals to Schiller, and asked him
for a stage adaptation of Iphigenie.
The main cause of his visit to Jena was the Biittner
Library. The introduction of order into this " dreadful
chaos "3 was rendered more difficult by the Duke's having
made over Biittner s house without further ceremony to the
new Commandant, von Hendrich. Goethe now meant to
carry out an earlier design of his, a general catalogue of the
Weimar Library and of the two libraries at Jena.4 He
began an exposition of the principles on which the Weimar
1 See in Goethe's Gesellige Lieder the poem Zum neuen Jahr,
"Zwischen dem Alten, Zwischen dem Neuen." — Tr.
2 Charlotte von Stein writes to Fritz, January 7, 1802 : — "Gestern
fuhr er mit seiner Hausmamsell auf der Schlitten." See Duntzer, Char
lotte von Stein, ii. 145. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, January 22, 1802. See also Goethe's letters to
Voigt on the subject. In one he writes that "the most fluent tongue
and the most skilful pen are not able to describe fhe condition in which we
found these rooms." See also the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1802. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Schiller, December 9, 1797.; January 19, 1802. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 527
Theatre was conducted for the Journal des Luxus, and he
wrote the beautiful stanzas 1 addressed to the Duchess to be
spoken at the pageant which was to be given under his
management on the Birthday Redoute. He returned to
Weimar on January 28, 1802, and on that day conducted
the final rehearsal of Turandot. On the following evening,
Friday, January 29, the Birthday Redoute and the pageant
took place. To the horror of the polite society which despised
and hated Christiane, " Amor " in the pageant was personated
by August Goethe, who handed to the Duchess the stanzas
written by his father, having been borne through the hall by
" Momus " and " Satyr." The Hereditary Prince represented
"Epos;" the Princess Caroline, " Fama," held a garland
above the head of " Epos." When the pageant was over the
Princess sought out Goethe and presented the garland to
him. The angry eyes of the fine ladies did not prevent poor
Christiane, who was present, from a hearty childish enjoyment
of the fine sights. On the Duchess's birthday, January 30,
1802, Turandot was presented and proved very successful ; it
was repeated on February 2, when to add to the interest, the
riddles propounded by the Chinese Princess were new.
The tiresome building of the Castle gave Goethe some
trouble at this time. But a more important matter was
the breach with Kotzebue. Kotzebue's piece Die Deutschen
Kleinstddter was to be played in Weimar, but Goethe had
required that first a number of passages should be omitted
which seemed to him unsuited to Weimar. Kotzebue would
not consent, and, strange enough ! called on Schiller to
take his part. But Schiller, having read the piece, declared
his opinion to concur with Goethe's. Then Kotzebue agreed
to the larger number of alterations, but took his final stand
upon the maintenance intact of certain five passages objected
to by Goethe ; Weimar should not have the play at all other
wise. But Goethe was not the man to yield to defiance what
he had not yielded to persuasion, and so Weimar had not the
play and Kotzebue became an enemy.
The reader will remember how much a new theatre was
needed at Lauchstedt2 It was resolved to begin it this
year, and the necessary preparations were entered on. The
1 See Hempel's Goethe, xi. 234. — Tr. 2 See p. 491. — Tr.

528 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
Krdnzchen had been closed by Goethe, who wished to draw
back into himself again. When asked why he closed them he
replied, "Sprecht, ich sei der Bar."1
Goethe returned to Jena about the 8th of February. Al
though the difficult task of getting the Biittner Library into order
laid heavy claim on his time, the stay in Jena offered him a
good deal of pleasure. Nay, he even felt inspired to some
lyrics 2 which flowed forth fresh and fair and perfect as of old.
An especial pleasure was his bright delightful alliance with Pro
fessor Hufeland's3 wife, a lover of singing. Another friend of
Goethe's was Silvie von Ziegesar, a charming girl of sixteen,
who lived in Drakendorf, not far from Jena. After some
hesitation Goethe yielded to his desire to give a Krdnzchen of
farewell in honour of the Hereditary Prince, who was about
to travel to Paris accompanied by the lately appointed
Geheimerath von Wolzogen. For this purpose he returned
to Weimar. The Krdnzchen, at which the Hereditary
Prince and the Princess Caroline were present, was held on
February 22, 1802. Two of Goethe's Gesellige Lieder and a
poem of farewell, composed by Schiller, were sung.
Goethe spent the end of February in Weimar. During
this time he had a visit which gave him great pleasure. For
some years he had been on friendly terms with Karl Friedrich
Zelter of Berlin, who had composed several things for him.
Zelter, now forty-three, was a Master Mason and Director of
the Singing Academy. Zelter wore short black silk breeches,
silk stockings, and on his shoes great silver buckles. He
combined a solid and rugged independence with tenderness
of feeling.4 Goethe felt much attracted ; even spectacles,
usually so repellent to him, were in Zelter a venial fault. He
made Zelter come and stay in his house, and thus learned a
good deal, and gave him several of his songs to compose.
1 "Say, I am the Bear." Cp. pp. 214, 228, 229. See Duntzer,
Goethe's lyrische Gedichte erlautert, i. 278. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, Februaiy 19, 1802. The lyrics probably were
Tischlied, and Generalbeichte. See the Gesellige Lieder. It was at this
time too that Goethe begun Hochzeitlied. See the Balladen. Duntzer,
Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, i. 278-9. — Tr.
3 This was the Jurist, Gottlieb Hufeland, not the professor of medicine,
Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, who had been called to Berlin. — Tr.
4 See Eckermann, Gesprdche mit Goethe, December 4, 1823. — (the
end). As to Zelter's spectacles see April 5, 1830. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 529
As for Zelter, he was transported ; he writes of his visit :
— " I thank God daily on the knees of my heart that I have
seen your face at last. Remembrance of those days will only
cease when my memory ceases. A new spirit has been
waked in me by contact with you, and if I have produced
or shall produce anything worthy of the Muses, I know that it
is a gift and whence it comes."
Kotzebue, who had long been trying to discredit Goethe's
Wednesday evening Krdnzchen by a more brilliant and showy
one held on Thursdays, now resolved to play what he thought
a trump-card against the poet whom he hated, envying his
lofty genius and his stable power. If all went, indeed, accord
ing to Kotzebue's hope, a breach between Schiller and Goethe
would be effected. He organised i\fete to celebrate Schiller's
Name -Day, March 5, 1802.1 There should be recitations
from Schiller's works in the Town Hall of Weimar, terminat
ing with Das Lied von der Glocke, at the end of which the
Master Bell-founder, personated by Kotzebue himself, should
strike the mould of the bell and disclose Dannecker's bust of
Schiller. Even for the Countess von Egloffstein and Amalia
von Imhof the temptation to show off was too strong. Many
preparations were made, a great deal of trouble taken, and,
after all, the scheme broke down miserably on the refusal of
the Biirgermeister to lend the Town Hall, which had lately
been fitted up with new decorations and a new platform.
Goethe was meanwhile spending pleasant days in Jena,
whither he had gone early in March, and Schiller, who filled
his place at the rehearsals, held completely aloof from the
honours that were meant to betray.
During a short interval spent in Weimar Goethe asked
Herder to confirm August in the boy's own home. Herder
consenting, Goethe wrote a letter of warm thanks to his old
friend who is so good as to introduce August into the Christian
community by a more liberal way than precedent authorises.
August, accompanied by his tutor, shall present himself to
Herder.2 Immediately after this Goethe returned to Jena,
taking with him his brother-in-law Vulpius, who had been
1 Falk, Ludecus, and Goethe himself have left accounts of this scheme
and its results. See the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1802, and Bieder-
mann's note (Hempel's Goethe, xxvii. 408-9). — Tr.
2 Goethe to Herder, Weimar, April 26, 1802. — Tr.
2 M

53° THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
appointed library-amanuensis. All went well with Goethe this
time in Jena ; he felt the lyric stir and thrill again, x and the
poems that he wrote were like the fresh blossoms of the
spring. On May 15, 1802, he returned to be present at
Iphigenie, which Schiller had prepared for the theatre. The
piece made a deep and noble impression. Goethe, with that
theory in mind that it is well to accustom actors and spectators
to every form of the drama, had ere this resolved on a
very bold step. Friedrich Schlegel's tragedy Alarcos is a
strange mixture of the antique and romantic, Greek trimeters
and Spanish assonances, iambics and trochaics, rhymed and
unrhymed verse. This play Goethe resolved to bring on the
Weimar stage, though Schiller expressed doubt, and Goethe
agreed with him that the play was full of faults. It was a
bold undertaking of the master, who cared little about external
success or failure, but who was resolved on carrying out a
strong will, made stronger by having hitherto overborne all
opposition. Goethe had at this time but one cause of anxiety
— Christiane was very poorly.2
Goethe went, about May 20, 1802, to Lauchstedt for a
week, and found the building of the new theatre progressing.
After he had returned Alarcos was given (May 29), and, not
withstanding the most careful and finished acting, the piece
was a complete failure.3 Untroubled by this, Goethe went a
week later (on June 6, 1802) to Jena, to compose the open-
1 Goethe to Schiller, May 4, 1802. — Probably the lyrics written at
this time were Friihlingsorakel — " Du prophet'scher Vogel Du, Bluthen-
sanger, O Coucou !" and Bergschloss : —
Da droben auf jenem Berge
Da steht ein altes Schloss,
Wo hinter Thoren und Thiiren
Sonst lauerten Ritter und Ross.
See Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, i. 279, (where read Lieder 75,
Hot Lieder 15). See in Mr. Hutton's Essay on Goethe comment on this
poem Bergschloss and a translation. Geistesgruss, composed on the voyage
down the Lahn in 1774, is next to Bergschloss in the arrangement of the
Lieder. — Tr.
2 See in the book Freundschaftliche Briefe von Goethe und seiner Frau
an Nicolaus Meyer, the affecting letter of Christiane to Nikolaus Meyer at
this time. Meyer had been in Weimar again during January and Febru
ary 1802. — Tr.
3 This is the occasion on which Goethe is related to have stood up and
said: " Let no one laugh ! " — Tr.

1801-1805.] "THE DIOSCURI. 531
ing piece for the Lauchstedt Theatre, and returned with the
piece finished on the morning of June 13, the day on which
August was confirmed.
After a short stay in Weimar, Goethe went to Lauchstedt,1
accompanied by Christiane and August, and on Sunday, June
2 7,2 1802, the new theatre was opened. Ludecus tells how,
when he arrived in Lauchstedt at seven o'clock in the morn
ing, he saw Goethe in a blue overcoat in front of the theatre.
Goethe was glad that Ludecus had accepted his invitation to
be present at the opening performance, and conducted him into
the theatre immediately. To the astonishment of Ludecus,
the fitting up of the interior was in active progress, and all
appeared to be in indescribable confusion. Ludecus exclaimed
in surprise : "And here it is proposed to act a play to-night?"
To which Goethe triumphantly answered : " Here a play shall
be acted to-night !" At six in the evening a trumpet sounded
to give notice of the performance. The theatre could hold
one thousand spectators; there were about eight hundred
present. At the close of the opening piece, Was wir bringen,
the students from Halle University cried : " Long live the
greatest Master of Art, Goethe !" To this performance Goethe
had invited Reichardt (who had visited him lately) and the
philologist Friedrich August Wolf.
Accompanied by Wolf, Christiane, and August, Goethe
went after a while to Halle,3 where he and his made the
acquaintance of most of the professors. Here August learned
to swim. To Reichardt, in Giebichenstein, near Halle, a
pleasant visit was paid by the whole family. Goethe found
many objects of attraction to prolong his stay in the university
city ; but Christiane and August returned after a few days to
gay Lauchstedt, to use the baths and enjoy life. Christiane's
greatest pleasure was dancing, and there were innumerable
1 He left soon after the Duke's departure, which took place on June
20, 1802. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 403. — Tr.
2 Goethe, in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, says June 26, 1802. This
is a mistake, according to Duntzer. See Goethe und Karl August,
ii. 403. Ludecus mentions that the day was Sunday. June 26 was a
Saturday. (There is, however, some evidence in favour of June 26. See
Biedermann's note to the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1802. Hempel's
Goethe, xxvii. 413.) — Tr.
3 About July 12, 1802. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August; ii. 405
— Tr.

532 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
hops and balls in Lauchstedt.1 On July 25, 1802, Goethe
returned to Weimar.
The affairs of the library drew him very soon (August 3,
1802) to Jena, Here, surrounded by museums and all those
influences which in former years had led him to the natural
sciences, the old interest in them revived, and he studied
with special attention Comparative Anatomy and the Meta
morphosis of Insects ; then the Theory of Colour occupied
him, and the remarkable Appendix for the new edition of his
translation of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini.2 He enjoyed
constant delightful and helpful intercourse with the families of
the bookseller Frommann, the theologian Paulus, the jurist
Hufeland, the anatomist Loder, and others. The Art Exhibi-
bition, less brilliant this year than in other years,3 drew him
back to Weimar at length.4 On September 25, 1802, the
Weimar Theatre began its season with the piece played at
the opening of Lauchstedt Theatre, Was wir bringen. A few
days later Professor Batsch of Jena died unexpectedly; his
death was a great loss to the Botanic Gardens and to Goethe.
On a short visit to Jena caused by this incident, Goethe had
the friendliest meeting with Voss, who shortly before had
settled in Jena.
Another loss at this time was that of the daily companion
ship of Heinrich Meyer, who, intending to marry at Christmas,
left Goethe's house for one of his own. August inherited
Meyer's room, and could now display his collections (chiefly
of coins and minerals) to the best advantage., Schiller's
children and he were the best friends ; they had even instituted
an Order among themselves, the insignia of which were some
times awarded to grown-up people. During November 1802,
Goethe revised that remarkable cluster of Gesellige Lieder
which had sprung up during the two past years, and worked on
1 See Christiane's second letter to Nikolaus Meyer. She made the
acquaintance of Reichardt's and Wolf's daughters, and was treated by all
with great friendliness. — Tr.
2 The first edition in book form of this translation was published in
1798. That with the Appendix, in 1803. — Tr.
3 See in Duntzer's Goethe und Karl August, ii. 411-414, the account
of the visit of the sculptor Schadow to Weimar. — Tr.
4 Probably after August 20, and before August 23, 1802, Duntzer,
Goethe und Karl August, ii. 409. On August 23 Corona Schroter died
at Ilmenau. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 533
the usual annual report on the prize pieces ; but it was a time
of creative activity also ; the second act of Eugenie was form
ing. He drew back from the Court at this period. A Court
attempt to draw Schiller into nearer relations was not successful,
though with that end in mind a diploma of nobility for him was
procured in Vienna.
It was at this time that Herder complained to the Duke
of the injury done to the Gymnasium by the withdrawal of
the children who served as a chorus at the public representa
tions of operas and the numerous rehearsals. Goethe could
only reply that without the aid from the children no opera was
possible, and that already it was arranged to have the rehearsals
at other than the school hours. He could not procure a
regular chorus when needed, and there was not money to
pay for the institution of choristers. This was a period of
deeper anxiety on a graver subject ; Christiane's confinement
was approaching. Goethe was about to go to Jena for the
sake of intercourse with Voss, when Christiane bore a daughter.1
On the following day, to Goethe's bitter sorrow, the infant
died. This was the fourth little comer that had suddenly
departed after the briefest stay; and her coming had given
him such joy ! If the passionate outbreak of his grief lasted
but a short time, the bereavement worked the more enduring
inward effects.2
During the first quarter of the New Year 1803, Goethe,
unwell, unstrung, and dejected about his position in Weimar,
remained shut up indoors most of his time. Such sad quar
antines were henceforward frequent with him ; in them while
living entirely to himself, to his own thoughts and emotions,
he collected himself for renewed living in the world. The
retirement of which we are now speaking was used in bringing
to completion Eugenie, a piece which rose from the depth of
his heart, for in it the primary effort was to set forth an after-
throbbing grief like his own — the grief of a father who has
lost his daughter. But he had many other employments;
thus he was still working on the Appendix to the Life of
Cellini; and he spent time in arranging a collection of coins
1 December 18, 1802. Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 159. — Tr.
2 Schiller showed great sympathy with Christiane on this occasion.
See Goethe to Schiller, December 19, 1802. — Tr.

534 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. ni."
which were the result of his interest in Cellini. During the
beginning of this "quarantine"1 Goethe would only receive
strangers of real eminence. Thus the famous discoverer in
acoustic, E. F. Chladni, visited him, and after his usual fashion
he absorbed what Chladni had to give and moulded it anew,
beside gaining positive immediate furtherance as to his Theory
of Colour, since there are many senses in which the relations
of sounds and colours may be said to cross each other.2 The
gladdening influence of music was not forgotten. In Decem
ber 1802 Zelter had thrown out a hope of visiting Weimar in
the beginning of February 1803, and Goethe looked forward
to this visit with much pleasure, but the friends were, after all,
disappointed. (Beside the delight of personal intercourse with
Zelter, Goethe had wished to ask him questions about the
organisation of the opera and the orchestra in Weimar, now
about to be carried out on a scale intended rather to meet
future than present needs.3) Even Schiller, having to econo
mise time and strength, did not come to Goethe, though he
visited the theatre and the Redoute. At Goethe's request
Schiller sent him a transcript of Die Braut von Messina on
February 5, 1803, and on the day after he at length visited
him, when the play was thoroughly talked over. We find the
Duke somewhat later sending Goethe a number of the new
paper of Kotzebue and Merkel, Der Freimuthige, with the
remark : — "We must take the thing in between us all in order
to remain au courant of the impertinences." The shabby
attacks of the superficial Kotzebue (whom the Berlin Academy
of Sciences had just admitted to the Class of Belles Lettres),
did not tend to dispel Goethe's depression. The Zeitung fur die
elegante Welt, it is true, took up his part, still he was embittered.
He did not permit the matter to turn him aside in his path ;
only in silence he revenged himself with some satirical verse.'
1 Schiller to Goethe [end of January], 1803. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, January 26, 1803. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, March 10, 1803, Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und
Zelter in den Jahren 1796-1832. Herausgegeben von Dr, Friedrich Wil
helm Riemer (Berlin 1833-4 ; six volumes). — Tr.
4 See Ultimatum, Hempel's Goethe, iii. 300. There is an important
passage at the end of Christiane's letter to Nikolaus Meyer, February 7,
1803, which helps us to see how Goethe felt about personal attacks on
himself. Duntzer (Goethe und Karl August, ii. 426) hears Goethe's
own voice in this passage. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 535
Henceforward he occasionally saw a small assembly at
his own house, ahd had the actors to him often there. On
March 10, 1803, he conducted a rehearsal of Schiller's Braut
von Messina, and then he had a reading rehearsal of his own
Eugenie. He cautioned the actors not to betray anything of
the substance of the piece. All that even Schiller knew was
the name, and what memoirs had been worked on. On March
19, 1803, Goethe left his retreat in order to be present at the
performance of Die Braut von Messina, 1 but afterwards shut
himself obstinately from the world again,2 only receiving
Schiller, a few men of eminence, and his actors ; besides that
he continued to give occasional little concerts. To one of
these, on March 28, 1803, we find the lately returned Heredi
tary Prince invited.
On April 2, 1803, Eugenie was acted. Goethe was not
present. The play, a model of simple, noble style, made a
beautiful impression. Schiller wrote to Iffland that it was a
piece of a lofty, moving kind, and that with its great female
debut part it could not fail to draw on the German stage.3
Goethe's depression had not yet departed, and he con
tinued for some time his retired indoor life. It is probable
that he was present when, on the 23d of April 1803, Schiller's
Jungfrau von Orleans was at length4 acted on the Weimar
stage ; we find him after this in intercourse with society, and
visiting the Duchess Amalia. On May 1 the betrothal of
the Maid of Honour of the Duchess, Fraulein von Wolfskeel,
took place. For the day, which happened to be also her
birthday, Goethe wrote a bright little poem.5 Of official
1 Crabb Robinson was at this performance. He by mistake places it
on the 20th. The Jena students cheered for Schiller, though it was con
trary to the rules of the Weimar Theatre to express applause by cheering.
Clapping alone was permissible. — Tr.
2 See the important evidence of his state at this time in Christiane's
letter to Nikolaus Meyer, April, 21, 1803. — Tr.
3 See Duntzer's Goethe und Karl August, ii. 433-434. This part
Fraulein Jagemann played with remarkable power. Crabb Robinson
complimented her once on it, and she said : — " If I played the part well it
was by chance, for I do not understand the character." — Tr.
4 It will be remembered that in April 1801 Karl August had been a
hindrance to its being acted in Weimar. See p. 522. — Tr.
B Magisches Netz, "Sind es Kampfe die ich sehe?" Varnhagen's
explanation is that Goethe had found Fraulein Wolfskeel, secretly knitting
a vest for her betrothed, Goethe did not know of her betrothal, and was

536 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
duties those which, beside the theatre, occupied him during
the period just considered were the fitting up of the Castle
and the choice of a successor to Professor Batsch. The
arrival, expected to take place in the late autumn of 1803, of
the Russian Princess, the bride of the future Duke of Weimar,
made a great improvement in the Theatre desirable, especially
as to opera. Schiller and Goethe talked over the plan of a
periodical, Das Deutsche Theater, to contain noteworthy stage-
versions of plays. Goethe unhappily undertook an adaptation
of Gotz von Berlichingen.
On May 14, 1803, Goethe, accompanied by August, went
to Jena,1 intending there to revise his Gesellige Lieder and
Eugenie, and to work at the Theory of Colour. He had plea
sant friendly intercourse with Voss, to whom he submitted
Eugenie ; but the rigid metrist showed poor judgment in deal
ing with the poem, and Goethe came but once to him on the
matter. And a course of daily lessons which Voss began to
give August died away like a stream in the sand.2 Goethe,
during this stay in Jena, had the good fortune to get rid
of his property at Oberrossla by selling it to the man
who had been his tenant. The house there in which he
spent so many happy and significant hours has long since
disappeared. He returned on May 29, 1803, to Weimar,
and had a delightful fortnight's visit from Zelter. After
this he accompanied Christiane to Lauchstedt, and leaving
her there went on to Halle, whence, after a short stay, he
returned to Weimar.
afterwards surprised to see the waistcoat on K. W. von Fritsch. (The five
boys and girls are the fingers of the two hands. ) But Varnhagen's story is
not quite correct. See Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, iii. 358. — Tr.
1 During this visit it was that Goethe saw Herder for the last time.
Herder, after some very pleasant talk, made a displeasing remark about
Eugenie, on which a dreadful emotion seized Goethe : "I looked at him,
made no reply, and the many years of our intercourse terrified me in this
symbol most fearfully." See Goethe's Biographische Einzelnheilen. — Tr.
2 But Goethe was on very pleasant terms with the Vosses. One day
he found Frau Voss in the garden working at her flower borders. He
chatted pleasantly about her work and advised her to get hardy things, and
she remarked that they were such strangers in Jena that they did not know
where to get them. Then Voss and Goethe walked up and down chatting
while Frau Voss worked on. A few days later, when the Vosses came back
in the evening - from a party, they found all the borders dainty and neat,
and everywhere summer flowers planted. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI.

537

Meanwhile all was not well with the University of Jena.
Some of her best professors were being drawn from her by the
brilliant prizes offered in other universities. And when on
July 2, 1803, Goethe again betook himself to Jena for some
days, his mind was occupied in considering how best to fill
up the vacancies and how to guard against such losses in
future. Unhappily the Duke was now in a mood of dis
gust with the University, especially because he had not
means to offer salaries as high as those given to professors by
other German states. The Weimar Theatre had a real piece
of good fortune at this time. On July 21, 1803, a young
Augsburger, Pius Alexander Wolff, offered himself as an actor
to Goethe, of whom both as a poet and as a manager of the
theatre he was an enthusiastic admirer. Wolff was very young,
only turned twenty. From Augsburg with Wolff came Griiner,
another young man who wished to be an actor ; it afterwards
turned out that he had not patience enough to submit long
to Goethe's exact and thorough training. Shortly before a
third young actor named Grimmer had come to Weimar. As
Goethe considered all three to possess good powers he gave
them a special series of careful lessons before the return of
the company, absent in Lauchstedt.
On August 1, 1803, the new Castle which, during fifteen
years, had cost Goethe so much anxiety and trouble, was at
length occupied by the ducal family. But a new and much
worse source of anxiety and annoyance was prepared for him
when Kotzebue's Freimiithiger was able to announce with
malicious delight that the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, with its
editor C. G. Schiitz, was about to remove from Jena to Halle.
So great a loss to Jena could not be contemplated by Goethe
without an endeavour to make it good, and he accordingly set
to work and founded a new magazine in Jena. And this
magazine succeeded, though the plan had been looked on as
hopeless by Schiller and others. The success was indeed
purchased by a really wonderful exertion of Goethe's powers,
which might perhaps have been otherwise used to better pur
pose. Still, beside the great profit to Jena University and to
literature, there was much for himself in this labour. On his
birthday, August 28, 1803, the first conference took place with
Professor Eichstadt, who had undertaken the editing of the
new magazine : and not until, after three years' existence, its

538 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. hi.
continuance was assured, did Goethe retire to some extent
from active co-operation.1
An important addition to the library building of Weimar
was now begun, and the plan of a new Schiesshaus2 carefully
considered. Meanwhile Goethe's Berlin opponents — one of
whom was the sculptor Schadow, a partisan of Kotzebue's and
an enemy to the Ideal tendency — had succeeded in having
Eugenie regularly damned in the Prussian National Theatre.3
And this while Fichte declared the play to be Goethe's master
piece, and could not adequately admire it. Malice had done
its work, though Berlin, before the year was over, tried to
expiate the fault by giving a good reception to the play.4
Schiller meanwhile enjoyed high honour as a dramatist — the
young king of Sweden who visited the Court of Weimar
about this time (August 1803), had Wallenstein acted at his
special desire, and when going away sent the poet a diamond
ring. No shadow of jealousy marred Goethe's pleasure in his
friend's success, though at times his own mishap depressed him.
The visit which Goethe had planned5 to pay to Frankfurt
and his mother in the year 1803 had proved impracticable.
A couple of years earlier,6 when a relative of J. G. Schlosser
(who died in 1799) wished Frau Aja to be put under guardian
ship, because she was spending too much, Goethe saved her.
She had the right, he declared, to spend all her property away
if she desired, since she had suffered so long, and with such
noble patience, under a weary lot. He whose affection was
¦ the dearest of her treasures was not one to see her wounded
by her power of giving away being limited, or by any restraint
on her careless, joyous, innocent life.
1 Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann has published Goethe's Briefe
an Eichstddt (Hempel, Berlin, 1872), with a preface and notes. A good
notion of Goethe's amazing labours may be gained from this book. The
new magazine was called the Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung. — Tr.
2 Literally " Shooting House." House whence game are shot, being
driven up by beaters. — Tr.
3 Schadow had hired and placed hooters, we learn from a letter of
Fichte's. Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 444. — Tr.
4 Zelter, writing on October 24, 1803, tells Goethe that Die naturliche
Tochter had been played for the third time on October 22, and had had
good applause. — Tr.
5 Keil, Frau Rath, S. 346.— Tr.
6 In 1800. See Duntzer, Frauenbilder aus Goethe's Jugendzeit, S.
551. As to J. G. Schlosser's death, see p. 510 (note). — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 539
In the beginning of September 1803, Goethe had a piece
of good fortune. Fernow,1 who had been offered a professor
ship in Jena, came from Rome to take it up, and with him
came Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer, a native of Glatz, then in
his thirtieth year. Riemer was an excellent philologist in
the school of Wolf. He had been tutor in the house of
Wilhelm von Humboldt, and now entered Goethe's house in
the same capacity. Nothing could have been more accord
ant with Riemer's desire than a life beneath the influence of
such a spirit ; and, though Goethe often dictated to him as
a secretary, Riemer had plenty of time for his own purposes.
After the return of the actors from Lauchstedt, the class
of three which Goethe had been instructing in theatrical
delivery widened to a whole dozen.2 Meantime, while Goethe
had lost interest in continuing Eugenie, Schiller had found
a new dramatic material in Wilhelm Tell. The two poets
laboured very diligently together in preparing a representation
of Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar, which took place on October
1, 1803, was very successful, and was repeated on October 8.
Also Schiller's adaptation from the French, Der Parasit, was
acted about this time with the best result, the Duke especially
being delighted with it.
During the closing months of the year 18033 we find
Goethe frequently in Jena, where he shows particularly friendly
interest in Voss, whom he hoped to gain for the University.
In Jena Goethe wrote that delightful satiric poem on Kotze
bue, Der neue Alcinous, which he of course kept secret. The
remarkable volume Der Geselligkeit gewidmeten Lieder, which
he had been preparing for the printer in May, had now
appeared; though issued in pocket-book form, and in some
instances giving the guitar accompaniment to the songs, it
seems to have been hardly noticed by the public. The
approaching appearance of the first number of the new Liter-
aturzeitung filled Goethe with excitement. It was a difficult
and critical business ; he had to look after everything, from the
1 Fernow's speciality was the philosophy of art. — Tr.
2 Goethe jotted down at this time a series of observations on the actor's
art, which Eckermann put into form in 1824, and which are published in
Goethe's works under the title Regelnfur Schauspieler. — Tr.
3 Herder began to ail at this time ; the final illness of his life was upon
him.— Tr.

540 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. hi.
general intellectual conception of the whole to the smallest
details of typography.1 Then he was at the same time pre
paring his report on the Art Exhibition, which included an
essay on the work of Polygnotus. All this coming on him in
the unkindly December weather taxed his powers severely,
and when he heard that Madame de Stael was expected in
Weimar, he felt it altogether impossible to go thither to meet
her and take part in society. Madame de Stael is welcome
to Jena, he remarks ; give him but twenty-four hours' notice,
and part of Loder's house shall be ready for her; she shall
find homely fare ; she and Goethe will really meet and speak
to each other better than they could in a drawing-room.2
Schiller spoke to the Duke, who wrote to Goethe (December
14, 1803), approving of his staying in Jena and receiving the
visit of Madame de Stael there ; but on December 1 8 the Duke
sent a courier, pressing him to come to Weimar, where the
great Frenchwoman had been setting everything in a whirl
since her arrival on December 15. Goethe, however, remained
firm. But when Madame de Stael declared that she would
visit Goethe in Jena on December 24, it seemed to him
impolite to bring her over the bad road in winter for his sake
alone, and he invited her to dine with him in his Weimar
house on December 24, to meet the Schillers. On December
18, 1803, in the evening, Herder died; Frau von Imhof, the
sister of Charlotte von Stein, had died at noon the day before.
Goethe was agitated by these deaths, and the bad weather and
the other causes of depression seem to have produced a kind
of nervous torture. In a letter of December 20 to Charlotte
Schiller, he says that he envies Herder when he hears that they
are burying him.
Madame de Stael and the Schillers dined at Goethe's house
on December 24, 1803. Goethe was very friendly, but did
not at all yield his assent to the gifted Frenchwoman ; who
conceived that she understood the great poet thoroughly,3 and
1 Goethe to Schiller, December 13, 1803. — Tr.
2 Goethe.to Schiller, Jena, December 13, 1803. — Tr.
3 See Crabb Robinson's Diary, the year 1804 (vol. i. pp. 177-8).
" I said : * Madame, vous n'avez pas compris Goethe, et vous ne le com-
prendrez jamais.' Her eye flashed, she stretched out her fine arm, of
which she was justly vain, and said in an emphatic tone : ' Monsieur, je
comprend tout ce qui merite d'etre compris ; ce que je ne comprends n'est
rien.'"— Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 541
took upon her to give him counsel. Yet his very opposition,
sometimes frank and direct, sometimes mischievously turning
and baffling, charmed her ; she regularly fell in love with him,
in spite of the "bonne et belle rotondite," with which she
roguishly taxed him,1 undeterred by the fact that she did not
want for plumpness herself. Goethe paid her the return visit,
but immediately after a violent cold brought from Jena confined
him for weeks to his room,2 so that personal intercourse with
Madame de Stael ceased for the present. On her way to
Weimar she had visited Goethe's mother, and had oppressed
her extremely. Goethe's illness was lightened by a visit of
some length from the philologist F. A. Wolf, who came from
Halle at the close of the year 1803. The historian of Switzer
land, Johannes von Miiller, who arrived in Weimar on January
22, 1804, was also admitted to see Goethe. The first act of
Wilhelm Tell, which he read in the second week of January,
called forth warm praise and congratulation.
But Madame de Stael grew restless at being so long shut
off from Goethe's society ; the notes that they exchanged were
not enough for her. On January 22, 1804, she wrote asking
for an interview, and her request being granted, she came to see
Goethe on the following morning, accompanied by her friend
Benjamin Constant, who knew German well. Nor did Goethe
remain at all in the debt of the lady on this occasion, who,
with all her polish, was " rude enough to the Hyperboreans,
whose fine old pines and oaks, nevertheless, whose iron and
amber, may be so well applied for both use and ornament."3
After the brilliant Frenchwoman he felt a desire for intercourse
with intellectual German women. So on January 24 he invited
Charlotte von Stein and her niece Amalia (formerly von Imhof,
now married to Lieutenant von Helvig) to come and see his
coins, which they accordingly did. Two days later Madame
de Stael and Miiller were together at Goethe's, and the Duke
came in, when, as Goethe tells Schiller, the talk grew very
merry, and the plan of going through her translation of his
poem Der Fischer was not carried out. At this interview she
1 See Diintzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 461. — Tr.
2 Goethe observes in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte that the dear experience
of 1 80 1 ought to have made him more careful about residing in harsh
winter weather in the old castle at Jena. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Schiller, January 23, 1804. — Tr.

542 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. hi.
is said1 to have brought him roundly to task for secluding
himself so much, and for being so reserved. If she did make
such an ill-judged attack on his deliberately- chosen plan of
life, a German retort to her French obtrusiveness was doubtless
not lacking. On the evening of January 27 Goethe was
visited by Benjamin Constant and by Schiller. Immediately
after this he broke his quarantine, though he continued to
avoid the Court.
In the beginning of February 1804 Voss came with his
wife to stay in Weimar. Goethe had provided them with a
suitable lodging not far from him, and there was always the
warmest welcome for them in his house. So much did Goethe
esteem Voss, indeed, that, in order to retain his services for
Jena, he ventured on an act not consonant with rigorous
justice, he gave to Voss's son Heinrich, who had as yet done
nothing to prove his teaching powers, a new professorship,
which, long earnestly advocated by Herder, was now to be
founded in the Weimar Gymnasium. It was arranged that
Heinrich should soon come and stay with Goethe, and so
make himself familiar by degrees with the requirements of his
new calling. During this time Schiller usually came over to
Goethe's in the afternoons, and remained until evening.
On February 10, 1804, Heinrich Voss came to Goethe,
and remained nine days, during which he acquired an extra
ordinary love and reverence for the great poet, whose interest
in him was like that of a father. Every morning he spent a
couple of hours with Goethe in his room, and in the evenings
listened with delight while he poured forth his thoughts.
Goethe's actors' class was now, it seems, merely an assembly
on Sunday mornings to read poetry aloud. For the two Sun
days on which Heinrich Voss was present (February 12 and
19) Goethe chose the elder Voss's idyll Luise. On the even
ing of February 16, 1804, Madame de Stael and Benjamin
Constant supped with Goethe without other company. There
was a remarkable wit-combat on this occasion. Goethe pressed
Madame de Stael so hard by his rejoinders that she was forced
to take refuge in a skilful change of front.2 Though Goethe
would not visit Court while Madame de Stael stayed in
1 By Bottiger, who states that he derives his account from Miiller.
See Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 468. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 473-4. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 543
Weimar, he was on one occasion at the Duchess Amalia's
when she was present;1 on February 23 he was her guest at
dinner; on February 24 she visited him and lectured him
about Schlegel's Alarcos, and he talked finely about Tragedy.
When she was going he told her that August would call on
her to-morrow, to ask an inscription for his new album. As
yet the only other entries in this album were by Goethe and
Schiller. On February 29, 1804, Madame de Stael left
Weimar for Berlin. Goethe had given her letters of introduc
tion to Zelter and to August Wilhelm Schlegel. He felt a glad
sense of relief on the departure of this typical French femme
d'esprit. Her importunity and obstinacy used to drive him
into opposition, and often compelled him to carry the opposi
tion to extremity; for otherwise he must either be silent or
say plainly to her that such conflict could lead to no result.
" In mere joy that the Stael is gone, Goethe has been for
two consecutive days driving everywhere on a sleigh with his
more congenial Donna," writes Charlotte von Stein on March
8, 1804.2 The rehearsals of Wilhelm Tell and the needful
preparations made Goethe very busy for a time. The repre
sentations, first on March 17 and then, with some cutting
down, on March 19, 1804, excited greater admiration and
delight than any of Schiller's former plays. Now Schiller felt
that he was gaining mastery of the scenic art. He had already
attacked a new subject, derived from the history of Russia.
Yet he liked Weimar less every day, and longed to find
some other home, while Goethe's strong attachment to the
place strengthened as the years passed by, notwithstanding the
many pains and burthens that they brought. He was now
suffering a great deal in an endeavour to adapt his Gotz for
the stage. However, his spirits brightened towards the close of
March 1804. Thus we find him inviting Charlotte von Stein
to visit him every Thursday morning about eleven o'clock, when
he will show her and the friends whom she may bring some
thing from his collection of objects of art. Then there were
concerts at his house every Sunday ; at these concerts he gave
the preference to Zelter's melodies. At the end of March
young Voss again came for a considerable stay, during which
Goethe was even more amiable than before. Goethe had
1 See the account of this in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1804. — Tr.
2 See Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 195. — Tr.

544 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
secretly procured a doctor's diploma for the young fellow, who
himself tells of the kindly jest by which the burdensomeness
of the moment of giving and receiving a benefit was in this
instance lightened.1 His appointment to the new professor
ship was now finally determined.
From Berlin Madame de Stael wrote merrily to Goethe
that she would soon return to Weimar for a three weeks' stay,
in order to steal from him all that could be stolen. But news
that her father was very ill brought her to Weimar earlier than
she had intended, and in Weimar she heard that he was already
dead. Her grief was terrible — almost madness; she screamed;
she had convulsive fits. There could be no wit-combats this
time ; Goethe could only try to show his deep compassion for
her. She left Weimar for Coppet on April 30, 1804. Four
days earlier Schiller, longing to escape from the narrow, life of
Weimar, had gone with his wife and children to Berlin.
Goethe now again drew near to the Court that he had so
long avoided, nearest of all to the Duchess Luise. Heinrich
Voss had come to take up the duties of his new post ; he
lodged close to Goethe, who allowed him the freest access, and
a friendship grew between them, which made Voss very happy.
The young fellow's father and mother came at Goethe's invita
tion to Weimar for a few days, and visited the school where
their son was teaching. Goethe wished the elder Voss to
accept a pension from the Duke, but he would not, whereupon
Goethe procured him an authorisation to receive certain allow
ances, such as firewood and game, altogether worth about 200
thalers a year.
On May 21, 1804, Schiller returned from Berlin. He
was not ill-disposed to go and live there on the favourable
conditions offered him. This would be a severe loss to Goethe,
who nevertheless unselfishly abstained (as formerly, when
Herder was invited to Gottingen) from attempting to dissuade
such a course ; he only counselled a thoughtful balancing
of advantages, and that no step should be taken before
the return of the Duke from his tour of inspection. But
after a week at home Schiller had resolved on declining the
invitation to Berlin, if the Duke, as he wrote to Korner,
would only offer some compensation worth accepting. The
1 See Diintzer, Goethe und Karl August, ii. 479. — Tr.

,1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 545
Duke returned on June 4, 1804. After hearing from Schiller,
he desired him to let his wishes be known without any reserve ;
and on June 8 wrote affectionately to him, gladly granting the
desired boon, — the doubling of his salary, — and promising
that it should soon be raised to iooo thalers. Besides, the
Duke expressed a hope that the Berlin folk would be able to
benefit Schiller without any injury to Weimar, viz. that Schiller
might obtain good terms on agreeing to reside in Berlin for a
considerable time each year.1
During the summer of 1804 we find Goethe frequently
dining at Court, and occasionally the Duchess and the Princess
Caroline came with Charlotte von Stein to his Thursday morn
ing receptions. He was often in Jena, and spent a fortnight
in Lauchstedt (August 17 to September 3), where at last the
stage adaptation of Gotz von Berlichingen was finished, and a
reading-rehearsal of it held. When on the Duke's birthday he
returned to Weimar, his time was fully claimed by the Court,
by the preparation of Gotz for the stage, and by the Art Exhi
bition. Meanwhile Voss and his son had received an invita
tion to Wiirzburg University, and the elder Voss seemed inclined
to accept it ; but Heinrich was firmly resolved not to leave
Weimar and the great man to whom he owed almost as much as
to his parents. He was daily with Goethe, often half a day
without interruption; they read Greek together diligently.2
After many rehearsals Gotz in its new form was presented
on September 22, 1804. The piece was very long; the repre
sentation, beginning at half-past six, lasted until eleven. There
was very slight applause ; to many, one of whom was Wieland,
it was incomprehensible how Goethe could have so transformed
the great work of his youth. The adaptation had been made
to meet the taste of ordinary audiences, and to suit the usual
requirements of the theatre ; there were several good pieces of
1 Schiller wrote to Berlin about this, but never received an ansfrer.
See Duntzer, Life of Schiller.- — Tr.
2 See the letter from the younger Voss to Boie, quoted by Duntzer,
Goethe und Karl August, ii. 488. Goethe was then especially interested
in Sophocles : — " But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild ;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole. " Tr.
7. N

546 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
writing among the additions, but the unity of the play as a
whole was disturbed, and much of the poetry and beauty
gone. Too long for a single performance, only the first two
acts were played on September 2 9 ; the last three followed on
October 13. Various causes made it impossible for Goethe to
leave Weimar in September and October 1804; thus, though
the Natural History Society of Jena had appointed him presi
dent, he could not thank them in person. In November he
was appointed honorary president of the Mineralogical Society
of Jena, in the room of Prince Galitzin,1 who was dead.
Weimar now bestirred itself to welcome home the Crown
Prince and the Russian Grand Duchess, his bride. Goethe
tried to compose some appropriate piece, but he waited on
inspiration in vain, and at length asked Schiller to undertake
the task. Within four days Schiller's lyric dialogue Die Hul-
digung der Kunste was composed and studied. On the after
noon of November 9, 1804, the festal entry of the bride and
bridegroom took place. It seemed during the next few days
as though the people could not rejoice enough. On Novem
ber 1 2 the young pair honoured the theatre with their presence ;
and then Schiller's piece was received with extraordinary delight.
The amiability and charm of the Princess won all hearts ; she
received Goethe in the most graceful way, though for him she
had not, as for Schiller, a diamond ring from the Empress of
Russia. Nor was there a Russian Order for him, as there was
for Voigt. The Duke, however, raised Goethe, Voigt, and
Schmidt to the dignity of Actual Privy Councillor ( Wirklicher
Geheimerath), with the title " Excellency."
Charlotte von Stein and her little sister-in-law had become
regular attendants at Goethe's Thursday mornings. On No
vember 2 9, 1 804, a party from the Castle also came — the Crown
Princess, the Duchess Luise, and the Princess Caroline.
Goethe was now busy editing Winckelmann's letters to
Berendis,2 which had been preserved in the keeping of the
Duchess Amalia ; he was writing an essay on Winckelmann,
to be published with the letters. During the last five years
Goethe had again felt strongly attracted by Winckelmann.
Then, prompted by Schiller, he began to translate Diderot's
dialogue Le Neveu de Rameau from manuscript, and, besides,
1 The husband of Goethe's friend the Princess Galitzin. — Tr.
2 See Hempel's Goethe, xxviii. 195. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 547
prepared a series of careful notes on the persons mentioned,
and on the questions of music and literature touched upon in
the dialogue. In the latter half of December 1804 Goethe
felt extremely unwell again ; we find him on December 1 9
writing to Charlotte von Stein that he cannot receive on the
morrow — Thursday morning — as usual. Yet a week later, on
December 27, 1804, he had the Duchess, Charlotte von Stein, .
Charlotte Schiller, and other ladies, with him, and showed them
the cast of the Minerva of Velletri, that had come from Paris
a few days before. Charlotte Schiller observed how ill Goethe
was. Schiller, too, was a sufferer at this time ; a heavy cold had
left its usual legacy. He kept steadily at work on a translation
of the PKedre of Racine, to be acted on the birthday of the
Duchess ; a translation undertaken in order to please the Duke,
whose partiality for the French Drama will be remembered.
The New Year, 1805, in which death was to terminate the
great poet alliance,1 began not very ill for Goethe, since he
found himself able to appear again in the " society of the noble
and fair;"2 but the result was not good; he was laid up, and
had to stay indoors for a while.8 However, on January 10,
1805, he received the Crown Princess and the other ladies,
though on the two following Thursdays he had to excuse himself.
His comedies Die Mitschuldigen and Der Biirgergeneral were
played with great success about the middle of January ; he had
conducted the rehearsals himself in his room. So, too, the
rehearsals of Phidre. Goethe was, besides, busy with important
contributions for the Literaturzeitung. Schiller suffered a great
deal during the beginning of January, and a little later his
family were ill.4 At the end of the month Goethe ventured
1 The story which comes to us by Voss, how Goethe, writing to
Schiller, set down, "The last New Year's Day," is well known. And
when visiting Charlotte von Stein on New Year's Day, he told her that
he believed that year would see either his death or Schiller's. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Schiller, January 9, 1805. — Tr.
3 In one of her letters Charlotte Schiller observes that the air of the
Court does not agree with beautiful souls, for Schiller, too, always becomes
ill when he goes there ! — Tr.
4 On January 14, 1805, Schiller writes to Goethe: — "I am very
sorry to hear that your remaining indoors is not voluntary. Alas ! it goes
hard with us all, and he who, compelled by necessity, has gradually learned
to endure his illness patiently, is best off. I am now really glad that I
formed and carried out the resolve to occupy myself with a translation.
Thus at least some result has come of these days of wretchedness, and I
have at any rate lived and acted." — Tr.

548 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
out, but immediately had to shut , himself up again. On
February i, 1805, he amused himself preparing an -honorary
diploma for Gerning, as a member of the Mineralogical Society.
We give a facsimile. In the pen-and-ink outline round the
edge are seen symbols of the storms and weather, of the planets,
of the god of earthquakes. Vulcan and Neptune are shown
as symbols of the two opposed geologic theories. ' In the
figure of the god of earthquakes there hovers a memory of
Raphael's cartoons. All in this facsimile is by Goethe, except
the signatures of von Trebra and of Lenz.
About the 7th of February 1805 Goethe became very
ill indeed ; so terrible was the pain that his screams . were
heard by the sentinels at the gate of the city.1 During the
three following months an attack of his disorder occurred every ,
four weeks.2 He was dreadfully weakened each time. It was
a colic of the kidneys, attended with violent cramps ; and on
each return his life was in actual danger. At this time Schiller
suffered from ague fits. Goethe's present attack, though so
violent, did not last long, and he was soon able to go out
every day, but not strong enough to visit his friend ; the excite
ment would have been too much for both of them. His
intellect was pretty clear, however, and he dictated at the
notes to his translation of Le Neveu de Rameau. In the
beginning of March 1805 Schiller could resist the yearning to
.see Goethe no longer, and sent young Voss to announce that
he was coming. " They fell on each other's neck," writes Voss,
" and kissed in a long, earnest kiss before speaking a word.
Neither of them mentioned the illness of himself or of the
other, but both enjoyed the unmingled delight of being once
more together and, in good spirits."
The success of Die Mitschuldigen encouraged Goethe to
bring his oldest piece, Die Laune des Verliebten, on the stage.
It was acted March 6, 1805, and must have strangely affected
the many anxious friends of the great poet. All seemed well.
Schiller returned to his Demetrius ; Goethe rejoiced in the
increase of knowledge of French literature and art in the
eighteenth century which his work on Le Neveu de Rameau •
was bringing. He had a. new and violent attack on March 8,
1 This is mentioned by Falk in a letter. See Duntzer, Goethe und. ;
Karl August, ii. 501. — Tr.
2 See Christiane's letter to Nikolaus Meyer, April 12, 1805. — Tr. •

801-1805.]

THE DIOSCURI.

549

1805, but was soon tolerably restored; his old, friend Knebel
found him a week later in his garden, looking happy. Knebel
had come to live in Jena now, and Goethe was very glad of
this. Heinrich Voss was continually with him, and confided
to him all his feelings and thoughts. Goethe and Schiller saw
each other at times. But on March 20, 1805, a cold north
east wind came that shut them within doors again, and delayed
their recovery. However, in the beginning of April 1805
Goethe felt so well that, when on April 10 August Goethe set
out in good charge to see his grand
mother Goethe, Christiane could ac
company her boy to Erfurt. But she
had been only a few hours in Erfurt
when a messenger came to call her
back ; Goethe had had a violent
attack of his illness. Yet he was as
before soon restored to a tolerable
condition. He was ordered horse
exercise by his doctor, and it did him
a great deal of good. The thought of
the return of his illness troubled him.
Frau Aja was very happy in her
little grandson, who already over
topped his mother by half a head.
The child stayed over three weeks
with her. We give here a silhouette
--. ofthe dear little woman, taken at this
period. It was given by her to Frau
? Senator Stock, a great friend of hers.1
On April 19, 1805, Goethe sent to the press the three
essays on Winckelmann, one by himself,, one by Friedrich
August Wolf, and one by Heinrich Meyer, which, with the
letters of Winckelmann to Berendis, and Heinrich Meyer's
Outline of the History of Art in the Eighteenth Century, formed
the book called Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert. Goethe
had grown anxious to publish a new edition of his Works, and
as the great publisher Cotta was expected to come soon to
Jena, he sent to Schiller his agreements with former publishers
(Goschen, Unger, and Vieweg), in order that if Schiller were
1 Frau Senator Stock was a daughter of the Danish Councillor of
j Legation, Johann Friedrich Moritz. See p. 32. — Tr.

Fig. 33. Silhouette of Goethe's
mother in the year 1805. From
the Gedentiblatter an Goethe.

550 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. iii.
talking with Cotta on the subject he might know all that
was needful. (In October 1804 Schiller had communicated
Goethe's conditions to Cotta, who on the whole approved of
them.) However, Goethe's first care now was to finish the
collection of notes for the translation of Le Neveu de Rameau,
and on April 24, 1805, he sent the last of them to Schiller.
On April 25 he visited Schiller, and talked of a journey to
Dresden. Schiller thought him tolerably restored. Yet the
decline of the University of Jena was weighing on his mind.
So many of the best professors had been lured away, and the
number of students was diminishing. And now Voss was
invited to Heidelberg, and resolved to go, though Goethe and
the Duke were ready to do anything they could for him.
On the evening of April 29, 1805, Goethe went to visit
Schiller, but found him starting for the theatre to see a Ritter-
schauspiel1 called Clara von Hoheneichen, by that voluminous
scribbler C. H. Spiess ; and having no wish to keep him from
going, and feeling too ill to go himself, they parted, never to
see one another again. The performance over, Heinrich Voss
went, according to his custom, to Schiller's box, and found
him extremely feverish, with his teeth chattering. He was
taken home, and lay for some days very ill, not responding
even to the caresses of his children. Goethe, not at first
apprehensive, grew very sad as the days passed and Schiller
was no better. " On one occasion I found him in his garden
weeping," writes Heinrich Voss ; " but only single tears, that
glistened in his eyes. His spirit wept, not his eyes ; in his
looks I read that his feelings had something great — more than
earthly, something infinite — in them. I told him a great deal
about Schiller, and he listened with a kind of ineffable composure.
" Destiny is inexorable, and man is little !" that was all he said ;
and in a few moments began to 'speak of more cheerful things."
On May 1, 1805, Goethe planned out for Cotta the con
tents of the twelve volumes in which they proposed to issue
his Works. A new attack of his disorder came on immedi
ately after this ; its violence soon abated, but it left him sadly
weak and broken. It was a delight to him when about this
1 One of the many results of the success of Gotz von Berlichingen was
the springing up of plays whose scenes were laid in the feudal ages, and
whose principal characters belonged to the old German feudal nobility.
These plays were called Ritterschauspiele. — Tr.

1801-1805.] THE DIOSCURI. 551
time August came back from the ever joyous and loving Frau
Aja. So soon as Goethe could, he wrote to her, May 6, 1805 :
— " Receive, dear mother, a thousand thanks for all the good
ness you have shown our August ! I only hope that the
memory of his stay may give you a fraction of the delight
that his account of his visit gives us. We are brought by it
again into the living presence of you and of my old friends.
Thank warmly for us all those who received him with such kind
ness. This first attempt to look forth into the world has been so
successful, that I have good hope for his future. His youth has
been happy, and I would fain see him merry and joyous still,
as he passes on to a more serious age. I too in these better
days, notwithstanding some agitation, find myself right well."1
On the day on which this letter was written, Schiller had
grown so much better that he himself plucked up courage
anew. But his head was bad that evening, and he raved a
good deal during the following days. On the afternoon
of May 9, 1805, he fell asleep, and the watchers took heart.
His wife sat in an adjoining room. Suddenly, at about six
o'clock in the afternoon, she was called ; a paralytic stroke had
fallen, the face was distorted, the hands cold ; then a kind of
electric shock passed over the features, and the great ease and
quietness of death had come to Schiller.
Heinrich Meyer was at Goethe's house when the sad news
came there. Meyer was called out, but when the worthy man
heard what had happened, he was too much agitated to face
Goethe; he hurried home without taking leave. Christiane,
too, went out for a moment. On her return Goethe saw that
something was wrong. After a while he said, "I see clearly
Schiller must be very ill ;" whereupon they tried to persuade
him to the contrary. During the rest of the evening he
remained silent, wrapped in his thoughts; in the night he
was heard weeping. In the morning he said to Christiane,
"Is it not true that Schiller was very ill yesterday." She began
to sob. "He is dead?" whereupon she had to acknowledge
it. Then he turned aside and wept, without speaking a word.
He spent the day in deep, gentle grief, in the companionship
of Christiane and Riemer. He sent kindly messages to
Heinrich Voss by August, and asked him to come to him ;
1 See this letter in Robert Keil's Frau Rath, p. 357. — Tr.

552 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. vii. ch. hi.
but Voss dared not. Goethe could not bear to look on the
dead face, nor to see any of Schiller's dear ones. On the
other hand he drew near to his old friend Charlotte von Stein,
who too had loved and honoured Schiller well. Charlotte
writes on May 1 1 : " Goethe is again fully restored, and comes
more often to me now. In Schiller he has had an irreparable
loss. To-day he spoke with such originality on the physical
and spiritual man, that I would have wished to write it down
on the spot." Karl Stein remembered to have heard from his
mother that, when she tried to persuade Goethe to see Schiller
lying in death, he exclaimed: "No, the agitation !" (" Nein,
die Zerstorung ! ") Not until May 13 did Heinrich Voss
venture into his presence. On May 18 they went together to
walk in Weimar Park. Goethe was greatly moved when he
heard that the departure of the elder Voss was now fully
determined on. Schiller's loss he must bear, since destiny
took him away, but Voss was being taken away by men. They
went home in silence ; young Voss took leave in silence. In
his home Goethe was very sad ; Christiane heard him saying
to himself : " Voss will follow his father, and Riemer too
will sooner or later be drawn away ; then I shall stand quite
alone !" At this sad time the Duke was absent on a tour
of inspection in Prussia We do not know whether Goethe
visited the Court, it is probable that he did not; but we find
him often at the Duchess Amalia's. When the first weight of
grief had lightened, he yielded to the solicitation of the actors,
that a piece should be given in honour of Schiller's memory.
Since by Art " pain should be roused only to be alleviated,
and resolved into higher emotions of consoling power ; "
Goethe would seek in this piece to set forth " not that which
we have lost but what is still left to us."1 To Zelter, on June
1, 1805 : " Since I wrote to you last, my good days have been
few. I thought to lose myself, and lose a friend, and in him
the half of my existence. The truth is, I ought to begin a
new mode of life ; but at my years there is no longer a way.
So I just look straight before me every day, and do what is
nearest, without thinking of a further sequence." Yet there
was much still left him, his wife and child, true friends, an
assured centre of powerful activity ; above all, his own creative
and speculative genius, and his own unsubduable will.
1 Goethe to Cotta, June 1, 1805. SeeVollmer's Briefwechsel Schillers
mit Cotta [Stuttgart, 1876] S. 557.— Tr.

i i

BOOK VIII.
THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE DEATH OF SCHILLER TO THE PEACE BETWEEN FRANCE
AND PRUSSIA.
MAY 1805-SEPTEMBER 1807.
In the few months of rest and recovery which followed, Goethe
was still troubled by occasional illness. On May 30, 1805,
Friedrich August Wolf and his charming daughter came to
stay a fortnight with him.1 After Wolf had returned to
Halle, Voss and his wife came to Weimar to take leave. We
know through Heinrich Voss that Goethe was in pain at the
time from his disease, but it is not wonderful that a certain
chill had come over his manner towards Voss, who did not
speak a word of his approaching departure for Heidelberg.
Cordiality was impossible, in the face of such reserve, and with
Goethe's wounded memory of all the affectionate wiles thrown
away in the endeavour to retain Voss for Jena. Not long
after Goethe had another attack of spasms ; but it was less
violent than former ones, and on the following morning he was
able to receive his old friend Friedrich Jacobi and his sister
Helene (June 23). It was now almost thirteen years since
they had seen one another,2 and the meeting gave Goethe great
delight. Wieland, who of late had begun to draw close again
1 Goethe writes at length of this interesting visit in the Tag- und
Jahres-Hefte for 1S05.— Tr.
2 They had seen each other when Goethe was returning from the
campaign in France in 1792. See pp. 457-8. — Tr.

554 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
to the single great figure in German poetry left,1 was during .
Jacobi's stay on one occasion dining at Goethe's, and observed
how Christiane took the place of honour at the table, and with
what tender courtesy Goethe treated her.2
On July i, 1805, Jacobi left. He afterwards told a friend
that during the last two days of his visit Goethe had been
almost perfectly the Goethe of old times.
On July 2, 1805, Goethe, with Christiane, August, and
Riemer, went to Lauchstedt. He was, of course, soon attracted
to Halle, and there spent many fruitful and interesting hours
with Wolf. Gall the craniologist was delivering lectures in
Halle. Goethe attended these lectures. When one of his
fits of illness came on, Gall delivered the lectures that he had
missed at his bedside. When back in Lauchstedt, Goethe.
wrote (July 22, 1805), begging Zelter to come and visit him
in Weimar: "I am thinking of a dramatic presentation of
Schiller's Lay of the Bell. What might not this be with your
help ! Do come ! " Zelter could not come ; nevertheless
Goethe asked him (August 4) for the musical arrangement of
the Lay. But shortly after he came quite unexpectedly for a
few days, and was very useful. Many matters were discussed
between the friends. Goethe's yearning pain found some
abatement in paying this tribute of honour to the memory of
Schiller.8 On August 1 2 Christiane and August went back to Weimar,
to be present at the opening of the new Schiesshaus.4 Goethe
had arranged with Wolf to go to Helmstedt, in Brunswick, to
see the strange old collector of curiosities, Hofrath Beireis,
who lived there. They started on August 14, 1805, taking
Goethe's boy with them. Goethe has given in the Tag- und
Jahres-Hefte for 1805 a very full account of this pleasant
excursion. They visited Magdeburg on their way, and Goethe
examined with interest the cathedral and its ancient monu
ments. Their return journey brought them through Halber-
stadt, and they thought with tender regret of the good old poet
1 See the reference to a remark by Wieland in Duntzer, Goethe und
Karl August, ii. 514. — Tr.
2 Christiane had been very unselfish and good during Goethe's illness.
See Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 220. — Tr.
3 The performance of Das Lied von der Glocke at Lauchstedt took place
August 10, 1805.— Tr. 4 See p. 538.— Tr.

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 555
Gleim, who had died there two years before. Their journey
ended with their arrival in Halle on August 25.
Restored in mind and body, Goethe finally returned to
Weimar on Friday, September 6, 1805. A week later he had a
visit from the Crown Princess and Princess Caroline, and hence
forward he delivered lectures on Natural Science, on Colour,
Magnetism, Elasticity, every Wednesday morning before a
select circle, consisting of the Princess and her governess,
Charlotte von Stein and her sister-in-law; and in these
lectures he sought to interweave ethical considerations. His
delivery, the result of careful thought and practice, pleasant
to hear and instinct with feeling, charmed the ladies, not
withstanding the habit of often passing his hand over his
forehead, in which he resembled Gall. Now at length he
ventured on a visit to Lotte Schiller; it proved a strange
mingling of pain and pleasure. He talked to her chiefly of
Natural Science, and invited her to attend the Wednesday
lectures. The Art Exhibition of this year was poor. It was
the last, for Goethe, seeing his efforts in the service of Ideal
Art working but little result, defeated on one hand by
the pietistic tendency of the time, on the other by the natural
istic tendency, felt ill inclined to continue an unprosperous
war. And accordingly no prize subject for 1 806 was published.
In the Report of 1805 it simply runs thus : — " For the current
year our Art Exhibition remains closed. Meanwhile we pur
pose to hold intercourse on the subject of Colour with the
friends of Art and Nature. Perhaps we shall in future appoint
our prize subjects with reference to this insufficiently treated
side of Art."
Already while in Lauchstedt Goethe had come to an
understanding with Cotta as to the publication of his Works.
On sending in the beginning of his MS. he was to receive
one thousand thalers, at Easter 1806 three thousand, at Easter
1807 three thousand, at Easter 1808 three thousand. Cotta
was to have the sole right of publishing until Easter 1 8 1 4, and
then he was to have the right of preference if he offered as
high terms as other publishers. On September 30, 1805,
Goethe sent the revised Wilhelm Meister, which was to occupy
the second and third volumes of the set ; the first volume, to
contain the poems, demanded greater labour. But even nearer
to his heart than the new edition lay the completion of the

556 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
Theory of Colour, which should appear in the coming spring ;
and when in October 1805 he went to Jena on University
affairs, he worked on this long-cherished scheme. In Jena he
was always cordially welcome in the house of the bookseller
Frommann. Frommann's wife, an intelligent and cultivated
woman, was interesting and attractive to Goethe, and so too
was the adopted daughter of the house Minchen (Wilhelmine)
Herzlieb, a beautiful girl of seventeen, whom he had seen
grow up during the last eight years, since the death of -her
father, the Superintendent1 in Ziillichau.
But already the dark shadow of coming war had fallen
on the land. The Prussians, fortifying themselves in Erfurt,
billeted troops all over Weimar territory, a heavy burden that
lasted many months. In the beginning of November 1805
the Emperor Alexander of Russia, a man of undoubted per
sonal amiability arrived in Weimar. During his stay we find
Goethe dining at Court for the first time in that year. The
Emperor sent his visiting card to Wieland and to Goethe.
The latter went to Jena again in December 1805 ; thither,
accompanied by Prince Louis Ferdinand, came also Karl
August, on his way to headquarters in Ronneburg.
At Christmas 1805 Goethe became ill; his periodic spasms
began again and continued during the first five months of
1806, at intervals of three or four weeks. The continual
anxious anticipation of these weakening and painful attacks
untuned him dreadfully. Yet he went on delivering the
lectures to the ladies whenever not absolutely prohibited by
sickness, and their unanimous praise gave him real pleasure,
though he did not like their devoting a previous quarter of an
hour to the public events of the day. He was much grieved
by the death of Christiane's sister Ernestine on the 7 th of
January.2 On January 15, 1806, Goethe's Stella in Schiller's adapta
tion was acted. Goethe had changed the denouement, mak
ing Fernando commit suicide. The piece was splendidly
appointed, but the new denouement was felt to be an evasion
of the difficulty, and the moral sense was still unsatisfied.
1 Superintendent in several states of Germany means a clergyman of
high rank. — Tr.
2 See the extracts from letters of Christian Vulpius, Christiane's brother,
in the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1881. See the extract dated January 7.  Tr.

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 557
The Weimar stage at this time possessed two very good
actors in Pius Alexander Wolff and his wife; the maiden
name of the latter was Malcolmi.
Marches through, and the billeting of soldiers, continued
to weary and vex the poor little duchy of Weimar. Officers
frequently dined at Goethe's table. On January 30, the
birthday of the Duchess, before the performance of Corneille's
Cid the audience in the theatre all joined in singing to the air
of God save the King, and with the accompaniment of the
splendid trumpeter band of the Owstien Regiment, verses of
Goethe's that expressed the general longing for peace.1 And
for the time warlike demonstrations ceased. In the middle
of February 1806 the Prussians left Weimar.
Meanwhile Goethe had written a very searching and
appreciative notice of the Volkslieder in the collection of
Arnim and Brentano, called Des Knaben Wunderhorn ;2 and
with Riemer's help had been revising and rearranging his
poems for the new edition. Some new poems were written.
At this time, too, re-emerged the plan of eight years ago of an
epic Tell. To complete the first batch of copy only the fourth
volume was now wanting, and that would give little trouble.
On May 10, 1806, the day after the anniversary of Schiller's
death, Das Lied von der Glocke was acted again, with Goethe's
Epilog somewhat altered. Goethe hoped that a visit to Karlsbad
in the summer would do him a great deal of good, but before
the time for the trip came he had another attack of his illness.
In June 1806 he went to Jena with August and Riemer,
there to do his best to prevent the physicist Voigt from leaving
Jena with his apparatus for the study of Physics. August soon
went back to Weimar, where he was a pupil at the Gymnasium.
It is related that once when Director Lenz desired the boys to
translate the classic poets in German verse, August Goethe
refused, saying that his father had forbidden him to make
verses. A few years before, when a young man was announced
who did not know French, Goethe had said with irritation :
" Verse machen k'onnen sie alle."3 He had special reason for
preventing his son from making verses.
1 See in Hempel's Goethe, xi. 302, in the Maskenziige, the lines begin
ning "Herzlich und freudevoll." — Tr.
2 See the notice in Hempel's Goethe, xxix. 384-98. — Tr.
3 "They are all good at verse-making." — Tr.

558 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
In the beginning of July1 1806 Goethe, accompanied by
Riemer, arrived in Karlsbad. The delight in two old pur
suits — in the study of mineralogy and in landscape sketching —
awoke anew in Karlsbad, and during the six visits ofthe following
seven years continued unabated. The lapidary, Joseph Miiller,
long known to Goethe, had investigated minutely the charac
teristics of the various rocks and strata of the district during
the years since their last meeting, and had gathered an adequate
museum of specimens. This museum and Miiller's communi
cation of his views, together with conversations with Bergrath
Werner 2 and August Herder, drew Goethe again to mineralogi
cal investigation, a result to which, indeed, the neighbourhood of
Karlsbad alone was sufficient As to his sketches, he purposed
to bring a dozen of them when perfected to the Princess Caroline,
whose talent for drawing he was glad to stimulate in every way.
During this visit of 1806 to Karlsbad an important plan
revived in Goethe's mind. He had once thought of writing a
Festspiel in the manner of Calderon, a poet whose work
A. W. Schlegel had made known to him some years before,
and whom he had learned to honour. In the rich form
bequeathed by Calderon, Goethe had designed to set forth in
the Return of Pandora this thought — that a genuine work of
art is only possible through the combination of poetic fire with
the ripe skill that comes of well meditated experience. And now
in one Frau von Levezow, by birth a von Brosigke, he found a
prototype for the noble figure of the Pandora of his conception.8
But political fears and anxieties invaded the peaceful
mountain valley. Through Prince Reuss the poet had a
glimpse of approaching calamity. Napoleon had succeeded
in seducing sixteen German sovereign princes into forming the
so-called Rheinbund under his protection. On the way back
to Weimar Goethe learned at Hof, near the scene of Jean
Paul's boyhood, how the Holy Roman Empire had ceased to
exist4 He reached Weimar on August 12, 1806.
1 Goethe says in the Tag- tmd Jahres-Hefte, "end of May" — a
mistake — see the letters to Zelter. He has not been in Karlsbad since
1795. — Tr. 2 See p. 432. This is Abraham Gottlob Werner. — Tr.
s In Goethe's Diary for July 27, 1806, the two names "Frau von
Levezow" and "Pandora" stand beside each other. — Tr.
i On August 6, 1806, the Emperor, Franz II., declared that he con
sidered the empire dissolved by the formation of the Confederacy of the
Rhine.— Tr.

1S05-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 559
A few days after his return he went to Jena. Here he
had the Farbenlehre placed in the printer's hands ; the two
volumes were to proceed at the same time. The first
volume contained his new Theory of Colour and the con
futation of the current theory, the second volume gave the
history of the science. While he was in Jena word came
that the Berlin Academy of Sciences had elected Goethe
and Cuvier to be Foreign Associates. He was called back
to Weimar in the first week of September 1806 by the grow
ing seriousness of the political situation. Karl August made
a treaty with Prussia, by which Weimar was to join in the
threatening war. At the Prussian headquarters in Niederrossla
Goethe and Karl August had a "pregnant conversation."1
The Duke talked hopefully, showed how necessary it was that
he should take part in the war, and committed the care of his
land and people to his old friend.
On September 26, 1806, Goethe hastened to Jena again,
his primary object being to help in setting out the geological
specimens that had just come from Karlsbad. As the Prussian
general, Prince von Hohenlohe, was to stay in the old Castle,
Goethe occupied a side wing on this occasion. He generally
dined at the Prince's table, and there heard nothing but
politics talked. The greater pleasure was it each evening to join
the peaceful Frommann family circle, where he had grown more
and more intimate continually. There he always found materials
for drawing ready, and his unfinished drawing would lie open
awaiting him ; he was fond of drawing and talking at the
same time.2 He returned to Weimar (October 6, 1806) and
found all disquiet and consternation there.
Weimar had lately gained a charming resident. Johanna
Schopenhauer was a native of Danzig ; her husband had died
in Hamburg, leaving her in easy circumstances, and she had
chosen Weimar as her new home. She was now thirty-six, of
charming presence and fine culture. When a few months
before she had paid a brief visit to Weimar, Goethe had
wished to conduct her through the Library, but had been pre
vented by illness. On Sunday, October 12, 1806, a stranger
was announced at her house ; a handsome, grave-looking man in
1 Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1 806. — Tr.
2 See p. 161 — Caroline Flachsland's letter of November 27, 1772.
— Tr.

560 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
dark dress appeared and bowed low with much grace. " Per
mit me," he said, "to introduce to you the Geheimerath
Goethe." Having heard so much of Goethe's stiffness, she
did not suppose her visitor to be the great poet of the
Germans, until he showed her more clearly .who he was.
" My joy and my confusion were equally great," she writes to
her son Arthur. " When I collected my thoughts I found my

Fig. 34. Johanna Schopenhauer. From an oil-painting in the Library of Weimar,
engraved here for the first time.

two hands closed in his, and we were on the way to my
sitting-room. He said he had wished to come yesterday ; he
quieted my fears as to the future, and he promised to come
again." Goethe visited Charlotte von Stein on the same day.
Early on the morning of October 14, 1806, the day ofthe
battle of Jena, the Duchess Amalia, the Crown -Prince and
Princess Caroline, fled from Weimar. By seven o'clock in
the morning the cannonade was heard. The day was very

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 561
calm and fair. The roar grew more and more terribly audible ;
then later it diminished, and at length seemed to die away
entirely. So about three o'clock Goethe's household assembled
at dinner, but hardly had they begun when cannon shots were
heard again, this time very near at hand; at first isolated
shots, then several following on one another rapidly. The
dinner-table was soon deserted ; Goethe went" into his garden
and walked up and down, while balls whistled high above. It
was now about four o'clock, and Riemer could see the bayonets
of the retreating Prussians gleaming in the sun as they passed
along by the garden wall. After a while French hussars
thronged into the town, and soon it was filled with rioting,
plundering enemies. A hussar officer, Wilhelm von Tiirckheim
— Lili's son — came to Goethe and accompanied him to the
Castle. Goethe sent home word that Marshal Augereau x and
his escort, beside some troopers and cavalry officers, would
take Goethe's house as their quarters ; no one else should be
admitted. Soon sixteen Alsatian troopers appeared there, so
tired that they soon all went to sleep downstairs in the servants'
room. In the building at the rear of the house were many
people of the neighbourhood, who had fled thither. Later
Goethe returned. The Marshal did not arrive. There is a
detailed account in Riemer of the incidents of the night — how
two tirailleurs who came were not so easily contented as the
troopers had been ; how they secretly got into Goethe's bed
room ; how Christiane, by her presence of mind calling one
of the fugitives in the back house up to help by the stairs
which led into the garden, freed Goethe from the drink-
maddened intruders. When the Marshal2 came at length
in the morning, a guard was placed before the door
(October 15,1806).
During the presence of the enemy Christiane had a great
deal to bear from the insolence of the officers, who treated
her as a mere housekeeper.3 Goethe saw this, and felt that
1 Riemer, Mitlheilungen, i. 363, says Marshal Ney. But Ney did not
take up permanent quarters in Goethe's house ; he only spent a few hours
there on October 15. Still there may have been a change of purpose, and
Riemer is probably correct. — Tr.
2 On November 3, 1806, Goethe writes to F. A. Wolf: — "I have
had first General Victor, then Marshals Lannes and Augereau, in the
house with their adjutants and suite." — Tr.
3 Aus Goethe's Leben Von einem Zeitgenossen. — Tr.
2 0

562 THE LIFE OF GOETHE.' [bk. vih. ch. i.
the mother of his son, the saver of his life, ought no longer to
remain without legal right to call herself his wife. Since the
dangerous illness in 1801, in which Christiane had nursed him
with such affection and courage, he had shown himself fre
quently with her in public, and during the last few years she
had "sat at his table as mistress of his house ; all that was
wanting was the ecclesiastical ceremony.
On the afternoon of October 1 5 Napoleon came to Weimar.
He was full of wrath against Karl August, but his anger was
overcome by the great heart and will of the Duchess Luise.
On October 16 he commanded that the plundering should
cease. On the morning of October 17 he left the little city
that he had brought to the brink of destruction. If within
three days1 Karl August would leave the Prussian army, with
draw his contingent and return to Weimar, he might retain
his dominions. On that day, October 17, 1806, while all stood on the edge
of fate, Goethe wrote to Gunther, Chief Councillor of Consistory
and Court Preacher : " During these days and nights an old
purpose of mine has come to ripeness. I want to recognise
fully and legally as mine my little friend who has done so
much for me, and now has lived through these hours of trial
with me. Tell me, worthy reverend sir and father, how to
proceed that, soon as possible, Sunday or earlier, we may be
married. What steps have to be taken? Could you not
perform the ceremony yourself? I should like it to take
place in the sacristy of City Church. Give the answer to the
messenger, if possible, I beg." On Sunday, October 19,
1 806, the marriage took place in presence of August Goethe
and Riemer,2 but in the sacristy of the Court and Garrison
Church, as Gunther had no jurisdiction over the City Church.
On the following day Goethe dined at Court, for the first and
last time that year, with Commandant Dentzel. Next day he
inquired through Riemer after the welfare of Johanna Schopen
hauer, and in the evening he visited her, accompanied by his
wedded wife. Foreseeing that the distinguished circle of
ladies, hitherto his friends, would be embittered by his
marriage, he took refuge in the generosity of the stranger,
1 Keil, in his new book, Goethe, Weimar und Jena im Jahre 1806
[Leipzig, 1882], p. 43, says that twenty-four hours was the time. — Tr.
2 Riemer, Mittheilungen, i. 373. — Tr.

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 563
accustomed to the life of large cities. " I received her as if
I did not know who she had been hitherto," writes Johanna
Schopenhauer to her son. " I saw plainly how my behaviour
gladdened him. There were a few other ladies with me, who
were formal and stiff at first, and who afterwards followed
my example. Goethe remained almost two hours, and was
more talkative and friendly than he has been for years. He
has as yet introduced her in person to no one but me. He
trusted that I, as a stranger and a dweller in large cities, would
receive his wife as she must be received ; she was indeed much
confused, but I soon helped her through." Four days later
Johanna paid her return visit. Goethe felt a mountain lifted
from his breast, saddened as he was by the condition of the
city, plundered, and filled with sick and wounded. He was
more affectionate in intercourse with his friends, more sympa
thetic, more gentle, than he had ever been. In the welfare of
his Jena friends he showed especial interest at this time.1 He
did not yet venture to visit Charlotte von Stein. In the even
ings he often went to Johanna Schopenhauer's. There, too,
Heinrich Meyer, who had lost everything in the recent troubles,
and a pupil of Meyer's in whom Goethe was interested, a young
but plain -featured painter, Caroline Bardua of Ballenstedt,
were frequent visitors.
To calm himself he began work on the Farbenlehre, whose
printing had been broken off by the misfortune of Jena. By
the end of October Weimar had quieted down a good deal ;
and the Duchess Amalia soon returned. During the sack of
Weimar, poor Kraus, Goethe's fellow-townsman and old friend,
received such ill treatment that he died of it. He was buried
on November 9, 1806, and though Goethe disliked attending
funerals, he was present. Heinrich Meyer now became Director
of the Drawing Academy. On November 1 o, Johanna Schopen
hauer dined at Goethe's; there were present also Meyer,
Knebel, Bertuch and Bertuch's wife. Johanna was lost in
admiration of Goethe. On one occasion she writes of him : —
1 On October 18, Goethe dictated to Riemer a circular addressed to
twelve Jena friends, inquiring after their welfare, and describing the state
of Weimar. He then procured a pass from Commandant Dentzel, and
sent a messenger who went round to the houses of the friends addressed
in the1 circular. Among the friends were Hegel, Knebel, and Frommann.
— Tr.

5°4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE: [bk. viii. ch. i.
"He is the most perfect being that I know, in externals also.
A tall handsome form held erect, very carefully attired, always
black or completely in dark blue, his hair tastefully dressed
and powdered as becomes his age — and an absolutely splendid
face, with two clear, brown eyes, at once mild and penetrating."
The sound of his voice was music to her. On the evening of
November n, Goethe was at Johanna Schopenhauer's, with
Meyer, Fernow, Riedel, and the poet, Dr. Stephan Schiitze.
He was in the gayest mood, and declared himself prepared to
come regularly to Johanna's receptions, which, as now arranged,
should take place on Sunday and Thursday evenings. Tea
only was drunk at them. He was the soul of these assemblies,
where a table with drawing materials always stood ready for
him. Now at length Goethe ventured to visit Charlotte von
Stein, who had suffered a great deal during the sack of the city.
But his marriage with Christiane had incensed. Charlotte : there
was a barrier dividing them, she was besides full of bitterness
because of her misfortunes, and he did not ask her to his wife's
house as he did Charlotte von Schiller. He occasionally visited
the Duchess Amalia's, where he used to draw and talk at the
same time as in other places. But nowhere was he more
friendly and cheery than at the house of Johanna Schopen
hauer, whose kindly reception of his wife had filled him with
warm gratitude.
On December 15, 1806, Weimar was compelled, under the
Peace of Posen, to join the Rheinbund, and to pay an indemnity
of 2, 200,000 francs. Meanwhile, since even after the grimmest
fall we must seek to rise again, Goethe caused the theatre to
open on the 26th of December. By the 13th of December
he had finished the didactic part of the Farbenlehre, and turned
to the passionate polemic section. He laboured also in pre
paring material for fresh volumes of his Works, especially
in completing and connecting the parts of Faust, which he
promised himself would make a deep impression in its new
form. In the new year (1807) Goethe was often very poorly.
The friendship with Johanna Schopenhauer maintained all its
intimacy. His wife occasionally was one of the company,
and her Thiiringian naiveti passed without especial remark.
Goethe derived great pleasure from the experiment of the actors

I \\

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 565
Wolff and wife, who, of their own accord, set about bringing '
Tasso on the stage. They surprised him one day with a.
rehearsal which he thought so good that he did not oppose
the public presentation of the play. This took place on
February 16, 1807, and was very successful. There was great
applause at the beginning, because Goethe had a bust of
Wieland instead of one of Ariosto, crowned by Leonore. The
actors' lessons in reading still went on.
Soon after this the little state had fresh cause for general
grief. The good Duchess Amalia died on April 10, 1807.
In three days Goethe composed a short account of her life
and influence, and at the solemn service in honour of her
memory on April 19, this was read aloud from all the pulpits
in the country.
On April 1, 1807, Goethe had begun to hold Wednesday
receptions again.1 At the first of them he lectured on the
geographical distribution of plants, with reference to a work
which Alexander von Humboldt had lately dedicated to him.
In the third (April 15, 1807), the philologist, F. A. Wolf, then
in Weimar, gave a short address on the ancients, and Goethe
exhibited some flowers, and made some important remarks
upon them. In the night between April 16 and 17 an
extraordinarily violent attack of the old complaint occurred, "
its proximate causes being the lowness of the barometer and
over-exertion. On the ist of May 1807 we find him once
more with the Duchess at tea; Wieland and Charlotte von
Stein were there too. Some days later he had another Wednes
day reception.
Now Gopthe was to have one of the strangest experiences
of all his life, the passionate obtrusiveness of Bettine Brentano.
She was the youngest daughter of Goethe's Max Brentano, of
Ehrenbreitstein and Frankfurt memory, the grand-daughter of
Sophie von Laroche, who had died a short time since (in
February 1807). Bettine was now just turned twenty-two.
Almost five years ago she had sent word to Goethe by Charlotte
von Kalb that she burned with love for him, as Mignon for
Wilhelm Meister. This Mignon fantasy grew wilder and
wilder in her. She was a daily visitor of Goethe's mother,
and amused her a great deal, but plagued her too. Sometimes
Bettine declared to the Frau Rath that she would run off in
1 See pp. 555, 556.— Tr.

566 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
boy's dress to Weimar.1 She now came in the company of her
brother-in-law and her sister. Goethe received the enthusiastic
daughter of Max, the friend of his mother, with affectionate
kindliness, but had to repress her stormy ebullition of feeling.
He called her, as he would call other young ladies, his
" child," his " pretty, good maiden," " dear heart," 2 but was
amazed by her eccentricity. She came to the evening circle
of Johanna Schopenhauer, and there drew attention by her
droll, fantastic behaviour. "A cheery, good-hearted kobold
seemed to speak from her whole nature, and at the same time
an enthusiasm for music lifted her into the world of souls,"
writes Stephan Schiitze.
A surprise of another kind that Goethe had about this
time was a letter from Madame de Stael, who, having heard
from Frau von Schardt of his illness, entreated him to come to
Coppet Goethe perceived her intention, and politely excused
himself. The Weimar Theatre closed earlier than usual this
year. The actors went first to Leipzig, where their season was
opened (May 24, 1807) with the recitation by Madame Wolff
of an excellent prologue by Goethe. Goethe had commended
the company to the kindness of his friend, Friedrich Rochlitz.3
Soon after the middle of May 1807 Goethe went to Jena.
Before leaving he had sent every volume of his Works, except
one, to the printer. The change in the little University city
that had once been so flourishing saddened him, and he soon
went on with Riemer to Karlsbad* The use of the waters
in the ordinary way at first made him very much worse, but
when he followed the directions of Dr. Kapp of Leipzig, he
improved rapidly.5 On August 10, 1807, he writes to Charlotte
von Stein : " During the last ten weeks I have had several
epochs in my quiet life. First, I dictated short romantic
stories " (these he had had a long time in mind), "then there
1 See in Keil's Frau Rath a letter from the Frau Rath to Christiane,
dated May 16, 1807, that is, after Bettine had seen Goethe. (Frau Rath,
p. 364).-TR. 2 See Eettine's letter to Goethe, Cassel, June 15 [1807], in Loeper's
Briefe Goethe's an Sophie von La Roche und Bettina Brentano. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Friedrich Rochlitz, April 3 and May 12, 1807. — Tr.
4 At the close of May 1807. See No. 279 in Goethe's Briefwechsel
mit Knebel. Duntzer has pointed out that this letter is clearly dated
incorrectly, Jena, March 24, 1807. It should be Jena, May 24, 1807.
— Tr. 6 Goethe to Zelter, July 27, 1807.— Tr.

1805-1807.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 567
was sketching, then the kingdom of stone and rock had its
turn, and now I have returned again to the region of the freer
fantasy, the region where we always finally find ourselves
happiest" His elucidation of Joseph Miiller's collection of
specimens of Karlsbad rock was printed in Karlsbad. In the
Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1807 Goethe speaks of the value of
a watering-place in bringing together many important persons,
acquaintance with whom enriches and varies life. Among
those met by Goethe on this visit were the French Resident,
Karl Friedrich Reinhard, with whom he became intimate,1
and the Chief Court Preacher, F. V. Reinhard, from Dresden.
Goethe found with pleasure that, in questions of ethics, his
opinion coincided with that of F. V. Reinhard. Towards the end
of his stay in Karlsbad he was joined by August, whom he had
sent for, wishing him to see the place talked of so often at home.2
The peace concluded between France and Prussia in July
1807 seemed to promise at least a temporary calm. The
return of the Crown-Princess in the company of her husband
was celebrated with great rejoicing in Weimar. She was wel
comed to Weimar Theatre by the remarkable Fore-piece? which
Goethe composed within eight days. The thought of this
little lyric dialogue is : True patriotism consists in every man's j
labouring diligently in his own place ; in so doing he best learns •
to further the general good. This was the rule by which
Goethe himself diligently strove to shape his life. Many things
claimed his time and thought. As an officer of state it lay
upon him to give his best attention to the academic institutions
of Jena, to foster and develop the theatre in Weimar ; at the
same time he was striving to build up a new theory of colour,
and to bring to recognition a real vivid notion of the simple
laws of development that Nature follows in all her depart-
nents.4 (So early as Easter 1807 in the Fair Catalogue, an
1 See the important correspondence of Goethe and Reinhard, from
1807 to 1832, published by Cotta in 1850. — Tr.
2 Goethe returned to Weimar in the beginning of September 1807.
— Tr.
3 Vorspiel zu Eroffnung des Weimarischen Theaters am 19 September
1807. Hempel's Goethe, xi. 88-100. — Tr.
4 This project was in Goethe's mind during part of 1806. See the
Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1807, and Goethe to Knebel, October 29, 1806;
Goethe to Zelter, December 26, 1806. See Hempel's Goethe, Theii xxxiii.
Seite ix.-x. — Tr.

58 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. i.
ssay by him had been announced, Ideen iiber organische
lildung1). In a silent, regular, consequent activity, Goethe
ut all his hope, and to his mood the eternal mining and
ountermining of politics seemed worse than futile, likely only
} bring fresh trouble on the nation, nay, perhaps lead in the
nd to its overthrow.
1 See in Hempel's Goethe, Theii xxxiii. S. 3-14, the essay called
'ildung und Umbildung organischer Naturen. — Ts..

CHAPTER II.
BETTINE — ZACHARIAS WERNER  SONNETS  MINCHEN HERZLIEB
 THE WAHLVERWANDTSCHAFTEN  THE WANDERJAHRE
— PANDORA  PUBLICATION OF FAUST — DEATH OF FRAU
RATH  NAPOLEON AND GOETHE.
October i8o7-November 1808.
Goethe had now drawn near to the Court again. On Tues
day mornings he visited the Princess Caroline, and, " without
delivering a formal lecture, he explained in a very charming
way highly intellectual things."1 Then, in the evenings he fre
quently read aloud to a small circle in the Duchess's apart
ments ; the Crown-Princess, Princess Caroline, Charlotte von
Stein, and the wives of the two Stewards of the Household,
would be of the gathering, seldom any men. More delightful
evenings, Charlotte remarks, than those spent in the eternal card-
playing. Goethe's hearers were charmed with the new scenes
of Faust (the new edition of the drama was at the time in the
printer's hands). At his own house there were little concerts
every Sunday. There were indeed hardly ever more than four
voices ;2 still he hoped to develop it further. The fragment
of an Achilleis, which was now at length to appear in the new
edition of his Works, needed a new revisal ; and his designed
Pandora must be executed, since he had promised it to Leo
von Seckendorf for the magazine Prometheus, which Seckendorf
was about to edit in partnership with a son of the famous
physician Stoll.
During the first ten days of November 1807 Goethe was
1 Charlotte von Stein to her son Fritz, November II, 1807. Duntzer,
Charlotte von Stein, ii. 273-4. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Zelter, Jena, December 16, 1807. — Tr.

570 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
teased with the importunate enthusiasm of Bettine, who, with her
sisters and brother, had come to Weimar again. Four months
before she had opened her heart to him in a dithyrambic
letter :x without his love, what is most beautiful, most holy,
would be gone from her life. Goethe was very friendly
to the "pretty child," but continued to baffle her intrusive-
ness with smiling, pleasant humour. One morning Bettine
lamented to Riemer that Goethe behaved so strangely2 to
wards her. He freely gave her leave to write to him, but she
was to write especially about Frankfurt and his mother.
On November ii, 1807, Goethe went with Riemer to
Jena, where the polemic part of the Farbenlehre was being
printed. On the way Goethe expounded to Riemer the whole
conception oi Pandora in detail.3 By November 19 he could
read to Riemer the beginning of the drama, and on November
29 he dictated some of it aloud. On November 29, Advent
Sunday, he dined with a large company at the house of the
bookseller Frommann. Minchen Herzlieb had unfolded an
exquisite youthful beauty, heightened by a singular reserve
of manner, that indicated depth of spirit and feeling. She
made a powerful impression on Goethe's mind, but only roused
a fleeting gust of passionate excitement. Thus we find him
calmly continuing to dictate Pandora during the following
days. On December 1, 1807, he writes to Charlotte von
Stein : — " I spend frequent evenings with Knebel, where many
things are read and talked over. On the whole, with an ex
ternal remarkable quietness, there is at , bottom much activity.
Cultivated men, and those who labour in the culture of others,
spend a noiseless life. The dark days and long evenings are
indeed almost unconquerable here."
On the evening of the day on which this letter was written,
December 1, 1807, the post-car bore into Jena the author of
the play Martin Luther, which had been lately4 acted with
great effect, in an abbreviated form, on the Berlin stage.
1 Loeper, Briefe Goethe's an Sophie von La Roche und Bettine Brentano,
1879, pp. 147-157. The letter is reprinted from the original manuscript,
and the version given by Bettine in Goethe's Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde
is also printed, in order to allow comparison. The date of the original
manuscript is June 15. Bettine changed this to May 15. — Tr.
2 " So wunderlich und sonderbar." Riemer, Mittheilungen, i. 32. — Tr.
3 Riemer, Mittheilungen, ii. 596. — Tr.
4 Iffland first brought it on the stage in June 1806. — Tr.

1807-1808.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 571
Zacharias Werner, who held himself to be Schiller's appointed
successor, was born in Konigsberg in November 1768. Ere
the time at which we are now arrived he had put himself in
communication with Goethe, who recognised his dramatic
power, but felt that great immaturity was evidenced by the "un
pleasant oppositions " to be found in his pieces, which were all
strongly tinged with mystic sentiment. However, he was now
in such a cheery mood that he found it easy to overlook what
was repellent in Werner's personal presence for the sake of the
genuine poetic fire in him. Thus, on the morning of Decem
ber 2, 1807, when "Dr. Luther," as Goethe humorously calls
him, came, easily introducing himself, he was well received.
On the evening of December 2 Goethe and Werner were at
Knebel's. On the following evening they formed part of a
considerable gathering at Frommann's hospitable house, and
Werner read aloud some sonnets with wonderful depth of feel
ing. On the days following Werner was much with Goethe, and
spoke to him of a new, nearly-finished drama, Wanda. Werner
bubbled over with sonnets, and Goethe caught the sonnet fever
from him. He read many German and Italian sonnets, and
meditated on the nature of this form of verse. Finally he
began to compose himself. At Knebel's, on the evening of
December 6, 1807, he read aloud his first sonnet. It is that
which stands fourth in the Sonnette in Goethe's Works, and is
the utterance of a maiden in love. Between December 6 and
18, 1807, arose a group of sonnets, two of which are person
ally addressed to Minchen Herzlieb, but precisely these show
no sign of genuine passion. If he had felt passion the sonnet
form would not have been his choice ; it seemed to him only
suitable for poetically refined love- sentiment. It was the
amusement and excitement of emulation that drew him to
spend his time thus, leaving Pandora unfinished Werner's
Wanda seemed so important a production of its kind, that
Goethe resolved to have it played on the coming birthday of
the Duchess.
On December 18, 1807, Goethe returned to Weimar in
the best spirits. The preparations for Wanda began at once,
otherwise his life went on as usual. At Christmas he sent
sweets to Minchen, accompanied by a gallant sonnet1 Frau
1 The sonnet Christgeschenk. Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, iii.
247, 264. On Goethe and the Sonnet, see note 2, p. 511. — Tr.

572 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
Frommann surprised him with the gift of a beautiful letter-
case that she had worked for him. August Goethe's birthday,
December 25, was celebrated with a little piece by the friendly
actors. On Wednesdays Werner read aloud at Goethe's house
to a select circle of ladies, among whom were the Duchess and
the Princess. He read his play, Das Kreuz an der Ostsee1
first, then his Attila. Notwithstanding his external repulsive-
ness, he made a huge impression on the ladies; indeed he
had an uncommon adaptability and power of winning people
to his side ; even the Duke was interested by this very extraor
dinary saint2
On January 16, 1808, Goethe came with his wife to Jena
for a couple of days, in order to attend the ball at The Rose ; he
wished to introduce Christiane as his wife to his sincere friend
Frau Frommann, and the whole Jena circle. He had just
taken unpretentious lodgings near the Castle of Jena, having
been compelled, by the projected restoration of the Castle,
to abandon for the present his old quarters there.3 At the
Frommanns' he read aloud, not sonnets, but part of Hackert's
Leben. Wanda, Queen of the Sarmatae, was admirably played on
January 30, 1808. The scenery and dresses were very good.
It made a great impression on many hearers. " The plot is
indeed simple, the situation natural and explicable, but the
execution is infinitely tender, and in many places loses itself
in the region of mystery," writes Goethe, on February 1, to
1 The Cross on the Baltic. — Tr.
2 Charlotte von Stein writes to Fritz, December 31, 1807, of Werner :
¦ — "When reading, he turns his eyes frequently in a very rapt way to
heaven, reads pleasantly when not too violent, and feels a call, as he says,
to propound to the world, Love in its thousand differing forms. He has
an intellectual expression, often seems to one ugly, and often good-looking,
but odd enough. He is a favourite of Goethe's ; they became acquainted
in Jena. They were at Knebel's one evening ; Knebel's wife was pouring
out tea, their little boy was playing with toys, and Werner was in the
height of declamation. Suddenly the boy said: 'The man is crazy!'
Knebel cried : ' Hold your tongue, sir !' The mother was horrified.
Goethe nearly laughed himself to death. ' Let him off,' said he. ' The
lad has half a world in him.' (And in truth a poet cannot be like other
men.) But the boy maintained: 'How could he talk like that if he
wasn't crazy !' But it did not disturb Werner." — Tr.
3 Goethe to Frau Frommann, December 26, 1807. Das From-
mannsche Haus [Jena, 1870], p. 42. — Tr.

1807-1808.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 573
Nikolaus Meyer. The Duke gave Werner sixty ducats. It
was impossible to provide him with any regular appointment
in Weimar. And ere long the immorality of the life of this
"Liebesgesell"1 was discovered.
Meanwhile Goethe had been working on Pandora, and
had sent the beginning of it to the printer. Moreover, in
January 1808 he dictated to Riemer that gay, charming ballad,
Wirkung in die Feme. In the latter part of February he
became unwell, and had to spend about a fortnight indoors.
On March 17 he went to Jena for a few days, to care for
the many things that claimed him. At the close of March
Werner departed ; in good time, while all was still pleasant ;
he was full of Goethe's greatness as a man and as a poet.
In the beginning of April 1808 August Goethe went to
the University of Heidelberg, to spend two years there in the
study of jurisprudence. This was a sad parting for Goethe, who
was still poorly. "The black-eyed, brown-curled youth"2 was
received in Frankfurt with joy by Frau Aja and Bettine. (Bet
tine had leave to write to Goethe.3 When he sent her a letter
in January 1808, she had been "beside herself with joy."4)
" Let his father's city become a paternal city, so that he may
feel among his own people," wrote Goethe to Bettine. " Intro
duce him to your dear brothers and sisters and relatives, and
when you are friendly to him, be mindful of me."5 The Prince
Primate of the Rhine, whom we have known as Statthalter
Dalberg,6 now lord of Frankfurt, gave a banquet in honour of
August and of Goethe's mother. Goethe was pleased, and
sent his thanks to Dalberg through Bettine.7
Meanwhile he had begun a sequel to Wilhelm Master's
Lehrjahre. At Schiller's suggestion, allusions to a sequel had
1 This was a title assumed by Werner himself. See the book Das
Frommannsche Haus [Jena, 1870], p. 88. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Bettine, April 3, 1808. Loeper, Goel/ie-La Roche,
pp. 164-166. — TR.
3 Frau Rath to Goethe, September 8, 1807. Keil, Frau Rath,
p. 368.— Tr.
4 Frau Rath to Goethe, January 15, 1808. Keil, Frau Rath,
P- 375-— TR-
6 Goethe to Bettine, April 3, 1808. — Tr.
6 See pp. 249, 310, 385, 394, 434.— Tr.
7 Goethe to Bettine, May 4, 1808. Loeper, Goethe-La Roche,
pp. 170-171. — Tr.

574 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
been inserted in the Eighth Book of the Lehrjahre. In this
sequel Goethe meant to incorporate a series of tales which he
had had by him in an unfinished state many years. He had
planned to start for Jena about April 1 1, 1808, but an attack
of the old disorder came on, and he spent his Easter in
Weimar. But he was well enough on Easter Monday, April
18, to visit the Greek Church to hear the beautiful singing
of some Russians who were going to Paris. After this we
find him reading aloud from Meister's Wanderjahre one day,
at Charlotte von Stein's, to a circle of ladies ; another evening
he reads in the Duchess's apartments, Charlotte being present1
Goethe and Charlotte had become good friends again. After
a short visit to Jena, he left Weimar for Karlsbad on May
12, 1808, intending to make a long stay on this occasion.
During his absence Madame de Stael came to Weimar chiefly
for his sake ; and though the Court treated her in the friend
liest manner, she remained only nine days,2 since he would not
return from Karlsbad to see her.
Meanwhile Karlsbad was doing him a great deal of good.
He now carried Pandora forward to a certain point of section ;3
and he began Die Wahlverwandtschaften. This novel is the
development of what had been at first conceived as a short
tale, like those bedded in Meister's Wanderjahre. In it this
truth receives prominence, that the most painful renunciation
is the penalty of any wrong done to the sanctity of marriage,
even in thought4 Of how many painful acts of renunciation was
1 See Diintzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 286, for interesting details. — Tr.
2 June 11-19. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Charlotte von Stein, July 2, 1808. — Tr.
* I collect a few of Goethe's own utterances on this novel : — Ecker-
mann, May 6, 1827 : — "The only work of considerable length in which
I am conscious of having striven to set forth an idea is probably my
Wahlverwandtschaften." And what was this leading thought or idea?
Goethe to J. St. Zauper, Eger, September 7, 1821 : — "Die Wahlver
wandtschaften: The very simple text of this discursive little book is
Christ's words: — 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her,
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.'" Goethe to
Zelter, January 29, 1830 [v. 381]: — The text the sixth commandment.
Eckermann, January 21, 1827 : — "I do not quarrel with Solger because
'he cannot endure Edward. I myself cannot endure him." See also:
Goethe to Reinhard, December 31, 1809; Riemer, Mittheilungen, ii.
607; Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 1809 (Hempel's Goethe, xxvii. 186) ;
Eckermann, March 30, i824;.Sulpiz Boisseree's Diary, October 5, 1815
(Sulpiz Boissere'e, i. 289). — Tr.

1807-1808.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 575
Goethe himself conscious, that had left wounds often opening
and smarting anew I1 Only a few traits of the Ottilie of the
book are taken from Minchen Herzlieb.2
Very delightful were the weeks spent by Goethe at Karls
bad, in the Ziegesar circle, enlarged for the time by the
accession of a Frau von Seckendorf from Dresden, and of
the amiable Pauline Gotter (daughter of the poet Gotter,
whom Goethe had first met long ago at Wetzlar, and who was
now dead). And even when their Drakendorf friends left
Karlsbad for Franzensbrunn, Goethe and Riemer maintained
the alliance with Frau von Seckendorf and Pauline. Goethe
was very friendly towards Pauline; in the evenings, at tea,
he would read little poems to her; gave her lessons in
botany in the early' morning (he had won back all the alle
giance of the Weimar ladies this spring with his explanations
of plant structure) ;3 and used to take her on long walks. On
July 1 1 , 1 808, he went on a short trip to Franzensbrunn,4 where
the Ziegesar family were still staying, as he knew. He became
much interested in the geology of the Kammerberg, a hill
near Eger. On his return to Karlsbad, he was glad to find
two painters there — his old true friend Bury, who came with
the Crown -Princess of Hessen- Cassel, and the landscape
painter, Kaaz of Dresden. Kaaz took Goethe's amateur
sketches and altered them until they looked tolerable, and
by his mode of doing so brought Goethe from his fantastic
1 The best that has been written in English on Die Wahlverwandt
schaften has been written by Mr. Andrew Hamilton, in the article Goethe
and Minna Herzlieb, in the Contemporary Review for January 1876.
(Contemporary Review, vol. xxvii. See especially the good presentation
of matters on pp. 214-215.) The best general account of the book is as
usual that by Duntzer in the series, Erlduterungen zu den Deutschen
Klassikern [Wartig, Leipzig]. — Tr.
3 It may not be amiss to warn English readers that the account
of Goethe and Minna Herzlieb in the last edition of Mr. Lewes's Life of
Goethe, derived from Adolf Stahr's book, Goethe's Frauengestalten, is •
thoroughly incorrect. See Mr. Hamilton's article in the Contemporary
for January 1876, and the little book Das Frommannsche Haus und seine
Freunde [Jena, 1870]. See also an article by Hermann Frommann,
Stahr's Aufsatz iiber Minna Herzlieb, published in Westermann's Monats-
Hefte for September 1870. — Tr.
3 See in Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 286, the quotation from
Charlotte's letter to Fritz, April 22, 1808. — Tr.
4 July 11-21. (The letter to Frau -von Eybenberg, July 17, 1808,
is incorrectly dated " Karlsbad.")— Tr.

576 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
scrawling to a purer treatment. Good news of the late edi
tion of his works came at this time. It had sold so fast
that a new issue was necessary, and for this Cotta voluntarily
paid him a further 705 thalers. At Easter 1808 the final six
volumes had appeared, and the First Part of Faust, now at
length complete, had attracted great attention and admiration,
mingled with astonishment. On Goethe's fifty-ninth birthday,
August 28, 1808,1 he made up his mind, at Riemer's solicita
tion, to write an account of his life, as an elucidation of his
works. Thus he formed new plans continually, even while
occupied in the execution of former ones ; and how many
were never executed ! Two days later he went to Franzens
brunn again,2 where he sketched his Essay on the Kammer-
berg, in which he endeavours to prove the hill to be of volcanic
formation. How light-hearted he was on the journey back to
Weimar, the bright little lyric Der Goldschmiedsgesell, written
at Hof, September 12, 1808, is a witness.
But very sad news met him in Weimar. On September
13, 1808, the Frau Rath died, after a short illness. Goethe
always knew well what a mother he had ; to prepare a pleasure
for her had been his own greatest pleasure ; her praise had
continually inspired him. And now no word more from her
for ever I whatever his successes and joys in time to come,
his dear mother would not be gladdened by them.3 It was
too sacred a sorrow to find expression in words, and he avoided
mention of his irreparable loss. There is a letter to Silvie von
Ziegesar which shows how deep his emotion was.4 Karl von
1 Riemer, Mittheilungen iiber Goethe, ii. 611. — Tr.
2 He stayed a fortnight in Franzensbrunn on this occasion, though
the Ziegesars had gone home. — Tr.
3 I give extracts from the two last letters she wrote to Goethe. June
3, 1808 : — "Thy letter of the 9th May has refreshed me and gladdened
me exceedingly. Ay, ay, ' Thou shalt yet plant vines on the mountains
of Samaria — plant shalt thou, and pipe also' [see p. 83; compare
also : Goethe to his mother, August 9, 1779, and December 7, 1783].
So often as I hear something good concerning thee, all the promises
stored in my heart live again. He ! keepeth truth for ever, Hallelujah ! ! !
He 1 will also bless Karlsbad this time, and cause me ever to hear good
news of thee." July 1, 1808 : — "Thy dear little letter of the 22d June
was to me as usual a valued, cherished, glorious appearance. God ! bless
the watering-place still more, and cause the old illness to disappear
altogether." — Tr.
4 Goethe to Silvie von Ziegesar, September 21, 1808. When Pro-

1807-1808.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 577
Stein, with whom Goethe had long been on cold terms, relates
that at this time Goethe met him one day, and asked with
sadness and affection: "Dear Karl, haven't ' you one kindly
little word for me?" For some time he meditated a special
tribute to his mother's memory.1
For the arrangement of matters connected with the inherit
ance, Christiane was sent to Frankfurt by Goethe. She had
a bright, charming, lovable companion in Caroline Ulrich, an
orphan who had found a refuge in Goethe's house. Caroline
was a valued aid and friend to Christiane, over whom she had
a good influence. Goethe, too, found much pleasure in her
delightful presence in his home.2 In Frankfurt Christiane
met August, who had come over from Heidelberg. They
stopped in the house of the widow of the Sheriff Hieronymus
Schlosser ; her son, City Councillor (Stadtgerichtsrath) Johann
Friedrich Heinrich Schlosser, aided Christiane by his advice.
She fulfilled admirably Goethe's commission to dispose of the
matter "easily and magnanimously."3 The property had
diminished a great deal through the hardness of the times and
the generous mode of life of the Frau Rath. Goethe inherited
something over 20,000 gulden in taxable property, which re
mained in Frankfurt. Henriette Schlosser, the daughter of
J. G. Schlosser, writes of Christiane : — " We all like her
thoroughly ; and feeling this, she is grateful and glad, and
returns it, and was quite frank, and of the fullest confidence
in us. Her outer being has something common — not so her
inner. Her behaviour at the division of the inheritance was
liberal and fine, an occasion certain to betray, if anything
impure were in her. We are all glad to know her, and to
judge her after her deservings, and to be able to defend her
with others, for an untold quantity of injustice is done her."
Of August Goethe Henriette writes : — " He is a very dear,
good lad, sensible, warm-hearted, true. He does not, like his
father, belong to the order of geniuses. Also, he is enormously
fessor Duntzer wrote, only four of Goethe's letters to Silvie had been
printed. But the Goethe -Jahrbuch (1880, p. 243, and 1882, pp.
191-198) has since given us eleven more. — Tr.
1 In autumn 1831 he told Riemer that he thought of calling the book
Aristeia. Riemer, Mittheilungen iiber Goethe, ii. 726. — Tr.
2 Caroline Ulrich was afterwards Riemer's wife. — Tr.
3 "Auf eine glatte und noble Weise." See Goethe to Knebel, Novem
ber 25, 1808.— Tr. 2 p

578 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
glad that his mother is now his father's wife ; he does not seem
to love the same things as his father, and will certainly be
an honest citizen man of business, yet without being dry ; he
is extremely lively and light-hearted, and takes pleasure in
literature, clings, childlike, to his parents, and is confiding
towards us all; and we are thoroughly charmed with him."1
Almost at the same time with the news of his mother's
death, Goethe had heard of the approaching meeting of the
Emperors Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt, which was now
a French city. Poor little Weimar, already groaning beneath
its burthens, was to be the Emperor Alexander's headquarters,
and had to meet huge additional expenses. On the evening
of September 25 Alexander came, many other royal person
ages having arrived before him. Karl August had gone to
meet Napoleon at Eisenach, to invite him to Weimar, and to
shoot deer at the Ettersberg ; Napoleon, intending the bitterest
humiliation to Prussia, ordered that there should also be an
inspection of the battlefield of Jena, and a — hare-hunt !
On September 27 Alexander left Weimar for Erfurt.
Napoleon met him midway, at a little hamlet called Miinchen-
holzen, and they embraced ; in the evening they entered Erfurt
together. On September 29, 1808, Karl August summoned
Goethe to Erfurt. Here he saw the Andromaque of Racine
played by the actors of the Theatre Fran$ais. On September 3 o
Karl August gave a great dinner, and in the evening Goethe saw
Racine's Britannicus. On October 1 Napoleon held a lev'ee.
On the morning of October 2, 1808, at about eleven, Goethe
was summoned to an audience with Napoleon. He found the
Emperor at breakfast,2 in the cabinet so familiar to Goethe in old
Dalberg times. Napoleon looked at Goethe attentively, and
then spoke in just and memorable words the full impression :
"Voila un homme!"3 After Goethe's age and health and
1 These letters of Henriette Schlosser's are reprinted in the appendix
to the book entitled Briefe von Goethe an Johanna Fahlmer, herausgegeben
von L. Urlichs [Leipzig, 1875]. — Tr.
2 Talleyrand, Berthier, and Savary were present when Goethe
entered ; Daru came in shortly after. — Tr.
3 This is according to Chancellor von Miiller, in his Erinnerungen
aus den Kriegszeiten, 1806-1813. Goethe, in his Biographische Einzeln-
heiten, has it : " Vous £tes un homme." Reinhard writes to Goethe,
November 24, 1808: — "Von lhnen soil der Kaiser gesagt haben :
' Voila un homme ! '" Miiller makes Napoleon say it to Berthier and

1807-1808.] THE YEARS. OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 579
tragedies had been touched on, Daru mentioned that Goethe
had translated Voltaire's Mahomet. Napoleon said : " It is
not a good piece,"1 and proceeded to explain his view. Then
the conversation turned upon Werther. After several just
remarks, Napoleon found fault with the mixture of motives in
Werther ; the suicide is not prompted by unhappy love alone,
disappointed ambition is another motive. On this Goethe
ventured to remark that he had a certain effect to produce,
and needed a special agency. (The same objection had been
raised before by Herder and by Madame de Stael ; but Goethe
had removed all that could be justly blamed when revising
Werther, in 1786, for publication in Goschen's edition.2) After
this Napoleon spoke with impatience of the Fate Tragedies of
the day. " What would they with Fate now? " he said ; " Policy
is Fate !" Then Napoleon talked with Daru for a time. Then
Marshal Soult entered, and the Emperor asked him about the
troubles in Poland. Meanwhile Goethe observed the changes
in the familiar room. Then Napoleon came towards him,
and by a kind of manoeuvre excluded the other persons in the
room from the conversation between Goethe and himself. He
asked Goethe sympathetically, in a lowered voice, about his
personal circumstances. During the whole interview, the
variety of Napoleon's expressions of assent was admirable ;
for he seldom listened without nodding or saying " Oui," or
" C'est bien," or something to that effect. When he had him
self made any remarks, he would usually add : " Q'en dit Mr.
Got?" Goethe at length, having consulted the chamberlain
by signs, slipped away without further ceremony.
Since the French actors were to play in Weimar in a few
days, Goethe had a great deal of consultation with them
(October 3). On October 4 he returned to Weimar in order
to see the theatre made ready. On October 6, at noon, the
Emperors left Erfurt ; Karl August met them at Stedten, and
conducted them to a large and handsome shooting stand that
Daru when Goethe was leaving. Probably the Emperor said : " Vous
etes un homme," to Goethe when he entered, and also said : "Voila un
homme ! " to Berthier and Daru when Goethe was leaving. — Tr.
1 Cp. Sulpiz BoissereVs Diary, August 8, 1815. Sulpiz Boisseree, i.
265.— Tr.
2 But Napoleon knew Werther by a translation of the first edition ;
and so, I suppose, did Madame de Stael.' — Tr.

580 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. ii.
had been put up in an open place near the Castle of Etters
burg. There already the kings and princes were gathered
before them. By four o'clock in the afternoon the slaying of
forty-seven stags was at an end ; then all went to Weimar
Castle, where at six o'clock a great banquet began. At the
Emperors' table sixteen covers were laid ; there was a long
table of marshals ; altogether five hundred and fifty persons
were feasted on this memorable day in Weimar Castle. About
seven o'clock they set out for the theatre. In front of the Castle
an obelisk sixty feet high blazed in clear flames. There was
a Latin inscription ending with a chronodistichon. The in
scription was by Voigt and ran thus : — "The very auspicious
arrival of the Emperors, Kings, and Princes, the consolation
of the distressed \afflictae\ Fatherland, Karl August, Duke of
Sachsen, has here indicated." A permanent obelisk was to
be executed in stone.
The play given that evening was Voltaire's Mori de Cesar.
As in Erfurt, the front part of the pit was occupied by the
emperors and kings. After the play there was a ball at Court.
Here Napoleon spoke several times with Goethe, and finally,
after graciously dismissing old Wieland, and before his own
retirement at one o'clock, talked at length and very earnestly.
He took pains to show that La mort de Cesar was not a good
play. He called on Goethe to treat the subject in a larger
manner, to show the world how Cassar would have made the
fortune of mankind had he not been murdered ere he could
carry out his vast plans.1 (It was thus that Goethe had viewed
the subject in his youth.2) "Come to Paris," said Napoleon
finally, " I desire it of you. There you will find a wider circle
for your spirit of observation ; there you will find enormous
material for poetic creations."
Next morning (October 7), at nine o'clock, the Emperors
went to inspect the field of the battle of Jena ; there was tc
be a hare-hunt at Apolda afterwards. Goethe avoided being
1 After the representation Napoleon had said to the Duchess Luise : —
Etrange piece, ce Cesar ! Piece republicaine ! J'espere que cela ne fera
aucun effet ici. " (From Knebel's Briefwechsel mit seiner Schwester Henriette,
edited by Duntzer. ) For notes and references on the sources as to the
intercourse of Napoleon and Goethe, see Biedermann's edition of Goethe's
Biographische Einzelnheiten ; Hempel's Goethe, xxvii. 553-556. — Tr.
2 See p. 192.— Tr.

1807-1808.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 581
present at this humiliating inspection and hunt ; L on that day
he gave a breakfast in honour of his guest, Napoleon's Secretary
of State, Maret, and of Marshal Lannes.2 After the hunt, the
Emperors returned to Erfurt, without delaying in Weimar. On
October 12 Napoleon granted the Cross of the Legion of
Honour to Goethe and Wieland. The letters notifying this,
composed in the most flattering terms, were communicated by
Maret to the Weimar ambassador, Privy Councillor von Miiller.
On the same day Napoleon, beside making allotments for the
Catholic church in Jena, and towards indemnifying the town for
its losses, assigned to the University of Jena a property in the
seigniory (Herrschaft) of Blankenhain. Goethe had invited
Talma and the intellectual Madame Talma to his house, and
talked on many subjects with the great actor with the most
intimate interchange of thought. On October 14, 1808, Alex
ander of Russia returned to Weimar, and Goethe on this and
the following day dined at Court. In the evenings there were
balls ; at that of October 1 5 Goethe and Wieland appeared
decorated with the Russian Order of St. Anne. On October
16 Alexander left Weimar.
The greatness of Napoleon had not prevented Goethe from
resenting his deliberate endeavour to wound German pride,
and from bitterly regretting the terrible cost of this festive
show and splendour, in a land already overburthened by the
results of war. But Goethe recognised in this daemonic3
hero a born ruler of the world, one of those who find happi
ness only in rule and command, one who, always himself,
a match for every moment and for every situation, diverted by
nothing from his aim, reposed steadfast and secure on himself
and his clear fixed will. Opposed to this man, all the em
perors, kings, generals, of the day seemed of trifling moment.
1 Karl August excused himself from joining the hunt by the plea of
illness. Luise Seidler's Erinnerungen, p. 42. — Tr.
2 Marshal Lannes had stopped at Goethe's house in October 1806.
See p. 561 (footnote). — Tr.
3 Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, March 2, 1 83 1. — Tr.

CHAPTER III.
from the congress of erfurt to the retreat
from moscow.
November i8o8-December 1812.
During the four years that follow we shall find Goethe
engaged in the same manful endeavour, amid the dreary
external circumstance of the national lot, and in defiance of
bodily suffering, to develop a useful official activity, to satisfy
the ideal claims of his higher nature, to labour with beneficial
result, whether in a wider or narrower circle.
In December 1808 he felt very poorly. In the spring of
1809 (after a year's interval), another attack of his old dis
order came on. This was the more serious because a speedy
repetition of it must be dreaded, while the hostile relations
between France and Austria prevented a visit to Karlsbad.
(Besides, the intense desire to complete in solitude and calm
a work which had taken so painful a hold on him as Die
Wahlverwandtschaften, would restrain him from visiting the
gay, distracting watering-place.) A new attack came before
autumn 1809, and the very worst was feared, and afterwards
his former vigour would not return. In May 1 8 1 o he became
extremely ill ; it was necessary to make haste to get to Karls
bad, and thence tolerably restored he went to Teplitz. Again,
in 181 1, a short visit to Karlsbad was attended with a great
deal of benefit. But in the March of 18 12, the dangerous
political situation agitated him to illness, he fled to Jena, and
there such a longing for his fountain of health, Karlsbad, came
upon him, that he set out thither (May 1). At Karlsbad an
attack of especial violence came on June 2 6 ; afterwards,
when tolerably restored, he went to Teplitz (July 14).

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 583^
After a month's stay there, he returned to Karlsbad to
perfect the cure.
Let us now consider his domestic circumstances. His
son was a source of great joy. In Heidelberg August had
maintained close friendship with the Voss household, especially
with Heinrich Voss.1 Another old Jena friend of Goethe's,
Professor Thibaut, was now a kind friend to August, of whom
he had good hopes, but he feared that there was something
" hectic " in the youth's nature. At the end of September 1809,
after having seen the Rhine as far as Coblenz, August returned
to Weimar, travelling all the way from Wiirzburg on foot. A
month later he went to Jena to study Finance, a subject in
which he felt great interest. He took his meals at the house
of Commandant Hendrich. Knebel, whom, however, he did
not visit often, being generally engaged with younger friends,
was much pleased with him; and says of him, that he has
something positive, reasonable, characteristic about him ; that
he is of an honest, modest nature ; and, moreover, grave, and
attentive to his business. On February 2, 18 10, there was
a very brilliant masquerade2 at the City Hall of Weimar.
The various personages of the procession were explained by
two of their number, a Bard and a Minnesinger, who, intro
duced by a herald, were led to a place beside the illustrious spec
tators. August Goethe represented the Bard, President K. W.
von Fritsch the Minnesinger. Charlotte von Stein was pleased
with the exceedingly fine voice of August, which she thought
very like his father's. The betrothal and marriage in this year
of Princess Caroline were each the occasion of a series of balls
and festivities. August was present at these with his mother.
In October 18 10 August received from the Duke the title
of Kammerassessor ; however, he spent the winter in Jena. On
January 1, 81 11, he was at the Ducal table without his father
for the first time, and this occurred often afterwards. In the
spring of 181 1 he went to study agriculture at Capellendorf,
a village about five English miles from Weimar. Christiane
excited general remark at this time by her excessive abandon
ment to her delight in dancing ; the Jena students permitted
themselves shameful practical jokes on her, to the grief and
humiliation of August. He seems to have become very much
1 Heinrich Voss had joined his father in Heidelberg in the end of 1806.
— Tr. 2 See Die romantischePoesie, Hempel's Goethe, xi. 304-3 1 3. — Tr,

584 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch; hi.
more retiring, and thus came to be called "The Monk." Of
a positive practical nature, we find him moving his father to
transfer to Weimar the property which stood in Frankfurt in
his name, and which was there subject to heavy taxation. In
March 18 12, August writes to Fritz Schlosser on the subject.
His father by his habits of thought can give little attention
to such matters, but August holds it a duty to undertake the
affair. If memorialised by his father, the Prince Primate will
probably remit the ten per cent transfer tax. And August
is prepared to come to Frankfurt and Aschaffenburg to look
after things in person. Schlosser endeavoured to manage the
business through the Minister of Finance. The Prince Primate
resolved to pay the tax himself, and to have a medal struck
in Goethe's honour. But these kindly intentions were frus
trated by occurrences which set the Prince aside.
It was Goethe's desire to introduce his wife into the circle
of ladies of high rank. And when she came back from Frank
furt in 1808, after having acted so well in the division of the
inheritance, he made a special effort to improve her position.
He turned to Frau von Wolzogen, who declared herself willing
to enter into social relations with Christiane. Accordingly,
on November 17, 1808, we find Goethe gratefully inviting
Frau von Wolzogen to tea that evening, and begging her to
persuade Charlotte von Stein and Charlotte Schiller to be
friendly also. The two ladies seem to have yielded. Charlotte
von Stein writes to Fritz : — " It is not indeed pleasant to me
to go into company ; however, as he loves the little creature
extremely, I can perhaps do so for once to give him pleasure." 1
We find Frau von Schardt inviting Christiane and Charlotte
von Stein to spend the evening of January 10, 1809, with
her. But there was no nearer intimacy, though once more
Goethe, on May 10, 18 10, before starting for Karlsbad, writes
to Charlotte : — "Would you do me a kindness ! then during
my absence show some goodwill towards my wife and son,
whom I am again leaving for a longer time than is fitting."
With Bettine he had at first greater success in his efforts
on Christiane's behalf. Bettine, who had not been in Frank
furt at the time of Christiane's stay there, now sent her pretty
presents, and was at last invited by her to Weimar. Goethe
1 See Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, ii. 301-2. Charlotte von Stein
could not go to this tea-party because engaged for another. — Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 585
responded to Bettine's letters, presents, and other courtesies
with grateful friendliness. On November 3, 1809, he writes
to her : — " One cannot, dear Bettine, attempt to emulate you ;
you surpass your friends in word and deed, in courtesies and
gifts, in affection and in entertainment, so there is nothing
for it but to yield, and be content with devoting to you in
return as much love as possible, though it be but in silence.
Your letters give me great pleasure ; they remind me of the
time when I was perhaps as foolish as you, but certainly
happier and better than I am now."1 In the beginning of
1 8 10 Bettine gave great pleasure to Christiane by sending
her a masquerade dress, of which she had been in need, as it
turned out, and which called forth from her a letter of thanks.
Before going to Karlsbad in May 18 10, Goethe writes asking
Bettine, then in Landshut, for a " sign of life." Her letters are
travelling with him to Karlsbad.2 His letter was sealed with a
little Cupid. When in Teplitz, at the end of the summer, he
was surprised by her arrival ; her strange being shimmered in
the most various hues. She left with him the fantastic diary
that recorded her love-craze. In reply to a letter which she
wrote to him when on her journey of departure he writes :
— "Your letters, dear Bettine, are such that every time the
last seems the most interesting. So it was with the papers
which you had brought with you, and which, on the morning
of your departure, I read diligently, and read again. But now
your latest has come, that surpasses the rest. If you can so
continue to surpass yourself, do it. You have taken away so
much with you that it is very fitting to send something from the
distance. May all go well with you."3 Her brilliant flashes
of intellect and wit stirred and interested him remarkably.
While Goethe was away in Karlsbad, the marriage of
Princess Caroline (July 18 10) had, as already mentioned, set
going balls on the largest scale, and for these Christiane, like
many others, took lessons in dancing. She abandoned herself
wholly to her delight in this amusement. (When, in January
1810, the bridegroom, the Crown-Prince of Mecklenburg-
Schwerin accompanied by his brother, had come to Weimar for
1 Loeper, Briefe Goethe's an Sophie von La Roche und Bettina Bren
tano [Berlin 1879], p. 182. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Bettine, Jena, May 10, 1810. Loeper, p. 189. — Tr.
3 This letter is not dated. See Loeper, p. 191. — Tr.

586 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. hi.
the betrothal, Christiane had learned to know them in her own
house as intellectual, cultivated men ;x it is needless to say
that they had not been wanting in respect for Goethe's wife.)
Hardly were the marriage festivities at an end when Christiane
hastened with her gay young companion Caroline Ulrich to
Lauchstedt, where there would be many dancing-parties during
the summer season. Goethe gladly allowed her full indulgence
in the cheerful, unrestrained enjoyment in which alone the
demands of her simple, childlike nature found satisfaction.
Her natural imperturbable high spirits, her roguish chatter,
her warm-hearted benevolence, and her anxious, disinterested
affection gave him joy; even her little weaknesses amused
and cheered him.
After Goethe's return from Karlsbad and Teplitz in the
autumn of 1 8 1 o, he tried to give Bettine's wayward, will-o'-the-
wisp fancies a definite direction. " I will confess to you that
I am about to write my confessions, whence may result a novel
or a history ; as to that we cannot be sure beforehand ; but in
any case I need your help. My good mother is gone, and so
are many others who could recall the past to me, which I have
for die most part forgotten. Now you have lived a happy time
with my dear mother, have heard again and again her tales and
anecdotes, and you bear them with you and cherish them all
in a memory that makes them live afresh continually. So do
sit down and write down what has reference to me and mine,
and you will give me much pleasure, and lay me under obliga
tion."2 Bettine made many important communications, though
she had an unconquerable tendency to ornament and trim
facts according to the imaginings of her own fantastic little
head. She soon came to Weimar in person, and was received
as a dear friend by Goethe and his family. The young painter
Luise Seidler met Bettine at Goethe's house during this visit.
(We have seen Luise, the playmate of August Goethe, in the
Castle-yard at Jena, fourteen years ago.3 Goethe had felt warm
interest in her since September 1810, when he had found her
copying in the Dresden Gallery.)4 She describes Bettine
1 See Christiane's letter to Nikolaus Meyer, July 5, 1810. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Bettine, Weimar, October 25, 1810. Loeper, Goethe-La
Roc/ie, 192-3. — Tr. 3 See page 483. — Tr.
4 Luise Seidler had had a great sorrow in 1810. Her lover Geoffroy
had died of fever in a military hospital in Spain. It was on her birthday,

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 587
seated on a low footstool chatting, roguish and gay, one little
boot green, and the other red.1
Luise Seidler stayed for some time at Goethe's house, as
he permitted her to practise at her art by painting his portrait.
To her we owe some knowledge of the daily life of the house
hold. She tells us that dinner was served in a small room,
adorned with drawings by great old masters. There were
never more than eight guests. The food was good and simple ;
the drink excellent Burgundy. At dessert Christiane and
Caroline Ulrich used to withdraw, and at this time August
also would seek his own occupations. Luise had permission
to remain ; this she could do, because there were hardly ever
any ladies guests at dinner. Then Goethe generally would
produce some object to form a starting-point and subject for
conversation, a small bronze Moses oi Michael Angelo, Cor
nelius's drawings for Faust, and so on. Interesting, instructive
talk whiled away the time, and the evening would come ere
they were aware, and with it new pleasures, for they generally
went to the theatre on the three nights of the week on which
it was open. Riemer and Meyer used to accompany Goethe,
and sometimes the ladies went too. In the theatre, in the
enclosed box below the Ducal box, cakes and wine were
handed round between the acts. Often the evening scene
May 15, 18 10, that full confirmation of the sad news reached her. She
sank into a kind of brooding gloom for a time. To rouse her from this a
friend visiting Dresden took her there. She went to the Gallery ; a new
world opened before her. She formed a clear, steady resolve to be a
painter, and in Professor Vogel she found a kind and able teacher. In
August 1 810 she paid a short visit to Teplitz, and met Goethe there ; but
no remarkable friendship formed yet. It was perhaps on September 17,
1 810, that Goethe came into the Gallery where Luise was painting. There
was great excitement. Many ran to speak to him ; but Luise hid in a
window-recess. She could perceive by the voices that Goethe was drawing
near, and at length stood still before her easel. "This is really an
exquisite piece, this St. Cecilia after Carlo Dolce," she heard him say ;
"whose is it?" Luise's name was mentioned; when he heard it he
looked round the corner and saw her in her hiding-place. Her face
blazed as he offered her his hand and in a friendly, paternal way said how
glad he was to meet her, and to find her the possessor of a talent that he
had not known of hitherto. The delicate kindness of Goethe's after treat
ment of her cannot be compressed into this note ; I hope that the reader
will seek it in Luise's own narrative. — Tr.
1 It was in the beginning of 181 1 that Luise met Bettine at Goethe's.
Compare pages 58 and 59 of Luise's book. — Tr.

588

THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. hi.

at home was patriarchal, when, for instance, Goethe, his
wife, and Caroline Ulrich, would play a game of dummy
whist, the accompaniment of punch in little glasses not being
omitted. Christiane's harmless delight in gaiety embittered the
Weimar ladies more and more against her. They were
especially annoyed when, in May 1811, Goethe took her and
her companion Caroline Ulrich to Karlsbad. Even Charlotte
von Schiller is capable of writing that in Karlsbad Goethe
has wisely placed his stouter half under the guardianship of
Frau von der Recke and the Princess of Hohenzollern,
beneath whose aegis her
dignity and fame have re
mained excellent ; whereas
in Weimar she had only
had a certain Russian
courier and secretary (Lev-
andofsky) for cicisbeo, who
has often visited her in
her box, and gone with
her to the shooting-place.
But the bitterest out
burst of feeling against poor
Christiane had not yet
come. In September 1 8 1 1
Bettine, now Bettine von
Arnim, came to Weimar
with her husband. She
was often at Goethe's
house, and with his wife, towards whom, however, she felt
a certain secret jealousy. Then she of course felt vividly
how far beneath her the intellectual inferiority of Christiane
was. One day, when the two women were at the exhibition of
pictures, Bettine dismissed with contempt some criticism uttered
by Christiane. The latter resented the contemptuous tone, and
the refined Baroness von Arnim allowed herself to call Goethe's
wife a "blood-pudding." To this Christiane replied, as was
fitting, by forbidding Bettine to enter her house. Goethe
confirmed Christiane's order without the least shadow of
swerving. The Weimar ladies thought Goethe wrong in
taking the part of the " globular form of the Frau Geheimera-

Fig. 35. Bettine von Arnim.
From an engraving of the time.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 589
thin,"1 found no fault in Bettine's insolence, and in all their
endeavours to recover favour for her with Goethe, never
thought of the one hopeful way indicated by the good Meyer,
that Bettine should apologise to Christiane. In 1 8 1 2 Goethe.
went to Karlsbad, it will be remembered, in the beginning df
May ; about the middle of June he had his wife and son to
him. They returned about the middle of August, bringing
with them a letter to Charlotte von Stein, in which Goethe
writes : " The bearers will be able to tell you that up to the
present many good things, with evils interspersed, have befallen
us." ¦ (This letter is not in the familiar handwriting of Riemer.
On this occasion Goethe was accompanied by a new secretary,
little J. John, not by Riemer, who, on becoming a professor at
the Gymnasium at Easter-time, had left his house.)
At his Wednesday receptions in the beginning of the
winter 1808-9, Goethe read aloud from the Nibelungenlied,
with which many years' acquaintance had made him familiar.
He used to explain all that made it hard to understand, and
would expound with luminousness and enthusiastic insight his
own general view of the poem and of the circumstances and
conceptions to which it owes its genesis. One day in January
1809 a cold made reading difficult for him, and he asked
Riemer to take his place. The inferiority was extraordinary,
for though when Goethe read, the disadvantage of having lost
some of the front teeth became apparent, his voice was of
incomparable quality. In the latter part of January 1809
Goethe brought a remarkable visitor to a Wednesday reception.
, It was the somewhat cynical Scandinavian traveller and anti
quary, Martin Friedrich Arendt of Altona, who stopped in
Weimar for a short time, just then. They had from him an
account of his travels, of Iceland, and of the Eddas. Arendt's
external appearance resembled that of a beggar. He usually
dined in Goethe's house, and his manners were so unpleasant
that he was not generally regretted when he left.2
Zacharias Werner had come to Weimar again in the end
of 1808 ; he stayed a few months, but attended none of the
gatherings for reading aloud. Werner was sinking deeper and
1 This is one of Charlotte Schiller's expressions. See Duntzer, Char
lotte von Stein, ii. 352.
2 Riemer (Mittheilungen, i. 412-414) gives an amusing account of
Arendt's eccentricities and of Goethe's serene politeness. — Tr.

590 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iii.
deeper in mysticism. This annoyed Goethe. One day, at a
pretty large dinner-party at his own house, Goethe declared
distinct opposition to this squint religiosity, he would never
support it, and would always exclude it from the stage.
After reading the Nibelungenlied, the Wednesday assemblies
were occupied with the old heroic poems, Fierabras, King
Rother, Tristan and Isolde. In the winter of 1809-10, instead
of Goethe's Wednesday receptions, there were Wednesday
breakfasts in the Princess Caroline's room with the bay-
window. Goethe was generally present.
A very great delight of this part of Goethe's life was the
little singing concert that took place regularly in his house.
The leader of the little company was young Karl Eberwein.
Goethe had sent Eberwein to Zelter in February 1809 : —
" Receive him kindly and help him on with counsel, doctrine,
and example." 1 Eberwein came back in the autumn. The
rehearsal for each little concert took place on Thursday
evening, when a frugal supper was served. The concerts were
given on Sunday mornings, a select audience for them being
always invited to breakfast. This little company for house-
concerts appeared a few times in the theatre ; a performance of
Goethe's ballad Johanna Sebus to Zelter's music was especially
successful. But by the beginning of 1 8 1 1 Fraulein Jagemann
had sown discord among the members of the company. Goethe
let the winter 1811-12 pass without concerts, and only revived
them again in December 1812.
On April 14, 1809, the Duchess held the first of a series
of Friday evening gatherings, at which Goethe constantly
attended. At these gatherings the beginning of Die Wahlver
wandtschaften, the tale called Die neue Melusine, and parts of
Dichtung und Wahrheit were read aloud, and were received
with ardent pleasure. We must also think of Goethe as
frequently present at a ladies' gathering (Damenkranzchen), held
on Monday mornings, and at Johanna Schopenhauer's evening
assemblies. On February 7, 181 2, St. Aignan, Napoleon's accredited
representative at all Saxon courts, was introduced at the Court
of Weimar. Grave, simple, dignified, of many-sided culture,
melancholy, an evident sufferer, he attracted Goethe, who, in
1 Goethe to Zelter, February 16, 1809. — Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 591
spite of the prevalent belief that St. Aignan was a spy, invited
him to come on Sunday mornings to his house to examine
works of art, and invited for the same occasions the circle of
ladies who had honoured the Wednesday morning gatherings
with their presence.
During the first two years of the period treated in this
chapter Goethe seldom appeared at table at Court. He was
probably present at the masquerade given on February 3,
1809. August was the astrologer, Christiane was one of the
country-folk, and the verses spoken by August were written by
Goethe.1 On February 2, 1 8 1 o, a very important masquerade
composed by Goethe was acted ;2 when it was repeated on
February 16, 18 10, Goethe himself appeared as one of the
masks. After October 5, 1810, we find him very frequently
at the Court table. At that time the Duke gave him a pair
of Polish carriage horses, with the right to free fodder for
them, and gave August the title of Kammerassessor.
The visits to the Bohemian baths were an immense
pleasure to Goethe. At Teplitz in 1810 he made a very
interesting acquaintance in Louis, the late King of Holland.
" Louis," said Goethe, " is the impersonation of graciousness
and affability, as his brother Napoleon of power and force."3
Altogether Goethe was impressed and charmed by the
exquisitely unmixed moral nature of Louis, which was inca
pable of obeying any guide but its own gentle instincts. In
June 1 810, a short time before this meeting with Louis, the
citizens of Karlsbad as they awaited the arrival of their
young Empress,4 asked the great poet who was staying among
them to write a poem of greeting on their behalf, and soon
after asked for another poem to inscribe on her drinking
glass. Goethe complied with great pleasure, and when a
pretty spot in the neighbourhood was named after the Empress,
he wrote a third poem. The Empress was charming, and
intellectual, and graciously friendly to Goethe. On her
1 See Hempel's Goethe, xi. 373-4. — Tr.
2 Die romantische Poesie. See p. 583. — Tr.
* Falk, Goethe aus niiherm persbnlichen Umgange dargestellt, Leipzig,
1832. The account of Goethe's opinion of Louis of Holland is according
to Riemer [i. 23] one of the few thoroughly trustworthy parts of Falk's
book. See also : Goethe to Knebel, Teplitz, August 30, 18 10, and
Goethe to Marianne von Willemer, September 9, 1823. — Tr.
4 Marie Louise, the third wife of Franz I. of Austria.— Tr.

592 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. hi.
departure she asked him to say a good word to all in her
name, which he did with exquisite skill.1
Two years later, in July 1812, she came to Karlsbad again,
accompanied by the Emperor and his daughter the Empress of
the French. Again Goethe, at the request of the citizens,
willingly agreed to furnish poetic addresses, though he had
not yet quite recovered from an attack of his disorder. And
it might well seem difficult to greet and congratulate the
Empress of the French side by side with her father. But
Goethe solved the difficulty skilfully, by writing a separate
poem in which he hailed the daughter of Hapsburg as one
who having, as it were, been already a bringer of peace by her
mediation, would be so again, since through her influence
her husband, who could will all, would now will peace. Beside
these two poems he wrote, of his own accord, one that relates
to his beloved Empress of Austria, which might be considered
an introduction to the two others.2 The Empress, who felt
very poorly, went on to Teplitz. Shortly after she indicated to
Goethe through Karl August 3 her wish that he would come to
Teplitz also. He did come thither on July 14, 1812. "In
the neighbourhood of the Empress more happiness and
good fortune have fallen to me than I deserve. . . . The
notion of this extraordinary lady, which in the space of four
weeks I have been able to thoroughly form, is a rich gain for
my whole life. ... To have an experience like this near the
end of one's days, gives such a pleasant feeling, as though one
died at sunrise with the perfect assurance through both inner
and outer senses, that Nature is eternally productive, pene
trated with Divine vitality to its farthest centre, faithful to its
types, subject to no old age."4 Between Goethe and the
Empress there was the most beautiful cordial human relation.
He read aloud a good deal in her presence. When Tasso was
acted, Goethe wrote an epilogue stanza, which puts into the
mouth of the Leonora of Tasso a short acknowledgment of the
1 The four poems are to be found in Hempel's Goethe, ii. 403-408.
They are dated : June 6, June 10, June 19, June 22, 1810. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Reinhard, September 20, 18 12. The three poems will
be found in Hempel's Goethe, ii. 408-413. — Tr.
3 See No. 269 in the 1873 Vienna edition of Goethe's Correspondence
with Karl August. 1810 is certainly a misdating of this letter, obvious
on reading it. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Reinhard, Karlsbad, August 14, 1812. — Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 593
incomparable worth of the Empress.1 At her wish he composed
in two days, on a subject proposed by her, a little comedy 2
which was acted by the ladies and gentlemen of her suite.
If the personality of the Empress seemed wonderfully
attractive to Goethe, that of the great Beethoven was repellent.
Yet he felt that Beethoven's brusqueness and irritability had
great excuse in his deafness. " I made the acquaintance of
Beethoven in Teplitz. Plis talent has astonished me, but he
is unfortunately an altogether unsubdued personality, who
is not wrong, indeed, in finding the world detestable, but in
finding it so makes it a better place neither for himself nor for
others."3 The Master of Sounds prided himself on his bluff
violation of forms of courtesy : thus when he met the Empress
he compelled her to make the first salutation ; he thought it
right by such means to keep grand people at their distance,
so should they learn, that it was not in them to create those
great spirits that tower above the common beings of the
earth.4 This theory of action and its blustering exposition
could of course but move Goethe to smile.
We now turn to Goethe's official activity. And first the
Theatre. Precisely in the affairs of the theatre he had, towards
the close of 1808, one of his most bitter experiences. Caroline
Jagemann, in confederacy with the bass singer Stromeyer, had
already brought him many annoyances, and when, in November
1808 the Duke, by his angry treatment of the singer Morhard,
regardlessly compromised the commission of the theatre, Goethe
asked to be relieved from the management, since his position
in Weimar, in other respects desirable and one to be thankful
for, was rendered a hell by his connection with the theatre.6
The resignation was provisionally accepted, without the Duke's
making any attempt at reconciliation. Goethe was glad to
be free of a service so unpleasant, in which (beside that he
1 See the lines Grdfin O'Donel als Eleonore. Hempel's Goethe,
ii. 415. — Tr.
2 Die Wette ( The Wager). See Riemer, Mittheilungen iiber Goethe,
ii. 617, for dates. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, Karlsbad, September 2, 1812. — Tr.
4 See in Beethoven's Letters, edited by Nohl (translated by Lady
Wallace), Beethoven to Bettine von Arnim, August 1812. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Karl August, November 10, 1808. Reprinted in the
Appendix vi. to Otto Jahn's Goethes Briefe an Christian Gottlob von
Voigt, Hirzel, Leipzig, 1868. — Tr. 2 Q

594 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. hi.
worked with inadequate means) he could no longer hope to
do anything for art. Yet at length the Duke felt how great
a loss Goethe would be, and how hasty and passionate was
his own conduct. Meyer was chosen as mediator, probably
at Voigt's suggestion. But Goethe, who saw the affair to be
" in truth merely played behind the cloak," x insisted that his
honour forbade his having anything to do with a merely
apparent management, he must have the direct influence
needful and discipline ; he did not want to inconvenience
Fraulein Jagemann, who should, as heretofore, act in what
parts she liked and when she liked ; 2 moreover, if it was
desired to separate the Opera from the management, he had no
objection. The way in which the Duke carried on the matter
after this, with a sort of haughty obliviousness to all that he
owed to the greatest poet of the time, and the faithfullest friend
to him, affected Goethe very painfully, and at length Voigt had
to call the attention of the strangely changed Karl August to
the fact that Goethe was growing ill in body and mind through
the affair, and Voigt suggested that the Duke should let matters
rest for the present3 It was then proposed that Goethe should
after Easter submit a design of a Constitution for the Theatre,
and should from time to time report by word of mouth on
such measures as might be needful for the preservation of the
whole. Voigt had sketched the note which the Duke was to
address to Goethe. The Duke altered it unfavourably at the
conclusion. Goethe had probably seen the first draft, and
when the altered note was put before him, he became stubborn
again. " It is a very noble thing, doubtless," he said, " to
spare others, but on this occasion I have every reason to
think of myself." 4 Yet he was glad to have the affair tempor-
1 This is in a short note from Goethe to Voigt, December ii, 1808.
See page 522 of Jahn's book. — Tr.
2 This is in Voigt's letter to the Duke of November 30, 1808, convey
ing the results of Meyer's negotiation ; the letter ends thus : — " Ueberhaupt
sehe er durchaus keine Persbnlichkeit, sondern es sey ihm bloss um die
Sache zu thun." — Tr.
3 This was on December 18, 1808. See Goethes Briefe an Voigt,
pp. 529-530. It is interesting to note throughout the correspondence what
a power Goethe had become in Germany. Kirms and Voigt warn the
Duke that if Goethe is dismissed, it will be much talked of everywhere,
and the theatre will suffer. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Voigt, December 27, 1808, Goethes Briefe an Voigt, p.
532.— Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 595
arily settled : he had at any rate preserved his dignity, and had
not swerved by a hair's-breadth from his claim to conduct
that part "of the manager's business which deals with the
aesthetic alone and uncontrolled.
Talma and the French drama had not been without
influence on Goethe; whatever was good in the French he
would fain introduce in Weimar,1 and the actor Wolff, who
had been a great deal with Talma, strove to adopt these
excellences. For the rest, Goethe was more than ever intent
on bringing out the most various dramatic forms on the
Weimar stage, on founding, as it were, a World Theatre (this
is a counterpart to his endeavour after a World Literature),
and in general on furthering ideal dramatic art. But, unfor
tunately, as hitherto, the means needful for great performance
were not. The Opera lay in great measure in the hands of
Fraulein Jagemann. (In 1809 this lady was made Baroness
von Heygendorf by the Duke, and in 181 2, to the general
scandal, she took up her abode in the Palais, where five years
ago the Duchess Amalia had died.) On January 30, 1809,
the birthday of the Duchess, the Antigone of Sophocles, in the
adaptation of Goethe's friend, Friedrich Rochlitz of Leipzig,
was acted with very charming effect. The actors were in
Greek costume. Wolff, as first leader of the chorus, and Frau
Wolff as Antigone, won a great triumph.2 To what excellence
the art of acting had attained was strikingly manifested by
the performance of Tasso, February 14, 1810. "It would
be tempting Providence," said Goethe, "to desire that the
piece should ever be played so well again." On the birthday
of the Crown-Princess, Voltaire's Zaire was admirably acted.
Zacharias Werner's gruesome play, Der vierundzwanzigste
Februar, followed on February 24, 1810, its own day!
Werner had of late been in favour with the Duke and Fraulein
Jagemann. Der vierundzwanzigste Februar had been written
at Goethe's desire that Werner would for once attempt a
purely human piece, working by simple effects. The perform
ance was the highest attainable in this style ; " the dreadfulness
1 Cp. Goethe to Frau von Eybenberg (Marianne Meyer), December 4,
1808.— Tr.
2 See Goethe to Friedrich Rochlitz, February I, 1809. Goethe's
letters to Rochlitz are collected in Otto Jahn's Goethe's Briefe an Leipziger
Freunde. — Tr.

596 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iii.
of the material was forgotten in the purity and security of the
performance." x Goethe confessed to the actors that they had
now arrived at the perfection he desired, nature and art were
joined as close as was possible. Schiller's memory was worthily
honoured on the anniversary of his death by the performance
of detached scenes from his pieces, and of the Lied von der
Glocke, with Goethe's Epilog. Goethe had added to the Epilog
a stanza 2 to the purport that even those who at an earlier time
were unwilling to acknowledge Schiller's greatness, now joined
gladly in honouring his name. In September 1810 Iffland
came to Weimar for the third time. The playing of the great
master of the realistic in acting had as before a stimulating
effect on all who saw him. On January 30, 181 1, a whole
new province, as Goethe says, was conquered for the stage
when the Duchess's birthday was celebrated by a performance
of Calderon's comedy, El principe constante (The Constant
Prince). Goethe had shunned no pains in the labour which
he devoted to the rehearsal of this play ; and its performance
proved so affecting that Goethe, and Charlotte Schiller, who
sat beside him, wept aloud. After this, the Weimar Theatre
ventured on the Pygmalion of J. J. Rousseau, and the Saul
of Alfieri.3 In the summer of 1 8 1 1 the Weimar company
played in Halle, the University Church there having been
fitted up as a theatre ; and the first performance was opened
with a prologue written by Goethe.4 In 1 8 1 2 Shakespeare's
tragedy of passion, Romeo and Juliet, with certain alterations
for stage purposes by Goethe, made a deep impression, and
notwithstanding many objectors, held its own.5 After this
came Calderon's remarkable La vida es sueito (Life's a dream),
then some pieces by tbe young Theodor Korner, who was
just becoming known. Goethe gave great care to Korner's
plays. Finally the year 181 2 closed with a visit from Iffland,6
1 Goethe's Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 18 10. — Tr.
2 The second last as the Epilog now stands. Hempel's Goethe, xi.
237. — Tr. 3 Saul in the translation of Knebel. — Tr.
4 Dated: Halle, den 6, August 181 1. Hempel's Goethe, xi. 244.
— Tr.
5 Romeo and Juliet was first acted in Weimar on January 31, 1812.
— Tr.
6 This was Iffland's last " Gastspiel" in Weimar. There were in all
four : one in 1796, one in 1798, one in 1810, and one in 1812. Iffland
died in 1814.— Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 597
important both to Weimar audiences and actors. Thus
Goethe laboured to elevate the actor's art, and set high aims
in view and proscribed all carelessness and laziness that would
fain call itself naturalism.
Apart from the Theatre, Goethe's official activity, when
not claimed by some special commission of the Duke's, was
concentrated on institutions that had to do with Science and
Art. The University of Jena had declined sadly, still Goethe
did not desist from striving, with clear-thoughted, large judg
ment, to attain the best that was possible. In the hope of
better times, he held it to be his duty to give all his care to
the scientific institutions. In the first instance it was planned
to refit the first story of the Castle at Jena for museums, yet
Goethe purposely lingered in this, fearing that the restored
rooms would be taken for military purposes. In 1808 an
Osteologic -Zoological Cabinet was founded; two years later
the Mineralogical Cabinet was increased by the purchase of
the geological collection of Bergrath Voigt -1 the Anatomical
Cabinet was improved. In 1 8 1 1 the chemical laboratory of
Dobereiner, that proved so valuable, was fitted up. In 1 8 1 2
an Observatory was instituted in the house that had once
been Schiller's ; and the Cabinet of Physical Science received
a permanent strengthening in a subsidy from the Crown-
Princess of Weimar. The Drawing Academy of Weimar was
brought into close connection with the Library. Goethe's
effort to unite all the institutions in Jena and Weimar
that had to do with science and art under a single central
authority called the Superintendence (Oberaufsicht), was not
successful.2 During the years treated in this chapter Goethe wrote and
published much that was important for literature and science.
The Poems of Occasion already mentioned3 may be passed
over. Die Wahlverwandtschaften was published in the begin
ning of the period,4 a novel remarkable for depth of feeling,
1 This is Johann Karl Wilhelm Voigt of Ilmenau. See on his collec
tion Goethe to C. G. Voigt, January 10, 1 8 10. — Tr.
2 See the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1809, and Goethe to Voigt, July 22,
1809. — Tr. 3 See pp. 591-2.— Tr.
4 We have seen how Goethe began Die Wahlverwandtschaften in the
summer of 1808 at Karlsbad (p. 574), and how he read aloud the earlier
part of it at the Friday evening receptions of the Duchess in the spring of
1S09 (p. 590). The interest excited inspirited him to resume work on it,

598 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iii.
wealth of penetrative knowledge of the world and of man,
and artistic perfection ; a masterpiece of its kind, though it
has not escaped manifold misinterpretation. The first two
volumes of Dichtung und Wahrheit were published during
this time.1 Viewing all from the lofty vantage of a noble old
age, Goethe's gaze is clear and penetrating, and the perfect
art of the presentation makes his youthful days live again with
rare vividness. The book did much to bring the great poet
near to the hearts of his German people. By the close of
1812 the Third Part had been begun. The early portion of
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre and of the tale Das nussbraune
Mddchen that belongs to it were written in the years 1809
and 1 8 10, and were published in Cotta's Pocket-Book for
Ladies.2 Further, it must be recorded that during the four
years under review there was an abundant blossoming of fresh
lyric poetry, song, ballad, and cantata.3
Goethe appeared as a writer on geology during this period,
in his essay Der Kammerberg bei Eger published4 in Leonhardt's
Taschenbuch fiir die Mineralogie. But the world was aston
ished when the great poet sent forth in two fine volumes with
elucidatory tables, his book on light and colour, Zur Farben-
lehre, the product of twenty years of faithful methodical
observation, of infinite industry, a model of happy exposition.
The printing of it, begun in 1806, before the battle of Jena,
was only finished in May 1810. It is true that science and
many important philosophers have rejected Goethe's Theory
and he completed it during the summer of 1809. It went to the
printer at the end of July, and on October 3, 1 809, he read the last proof
sheets of it. — Tr.
1 The First Part oi Dichtung und Wahrheit was published in 18 II.
On October 23, 1812, Goethe sends the Second Part to Knebel. — Tr.
2 Goethe did not return to the Wanderjahre after this until 1 820. — Tr.
3 The beautiful dramatic ballad Johanna Sebus, founded on a real
incident, was written in May 1809. To 1810 belong Rechenschaft and
Ergo bibamus (see the Gesellige Lieder), Katzenpastete (a satire on Newton,
see Parabolisch), the erotic poem, Das Tagebuch (not yet included in
Goethe's Works, published first in separate form in 1861, 3d edition,
1868, Berlin), and the well-known Genialisch Treiben ("So walz' ich
ohne Unterlass, Wie Sankt Diogenes mein Fass"). In 181 1 was written
the cantata Rinaldo. In 1812 the lovely Mailied ("Zwischen Weizen
und Korn, Zwischen Hecken und Dorn "). See, for further information,
Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte erldutert, i. 303-313. — Tr.
4 In 1809.— Tr.

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 599
of Colour, and refused to recognise the correctness of his
tenets in physics, still by the first part (Physiologische Farben)
he is the founder of a new science, Physiological Optics, a
fact generally recognised even among his contemporaries, and
as for the History of the Theory of Colour, opponents of the
speculative part of Goethe's work praise it as a masterpiece.
Further, many isolated fine observations have a permanent
value, and in the skill of arrangement and of exposition this
noble book remains unsurpassed. The opposition which his
theory encountered brought him many bad hours ; still in his
belief that he had found the one true and fruitful conception
of the matter, in his purpose to faithfully and steadfastly work
on in that conception, he found an aid to rising superior to
that opposition ; and he never repented having given so much
time to this important part of Natural Science. But it was a real
pity that the mistrust of Goethe as a man of science evoked
by the Farbenlehre operated against his theories of organic
structure which were published afterwards, and prevented
for a long time their receiving the recognition they deserved.
Study of the other branches of Natural Science had
slackened during this period. Schelling's acute book, Memo
rial on the Work : " Concerning Divine Things" was called
forth by an essay Concerning Divine Things and their Manifest
ation, in which Jacobi attacked the Identity system of the
Nature Philosophy. In Schelling's book Goethe found his
own philosophy of Nature reasoned out and supplied with a
firm basis. He was "terrified and troubled" on Jacobi's
account (Jacobi was absolutely crushed by Schelling), but
he was " edified " also.1 " On the whole gratitude is due to
Jacobi, since he has called Schelling forth from his stronghold.
For me his work is of the greatest significance, because
Schelling has never spoken so plainly before; and for me
precisely in my present every minute's acting and thinking,
it is important to see with thorough clearness into the statum
, controversiae between the " Nature " men and the " Freedom "
men, that according to the measure of this insight I may
pursue my activity in various departments."2 To Jacobi,
whose abuse of the Nature Philosophy had made Goethe feel
very bitter, he wrote: — "I for my part, with the manifold
1 Goethe to Knebel, March 25, 1812. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, April 8, 1812.— Tr,

600 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. hi.'
tendencies of my being, do not find one mode of thinking
sufficient ; as a poet and artist I am a Polytheist ; on the
contrary, as a searcher into Nature I am a Pantheist, and one
as distinctly as the other ; if I have need of a God for my
personality, as a moral human being, that has been provided
for also." 1
Nor did Goethe's interest in ancient and modern art flag
during these four years ; only a little on the subject, however,
was published. Many a matter was discussed and arranged
with Heinrich Meyer. Several important painters, such as
Friedrich, Kaaz, Kiigelgen, and Runge,2 entered into com
munication with him. Tischbein, who had drawn near to
Goethe in 1806 again, had soon after relapsed into silence.3
The Dresden Gallery attracted Goethe repeatedly. Moreover
we find him during this period again trying his skill in land
scape-sketching. A very important friendship was that with Sulpiz Boissere'e.
Boisseree, the son of a wealthy merchant of Koln, was born in
1783. With his brother Melchior, his junior by almost three
years, he had collected a large number of old German pictures,
which the spoliation of churches and monasteries, and the ruin
of families, had dispersed ; and further had applied himself to
the minutest study of the Cathedral of Koln as the most per
fect product of Gothic Art.4 He had a number of drawings
1 Goethe to Jacobi, January 6, 1 81 3. (See also Goethe to Jacobi,
May 10, 1 8 12.) — Tr.
2 Kaspar David Friedrich (1774- 1840) sent drawings to Weimar
in 1808; Karl Friedrich Kaaz (1776-1810) was in Weimar in 1809,
(and see page 575) ; Franz Gerhard von Kiigelgen (1772-1820) came in
December 1808 to Weimar, painted a portrait of Goethe, left Weimar in
February 1809; Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810). — Tr.
3 Goethe's opinion of Tischbein's character had changed very much
even before he left Italy. And what may on the whole be regarded as
his final judgment of Tischbein will be found in his letter to Herder of
March 2, 1789 : — "With all his good qualities, Tischbein is a. queer
animal, a sort of hare-brain (Hasenfuss), lazy, unreliable, since the
Italians have taught him to dabble in the mltier oi falseness, word-break
ing and contract-breaking. . . . He thinks that he is of subtle discern
ment, and is only paltry ; he thinks that he can intrigue, and the most he
can do is confuse people." For an account of the relation between
Goethe and Tischbein, see Duntzer's Aus Goethe's Freundeskreise (Braun
schweig, 1868), pp. 215-253. — Tr.
4 Boisseree was brought near to the Romantic School by the friendship
of Friedrich Schlegel (who left Koln in 1808). In March 18 10 Boisseree

1808-1812.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 601
of the Cathedral prepared with- the purpose of publishing a
description and history of it. He sent a selection from
these drawings to Goethe in 1810. (The introduction had
been brought about by Reinhard.) Fully as Goethe recognised
the value of the drawings, he regarded Boisseree's extraordi
nary admiration of the Gothic as a mistake, and in Boisseree's
endeavour to win him for the cause, he only saw prudent
calculation of ways and means. He did not hold out hope of
aid in the matter.1 Yet Boisseree visited Goethe in May
181 1, intent with all the force of conviction on winning him
to his side. Goethe soon saw that his visitor really had the
matter at heart, and was no empty-headed visionary; and
he was the more easily gained over by all that Boissere'e had
to tell of Low German Art, since the young fellow was careful
to show himself just to Greek Art2 He invited Boisseree to
come and dine next day (May 4), and they were soon good
friends. Boisser6e thought that already he had persuaded the
old gentleman over to his views — he did not know how far he
was from penetration into Goethe's real mind. He did not
know that the signs of emotion, which he took for signs of
conviction, were the expression of Goethe's delight in his own
thorough worth, in his fresh enthusiastic youthful personality,8
and that Goethe continued to hold Gothic architecture simply
as a stage in development necessary at its time and in its
place, but not to be compared with the perfectness of the
architecture of the Greeks. Still Goethe promised to publicly
commend Boisseree's costly enterprise, only not in a daily
and his brother went to live in Heidelberg. The influence of Friedrich
Schlegel would of course tend to make Boisseree averse to the "heathen"
Goethe. But this found an ample counterbalance in the influence of a
very remarkable friend called Bertram. I think that the reader will find
great pleasure in an estimate of Goethe in Bertram's letter to Boisseree,
July 15, 181 1 (Sulpiz Boissere'e, i. 142-3). — Tr.
1 See Goethe to Reinhard, Jena, May 14, 1810, and : Karlsbad, July
22, 1 8 10. — Tr.
2 The account in Boisseree's Letters to his brother (May 181 1) of
Goethe's coldness at first, and of his gradual thaw, is very interesting.
See the very important volumes called Sulpiz Boissere'e (Stuttgart, 1862).
Volume i. contains Boisseree's fragment of an autobiography, his diaries,
and his correspondence with all his friends except Goethe. Volume ii.
contains his correspondence with Goethe. — Tr.
3 See Duntzer's essay on Goethe's relation to Sulpiz Boisseree, Aus
Goethe's Freundeskreise, 304-5. — Tr.

602 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iii.
paper. He acknowledged freely that he was in accord with
the general tendency of Boisseree's mind, and that Boissere'e's
special study was one that he loved and cared to learn about
from others, since he was prevented by circumstance from
occupying himself with it directly.
But Boisseree felt hurt when a year passed by and Goethe's
promise to commend the design of publishing plans of the
Cathedral seemed forgotten. How joyfully surprised was he
then, in the autumn of 1812, when he found that in the
second part of Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe, after describ
ing his own youthful endeavours to comprehend Strassburg
Cathedral, had thus written ; — " Here I must single out for
praise the admirable Sulpiz Boissere'e, who with unwearied
zeal labours to exhibit the Cathedral of Koln, in a splendid
series of engravings, as the highest example of those mighty
conceptions whose intention, Babel-like, would soar into the
heavens, and which were so much beyond earthly powers that
of necessity they stood still in their execution." And a little
farther on Goethe expresses a hope that " our active young
friend " will not content himself with the monograph on the
Cathedral, but will follow out the history of the architecture
of the Middle Ages in Germany in detail. Thus Goethe had
been won to a full acknowledgment of the nobleness of Gothic
Art, when the burning of Moscow turned the world's goings
on into new paths.

CHAPTER IV.
THE LIBERATION OF GERMANY.
December 1812-Jui.Y 1814.
On December 15, 181 2, the flying sleigh bore Napoleon fast
through Weimar, so fast that his ambassador St. Aignan
only overtook him at Erfurt. St. Aignan brought to Goethe
friendly greeting from the "Emperor of the Night," as Karl
August called Napoleon. Karl August had long nourished
hatred for the French oppressor in secret. Accordingly he
had summoned von Muffling as District Vice-President to
Weimar,1 which became the central point of schemes for the
freeing of Germany. Of these schemes Goethe and Voigt
knew nothing, for they did not believe that any good could
come of opposing Napoleon. Painful as the suspense was with
which Goethe now looked to the development of events, he
did his best to drive away gloomy thoughts, and to mould a
cheerful daily home life. Fraulein Engels, of Berlin, who had
belonged to Weimar Theatre since 1805, a particular friend
of Christiane's, now frequently gave Goethe great pleasure
by singing while at table to the guitar. On the evening after
Twelfth Night (January 7, 18 13) there was again2 a con
cert at his house, and at this concert his Song of the Three
Kings 3 was sung to Zelter's music. Next day Goethe dined at
Court, as already he had, four days before. Immediately after
he had a fit of illness, from the consequences of which he suf
fered for a long time. Still ill-health did not prevent him from
1 This was in 1809. On Muffling, see Otto Jahn's Introduction to
Goethes Briefe an Voigt, 95-97. — Tr.
2 It will be remembered that the concerts had been discontinued.
Seep. 590. — Tr. 3 See p. 316.— Tr.

604 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
devoting himself with great interest to the Theatre, especially to
the approaching Court festivities. For precisely in such gloomy
times it was needful to maintain a deliberate cheerfulness !
On January 20, 18 13, a heavy blow in his ailing condition
fell upon him in the death of the good old Wieland, who
succumbed beneath repeated strokes of paralysis. Goethe
was not fit to attend the funeral, and he sent August in
his place. We find him seeking comfort in his old friend
Charlotte von Stein, as he had done after the death of
Schiller. Yet he soon roused himself, and in spite of bodily
suffering turned to fresh labours. He composed an idyll1
for the festivities of the evening of the Duchess's birthday,
January 30, 1813, and the' address fn Memory of Wieland
belongs to this period. It was Goethe who conducted the
festivities on the birthday of the Crown- Princess. The Prin
cess was at the time full of painful anxiety : for her brother,
the Czar, had advanced into Germany, and was plainly deter
mined on driving Napoleon to bay. Goethe was the more
ardent in making the celebration of her birthday a brilliant
one. Tableaux after pictures were presented, and the fourth
tableau, a representation of Arcadia, with nymphs and fauns
and river-gods, and Apollo and the Muses, was designed by
Goethe himself.2 Although he had been ill in bed only a
short time before, he was present at the chief rehearsal of these
tableaux, and at their representation on February 16, 1813.
Two days later Goethe delivered in a very impressive way the
address fn Memory of Wieland at the Lodge of Mourning
(Trauerloge). At the beginning of February 1813 the Duke
appointed August to be Court Page in the suite of the Crown-
Prince ; the appointment seems to have given Goethe a good
deal of pleasure.3
During the end of February and the beginning of March
18 13, the dreary remnants of the Grand Army moving home
wards from Russia brought contagious disorders into Weimar.
All the signs of the time indicated a new fearful war, and
poor Weimar would suffer again as in the " Jena " days seven
years ago ! Meanwhile Goethe was daily thinking over the

1 See the cantata called Idylle ; Hempel's Goethe, ii. 310.  Tr.
2 Goethe to Heinrich Meyer, February 9, 1813. — Tr.
3 See his letter of thanks to the Duke, February 6, 1813. — Tr.

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 605
Third Part of his Dichtung und Wahrheit.1 It was his hope
to complete it in the coming summer. But the aspect of
things grew more and more threatening ; the confusion of
the relations of princes and states was great ; friends were
dreaded as much as foes. The Crown -Princess fled from
Weimar on April 7, 18 13. Five days later a flying party of
Prussian horse entered Weimar, and made prisoners of the
Weimar Contingent. The continual excitement told badly on
Goethe, and he grew so feverish and wretched that his family
urged him to start for Teplitz without leave-taking.2 Christiane
came to Charlotte von Stein to say farewell in his name.
Shortly before this it had become necessary to decide
on closing the mines at Ilmenau altogether. Goethe was
deeply moved to think that such an expenditure of strength,
time, and money had brought no fruit ! But he recollected
with gratitude what a good influence on his life working in
conjunction with Voigt had been.3
An old Prussian pass enabled Goethe to procure right of
way through the disturbed country for himself and his secretary
John. In Meissen he met a company of Black Jagers on the
march to Leipzig. Among them was the author of Undine,
a tale of which Goethe had a very high opinion. Goethe was
muffled in a Russian general's cloak, with a red collar, and
had a military cap pressed down deep over his face, yet Fouque'
knew him. How he greeted Goethe with a military salute,
how the company presented arms and cried : " Long live
Goethe, the poet of poets !" how, finally, Goethe pronounced
upon their cutlasses and muskets the blessing they craved,
Fouque himself has told us. In Dresden Goethe saw the
entry of the King of Prussia and the Czar, but at the same
time heard that on April 1 8 the French had driven the Prussian
hussars out of Weimar. In the Dresden Gallery he found
much to interest him, though what was best had been removed
for safety. At the house of Korner, whose son had joined
Liitzow's volunteers, he met the great statesman Stein and his
friend Arndt Their sure hope of victory roused Goethe to
1 Goethe to Knebel, March 10, 1813. — Tr.
2 He left Weimar on April 17, 18 13. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Voigt, April II, 1813. It will be remembered that in
1798 mining had been given up, the shafts and drifts only being still kept
open. See p. 501. — Tr.

606 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
vigorous expression of disbelief in it. " Ay, you may shake your
chains ! the man is too great for you ! you will not burst them,
but urge them deeper into your flesh !" On April 26, 1813,
he arrived in Teplitz, where he met the Crown-Princess.
From Teplitz Goethe writes, six weeks later, June 11, 1813,
to Fritz Schlosser : " On May 6 relieved as to the fate of
Weimar. Then the war drew near to us. Some said they
heard the thunder of cannon, but all saw the fiery sign by
night among the clouds. Russian and Prussian wounded
confirmed the occurrences. . . . New fugitives arriving set all
in commotion ; many of the former ones went away farther into
the country; and in addition to all this external trouble, the
inner trouble of party-feeling I"1
The armistice of June 4, 18 13, opened free way for com
munication with Weimar. To Zelter Goethe writes from Tep
litz, June 23, 1 8 13 : " My dear ones are well, and bear up reso
lutely through it alL I am well, and can work. What more do
I desire?" (Since, in November 1812, Zelter had written a
pathetic account of the suicide of his promising eldest son
to Goethe, the latter had addressed his friend with the brotherly
Du, which not even Heinrich Meyer or Schiller had drawn
from him.) He found an especially delightful refuge from the
noise and troubles of the time in the portrayal of his own past
life.2 In the early part of this summer stay in Teplitz, Goethe
even wrote some ballads;3 such work lightened the burthen
of the time. It was a great inconvenience when, in the middle
of his work, his secretary John became ill. Karl August came
to Teplitz at the end of June 1 8 1 3 ; from him Goethe learned
many things about the political situation that by no means
tended to quiet his fears. His studies of natural science did
not remain fruitless. An excursion, attended with some danger,
to Zinnewalde and Altenberg, yielded him the greatest profit.4
1 See Frese's Goethe-Briefe aus Fritz Schlosser1 's Nachlass, p. 51. — Tr.
2 He mentions to Zelter, in the letter already quoted, that he is work
ing on the Third Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit, and that he hopes to
have it published by Michaelmas 18 1 3. — Tr.
3 Die wandelnde Glocke ; Der getreue Eckart ; Der Todtenlanz, all sent
to Riemer on June 6, 1813. (Duntzer notes that "Juli," Riemer's
Mittheilungen, ii. 548, is a printer's error for " Juni.") — Tr.
4 Goethe has written an especial account of this excursion, which occu
pied three days, the ioth, nth, and 12th of July 1813. See Hempel's
Goethe, xxxiii. 357: Ausfiug nach Zinnwald und Altenberg. — Tr.

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 607
Austria having declared war against France, Goethe left
Teplitz, where, during the latter part of his stay, in great quiet,
he had brought the Third Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit
to a close. In Dresden he "spent extremely stirring and
tempestuous days."1 In Weimar he found his family well.
Thence, in the latter part of August, he went to join the Duke
in Ilmenau, where he had not been since 1796. He spent
seven happy days there in gracious memories of the old time,
which was now so distant that only what was actually fruitful
in it remained for the imagination.2 His birthday was merrily
celebrated at Ilmenau. During the stay Geology resumed its
old fascinating power.
The victories of Bliicher at the Katzbach, and of the allies
at Kulm, roused the hopes of the Germans ; but Goethe
considered the issue of the war still doubtful. And then,
even the victory of Germans (in alliance with Cossacks and
Baschkirs !), might bring great trouble to Weimar by driving
the conquered French through the city on their retreat. How
ever, sometimes a cheery mood set in, ' such as that in which
he composed the gay, bright verses Offene Tafel? now to be
found in his Gesellige Lieder. His chief preoccupation was
with Geology, particularly with his collection of tin -formations.
But the theatre made its demands also ; thus, on the very
days of the battle of Leipzig, at the wish of the actress Frau
Wolff, he wrote for the Essex of Banks and Dyk a noble
epilogue, in which there is a passage that might seem to
indicate the fall of Napoleon.4
1 Goethe to Fritz Schlosser, Weimar, September 5, 1813. — "Bis den
l8te.n August verlebte ich ruhige Tage in Teplitz, dann sehr lebhafte und
stiirmische in Dresden, und befinde mich seit dem igten hier." " i8ten
August" is plainly a misprint for " I3ten August" or " ioten August."
See Goethe's lines to Peucer, dated Dresden, August 15, 1813. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, September (5), 1813. We shall find Goethe
visiting Ilmenau only once more, in August 1831. — Tr.
3 Offene Tafel was dictated to Fraulein Ulrich on October 12, 1813.
Duntzer, Goethes lyrische Gedichte, ii. 209. — Tr.
4 The tines :—
" Der Mensch erfahrt, er sei auch, wer er mag,
Ein letztes Gliick und einen letzten Tag."
Goethe put this version of Ovid's Nemo ante obitum beatus among his
poems in 1815 [see Hempel's Goethe, ii. 328]; and in 1824, in speak
ing of Rochlitz's Diary ofthe Battle of Leipzig, he calls attention to the

608 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
The 2 1 st of October 1813 was a day of terror for Weimar.
Not only did the little city suffer by the conflict between the
Allies and the French rear-guard, and by the cannons of the
French, but her very deliverers plundered her. Goethe did not
escape threats.1 But the many interesting acquaintances that
he made in the following days (among them were Metternich
and his own Leipzig fellow-student Hardenberg), were con
sidered by him ample amends for whatever misfortune befell
him. Amid the confusion and distraction of the time, he took
refuge in the study of China and her affairs. In this he was
very much aided by the presence in Weimar of the Orientalist,
Hofrath Julius Klaproth.2 Moreover, he found solace in
arranging his works of art, especially the engravings. He
began to distribute them in various schools, and to unite the
collections of different times.3 In the revision of the Third
Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit, he was supported by Riemer,
whom he would gladly have had an inmate of his house
again. Weimar continued to suffer very much by the war.
It was fixed on as the situation of two head lazareths,
and it was the centre to which all companies of recruits
were sent, thence to be distributed to their permanent
regiments. Every one expected to see the Duke soon go
over to the Allies openly. On November 13, 1813, Essex
was acted. Eight days later there was a concert at Goethe's
house again.
Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the sacred cause of Fatherland
had moved a number of men, older and younger, to join in
the war of liberation as volunteers. Among them was Kieser,
the Professor Extraordinary of Medicine at Jena. " I have
been at Goethe's house for half an hour," writes Kieser, on
November 24; "he spoke well (brav); wished that I would
strange fact that these lines were written during that battle [Forty Volume
Edition of Goethe's Works, xxxii. 337]. — Strehlke's note in Hempel's Goethe,
xi. 251. (See also Goethe to Knebel, November 4, 1813 ; Goethe to W.
von Humboldt, November 4, 1 813.) — Tr.
1 See in Goethe's Briefwechsel mit Knebel the interesting account of
Goethe's troubles with the Cossacks, quoted from Heinke. — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Knebel, November 10, 18 13. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Knebel, November 13 181 3. "It is opium for the
present times," he said to Luise Seidler. See p. 98 of her Recollections,
the editor's footnote. — Tr

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 609
stay in Weimar, instead of going with the army."1 Goethe
and Voigt were of opinion that officials could do greater
service by remaining at their posts than by joining in the war ;
and in Weimar medical help was sadly needed to deal with
the malignant nervous fevers that prevailed. On November
26, 1813, Kieser supped with Goethe, and in a two hours'
conversation discussed the world's affairs; they agreed in
thinking that France, in a conflict with England, must be
beaten, because the sea was more living and mighty than the
rigid land. That Goethe was deeply moved by the great ideas,
Freedom, People, Fatherland, and that he was firmly con
vinced that Germany had a great future, is proved by the
well-known conversation with Luden.2 August Goethe had
not as yet subscribed among the volunteers ; his father's
opposition made him hesitate. Meanwhile, the Duke had
left the Confederation of the Rhine, and issued an appeal to
volunteers. Goethe continued his effort to bear up bravely during the
dreaded December weather. We find him writing a couple of
satiric poems 3 and detached Spruchverse ; and looking up
unprinted poems among his papers, since at Easter 18 14 he
would have the right to publish a new edition of his works.
On the Duchess's Friday evenings he read aloud from the
Third Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit. (He appeared twice
at the Duchess's table, and on December 18, 18 13, at that
ofthe Duke, who was just back from Frankfurt.) No distrac
tions, however, could prevent a painful agitation that arose
from the enormous tension of expectation, and his fear that
the Allies would fail. On the evening of December 12, 1813,
Kieser found him in strange excitement. " In the closest
confidence he communicated great plans to me, and called
on me for co-operation. ... I never saw him so fearfully
agitated, violent, wrathful ; his eye glowed, often words failed
1 The letters of Kieser to Luise Seidler will be found in the book
already referred to, Erinnerungen und Leben der Malerin Louise Seidler,
Berlin, 1875. — Tr.
2 In November 1813, Luden wishing to start a periodical, opposed
to Napoleon and the French, to be called Nemesis, went to Goethe.
Goethe endeavoured to dissuade him. Luden, Riickblicke in mein Leben,
Jena, 1847. (Cp. Goethe's defence, Eckermann, March 14, 1830.) — Tr.
3 Regen und Regenbogen (the third of the Drei Palinodien), and
Pfaffenspiel. — See the division Parabolisch in Goethe's Poems. — Tr.
2 R

610 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
him, and then his countenance swelled, and the eyes glowed,
and the whole gesticulation had to make up for the word that
was wanting. I understood his words and his plans, but not
himself. . . . He talked about his life, his deeds, his worth,
with a frankness and distinctness that I did not understand.
Was it that the great plan, which I can only tell you of by
word of mouth, took such a hold upon him ? Then I must
esteem him still more, and honour his trust in me." It is
probable that Goethe had for the moment been seized with
the thought of persuading Napoleon, with whom he stood so
well, to confine his pretensions to France before the Allies
crossed the Rhine.
Another very serious conversation about Napoleon is
recorded by Friedrich Rochlitz, who, at this time, for three
weeks, enjoyed the friendliest intercourse with Goethe. At
the end of the conversation, Rochlitz, much affected, ex
claimed : " There, I think that is enough for to-day. Only let
us not omit to give God the honour, and acknowledge his
moral government of the world." They had been walking
up and down talking. Goethe suddenly stopped and said
solemnly : — ' ' Acknowledge it ! who can help acknowledging
it? But I for my part in silence!" "In silence? why in
silence?" asked Rochlitz. Goethe replied, " Who can express
it save for himself? For others who ? And when one knows
that one cannot utter it, it is not permissible." 1
August now reported himself as a volunteer. His father
hoped that the Duke, knowing how deep was his anxious
dread on behalf of his only son, would prevent August from
going to the war. The Duke made August the companion of
Kammerrath Riihlmann, who was going to head -quarters in
Frankfurt on commissariat business. But this did not suffice
to calm Goethe. " All my wishes would be fulfilled if it lay
in his Serene Highness's plan to keep him for the future in the
career on which he has entered, and which is thoroughly
suitable to his nature and peculiarities, in order that, sooner
or later, he may count himself one of those physicians who
are called to heal the wounds inflicted by the war. At the
same time he would have it in his power to be helpful to
1 Rochlitz gave an account of this conversation in the Jahrbiicher der
Literatur, Band 60. His account is quoted in Biedermann's Goethe in
Leipzig. Rochlitz's stay in Weimar ended on December 21, 1813. — Tr.

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 611
me in the little circle of my home and affairs, where a here
ditary familiar assistance is needed, since the endeavour to
appropriate others to that end is not always successful,1 and
one is left anew unprovided."2 The petition (which he com
municated on December 30, 1813, to Voigt also) betrays a
spirit untuned by painful agitation. On the following evening
Kieser supped at Goethe's ; " He was very low spirited, soft,3
as he said, and did not come to table."
The combat with this strong agitation was bravely con
tinued during the early part of the year of final deliverance,
1814. On January 7, 1814, we find Goethe at table at
Court. After this the Duke, as Commander-in-Chief of the
Saxon Army, went to the Netherlands. At this time Kieser
was frequently at Goethe's house, one of the servants there
having taken the nervous fever. "The condition of our
Goethe does not at all please me," writes Kieser on January
18, 1 8 1 4. " Yesterday evening he was again so excitable,
so serious, so soft, that I was dreadfully anxious. He was
gathering all his old engravings together for the sake of occu
pation, is very cheerful, but after such a peculiar fashion !
I fear very much for his life." Yet Goethe dined several
times at Court, once upon the arrival of the Empress of
Russia, on January 28, and again on the birthday of the
Duchess, to whom he dedicated a little poem of congratula
tion. So too he wrote a very good concluding scene4 for
Wallensteins Lager, which was given as a farewell piece before
the Jager volunteers marched out of Weimar to join the war.5
We find Goethe at this time bitterly annoyed by the
insidious intrusion of an empty mysticism 6 into life and litera
ture. Poetry as poetry he thought would have no success
for a long time, since men only craved the effects due to the
material of literature. At this time he seems to have begun
to pay more attention to von Hammer's translation of the
Divan of the Persian poet Hafis, which had come into his
1 This is an allusion to Riemer and John. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's Briefe an Voigt, 308-9. — Tr.
3 " Welch." — TR. 4 Hempel's Goethe, xi. 207-9.— Tr.
5 Herr Duntzer thinks that there must have been two "marches out"
of volunteers from Weimar in January 1814, one on January n, the other
on January 31. See Goethe to Knebel, January 12, 18 14, and Kieser
to Luise Seidler, January 31, 1814. — Tr.
6 Goethe to Knebel, January 19, 1814. — Tr.

612 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
hands in the spring of 1813 ; he was glad to fly to the refuge
of this strange world, so strange — and yet so like as a scene
of political turmoil. In February he had to go to table at
Court frequently. He began to feel calmer. On February
14 he wrote the cheerful verses Kriegsgluck. The Jena institu
tions continually claimed his attention.
Meanwhile August had come back from Frankfurt, where
he had proved very useful. In March 1 8 1 4 great anxiety was
caused by the news of the temporary retreat to which the
wonderful generalship of Napoleon compelled the Allies. The
return of harsh wintry weather now leads Goethe back again
"to the indoors of house and of mind."1 He was already
far on with the Fourth Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit, but
the account of the breaking off with Liii seemed a delicate
matter to treat while she still lived, and accordingly he stayed
his advance and leaped over immediately to the Italian journey,
and completed the account of it as far as Venice.2 The new
edition of his Works also occupied him. Goethe was at this
time looking forward with much interest to the arrival of
Hofrath Sartorius of Gottingen, whose political judgment he
valued extremely. Sartorius, at the wish of the Princess.
Katharina, had been putting together his thoughts on a new
constitution for the Empire.
When on April 9, 1814, word came that the Allies had
entered Paris, and all Weimar broke forth in rejoicing, Goethe
was suffering from violent rheumatic attacks which prevented
him from leaving the house. He felt the reorganisation of
the Empire on a durable basis to be of immense importance ;
he was oppressed with anxiety lest the union of the victorious
powers should not last ; and he foresaw what a measureless
demand for freedom would now be made by the friends of
the People which had hurled itself into the war with such
enthusiasm. On the morning of April 15, 18 14, news came
that Napoleon had abdicated. By this time Goethe was
enjoying the presence of Sartorius, with whom he earnestly
discussed the future of Germany. He avoided all other
political discussion, and accordingly seemed cold in the
midst of the glad excitement of those days. But from him
not a whit less than from others a heavy burthen had been
1 Goethe to Knebel, March 9, 1814. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, March 30, 1814. — Tr.

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 613
lifted, anxious as he felt concerning the future development
of affairs. Lying on the Ilm a few miles above Weimar is the little
town of Berka. The sulphur spa there had been rising into
repute; indeed, Goethe took much interest in it, and did
his best to make it known as a health resort. Early in the
spring of 18 14 he had proposed to himself to try whether
the sulphur of Berka would not be good for the rheumatism
that tormented him. But it was not until May 13, 18 14,
that he could get away from Weimar to take up quarters in
the top story of the so-called Edelhof. - In the beginning of
this stay he was occupied with a fore-piece for the opening of
the summer performances of this year at Halle. The good
physician, Professor Reil, who had done a great deal for the
baths and theatre of Halle, had fallen a victim to the hospital
fever during the past winter. Goethe meant that his fore-piece
should not only serve to introduce his company at Halle, but
should be a memorial to the good physician. On May 17,
1 8 14, a proposal came from Iffland that Goethe should write
for the Berlin stage a fore-piece to celebrate the return of the
King of Prussia, who was expected to enter Berlin with the
Czar in about four weeks. At first Goethe thought the interval
too short for any composition worthy of the occasion,1 but /
next day2 a suitable conception occurred to him. On May /
24, 1814, he sent to Iffland the programme oi Des Epimenides j
Erwachen. The sleep of Epimenides was to symbolise Goethe's V
own aloofness from the great cause of Fatherland, the result
of want of faith in the miraculous power that resides in an
enthusiastic outbreak of patriotic feeling. The passionate,
rapid composition of the piece must be ascribed to the desire
that Goethe felt to expiate his fault so far as penitent confession
might, not to any ambition for the honour of celebrating the
triumph of the Prussian capital.
Just at this time Goethe was rendered very anxious by an
affair of honour between August and Rittmeisler von Werthern.
A good friend interposed. Privy Councillor von Miiller, who
1 Goethe to Kirms, May 18, 1814. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Kirms, "May 20," 1814. See Goethe's letters to Kirms,
reprinted in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, ii. 274-5. Tne letter is misdated " May
20;" it should be "May 19." Professor Duntzer calls attention to the
words " gestrigen Briefes," which prove this clearly. — Tr.

6i4 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. viii. ch. iv.
during the late troubled times had become so important a
person for Weimar, and who in 1808 was admitted to warm,
friendly intercourse with Goethe, came to visit him at Whit
suntide, and found him in great distress about the impending
duel. Miiller at his wish undertook to compose the affair,
and succeeded.1
On receiving word from Iffland that the Berlin fore-piece
must be performed between July 20 and 24, 18 14, Goethe set
Riemer to work to complete the fore-piece for Halle, and
laboured with such zeal on the other that, although he had a
cheery ten-days' visit from his friend F. A. Wolf, he was able
to send off the whole piece on June 15, 1814, with only a few
gaps, that could be easily filled. This done, he at last felt
perfectly free, and full of new life. This happier mood found
expression in blithe poems ;2 even some of the earlier Divan
lyrics, in imitation of Hafis, being written at this time. He
had a visit from Zelter, who met at his lodgings the Berlin
Capellmeister Weber, sent by Iffland to discuss more carefully
various passages of Epimenides. Goethe was wishing at this
time to go to Wiesbaden for the summer,3 but his doctors
advised the Bohemian baths. He returned to Weimar in
Zelter's companionship.
Weimar was looking forward to the coming of Karl August ;
she was preparing to deck herself after the gayest fashion to
welcome him. Goethe went from street to street, measuring
and reckoning, advising and instructing, encouraging and
praising, or humorously scolding. He meant that Karl
August should have a literary welcome, and he collected
a number of poems by Weimar and Jena friends, under the
title Willkommen ;4 several poems of his own were added.
But the nosegays and garlands withered; the much -desired
one came not, but went to the Aachen baths. And, notwith-
1 Miiller came to Berka on Saturday evening, May 28, 1814, and
spent Whit-Sunday with Goethe and Riemer. In the forenoon of Monday,
Miiller went to Weimar, and was able to return in time for dinner with the
good news. Goethes Unterhaltungen mit Miiller, Stuttgart, 1870. — Tr.
2 Die Weisen und die Leute, Vergebliche Miihe, are two written at
this time. The first Divan lyric, ' ' Hans Adam war ein Erdenkloss,"
was written at Berka, June 21, 1814. — See Duntzer's Goethes lyrische
Gedichte, i. 324., and Duntzer, Goethes Westostlicher Divan, 22. — Tr.
3 See his letter to Fritz Schlosser, Berka, June 20, 1814. — Tr.
4 See Goethe's letter to Knebel, Weimar, July 9, 18 14. — Tr.

1812-1814.] THE YEARS OF POLITICAL CALAMITY. 615
standing his doctors, Goethe now resisted no longer the strong
impulse that urged him to the banks of the river of the
Germans. There, in his native air, among his own people,
he trusted to find healing virtue, though in his native city,
now again restored to her old freedom, the loving gladness of
his good mother would welcome him no more.

BOOK IX.
NEW LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
THE RHINE AND MAIN JOURNEYS  MARIANNE WILLEMER 
THE WESTOSTLICHER DIVAN.
July 1814-MAY 18 16.
On July 25, 1 8 14, Goethe, accompanied by a servant, started
for the Rhine. The journey that followed is remarkable for
its wealth of song. In the night of July 271 he arrived in
Frankfurt. Goethe thought the city much altered since he
had last seen it, seventeen years ago.2 He alighted in the inn,
and wandered through the streets alone, without visiting any
of his friends or relatives.3 The drive to Wiesbaden on the
warm night of July 29, 18 14, has its monument in the beauti
ful poem All-Leben? In Wiesbaden Goethe found his friend
Zelter, who had been there since July 12. In delightful
weather, in the society of old and new friends, he began to use
the " cure " after the most regular and careful fashion. He
only interrupted it on Sundays, to spend the day in Biberich
1 Diintzer corrects the misprint "dem 25stn" in Goethe's Resume
of the journey. The Resuml will be found reprinted in Bernays' edition
of Goethe's letters to Friedrich August Wolf. — Tr.
2 He had seen Frankfurt last on August 25, 1797, see p. 492. The
change that Goethe perceived was for the better. It will be remembered
how he had in former years lamented the decline of Frankfurt. See the
footnote, p. 1. — Tr.
3 In the two days that followed he saw only some of them. See
Goethe to Fritz Schlosser, Wiesbaden, August 1, 1814. — Tr.
4 Westbstlicher Divan (Loeper's edition), i. 16, " Staub ist eins der.
Elemente." Hempel's Goethe, iv. 23. — Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 617
with the Duke of Nassau-Usingen. One of his new friends was
the eminent mineralogist, Oberbergrath Cramer of Wiesbaden.
Not long after Goethe's arrival in Wiesbaden,1 Zelter
handed to him a letter from Staatsrath Schultz of Berlin, a
man who had long been his sincere admirer. In June 18 14
Goethe had given to Zelter a copy of the Propylden to
send to Schultz, and the letter now received was in the first
instance one of thanks for this gift But Schultz went
on to tell how great was his interest in Goethe's Theory of
Colour, and how he had been studying and making experi
ments, with the purpose of developing that part of the theory
which deals with the physiology of colour. This was the
beginning of an interesting friendship, though letters between
Goethe and Schultz did not become frequent until the year
1816. On August 16, 1814, Goethe, Zelter, and Cramer went to
see the festival of St. Rochus at Bingen, which had been sup
pressed during the French occupation. Goethe has written
an interesting account of the festival ; one feels reminded of
his pilgrimage to the Odilienberg in the old Strassburg days.
On August 22, 18 1 4, Karl August, who, it will be remembered,
had gone to Aachen for the baths, arrived in Mainz on his
return journey. Goethe went to Mainz to meet him, and then
went with him to visit the minister Stein in Nassau ; and
then, with Wiesbaden as centre, the two made excursions to
Schlangenbad and other places. August 28, 18 14, Goethe's
birthday, was a Sunday. He spent it, as he spent other
Sundays, at Biberich. From September 1 to 8 Goethe stayed
at the country-house of Franz Brentano, at Winkel. The first
five days were occupied with a series of the most delightful
excursions into the Rheingau.2 On September 8, 1814, he
returned to Wiesbaden. To the time we have reviewed
belong many songs afterwards dispersed in the West'dstlicher
Divan 3 and the sketch of the Festival of St. Rochus.
1 Goethe has noted on Schultz's letter in his own handwriting that he
received it on August 5. It is dated July 29, 1814. . See the Briefwech
sel zwischen Goethe und Schultz [Dyk, Leipzig], edited by Duntzer, with
a valuable Life of Schultz. — Tr.
2 Goethe has written the history of these pleasant days. — See Im
Rheingau Herbsttage. — Tr.
3 See Duntzer, Goethes Weslbstlicher Divan, 25-29. — Tr.

618 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
Goethe did not stay long in Wiesbaden after this, but
returned to Frankfurt,1 where he yielded himself to the
pleasure of coming into nearer contact with his dear fellow-
citizens. By the reiterated invitation of Fritz Schlosser, he
stayed in the house of Schlosser's mother, the widow of
Hieronymus Schlosser, whose thoughtfulness and sympathy
removed from Goethe's mind the feeling of strangeness in
Frankfurt that he had felt ever since his mother's death, and
that had made him avoid the city.2
During this visit to Frankfurt, Goethe formed one of the
most important friendships of his life. He had long been
acquainted with the Geheimerath von Willemer, a man of wide
and generous culture and sympathy. Willemer was born
March 1760, and was thus more than ten years younger
than Goethe. He had been married twice, and was soon
to marry for the third time. The name of the woman
who became his third wife was Maria Anna Jung. She was
born November 20, 1784, and accordingly, when Goethe
made her acquaintance, she was nearly thirty. Her native
place was Linz on the Danube. She had been an actress,
and a bewitching one. While she was still very young,
Willemer had removed her from the temptations of the
stage, and received her into his house among his daughters,3
where he continually saw more and more reason to esteem
and love her. This was the lady whom Goethe now first
learned to know.
At this time Sulpiz Boisseree arrived in Frankfurt. He
writes to his brother on September 19, 1814, that Goethe is
1 On September 9, 1 8 14, Goethe writes to Fritz Schlosser that he
hopes to arrive at Schlosser's house in Frankfurt on the evening of Mon
day, September 12 ; Creizenach in his book Goethe und Marianne von
Willemer, p. 33, says that Goethe arrived on September 10 in Frankfurt,
I do not know on what evidence. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's letter to Hieronymus Peter Schlosser's widow, Weimar,
December 30, 18 14. Goethe-Briefe aus Fritz Schlosser's Nachlass, pp.
104-5. Among the old friends whom Goethe met were Riese, Kehr (p.
40), and Georg Schiitz (pp. 375 and 409). The last gave lessons in
drawing to Marianne Jung. — Tr.
3 This was in 1800. The whole story of Marianne von Willemer is
well told in Creizenach's Introduction to the Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe
und Marianne von Willemer. But Duntzer's paper in Westermann's
Monats-Hefte for September 1870, and Hurler's in the Deutsche Rundschau
for 1878 should be consulted also. — Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 619
" friendly, loving, and confidential, from the very depth of
his heart ; " soon, accompanied by Christian Schlosser, he
will come to Heidelberg. Goethe stayed with the brothers
Boisseree, in Heidelberg, from September 24 to October 9,
1 8 1 4, enjoying the happiest days in the companionship of new
friends, and of old friends once known in Jena, among whom
were Paulus, Thibaut, and Voss. The glorious collection of
paintings of the Boisserees filled Goethe with rapture. He
planned to write, with the aid of the possessors, a treatise on
this collection, and on the importance of Old German Painting
and Architecture in general, and next Easter he would return
to Heidelberg and have this treatise printed there.1 From
Heidelberg Mannheim was visited,2 and on the return to
Frankfurt Goethe was accompanied by Sulpiz Boisseree to
Darmstadt on Sunday, October 9-3 The time in Frankfurt
was again spent delightfully in a large circle of friends. During
his absence in Heidelberg Willemer had married Marianne.
Goethe was their very frequent and welcome guest. On
October 18, 18 14, many beacon -fires, commemorating the
battle of Leipzig, blazed on the hills round Frankfurt. From
a tower in Willemer's vineyard Goethe and his two friends
saw the spectacle.4 On October 19, Frankfurt was illuminated.
Next day Goethe left his native city, rich in memories of
happy friendship. Neither the Senate nor the Directors of
the Theatre, however, had thought of taking any notice
of the presence of their great fellow-townsman. The good
Willemer, feeling immense exasperation at this, had relieved
himself by writing a description, spun from his brain, of a
splendid performance of Tasso in Goethe's honour. This
1 See Duntzer, Sulpiz Boisseree. Aus Goethe's Freundeskreise, pp.
323, 324.— Tr.
2 On Sunday, October 2, 1 8 14. See the book called Sulpiz Boissere'e,
vol. i. p. 225 — the extract from Boisseree's Diary. — Tr.
3 They there succeeded in obtaining a drawing of the sketch of Koln
Cathedral, that had lately been found in an attic ; it was in the possession
of a man named Moller. Goethe left Darmstadt for Frankfurt on October
10, 1 8 14, though it had been his intention to stay until the nth. Thus
Goethe's Resume' of his journey is certainly wrong in placing his return to
Frankfurt on October 13. Probably 13 is a misprint for 10. See Sulpiz
Boisseree-'s letters to his brother Melchior, October 10, and October n,
18 14.— Tr.
4 Goethe was remarkably impressed by the wide prospect of flame
tipped hills : he refers to it often in letters afterwards, — Tr.

620 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
description he forwarded to the Morgenblatt, which printed
it and shamed the Directors.1
Goethe returned to Weimar on October 27, 1814. Here
he was at first completely occupied by business. During his
absence the theatre had been opened with a performance of
Milliner's Schuld, the only one among the modern genuinely
poetic dramas that promised to be valuable as an acting
piece.2 Goethe now zealously urged on rehearsals of his
monodrama Proserpina, in which he meant that Frau Wolff
should enjoy a great triumph. The new scene-painter Beuther,
an excellent artist, was a great help to Goethe in the repre
sentation, in which all the resources of scenic art were skilfully
united. It was arranged that Calderon's Zenobia should be
played on the birthday of the Duchess. In the apartments of
the Duchess, Goethe used to read aloud to a select circle every
Friday evening something — his own or another's. The first
readings were from an account of the journey just terminated.
Goethe writes to Zelter on October 31, 18 14 : — "Infinite
treasures of observation and of instruction have been mine,
from the Granite on to the labours of Phidias,3 and from that
backward to our own times ; " but the resulting distraction was
a hindrance to consequent scientific or literary occupation, and
the only steady work that he didwas the study of the East,
and the preparation of the new edition of his Works. For this
edition, which was estimated to run to twenty volumes, Cotta
gave him 16,000 thalers, though the exclusive right to publish
was only to last eight years. In the December of 1814
Goethe went to Jena to stay some time, as he had so fre
quently done before, and to look after the scientific institutions
there. He found all in good order, and only had to regret
the want of unity among the professors.4 After his return
he became absorbed in the study of the East. He would
need the minutest knowledge of the East for his Westostlicher
1 The report was soon challenged, and Willemer being called on for
an explanation, was easily able to make his peace with the editor. But
the account of the performance had been already copied by other papers,
and the contradiction did not prevent many a Life of Goethe from adopting
the story. — Tr.
2 Compare Goethe's remarks in the early paragraphs of the Tag- und
Jahres-Hefte for 18 14. — Tr.
3 This will refer chiefly to the visit to Mannheim on October 2. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Voigt, December 13, 18 14. — Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 621
Divan, a work that had already begun to hover before his
mind as a whole. And so he read a great deal in the Persian
poets. But he was aware of the danger of yielding taste and
imagination to the luxuriant charm of Hafis, and every day
strengthened himself on the eternal nature and truth of
Homer.1 He moreover continued to prepare a largely aug
mented collection of his poems for the new edition of his
Works. And he had again begun to work on the diaries and
letters that he had sent long ago to Charlotte von Stein and
Herder from Italy.2
The unfavourable reports that Goethe received through a
secret channel of the progress of negotiations at the Congress
of Vienna filled him with bitterness and regret But his old
resource for times of oppression and disgust — a steady conse
quent activity deliberately pursued — proved of good avail.3
A little later, Christiane's terrible attacks of cramp (in the
night before February 5, 181 5, she was thought to be dead)
brought him into dire distress.4 It was evident that her
recovery could only be temporary. Goethe's life and thoughts
were at this time altogether in the East. In February 1 8 1 5 he
composed a series of Hafis lyrics. At the Friday evenings of
the Duchess, he read aloud from Persian and Arabian poems.
Even the first news of Napoleon's return from Elba, and a
terrible cold caught in the beginning of March 18 15, were in
combination insufficient to check his Hafis poetry. It was not
until after the middle of March that the verses ceased to flow,
and he then began to work at the letters which describe his
first sojourn in Rome from October 1786 to February 1787.
Goethe's Epimenides was at length acted in Berlin on
March 30, 18 15, the most unfavourable time possible, for the
despot whose downfall it celebrated was again free. Goethe's
1 Goethe to Boisseree, January 2, 1815 : — " Taglich wird eine Pericope
aus dem Homer und dem Hafis gelesen, wie denn die persischen Dichter
gegenwartig an der Tagesordnung sind." See also Goethe to Knebel,
January n, 1815. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Eichstadt, January 29, 181 5. See above, p. 612. — Tr.
3 Goethe's letter to Knebel, February 8, 1815, will be found an inter
esting reference here. — Tr.
4 Goethe writes to Willemer, April 3, 181 5 : — " I have been suffering
a great deal : my good wife was but two finger-breadths from death. Now
she is up and about, while a terrible cold has been my companion for four
weeks."— Tr.

622 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
mental and physical condition was so far from health that in
the beginning of April 1815, instead of going himself to
inspect the institutions in Jena, he sent his son August. But
he sketched the Report relative to this inspection himself;
also an Instruction for the custodian of the Jena museums.
The first four volumes of the new edition were now sent off.
Though his mood was the most bitter one, he could not bear
to omit solemnising the close of the second lustrum that had
elapsed since Schiller's death. And he resolved to seize the
occasion to do honour to the memory of Iffland also. The
great actor had died in September 18 14. So now Regier-
ungsrath Peucer was set to work on an after-piece to Iffland's
play, Die Hagestolzen. The after-piece closed with an epilogue
on the great actor. It was preceded by Schiller's Lied von
der Glocke, with Goethe's epilogue again enlarged,1 and the
two last acts of Die Hagestolzen. The performance, on the
anniversary of Schiller's death, proved very effective.
Meanwhile Goethe continued so poorly that all his friends
urged him to go away to a summer watering-place, and the
Duchess herself added a kind of command.2 The doctors,
who had advised the Bohemian baths in 1814, were now in
favour of Wiesbaden. Thus Goethe, who had this time little
inclination to leave his home at the season of the year when it
was most delightful, was sent forth, one might say, by forces
outside his own will, to find in his native Rhine-land not
only a wonderful renewal of physical health and strength, but
that noble and beautiful love which brought completeness to
his fragmentary Divan, and to which is due its most exquisite
fragrance. He left Weimar on. May 24, 18 15. From the beginning
the journey was rich in Divan lyrics. On the evening of May
2 7 Goethe left Frankfurt for Wiesbaden, where he arrived late
at night. In Wiesbaden all awaited the issue of the new war
in painful excitement. The first rumour of Waterloo (June 1 8)
that reached Wiesbaden represented it as a defeat of the Allies ;
it may then be imagined with what great joy the truth was heard.
It was a pleasant surprise to the poet, when the Emperor of
Austria conferred on him the Cross of the Order of Leopold,
1 Seepage 596. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, May 10, 18 1 5 ; Goethe to Voigt, May 10,
1815.— Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 623
while about the same time August was appointed Kammerrath
by the Duke of Weimar. In the last week of July 18 15
Goethe was with the minister Stein a great deal. Stein had
sent him a friendly invitation to Nassau. Goethe converted
the journey to Nassau into a mountain excursion, and was
accompanied on it by the mineralogist Cramer. Stein per
suaded Goethe to go on with him to Koln, in order to learn
the state of the literary and scientific institutions of the city,
and to ascertain clearly the wishes of the inhabitants. On
Tuesday, July 25, 18 15, Goethe and Stein drove to Coblenz,
and then sailed in a large boat down to Koln. There they
viewed the Cathedral within and without, visited private art-
collections, paid visits, drove round the city, in short, saw
everything of importance, and talked over all questions with
able and well-informed men.
By Bonn, Andernach, Niedermendig (where Goethe could
not detect any trace of volcanic action), Coblenz, Nassau, he
returned to Wiesbaden again.1 Stein had called on him to
send to Hardenberg a memoir on Art and Antiquities in the
Rhine-land, and Goethe, wishing to take counsel with Boisseree,
then in Schlangenbad, wrote urging him to come to Wiesbaden.
Boisseree came, August 2, 1815.2 It was arranged that
Boissere'e should make a sketch of the memoir, and Goethe
would execute it himself. They spent more than a week in
delightful intercourse. On the morning of August n, 1815,-
they drove to Mainz; on Saturday, August 12, they arrived
in Frankfurt. Boisseree alighted at an inn, while Goethe went
on to Willemer's country-house, the so-called Gerbermiihle, on
the south bank of the Main, between Offenbach and Frankfurt.
The four weeks now spent with his dear friends were very
happy. Marianne's brightness and grace, her singing, the dis
interested sympathy in his pursuits (even in his Farbenlehre)
of which she was capable, her talent for life shown in her power
of planning and executing details with decision and self-con-
1 He reached Wiesbaden, July 31, 1815. Our knowledge of the
days, spent by Stein and Goethe in Koln is partly derived from Arndt's
book Meine Wanderungen mit Stein. There is also a diary by Goethe,
giving a brief note of the events of each day. Sulpiz Boissere'e, ii. 65.
— Tr.
2 Boisseree has left a remarkably full diary of the time that he now
spent with Goethe. See Sulpiz Boisseree, i. 249-294. — Tr.

624

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. IX. CH. I.

fidence, above all, her tender, ardent affection, and her thorough
understanding of his nature, drew Goethe irresistibly to her.
I She showed especial pleasure in his Divan, from which, by his
\ own preference, he read many poems. But not only Marianne
made his stay delightful; there was Willemer himself, and
Willemer's daughter Rosette Stadel, a refined, cultivated woman,
who, since her husband's death in 1802, had lived in her
father's house ; both
of them showed
cordial affection for
the poet, and joy in
his presence.1 His
birthday was kept
with all honour.
Among other gifts
having connection
with the Divan, he
received a turban
of the finest mus
lin, wreathed with
laurel; this was a re
ference to his song :
"Komm, Liebchen,
komm,umwinde mir
die Miitze."2 Mari
anne and Rosette
vied, indeed, in
amusing him by
Fig. 36. From a miniature on ivory of the yea, -iSio, re- roguish aUusions to
produced in the second edition of Creizenach s brief- ° .
wechsel zwischen Goethe -und Marianne von Willemer. tne dJlVan and nlS
Persian beloved.
On Friday, September 8, 18 15, Goethe went to live in
Frankfurt in Willemer's town -house. Now began an exchange
of bright lyrics between the old poet and the Suleika of the
Gerbermuhle who had grown so dear. On September 12, he
sent her the lovely poem : — " Nicht Gelegenheit macht
Diebe." Marianne replied immediately with the admirable
1 Beside Rosette, Willemer had three children ; two daughters, both
married, and a son, known as Brammy in the family. — Tr.
2 Westostlkher Divan (Loeper's edition), viii. 14. Hempel's Goethe,
iv. 130. — Tr.

^J^iAea^ve yf/fJa-i

Heei.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 625
verses beginning : — " Hochbegliickt in deiner Liebe." From
Frankfurt Goethe also sent her a leaf of the eastern plant
Gingo biloba as a symbol of cordial friendship. One day
amid the tumult of the fair,1 Marianne was overjoyed to meet
her beloved poet on the arm of her husband. With Boissere'e
Goethe went to see many collections of paintings, and enjoyed
the society of old friends. On Wednesday, September 13,
he announced to the delighted Boissere'e that he would go
to Heidelberg with him on the following Monday.
He returned to the Gerbermiihle on Friday, September
15,2 and gave Marianne a shawl bought at the fair, while in
exchange she gave him a Turkish Order with Sun and Moon,
roguishly protesting that a Turkish merchant had given it to
her for the great poet. During the following Saturday and
Sunday, she filled Goethe with delight by her " beautiful and
sympathetic"3 rendering of some of his poems, of many pretty
Volkslieder, and of the aria from Don Giovanni : — " Gib mir
die Hand mein Leben."4 In the dialogue between Suleika
and Hatem beginning : — " Als ich auf dem Euphrat schiffte,"
Goethe gave exquisite expression to his feeling that these
days could never be forgotten. That Sunday evening
(September 1 7 5) on which the aria from Don Giovanni was
sung was the last of Goethe's and Boisseree's stay at the
Gerbermiihle. They were all very gay : those pleasant familiar
jokes that are sure to come into existence when people are
1 See Marianne to Goethe, April 27, 1824. — Tr.
2 During his stay in Frankfurt he had paid Rahel that visit which
she calls her " Adelsdiplom. " It was nearly three weeks earlier, August
20, 18 1 5, that she caught sight of Goethe in a carriage with the Willemers
and Rosette, and ran towards the carriage crying, "Da ist Goethe!"
Goethe had met her, I think, but once before — in July 1795, at
Karlsbad. See p. 476. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, Weimar, October 29, 1815 ; — "Von offentlicher
Musik habe ich auf meiner Reise nichts erfreuliches gehbrt. Einzelne
liebenswiirdige Stimmen zu Clavier und Guitarre sind mir sehr anmuthig
gekommen, Gott und die Bajadere hort' ich vortragen, so schon und innig
als nur denkbar." — Tr.
4 She sang this with such bewitching charm that Goethe said she was
herself a little Don Juan, whereupon all present laughed heartily, and she
hid her face in the music. — Sulpiz Boisseree, i. 280-1. — Tr.
6 Observe that in Boisseree's Diary there is a date omitted after Sep
tember 16, which puts the subsequent dating until September 23 wrong
by one. There is no September 17. Duntzer on Goethe's Wests stlicher
Divan, 1878, p. 59. — Tr. 2 S

626 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
happy were reiterated with especial enjoyment. Then
Marianne put on her turban and wrapped herself in the
Turkish shawl, and all sat listening while Goethe read aloud
Persian love poems, perhaps some of his own Divan songs.1
On the afternoon of Monday, September 18, 1815, Goethe
started for Heidelberg with Boisseree. Willemer had promised
to come to Heidelberg with Marianne and his daughter.
The memoir for Hardenberg, which was to be called Von
Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein und Main, had now grown to
a book of manuscript a finger thick.2 Goethe and Boissere'e
drove to Darmstadt as their first stage, through woods where
beautiful lights from the afternoon sun played on the tree-
stems and the grass. Tuesday, September 19, was spent in
Darmstadt, and at noon, on the 20th, they arrived in Heidel
berg. During the next few days Goethe saw a great deal of
his old Jena friend Paulus ; they vied with each other in
imitating the complex Arabian characters,3 and he exchanged
many a pleasant jest with Paulus's merry little wife, who made
fun of their efforts. On this visit to the Boisserees, Goethe
devoted special attention to the study of the Cathedral of
Koln ; and he had the sketches of the Cathedral towers hung
up in his room. He wrote some beautiful lyrics to the absent
Marianne at the old Castle, and he wrote or scratched her
cipher on the fountain near the terrace.*
Meanwhile the Willemers had set out to pay the promised
visit. On the morning of Saturday, September 23, 1815,
Marianne wrote at Darmstadt5 the noble song of yearning
addressed to the East Wind.6 At noon, on the same day, the
1 Sulpiz Boissere'e, i. 281 :— " We remained together until one o'clock.
It was a beautiful moonlight night. Goethe detains me with him for a
while in his room ; we chat, then it occurs to him to show me the experi
ment of the coloured shadow ; we step out on the balcony with a wax
taper, and are watched from a window by the little woman." Hermann
Grimm long after saw with Marianne a comical sketch of Goethe, holding
a light out of the window in order to see the moon more clearly. — Tr.
2 See Sulpiz Boisseree's Diary, September 10, 1815. — Tr.
3 See Goethe to Knebel, October 21, 1815. — Tr.
4 See the dialogue: — "Andes lust'gen Brunnens Rand." Loeper's
edition of the Westbstlicher Divan, viii. 34. — Tr.
6 See Duntzer, Goethes Westb'stlicher Divan, p. 64. — Tr.
6 Westostlicher Divan, viii. 39 : —
" Was bedeutet die Bewegung?
Bringt der Ostwind frohe Kunde?" — Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 627
travellers surprised Boisseree and Goethe in Heidelberg.1
Between this and the afternoon of September 26, when the
friends from the Gerbermiihle left, several Divan lyrics were
written. One of them was the beautiful Wiederfinden2 a
glorious utterance of the joy of reunion. When they went
to the Castle for the last time Goethe pulled a leaf of Gingo
biloba for Marianne, and he pressed a kiss on her forehead.
A noisy crew of Russian soldiers rushed in and interrupted
them as they sat and talked.3 A memorial inscription has
lately been placed on the spot which this rare love-scene has
rendered memorable. Before parting finally, Goethe and
Marianne planned to write to each other in cypher. Each
had a copy of Hammer's translation of the Divan of Hafis.
By sending to each other the numbers of certain pages, and of
a certain line on each page, they could make letters.4 They
moreover promised to think of each other when full moon
came round again.5 It had been full moon during Marianne's
stay in Heidelberg. On Tuesday, September 26, 1815, the
Willemer party left for home. A few hours later, Marianne
wrote at Darmstadt the beautiful song to the West Wind.6
Goethe and Marianne never met again.
Some weeks before Karl August had written from Baden
to Goethe that he would be in Heidelberg soon after Septem
ber 20. At length, on Thursday, September 28, he arrived.7
On Friday he went to see the Boisserees' collection of paint
ings. On Saturday, September 30, Goethe and he went to
1 Boisseree had written to Willemer to come on Monday (the 25th).
Hence the surprise. — Tr.
2 " Ist es moglich ! Stern der Sterne. " Loeper's edition of the
Divan, viii. 43. — Tr.
3 This was in the so-called Stuckgarten. Forty-five years later, in
i860, Marianne, on a visit to the Castle, gave these details to a sympa
thetic friend. See the little book by Frau Emilie Kellner (ne'e Andrea),
Goethe und das Urbild seiner Suleika, pp. 43-48. — Tr.
4 See Goethe's notes to his Divan, article Chiffer. — Tr.
6 See the Westostlicher Divan, viii. 44 ; Vollmondnacht. — Tr.
6 Westbstliclier Divan, viii. 42 : —
" Ach, um deine feuchten Schwingen,
West, wie sehr ich dich beneide ! "
Frau Emilie Kellner (p. 30) tells a story of the great emotion with which
Marianne once heard Jenny Lind sing these verses. — Tr.
7 This is established by Goethe's letter to Voigt, Heidelberg, October
a, 1815. — Tr.

628 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
Mannheim, and on October i Goethe returned alone to
Heidelberg. The composition of beautiful Suleika lyrics went
on during these days. Monday, October 2, was spent in resting,
and on Tuesday the 3d he drove with Boisseree to Karlsruhe.1
On Goethe's return to Heidelberg he found awaiting him
an invitation from Madame Jagemann -Heygendorf, who was
at Mannheim in the Duke's company, to come and see
tableaux and what-not at the festivities there. Goethe dis
liked Caroline Jagemann very much. It was a hateful sum
mons from the free, simple life in the companionship of kindred
souls that he had been leading for some months ; the artificial
society of princes and actors seemed very base and mean in
comparison. He fell into a state of painful nervousness ; he
feared every moment to receive a letter from Karl August
supporting the invitation. Flight was his thought. He
started on October 7, 181 5, taking the sketch ofthe Cathedral
with him. Boisseree dared not let him travel alone in his
vexed state of mind and body, and went with him. But he
recovered as the chance of being overtaken by the Duke
diminished ; and on October 9, at Wurzburg, Boisseree could
see him depart for Weimar alone without apprehension. On
this and the following day (October 10), although the demons
ceased not to make mouths at him occasionally,2 Goethe
wrote two Divan lyrics,3 which allude to the genius for
poetry of Marianne. He reached Weimar on October 11,
18 1 5, having been absent since the 24th of May.
The days that followed his return were full of disquiet.
His first trouble was the loss of Pius Alexander Wolff and his
wife, his best actors, who owed so much to the culture received
1 Tbey returned on October 5. Boisseree's Diary is remarkably full
and interesting at this point. After talking of the Cathedral of Koln and
of the Willemers, Goethe mentioned 'how forty years before he had often
gone to visit Liii in Offenbach, along the path near the Gerbermiihle. In
Karlsruhe Goethe saw Jung Stilling again (after a lapse of forty years). Jung
was very cold, Goethe also met Johann Peter Hebel in Karlsruhe. — Tr.
2 Goethe _ to Sulpiz Boisseree, Weimar, October 23, 181 5 : — "Den
1 1 October kam ich in Weimar an, nachdem mir zuletzt die Damonen
noch einige Gesichter geschnitten hatten." — Tr.
3 Westostlicher Divan, viii. 35 : — "Kaum dass ich dich wieder habe"
(October 9); Westostlicher Divan, viii. 23: — "Wie des Goldschmieds
Bazarladchen " (October 10). As to the wrong date (October 7) given
to the former of these two lyrics in the quarto edition, see Duntzer,
Goethes Westostlicher Divan, p. 74> — Tr.

1814-1816.] NEW LIFE. 629
from him. During his journey he had been communicating
with Wolff, who, compelled by weak health to go to baths
in the beginning of July 18 15, had asked an extension of
leave of absence. This Goethe, by Kirms' advice, had at first
refused, but had afterwards granted it on pressing repetitions
of the request. The Wolffs were meanwhile offered very good
terms by the Direction of the Theatre of Berlin. The hostility
of Kirms, the uncertainty of affairs in Weimar, where Goethe's
resignation of the managership was always to be feared,
and the general inferiority of the position there, made the
Wolffs determine on accepting the offer from the capital. In
a letter addressed to Goethe, dated September 28, 1815, they
announced their intention of leaving Weimar next Easter,
when their contract would expire. They gratefully acknow
ledged how great was their debt to the master. But Goethe
was pained to find that Wolff could take a step of this kind
without speaking a word to him. Any attempt to have such
a formal notice repealed seemed to Goethe unworthy of the
dignity of the Commission of the Theatre, as he declared to the
Hereditary Prince, who wished him to sound the Wolffs to dis
cover on what terms they would stay. Finally Karl August left
the affair to the Commission. Goethe moved Voigt to make
a last attempt, but it was no use. Wolff considered it right
to adhere to his resolve ; he longed for a wider circle of activity.
Goethe was moreover disquieted about his own future,
since in the imminent re-adjustment of the Ministry his A
functions and his rank would come in question. Not having )
been asked for advice, he held altogether in the background.
The greater accordingly was his pleasure when on November
30, 1815, he heard through Voigt that, retaining his present
duties, he was appointed First Minister, with a salary of 3000
thalers and an allowance for an equipage. The appointment
of the Ministry was completed on the following day. , Soon
after, in December 18 15, Goethe went to inspect the scientific
institutions in Jena, where indeed he had already spent a
week in the previous month.
Meanwhile, the essay Von Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein
und Main had advanced, notwithstanding manifold hindrances,
the Divan had been growing richer and richer, and the friend
ship with Willemer and Marianne had been fostered by an
interchange of letters and poems, which were the beginning of

630 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
one of the most interesting and charming among Goethe's
correspondences. Towards the end of 18 15 Goethe was
again very poorly. As for the Theatre, pretty nearly all
pleasure in it was gone, what with the approaching loss of
his best pupils, and the complaining and nagging of Kirms
about costume belonging to the Theatre, which he' said Frau
Wolff was bound to restore to the management. Moreover,
the actors were on bad terms amongst themselves. Still,
when they appeared on the stage, the audience felt that their
power of acting together was remarkable. Such, for instance, was
the feeling on the birthday of the Duchess, January 30, 18 16,
when Epimenides Erwachen was acted (though with all the
beauty and effectiveness of detail, the piece as a whole was hard
to comprehend). This was the first appearance of the play in
Weimar ; some alterations had been made. Karl August, who
had the advancement of the study of Natural Science at heart,
began to show great zeal for improving the scientific institu
tions of Jena, and accordingly a good deal of Goethe's attention
was devoted to them. And the Duke also took lively interest
in the meteorological observations begun by Goethe in 1815.1
On the birthday of the Duchess, January 30, 1816, the
Order of the White Falcon of Watchfulness was solemnly
revived, and the Grand Cross of the Order given to Goethe
and Voigt. Vigilando ascendimus — nothing could be nearer
the heart of Goethe's belief than this, the ancient Word of the
Order ! Voigt had composed a Prologue for the ceremony.
Goethe delivered a short speech of thanks. With February
1816 the Divan poetry ceased, but the songs were now
arranged and revised, the study of the East was continued,
and in the middle of February an announcement of the West
ostlicher Divan was sent to the Morgenblatt. By the beginning
of March the first number of Kunst und Alterthum am Rhein
und Main was printed. In this Goethe considered that he
had performed a duty towards his Fatherland, though, what
with the German " many-mindedness " ( Vielmeinerei), he did
not expect much result from it.2
1 See Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 181 5, Goethe to Karl August, January
17, 1816, and Wolkengestalt nach Howard in Zur Meteorologie. — Tr.
2 Compare Goethe to S. Boisseree, June 8, 1816 : — " Leider aber
wird bei dieser verworrenen und gleichgiiltigen Weltverfassung das
Gemeine : was nicht hilft, wenn's nur nicht schadet ! schon einige Beru-
higung geben konnen." — Tr.

1814-1816.]

NEW LIFE.

631

The Grand Duke had promised a constitution to his
people more liberal than that given seven years before. The
ceremony of sanction of the Constitution was appointed to

Fig. 37. Goethe with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Falcon. Drawn by
Ferdinand Jagemann. From an engraving by C. Miiller.

take place on April 7, 18 16, when Goethe and Voigt were
to stand on the right of the throne. " On the 2d of April," 4
writes Goethe, "I was attacked by curious, not dangerous,
but severe rheumatic illness, and had to go to bed. So far

632 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. i.
as I could judge, it would be impossible to be in my place
on the 7th. Then fortunately a Napoleonic saying came into
memory — L'Empereur ne connait autre maladie qw la mort,
and I said accordingly that, if not dead, I would appear at
Court on Sunday at twelve o'clock. It appears as though the
doctor and Nature took to heart this tyrannic saying, for I
stood on Sunday, at the right hour, in my place on the right
hand next the throne. And at table, too, I was able to satisfy
all obligations. Afterwards I came home again, and went to
bed."1 He was very much grieved when, on April 18, 1816,
the Duke told him of the death of the good Empress of
Austria. The liberally-conceived Fundamental Statute of the
Constitution, framed in concert with the Deputies, was pub
lished on May 5, 18 16. Goethe was no friend of Freedom
of the Press, nor of constitutional popular rights, which seemed
to him to be hindrances to vigorous government.
1 Goethe' to Zelter, May 3, 1816. — Tr.

CHAPTER II.
SEVEN YEARS ON THE HEIGHTS.
1816-1823.
Goethe may now be considered to have reached a high table
land of life, and during the next seven years we rather picture
him as traversing this table-land in assured possession of the
many glorious and valuable things that it had to give, than as
climbing to a goal with painful renunciation and toil. Old
age had not begun, yet he had all the luminous wisdom that
usually comes only when the decay of the power of enjoy
ment has sadly lessened the value of wisdom. We will not
take all the events of these years in chronological order,
but will group them under certain headings. And first we
will consider —
Goethe's domestic and personal circumstances. —
The period began with one of the great sorrows of his life.
Christiane was again attacked by dreadful spasms ; her
suffering filled him with anguish. On June 3, 1816, when
sending the first number of Kunst und Alterthum to Fritz
Schlosser, he excuses the brevity of his note by the "grievous
domestic misfortune " that is his hindrance. Three days later
death delivered poor Christiane from indescribable agony.
Goethe has left in both verse and prose record of the deep
sorrow that he felt1 August Goethe writes, on June 10, 181 6,
1 The lines written on the day of Christiane's death are —
" Du versuchst, O Sonne, vergebens,
Durch die diistern Wolken zu scheinen !
Der ganze Gewinn meines Lebens
Ist ihren Verlust zu beweinen."
To Zelter on June 8, 1816, he writes: — "When I tell you, sturdy, well-tried
son of old Earth, that my dear little wife has in these days left us, you

634 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
to Fritz Schlosser : — " Honoured friend, when I tell you that
my dear mother is dead, it is enough to make our condition
real to you. My father tries to bear up by aid of a steady
activity, and I derive energy from the thought of being useful
and pleasant to him in domestic and social relations."
A few days after this the poet of Werther met the Lotte
of Wetzlar again. She came to Weimar to visit her sister, the
wife of Kamtnerrath Riedel.1 Kestner had died sixteen years
ago.2 Lotte still took full interest in life, and met Goethe with
cordial friendliness. Dressed in white, with her slight form,
her significant eyes, her fine profile, and her cultivated, intel
lectual personality, she made a charming impression ; only her
head shook continually, as is noted by Charlotte von Schiller.
The death of Goethe's wife made him wish more than ever
for an affectionate young daughter-in-law. His eye rested on
Ottilie von Pogwisch, the granddaughter of an old lady whose
hearty fondness for fun had made her well known in Weimar.
The Countess Henckel von Donnersmark, accompanied by
her daughter Henriette, the widow of a Major von Pogwisch,
and two granddaughters, had arrived in the train of the Crown-
Princess in 1804. Ottilie was the elder of the two grand
daughters. As a child she had been used to sing at Goethe's
house-concerts, and had attracted him by her grace, her friend
liness, her beautiful voice, and her thorough musical knowledge.
She was sympathetic and intellectual, and was an ardent en
thusiast about Goethe. (This did not prevent her from delight
will understand what that means. '' At the close of a dictated letter to
Boisseree, June 8, 18 1 6, he writes with his own hand : — "I add that my
dear little wife has in these days left us, and my dear friends will assuredly
feel for me." To Luise Seidler he writes, June 12, 1816 : — "With my
great loss the only way to make life endurable is to reckon up gradually
all the goodness and love that is still left to me." To Alexander von
Humboldt, who had sent him a copy of his book On the Distribution of
Plant-forms on the Earth, Goethe replied on June 12, 18 16, with the
eight beautiful lines beginning "An Trauertagen," to be found in the
division of his poems An Personen. When Christiane was dying, Goethe,
kneeling by her bedside, broke forth in the despairing cry, " Thou wilt
not leave me ! no ! no ! thou canst not leave me ! " When the end drew
near, and the doctor called him, saying that it was time to come if he
desired to see her again, he followed sobbing. He took her hand, and
caressed her brow. She opened her eyes and tried to speak, but could
only make inarticulate sounds. He left the room in an agony of
sorrow. — Tr.
1 See p. 361. — Tr. 2 In May 1800.— Tr.

1816-1323.] NEW LIFE. 635
in Jean Paul, also, between whom and Goethe there were
such fundamental differences.) Her family life had been a
disorganised thing ; she slept at her grandmother's, and only
spent a few hours every day with her mother, and then dined
somewhere else ! August was not averse to this bride. And so,
on January 1,1817, Goethe writes to Zelter that the betrothal has
taken place. The Court and the city regarded the match with
favour. Very pleasant results for society in Weimar might be ex
pected, people thought. The grandmother and her sons had had
some objection on the score of August's birth, but soon dropped
it ; still, malicious tongues were busy about the marriage.
Goethe roguishly advised the bride not to contradict his
son, who always wished to be praised ; if she wanted to scold,
let her come to himself. Already August had the tendency
to dissolute, sensual indulgence, that destroyed his constitution
in the end. Goethe hoped that an intellectual woman like
Ottilie would bring him into other ways, and that the very
oppositeness of their characters would be the foundation of a
genuine domestic happiness. Later, there was a fiction current
in Weimar about a connection between August and an actress,
one of those who fill a mute part at a theatre ; this woman,
the story ran, came to Goethe's box one evening, and, throwing
herself before him, implored him to sanction her marriage with
his son. On June 17, 181 7, August and Ottilie were married
in the strictest family privacy, for Goethe, as we know,1 could
not bear external ceremonies of this kind. The young pair
had to content themselves with the top story of Goethe's
house, which was, however, made as pretty and cosy as could
be. To Ottilie it seemed heaven, Frau von Schardt recounts,
to live at length on firm ground in her own house. According
to the same fine observer, the two young people were happy,
like children when a great deal of care has been taken for
them ; their new-furnished rooms were filled with the perfume
of flowers, and with peace. " The papa is very fond of his
daughter-in-law," writes Frau von Schardt ; " when he was in
Jena she had to write to him every week ; so, too, he wrote to
her. He shared with her all the treasures which he cherishes
con amore, or produces."2
1 See pp. 482 and 498. — Tr.
2 In Duntzer's Charlotte von Stein, ii. 450-1, there are long and inter
esting extracts from Frau von Schardt's letters. — Tr.

636 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
At this period Goethe spent most of his time in Jena,
living first in the Castle, and then in the ruined gardener's
house at the Botanic Gardens, where he stayed even during
the winter. In the'spring of 181 8 he occupied the rooms on
the top story of the inn Zur Tonne at Camsdorf, a suburb
of Jena. From these rooms he had a lovely view.1 He
remained in them until the end of June 1 8 1 8. It was only
now and then that he came over to Weimar ; as, for instance,
to the masked ball of the 18th of February 18 18. On this
occasion he caught a cold, the effects of which lasted a long
time. On April 9, 18 18, he was gladdened by news of the birth
of his grandson, Walther Wolfgang. The birth was a painful
one. " The poor young papa has endured a great deal,"
writes Charlotte von Schiller, "and I believe even more
through the womankind around [Ottilie's family and Adele
Schopenhauer, who were in great excitement] than through his
wife's condition. His bright, troubled face has made him
still dearer to me." Goethe saw his grandson first on April
14, after the christening. His joy in the birth of this grand
son found expression in the humorous mineralogical Cradle-
Song2 The new German Constitution granted right of migration
free from taxes. Goethe had accordingly withdrawn his pro
perty so far as possible from Frankfurt, and in order to escape
the civic tax and other burthens, had declared through an
attorney his resignation of civic rights. Many had expected
that the Senate of Frankfurt would make him a freeman of
the city ; 3 but Goethe's withdrawal of property had embittered
them, and they showed their displeasure. Not only did they
make a detailed note on December 9, 18 17, of Goethe's
retirement from citizenship, but, contrary to usage, they crossed
1 See Goethe's letter to Zelter, February 16, 18 18. — Tr.
2 Wiegenlied dem jungen Mineralogen Walter von Goethe, 21 April
1 8 18. He had his grandson received at once into the Mineralogical
Society of Jena. — Tr.
3 Dalberg had this plan when Prince Primate, but the War of Libera
tion had removed him from power. See for fuller accounts of these
negotiations that by Schlosser, Fritz Schlossers Nachlass, pp. 25-6, and
by Creizenach, Goethe und Marianne von Willemer, pp. 95-6. Another
reference given in these books is Ruppell in Archiv fur Frankfurts
Geschichte und Kunst, 1855. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 637
out the original entry of his name, made in the autumn of
1 77 1, when, after his return from Strassburg, he had become
a citizen of Frankfurt.1 And later, when he wanted to sell a
house, they made the transaction difficult. All this did not
tend to make him more anxious to visit his native city. In
July 18 16 he had started for Frankfurt, accompanied by
Meyer, but the carriage was upset, and this omen deterred
Goethe from going to the Rhine in that year. In 18 17 the
claims of Jena prevented it ; his only pure pleasure-trip in that
year was a visit on his birthday to the noble monastery ruin,
Paulinzelle,2 where his son surprised him with a secretly pre
pared banquet. And henceforth a mysterious voice prevented
him from visiting his native city, notwithstanding many friendly
invitations. In 18 18 he went to Karlsbad again, and geology
reasserted her old empire. But at the close of his stay3 a bad cold
overtook him, and he was not well until some days after his return
to Weimar. In October 1 8 1 8 he had a visit from his dear Zelter.
Goethe's home-life was at this time extremely pleasant.
In the middle of the day he dined with his family, which
had been lately increased by the addition of Ottilie's younger
sister Ulrike, who, though weakly, gladdened the household
with a bright, affectionate presence. Then there were friends
who alternated in their attendance at the dinner-table, and
who came pretty regularly in the evenings. The most con
stant of these visitors were Heinrich Meyer, Riemer, Privy
Councillor von Miiller,4 and the Countess Julie von Egloff
stein. The young lady last named, then twenty-six, charmed
Goethe by her intellect and grace, and a decided talent
for painting. Another welcome guest was the architect
Coudray. Coudray had been in the service of the Grand
Duchy of Frankfurt, and on its dissolution was engaged by
Weimar. At the close of 18 18 the Empress-Mother of Russia visited
1 See p. 126. — Tr.
2 Goethe observes in the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for 181 7, that though
he had been for forty years traversing Thiiringen in all directions, he had
never visited these ruins before. — Tr.
3 Goethe was in Karlsbad from the close of July until the middle of
September 1818.— Tr.
4 Miiller had been head of the Judiciary as Chancellor von Miiller
since 1 81 5. — Duntzer.

638 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
Weimar. Goethe was called on for a masque, and could not
refuse. In order to concentrate his thoughts he withdrew to
Berka, and there in a wonderfully short time the extensive
work was composed. The ladies and gentlemen who filled
the various parts had to come to Berka to be drilled. The
scene at the performance on December 18, 18 18, was one of
the highest of our poet's triumphs.1
After this Goethe remained for a considerable time in
Weimar. In the spring he suffered a painful loss. On March
22, 18 1 9, Christian Gottlob von Voigt died. There were
indeed few with whom Goethe's life had been more closely
knit for many years, not merely through their relation as men
of business, but as human beings in the full sense.
Voigt's death left a vacancy in the Superintendence 2 of
literary and scientific institutions. August Goethe was accord
ingly now appointed to a place in it subordinate to his father.
Twelve days before the death of Voigt another old friend
had departed. Friedrich Jacobi died suddenly in Miinchen,
March 10, 1819. Goethe's heart, in spite of ail that had
happened, had still clung to Jacobi in deep affection. His
last greeting had been a letter introducing Luise Seidler when
she went to Miinchen nearly two years ago (July 181 7). In
May 1 8 19 Goethe sent his son and his daughter-in-law to
Berlin to visit his nephew Staatsrath Nicolovius 3 and other
friends there. Soon after this August Goethe lost his best friend
through the departure of Ernst Schiller, who, unable to find a
permanent situation in Weimar, went to Koln as Assessor.
In March 18 19 Goethe had an unexpected visit from
Willemer, who was going to Berlin to beg mercy from the King
of Prussia for the young officer who had killed his son Brammy
in a duel in the summer of 1818. The friendliest relation
had been kept up with the Willemers through all these years.4
1 This, the most important of all Goethe's Maskenziige, was also the
last. See Goethe to Knebel, December 26, 1818. Goethe to Zelter,
January 4, 1819.— Tr. 2 See pp. 597 and 650. — Tr.
3 Georg Heinrich Ludwig Nicolovius married Marie Anna Luise
Schlosser, Goethe's niece, the daughter of Cornelia. — Tr.
4 It is noteworthy that nearly all Goethe's letters in the Willemer cor
respondence up to this point are addressed either (a) to Willemer, or (b)
to Rosette Stadel, or (c) to Willemer and Marianne collectively. This be
comes more noteworthy when we remember how he avoided visiting Frank
furt.— Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 639
v Willemer promised to return from Berlin by Weimar, but was
unable to do so. In July 18 19 Marianne went to Baden, and
thence she wrote to Goethe a letter in which she spoke ingenu
ously of the deep emotion that had been stirred when she
recalled old memories which Willemer's visit to Weimar had
in several ways wakened again with great vividness. Goethe
was deeply moved by this letter. He wrote a short passionate
assurance of affection, he even fell into the use of the passionate
" Du."1 Marianne's silence2 was hardly needed to remind
him of his accustomed self-monition "Nicht weiter !" At the
close of August 1819 Goethe went to Karlsbad. Before his
departure he sent to Willemer a copy ofthe Westostlicher Divan.
There are poems by Marianne in it, but how much more does
it. owe her than those few lyrics, beautiful as they are !
There was a fine celebration of Goethe's birthday in Frank
furt in this year (18 19), and his friends sent him a golden laurel-
wreath with emeralds. At this time, too, some important men
joined in proposing a monument to the poet at Frankfurt ; it
was to be a hall erected on a hill with a bust of Goethe high
' placed, the hall adorned with pictures whose subjects should
be taken especially from Hermann und Dorothea.
On December 5, 18 19, Friedrich Stolberg died. His death
affected Goethe the more because of the violent attacks which
Voss had made on Stolberg shortly before. The tenderness
with which Goethe treasured all memories of the friendship
that had begun when he and the Stolbergs were young together
was outraged by this harshness of Voss. In this December of
18 1 9 Goethe had a severe illness, the after results of which
compelled him to strict seclusion for a while. In the previous
year he had begun to hold almost altogether aloof from Court.
At this time August was growing more and more gloomy
and irregular in conduct. His position in Weimar, where he
was expected to play the part of son of his father, to whom
he was considered an appendage, drove him to despair, and
in his disgust he abandoned himself with less and less restraint
to a sensual life. Towards his father he showed deep affection
1 Goethe to Marianne von Willemer, July 26, 1819. — Tr.
2 She did not reply until a little later than the middle of August,
when she was again in Frankfurt. Goethe had written on August 5,
1819, to Willemer: — "Nach Baden habe ich gleich geschrieben, man
wird verzeihen wenn ich zu aufrichtig gewesen bin." — Tr.

640 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
and faithful obedience ; came every morning to receive his
commissions, and, when not compelled to go to Court, dined
with him ; but in the evenings generally followed his own in
clination. The superintendence of the cabinet of coins and
the cabinet of natural history was performed by August with
great care ; in all things, indeed, he was a model of order.
An enthusiastic admiration for Napoleon filled him; he gathered
everything connected with the great conqueror that ,he could
lay hands on.1 His heart throbbed with the desire for genuine
friendship, which he could not find. The periods of abandon
ment to excess always lasted but a short time. He had little
feeling for plastic art, but fine appreciation of great poetry;
thus he loved and admired the noble creations of his father
and of Schiller. His own mind found expression in poems
deep in feeling, but generally lacking in completeness of form.
In the year 1820 Goethe's visit to Karlsbad was very early,
for the winter had used him ill. In Eger he made the
acquaintance of Joseph Sebastian Griiner, the magistrate who
examined his pass. . Griiner came to return the pass in person.
His reverential affection, his fondness for mineralogy and
history, and his power of true observation attracted Goethe
much, who promised on his return from Karlsbad to stay
longer in Eger. This was on April 26, 1820; on May 28
Goethe arrived in Eger again, and spent a pleasant day with
Griiner. After this a close friendship grew between them.
"Goethe was of high stature," writes Griiner,2 "of strong robust
build, the brownish hair slightly bleached, the brow high arched,
the eye still fresh and fiery, the colour white and red. The
features of the countenance were strong, the chin somewhat
prominent, the neck considerably fleshy. . . . Usually he wore
a dark-blue over-coat that came to the ankles, at times, too, a
black frock-coat and trousers of the same colour. ... A fine
white or black silk waistcoat, a white cambric scarf folded small
and laid round the neck and the ends joined by a breastpin
should not be omitted. On account of his full-bloodedness
... he had used himself to wear his neck-cloth very loose."
After his return from Karlsbad business detained him in
1 Cp. Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, January 17, 1827;
March 7, 1830.— Tr.
2 See the book Briefwechsel und miindlicher Verkehr zwischen Goethe
und dem Rathe Griiner, Leipzig, 1853. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 641
Jena a long time ; he lived in the Botanic Garden as before.
Here, in August 1820, he had the pleasure of a visit from
Schultz, who was accompanied by the artists Schinkel,
Tieck, and Rauch. The last two made models of Goethe's
bust. On September 18, 1820, Goethe's second grandson,
Wolfgang Maximilian, was born. Ottilie's sufferings had been
long and severe, and there was grave fear that she would not
recover. Goethe returned to Weimar before the middle of
October 1820, and had a pleasant fortnight's visit from Fritz
Schlosser and his wife. Their secession to the Catholic
Church had not made Goethe less friendly. During this winter
he did not leave his house.
In the spring of 182 1 there was a renewal of the old
dominion of music. Eberwein and his wife gave small and
large concerts at Goethe's house. In June 1821 Goethe pro
cured one of Streicher's pianos. Meanwhile the project of
erecting a memorial to Goethe at Frankfurt had not been
forgotten. In May 182 1 the committee was able to report
that the city had given a site, that the likeness of Goethe had
been ordered, that a design of the building had been made,
and that a considerable sum had been collected in Frankfurt.
The committee called upon the sovereigns and the peoples of
Germany for contributions ; and the subscription was fixed at ten
gulden. Goethe feared that the affair was planned on too large
a scale ; he wished that the monument had been brought into
connection with the new Library. From the beginning there
was, indeed, something wrong-headed about the management
of the affair ; and all, to Goethe's annoyance, ran away as it
were into the sand in a strange fashion, not even the setting
up of his likeness in the Library being accomplished. The
subscriptions were paid back ; and when many givers refused
to take theirs, the sum that remained was expended in sending
to the poet regularly on his birthdays a quantity of the. noble
wine of his native country.
Goethe felt very unwell in the summer of 182 1. At the
end of July accordingly the doctors sent him to Marienbad, a
new health resort dependent on the Abbey of Tepl. In Marien
bad, notwithstanding the rainy weather, many stones were
hammered and a good stock of specimens gathered. Goethe's
" after-cure " in Karlsbad was hindered by the inundation that
desolated the place on September 9, 1821. After spending
2 t

642 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
about three weeks in Eger (August 25 to September 13) he
returned to Jena, where he stayed from September 15 until
the close of October. On receiving word from Zelter that,
accompanied by his daughter Doris and by his pupil, the
wonderful pianist and composer of eleven, Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy, he was about to visit Goethe, the latter hastened
to Weimar. The history of the vividly -spent, delightful days
that followed is open to us in the accounts of it written by the
wonderful boy.1 Goethe felt extraordinary elevation of spirit,
and was ready for the gayest merriment The baths had done
him so much good that the winter passed without illness, yet
at length a severe cold set in and lasted a long time.
Already, as Cotta's exclusive right in the second edition of
Goethe's Works would soon cease, Goethe was meditating a
new edition, the last which he could hope to see. He set the
Library secretary, Krauter, to work, arranging his papers and
letters. And he looked round him for young men who would
aid in the preparation of the new edition. In the previous
year he had endeavoured to gain for himself the young Karl
Ernst Schubarth who by his essay, Zur Beurtheilung Goethes, 2
had proved his earnest goodwill. But Schubarth desired a
State appointment. As to the study of Mineralogy Goethe
found an able ally in the Petersburger Soret, who, now in his
seven and twentieth year, was summoned to be the tutor of
the Hereditary Prince. Soret, when four years old, had gone
to live in Geneva.
The June of 1822 saw Goethe again in Marienbad. There
and over the country, as far as the Fichtelgebirge, there was
now a great deal of stone hammering. Goethe was glad to
meet in Marienbad the well-known mineralogist Count Caspar
von Sternberg. And the heart of the poet was here kindled
once again. Ulrike von Levezow, a wondrously charming
maiden of fifteen, who with her mother (Goethe's Pandora3)
and two sisters visited the ecclesiastical watering-place, by her
look, her voice, and her angelic personality, laid a strange spell
1 English readers will find Felix's letters translated in Hensel's book
The Mendelssohn Family. There is besides an English translation of the
book Goethe and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy [Macmillan]. — Tr.
2 First published in 1 81 7, and republished in 1820; Schubarth was
with Goethe in Jena in September 1820. See Goethe to Schultz, October
1, 1820.— Tr. 3 See p. 558.— Tr.

1816-1823.] - NEW LIFE. 643
on the poet, now seventy-two, a spell of which he only became
aware when the time to part arrived.1 On his return he wrote
outside Eger the poem AEolsharfen, which expresses the
yearning emotion of separated lovers. For a time the cheery,
affectionate letters of Marianne von Willemer drew no response,
and Alwine Frommann in Jena thought she could observe
melancholy moments.2
Yet he soon resumed the mastery of himself, and took a
gracious part in the social life of his home. As he had ceased
to go to the Court, the Court came to him ; the Grand-Duke
Karl August one morning every week, on Tuesday mornings
the Grand-Duchess Luise, on Thursday mornings the Crown-
Princess, and Goethe had always something important in
literature or science to lay before each. On Tuesday evenings
there was generally a large assembly to tea at his house ; many
of the young Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, who
were about in Weimar, had access. Goethe himself always
appeared, at least for a short time, at this tea. On December
14, 1822, after a long interval, he had a musical evening at his
house again. The severity of the winter now came hard upon
him. Besides, the love of Ulrike von Levezow may have
disquieted him.
On February 17, 1823, Goethe was suddenly attacked by
inflammation of the pericardium, and probably of part of the
heart ; for a few days the worst was feared ; not until February
26 was the danger over.3 His recovery of strength was slow.
He had been a long time without consciousness ; the use of
arnica at the crisis had cured him.4 He was immensely
gladdened when (March 22), in celebration of his recovery,
his Tasso was acted, with a prologue having reference to the
1 Goethe arrived in Eger from Marienbad on July 24, 1822. He
made many excursions, and saw a great deal of Griiner. Sternberg, too,
came to Eger. Goethe left Eger for home on August 27, 1822. See Goethe
und Griiner, pp. 76, 119, 120 (on p. 120 read "27" for "24"), and
Goethe to Sternberg, Eger, August 26, 1822. — Tr.
2 So Marianne learned from Alwine Frommann's brother, who was
in the shop of a Frankfurt bookseller. Duntzer, Goethes Westostlicher
Divan, p. 128. — Tr.
3 See August Goethe's letters to Schlosser and to Zelter, February 26,
1823. Goethe- Briefe aus Schlossers Nachlass, p. 113; Goethe und Zelter,
iii. 292. — Tr.
4 Cp. Sorel (in Eckermann), Tuesday, February 24, 1823. — Tr.

644 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
occasion. Immediately after the successful performance, an
account of it was brought to him.1
After his recovery Goethe sent his reply to the letter of
Countess Auguste von Bernstorff, once Auguste von Stolberg,
the dear friend of his youth whom he had never seen. She
had written to him in October 1822, exhorting him to be
converted. She conjured him to depart from all in the world
that is petty, vain, earthly, and not good ; to turn his gaze and
his heart to eternal things, and to make good, ere too late, the
harm that his writings had done to the souls of others. Goethe's
reply is serious and dignified : " To live long is to outlive
much ; beloved, hated, indifferent men ; kingdoms, capitals,
cities, nay, forests and trees that when young we sowed and
planted. . . . All this fleeting show we accept unconcerned ; we
are not troubled by the evanescence of Time if the Eternal
is every moment present. All my life I have meant honestly
towards myself and others, and in all my earthly action have
looked to the highest. You and yours have done the same.
We will then continue to labour while it is day; a sun will
shine for others also ; they will play their part, and meanwhile
for us there will be a clearer light. And so let us remain
untroubled about the future. In the kingdoms of our Father
are many provinces, and since here on earth He has given us
such a peaceful abiding, there will be provision for us both
yonder also ; perhaps then we shall have the happiness
hitherto withheld, and know one another face to face, and so
love one another more throughly than before. In calm trust
be mindful of me." So far Goethe had written immediately
after the receipt of Auguste's letter, but he had not sent what
he had written, because, by a like utterance of himself, he
had once against his will wounded her brother. But after his
recovery from the dreadful illness of that spring : " The page
shall go to you to bring you direct evidence that the Almighty
still permits me to behold the fair light of His sun ; may the
day to you as to me shine with friendly brightness, and may
you think of me with goodness and love, as I cease not to
recall those times when that still worked in union which
afterwards was sundered ! May all be united again in the
arms of the all-loving Father ! " 2
1 Cp. Soret (in Eckermann), Saturday, March 22, 1823. — Tr.
2 Goethe to the Countess Bernstorff, April 17, 1823. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 645
In the early summer of 182 1 the student Johann Peter
Eckermann, then twenty-nine, had sent from Gottingen a copy
of his poems, with a short account of the strange events of his
life ; and Goethe had replied with a few friendly lines. More
over, Eckermann heard that he had spoken favourably of his
confidant. And now, in May 1823, Goethe received the
manuscript of Eckermann's Beitrdge zur Poesie, with a request
that he would recommend it to Cotta. As Goethe delayed
to reply, Eckermann, longing for a decision, set out on foot
for Weimar. On June 9, 1823, Goethe received Eckermann's
request for an interview, and named noon on the following
day. He proved very friendly. On the second day of their
intercourse he said that he would be glad if Eckermann would
remain in Jena all the summer, until his return from his
approaching visit to Marienbad. Eckermann would not only
find this a good step for his own purposes, but could further
those of Goethe. Eckermann was commissioned first to hunt
out Goethe's articles in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, and
then to make an index to Kunst und Alterthum, carefully not
ing such subjects as might be considered not to have received
their full treatment.
Before Goethe left Weimar 1 for Marienbad, in the number
of Kunst und Alterthum that his illness had delayed, he spoke
publicly his heartfelt thanks for all >the kindness that he
had received, both at home and from abroad, since his illness.
To such strong proofs of sympathy he would endeavour to
respond after the fashion in which he had won them, namely
by an earnest, faithful, honest, objective activity which would
benefit his Fatherland as well as foreign countries. " Since the
Almighty has permitted me to emerge again from this hard
fight with adequate intellectual and spiritual powers, it is my
duty to think continually on the careful use of them."
He arrived in Marienbad in the early days of July 1823.
Karl August had arrived shortly before. Goethe felt remark
ably well ; he obtained delightful lodgings ; and as the other
occupants of the house were all ladies,2 he had quietness. Among
1 He left Weimar on Thursday, June 26, 1823. He arrived in Eger
on the evening of Sunday, June 29, and reached Marienbad on Wednes
day, July 2. Goethe to Schultz, July 8, 1823. See also Griiner's
book, on p. 130 of which read "Sonntag" for " Montag."— Tr.
2 Goethe to Knebel, July n, 1823.— Tr.

646 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
these ladies were the Levezows. Ulrike's charm bewitched
him anew; with her, his beloved " Stella," he spent the happiest
days. When he heard her voice in the Brunnenallee he would
seize his hat and hasten to her ; 1 he missed no opportunity
of being with her. Not. until the beginning of August 1823
did his love reach the height of passion ; all was so open and
remarkable that the visitors to the baths talked of marriage.
Ulrike's mother broke everything off by leaving Marienbad
suddenly. When they were parting Ulrike, after a first kiss of
farewell, could not help pressing one more on the poet's lips.
In the extraordinary excitablity of that time Goethe was
very receptive for music. The singing of the celebrated prima
donna, Madame Milder of Berlin, moved him to tears. So,
too, did the wonderful playing of the lovely Polish lady,
Madame Szymanowska, the first pianist to the Empress of
Russia. In these tears Goethe found himself again, found the
power to bear with courage the great sorrow of renunciation,
and to lift himself anew after it. In the poem Aussohnung2 he
acknowledges the beneficial power of Madame Szymanowska's
music. Now he was able not only to roguishly joke at Mile.
Wolowska, her sister, who was melancholy and had thoughts
of death, but to address two stanzas 3 to the good friends in
Weimar, who were about to celebrate at the same time his
birthday and his wonderful recovery; these stanzas were recited
by his son at the banquet. On August 20, 1823, conducted
by Griiner, who had come to fetch him, Goethe drove to Eger,
where he wished to examine the surrounding mountains. After
a few days of excursion with Griiner he set out for Karlsbad.
On August 25, 1823, on the way to Karlsbad he composed, bit
by bit in the carriage, writing down at each stage what he had
composed, the noble Elegie i that glorifies the difficult resolve
to give up Ulrike. He spent his seventy-fourth birthday alone
in Elbogen, refusing an invitation to keep it at Castle Harten-
1 Eckermann, Monday, October 27, 1823. — Tr.
2 See the Trilogie der Leidenschaft in Goethe's poems. See also
Eckermann, December I, 183 1. — Tr.
3 The lines beginning —
" In Hygiea's Form beliebt's Armiden,
Im Waldgebirg sich Schlosser aufzubauen." — Tr.
4 See the Trilogie der Leidenschaft in Goethe's poems. See also
Eckermann, Sunday, November 16, 1823. Goethe's companion on the
drive was J. John, his secretary. See Griiner's book, page 169. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 647
berg with Count Auersperg. On September 7, 1823, he
returned to Eger, and remained there until September n,
chiefly occupied with mineralogy.1 He rested a few days in
Jena before he ventured to return to Weimar, whither the
report that he was betrothed had come. ' He now invited
Eckermann to remain through the winter in Weimar, promising
to procure lodgings not far away from himself. At midday
on Wednesday, September 17, 1823, he reached his home
apparently cheery and glad, but those who looked deeper
could see how hard he found it to resume the old accustomed
Weimar life. His bitter disgust with circumstance was uttered
freely to Chancellor von Miiller.2
On September 28 the arrival of Staatsrath Schultz glad
dened Goethe. He had confessed to Schultz in a letter that
in Marienbad he had loved much.3 Two days after Schultz
came Count Reinhard to pay his long-promised visit. On
October 2, 1823, Goethe called Miiller aside and began to
talk anew of a plan of evening assemblies during the winter.
Goethe would first invite a number of people once for all, and
they should come after that on any evening they pleased.
One of the most important of the Weimar ladies must be a
kind of patroness, and none would be more suitable than
Frau von Fritsch. Goethe's object in this assembly was to
provide some charm against the ennui that Weimar life had
for him after the excitement of Marienbad. He confided to
Miiller then his relations with the Levezows. " It is an affec
tion that will still give me plenty to do, but I will get over it.
Iffland could make a charming piece of it — an old uncle who
loves his young niece too ardently." In the days that followed
Goethe often appeared melancholy- and reserved, then again,
however, he would be cheerful and communicative. On
October 14, 1823, there was a large company to tea at his
house, among others Savigny with his wife and daughter.
Goethe was very friendly and bright, his daughter-in-law often
clung to him and kissed him. Ten days later, October 24,
1 All through the summer Goethe's servant Stadelmann had been dili
gently gathering mineralogical specimens for him at Marienbad and else
where. — Tr.
2 See Goethe's Unterhaltungen mit Miiller, Tuesday, September 23,
1823.— Tr.
3 Goethe to Staatsrath Schultz, Eger, September 8, 1823. — Tr.

648 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
1823, he gave an evening party in honour of Madame Szyma-
nowska. Her inspired playing charmed all hearers. On
October 27, there was another party at Goethe's. Before the
party in the quiet of his own room Goethe showed to Ecker
mann the manuscript of the Elegie. It was written in large
Latin characters on fine vellum paper, and was fastened into
a red morocco case with a silken cord. Madame Szymanowska
played on two other evenings at Goethe's house. On Novem
ber 5, 1823, she dined there for the last time. Goethe en
deavoured to be cheery and amusing, and through it all the
deep pain that the parting gave him was evident At five
o'clock the carriage came to take her to her farewell audience
with the Crown-Princess. It was doubtful whether she would
come again. " Then the human in Goethe was plainly
revealed ; " he begged Miiller 1 to bring about her return to bid
farewell once more. Some hours later Miiller and August
led her and her sister to him. The beautiful artist thanked
Goethe earnestly for his goodness, and he replied with a jest,
wishing to carry off matters lightly, but tears burst forth.
Unable to speak, he pressed her and her sister in his arms,
and his gaze followed them for a long time, as they disappeared
down the series of open rooms. To this exquisite woman
he did, indeed, owe his restoration to himself, but she had
now involuntarily aroused in him anew the feeling of painful
renunciation. In the night preceding the 6th of November 1823 Goethe
was attacked by a cough and inflammation of the chest. This
did not, however, prevent him from receiving his friends. On
November 12, 1823, Wilhelm von Humboldt came for a visit
of several days. But the illness grew worse. On November
1 6 he had to begin sitting through the nights in his arm-chair,
and this wearied him very much ; then came pains in the
kidneys, and the coughing grew convulsive. Zelter, who arrived
on November 24, found him in a very critical state. Goethe
found some comfort in reading to Zelter the Elegie that was
so dear to his heart. Zelter's presence was a manifest benefit.
Cough and cold yielded, sleep returned, only a pain in the
right side remained. Though he gradually became quite well,
there was an extreme abatement of vigour, the youthful fresh-
1 Who tells all this story in the Unta-haltungen. — Tr.

1 8 16-1823.] NEW LIFE. 649
ness, which only a short time since had filled him with life, did
not return ; Goethe had grown really old at last, and after this
illness felt unfit to attempt any journey of considerable length.
Goethe's Official Labours, 1816-1823. — Goethe's
most important activity in the public service was destined to
a dreary termination soon after the point at which this chapter
begins. Annoyed at being unable to frustrate the choice of
Kotzebue's Schutzgeist as the piece for the birthday of the
Grand-Duchess Luise (January 1817), Goethe did not interfere
to prevent the performance of the piece in its whole length, and
accordingly great disgust was roused. Goethe seized the occasion
to declare his resignation of the managership, but Karl August
persuaded him to take the reins once more, assuring him that
he should have uncontrolled power in matters of aesthetics,
and placing his son at his side in the Intendance of the
Theatre. Goethe, earnestly intent on bringing the players,
who had been growing careless, into good discipline by careful
practice, brought the Mahomet oi Voltaire on the stage again,
and he took the trouble to make an abbreviated adaptation
of the wretched Schutzgeist, and to have it very carefully
rehearsed. When the play was given on March 8, 1817,
" in the old Weimar fashion, with precision as well of
entrance, exit, action, and grouping as of recitation and
declamation,"1 the greatest applause was gained. After this
triumph he handed to the Grand-Duke a new scheme of the
constitution of the Theatre. The Duke, having accepted this
graciously, Goethe went, on March 20, 181 7, to Jena, in order
to work out in detail a number of regulations about the
Regisseurs, the Capellmeister, the Repetitor, the Competitor,
and about other matters. Then he returned to Weimar. But
Caroline Heygendorf-Jagemann was not pleased with the rigid
rule to which Goethe, moved by zeal for art, would fain
subject the Theatre, and she used an occasion that offered
for getting rid of the poet. Goethe refused to allow the •
actor Karsten to exhibit his dressed-up poodle performing the
chief part in the Dog of Aubry as adapted by Karsten. Caro
line Jagemann succeeded in persuading Karl August, who
was passionately fond of dogs, to insist on carrying through
the order for the performance. As Goethe was unable to
1 Goethe to Zelter, March 9, 18 17.— Tr.

650 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
prevent it, he went to Jena, April 13, 1817. The Grand-
Duke wrote to him immediately : " Dear friend, various utter
ances of yours which I have heard or read, have informed me
that you would be glad to be freed from the vexations of the
managership ofthe Theatre; that you would, however, willingly
aid with advice or action if (as will probably often occur) you
were asked by the Intendance. I willingly meet your wishes
in the matter, thanking you for the great service that you
have done in these very entangled and wearying affairs, begging
you to retain interest in it on the art side, and hoping that
the lessening of annoyance may increase your good health
and lengthen your years. I enclose an official letter that has
reference to this change, and wish you well to live."1 Goethe
replied with like formality, accepting the dismissal, but begged
" unterthanigst" that his son might be relieved from the labours
of the Intendance, that he might be able to give all his time
to the building-work assigned him.
Goethe could now devote his entire energy in official
matters to the Superintendence of the institutions of science
and art. At Michaelmas 18 17 he delivered a comprehensive
report on the condition of the Museums at Jena. Another
labour was soon afterwards provided for him. The melancholy
condition of the University Library had attracted attention at
Gotha. Thence came a wish that the Weimar Superintendence
would take up the management of the Library, which had
been hitherto in the hands of the Senate. And so Goethe
was most unpleasantly surprised by receiving a Rescript, dated
October 7, 181 7, which indicated that he was to devote him
self to the matter, and to sketch a plan immediately for
rearranging the Library in the best manner. After having
carried out the needful preparatory measures through Voigt,
who was associated with him, he betook himself to Jena on
November 7, 181 7. It is impossible that we should enter on
an account of Goethe's conduct of the toilsome and com
plicated task. It was at length for the greater part completed
on November 18, 1824. And a wider scope than that of
this book would be needed to describe the labours of Goethe
among the many institutions that branched out of the Museums,
or his activity with regard to the Meteorological Observa-
1 This letter is dated April 13, 1817. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 651
tions, that the Grand-Duke set on foot in 182 1 in connection
with the Observatory. At a late time he used often to speak
with pleasure of the energy with which he had in these labours
opposed the selfishness, the intrigues and pretensions of indi
viduals.1 Even by September 1823 he was able to boast that
his Institutions at Jena were noble and in the finest order,
because he had treated everything absolutely objectively, and
had not appointed a single man uselessly.2 At the same time
Goethe was the best advocate, and the true friend of those
subordinates who served him faithfully.
Goethe's Literary Activity, 1816 - 1823. — After
Goethe's return from the Rhine and Main in October 1815,
the Divan had received many additions, had been arranged
and revised ; its printing was completed by the end of Septem
ber 18 18, but the needful elucidations and illustrations were
not to be done hastily, and not until the August of 18 19 was
the whole work, notes and all, in print. Besides the Divan,
these years produced a rich harvest of lyrical poetry, tender, or
passionate, or gay, or reflective. There were noble ballads,
too, and Goethe's aphoristic vein of poetry flows during these
years with no less freedom than formerly, in deep meditations
on God and the World, on the destiny and fate of man, or in
lighter verses expressing the mood of the moment, sometimes
sociable and kindly, sometimes gravely deliberative, sometimes
playful, sometimes repellent and combative. With such rare
favour did the Muse of Poetry delight to honour him even in
his high old age.
The work in prose of this period is also very important.
The first volume of Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre was formed
by uniting various tales, the larger number of which had already
appeared. By May 182 1 this volume was printed. But now
there was a delay, for Goethe was dissatisfied ; he felt that the
parts had not been fused into a whole, and it was impossible
to continue the work on these lines. He resolved that in a
new edition all hitherto done should be completely recast.
But some years elapsed before he attempted this.3 In the last
1 The reader will find it interesting to refer to Eckermann, March 15,
1830. — Tr.
2 Goethe's Unierhaltungen mit dem Kanzler von Miiller, Thursday,
September 18, 1823.— Tr.
3 See Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, January 15, 1827. — Tr.

652 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
chapter we saw Goethe working on the diaries and letters of
his sojourn in Italy.1 The first volume oiDie Italianische Reise
appeared late in 1816, the printing of the second 'was com
pleted in July 18 1 7, as Goethe tells Boissere'e on the 29th.
These two parts brought the journey as far as the return to
Rome after the excursion to Naples and Sicily. They are
called on their title-page the First and Second Parts of the
Second Division of Aus meinem Leben. The Campaign in
France appeared in 1822, and was called oddly enough the
Fifth Part of the Second Division of Aus meinem Leben. We
have seen how Goethe had paused at the close of the Third
Part of Dichtung und Wahrheit, because he felt it impossible
to give an account of his love for Liii while she still lived.2
During the years treated in this chapter he made a couple of
attempts to resume his narrative, but he found himself unable
to progress satisfactorily with it.8 On the other hand, he began
that annalistic summary of his life known as the Tag- itnd
Jahres-Hefte, or Annalen.11 The numbers entitled Ueber Kunst
und Alterthum in den Rhein- und Maingegenden, that began to
appear in 18 16,5 soon took a wider scope than at first intended
or than its name indicated. The very second number con
tained a long-planned polemic against the "New-German,
Religious-Patriotic " conception of art. The article purported
to proceed from W. K. F., viz. Weimarer Kunst-Freunde
(Weimar Lovers of Art), a signature that had been in use in
earlier times in the Propylden. It was written by Heinrich
Meyer, but Goethe's own distinct view of the matter was pro-
1 See p. 621. — Tr. 2 See p. 612. Liii died in 1817. — Tr.
3 See Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, 1821, Goethe to Schultz, June 12, 1822,
and Eckermann's Conversations, August 10, 1824. The Fourth Part of
Dichtung und Wahrheit was not completed until 183 1. — Tr.
4 He began it in 1820. In the preface to the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte
in Hempel's Goethe, xxvii., will be found an attempt at an account of their
growth, by W. Frh. von Biedermann. The following is his table of
approximate results : —
In 1820 Goethe wrote the account of 1797 and 1798.
,, 1822 ,, „ 1799, 1800, 1806-9.
,, 1823 „ ,, 1810, 1819-1822.
,, 1823 and 1824 ,, 1811-1818.
,, 1825, January to May, ,, 1749-56.
,, June 1825, he completed the year 1802.
The other years quite uncertain. — Tr.
5 See p. 630.— Tr.

1816-182.3.] NEW LIFE. 653
pounded with an explicitness that pained even Boissere'e.
The limitation implied by the latter part of the title, " in den
Rhein- und Maingegenden" having been over-passed, these words
were dropped when in 1818 the first number of a second
volume was published. The work was now simply Kunst und
Alterthum. Henceforth it was an organ through which Goethe
freely communicated his thoughts, not only on plastic art and
on antiquities, but on poetry ; he even published in it some of
his smaller poems.
Goethe and Natural Science, 1816-1823. — He pro
vided himself with a similar organ for the results of his study
of Natural Science. In 181 7 the first number of the first
volume appeared; it was entitled On Natural Science in general,
especially Morphology. Experience, Speculation, Deduction, deriv
ing unity from their connection with a life's events? There
were again two subordinate titles, according to which the work
fell into two divisions, Zur Morphologie and Zur Naturwissen-
schaft iiberhaupt. The second and third numbers were not
published until 1820, and in 1824 the work came to an end
with the completion of the second volume. It was in its
numbers that Goethe first printed his old researches on the
intermaxillary bone,2 and in comparative anatomy.3 It was,
moreover, in them that he first made public his conviction,
now thirty years old, that the skull is a modification of a verte
bral bone.4 Sixteen years later than Goethe, Oken had hit on
the same conception, and in 1807 had made it public, though
the method of his exposition was odd and faulty. Two years
later Lamarck expounded it in his Philosophic Zoologique.
Goethe remained silent, although urged by his friends to assert
his priority in the discovery.5 The great importance of his
1 Zur Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt, besonders zur Morphologie.
Erfahrung, Betrachtung, Folgerung, durch Lebensereignisse verbunden.
Goethe's own commentary on the last phrase of this title will be found, as
Kalischer points out (Hempel's Goethe, xxxiii. x. xi.), in his letter to Roch
litz, June 1, 181 7.— Tr. 2 See pp. 341-3.— Tr.
3 See p. 475-— TR. 4 See p. 437.— Tr.
5 He did not announce until 1820 that he had held the theory "many
years." See Hempel's Goethe, xxxiii. 253 (foot). In 1823 he first
related the circumstances of the discovery, ibid, xxvii. 353 (foot). The
subject has been well threshed. See Lewes's Life of Goethe ; Duntzer's
Aus Goethes Freundes/ireise, the article on Oken ; and Kalischer's Intro
duction to the volumes of Hempel's Goethe, that contain Goethe's scientific
writings; Hempel's Goethe, xxxiii. pp. cxiii. -cxliv. — Tr.

654 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. ix. ch. ii.
osteological researches is now universally acknowledged. In
Geology, too, Goethe's Neptunic theory is gradually gaining
ground, for he did not hold the crass belief that the moulding
of the earth's surface is solely due to the action of the waves
of the sea, he believed in the subsequent and partial operation
of volcanic forces.
It was not without passion that Goethe defended his dear
Theory of Colour in the pages of his new scientific journal.
We find him explaining with great delight and sympathy his
view of Malus's discovery, the polarisation of light ; this, indeed,
had occupied him so early as 1812.1 Goethe's conclusion was
that the colours which Malus called ent-optic were dependent
on the sun's position in the sky. As in the Farbenlehre the
beauty of the description of the phenomena of colour and of
the series of connected experiments is acknowledged, while
Goethe's explanation is rejected by science.
To the studies of Natural Science, in which we have so long
seen Goethe busied, must be added in these years that of
Meteorology. So early as 1 8 1 6 he had been greatly interested
by Luke Howard's attempt to apply a terminology to the dis
tinction of different kinds of cloud — Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus,
Nimbus. Goethe soon found that each cloud-form) is peculiar
to its own atmospheric height. He finally adopted the view
that all meteorological phenomena are to be explained by
assuming the earth to vary in its power of attraction ; when
the power is great the density of the air is gre&t and the
barometer sinks ; when the attraction is slight the barometer
rises accordingly. He endeavoured to make real to himself
this supposed variation in the earth's attractive power by the
image of In -Breathing and Out -Breathing, arid he called
the two opposite states of the earth its Water-Negation and
Water -Affirmation.2 In all this Goethe departed from the
mode of procedure which he had hitherto observed, viz. in
every inquiry to choose from the whole subject the point as
to which there is the greatest certainty, and to assume firm
footing on that ; and he committed all that facts seemed to
1 Goethe tells us in the Geschichte der entoptischen Farben, that in
August 18 1 2 he began experimenting on the phenomena observed by
Malus. — Tr.
2 This theory is first stated in the first part of the Italianische Reise
(September [9] 1786), which Goethe published in 1816. — Tr.

1816-1823.] NEW LIFE. 655
render doubtful to time, to chance, and to the activity of other
inquiring spirits. He did not, of course, deny that there must
be many other co-operating meteorological influences beside
his hypothetic variations of earth-attraction. Modern science
recognises no such attraction, but does hold the revolution of
the earth on its axis to be a factor. Goethe fortified himself
by a series of observations pursued for years with zealous care
fulness. In all these studies of Natural Science which fill such a
large part of the closing decades of his life he derived valuable
aid from certain external agencies or influences — from the
institutions that the Superintendence controlled, from a wide
and fruitful intercourse with men of science, and in a very
remarkable degree from the pleasant journeys of the summers
and autumns. Any one who follows him through these years
in his own letters and papers, and the ample records of his life
and conversation left by other men, will find one feeling grow
continually — simple marvel that any being should be such
a fountain of vigour. The Universal Nature that surrounded
him, no less than the varied thoughts and deeds and emotions
of his fellows, was full of meaning to this man, and as his keen
glance penetrated and analysed the strange, complex infinite,
which we call the Human, so, too, he was intent on passing
beyond mere contemplation of the infinite of phenomena
which are not human, to the comprehension of that infinite in
so far as his peculiar gifts enabled him.

BOOK X.
THE RESTLESS CLOSE.
CHAPTER I.
goethe's old age — an almost uninterrupted residence in
weimar, during which he prepares a final edition of
his works  deaths of charlotte von stein, of karl
august, of luise, and of goethe's son  a period of
unceasing activity  wide correspondence and great
influence.
1824-1830.
Goethe considered the last years allotted to him by fate as
his "testamentary" years. In them he would secure the
publication of an edition of his works as complete as possible ;
and would secure, moreover, an income for his heirs from the
proceeds of this edition. It was accordingly needful to finish
the Annalen (or Tag- und Jahres-Hefte), to re-write in some
measure what had been done of the second part of Faust, to
re-shape and complete Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre. His
health was precarious, and the winters trying, but he had the
power of quietly waiting on his good times.1 During the
earlier years of this closing period we find him looking forward
to visiting his dear Marienbad, but when the time for starting
comes he' always feels unfit for it, his strength only sufficing
for daily drives at first, and short excursions later on. The
want of exercise was injurious to a man of apoplectic tempera
ment. So much the more important to him was the lively
1 It will be found interesting to turn to his conversation with Ecker
mann, March II, 1828. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE, .657
personal intercourse with the friends who continually visited
him, and the guests so seldom wanting at his dinner-table.
At dinner he always exhibited a careful hospitality, carving
at a side-table with, one might say, sovereign dignity, pressing
food and drink with friendly urgency on his guests, concerned
about their favourite dishes and their general enjoyment. At
his evening receptions, where he generally abstained from food,
he showed himself in the most various moods, sometimes
roguishly merry or ironical,, or purposely contradictory and
paradoxical, sometimes passionately moved, or kindly and
affectionate, or gentle and sympathetic, and sometimes inclined
to frank self-utterance, and the instruction of those to whom
he spoke, while there were also times of silence and reserve,
when something important occupied his thoughts, or he was
low-spirited, and languid, and incommunicative from bodily
illness. That which enabled him to endure was his conscious
ness that he had faithfully performed his duty as a man, as
a citizen, and as a servant of the State ; and that he had em
ployed his powers for the highest purposes in literature and
in science. The world at that time possessed no loftier spirit,
no nobler intelligence, than the universal German poet, whose
influence swayed the best minds of England, France, Italy,
Poland, Russia, America, whose abode was a place of pilgri
mage for critics, artists, poets, philosophers. Weimar was
then, and has been since, the Kaaba of all Germany, though
Menzel and Borne disowned and denied Goethe, though
Heine mocked at him, in spite of the counterfeit-manufacture
of the foolish parson Pustkuchen, in spite of the opposition,
especially to the Theory of Colour, of many men of science,
in spite of the artists in Miinchen and Rome, who held his
aesthetic theories to be wrong. And Goethe himself felt that
the homage done to him was simply gratitude, due because
of his having employed to good purpose the talent committed
by gracious Mother Nature to his keeping. By the sovereign
family of Weimar he was regarded as an honoured member
of their house; German kings and princes came to him to
attest their reverence; in and around Weimar, when he
passed, no head remained covered. Only by his own fireside
that peace, which is the crown of happiness, was not. The
dissension between his son and his daughter-in-law, the dis
solute life of August, the moral and physical ruin which was
2 u

658 THE LIFE OF GOETHE.. [bk. x. ch. i.
its result, and, finally, August's death far away, brought deep
woe on the old man ; and the deeper because the two young
people for whose welfare he cared so much had fine gifts ;
because August, in spite of the dominance of his sensual

Fig. 38. Goethe in his study. From an oil-painting by J. J. Schmeller.

nature, did not succumb to that fatal callosity of soul, and
selfishness, and imbecility, which in the long run are the fruits
of licence. He still loved his father well, and was tenderly
careful for him, and in affairs he showed clear intelligence and
good sense (he was made Privy Councillor of Finance and
Chamberlain), and thus this prodigal never suddenly wrenched

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 659
himself away from his father's heart, but kept continually
wringing it to pain, that dulled and freshened again. And
so August's death was a sharp grief. Yet Goethe bore it as
he bore the deaths of Karl August and Luise, like a wise man
who faces the inevitable with composure, though there were
times of melancholy and bitter tears. He was upheld and made
strong by his sense of duty, by the unresting, though unhasting
activity of his insatiable intellect, by a lofty self-esteem that
was nourished on his consciousness of great results and a world's
homage, and by a certain high, serene benevolence of mood
that sided always with what was good and lovely, that led him
to be mild in judging the faults of men, to be glad in relieving
their need, and brought with it an unspeakable consolation.
In the beginning of the year 1824 we find Ottilie and
August on bad terms. Ottilie had gone to join her mother in
Berlin towards the close of December 1823. In Berlin she
met a young Englishman, to whom she felt a great attraction,
which she was not ashamed to acknowledge. At the same time
the condition of her sister Ulrike gave great anxiety to Goethe ;
she had fallen heavily on the back of her head, and the worst
was feared. Ottilie's accounts of her Berlin life brought him
much pleasure, for she had a receptive clearness which made
her a good observer and narrator of external events. As for
her faults, Goethe felt that he must not be hard, but must take
at its worth her vivacious, excitable, charming personality.
During the earlier months of 1824 he was occupied with
the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, while Eckermann was busy reading
through his papers. Goethe showed the most kindly interest
in Eckermann's career, and in their intercourse continu
ally endeavoured to cultivate and elevate his conception of
Art Though during the winter he was compelled to remain
quietly indoors, we find him by February 29, 1824, taking a
drive before dinner with Eckermann, and on March 16, 1824,1
his carriage brought him to his Garden in the Park, which he
had not seen for a long time, and though there was sadness in
the old memories that the place aroused, he visited it frequently
afterwards. He brought Eckermann there on March 22, and
had the little house opened, and showed Eckermann the tiny
room upstairs where he had done so much work many years
1 Chancellor von Muller's Unterhaltungen mit Goethe. — Tr.

660 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
ago. On March 25, 1824, Karl August writes: "The day
after to-morrow [Topfer's] Hermann und Dorothea will be
represented on this stage ; it certainly will be a pleasure to you.
So do come ; you can conceal yourself either in my little box
or in our large one." On April 14, 1824, there was a concert
at Goethe's house ; it was a good while since there had been
one before. A choir, conducted by Eberwein, sang parts of
Handel's Messiah. The ladies who were present joined the
singers, Ottilie and her mother, the Countess Caroline von
Egloffstein,1 and Fraulein von Froriep. Goethe, sitting at a
little distance absorbed in listening, spent a very happy evening :
a long-cherished wish was gratified. Soon after, his true old
friend, Friedrich August Wolf, came and stayed with him for
about a week. Wolf was very poorly, and was now on his
way from Berlin to the South of France. He was as fond of
opposition as ever. Goethe gave a dinner in his honour on
April 19, 1824 ; at this dinner there was a great deal of merry
wit combat between the two. On another occasion Goethe
made ironical allusions to Wolf's courtier-like submissiveness.2
This was the last meeting ofthe friends ; Wolf died at Marseilles
a few months later.3
More and more definite became the plan of employing
Eckermann and Riemer as collaborateurs in preparing the new
edition of his Works. In April 1824 he obtained his letters
to Schiller from the Schiller family. He considered these
letters part of his Remains, and Cotta had promised to publish
them. Moreover, Cotta had in general terms declared himself
ready to publish the new edition.
In the summer of 1824 Ottilie went to Schlangenbad, and
did not return until her father-in-law's birthday. Goethe had
had thoughts of going to Marienbad, but found after all that
he was unfit for travelling, and remained in Weimar. And his
quiet stay-at-home life agreed with him very well. Only there
were many little family misfortunes that jarred on him. Thus
Ottilie was poorly, and his elder grandson, little Walther, broke
his arm.4 During the long winter evenings Goethe, with
1 The elder sister ofthe Countess Julie von Egloffstein, p. 637. — Tr.
2 This was on April 21. Wolf had spent nearly all the day before with
Karl August, the Duchess, and the Crown-Princess, and was dreadfully
wearied by it. — Tr. 3 He died on August 8, 1824. — Tr.
4 Miiller, Unterhaltungen mil Goethe, October 11, 1824. — Tr.

'1824-1830.J THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 661
Coudray's help, sketched the plan of a new theatre for Weimar.1
He had, moreover, talked with Coudray about the Furstengruft2
which Karl August built this year on the highest part of the
new cemetery. For this noble prince disdained to seek a
burial-place for himself and his race away from Weimar.
As Goethe desired that his new edition should bring in a
good deal of money, it behoved him to endeavour to prevent
piracy. So he formally petitioned the Diet of the German
Bund to make unauthorised reprinting of his works a punish
able offence within the States that composed the Bund?
Moreover, he took a great deal of pains to gain powerful
members of the Diet to his side.4 At the sitting of March
24, 1825, the matter was brought before the Diet, but there
was a considerable difference of opinion. Some Governments
thought that the Diet should assent to the petition, while others
preferred that each Government should protect Goethe within
its own territory. And there was accordingly delay, and Goethe
was kept in suspense almost all that year. He had a great
deal of trouble and spent much valuable time in rousing those
who were indifferent by repeated appeals, and in writing letters
of thanks to the several States, each letter composed to suit a
special set of circumstances. 5
On March 22, 1825, two days before that sitting of the
Diet which was so important to Goethe, the Theatre of Weimar
was burned to the ground. This event pained and agitated
the old poet sadly ; the monument of many years of cherished
recollections was swept away.6 He slept little during the
night, but lay and watched the flames rising unceasingly to
the sky. Weakened by the emotion and want of rest, he
stayed in bed on the 2 2d. When Eckermann visited him
1 See Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, March 24, 1825. — Tr.
2 Literally " Princes' Vault " — a mausoleum for the royal family of
Weimar. — Tr.
3 Goethe's petition is dated Weimar the . . . January 1825. It is
reprinted by Strehlke in his Verzeichniss von Goethe's Briefen [Berlin,
1882], i. 143-S— Tr.
4 See in Strehlke's Verzeichniss von Goethe's Briefen, the articles
Beust, Baiern, Deutsche Bundesversammlung, Metternich. — Tr.
6 Cp. Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe,Decemher 25, 1825. — Tr.
6 "The fire is the grave of my memories," he said to Miiller, then
added : " But the only means of overcoming adversities is a fresh activity,
and accordingly I will hold a session with Riemer this very day." — Tr.

662 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
he stretched out his hand to him. "We all have suffered a
loss," he said, "but what can be done? My little Wolf1
came to my bedside early this morning. He took my hand,
and, looking at me with big eyes, he said : — ' Thus it is with
human things !' What more can be said !" In the first
dismay Goethe had been inclined to gloomy thoughts, and
had considered the fire a bad omen for the jubilee of Karl
August's accession, which was to be held that year. But he
soon -rallied, and was zealous in urging that a new Theatre
should be commenced. The design which Coudray and he
had made during the winter would be useful now. And
when Eckermann came to dinner on Sunday, April io, 1825,
Goethe had the good news that Karl August had approved
this design, though there had been a great deal of opposition.
The foundation was accordingly laid without delay, and the
building advanced rapidly. But on April 29 Eckermann, on
going to the site, was distressed to find that the work was
stopped, and to hear that another plan, whose execution would
be cheaper, had been preferred to Goethe's. Without doubt
Goethe's steady opponent, the all-powerful Caroline Jagemann,
had a hand in this. Goethe bore the strange rebuff with
gentle composure,2 and showed no irritable sensitiveness,
though he was still weak from an illness.
Soon after Goethe's resolve to publish a new edition had
become known through the proceedings at the Diet, offers
from many publishers began to come to him. On May 5
1825, the brothers Friedrich and Heinrich Brockhaus came to
Weimar to negotiate. Goethe referred them to his son, who was
to be the possessor of the profits of the edition. They would
give 50,000 thalers, and an agreement for twelve years at this
price was sketched. Ere deciding, however, August resolved
to see whether a larger sum could not be obtained. ¦ But
though new bidders presented themselves, none offered more
than the brothers Brockhaus. Goethe was in reality anxious
to remain with Cotta. He had begun to think that Cotta
was lukewarm in the matter.3 But Boisseree assured him to
the contrary. Just at that time Cotta had to make some
1 His second grandson, who was his constant companion, and who
used to breakfast with him. — Duntzer.
2 Eckermann, May I, 1 82 5. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Boisseree, May 2, 1825. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 663
long journeys, and these had delayed his coming to Weimar.
So Goethe sent to him an exact account of the new edition,
and awaited an offer which should be "the first and the last"1
Cotta declared that he would give 10,000 thalers more than
any other publisher, though by an old agreement 2 he had the
right of preference. Goethe was very anxious to have all
uncertainty brought to an end, and on August 13, 1825, he
enclosed to Boisseree a memorandum to be communicated to
the great publisher. The more important part of it may be
thus paraphrased: — "Fifty thousand thalers Saxon money
have been offered, and it has been added that when a final
agreement to this effect is at length signed, a certain sum will
be added to this fifty thousand. Thus Cotta, in order to
outbid all other offers, as he has promised, will have to pay
between sixty thousand and seventy thousand thalers Saxon
money. But my son and his advisers think that the price of
the exclusive right for twelve years to publish this edition in
forty volumes should be at least one hundred thousand
thalers." We shall return to this subject a little later.
During all this time Goethe's health was pretty good,
though he did not leave Weimar. At length, on June 13,
1825, we find him driving to Belvedere with Chancellor von
Miiller The weather was mild and lovely, and the desire to
travel awoke in Goethe, and plans of travel were formed.
Two days later the friends repeated their drive, but there is
no further mention of a desire to travel ; the negotiations with
publishers were bringing too much anxiety.3 x
Among the numerous friends who greeted the old man on
his seventy-sixth birthday was his oldest friend, Karl August.
When Karl August asked him what new thing he had, Goethe
presented his grand-nephew Alfred Nicolovius from Berlin,
introducing him in royal fashion as "cousin." The Duke,
who was in extremely good spirits, said to Nicolovius : " You
have come by the diligence, have you not ? You Prussians
take only a few hours to drive through my whole Grand-
Duchy." Goethe made his favourite Alfred promise to stay
for the approaching jubilee of the Duke's accession, September
3, 1825. Q
1 Goethe to Boisseree, May 20, 1825. — Tr. 2 See pp. 555, 620. — Tr.
3 On June 17, 1825, Goethe writes to Marianne: "I shall probably
not leave this place this summer." — Tr.

664 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
There was a great stir in Weimar on that day. In the
morning, before six o'clock, Goethe surprised the Duke in the
"Roman House," 'while a cantata by Riemer was being sung
outside. Goethe had slipped quietly between the columns
wreathed with laurel and flowers, in order to be the first to
greet his Prince, among whose servants he was the oldest and
the longest in harness. He had a medal commemorative of the
day to give to Karl August ; it was his own design, engraved
by Brandt from a drawing by Meyer. When he came into
the Duke's presence he was unable to speak But Karl
August seized his hands and exclaimed : " Together till our
latest breath I"1 Then he began to recall their happy youthful
time: "Oh, eighteen years and Ilmenau!" Afterwards he
said : " Let us, however, be especially grateful that even on
this very day that is fulfilled which once was sung to us at
Tiefurt :— ' Nur Luft und Licht und Freundeslieb !
Ermiide nicht, wenn dies noch blieb !'"
To which Goethe replied : "This has given me threefold what
I have given !" Then Karl August embraced Goethe and drew
him to the window, and they both talked in a low voice for a
while. All the front of Goethe's house on the Frauenplan 2 was
beautifully adorned for the day. Among other decorations
there were eight pictures that had been painted at the Weimar
Drawing Academy for the festal welcome of Karl August in
1 8 14. Karl August, it will be remembered, had not come to
Weimar, as expected,3 and he had never seen these pictures.
Goethe's friends, who knew how they had been exhibited to
public gaze on that occasion, were startled when they found
him making use of them again. Goethe sent Alfred Nicolovius
down to hear what the people were saying, and he was much
pleased when Nicolovius brought word that they were engaged
in explaining the pictures. In the evening the house was
brilliantly lit up, and free welcome offered to all. Ottilie
received the numerous visitors who streamed through the
fine suite of rooms. The Crown-Prince of Weimar came, and
several princes of other sovereign houses, and all the notabilities,
1 Weimar's Jubelfest makes Goethe say this. But Herr Alfred Nicolo
vius told Professor Duntzer that the words belong to Karl August. — Tr.
2 See pp. 324 and 450. — Tr. 3 See p. 614. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 665
ambassadors, savants, citizens. Goethe stood in the middle
of the room in a plain black coat, wearing the Grand Cross of
the Order of the Falcon. Although he had risen so early that
morning he did not retire until midnight, and was accordingly
rather poorly next day. It may be said that he made all
this sacrifice for the Duke; let those who desire assurance
of the disinterested amiability of Goethe read of the affec
tionate warmth with which he received the good Joseph
Sebastian Griiner, whom he had invited to the festival.1 The
new Theatre was opened on this gala-day, before Goethe's
evening reception, with the opera Semiramis. The prologue
for the occasion was written by Riemer; it was long since
Goethe had done anything of the kind.2
While an unceasing tumult of rejoicing went on in Weimar,
Goethe received Cotta's conditions through Boisseree. Cotta
would give the 60,000 thalers, and if the sale went beyond a
certain number Goethe should have a share in the profit.
These conditions were accepted by both father and son.
Fresh rejoicings set Weimar in commotion soon after this.
The Court, it is true, had instituted no festival to celebrate the
golden wedding of the Duke and Duchess on October 3.
Eleven days later, however, on the anniversary of the battle
of Jena, the citizens presented the Duchess with, a medal
commemorative of the day, nineteen years ago, when her lofty
courage had saved Weimar. And the jubilee of Goethe's
arrival in Weimar was at hand. Karl August wished to
celebrate this day as the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning
of Goethe's service, though Goethe himself had not expected
this (he thought that the festival would celebrate the fiftieth
return of June since 1776, for in that month in that year he
had formally entered on office). And so Court and city made
great preparations to do beseeming honour to the day (Nov. 7).
Goethe was wakened early in the morning by soft voices singing
a chorale in the garden. About nine o'clock he entered his
reception-room. A cantata composed by Riemer — a morning
greeting from the Ilm — was sung by a very large choir of
1 Griiner was with Goethe from September 1 to September 10, 1825.
See pp. 205-223 of his book. — Tr.
2 The principal source of information as to the festivities of September
3, 1825, is a little book called Weimar's Jubelfesl, Hoffmann, Weimar,
1825.— Tr.

666 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
ladies. An hour later there was a general reception in
Goethe's drawing-rooms, at which the Ministers, all the higher
servants of the State, the Jena professors, and others, were
present. Goethe received a gold medal commemorative of
the day. It bore his bust and those of Karl August and Luise,
and the words : " Karl August und Luise Goethen." This
gift was accompanied by a letter, in which the Duke acknow
ledged the unaltered fidelity, affection, and steadfastness with
which the friend of his youth had followed him through all the
changes of his life, and said that to his living sympathy and
continually willing service was due the fortunate issue of the
weightiest enterprises. And to have won him for ever "I
hold to be one of the noblest graces of my reign."
The Biirgermeister, on behalf of the City Council, handed
in a deed which secured the citizenship of Weimar for ever
to Goethe's son, grandsons, and all their male descendants.
There were deputies from the Senate of Jena University, and
from each of its Faculties. The Faculties of Philosophy and
Medicine created him Doctor, and the former also granted him
the right of conferring the degree on two persons ; he chose
Eckermann and Nicolovius. The Faculty of Law deplored
that he had a doctor's degree from Strassburg -1 the Faculty
of Theology presented him with a votive address in the form
of a diploma, in which it was acknowledged that Goethe, "as
creator of a new spirit in science, and as a sovereign in the
dominion of free and powerful thoughts, had mightily advanced
the true interests of the Church and of evangelical theology."
The one striking absence among all these greetings was that
of the Senate of Goethe's native Frankfurt. Nor did the news
of the festival move them to grant him the freedom of their
city. About eleven o'clock the Court visited Goethe. Frau
von Heygendorf was one of those who came. Karl August
showed deep emotion : a brotherly embrace spoke more than
words could have done.
The Duke caused a copy of his letter to Goethe to be put
up in a public place. Goethe saw all the people in the street
pressing in one direction, and sent Nicolovius to find out the
cause ; when he heard that the Duke's letter to him had been

1 He was only a licentiate, it will be remembered. Strassburg took
no notice of Goethe on this day. — Duntzer.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 667
made public, he exclaimed : "That is he !" with tears of joy.
In the great hall of the Library in the later part of the forenoon,
about the time when Goethe was receiving the Court, there
was a distinguished assembly to hear addresses from Miiller
and Riemer. There was a great banquet at the Stadthaus ;
Goethe was not there, but was represented by August, who
proposed the health of friend Knebel, who had brought his
father to the Duke long ago. The poet had invited a charming
circle of ladies to dine at his own house. In the evening
Iphigenie was played at the Theatre. (A special reprint of the
play had been published for the day.) When Goethe appeared
in the Ducal box all the audience rose reverentially in their
places, which moved him to tears. The prologue was by
Chancellor von Miiller. When the curtain rose, deafen
ing applause greeted the scene disclosed — a hall with a
laurel - crowned bust of the poet. By the advice of his
physician Goethe went away after the termination of the
third act. The city was illuminated, and Goethe was
especially pleased by the illumination of the streets that
lay between his house and the Theatre. His house was
opened that evening for general hospitality as on the day
of the jubilee of Karl August. And next morning, in order
to utter his gratitude in the most expressive way, he sent
his grandchildren from house to house to greet his true fellow-
citizens in his name.
It was only by degrees that Goethe recovered strength
after the exertions of this day,1 and then the numerous letters
of thanks occupied much of his time. Meanwhile many
further offers from booksellers had been coming in. Brbnner
of Frankfurt offered 80,000 thalers. August wished to make
capital out of this increase on Cotta's offer, and his action in
the matter cannot be called straightforward. His father was
unable to dissuade him from some rather shuffling dealing.
Boisseree behaved admirably throughout, though August almost
drove Cotta to extremity. In a letter dated January 3, 1826,
Boisseree communicates in plain words that Cotta has rights
of property in several of Goethe's works, and cannot give them
up. Both sides must yield, he goes on; you must enlarge
1 Cp. Goethe to Zelter, November 26, 1825. Goethe to Boisseree,
January 8, 1826. — Tr.

668 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
the period to which you wish to limit Cotta's rights, and on
the other hand the contract must be understood to apply to
a fixed number of copies. When Goethe received this letter
he acknowledged the goodness of Boissere'e in transmitting
Cotta's arguments, but he maintained that in such arrange
ments the publisher has a great advantage over the author,
inasmuch as he is thoroughly aware of his position, while the
author is not. But he expressed his great wish to come to
terms with Cotta, and submitted a new scheme of agreement.1
After this all was arranged very fast. Cotta made the follow
ing final offer. He would pay 60,000 thalers for the forty
volumes containing Goethe's poetic, aesthetic, literary, critical,
and historical works. The limit of twelve years should stand.
For the volumes containing the scientific works an extra sum
proportionate to their size and number would be paid If
the pocket edition ran to 20,000 copies, there should be a
special payment for the octavo edition. Accordingly, should
Cotta sell 40,000 copies he would pay Goethe 120,000 thalers.
All this was communicated to Goethe by Boisseree in a letter
intended for Cotta's inspection, dated January 21, 1826. In
a letter dated two days later, but enclosed with the former one,
Boissere'e privately advised Goethe to accept this offer, for he
believed that Cotta would otherwise go back to the old offer —
to outbid other publishers by 10,000 thalers. August now, at
any rate, saw that he must be content ; but it was with emotion
that Goethe recognised Boisseree's disinterested goodwill and
honest and skilful dealing. On the 30th of January 1826
he replies : " Let your word be yea ! yea ! and accordingly
' yea and amen ! ' " and soon after the formal agreement
was signed.
We go back here a little to observe that the death of the
Emperor Alexander of Russia on December 1, 1825, had put
Weimar Court in mourning, and in Goethe had roused feelings
of tender personal regret.2 And his oldest and dearest woman
friend was now fast approaching the close of a life in which
there had been so much labour and sorrow. At the time
of the jubilee festivals there had been friendly greetings ex
changed between Charlotte von Stein and Goethe, and Alfred
1 Goethe to Boisseree, January 12, 1826. — Tr.
2 Cp. Goethe to Schultz, December 18, 1825. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 669
Nicolovius had gone to see Charlotte at Goethe's wish.1
Duringthe year, 1826 her little remaining strength failed, and,
in the early days of 1827, the last spark of what had once
been so fair and serene an existence went out.
In February and March 1826 Goethe was occupied with
the announcement of the new edition. Yet his mood was an
elevated one ; the spirit for poetry came upon him anew, and
he completed Helena. With this poem, which evidences
such wonderful plastic power, Goethe meant to give special
value to the first " Lieferung," or set of volumes of the new
edition.2 The spring, as it advanced, proved unfavourable to him.
He caught a cold in his garden, and suffered long from its
results. In the beginning of May 1826 Ottilie fell from a
horse3 and wounded her face badly, and- the process of healing
lasted a considerable time. Goethe would not see her until
she was well, for, as he told Miiller, such hateful impressions
clung to him, and spoiled his remembrance ever after. Ottilie's
bright presence was sadly missed by the old man, and the
arrival of Boisseree on May 17, 1826, in itself a great plea
sure, was the greater accordingly. Boisseree stayed until June
3, 1826. The presence of this well-tried friend, this fine and
large-minded critic, was very dear to Goethe. He begged
Boisseree to prolong his stay. " We shall not meet so young
again ; you do not know how much good your visit is doing
me ; all grows better and better the longer you are here ; do
wait a little while, do reconsider it." He was, indeed, in a very
soft and melancholy mood. Boisseree thought August Goethe
natural in manner and somewhat blunt (derb). Boisseree paid
several visits to Ottilie. He went for the first time on Sunday,
May 2 1. He found her in a room where the light fell through
1 Fritz Stein came to Weimar at the time of the Duke's jubilee. He
almost certainly visited Goethe. Duntzer (Charlotte von Stein, ii. 505)
thinks that it may have been during this stay in Weimar that Fritz
received Goethe's letters from Charlotte. Frau von Ahlefeld, who was
with Charlotte so much during her latest years, is the authority for the
statement that Charlotte burned all her own letters, which Goethe had
given back at her request. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Boisseree, August 26, 1826. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, May 10, 1826 ; Boisseree's Diary, May 17, 1826
(Sulpiz Boisseree, i. 471); Mailer's Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, May 17,
1826.— Tr.

670 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
green blinds (rouleaux); her brow and nose and upper lip
were covered with small bits of plaster. His impression of
her was good.1 A little earlier that day he dined with August
Goethe and Ulrike von Pogwisch. From their talk Boisseree
could see that the old man was completely " in the net " of the
young folk. Goethe's chief delight was his second grandson,
who was completely devoted to him;2 while the elder, "by
living and learning, had already been removed from the circle
of grandfatherly affection."3 The boys' tutor was one young
Rothe, a divinity student.
In the later part of June we find Goethe in his Garden.
On June 24, a lovely summer afternoon, Miiller found him
there with a few friends listening to the city band. In July
1826 Zelter and his daughter Doris came for a fortnight's 4
visit, and roused the desire for music afresh. Goethe's literary
labour at this time was the recasting of the Wanderjahre, which
he had taken up after completing Helena ; moreover, he was
preparing a new number of Kunst und Alterthum. In his
later years Goethe found much delight in reading Le Globe,
a Parisian paper remarkable for fine culture, and for vivacity
and esprit ; the notice of Stapfer's translation of his dramatic
works especially pleased him.5
In August 1826 the porcelain painter, Lud wig Sebbers
of Brunswick, came to see Goethe, and showed him some of
his work. Goethe felt so much confidence in the man, and
1 ' ' Frau von Goethe ist ein geistreiches, lebhaftes Wesen. " The follow
ing are interesting: — "Eckermann, ein subordinirtes treues Mannchen,
voll hiibschen Talents ; " "Julie von Egloffstein, eine kolossale, malende
Hofdame." — See Boisseree's Diary, Sulpiz Boisserle, i. 471-480. — Tr.
2 It will be found interesting to refer to Eckermann's Conversations
with Goethe, March 29, 1830. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Reinhard, December 26, 1825 (Briefwechsel, S. 261). — Tr.
4 Zelter left Weimar on July 19, 1826. See Goethe to Miiller, August
3, 1826 (Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. 236). — Tr.
6 Goethe to Reinhard, May 12, 1826 ; Goethe to Zelter, August 5,
1 826. As to Goethe's general interest in Le Globe, many references might
be given. I select the following : — Goethe to Reinhard, February 27,
1826 ; September 20, 1826 ; Goethe to Sternberg, September 19, 1826 ;
Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, June 1, 1826, October 3, 1828.
In the letter of February 27 he tells Reinhard that the paper is sent to
him, unordered, every post-day, the numbers since September 1824
having lately been forwarded to him, unordered also ; he is spending his
evenings in studying them. — Tr.

1824-1830.]

THE RESTLESS CLOSE.

671

liked him so well, as to yield to his urgent request and sit to
him. The portrait, painted on a cup, was extraordinarily like.1
On the following page we give the silhouette taken from a plaster
cast of Goethe's face. Sommering received it from Froriep,
a physician who had been summoned to an appointment in
Weimar in 1816 (Sommering had returned to Frankfurt in
1820, and there had been a short revival of correspond
ence between him and Goethe).
Goethe was at this
time in a very contented, ^s^fFS5^"-"-*.
happy mood. The fol- XX \v
lowing passage is taken
from a letter to Alfred
Nicolovius, dated August
11, 1826, and as yet un
printed : — " During the
last three months I have
taken consolation with my
good daughter - in - law,
and found her a source
of consolation. She has
suffered a great deal and
suffered unpleasantly; I
have suffered much less
since I have not been
disturbed in that which
is demanded of me, and
which I myself must
demand of myself."
In September 1826 Ernst Schiller, August Goethe's special
friend, came to Weimar to arrange family affairs.2 During his
stay Ernst had to take part in a rather strange ceremony. In
March 1826, when the so-called treasury vault (Cassengewblbe)
at the Jacobskirchhof was being cleared out, the Biirgermeister
Schwabe, acting on the evidence of the gravedigger, had dis
covered Schiller's skull. Goethe recognised it by the beautiful
1 Goethe tells Meyer, September 27, 1826, that he sat to Sebbers
probably twenty times, for hours or half hours ; even after the second
baking of the cup he sat for retouching. — Tr.
2 Charlotte von Schiller had died in the summer of 1826 at Ernst's
' house in Bonn. — Tr.

Fig. 30. Sebbers's portrait of Goethe.
A new engraving.

672

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[BK. X. CH. I.

horizontal setting of the teeth. It occurred to Chancellor von
Muller that the skull might find a suitable resting-place inside
the pedestal in the Library, on which Dannecker's bust of
Schiller stood. Goethe reluctantly consented, after he had
procured a cast of the skull. The ceremony took place on
September 17, 1826. Ernst Schiller formally presented his
father's skull to August Goethe for the Library. Goethe was
not present, but a noble meditative poem is the memorial
of, the day.1 The ceremony roused much unfavourable
criticism. Writing to Boissere'e, under date November 10,
1826, Goethe says : — " The affair of the
Schiller reliques cannot but be confessed
to be in some measure open to attack,
even by those who do not disapprove of
what has been done, even by me, who,
perceiving action to be necessary, had
guided it and urged it on in quiet, and
only retired when, contrary to my design,
it was made a public matter. I add
in confidence that for the present not
only the skull, but all the bones of the
skeleton, brought together by the de
liberative industry of our comparative
anatomists, are deposited in proper
arrangement in the Grand Ducal Library,
in a seemly shrine. But now my agency
will again interpose, and I hope that when
these precious remains are interred, as I mean to have them,
the whole fable will find a pleasing denouement, and the un-
delightful middle terms will be gladly forgotten. I am silently
at one with the Schiller family, and you, my dearest, shall be
among the first to know my solution of the matter ; it would
give me pleasure- if you guessed what, to tell the truth, is very
obvious." Goethe had already begun to look forward to a
place of burial in the graveyard that surrounded the Fursten-
gruft. Writing on January 19, 1827, he tells Boisseree how
he has planned a " seemly shrine " near the royal vault,
where his remains and those of Schiller, so strangely rescued,

Fig. 40. Goethe's Silhouette.
See p. 671. From the
Gedenkbldtter an Goethe.

1 Bei Betrachtung von Schiller's Schddel,
wo ich beschaute." — Tr.

: Im emsten Beinhaus war's

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 673
shall be placed together. His friends von Miiller, Coudray,
and Biirgermeister Schwabe, have undertaken to carry out
this design, and all had been arranged during the presence
in Weimar of Ernst Schiller, in September and October 1826.
During Ernst's presence Goethe began again to re-read for
publication his correspondence with Ernst's father. Moreover,
Goethe had begged back his own letters to Zelter,1 in order to
have them transcribed, and the transcripts inserted with the
originals of Zelter's letters. Goethe used to read through these
transcripts with Riemer in the evenings. He meant this cor
respondence to be published — the precious memorial of a long
and beneficial friendship. Ernst Schiller left Weimar about
the middle of October 1826. How deeply August Goethe
felt the parting from this dear friend may be seen in the
following words : — Abschied.
Bin ich denn ganz allein ?
Ich habe Vater ja,
Ich habe Frau,
Ich habe Kinder auch,
Doch keinen Freund !
Er schied ! ! Dein Goethe f.
Die Augenblicke waren theuer.
The revision of Helena occupied the poet a long time ; it
remained when all the other contents of the first four volumes
were already gone. On September 30, 1826, he writes to the
philologist K. W. Gottling, introducing to him "a beautiful
lady." This refers of course to Helena. Goethe tells Gottling
that Riemer and he had been going over Helena until they
were weary. For a good while Gottling had been helping
Goethe in the revision of the new edition ; he used to read
through all the manuscript before it went to the printer. The
letter in which Goethe first asks him for this aid is dated
January 10, 1825. 2
1 Goethe to Zelter, May 21, 1825. Observe that Riemer's preface,
p. viii., is incorrect. — Tr.
2 See the volume edited by Kuno Fischer, Briefwechsel zwischen
Goethe und K. Gottling in den Jahren, 1824- 1 83 1 (Miinchen, 1880).
K. W. Gottling was a professor in Jena. — Tr.
2 X

674 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
The reader will remember that, after the completion of
Hermann und Dorothea in March 1797, Goethe planned a
second epic poem, very different from his first ; and in April
1797 he sketched its plot1 The design had never been
carried out, and the papers had lain untouched for thirty
years. Now that Goethe, after the dismissal of Helena from
his attention, turned to the Wanderjahre, it occurred to him
to work up the plot designed for an epic into a tale for the
Wanderjahre. Accordingly, towards the close of 1826,2 he
began to develop the graceful and touching story which we
know as Die Novelle.
On November 22, 1826, Goethe writes to Boissere'e: "I
must tell you that in these days joy and hope have descended
to us from above, since our eldest princess Marie [Karl
August's grandchild], has been betrothed to Prince Karl of
Prussia ; thus, as last winter began with death and mourning,3
this begins with life and pleasure." Moreover, in December
1826 the presence in Weimar of Alexander von Humboldt,
and later of his elder brother Wilhelm von Humboldt, brought
a good deal of delight and interest into Goethe's life.4
The year 1827 is remarkable for a splendid revival of
vigour and freshness in the old man, and the reawakening of
the power of song. There was an abundant blossoming of
lyric verse, and it is wonderful how slight and few in all this
verse are the traces of the weakness of age, and how frequent
vitality and excellence. The joy of having successfully wrestled
with the difficulties of Helena, and the thought that the group
of volumes forming the first " Lieferung " of his Works would
appear at Easter, produced a kind of mental and bodily elation.
But there was sorrow too. On January 6, 1827, Charlotte
von Stein died in a gentle slumber that had lasted since the
previous day. In her will she had left instructions as to her
burial, and, knowing the soft heart of her old friend, she had
1 See pp. 488, 490. — Tr.
2 See Goethe to Wilhelm von Humboldt, October 22, 1826. — Tr.
3 Because of the death of the Emperor Alexander, already noticed,
See p. 668.— Tr.
4 Alexander von Humboldt came, I think, on December II, 1826.
See Eckermann under that date. See, on the peculiar value of visits from
men like the Humboldts, Goethe to Sulpiz Boisseree, December 30,
1S26.— Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 675
directed that the funeral procession should not take the
ordinary route along the Frauenplan, past his house. The
civic undertaker, however, declared that it was contrary to all
propriety that the funeral of one of high birth should take the
side way. And so, on the afternoon of January 9, 1827, the
sad procession moved along the familiar street. Goethe did
not attend it, but sent August, as on the occasion of Wieland's
burial. His grief was silent, but not therefore the less real.1
"The year has in truth begun, as earthly years will, with a
mingling of gladness and sorrow ; yet the gladness outweighs,
and we must acknowledge it with gratitude."2
On February 1, 1827, the Grand Duke brought the Crown-
Prince of Prussia to see Goethe,3 who was greatly pleased with
him ; on February 4 the Prince came again, accompanied by
his brothers Wilhelm and Karl. Goethe conceived the best
hopes of the successor to the Prussian throne, and spoke with
admiration of his good taste in art, of his intelligence, know
ledge, and vivacity. There were very gay doings in Court and
city just then, that lasted until the middle of February 1827.
Goethe took no part in them. At the close of January 1827
he was at last able to send Helena to Cotta, and about the
middle of February followed the new Zahme Xenien, which were
to conclude the fourth volume. Thus the first "Lieferung"
was disposed of, and the second lay "ready to be packed up."4
And now he was most intent on finishing his Wanderjahre.
But at the same time we find him attracted by Chinese
literature, reading Chinese fiction and poetry in translations,
and talking to Eckermann about it.5 The idea of a World
Literature had grown more and more vivid in Goethe con
tinually.6 Meanwhile the pleasant spring weather seemed
1 See Duntzer, Charlotte von Stein, the year 1827. Knebel's grief
was very great. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Boisseree, January 19, 1827. This is the letter in which
he tells Boisseree about the plan that he has formed as to his own burial.
See p. 672. — Tr.
3 Eckermann, February 1, 1827. (The English reader will correct
the misprint Russia in Mr. Oxenford's translation.) — Tr.
4 Goethe to Boisseree, February 17, 1827. — Tr.
6 Eckermann, January 31, 1827. Servian poetry, too, interested Goethe
just then. See Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte erlautert, i. 407. — Tr.
6 It is interesting here to look back to Herder's instruction, p. 1 1 1.
' — Tr.

676 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
to promise an enjoyable summer.1 We find Goethe driving
with Eckermann and observing the tender April green of the
roadside cornfields.
Towards the end of April 1827 A. W. von Schlegel came
to Weimar; on the evening of Tuesday, April 24, 1827,
Goethe gave a large tea-party in his honour. The crowd was
very great. Schlegel's fellow-traveller Lassen was also present.
Eckermann relates that Schlegel was dressed with extreme
neatness, and his appearance was so youthful and blooming
that some of the guests present spoke of cosmetics. He was,
however, quite surrounded by ladies, to whom he showed
Indian curiosities. Goethe drew Eckermann to the window :
"Now, how do you like him?" "Not better than I thought
I should," replied Eckermann. "He is indeed," replied
Goethe, " no true man ; but we must bear with him a little
because of his manifold learning and great merits."2 Next
day, April 25, 1827, Eckermann dined with Goethe and Dr.
Lassen. Lassen showed great knowledge of Indian poetry,
and Goethe was very glad to have the opportunity of increasing
his own very imperfect knowledge.
The author of that criticism in Le Globe of Stapfer's
(Euvres dramatiques Lie Goethe, which, had given Goethe so
much pleasure, was J. J. Ampere the younger. From the
ripeness and largeness of mind displayed in Ampere's study of
the development of Goethe's mind and art, it had been con
jectured by Goethe and Eckermann that the critic must be a
man of mature years. It was, therefore, a great surprise to
them when, in the later part of April 1827, Stapfer and
Ampere came to Weimar, and the latter turned out to be a
young man of twenty-seven.3 No less surprise was it to hear
that the other contributors to Le Globe, whose wisdom and
moderation and high culture they had admired so often, were all
1 Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, April 18, 1827. — Tr.
2 Eckermann and Goethe had a very interesting conversation about
Schlegel on March 28. Schlegel's injustice to Moliere and Euripides.in
his Lectures on Dramatic Literature was the occasion of the conversation.
Oxenford by mistake attributes the conversation to Soret. — Tr.
3 Ampere was born in 1800. Goethe makes a similar mistake about
Carlyle's age, in a letter to Boisseree, September 25, 1827. Carlyle, he
says, is probably middle-aged ; he has made himself acquainted with German
literature after a wonderfully penetrative inner fashion. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 677
young like Ampere.1 Stapfer and Ampere dined twice, May
4 and May 6, 1827, at Goethe's house. The old man listened
with interest to Ampere's account of Me'rime'e, Alfred de Vigny,
and other important talents. There was also a good deal said
about Beranger, whose poetry had of late interested Goethe
very much. At the second of these dinner-parties, Goethe
made some valuable remarks about Tasso and Faust, and re
lated how in 1797 he had planned an epic Wilhelm Tell.
Just after this Karl von Holtei, whose vaudevilles were making
a great stir, came to Weimar on his way back from Paris. He
announced his arrival to Goethe, and received an invitation to
dinner. His open-hearted fresh personality won the poet's
liking. On Saturday, May 12, 1827, Goethe went to visit his
Garden House in the Park,2 and he found the place so delight
ful in the fine spring weather that he decided to stay and live
a while in the solitude for himself and literature, and escape
the oppression of his domestic troubles. For Ottilie was
sickly and out of tune, while August abandoned himself
regardlessly to sensual pleasure. On May 15, 1827, Holtei
went to see Goethe at the Garden, and found him in a very
communicative mood, and mild, even melancholy. In the
early part of this stay in the Garden Goethe began to write
the Fourth Act of the Second Part oi Faust — "at that point
where Faust, descending from the antique cloud, meets his evil
genius again." " Tell no one ; but I confide to you that I
mean to advance from this point, and fill in the blank until I
reach the conclusion which has long been ready."3 (Faust was
finished in 183 1, and was published after Goethe's death.)
Another product of the weeks in the Garden is the beautiful
little group of lyrics called Chinesisch-Deutsche Jalires- und
Tageszeiten, a free adaptation of the clear, pure, calm manner
of Chinese poetry, to the utterance of the inspiration of the
sweet sights and sounds of a German spring. The long
beautiful days were indeed filled with many occupations. In
September, Goethe, when writing to Boisseree an account of
1 Eckermann's expression of wonder gave occasion for an exposition
by Goethe, of the value to literature and poetry of the atmosphere, the
milieu. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Zelter, May 24, 1827. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, May 24, 1827. — Tr.

678 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
his spring and summer, says of this time : " Thus May came,
and I was tempted to move into the Garden in the Park,
which was of great use to me ; for I pushed on with many an
old piece of work, began some new, and won a great deal from
the pure, though often interrupted quiet." One of the inter
ruptions was a visit from his dear and honoured Princess
Marie. She was soon to leave for Berlin with her husband
Prince Karl. The parting was so sad to Goethe that he was
unable to bid her farewell in verse.1 The rainy weather at
the close of May 1827 did not drive Goethe from the Garden,
and he continued there until the first week in June was past.
Soon after Count Sternberg came to Weimar, and Goethe
returned to town.2 With Sternberg there were many conver
sations on natural science. " In our cabinet of fossils he was
so good as to put in order a beautiful collection of plants of
the primeval world, and thus for the first time their true value
was given to them."3 Goethe remained in Weimar after this,
because, as he tells Zelter on July 17, 1827, he was so
dependent on his literary-artistic surroundings. It had been
comic to see what quantities of things had been dragged down
to the Garden during the four weeks of his stay there. But
such a love of the place had revived in him that every day he
spent at least a few hours in it.
During July and August 1827 Goethe was occupied
chiefly in enjoyment and criticism of the works of other men
in art and literature, both those of Germany and of other
countries. Perhaps his highest point of admiration and enthu
siasm during the time was reached during the perusal of
Manzoni's / promessi sposi. (He had written a preface for an
edition of Manzoni's Opere poetiche, that was printed in Jena.4)
Moreover, Goethe had plenty of official work. In the Jena
institutions there were many things to be cared for — appoint-
1 See Midler's Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, August 30, 1827. — Tr.
2 On June 9, 1827, Goethe writes to Zelter : " Now I am going back
to town to be always at hand for Count Sternberg when he can get free
from his obligations to society and Court." Sternberg is gone when
Eckermann calls on June 20. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Boisseree, October 12, 1827. — Tr.
4 The full title is given, Goethe und Zelter, iv. 290. Opere poetiche di
Alessandro Manzoni, con prefazione di Goethe. Jena, per Federico From
mann, 1827. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 679
ments to be made, thanks to be returned, the administration to
be superintended. These institutions had received generous
aid from the Grand Duke and the Crown-Princess. About this
time the ducal contributions in aid of the Library were greatly
diminished ; Goethe thought of a plan for avoiding impoverish
ment. There were some private reading associations in
Weimar. If the Superintendence joined these associations, it
could exercise a control over the choice of books. The books
would come to the Library as to a subscriber first, then they
would circulate for a time among the members of the associa
tions, and afterwards they could be purchased at half-price.1
During this time Goethe's domestic life continued to have a
good deal of trouble in it. Ottilie, who was suffering a great
deal from her pregnancy, " found a slight in everything, saw
defect of love and sympathy everywhere," and was in the
most dreadfully nervous condition.
Goethe's birthday in the year 1827 brought a specially
great pleasure. While receiving the good wishes of a circle
of friends he was surprised by the entrance of the King
of Bavaria, accompanied by Karl August. The king had
arrived in Weimar the night before, and on that morning
had declared that he came expressly for Goethe's birthday.2
It is well known what a lover of art the king was, how pene
trated with a feeling for the greatness of Germany. He gave
Goethe the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Bavaria,
and on this and the following day had the most intimate con
versation with the poet, whom he astonished by sympathetic
comprehension of, and by a complete acquaintance with all
the history of his life. A week later Staatsrath Schukowsky,
the tutor of the Czarewitch, manifested his reverence for
Goethe after the most touching fashion.3 Again, a little
later, the architect Zahn, who had just returned from Italy,
showed Goethe his tracings of Pompeian wall-paintings.
Miiller, visiting Goethe on the nth of September 1827, found
Zahn with him and the tracings spread out on the floor of
1 Goethe to Karl August, July 5, 1827.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Boisseree, in the continuation of a letter begun on August
26, 1827 ; Goethe to Zelter, September 6, 1827. See Sulpiz Boisserie,
ii. 478 ; Goethe und Zelter, iv. 368. — Tr.
3 See Miiller, Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, Friday, September 7,
1827.— Tr.

680 THE- LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
the sitting-room. Goethe "revelled" in pleasure. "I edify
myself by them," he said ; " for I call it edification when we
come on confirmation of what we hold to be right, and
vouchers for it." On the morning of September 13 we find
Goethe at a dtjeuner given by the Cross-Bow Shooting Club.
August proposed his toast of thanks for him.
There was indeed about this time a great revival of vigour
in Goethe, and he was in the mood for enjoying things. Thus
we find him taking delightful drives with Eckermann. On
September 24, 1827, they started at eight o'clock on a beau
tiful morning along the up-hill road to Berka. A certain
basket made of rushes in the bottom of the carriage attracted
the good Eckermann's attention, and Goethe related how it
came from Marienbad, and how useful it had been in minera
logical excursions among the Bohemian mountains. But on
this occasion it contained breakfast ! And after descending a
little valley and crossing the simple wooden bridge which
spanned the dry channel of a rain torrent, the coachman
was told to stop, and a napkin was spread on a road-side heap
of stones, and the good things of the basket were disclosed.
After this they spent an interesting day at Berka and Tonndorf.
Goethe had a great deal to communicate : he talked especially
of the Second Part of Faust, and Eckermann expresses deep
regret that his diary only contains notes of what passed in the
time before breakfast. Again, on September 26, 1827, they
started early for the Hottelstedt Ecke, the most western height
of the Ettersberg, thence to drive to the Ettersburg Castle.
The details of this drive are given at considerable length by
Eckermann. When they reached the western height they
alighted, and breakfast was spread out on a grassy hillock.
Seated with their backs against the wind-beaten oaks of that
high spot, they consumed a brace of roast partridges with new
white bread, and drank good wine from a cup of gold that
Goethe always carried with him. Before their eyes lay half
Thiiringen in the clear light of a September morning, a wide
beautiful view on which Goethe had looked many a time in
earlier years, and every point on the landscape was the centre
of recollections. After lingering thus some time they drove
on along the northern side of the Ettersberg to the Castle of
Ettersburg, how bright and cheerful once, now silent and
lonely. Goethe had the rooms opened, and told Eckermann

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 681
how Schiller had formerly lived for a while in one of them.1
Afterwards he led the way along a footpath through the wood
to a spot where, fifty years before, in the time of the good
Duchess Amalia, they had all cut their names on a beech.
Around this beech, in the beautiful summer evenings, they
had played farces and been young and joyous. The spot was
now damp and cheerless, being overshadowed by the growth
of the trees, and the names on the old beech could only be
read with difficulty.
On the day before (September 25, 1827) Goethe had had
a melancholy reminder of Schiller. The King of Bavaria, who
had visited the Fiirstengruft and the Library, had been very
ill content with the way in which Schiller's bones were pre
served. Like opinions having reached Karl August from
other quarters, we find him writing to Goethe : " I consider it
advisable that they [Schiller's bones], inclusive of the head, of
which first a cast should be taken, enclosed in the casket that
they lie in now, should, for the present, be placed and pre
served in the family vault that I have built for my race at the
new graveyard here, until Schiller's family shall have provided
some other disposition of them." Now Goethe had constantly
borne in mind the plan of having a place of burial erected for
Schiller and himself in the neighbourhood of the Fiirstengruft.
We find him writing on January 27, 1827, that Coudray is
making sketches for the " Twin Monument as it is to be accord
ing to our common invention and arrangement."2 It probably
was Goethe who persuaded Karl August to have the bones of
Schiller placed in a coffin. This was done on December 16,
1827. The coffin, prepared according to Goethe's directions,
was of oak, stained dark, with rings and rosettes of tempered
blue steel ; on the front was simply the name in golden letters.
It was laid at the foot of a step that was meant to receive the
Duke's coffin in time to come.
On the morning of Sunday, October 7, 1827, Goethe and
Eckermann set out for Jena, where they intended to stay until
the evening of the following day. (It is curious to think that
four whole years had passed since Goethe last visited Jena,
when returning from Marienbad in September 1823.) The
1 See page 515.— Tr.
2 Goethe to Sulpiz Boisseree, January 27, 1827. — Tr.

682 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
friends arrived early, and went to see the Botanical Garden,
where Goethe surveyed the shrubs and plants, and found
all in beautiful order. After looking over the Mineralogical
Cabinets and other scientific collections they drove to Knebel's,
where they were expected to dinner. The meeting between
the old friends (Knebel was eighty -three, Goethe seventy-
eight) was very affectionate ; Knebel in his haste almost
stumbled to the door to fold Goethe in his arms. After
dinner Goethe and Eckermann drove southwards up the pretty
valley of the Saale. When they returned to the streets of
Jena Goethe ordered the coachman to drive along the
Bachgasse and made him stop at an unpretentious house.
This was classic ground : it was the house that Voss had lived
in, and Goethe conducted Eckermann through the house and
among the garden fruit-trees, and talked of the pleasant
evenings that he had spent there with Voss and the good
Ernestine.1 By this time it was six o'clock, and they went to
their quarters at " The Bear." They had a large room, with an
alcove containing two beds. They sat in the pleasant autumn
twilight for a time without candles, and Goethe talked of
Voss and Schiller. Soon candles and supper appeared, but
Goethe's communicative companionable mood lasted, and they
chatted until healthy weariness made sleep delightful. Next
day (Monday, October 8, 1827) they rose early and went
first to the Anatomical Cabinet. Then they drove to the
Observatory, and, moreover, visited the adjacent Meteorological
Cabinet. After this they went down into the garden, where
Goethe had caused a little breakfast to be laid out upon a
stone table in an arbour. " You hardly know what a remark
able place we are sitting in," he said to Eckermann. " It
was here that Schiller lived. In this arbour, on these seats,
we have often sat at this old stone table and have exchanged
many a good and great word.2 He was in the thirties then, I
in the forties, both full of enthusiasms. That has all passed
away, and I am not what I was, but the old earth remains still,
and air and water and land are still the same." After Ecker
mann had gone upstairs and gazed on the windings of the
beautiful Saale from Schiller's windows, they went to the
1 Compare page 536. — Tr.
2 See page 498. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 683
chemist Dobereiner, whom Goethe esteemed highly on account
of his beautiful discoveries.1 It was noon by this time. They
resolved not to return to dine at " The Bear," but to enjoy
the splendid day out of doors. There was a little inn at-
Burgau where they could get some fish, and they had wine in
the carriage. All turned out delightfully. The drive brought
them past those thickets and windings of the Saale that
Eckermann had seen from Schiller's windows. The landlady
at Burgau apologised for having nothing ready, but they
should soon have some soup and some good fish. They
waited for dinner in the sunshine on the bridge. The scene
was full of cheerfulness. On the other bank was the little
town of Lobeda ; the river was covered with pine rafts that
shot beneath the bridge, guided by noisy merry raftsmen.
When their fish was ready it was served to them in the open
air, and they remained chatting pleasantly over their wine
until the sun, drawing near the summits of the western hills,
warned them of the lapse of time. The carriage was called,
they returned to Jena, and, after settling their account at
" The Bear " and paying a short visit to Frommann, drove
quickly back to Weimar.
Soon after Zelter came for a short visit.2 Then Hegel,
now a man of wide fame, came to Weimar. Goethe, with a
great personal esteem for Hegel, did not want to know any
thing of his philosophy.3 But Hegel was a warm adherent to
Goethe's Theory of Colour. We find Goethe venturing to
the Theatre once more at this time. The attraction was a per
formance of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflbte (fl Flauto Magico).
He tells Zelter that it yielded him little pleasure because the
performance was faulty, and because he was not as receptive
1 And a new kind of flue, invented by him and named after him,
had interested Goethe a good deal. — Duntzer.
2 Zelter left on October 18. There was a tea-party in honour of
Hegel at Goethe's house. Eckermann tells us that in the midst of the
cheerful talk Zelter rose and went out without saying a word. Those
present knew that it pained him to take leave of Goethe, and this was his
delicate expedient for avoiding the pain. — Tr.
3 To Chancellor von Miiller Goethe said, on July 16, 1827 : " Of the
Hegelian philosophy I do not want to know anything, although Hegel
himself pleases me. I have in any case already got all the philosophy
that I shall need until my end — indeed, properly speaking, I do not need
philosophy at all. " — Tr.

684 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
for such things as he had been.1 The anxiety that Ottilie's
suffering during her pregnancy had caused came to an end
when, on October 29, 1827, she bore a pretty daughter, whom
they called Alma Sedina Henriette Cornelia.
During that part of the year 1827 subsequent to his
birthday, Goethe had been working on the First Act of the
Second Part of Faust. He wished to publish in his Works
the beginning of this First Act, as far as the scene Lustgarten
(The Pleasure Ground). He worked steadily, and as his
health remained pretty good, he was able to send it to the
printer on January 24, 1828. We find Goethe writing bright
little lyric trifles at this time. Thus he addresses to Karl
August at the beginning of the New Year 1828 — the last
New Year for Karl August — the lines beginning : " Fehlt der
Gabe gleich das Neue, Sei das Alte nicht veraltet," and he
inscribed three little poems in the album of his " tried " friend
the Countess Caroline von Egloffstein. In an album which he
gave to a Frau Kammerherr von Mandelsloh, nee von Milkau,
he wrote two short poems, one a dedication. We give
facsimiles at the end of this volume. A little later, Count
Briihl, the Intendant of the Royal Theatre of Berlin, requested
permission to use Goethe's poem, Hans Sachsens poetische
Sendung, as a prologue to Deinhardstein's play Hans Sachs.
Goethe replies to Briihl on January 17, 1828. He has
recited aloud the poem deliberately, as it should be recited
before the public, and he finds that it occupies about twelve
minutes. As the poem contains the description of a painting,
some introduction is desirable to avoid abruptness. On
January 26, Goethe forwarded the introductory poem to
Briihl.2 At this time Holtei appeared in Weimar again ; he delivered
recitations. The kindness of friends secured him a consider
able attendance at these recitations. The old poet gave him,
as before, a friendly reception. And Holtei won over August
Goethe completely by reading aloud Faust in an adaptation
that he had made. According to Holtei's account August
was so much delighted that he rushed up to him, seized both
his hands, and, with tears in his eyes, cried : " I will tell my
1 Goethe to Zelter, November 6, 1827. — Tr.
2 See Hempel's Goethe, xi. 264. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 685
father that there is a great deal in Faust that I never under
stood until to-day !" Whatever the truth of this may be, it is
certain that they formed a very intimate friendship, like that
of sentimental, crack-brained students.1 Moreover, Holtei
was on friendly footing with Ottilie, her mother, and her
grandmother. But Goethe could not approve of Holtei's
trimming of Faust.
The winter weather did not prevent Goethe from going
out to drive occasionally ; we find him looking forward with
great hope to the coming of spring. His chief occupation
was finishing the Wanderjahre. The negotiation with Cotta
about the Schiller -Goethe correspondence was at length
brought to a conclusion through the good offices of Boissere'e.2
During the spring the Garden was constantly visited ; and the
old man, now seventy -eight, ventured again to the opera.
But the great drum, which made the whole house roar and
rattle to the rafters,3 made him afraid to go there any more.
His interest in the external world of Literature and Art
remained vivid as ever. Beside the French and English
periodicals he now received an Italian one — L'Eco of Milan.4
As for his own work, it was needful to get the Wanderjahre
ready for the fifth " Lieferung " of the new edition. More
over, he felt a great wish to complete Faust. He did at this
time succeed in writing the earlier part of the Second Act.
Another of his plans was the publication of a careful French
translation by Soret of the Metamorphosis of Plants, with his
torical addenda. It was Soret who called his attention to
the book by De Candolle, Organographie VegUale, which had
appeared in 1827. Very remarkable is the pleasure shown
by Goethe in observing how three different nationalities —
French, Scotch, and Russians — take his Helena in different
ways. " The Scot," he writes to Zelter, " seeks to penetrate
into the work ; the Frenchman to understand it ; the Russian
to appropriate it. In German readers perhaps all three will
1 "Burschikos" is the expressive adjective which I endeavour to
translate by a phrase. The German student has been described so often
that it is not needful to enlarge on him here. — Tr.
2 And on Sunday, April 6, 1828, Goethe despatched the manuscript
to Cotta. Goethe to Boisseree, April 7, 1828. — Tr.
3 Goethe to Zelter, April 22, 1828.— Tr.
4 Goethe to Zelter, May 21, 1828.— Tr.

686 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
found together."1 And when his enthusiastic admirer the King
of Bavaria sent his Court painter Stieler to paint his portrait,
the old man felt much pleasure in the great honour. Stieler was
amiable, and had a cultivated mind ; and Goethe liked him.2
Karl August had been poorly for some time. A journey
to Berlin — to greet his little great-grandchild, born March 20,
1828 — had been delayed and delayed in consequence. But
he would not give it up; and towards the close of May 1828
he started. When he took leave of Goethe with his usual
cordiality, little did the friends guess that it was their final
parting. The Duke finished his visit, and was on his return
journey (he had reached Graditz, near Torgau) when death
overtook him. He was standing at an open window when the
stroke came. This was on June 14, 1828.
The sad news arrived in Weimar on the following day.
It was a Saturday. Goethe sat at table with his family and
some guests. In the adjoining Garden Room some Tyrolese
were singing. August Goethe was called out. When he
came back he dismissed the singers, and then proposed that
they should leave table, as they would wish to go to the opera
Oberon that evening. Goethe thought the haste very odd (it
was scarcely four o'clock) ; however, he yielded, and the guests
dispersed through the rooms. Very soon August succeeded
in getting them all away ; and he was left to break the
news to his father alone. The blow was too hard. " I saw
Goethe late in the evening," writes Eckermann. " Before I
went into his room I heard him sighing and talking to himself.
. . . He refused all consolation. ' I had thought to depart
before him, but God disposes as He sees best, and nothing
remains for us poor mortals but to endure and hold ourselves
erect as long as we can and as well as we can.'" The body
was brought with military and royal honours to Weimar, to
the " Roman House " in the Park, which the Duke had been
so fond of. Here it was to remain until the funeral, which
was delayed by the absence in St. Petersburg of the new
Grand Duke. The Grand Duchess Luise was at the time
in Wilhelmsthal. She caused the news of the Duke's death
1 Goethe to Zelter, May 21, 1828. — Tr.
2 See the beginning of Goethe's letter to Zelter, No. 597. Goethe und
Zelter, v. 53.— Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 687
to be formally communicated to Goethe by Soret. Goethe
replied immediately: "Present my most emphatic respects to
Madame the Grand Duchess. My sentiments need no words
and my emotions can find none. If I might at all venture on
it I should be in Wilhelmsthal already."1 He was unable to
give any utterance in poetry to his grief. On June 20 he
writes to Soret : " I find myself in a strange mental condition,
which permits no steady, continued attention, and accordingly
I work off many isolated things which really have to be done,
and I arrange various matters which were in confusion, in
order to become aware that there is still something in the
world in which it is possible to be interested." But the deso
lation in his heart was terrible. His best source of relief was
the book by De Candolle to which Soret had called his atten
tion. Farther on in the letter which we have been quoting
he writes of this book : " Open it where I will, it reminds me
of my old friend, eternally forming and re-forming Nature, from
whom we receive our life, and to whom we return it." Though
his physician Dr. Vogel declared in favour of his going to
Wilhelmsthal, he felt unfit to see the Grand Duchess so soon,
and unable to bear the fatigue of appearing at Court. More
over, Stieler wanted to put the last touches to the portrait,
which had been successfully grounded before the Duke's
death, and Goethe' held it a disposition of fate that this
necessity excluded his power of choice.2 He sent his eldest
grandson Walther to Wilhelmsthal to visit the Hereditary
Prince, who was of about the same age. Not until June 28,
1828, was he able to send a letter of consolation to the
mourning widow. "Even this meagre thing has cost me a
great deal," he writes to Soret; "for I shrink from touching
with words on what we cannot bear to feel." Then he goes
on : " Meanwhile let me speak of the beneficial influence of
our botanical project.3 On waking in the morning, a moment
at which so great a loss always grows vivid anew, I seize the
work of M. de Candolle."
1 Goethe to Soret, June 17, 1828. Uhde, Goethes Briefe an Soret,
Stuttgart, 1877. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Soret, June 21, 1828.— Tr.
3 The project of translating the Metamorphosis of Plants into French,
with which, of course, the study of the Organographie Vegitale was
closely linked. — Tr.

688 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
Stieler's picture became a very noble one. Goethe observes
that the painting of the final touches had been strangely
favoured by the exaltation which passion brings.1 He could
not bear to stay in Weimar any longer ; he must fly to Nature
and seek restoration in solitude ; moreover he dreaded the
funeral, which was to take place on July 9, 1828.
With the permission of the Chief Court Marshal's Office
he left Weimar on July 7, 1828 He dined at Jena with his
old friend and fellow-mourner Knebel, and then went on to
the Ducal residence Castle Dornburg, where, however, he did
not reside in the principal Castle. Four years before Karl
August had purchased a property adjoining the Ducal gardens.
The name of the former owner of this property was Stomann.
And it was in the little "Stomann Castle" (" Stomann' sches
Schloss ") that Goethe took up his abode. He lived and slept
in the so-called Bergstube, from which he enjoyed a lovely
view, three windows opening to the south and one to the west.
He writes the following description of the place to Zelter on
July 10, 1828 : "I do not know whether Dornburg is familiar
to you. It is a little town on the rise in the valley of the
Saale, below Jena; outside it a series of castles . . . have been
built at the most various times ; and pretty gardens surround
pleasure-houses. I am stopping in the little old castle at the
southern end; it has been re-fitted lately. The prospect is
noble and gladdening; the flowers bloom in the well- cared
gardens ; the vine -arbours are hung with rich clusters ; and
beneath my window I see a smiling vineyard, which was
planted on a very desolate slope three years ago by him who
is dead. . . . On the other sides the rose -arbours are fairy
like in their lovely decking, and the mallows and what not
all blooming and bright; and everything is seen by me in
heightened colours, like the rainbow on a dark-gray ground.
During fifty years I have often enjoyed life on this spot with
him, and I could spend this time on no spot where the
evidences of his activity present themselves to the senses with
more insistent charm."
Goethe had brought with him to Dornburg his servant
Friedrich and his secretary J. John. His meals were provided
1 Goethe to Boisseree, Weimar, July 6, 1828. We are familiar in
England with Stieler's picture. It is prefixed to Mr. Lewes's Life of
Goethe. — Tr.

1 824- 1 830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 689
by the Court-gardener Sckell, whom he had known during
the last twelve years. From Sckell J we learn the particulars
of Goethe's simple mode of life. As a rule he rose at six
o'clock, and partook of coffee immediately. At seven o'clock
he summoned his secretary and dictated until eight o'clock,
sometimes until half-past eight. Then he walked on the
terraces or in the garden until half-past nine ; then breakfasted.
After breakfast he dictated again or went down into the garden,
if he was not prevented by early visitors. About eleven, as a
rule, visitors came, and those who came dined with him. Dinner
was served usually at half-past two, and lasted until four. Then
the visitors used to go away, and Goethe went into the gardens
again, where he remained until half-past five, when he ate
some white French bread and drank some wine. After that
he stayed in his room or, in fine weather, paced up and down
the gardens repeatedly. Sckell never found him seated when
in the gardens. In the evenings he read the letters that had
come and signed those that he had dictated during the day.
He went to bed at nine or half-past nine. Sckell, who could
enter his room when he chose, observed that he lay on his
back, gazing upwards, his hands outside the coverlet, folded
on his breast as if for prayer. And in the early morning the
hands were in the same position, and his first gaze on awaking
was upward. The deep and sweet sleep that he enjoyed was
' evidenced by the undisturbed state of the couch. He was
very temperate, and ate and drank by rule, and during all the '
time in Dornburg enjoyed perfect health.2
His visitors were numerous. Every week Ottilie and her
children two or three times ; August not so often. Others
who came were Chancellor von Miiller, and Frommann the
publisher, and the celebrated translator Gries, and President
1 Sckell, Goethe in Dornburg, Jena und Leipzig, H. Costenoble, 1864,
48 pp. — Tr.
2 To Eckermann he said : "I enjoy good days and good nights here.
Often before dawn I am awake, and lie by the open window to feast on
the splendour of the three planets that now stand together in the heavens,
and to refresh myself with the increasing brilliance of the morning-red.
Then I spend almost the whole day in the open air, and hold spiritual
converse with the tendrils of the vine, which speak good thoughts to me,
and of which I could tell you strange things. Moreover, I have begun to
write poems again, which are not bad ; and I would it were granted me
to live on everywhere in this frame." — Tr.
2 Y

690 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
von Ziegesar, and von Motz, and many Weimar and Jena
friends besides ; the Weimar folk less often, because the drive
to Dornburg and back was a pretty long day's excursion.
Some foreigners also came, among them the two sons of the
Duke of Wellington.
In the early days of his residence in Dornburg Goethe
received a letter which gave him great happiness. The new
Grand Duke and his Duchess were, as we have seen, in Russia
when Karl August died. From the Imperial Castle at Pau-
lowsk, where they were staying, they commissioned Lieutenant-
Colonel von Beulwitz to write on their behalf to Goethe,
inquiring after his welfare and expressing their sympathy.
(The Grand Duke placed the Middle Castle at his disposal,
but Goethe preferred to stay in the "Stomann Castle," and
the Middle Castle was only used by him in so far that he saw
visitors of rank in its reception-room.) The remarkable letter
in which he replies to Beulwitz was written on July 18, 1828.
The greater part of the letter is an exposition of the charm
that Dornburg has for him at the time — all the external loveli
ness of its gardens and vineyards and wide prospects is bound
close with memories that illuminate grief and render hope and
patience reason. But, returning from the general outer world
of things to his own individual and intimate being, he can
most sincerely acknowledge "that it is a consistent deduction
from the foregoing thoughts that I can in no better way prove
my unchangeable fidelity to the noble departed than if, after
the same fashion, devoted to the revered new-comer in his
place, I expressly pledge myself to appropriate all that in
me is to him, his noble house, and his dominions." This was
Goethe's free homage to his new sovereign.
The first occasion of which we have record on which
Goethe left the precincts of Castle Dornburg was a visit to
Jena on July 20, 1828. Writing to Zelter on July 27, 1828,
Goethe says that on the evening of the 20th, when returning
from Jena, he was caught in such a downpour of rain as he
had never seen the like of before.1 It was a precursor of
the bad weather to come. Again, on August 2, 1828, a
lovely day,2 accompanied by Dr. Stichling, a grandson of
1 Goethe und Zelter, v, 79. He mentions this again in letter of
August 26, 1828, ibid. v. 100. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Soret, Sunday, August 3, 1828. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 691
Wieland,1 he drove to the little village of Grossheringen, near
the confluence of the Ilm and the Saale, went to see the
salt-manufactory there, and visited the village-mayor Planert,
with whom he had been acquainted formerly.
On the same day, after his return to Dornburg, he had a
visit from a party of Jena friends — Frommann, and Frommann's
aunt Betty Wesselhoft, Gries, and Frau von Low, and her
charming daughter Luise. He was very bright and friendly,
and for almost two hours talked with wonderful animation of
a wide circle of men and things and situations.2 The enthusi
astic delight with which the young girl hung on his words
moved him. He stroked her arm with his and said : " Ay,
when we rub against youth we grow young again ourselves ! "3
Goethe's chief intellectual preoccupation continued to be
the design of translating and re-editing his Metamorphosis of
Plants. On Sunday, August 3, he sends to Soret a plan of
their proposed work, and informs him that he has read through
the whole of the Organographie Veg'etale ; indeed, has read
through the parts which concern them several times, and has,
besides, translated the section which De Candolle calls
Symmetric Vegetale. Closely connected with this botanical
study was the interest in the cultivation of the vine that we
find Goethe manifesting. A new method in this branch of
husbandry had been expounded by J. S. Kecht of Berlin, and
Goethe, in the midst of vineyards, felt "compelled" to put
Kecht's proposals to the test by practice, and to ascend from
them to primary physiological truths.4
1 To the kindness of Herr Professor Duntzer I owe the following note,
which will prevent confusion : — The father of the Dr. Stichling above
mentioned had married first a daughter of Wieland, and, after her death
in 1809, had married Luise, Herder's daughter. The Dr. Stichling
with whom Goethe went to Grossheringen was one of the children of
Wieland's daughter. See Goethe to Knebel, August 18, 1828. (The
"State Councillor Stichling," whom the English reader will remember in
Bayard Taylor's essay Weimar in June, "a grandson of Herder," would
be a child of the second marriage.) — Tr.
2 See Frommann's letter to Strive, quoted in the section called Goethe
in Dornburg in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, Band ii. S. 320-22. See also Goethe
to Soret, August 3, 1828.— Tr.
3 Das Frommannsche Haus [Jena, 1870], S. 39. — Tr.
4 Goethe to Soret, August 13, 1828. But he speaks of the subject
in earlier letters. On August 18, 1828, he tells Knebel that he has been
three weeks concerned about it. — Tr.

692 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
The pleasant garden -life at Dornburg began to suffer
interruption. Under date August 9, 1828, Goethe tells Zelter
that during the last week they have had a great deal of wild
wet weather, "and to-day it is particularly bad." This stormy
weather continued with only trifling intermissions. On August
18 Goethe tells Knebel that he has sent his carriage home —
this was a reply to Knebel's remark in a letter of August 14 :
" And if your horses can bear it, do let them once again find
the way to us." But the roads on the heights were hard to
traverse, and the hill to be ascended from Jena to Dornburg
was steep, and accordingly Knebel must be content with a
long letter and the prospect of seeing Goethe on his way back
to Weimar. On Thursday, August 21, 1828, the Hereditary
Prince of Weimar, a boy of ten, accompanied by Soret, visited
Dornburg. Beside the excursions to Grossheringen and to
Jena we know through Sckell of one other instance of Goethe's
leaving Dornburg during his residence there ; he went to the
Thurmberg, a hill close to the roadside, near the village of
Camburg, celebrated for the lovely prospect that it commands.
During his stay in Dornburg Goethe wrote some beautiful
lyrics.1 On August 25, 1828, as he watched the rising moon,
he thought with yearning of his beloved Marianne. Their
friendship had not been weakened by time ; they had remained
in uninterrupted intercourse during the years that had elapsed
since their final parting.
The 28th of August and the 3d of September, days of
such precious association to the student of Goethe's life, were
now at hand. The old poet had no doubt as to the rightful
course on this occasion. " I have petitioned against and for
bidden any trace of festivity that might be designed for the
28th of August," he tells Zelter on August 26, 1828. But
the Art Exhibition of the Drawing Academy ought, as usual,
1 According to the extract from Goethe's Diary quoted by Ludwig
Geiger in his article Goethe in Dornburg in the Goethe -Jahrbuch, ii. 317,
the Dornburg poems are — (1) Dem aufgehenden Vollmonde, alluded to
above ; (2), " Friih wenn Thai, Gebirg und Garten ;" (3) Der Brautigam ;
and (4) "Und wenn mich am Tag die Feme." To these may be added
the translation of the inscription over the gate of the Stomann Castle
(letter to Beulwitz) and the lines for the burial of his old actor P. A.
Wolff, "Mbgt zur Gruft ihn senken." See Duntzer, Goethes lyrische
Gedichte, i. 417, 418. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 693
to be opened on Karl August's birthday ; he would feel guilty
of impiety if he did not use his influence to have this done.1
The 3d of September was, moreover, the occasion of a very
solemn festival — the Lodge in Memory of the Duke, as a
Brother Mason. Goethe could not be present in person, but
he was present by his counsel and sympathy.2
In the beginning of September 1828 Zelter begs for
Goethe's explanation of the wild weather that had prevailed
of late. Thus he was led to the study of Meteorology anew.
He wrote a long letter to Zelter on the subject, giving him
meteorological notes from the evening of September 6 to
September 10, 1828.3
Meanwhile a wonderful restoration to health and tran
quillity had taken place ; and when he learned on September
8, 1828, that the Grand Duke was to return to Weimar on
September 14, he made ready and left Dornburg on the
morning of Thursday, September n, 1828, breakfasted at a
village on the way, and arrived in Weimar at two o'clock, in
the very finest weather, looking very well, and quite brown
from the sun. An admirably conceived birthday gift awaited
him. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz had bought
the old clock which had once stood in Goethe's paternal home
in Frankfurt. The Duke had sent the clock to August
Goethe, asking him to bring it into the house on the morning
of August 28. It was the Duke's design that Goethe should
be first made aware of the gift by hearing its once familiar
voice when he awoke on his birthday morning; after that
August might hand to his father the letter which the Duke
enclosed. Goethe's absence in Dornburg spoiled this plan ;
he received the Duke's letter there, and wrote his letter of
thanks on September 3,4 1828.
Goethe had reached his home just in time to sit down to
dinner in the room next the garden. The doors stood open
and admitted the pleasant autumn day, and Goethe was very
bright, and told of the many visits and presents that he had
1 Goethe to Meyer, August I, 1828. Goethe-Jahrbuch, ii. 342. — Tr.
2 Another whose memory was honoured at this Lodge was Hildebrand
von Einsiedel, who was such a well-known and honoured member of the
Weimar circle. Born in 1750, he died July 9, 1828.— Tr.
3 Goethe und Zelter, v. 111-114. — Tr.
4 This letter of thanks is in Strehlke's Verzeichniss, i. 434-435. — Tr.

694 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
had, and jested • lightly. But Eckermann could perceive an
undercurrent of seriousness, of embarrassment, such as one
feels on returning from a free holiday life to the old every-day
position, where old duties, old relations, make their claim, and
there is a certain feeling of strangeness and difficulty; it is
hard to realise the force of the old motives. Moreover, Goethe
had not seen any grown-up members of the reigning family
since Karl August's death ; this agitation was all before him.
While he was dining a message came from the now Dowager
Grand Duchess to say that she was coming to him, as usual,
on the following Tuesday. And the new Grand Duchess
visited him, as before, on every Thursday forenoon. Painful
as the first meeting with the Princesses after so great a loss
must have been, the old poet knew how to brace himself and
be courageous. Another reason for that seriousness which Eckermann
observed in Goethe has to be mentioned He had promised
to give the fifth " Lieferung " of the new edition to the printer
at Christmas 1828. This "Lieferung" was to contain the
re-modelled Wanderjahre. So much new matter was to be
added that the book would run to three volumes. A great
deal had to be done ; and all the summer, which Goethe had
meant to devote to the novel, had been spent otherwise in
consequence of the death of Karl August. Only a few
months now remained ; and even during those months Goethe
feared a good deal of disturbance from the visits of men of
. science returning from the meeting at Berlin. In this state
of anxiety he felt vividly the merits of the power of concentra
tion, the independence of external conditions, the intensity of
Schiller.1 After all, however, the first two volumes of the Wan
derjahre were sent off in good time, and he went to work on the
third volume. Among the men of science who visited Goethe
the one who most interested him was the naturalist Martius.2
Unfortunately about this time August Goethe had again
fallen into a life of licentiousness, and the breach between
1 See the close of Eckermann's entry for September 11, 1828. It is
one of the utterances of Goethe which helps us to see very clearly what a
complement to his nature Schiller's was. — Tr.
2 Besides the mention of Martius in Eckermann, see Goethe to Bois
seree, December 15, 1828. Goethe had an interesting visit from Tieck
and his wife and daughters in October 1828. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 695
him and Ottilie was dreadfully painful. When Ottilie was in
Karlsbad in the spring of 1828 August had gone so far that
Ulrike, on returning from Berlin, would not stay in the same
house with him, and went to her mother. This circumstance
was the origin of a violent quarrel, and the poor father suffered
deeply. And yet August was careful and diligent in his
management of the household economy and in his super
vision of the scientific collections. He had made a beautiful
collection of the fossils of the neighbourhood; they were
kept in a detached pavilion in the garden.1 He prepared
a catalogue of these fossils, which shows what an admirable
sense for order he possessed. Another activity of August's,
and one which gave his father much pleasure, was the collec
tion of medals which bore relation to good and remarkable
men. In the December of 1828, and during the first two months
of 1829, Goethe remained within doors. For a good while
he dined in his workroom alone, or with one guest. This
was partly because of the family dissension. He was working
hard at the third volume of the Wanderjahre during this time.
And on February 20, 1829, he told Eckermann, who was
dining with him, that he had finished the novel, and meant to
send it to the printer on the following day. And then he
began to work at the papers which recorded the history of
his Second Residence in Rome? He had now ceased to care
to continue Kunst und Alterthum, and dropped it before the
sixth volume was complete. For he had begun to think
that he was influencing general public opinion very little in
proportion to the labour expended.3 Soret's translation of
the Metamorphosis of Plants had pleased Goethe very much ;
it was necessary to revise the manuscript carefully, and dur
ing the years 1829 and 1830, and the beginning of 1831,
we find him frequently engaged in this task.4 On June 5,
1 Soret speaks of this collection under September 26, 1828. Correct
his note by Goethe's letter to Soret, 8th September 1829. — Tr.
2 Goethe had first taken out these papers in 1820 (as he tells us, in
the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte for that year), but the task of working them up
had seemed too difficult, and they had been laid aside again. In May
1828 he tells Zelter that he is dictating at the "Mdrchen" of his Second
Residence. Consult Duntzer's preface to the Italianische Reise. — Tr.
3 See Miiller's Unterhallungen mit Goethe, May 17, 1829. — Tr.
4 See Goethe's letters to Soret during the time. — Tr.

696 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
1829, Goethe bade farewell to the Princess Auguste of Saxe-
Weimar, who was on the eve of starting for Berlin to marry
her betrothed Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. The lady, who is
at present (1883) Empress of Germany, had made a remark
able impression in her youth on the great poet of the Germans.
He writes to Zelter on June 5, 1829, that "she is a personality
of as much real significance as amiability."1 And later in the
summer, Zelter having related how he had seen and talked
with the Princess, Goethe writes from the solitude of the
Garden in the Park : " And now to speak of the most pleasant
topic last ! It is a great pleasure to me that Princess Auguste
has impressed you so favourably with her excellences; she unites
feminine qualities with royal in such a perfect manner that we are
really struck with astonishment, and a mixed emotion of rever
ence and affection arises within us." Goethe lived for a good
while in his Garden that summer ; but there was not, as in other
years, a blossoming of lyric poetry, induced by the loveliness of
the spot.2 August, whose conduct had grown more temperate,
was now thinking seriously of a journey to Italy in the coming
spring. Ulrike had returned to live with the Goethes again.
Goethe was still living in the quiet Garden when, on
August 18, 1829, the celebrated Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz,
accompanied by a friend named Odyniec, came to Weimar,
bearing letters of introduction from Madame Szymanowska
addressed to Ottilie and to Goethe. Ottilie received the Poles
with graceful friendliness, and sent Madame Szymanowska's
letter to Goethe. On August 19 the friends were received at
noon by the old poet in the Garden.3 They dined with him
on that day at his house in Weimar, and he was very pleasant
and talkative. After a few days Odyniec began to like August
1 " Sie ist wirldich so bedeutend als liebenswiirdig. " — Tr.
2 Goethe was at the time very busy with the Second Residence in Rome.
See his letter to Zelter, July 18, 1829.— Tr.
8 In the letter of August 20, 1829, in which Goethe tells Zelter ofthe
visit of Mickiewicz, he also speaks of the interesting visit of Crabb Robin
son which had preceded it. Robinson, after having spent some time with
his old friend Knebel, came to Weimar on August 2, 1829, and found
Goethe in the Garden. He had several interesting conversations with
Goethe in the days that followed, and read aloud to him from Byron and -
from Milton. Of Milton Goethe seems to have known but little previously,
for he had not read Samson Agonistes. See (beside Robinson's Diary and
the letter to Zelter), Eckermann, Conversations, January 31, 1830. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 697
Goethe, who at first had seemed to him merely " a cheerful
bon vivant." Odyniec now began to think him a solid, reason
able nature, capable of deep feeling, though with a tendency
to make everything an occasion of badinage.
This' estimate of August is uttered in Odyniec's letter of
the 24th of August 1829. On that day there was an evening
assembly given by Ottilie, at which Goethe appeared for a
short time. He talked mostly of architecture and sculpture
with Mickiewicz, Coudray, and the great French sculptor
Pierre Jean David. David had come to Weimar in order to
. make a model for a colossal bust of Goethe. He was accom
panied by a younger Frenchman, Victor Pavie, a writer of
verse, and a wild enthusiast for Victor Hugo.
Goethe's birthday brought to Weimar the great Quetelet,
then Director of the Observatory of Brussels, who was accom
panied by his wife. Holtei, too, had returned again. The
letters of Odyniec give a vivid and delightful account of
those days, especially of the brilliant festivities of the
birthday.1 There was a banquet at the inn Zum Erbprinz,
at which Goethe's friends entertained the distinguished
strangers in Weimar. August represented his father at this
banquet. No men were asked to dine at Goethe's own
house on that day ; feminine tyranny excluded them ; twelve
self- selected pretty women and maidens gave the old poet
their company.
It was at this time that Ottilie started the little weekly
Das Chaos, for circulation among friends. It was to be sup
ported by the contributions of friends, and it came out every
Sunday. Holtei was one of its supporters. And during the
couple of years following verses by Goethe appeared in it now
and then, but without his name, for nothing in its pages was
to be signed August Goethe spent most of his evenings in
Holtei's companionship. Holtei writes : " He clung closer to
me continually, and granted me a confidence and an often
stormy friendship which put me in fear at times. Already
death was rioting in his veins ; his cheerfulness was wild and
1 Odyniec's letters are republished under the title Zwei Polen in
Weimar (Vienna, 1 870). The letters are translated into German. An
introduction is supplied by F. Th. Bratranek. Another account of the
birthday of 1829 is to be found in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, i. 349-352, in the
long extract from a letter of Peucer. — Tr.

698 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
forced ; his seriousness was gloomy and oppressive ; his sadness
was heartrending. Yet he endeavoured to maintain a certain
ceremoniousness of forms, which often looked like an uncon
scious imitation of his father, and accordingly, when compared
with the rest of his action, had a sort of phantom effect."
In. September 1829 Zelter paid Goethe a visit.1 The
Briefwechsel mit Schiller was published at length in the latter
part of this year. The reverential dedication of the book to
the King of Bavaria was written on October 18, 1829.
Goethe had wished to express his gratitude to the King in
poetry, but had found himself unable to do so.
Towards the end of 1829 Goethe began to work hard at
the first two acts of the Second Part of Faust. By January
1830 we find him at the Classical Walpurgis- Night. On
February 10, 1830, he told Eckermann that the subject had
proved a more diffuse one than he had expected : " I am not
half done, but I will keep at it, and hope to have finished
by Easter." Eckermann observed that he was in low spirits ;
the Dowager Grand Duchess was very ill.2
The noble Princess, whom we have seen a good friend to
Goethe for fifty years, in whose esteem he had such a high
place, died on Sunday, February 14, 1830. Eckermann was
on his way to dine with Goethe when he heard of the event.
Eckermann thought with some apprehension of the effect on
Goethe. When he entered the house the servants told him
that Ottilie was gone to break the sad news. Goethe had
received it with silent composure. Eckermann entered his
room, and found him taking his soup with Ottilie and her
little ones. "We went on talking cheerfully of indifferent
things." When the bells began to toll Ottilie and Eckermann
talked louder, for they feared a shock ; but Goethe maintained
the same perfect calm, which lasted on during calls from the
physician Vogel, who told the circumstances of the last hours
1 This visit lasted from Monday, September 14, to Monday, Septem
ber 21, 1829. Goethe went to Dornburg with Zelter and Ternite. See
Goethe to Miiller, October 11, 1829: Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. 246. Sckell
describes the visit; he is, however, incorrect in placing it in August 1829.
Goethe, according to Sckell, visited Dornburg for the last time in August
1830.— Tr.
2 It was on this day that Goethe, talking with Miiller, recalled having
seen the Duchess, a light, slender girl, step into the carriage on the Zeil
at Frankfurt in 1773. See pp. 169 and 724. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 699
of the Duchess, and from Soret, who had a message of con
dolence from the reigning Grand Duchess. When Soret entered
Goethe said to him : " Well ! come, take your place. The
blow that has been threatening has fallen at last, and we have
not, at any rate, to struggle with cruel uncertainty any longer.
We must now see how we may reconcile ourselves afresh to
life." A letter from the King of Bavaria had been a great
comfort to Goethe. " I thank Heaven as for a special good
ness that I have received this letter just on this day." But in
the days that followed he felt sadly what a chasm in his life
the loss of his Princess had made. On Monday, February 15,
Soret found him melancholy and thoughtful, without a trace of
the excitement of the previous day. " I must work very hard
in order to bear up," he said.
In order to throw his whole powers into the labour of
perfecting the Classical Walpurgis- Night Goethe regularly put
aside the Globe and the Temps at this time, and depended on
his friends for his knowledge of what was occurring in the
outer world. Accordingly he made rapid progress in his
difficult task. But on Sunday, March 7, Eckermann going to
him, found that he had been forced to lay the drama aside in
order to finish the last " Lieferung " of his Works. A decision
of great importance for his domestic peace now ripened ; he
at last agreed that his son should travel to Italy with Ecker
mann as companion. Johanna Schopenhauer remarks indeed
that the condition of August was such as to forbid either the
hope or the wish that he would return. It was on March 16,
1830, that August came and told Eckermann of his father's
decision ; on April 2 2, after Eckermann had finished his work
at the last " Lieferung," the travellers started.
When the Classical Walpurgis-Night had at length been
successfully completed, Goethe turned his attention to the
Natural Sciences; and, above all, to Botany. Speaking of the
translation of the Metamorphosis, he writes to Soret that one of
the benefits which he has derived from the work is that by it
he has been led back again in the most delightful way to Plant
Life, before which he had felt a certain timidity for many years.1
In the second half of May 1830, to the great pleasure of
Goethe, Felix Mendelssohn, on a journey to Italy, called to see
1 Goethe to Soret, July 1, 1830.— Tr.

700 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
him. Mendelssohn had meant to spend only two days in
Weimar, but the old gentleman could not let the splendid young
genius depart so soon, and Felix did not leave until June 3,
1 830, after a fortnight's stay. Goethe, whose enjoyment of music
was increased by satisfying the historical sense,1 caused Felix
to play through works of great composers in chronological
order. When Felix was leaving Goethe gave him a sheet of
the manuscript of Faust with a dedication : " to my dear young
friend, the ruler strong and tender of the piano, in memory of
happy May days."
Soon after Mendelssohn's departure Goethe visited Jena
again (June 1830). The Botanic Gardens gave him especial
pleasure, and he examined the collections. The Library
assistant, Dr. Ernst Friedrich Weller, a fine worthy character,
endeared to Goethe by his steady sustained activity, received
him at about nine o'clock. After breakfasting in the familiar
corner-room on the second story they drove round the ram
parts, and then Goethe returned to Weimar.2 Very inter
esting letters and diaries were meanwhile being sent home by
August ; they bore witness to a dear practical insight, but were
not wanting in instances of the tendency of the young man to
energetic downright bluntness.
In the March of 1830 the scientific controversy between
Cuvier and Geoffroy de St. Hilaire had roused the deepest
interest in Goethe. St. Hilaire combated the Analytic method
of conceiving the investigation of Nature, and upheld the
method which had always been Goethe's, the Synthetic, which
in its consideration of details always cherishes the Idea of the
Whole, of Unity, from which the particular is deducible. This
controversy still filled his thoughts when on August 2, 1830,
Soret came to tell him the news of the July Revolution in Paris.3
Goethe had not expected that the Parisian Liberals would
take up arms; there was not sufficient revolutionary momentum
1 Goethe to Zelter, June 3, 1830. — Tr.
2 Goethe intended to visit Jena again soon, but did not. See his letter
to Gottling, June 30 ; to Weller, July 16 and 27, 1830. — Tr.
3 The conversation which followed is well known, and has been com
mented upon as a proof of Goethe's indifference to great political events.
But Hermann Uhde contends (Goethes Briefe an Soret, S. 105) that the
conversation has been made more pointed and effective by the literary art
of Eckermann, who was anxious that his supplementary volume should be
as interesting as possible. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 701
in the people, he thought1 None the less did he condemn the
insane folly of the ruler who had irritated the sleeping lion.2
On July 27, 1830, Goethe, telling Boissere'e of the con
troversy between Cuvier and St. Hilaire, had spoken of an
essay with which he meant to disentangle the complexity of the
affair, for his own sake and the sake of his friends. On August
11 he writes to Soret: — "I have . . . undertaken an essay
to make the matter clear ; this is hard, for both sides fight to
a certain degree in darkness : I will see whether I can cast light
on the field." At the close of this letter he writes :— -" And
now, finally, a hurried mention of an event which gives me
much pleasure : I have received from St. Petersburg specimens
of pure gold and pure platinum, each seven pennyweights in
weight, which I wish to lay before my friend's eyes." This is
the occurrence which gave rise to the outrageous story that
Goethe intercepted and kept a bar of gold intended for the
Mineralogical Cabinet.
Three days before his birthday Goethe informs Soret that
the needful arrangements between Frommann, who was to
print the translation of the Metamorphosis of Plants, and
Cotta, who was to publish it, have been concluded, and the
printing might soon begin.
The birthday of this year was kept as a day of festival in
Weimar and many other places. Here may be fitly noted
the great change of feeling shown by Frankfurt lately. In
1829 there had been a banquet and a representation of
selections from Faust in the theatre in Goethe's honour. Dr.
Stiebel, in proposing Goethe's health at the banquet, had
recited a Trinkspruch, whose two concluding lines were a
satirical reference to the treatment which Goethe's withdrawal
of his property had called forth in 1 8 1 7 : — 3
"Drum bleib' uns der Frankfurter Goethe theuer,
Bezahlt er auch keine Einkommensteuer. "
These lines were hailed with loud merriment. A birth
day letter from Marianne had not failed in 1829; she wrote
from Baden on August 26, and sent Goethe a crystal goblet.
When the Willemers returned to Frankfurt early in September
1 See Miiller's Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, January 11, 1830. — Tr.
2 Cf. Soret's notes of a conversation with Goethe on January 17, 1831.
— Tr. 3 See pp. 636-7. — Tr.

702 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
1829, Marianne was impressed by the turn that the general
feeling of Frankfurt had taken. On September 25, 1829, after
having mentioned the representation of Faust, she writes: —
" Yet you probably know all this, probably too have heard of
the banquet at the Forsthaus at which Thomas,1 the single
member of the Senate present might, however, be considered a
representative ; he was really astonished by what occurred.
And it was very plain on this occasion how deeply and pain
fully the poor Frankfurters feel the loss of such a fellow-
citizen, although the mode and manner in which they show it
is not to their honour. Undoubtedly, only a gentle hint on
your part, only the slightest indication is needed. . . ." But
Goethe thought that it was now too late ; the matter had
better be allowed to rest, he replies to Marianne on October
22, 1829. The good will ofthe Frankfurters had not abated
in 1830 when they sent him as a birthday gift a beautiful
silver cup and many bottles of good Rhine wine.
In September 1830 the Berlin Jahrbiicher fiir wissen-
schaftliche Kritik contained Goethe's review 2 of the book in
which St. Hilaire had opposed Cuvief. The review attracted
the attention of a great many, and excited much interest.
It had meanwhile become impossible to Eckermann to
accompany the wild uncontrollable August any longer. From
August's ietters Goethe perceived what ill-assorted compan
ions they were. In Genoa a letter from Goethe informed the
travellers that Eckermann would be welcome home if he felt
inclined to return. Early on the morning of Sunday, July 25,
1830, they parted in the streets of Genoa and entered two
carriages, one about to drive along the coast to Leghorn, the
other setting out across the mountains for Turin. Eckermann
reached Geneva on August 8, and stayed there for about seven
weeks. It was on September 12, 1830, that he first wrote to
Goethe. The cause of separation from August, which he put
forward as the chief one, was an irresistible desire to revise the
notes for his Conversations with Goethe. He had left these
notes in Weimar in charge of Soret. Goethe writes on October
12, 1830, that he does not wish the notes of his conversa
tion to be published soon, but he will be glad to go through
1 Thomas was the second husband- of Willemer's daughter Rosette.
whom we have known in her first widowhood as Rosette Stadel. — Tr.
2 Ueber Geoffrey's de St. Hilaire: Principes de philosophic zoologique. — Tr.

1824-1830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 703
them and correct them with Eckermann. He did not invite
Eckermann to Weimar yet, to have seen him return without
August would have been too hard.
Meanwhile Goethe had continued to receive good news
from his son, who, indeed, on the day of separation from
Eckermann, had had his collar-bone broken through the over
turning of the carriage on the road between Genoa and
Spezzia, but had recovered ere long, and after having seen
Carrara and Florence, had taken ship at Leghorn for Naples.
He was present when, on his father's birthday, they began
the excavation of a private house of Pompeii.1 Goethe remarks
to Zelter 2 that August seemed at home in Pompeii, his feel
ings, remarks, acts, in that city were gay, full of the delight
in living. Yet there were symptoms of ill discernible. Of
August in Naples he says : — " His letters thence failed, I
must confess, to satisfy me ; they indicated a certain haste, a
sickly kind of exaltation. ..." And again: — "A rapid
journey to Rome had no power to soothe the nature already
sorely agitated ; and the honourable and affectionate reception
of the Germans living in Rome, and of the important artists
there, seems to have been enjoyed with a kind of feverish
haste." With this "feverish haste" compare the old man's
ceaseless industry at home : — " I scarcely leave the little back
room that you know, engaged day and night in using the powers
that are left me."3 On November 11 the terrible news came.
August had hurried from Naples to Rome about the middle
of October 1830. The great impression of the "Niobe of
Cities" overpowered him, and, conjoined with a lively inter
course with the many German artists and intellectual men in
Rome, consumed in a few days the last remnants of strength
in his weak, feverish, excited being. He returned very unwell
one day from a trip to Albano ; an attack of scarlatina followed,
but seemed to be well past, when, on October 27, a stroke of
paralysis unexpectedly brought his life to a close. When the
body was opened it was found that the liver was three times
the natural size and that the brain was malformed. He was
1 This house was named the Casa di Goethe in honour of the day. See
page 717. — Tr.
3 In the letter of February 23, 1831, in which he gives Zelter a short
account of August's tour in Italy. The two following extracts are from
the same letter. — Tr. 3 Goethe to Zelter, October 29, 1830. — Tr.

704 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. i.
buried on the morning of October 29, 1830, near the Pyramid
of Cestius, where, many years before, his father in a melan
choly mood had planned a grave.1 Thorwaldsen, out of rever
ence for the old poet, sketched a monument for the son, and
had it erected.
The news of August's death was sent to Weimar by Lotte's
fourth son, the Minister Resident August Kestner. Chancellor
von Miiller undertook to tell Goethe. The old man, now
eighty-one, bore his trial with a kind of convulsive composure.2
He had long foreseen the loss, though not the manner of it.
He could not but reckon August fortunate in the circumstance
of his death ; while still in the full enjoyment of Rome, where
so much good friendliness had met him, he had gone to his
rest speedily, without the torment of lingering illness. The
strange and significant part of this trial lay in the fact that the
burden of labour which Goethe had thought very soon — even
in the new year — to shift to younger shoulders he must now
continue to bear himself, and must even bear a heavier one.
" In such a case the great conception of Duty alone has power
to sustain us," he writes to Zelter, November 21, 1830. Again,
as so often before, he sought restoration in earnest, eager
activity ; and he was passionately attracted by that part of his
life which offered the most striking contrast with the present
— the time of his love for Liii.3
1 See page 410. Goethe, who was aware of the merits of Scott
and Byron and Manzoni, and of the young Hugo, seems never to have
found out Shelley and Keats. (As to Shelley, see his conversation with
Miiller, November 18, 1824.) One wishes that he could have known
what dust it was that lay not far from his dear son's in " the romantic and
lonely cemetery of the Protestants, under the pyramid which is the tomb
of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate,
which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. " — Tr.
2 "Nemo ante obitum beatus is a saying that has made a figure in the
history of the world, but in reality it says nothing at all. To give it
some soundness it must be shaped thus : Expect trials till the end. You,
my good friend, have not lacked trials, nor have I ; and it seems as though
Destiny were of opinion that we are woven, not of nerves, veins, arteries,
and other organs deduced from them, but of metallic wire." Goethe to
Zelter, November 21, 1830. When Miiller had told him he had exclaimed :
" Non ignoravi me mortalem genuisse !" his eyes filling with tears. — Tr.
3 Goethe, writing to Zelter, December 10, 1830, tells how he attacked
the fragmentary fourth volume of Dichtung und Wahrheit in November,
and in a fortnight had made it possible to print it. Then his illness had
come on. In March 183 1 we find him submit it to Eckermann. — Tr.

1 824- 1 830.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 705
After Eckermann left Geneva he had visited Frankfurt and
Cassel, and had arrived in Nordheim, where his betrothed
lived, at the close of October 1830. He started for Weimar
on the afternoon of November 20, and reached Gottingen at
dusk. The landlord of the inn, hearing that Eckermann
came from Weimar, and was now returning, calmly said that
the great poet Goethe had to endure a great misfortune in
his old age, for the day's papers announced the death of his
only son in Italy. Eckermann passed a sleepless night, and
afterwards, on the journey alone in the carriage, on the gloomy
November days, amid the desert stillness of the November
fields, could not take his thoughts off the terrible event and
the father's grief. He arrived in Weimar on Tuesday, Novem
ber 23, 1830, in the evening. He went to Goethe's house.
The noble old man stood firm and upright before him, and
clasped him lovingly in his arms. Then he sat down, appar
ently calm and cheerful, and talked of many things, only not a
word of his son. The return of Eckermann was undoubtedly
a great comfort ; beside the satisfaction of affection, it lightened
.the old man's burden, for he felt that he might reckon on the
most faithful aid in the difficult and important labour of pre
paring all that was still fragmentary and unarranged for publi
cation after his death.1 Two days later, November 25, 1830,
Eckermann dined with Goethe and Ottilie, and had to tell
about his travels. After dinner Goethe spoke of the Conver
sations : " It must be your first work, and we will not desist
until the whole is complete and in order." Yet he seemed to
Eckermann unusually quiet, and often lost in his thoughts — no
good sign ! That night he was seized with a violent haemorrhage.
The extreme skill of his doctor and absolute rest soon restored
him. On November 29, 1830, he wrote to Zelter in pencil:
" Noch ist das Individuum beisammen und bei Sinnen. Gliick
auf!"2 On the morning of November 30 he sent Eckermann
some poems for revision and arrangement, and added that
Faust should soon follow. To complete Faust before death
now lay on his heart as the last task of his poetic life. The
plan of revising the Conversations had to be abandoned.
1 Zelter called Eckermann (December 2, 1830) "Der getreue Eckart,"
and Goethe, writing to Zelter on December 14, 1830, uses the title. — Tr.
2 " The individual is still together, and in his senses. Good speed ! "
— Tr. 2 z

CHAPTER II.
THE CLOSING DAYS.
December 1830-MARCH 1832.
Goethe's word : " Lange leben heisst viele iiberleben,"1 was
destined to prove its truth in his case with the most painful
force. But that other word: "Ueber Graber, vorwarts !"2
was no less a real part of him. Three years ago Zelter had
written sadly, telling of the death of his youngest son. " Let
us continue to labour," Goethe replied, " until, in whatsoever
order summoned by the Spirit of the Universe, we return to
the aether." Death, " that ancient tale " which the Parcae
unweariedly repeat to one another,3 had no terrors for Goethe,
though he felt intensely the piteousness of the fate of Man,
who is forced to depart when the powers of his mind have
reached their highest development ; a feeling that found keen
utterance on the occasion of Sommering's death.4 The short
remaining portion of Goethe's life was, even more than the
previous years, "testamentary."5 Duties which would have
1 "To live long is to outlive many." This is from Goethe's letter to
Zelter, March 19, 1827. The "word" occurs with modifications else
where. See Goethe to Boisseree, October 17, 1817 ; Goethe to Schlosser,
May 17, 1819; Goethe to the Countess Bernstorff, April 17, 1823 (see
p. 644).— Tr.
2 "Over the graves, forward !" This will be found at the close of
the letter, dated February 23, 183 1, in which Goethe tells Zelter about
the last months of August's life. — Tr.
3 See the already-quoted letter to Zelter, March 19, 1827. — Tr.
4 Sommering died in March 1830. See Soret's account of a conver
sation with Goethe, March 17, 1830. — Tr.
6 Cp. Goethe to Zelter, January 9, 1827 ; Goethe to Boisseree,
January 19, 1827; Goethe to Wilhelm von Humboldt, March 1, 1829;
and Goethe to Zelter, November 23, 1831, for instances of his use of this
word. — Tr.

i530-i»32.J THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 707
fallen to August were now his. It was incumbent on him to
provide for the future of his grandchildren ; and, instead of
trustfully leaving his literary Remains to a son's discretion, he
had to form plans about it and communicate his will con
cerning it to faithful friends ; while that difficult labour — the
completion of unfinished writings (the most important, of
course, being the Faust and Dichtung und Wahrheit), was no
less imperatively needful than before.
Goethe counted his letters to various persons as part of
his Remains. We have already seen him revising and arrang
ing the Correspondence with Zelter? It occurred to him that
the proceeds of this Correspondence should be allotted as a
provision for Zelter's daughter Doris. On December 6, 1830,
Goethe asks Zelter to send a legal affirmation of this plan,
which can then take its place among the clauses of his will.
To Eckermann Goethe confided the task of examining his
diaries and letters, in order to select all that ought to be pub
lished in the Remains. (The project of going through Ecker
mann's Conversations had been dropped.) Drafts of Goethe's
letters to various persons had been kept since 1807. Ecker
mann spent some weeks at the end of the year 1830 in
carefully examining the letters of a few years. On January 1,
183 1, he brought Goethe a statement of considerations which
should, in his opinion, determine the manner of publishing
them. Goethe went over his statement point by point,
approved of it, and said : — " In my will I will name you as
the editor of these letters, and I will moreover indicate that
we are in general of the same opinion as to the method to
be observed." Meanwhile Chancellor von Miiller had under
taken to draft Goethe's will. On January 5, 1831, Miiller
brought the draft to him, and he signified complete approval.
On January 29 he writes to Zelter : — "My will . . . was
handed over to the Grand-Ducal Government on January 8 ;
in the last few days a codicil has been added, in order to
make my extremely-complicated affairs as clear as possible for
my descendants." It was a great relief to Goethe when the
final arrangements about his will were made. On January 8
he excuses the shortness of his letter to Zelter thus : — " Forgive
me if I stop here. All this providing for the future deprives
1 See p. 673.— Tr.

708 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. ii.
me of my activity in the present moment ; and it is to be
feared that when we have left this behind us a new Leviathan
will open wide his jaws."
During the first two months of 183 1 Goethe was tolerably
well, nay, we find him towards the close of February venturing
on a drive, and enjoying the prospect of the snow-covered
hills.1 Ottilie did all she could think of to give him pleasure.
She was his constant companion; and in the evenings she
read aloud to him from his correspondence with Zelter. We
must also picture Goethe as the delighted sympathiser in the
little joys and sorrows of his grandchildren ; the glimpses we
obtain of him in his relation to them reveal a noble tender
ness and wisdom. His sorrow for August had calmed in so
far that he found himself able to send to his Italian friends
a hasty sketch of August's journey, derived from the diaries.
The diaries themselves were "extremely interesting, but, on
account of the always-prominent individuality . . . not to be
communicated in their peculiar energy and decisiveness."2
The death of August was celebrated by the Freemasons'
Lodge with the solemnity worthy of the occasion.
The Court of Weimar did everything possible to show
honour to Goethe. Every Thursday the Grand Duchess visited
him, and in all her schemes for the advancement of art and of
science she asked his advice; the Grand Duke visited him
frequently in the evenings, and the Hereditary Prince came
sometimes in Soret's company. Retired as Goethe's present
life was, he found it easy to manage his official business, for
everything that he had charge of was in the very best order.
August's place in the Superintendence was filled by the ap
pointment of Vogel, the physician, but for whose skill Goethe
believed that he should have died long before.3 There was
one source of bitter annoyance to Goethe in these official
matters, the Estates would insist on an exact account of the
expenditure of the money placed in his hands ; they were of
course only exercising their right, and yet it was hard on the
old poet, after so many years of unquestioned benevolent
autocracy, to be summoned thus to judgment. It was a deep
grief to him when the news of the death of his true old friend
1 See Eckermann's Conversations, February 23, 1831. — Tr.
2 Goethe to Zelter, February 19, 1831. — Tr.
3 See Eckermann's Conversations, January 24, 1830. — Tr.

1830-1832.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 709
Klinger, in St. Petersburg, arrived in Weimar.1 There had
been a revival of intercourse between Goethe and Klinger in
the beginning of the century, immediately after Goethe's dread
ful illness, and at the time when the relations between the
Court of Weimar and of Russia had grown intimate.2
Meanwhile the great industry which we now have followed
through so many years knew no slackening. The translation
of the Metamorphosis of Plants was still passing through the
press during the early months of 1831. Careful scrutiny of
the manuscript and of proofs gave Goethe a great deal to do,
and led him continually deeper into the subject. Moreover,
there was the duty of completing the Second Part of Faust.
In February 1831 he attacked the Fourth Act.3 His advance
was slow, for he was only able to work at it in the early part
of the day while his brain was still fresh after sleep. About
this time he made up packets of the letters in his possession,
intending to return tljem to the senders. One of these packets
contained the letters of Marianne. On March 3, 1 831, he
wrote eight beautiful lines,4 which have reference to this resti
tution to Marianne. Yet he could not bear to pain her yet
by an act which would bring home to her, with such great
force, the inevitable nearness of his death, and the letters did
not find their way to Frankfurt until a later time.
Immediately after this Goethe felt very unwell, and only
his most intimate friends were admitted. Bleeding was pre
scribed, then he felt pains in his right leg, and at length his
internal complaint relieved itself through a wound in the foot,
1 See Miiller, Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, March 31, 183 1. — Tr.
2 It will be remembered how Klinger followed Goethe to Weimar in
1776. (See p. 266.) Klinger's dissolute life, and the bad offices of the
Kraftapostel Kaufmann, had caused a breach between the two friends
even before Lenz's " donkeyism " (see p. 288). Later Klinger entered the
Russian military service and rose to a high rank in it. Part of the corre
spondence of the second period of friendship between Goethe and Klinger
is printed in the Goethe -Jahrbuch for 1882. Klinger died February 25,
1831. See the Appendix. — Tr.
3 See Eckermann's Conversations, February 11, 1831. — Tr.
4 The lines beginning —
" Vor die Augen meiner Lieben,
Zu den Fingern die 's geschrieben."
See Creizenach's note, Goethe und Marianne von Willemer, pp. 304-5 ;
and see Duntzer, Westostlicher Divan, -p. 168. — Tr.

710 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. il
upon which he recovered rapidly, and at the close of March
was as bright and gracious as ever.1 On March 25 he had
shown to Eckermann an elegant green arm-chair that he had
bought at an auction. " However, I shall use it little or not
at all," he said, "for all kinds of comfortableness are really
quite contrary to my nature. You see no sofa in my room ; I
always sit in my old wooden chair, and it is only within the
last few weeks that I have had a kind of rest put up for my
head. A surrounding of comfortable, pretty furniture paralyses
my thought and brings me into an easy, passive condition.
Splendid rooms and elegant furniture, unless we are accustomed
to them from youth, are for people who have no thoughts and
who desire none."
During the period of indisposition he had not ceased to
work. We have seen that he had begun- the Fourth Act of
Faust, and now the Fourth Volume of Dichtung und Wahrheit
was taken out, and Eckermann was employed to examine it,
and Goethe talked over with him the results of this examina
tion.2 And there was the old unwearied activity of interest in
science, literature, and art.3
On March 31 Goethe was, as we have seen, quite well
again, and the Grand Duchess paid him her usual Thursday
visit. When she inquired after his health he gallantly replied
that, until to-day, he had not perceived his recovery, but her
presence made him feel anew the happiness of restoration to
health. On the same day Miiller met, at Goethe's house, the
Grand Duke, and Spontini, who was returning from a visit to
Paris. Among other things Goethe talked of Klinger a good
deal. On May 2, 1831, Goethe told the delighted Ecker
mann that he had almost succeeded in completing the begin
ning of the Fifth Act of the Second Part of Faust. (The later
part of this Act had been written some time.) On May 15
Eckermann dined alone with Goethe in his workroom. After
a great deal of cheerful talk Goethe rose, and taking a paper
from his desk, said : " When a man has passed the age of
eighty, as I have, he has hardly a right to live ; he ought day
by day to hold himself ready to be called away, and should be
1 Soret in Eckermann's Conversations, March 31, 1831.  Tr.
2 See Eckermann's Conversations, March 15 and 16, 1831.  Tr.
3 See Goethe to Boisseree, March 20, 1831 — a passage near the
beginning of the letter. — Tr.

1830-1832.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 711
intent on setting his house in order. As I told you lately,!
have in my will appointed you editor of my literary Remains,
and this morning I have drawn up, as a kind of contract, a
little paper which you and I shall both sign." After signing
they discussed matters of detail as to which they had not yet
fully decided. Goethe told Eckermann that, if needful, the
polemic part of the Farbenlehre might be omitted.
Four days after this conversation Goethe was attacked by a
violent catarrh. It lasted four weeks, tormenting and weary
ing him, and at times making him very depressed and irritable.
But it did not check his labour ; he fought day by day in the
endeavour to do the duty that lay next him.1 And the time
was not without many alleviating and pleasurable events. The
last sheets of Soret's translation of the Metamorphosis of Plants
passed through the press, and a great burthen was lifted off
Goethe. He sent one copy to the Academie Franfaise.
On July 8, 1 83 1, he writes to Zelter : — " It is well with me
in every sense ; so that I have set before me an object to be
attained ere my next birthday — an object which I will not
precipitately mention. If I succeed you shall be the first to
hear of it." The object in view was the completion of Faust.
Shortly after Goethe had two pleasant visits. On July 14,
183 1, the King of Wiirtemberg, accompanied by the Crown-
Prince and Soret, came. On July 22 Goethe and Riemer,
when out driving at about five o'clock in the afternoon, met
Zelter and Schultz ; they turned back at once, and, after the
new-comers had arranged matters at the "Swan" inn, all
spent the evening together. Zelter remained until July 26 ;
this was the last meeting of the old friends. After Zelter's
departure the colossal marble bust of Goethe that David had
modelled in 1829 at last arrived in Weimar. It was accom
panied by a reverential letter from David : — " Vous etes la
grande figure poetique de notre epoque, elle vous doit une
statue." Goethe gave the bust to the Library of Weimar, to
be the companion of Dannecker's bust of Schiller. Another
very much prized gift arrived in August 1 83 1. Under date
August 20, 1831, Goethe writes to Zelter: — "Fifteen English
Friends — as they subscribe themselves — caused a seal to be
prepared by their most famous goldsmiths. It is of a size to
1 See Goethe to Zelter, June 18, 1831.— Tr.

712- THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. ii.
be easily contained in the hollow of the hand, and in shape
is like a longish vase. . . . The English seem to think the
word 'Ohne Rast, doch ohne Hast'1 to be one of consider
able significance, and at bottom it is a very good expression
of their own way of acting. These words are inscribed around
a star, within the well-known serpent circling all ; unfortunately
Old German capital letters are used, and these tend somewhat
to obscure the meaning. It is a gift in every sense worthy of
thanks, and I have written some friendly rhymes2 to them in
return for it." The originator of this gift was Thomas Carlyle ;
and among the subscribers were, beside Carlyle, two of the
greatest Englishmen then living — Walter Scott and Words
worth. The rest were poets and literary men, all, with but a
few exceptions, of real importance, though they attained not
to the first three.3 The letter which accompanied the seal
speaks with deep feeling of the great debt due to the poet
Goethe, as a spiritual teacher, by the whole world ; " our
chief, perhaps our only benefactor, is he who by act and word
instructs us in wisdom."4
Meanwhile Goethe had attained the goal towards which
he had so long been striving. He had finished the Faust.
By August 183 1 the manuscript of the whole Second Part
lay before him stitched and complete. He was very happy.
"The rest of my life," he said to Eckermann, "may be
regarded as a free gift ; and it is now in reality a matter of
indifference what I do, and whether I do anything at all."
The birthday which proved to be the last of Goethe's life
1 Goethe misquotes his own words. The verses will be found among
the Zahme Xenien ; — "Wie das Gestirn,
Ohne Hast,
Aber ohne Rast,
Drehe sich jeder
Um die eigne Last ! " — Tr.
2 To Nineteen Friends in England. See a note in the Appendix.
— Tr.
3 Southey, Proctor, Heraud (of Eraser's Magazine), Professor Wilson,
John Carlyle, Lockhart, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, Moir, Jerdan (of
the Literary Gazette), Maginn, Fraser (of the Foreign Review), Churchill
(author of a translation of Wallensteins Lager that appeared in Eraser's
Magazine). — Tr.
4 See Eraser's Magazine, iv. 447 (November 1831). — Tr.

1830-1832.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 713
was now close at hand. It would be celebrated in Weimar
by festivities, which he desired to avoid ; and accordingly, on
August 26, 1831, he betook himself to Ilmenau, accompanied
by his grandsons. Eighteen years since, at the same season
of the year, he had gone thither to join Karl August,1 and
since that time he had not seen the place. Mining for silver
in Ilmenau had been entirely abandoned ; still the poet could
find a source of great pleasure in the " remarkable utilisation
of the manifold surfaces and depths of earth and mountain "
that he observed. The boys absorbed everything with fresh,
healthy senses, and he watched them with delight, as we have
known him watch August long ago.2 " These dear novices
pressed without poetic vehicle into contact with the primary
immediate circumstance of Nature. They saw the charcoal-
burners on the spot as they live, people who during the whole
year taste neither bread nor butter nor beer, subsisting only on
potatoes and goat's milk ; and there are others, such as wood
cutters, glass-blowers, who fare in the same way; but all are
more cheerful than we, who usually lose the To-day because
there has been a Yesterday and a To-morrow is coming."3
This excursion lasted six days, the very brightest days of all
that summer.4 It was at the inn called " The Lion," in the
little town, that Goethe stayed during this time.
On August 27, 183 1, he invited the Rentamtmann Mahr
to drive with him to the hill called the Gickelhahn. There,
almost half a century ago, he had written the noble poem
Ilmenau, addressed to Karl August5 Here, too, and at the
same time, he had pencilled the verses Nachtlied6 on the wall
1 In 1813. See p. 607.— Tr. 2 Seep. 477.— Tr.
3 Goethe to the Willemers, September 22, 1 831. — Tr.
* Goethe to Zelter, September 4, 1831. — Tr.
5 See pp. 346, 352.— Tr.
8 "Ueber alien Gipfeln." In the edition 6f his poems published in
1815 these lines follow the Wanderers Nachtlied of 1776 (see p. 254),
and are entitled Ein Gleiches. The date affixed to them is "6th Septem
ber 1783." Now Goethe was not in Ilmenau on September 6, 1783.
On that day he started from Weimar for the Harz with Fritz Stein
(see p. 356). But Duntzer gives the original inscription on the hut
wall: — "Am 2 Sept. 1783, Nachtlied." On that day we know
Goethe to have been at Ilmenau. (Duntzer, Goethes lyrische Gedichte, ii.
150.) (Several Goethe scholars, however, assert that the original date was
"September 7, 1780." Goethe spent the night between September 6

714 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. ii.
of the wooden hut on the summit. When the carriage which
bore Mahr and Goethe had gone as far as possible, they
alighted to climb the rest of the way on foot Goethe gazed
on the beautiful prospect with mingled delight and sadness.
" Ah," he cried, " would that my good Grand Duke Karl
August could have seen this loveliness once more !" Then
he hurried up the steep ascent with youthful eagerness, nor
would he accept any aid from his companion. When he
stood before the inscription —
" Ueber alien Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In alien Wipfeln
Spurest du
Kaum einen Hauch ;
Die Vbgeln schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch " —
tears flowed down his face. Slowly he drew his handkerchief
from his pocket, dried his tears, and said in a gentle, melan
choly voice : " Ja warte nur, balde ruhest du auch!" was silent
half a minute, looked out through the window at the dark
pine-wood, and then turned to Mahr, saying : " Now we will
go down again."
Though Goethe had fled from Weimar to avoid birthday
festivities, the good people of Ilmenau, with Oberjdgermeister
von Fritsch at their head, were determined not to let the day
pass unhonoured ; they did not forget what Ilmenau and the
whole neighbourhood owed to the great poet Early in the
morning the chorale : "Nun danket alle Gott! " was sung in front
of the " Lion " inn. A cheerful company assembled at the
dinner with which they entertained him later on ; and in the
evening there was a great deal of music, and the miners'
comedy mentioned in Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre was per
formed. In Weimar the colossal bust by David had been
unveiled in the Library on August 28, and the usual banquet
had taken place, with signs of sympathy more general than
ever. And eighteen friends in Frankfurt united to send him a
and 7, 1780, in the hut on the Gickelhahn. See his letter to Charlotte
von Stein, in which he describes the clear evening sky, the faint smoke,
the great stillness. Loeper, Goedeke, and Fielitz believe the poem to
have been written on that evening.)— Tr.

1830-1832.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 715
gift truly characteristic of his native city, viz. four dozen of
old Main wine and Rhine wine.
We have heard him say to Eckermann when Faust was
finished : " I consider the rest of life as a gift." Yet he con
tinued to add many touches to Faust during the autumn.
Moreover that last precious volume of Dichtung und Wahrheit
was still unfinished. Fortunately for his labours his good
health remained unbroken until the final illness, though he
had to lead a very regular and secluded life, and there were
many signs of the feebleness of old age. It was at this period
that he read Cicero's treatise De Senectute for the first time.
We find him venturing out-of-doors even in October. Thus
on October 6 he visited the Central Tree Nursery, and on
October 19 he was present at the Exhibition held at Belve
dere of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture. Botany
continued to exercise the same delightful attraction ; that which
chiefly interested him was the discovery of Martius of the
spiral tendency of plants ; moreover, he had entered into com
munication with the chemist Wackenroder on the subject of
the chemistry of plants. His life was, as ever, an unresting
toil ; each morning he found more work waiting on him than
the day sufficed for — Art, Literature, Natural Science, the old
official tasks with which we are so familiar, the activity of
beneficence to fellow-creatures, and a wide correspondence.
Moreover, he enjoyed a remarkable tranquil domestic
happiness during these closing months ; the behaviour of
Ottilie and his grandchildren was " allerliebst."1 Ottilie
shielded him skilfully from unpleasantness ; saw that every
thing occurred at the right time; read aloud to him in the
evenings from Plutarch's Lives, and by her intelligence and
originality of character was a source of continual delight.
Moreover, the visits from the royal family of Weimar, and con
tinual intercourse with a circle of good friends — Eckermann,
Riemer, Meyer, Miiller, Coudray, and Vogel — contributed to
give brightness to the evening of his life.
In November 1831 Goethe withdrew to live entirely in the
rooms at the rear of his house, " where the rising sun, just at
this season, shines horizontally into my room, and does not
leave me until it sets, so that its obtrusiveness often grows
1 Goethe to Zelter, No. 818 (vi. 300).— Tr.

716 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [bk. x. ch. ii.
inconvenient, and I am actually compelled to shut it out for a
while."1 In these little rooms he felt very happy, for there
was not a moment unoccupied by some interesting labour.
In January 1832 he read aloud Faust to Ottilie, and he con
tinued to change and retouch the drama. It is strange to find
Goethe at this time supplying an omission in his Farbenlehre,
as he had planned to do many years before. Boisseree wrote
in December 1831, noticing that a word in explanation of the
Rainbow might well be inserted, since Goethe was preparing
his Farbenlehre for publication as part of his Remains. Upon
this Goethe began an exposition of the Rainbow in a series of
letters to Boissere'e. His death came before the series was
finished. The Farbenlehre, in general, occupied a good deal
of his time at present ; the historical part especially called for
revision. Another branch of science which engaged Goethe's
last months was Comparative Anatomy. A second article on
St. Hilaire was only completed by March 1832. Goethe had
ere this entirely abandoned the study of Meteorology, and the
meteorological institutions of Jena were contracted in their
operation ; for it was thought that no laws were deducible
from observations made in such a fickle climate — the task
must- be left to meteorologists in tropical lands.
A visit from Zelter's daughter Doris in January 1832
brought a pleasant stir and excitement into the quiet family
circle of the Goethes. Ottilie was an admirable hostess, and
Goethe too aided in his own fashion, so that Doris enjoyed
the Weimar life very much. Yet Goethe, with all his cheerful
sympathy in the life of others, did not forget that his own end
must be near. On February 10, 1832, he told Marianne of
the packet of her letters that he had prepared. He only
asked her to promise not to open it until " the indeterminate
hour" arrived.2
On March 6, 1832, Goethe received a letter from the
artist Zahn,3 who was then in Pompeii, accompanied by a hasty
sketch of a splendid mosaic painting. This sketch gave the
poet a great deal of joyful occupation. The painting, a repre
sentation of one of the battles of Alexander, had been found
1 Goethe to Zelter, November 23, 1 831. — Tr.
2 The packet was not sent to Marianne until after Goethe's death. See
Eckermann's letter to her, Creizenach, Goethe und Marianne, 329. — Tr.
3 See pp. 679 and 680. — Tr.

1830-1832.] THE RESTLESS CLOSE. 717
in the house excavated in the presence of August Goethe in
1830. This house had received the name Casa di Goethe.
Zahn. in his letter related how, on Goethe's last birthday, a
company of Germans and foreigners had met in this house
and celebrated the day with high revel. Goethe sent a long
letter of thanks to Zahn on March 10, 1832.
On March 15 the Grand Duchess paid Goethe her usual
Thursday visit. He talked with vivacity of the Pompeian
painting and of many other things, especially of the political
events of the day. At dinner he was very cheerful, and he
took his usual drive. He was quite well that evening. But
he had a very restless night, and his grandson Wolf, coming
to breakfast with him as usual, found him in bed. Yet he
was able to receive visits in the evening. On Sunday, March
18, he spent a few hours out of bed, and spoke of work again.
On the evening of March 19 he talked with his doctor (who,
as we have seen, was associated with him in the Superintend
ence), of many matters connected with the institutions that
dealt with Art and Science ; he was especially intent on the
promotion of certain of the officials whom he had ere this
recommended to Vogel. On the night between the 19th and
20th the illness suddenly assumed a threatening character.
After some hours of sound sleep Goethe awoke about mid
night and felt a chill, that began with the hands, spreading
minute by minute over his whole body, and soon pains in the
chest difficulty of breathing, and restless wretchedness followed.
Yet he would not allow his servant to call the doctor, because
there was "only suffering in question, no danger to life."
When Vogel came in the morning the case seemed to him a
very bad one ; however, the measures which he adopted
brought great relief, and on this day, Tuesday, March 20,
1832, Goethe was able to sign a document which secured a
regular support to a gifted young artist, a Weimar lady, in
whom he took a paternal interest1 Next day, Wednesday,
March 21, Goethe seemed better in the forenoon, but from
noon on the signs of the approaching end were plain. Yet
he still anticipated recovery. The doctor would not allow
any one to see him but Ottilie, his grandchildren, and his
1 This, Goethe's last handwriting, is preserved in the Grand Ducal
Library of Weimar.— Tr.

7i8

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

[bk. x. CH. II.

servant. On the morning of March 22 he had Ottilie to sit
beside him ; he held her hand long in his and talked cheer
fully with her. But his words began to grow gradually more
and more indistinct, until at length all speech failed. Then
he sought to communicate by signs, at first in the air, then,

0TP

rf

uJ<n*d /fdZ.

Fig. 41. Goethe lying in death. From the original drawing by Friedrich Preller, by
permission ofthe possessor ofthe drawing, Frau Mathilde Arnemann of Weimar.

when his waning strength sufficed no longer to hold up his
arm, he wrote on his lap. At about half-past eleven in the
forenoon he drew himself into the corner of his chair and
departed gently from life — so gently that the actual moment was
unobserved. At the same hour, on the same day of the month,
his true friend Voigt had died thirteen years before. And in

ioju-i03Z.J

THE RESTLESS CLOSE.

719

1825 the theatre of Weimar was burned on March 22, and this
he had thenceforward regarded as his day of misfortune.
We refrain from any description of the great sympathy
shown by those who came to see the dead lying in state, or
of the splendid funeral which accompanied him to the Fiirsten
gruft on the afternoon of March 2 6. With reverence let us
enter that vault where, as he desired, his dust was laid by that
of Schiller, in an oaken shrine in front of the bronze coffins of

•<

Fig. 42. The Fiirstengruft of Weimar. From an old engraving.

Karl August and Luise, the good friends of his long, toilful,
glorious life. Mankind knows no spot more sacred than the
resting-place of the German Dioscuri. They do not, like the
Twin-Brethren of Grecian legend, lead a life of alternate splen
dour and darkness, now in Olympus, now in the lower world —
they live in the light of a fame not subject to the limitations of
place or time. And that their final repose in union is so true a
symbol of the noble brotherhood that united them in life is a
rare blossom in the wreath of pure human virtues which,
together with the laurel, adorns Goethe's brow.

720

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

~,«.*>*>/>g — &-***p/*<£^/

1784

1793.

2?"

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^^?<Sdy

1827.

1827.

Facsimile Signatures of Goethe at various times.

APPENDIX.

A second edition of this life of Goethe has been called for already in
Germany. The author has taken the opportunity to revise in accordance
with the latest discoveries. Nearly all the translation was in type
before the second edition was finished. Therefore I endeavour in the
following Appendix to give to English Goethe - students the value of the
most important changes in a series of numbered Articles. In each case I
give reference to the page of the translation where the article may be sup
posed to intercalate. The possessors of the translation can easily insert
on its pages counter references to the articles of the Appendix.
It must be borne in mind that minute changes in the text of the
original, due to the taste of the author, and in general tiny enlargements
of the mass of fact, which do not affect our view of Goethe, are omitted
from this Appendix. They would really tend to diminish its usefulness.
I. Circumstance of Goethe's birth, page i. — Goethe, according to the
Book of Baptisms of Frankfurt, was born between noon and one o'clock
on August 28, 1749, and was baptized in his father's house on the follow
ing day by Dr. Johann Philipp Fresenius, the Sunday preacher at the Grey
Friars Church. Dr. Fresenius was the clergyman who afterwards under
took to prepare Wolfgang for confirmation (page 32).
2. The date of the birth of Johann Kaspar Goethe (page 2) is omitted
in the second edition. The date of his baptism is given instead. It is
July 31, 1710.
3. Wealth of the elder Goethes. — Friedrich Georg Goethe (page 2) grew
rich rapidly after settling in Frankfurt. After the death of his first wife
his wealth increased until he paid the highest assessment in Frankfurt,
and when he married Cornelia Schelhorn his property was twice as great
as hers. Soon after his second marriage his wife's father, one of the richest
men of the city, died, leaving his daughter one -third of his property.
Johann Kaspar Goethe left the greater part of the family property to his
mother's disposal while she lived. He paid tax on only 2000 gulden. In
1704, Friedrich Georg Goethe, just before his second marriage, had paid
tax on 15,000.
4. Hermann Jakob Goethe, page 8. — The cause which prevented
intimacy with this man's family was the badness of the character of his
wife. 3 A

722 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
5. Goethe in Wetzlar. — It is observed (page 144) that Goethe did little
in Wetzlar to increase his knowledge of Law. The single trace of his
presence, writes Herbst (Goethe in Wetzlar, 33), that the lawyer Goethe
has left in Wetzlar is his entry in the Matrikel, a book kept for the self-
registry of young practitioners —
Johann Wolfg. Goethe
von Frfurt am Mayn. 23 May, 1772.
Duntzer notes in the new edition that those students who really pur
posed to learn some law placed themselves under some older lawyer, who
gave them lectures and law-work. We do not hear that Goethe did
anything of the kind.
6. Charlotte Buff's birthday, see pages 146 and 165, footnote. — On
page 156 of the new edition, the date January 11 is a misprint for
January 13. Herbst is quite mistaken on this point. The church
registry of Wetzlar contains the entry of Charlotte Buff's birth on January
13, 1753, and the entry of her baptism on January 14, 1733. It was
then customary in Germany to baptize on the day following the day of
birth. 7. Kestner and Lotte, page 147. — In the new edition (page 158) Duntzer
writes : — " The young Secretaiy of Legation was soon the most intimate
friend of the family. But it was only to her mother that he declared his
love for Charlotte, and his purpose to win her for his wife. Frau Buff
gave her blessing to the union before her death, which took place in
March 1771. From that time the cares of the household fell on Charlotte."
I add, however, that Kestner soon learned that Lotte loved him. On
November 2, 1768, he writes : — " I know that I possess the whole heart
of my beloved. May Heaven keep it mine. "
8. The walks on which Goethe accompanied Lotte, page 149. — Duntzer
adds in the new edition (page 159) that they sometimes went as far as
Garbenheim, or even to Atzbach, to see friends named Rhodius. Herbst
(page 114) mentions, however, that when Kestner was not with them
some female friend accompanied Lotte.
9. The remarkable crisis of Goethe' s passion for Lotte in August 1772,
pages 151-153. — When Goethe visited Lotte on August 8, at Atzbach,
the passionate ardour which he displayed made her feel very uneasy.
On August 13 Kestner was in Giessen on business. He returned on
the same day, and Lotte, accompanied by Dorothea von Brandt and by
Goethe, came to meet him. In the evening Kestner was much vexed
when he heard from Lotte that Goethe had kissed her. Lotte told it
frankly and simply, not so much complaining of Goethe as regretting
that the incident had occurred. Kestner's Diary has the following
entries : —
" A little brouillerie with Lottchen [on August 13], which was all past
and forgotten next day.
"August 14. In the evening Goethe, returning from a walk, came to
the courtyard [of the Teutonic Order]. He was treated with indifference,
and soon went away.

S-JO.] APPENDIX. 723
"August 15. Goethe was sent to Atzbach to take an apricot to Frau
Rentmeisterin Rhodius. He returned at ten o'clock in the evening, and
found us sitting outside the door ; the flowers that he brought were left
lying about carelessly ; he felt the slight, and flung them away ; he spoke
in parables. I walked with Goethe that night in the street until twelve
o'clock ; a remarkable conversation, when he showed himself to be full of
disgust, and had all kinds of fancies, at which in the end we laughed,
leaning against a wall in the moonlight.
" On August 16 — it was a Sunday — Goethe received a lecture from
Lottchen ; she declared to him that he had nothing but friendship to hope
for ; he grew pale, and was very much cast down. We went out for a
walk by the Neustadt Gate afterwards, Goethe and I in Bostel's company. "
Goethe went to Giessen on August 18, 1772, page 151. Herbst
(Goethe in Wetzlar, 134) mentions that Lotte had gone thither on August
1 7 — the day after that Sunday on which she had given Goethe the lecture.
When Goethe and Merck were at Pfaff 's house on the evening of August
18, it was proposed that Lotte should return to Wetzlar in their company.
This she refused to do : she wished Kestner to come and fetch her home.
On the afternoon of August 19 Goethe and Merck wandered down the
bank of the Lahn to Wetzlar. Goethe hastened to Kestner late that
evening and told him that Lotte wanted him to go to Giessen for her, and
also informed him of Merck's arrival. Veiy early on the morning of
August 20, Kestner arose and rode to Giessen and brought Lotte home in
a carriage which he hired in Giessen. Lotte drove the horse herself, and
the two lovers arrived in Wetzlar before noon. After dinner the whole Buff
family accompanied Merck and Goethe to Garbenheim. There they
separated, the Buffs returning to Wetzlar, Goethe and Merck going on to
Giessen. On August 22, a Saturday, Merck left Giessen for Frankfurt,
where he meant to spend the Sunday with Goethe's parents. Merck's
endeavour to persuade Goethe to come back to. Frankfurt was fruitless
(page 151), but Goethe promised to meet Merck on some fixed day
within a few weeks at the house of Frau von Laroche at Thalehren-
breitstein, and thence to go up the Rhine with him to Frankfurt. The time
originally fixed for Goethe's stay in Wetzlar was indeed over, and Rath
Goethe could not but desire the return of his son, who was making so
little use of the legal advantages of Wetzlar. See Herbst, Goethe in
Wetzlar, 189.
10. The farce: Das Ungliick der Jacobis. — This farce, which the old
edition placed after Werther in the spring of 1774 (page 188) Duntzer
now removes to the October of 1772. On the last day of May, or in the
beginning of June, 1774, Goethe told Johanna Fahlmer that Das Ungliick
der Jacobis was written immediately after his return in Merck's company
from the Rhine trip of September 1772. Seethe Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1881,
page 383, and see Article 25 of this Appendix. At the close of the first
paragraph on page 159 of our translation insert : — "About this time the
farce Das Ungliick der Jacobis must have originated ; it was founded on a
certain story that came to Goethe's ears." This farce was never finished.
See Hopfner's letter, quoted page 188. Goethe promised Johanna
Fahlmer, in the conversation to which reference has already been made,
that it should never see the light again.

724 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
i I. Goethe's friendship with Klinger and with Kayser. — In the first
edition Goethe's intimacy with these friends is represented as beginning in
the spring of 1774, when Merck was withdrawn for a while from Goethe's
society (see pages 190-191). But in the second edition Duntzer places
the commencement of intimacy between them more than twelve months
earlier. (On August 26, 1801, Klinger writes to Goethe : — " I am, with
the old feelings known to you more than twenty-eight years, your cordially
devoted Klinger.") At the close of the first paragraph of page 163
of our translation insert: — "About this time [midwinter I772"3l
Klinger seems to have drawn nearer to Goethe. In September 1772
Klinger [who was three years younger than Goethe] left school, and not
having money enough to go to an university, maintained himself by private
teaching. And probably it was at this time that Goethe made the acquaint
ance of Philipp Christoph Kayser. Kayser, who was now seventeen, was
the son of Johann Matthias Kayser, the organist of the Grey Friars Church
of Frankfurt." As to the new details on Klinger, see Duntzer's article
Klinger in Weimar in the Archiv fur Litteraturgeschichte, Bd. xi., and
Rieger's new book on Klinger.
12. The satirical Jahrmarkt which Goethe wrote in the spring of 1773,
page 168. — Duntzer inserts in the new edition a statement from one of
Caroline Flachsland's letters, that Goethe put Leuchsenring into this satire
in order to please Merck (um Merck die Cour zu machen).
13. The Princess Luise of Darmstadt starting for Berlin in 1773,
page 169. — This event is misplaced in the first edition. Goethe was in
Darmstadt from April 15 to May 3, 1773. How then could he have seen
the Princess step into her carriage on the Zeil at Frankfurt ? Duntzer's
correct arrangement in the second edition makes all clear. Merck and
the Princess departed (not in April) but on May 7, 1 773. It was after
Goethe's sorrowful return from Herder's wedding that he had to bear the
new grief of parting from Merck. The possessor of our translation will
insert the event on page 170 instead of page 169. Moreover it was not
after her death, but three days before it, that Goethe spoke to Chancellor
von Miiller of having seen her, light and slender, step into the carriage
that was to bear her away. See Miiller's Unterhaltungen mit Goethe,
February 10, 1830. See our translation, page 698.
14. On page 172, insert at the end of the first paragraph: — "Gotz
was being printed at Merck's printing-press at Arheiligen at this time, and
the task of correcting the proof-sheets gave Goethe a great deal of work. "
15. The silhouette and poem, pages 172, 173. — These are misplaced
in the first edition. They belong not to June 1773 but to September
1773. They were sent with the letter of September 15, 1773, which is
quoted on page 176.
16. Salyros oder der vergotterte Waldteufel. — Duntzer in the second-
edition assigns this dramatic satire to the summer of 1773. In the first
edition he had guessed its date to be August or September 1774 (page
203). But new evidence has been discovered since he wrote. On
the last day of May 1774, or in the beginning of June 1774, Goethe told
Johanna Fahlmer that the Satyros was written before she went to Diissel-

n-22.] APPENDIX. 725
dorf. Now she went to Diisseldorf in September 1773 with Helene and
Lotte Jacobi. See page 175 of our translation. (See the Goethe-Jahrbuch
for 1881, page 382.) At the close of the second paragraph of page
174, insert: — "A product of the overflowing wanton humour and
spirits of this time was the drama Satyros oder der vergotterte Waldteufel.
It represents a common adventurer who seeks by arrogant assumption to
satisfy his greed for power and to appease the cravings of sense. "
17. Gotter, Helden und Wieland. — In the second edition Duntzer
places this farce with Prometheus at the beginning of October 1773. The
couple of farces on Wieland and the Jacobis, which Goethe read to Schon
born (page 178), would accordingly be Das Ungliick der Jacobis and
Gotter Helden und Wieland. Remove the mention of it from page 1 79 to
the foot of page 176. The plan of Prometheus had been in Goethe's
mind in June 1773, as well as the plan oi Faust, page 172.
18. Plan of Egmont. — In the second edition Duntzer conjectures that
the "beautiful new plan for a great drama," of which Goethe writes to
Johanna Fahlmer, October 18, 1773 (page 179), may have been the plan
of Egmont, and the words quoted from a letter to Boie later on (page
181), "The sacrifice is prepared," etc., refer probably to Egmont, not to
fulius Casar.
19. Duntzer thinks that the Jakrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern is to
be ascribed to this time, October 1773. It is probably a development of
the satiric Jahrmarkt of April I773> Page 168, and see Article 12 of
this Appendix.
20. Goethe and Klinger. — During the winter of 1773-4 a place of
assembly for the mad doings of Goethe and the young geniuses of the
Sturm und Drang period in Frankfurt, was the "smoky little room," in the
humble house of Klinger's mother, on the Rittergdsschen. There a party
of these young friends met every Saturday evening and indulged in crack-
brained pranks.
Klinger's youngest sister, Agnes, a beautiful and intellectual girl of
sixteen, was a sympathetic partaker in the zeal for freedom of the young
geniuses. Long after, Goethe refers to the smoky little room in a letter
to Klinger, dated Weimar, December 8, 181 1. (From the Goethe-
Jahrbuch for 1880, page 397, I extract a reference to Burkhardt's article in
the Grenzboten for 1879 : Das Klinger haus in Frankfurt.)
21. Prolog zu den neuesten Offenbarungen Gottes, verdeutscht durch
Dr. K Fr. Bahrdt. — In the first edition Duntzer places this in the period
that followed the completion of Werther, see page 188. He now
believes it to have been written about January 1774. Bahrdt had pub
lished a kind of watery, diluted paraphrase of the New Testament, called
Die neuesten Offenbarungen Gottes. This disgusted Goethe, and he wrote
the dramatic scene mentioned above. Bahrdt was Professor of Theology
in the University of Giessen. Goethe sent the thing to his friend Hopfner,
a Professor of Law in Giessen, and Hopfner had it printed at once.
22. Fastnachtsspiel, auch wohl zu tragieren nach Ostern, von Paler
Brey dem falschen Propheten. — When Goethe had completed Werther
there was a load lifted from him, and a period of high spirits followed.
During this period he wrote the satire above named. Pater Brey, the

726 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
False Prophet, is a conception which originated in a study of Leuch'sen-
ring's odious character, and his sentimental self-imposition on Caroline
Flachsland, who was for a time taken in by his pretence. But Goethe
carefully abstained from particular details which might lead the public to
identify the character with its prototype. Only one well acquainted with
the circle would .have guessed the secret. The Faslnachtsspiel or Pater
Brey is to be ascribed to March I774> pag6 188.
23. Other work which belongs to the same period as Pater Brey. —
Goethe wrote in the March and April of 1774 some poems and songs,
which have reference to Art. Moreover, he wrote that fresh, gallant
lyric, So ist der Held, der mir gefdllt. In this poem he takes his careless
stand against the mawkish, effeminate note of the poems of Wieland, and
of Wieland's imitators, especially of J. G. Jacobi and of the mild young
writer of pastorals, Werthes, whom he met a few months later at Pempel
fort, page 199. The student will find So ist der Held in Der junge
Goethe, ii. 37.
24. Klinger and Goethe. — The account of Klinger, on page 190 of our
translation, must be corrected and enlarged. This has been already
partially done by Article 11. The student will now erase the sentence
beginning, " When Klinger came back from Giessen," and, allowing
the general account of Klinger to stand, will insert the following addi
tions : — " To Goethe's loss of Merck's intimate companionship at this
time must be added a temporary deprivation of the society of Klinger,
who left Frankfurt to study law at Giessen. April 16, 1774, is the date
of his matriculation as studiosus juris. Goethe had procured for the
needy young fellow hospitable reception into the house of Professor
Hopfner. He was unable to give him money, and indeed Klinger would
not have taken money as a gift. But Goethe gave him the farces— the
Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern and Pater Brey — with permission to do
as he pleased with them — to tear them, to store them away, or to sell
them." (The reader will here turn to the foot of page 208 of our transla
tion and make a correction. ) ' ' Klinger was at this time occupied with
his drama Otto, inspired by his admiration for Gotz von Berlichingen.
The friendship with Klinger was not broken off by this separation, but it
lost some of its intimacy. "
25. Johanna Fahlmer's endeavour io mediate between Goethe and
Wieland. — On page 192 the golden wedding ofthe Schweitzer-AUesinas,
on May 30, 1774, is mentioned. Goethe danced in May 31, the birthday
of Max Brentano. He tells Frau von Laroche of this in a letter written
at the beginning of June 1 774, see the translator's footnote No. 3. In
the same letter he writes: — "I have read the passages in the coming
number of the Wieland's Merkur which relate to me. He treats the
matter like a good fellow who sits firm in the saddle. I have never had
any injury from him, and now I pardon him his blasphemies against my
gods. " We now know how Goethe obtained a sight of the pages of a
number of the Merkur that was not yet published. The Goethe-Jahrbuch
for 1881, page 378, reprints a letter from Jacobi to Wieland, which should
be dated June 8, not May 8, 1774. (It should accordingly be preceded
by the letter reprinted on page 383, dated June 4, 1774.) In this letter

23-2S] APPENDIX. 727
Jacobi sends to Wieland an extract from a letter from Johanna Fahlmer,
received on June 6, 1774. This extract is a dialogue between Johanna
and Goethe. Very soon after the golden wedding, probably on the day
after, Goethe visited the Tante. He was at this time very anxiously
awaiting the appearance of the new number of the Merkur. In this
number Wieland would, he expected, take his revenge for the farce
Gotter, Helden und Wieland, which had been published by the mischievous
Lenz. (See page 187 of our translation.) It was Johanna's design to
shame him by showing him Wieland's generous and appreciative criticism
of Gotz, and his good-humoured notice of the farce. Jacobi had sent her
the sheets of the unpublished Merkur. She placed the article on Gotz
before Goethe ; after reading for a time he broke out into expressions of
surprised pleasure and approval. Yet there was something in Wieland's
tone that annoyed him. The " paternal manner " of Wieland, his con
viction that Goethe will "in time "judge after another fashion — "In
time ! In time ! yes, there it is, there it is ! that is just the way my
father speaks ; the same dispute that I have with my father in matters
politic I have with Wieland in these points." After this Tante Fahlmer
made him read Wieknd's notice of the farce. The skilfully calculated
bonhomie of Wieland conquered him : — "We recommend this little work
to all lovers of the pasquin manner as a masterpiece of persiflage and
sophistic wit." Goethe grew red, and Tante saw that he was agitated.
Then he said : — " He could not have done it better. Very good ! I say
it, henceforth for ever I must let him alone. Wieland gains a great deal
with the public by this incident. I am completely exposed to derision."
After this Tante put the thumbscrews on him with regard to the farce
on the Jacobis. For word of this farce had come to the ears of those
satirised in it, one of whom was Johanna herself. " Since I was at
Diisseldorf, has not some other pretty thing like the Gotter und Helden
dialogue been composed?" "Nothing, dear Tante," replied Goethe.
" The Satyrosi " — "No, that was done before you went away." "Nothing
at all?" she persisted, "a friendly drama of the same kind," looking
straight into his eyes. " You are honest, Goethe ! So you must tell me."
Goethe. — "That I will. — Yes, dear Tante; ask and I will tell !"
Tante.— "The Ungliick der J * * *?"
Goethe. — "Yes, that is -true. But that was written long ere I knew
you all [it was about March 1773 that Goethe seems first to have
become intimate with Johanna. See page 167 of our translation], and was
founded merely on anecdotes, on tittle-tattle, all from hearsay. All of
you play ridiculous parts together in it. You too, Tante. No one
but Lisette Runkel, Merck, and Dean Dumeix has read it [he forgot
Hopfner (page 188) and Klopstock (page 192)], and no one else in the
world shall hear or see it ; it shall never again smell the light. And it
has not been finished either — it is of no further account."
Tante. — " But must I really not hear it ? "
Goethe.  " Dear Tante, it is impossible. Do not ask it."
After a good deal of talk between them it grew clear who the hero
was, and what had given rise to the farce. It was written immediately
after the return of Merck and Goethe from Coblenz [therefore in September
or October 1772. See Article 10 of this Appendix].

728 THE LIFE OF GQETHE. [arts.
This conversation helps us to understand Goethe's visit to Jacobi. a few
months later, and his reconciliatory message to Wieland in December 1774-
It may be here fitly noted that the letter to Frau von Laroche quoted
on page 193 of our translation. is a reply to a letter in which she had spoken
of Wieland's utterance on Gotz. Loeper observes that the pupil of Spinoza
is recognisable in Goethe's observations on the Good and the Bad. These
observations were evoked by a passage in which Wieland speaks of the
man whose philosophy is founded on the principle that the Bad is Good,
and the Good is Bad. The concluding sentences of Goethe's letter are
explained by the following quotation from Wieland : — "Supposing also that,
a man, who does not love us, must for that reason be a bad man. "
Duntzer notes in the new edition that the Alexandrine, Un livre, croyez
moi, n'est pas fort dangereux, is a line of Voltaire's. Loeper observes that
it would be a good motto for Goethe's Epistle to Schiller on Books and
Reading (1795).
26. Goethe in Ems, July 17, 1774, page 197. — Late on the evening
of the day on which he wrote Des Kiinstlers Erdetvallen Goethe wrote
under Lotte Kestner's silhouette, which he carried with him, "Lotte
gute Nacht. am 17 Juli 1774."
Kiinstlers Erdewallen was sent off to Klinger, probably accompanied
by the Prolog, which forms the introduction to the group of farces that
form the Puppenspiel. These farces are Kiinstlers Erdewallen, Jahrmarkts-*
fest zu Plundersweilem, and Pater Brey. As the two last-named had been
given to Klinger in the spring of 1774 (see Article 24 of this Appendix)
Klinger had now the whole Puppenspiel in his hands. He was in pressing
need at the time and was trying to get money for them. They had been
offered to Nicolai by Hopfner, but a reply from Nicolai had not yet come.
27. Goethe, Klinger, and Wagner, pages 208-209. — The reader
will make some additions to this paragraph, and the modifications
needful to bring it into consonance with the following : — About the
time of the September Fair of 1774 Klinger was released from Giessen
by holidays. He came to Frankfurt, his mind full of his wild play Otto.
This play, as already noticed, is an imitation of Gotz, but far exceeds Gotz
in violence of language. Klinger, Goethe, and their circle indulged in a
wild " geniales" enthusiastic life during the holidays. Nicolai had refused
to purchase Goethe's Puppenspiel (see Article 26), and now Weygand, the
publisher of Werther, had, at Goethe's request, undertaken to bring it out,
giving Klinger a moderate honorarium.
Wagner, whom Goethe had known in the old Strassburg time, had
been banished from Saarbriicken because he espoused with too much zeal
the cause of his master, President von Giinderode, who had fallen under the
displeasure of his prince. When he visited Frankfurt the bookseller
Deinet had persuaded him to settle there with the hope of making a
living by literary work. His first place of abode after leaving Saarbriicken
had been the university city Giessen, and while staying there he had come
over to visit Goethe. That Wagner and Klinger were well acquainted
was therefore one of the reasons why Goethe so easily admitted Wagner
to intimacy, upon his migration to Frankfurt. Goethe was in a state of
extreme agitation at this time, as he awaited the appearance of Werther,

26-31.] APPENDIX. 729
not on account of its reception by the reading public, for he knew that it
must be very successful, but on account of the impression that it would
make upon Lotte and Kestner. His agitation would seek an outlet in
extravagant conduct, and probably Klinger was the more welcome on this
account. It will be observed by the student that the whole account of Klinger
and Wagner had better be transferred from pages 208-9 to Page 2°3 of
our translation. The corresponding alteration has been made by Duntzer
in the new edition.
28. Goethe reading Faust to Boie, October 1774, page 206. — To
the quotation from Boie's letter Duntzer adds after " stamp of genius : " —
" His Dr. Faust is almost finished, and seems to me the greatest and most
characteristic of all."
29 Claudine von Villabella. — Among the dramatic plans mentioned at
the foot of page 211 was that of the vagabond operetta Claudine von
Villabella (see pages 225, 229) whose scene is laid in Italy. We do not
yet know where Goethe found the material of this play.
30. Klinger, Kayser, and Wagner in the winter 1774-5. — Insert on
page 212 after "Egmont" : — Just before Christmas 1774, Klinger came to
stay a short time in Frankfurt. The friends led the old rollicking, crack-
brained life together. Poor Wagner, who was painfully endeavouring to
maintain himself, and who was now thinking of obtaining an appointment
in some foreign country, found his best present consolation in the company
of the young " geniuses." Klinger had already despatched his drama Otto
to a publisher in Leipzig. Kayser was the victim of an unprosperous love
for Sannchen, the daughter of the watchman belonging to the tower of the
church where the elder Kayser was organist. The organist would not
hear of marriage with a wife of such low rank, and his prohibition drove
his son to despair, and made him meditate abandoning his native city.
Yet the young fellow's grief proved no bar to his joining the life of mad
merriment of his friends. In the early days of January 1775 Goethe
sketched Klinger before his return to Giessen.
31. Goethe and the Stolbergs in 1775, pages 226-231. — On May 3,
1775, Goethe writes to Henriette Knebel: — "As usual I am living
in a whirl, and in immoderateness of pleasure and. of pain." Immedi
ately after this Freiherr von Haugwitz of Silesia, a young man of
twenty - three, arrived in Frankfurt. He came from Paris and had
arranged to meet the young Counts Stolberg in Frankfurt, thence to
proceed with them on a trip to Switzerland and Italy. In the time
intervening between his arrival and the arrival of the Stolbergs he
had grown very intimate with Goethe ; when the Stolbergs came,
indeed, they heard that Haugwitz was at Goethe's house and sent
thither for him. Soon after, Goethe presented himself and supped that
night with the Counts. They became warm friends in the first few
hours. "He is a splendid man," writes Christian Stolberg to his elder
sister. "A wealth of ardent feeling streams from every word, from every
gesture ; he is excitable and enthusiastic even to violence, but from amid
that very violence the tender loving heart looks forth."
Klinger was staying in Frankfurt at the time of tlie Stolbergs' arrival..

730 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
Since we saw him last he has rapidly finished a new drama, Das leidende
Weib, and, as remarked on page 190 of our translation, had sketched
Goethe in the Doctor in this play. Klinger became the inseparable
comrade of the Stolbergs during their stay. When they visited Mainz on
May 11, 1775, Klinger was with them. Goethe was, however, prevented
from joining this expedition. On another occasion they all went to Offen
bach together, and there Goethe introduced his friends to a beautiful
maiden — a ' ' rare creature " — with whom he flirted a few hours in the
autumn. On the day after the visit to the peasant Jakob Gujer (page 230), the
party sailed on the Lake of Zurich (June 13, 1775). They visited the
convent of Einsiedeln. , Goethe read to the Stolbergs a great deal from
manuscript. Without doubt the scenes of Faust were part of what he
read. An extract from the Diary of the Physical Society of Zurich,
reprinted in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, i. 371, shows that the Stolbergs, Goethe,
Haugwitz, and Passavant, were present on June 26, 1775, at a meeting of
the Society. At this meeting Lavater read a paper on Physiognomy.
I derive from the Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. 427, the following reference,
which is here in place : — The Grenzboten, Band iv. Five Letters from F.
L. Stolberg to J. H. Voss on the Swiss Journey of 1775, ranging in date
from March 18 to July 29, 1775.
32. Liii and Goethe in Offenbach, pages 225, 233. — The name of
Lili's uncle in Offenbach at whose house she used to visit was Bernard.
The D'Orville who, with Goethe, accompanied her on horseback on
August 3, I775> was 'ne husband of another niece of Bernard's. S.
Bernard, to whom she was betrothed in June 1776, was a relative of
her Offenbach uncle (page 300).
33. To the extracts from Christian Stolberg's letters, pages 249, 250,
describing life at Weimar, the new edition adds this from one of Friedrich
Stolberg's : — " In the forenoons we were either with Goethe or Wieland, or
we rode out with the Duke — sometimes on a hunt. After dinner there were
games played, blind-man's-buff or run-the-gauntlet. Between seven and nine
there was a concert or vingt-un. One afternoon Goethe read aloud his half
completed Faust. It is a noble work. The Duchesses were powerfully
affected by some scenes. The evening preceding the last day of our stay
we were at Prince Constantin's [see page 246] ; the Duke, the Statthalter
of Erfurt, an excellent man of understanding, Goethe, and many cavaliers
of the Court, supped with us. We had soon finished, and were in high
spirits, when the door suddenly opened, and lo ! the Duchess-Mother and
the beautiful Frau von Stein stepped solemnly into the room each with a
sword three yards long in her hand. They had come to dub us knights.
We knelt, and the two ladies went pleasantly round the table from man to
man. Afterwards we played blind-man's-buff a long time. . . . On the
last evening after we had taken our leave at Court we supped with Goethe
and Wieland alone."
34. Klopstock, Friedrich Stolberg, and Goethe, pages 263, 264. —
Duntzer adds, in the new edition, some interesting particulars as to
Friedrich Stolberg's behaviour at the time of Goethe's breach with Klop
stock. To fully appreciate Stolberg's attitude we must remember that

32-35-] APPENDIX. 73i
not long before he had written the extraordinary Song of Freedom, from
the Twentieth Century. During his recent visit to Weimar he had shown
this poem to Karl August, who was extremely pleased with it. Karl
August asked whether he would not dedicate it to the "Great Friedrich,"
whereupon he wrote a bitter dedication of it to the King of Prussia in
doggerel verse, and this, too, was well received. (See Duntzer's new
edition, page 263.)
But this singer of freedom and thirster for the blood of tyrants proved
unable to understand Goethe's manly resentment of the foolish credulity of
Klopstock. We find him calling Goethe " a Starrkopf in the highest
degree." ("Starrkopf" means a mulish, obstinate person.) In a letter
to Klopstock, Stolberg writes : — " Goethe's obdurate will, which, if it
were possible, he would gladly assert in opposition to God Himself, has
often made me tremble for him ;" nay, Stolberg thought that he remem
bered, ere he and his brother left Weimar, to have heard Goethe speak one
day of -ghmt -intelligences which do not bow before even the eternal truths
of Revelation. "God!" exclaims Stolberg, "what a medley, a Titan
lifting his head against his God and now dizzied by the favour of a Duke. "
Perhaps, continues this silly letter, "Klopstock, who so early recognised
what an iron neck Goethe's is, had been thinking of the sinner when he
wrote the poem Warning." (This had come out in the last Musen-
almanach. )
35. Klinger in Weimar, page 266. — Though Goethe received
Klinger with cordiality, he was extremely concerned to learn that Klinger
had given up his course of law study at the University shortly before it
was completed, and had accordingly lost his degree. Klinger had literally
played the truant from Giessen, hoping to obtain an appointment in
Weimar by Goethe's influence. It was, however, absolutely impossible
to Goethe to obtain a place for one of his friends in the Duke's service.
In any case Klinger was at the time so unsuited for a place in the
administration of Government that Goethe could not, in honesty, have
recommended him to the Duke. What need had the Duke, or Weimar
indeed, at that moment of a stormy dramatic poet ! At the same time,
Goethe knew well how dependent on Klinger was the poverty-stricken
family in the bare little house in Frankfurt. It is no wonder that Goethe's
heart was sore when he thought of the foolish act to which a foolish belief
in his powers had led his friend.
The breach between Lenz and Goethe, in November 1776, is men
tioned, page 288. Ere this Goethe had been estranged from Klinger
by the latter's self-abandonment to loose living. To this cause we must add
the bad offices of Lavater's mean protege', the so-called Kraft-apostel, Christof
Kaufmann. Kaufmann, who thought to worm himself into favour with
Goethe at Klinger's expense, was only too successful in poisoning Goethe's
mind. This he did the more easily because Klinger had withdrawn from
intercourse with Goethe. Kaufmann's arts were employed to prevent a
personal explanation between them. Klinger and Goethe held no com
munication for many years after this. In the beginning of the period of
estrangement Klinger became a writer of dramas for the boards, and
plunged deeper than ever into the excesses of the Sturm und Drang, and
into a wild life of sensual pleasure. Later he went to Russia, entered the

732 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
army, and rose to high rank. There was a friendly correspondence
between Goethe and Klinger in their old age. See the Goethe-Jahrbuch,
iii. 248-276, and page 709 of this translation.
36. Goethe and Karl Augustin Frankfurt, 1779, pages 295-296. —
Since the first edition was published the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1 881 has re
printed a letter from the Frau Rath to the Duchess Amalia. The letter
is dated 24th September 1 779. We learn from it that the Duke and
Goethe arrived in Frankfurt on September 18, 1779. Duntzer, in a
long extract, permits Frau Aja to speak for herself. In 1778 the Duchess
Amalia, on a trip to the Rhine, had visited Goethe's parental home.
Hence her intimacy with the Frau Rath.
' ' His Serene Highness, our most gracious and best prince, in order
to take us completely by surprise, alighted at a. distance from our house ;
they came, accordingly, without any noise at all to our door, rang, walked
into the blue room, etc. Your Serene Highness will now picture it ; how
Frau Aja is seated at the round table, how the door of the room opens,
how, in that moment, her Hatschelhans falls on her neck, how the Duke
remains for a while at some distance looking on at the maternal joy, how
Frau Aja, like a drunken woman, at length runs up to the best of princes,
half crying, half laughing, not knowing in the least what she ought to do,
how the handsome Kammerherr von Wedel also shows all possible sym
pathy in her prodigious joy. Finally, the entry of the father ; this passes
description altogether ; I feared lest he should die on the spot. "
To the Duke's relief there were no princes or princesses at the Fair of
Frankfurt : it was a great escape from boredom. On Sunday, September
19, 1779, the travellers went to a concert at the Red House, the largest
inn in Frankfurt. On Monday and Tuesday they attended the theatre.
Merck came over from Darmstadt "and behaved pretty well," says Frau
Aja ; " he is, indeed, never able to leave off the Mephistopheles completely,
but his friends are used to it now." On Wednesday, September 22, 1779,
about noon, Karl August and Goethe, accompanied by Merck, left Franlc-
furt. 37. Goethes visit to Schubart in 1779. — Carlyle has made English
readers thrill with indignation at the wrongs of poor Schubart, whom the
tyrannical Duke, Karl of Wurttemberg, shut up without 'trial in the castle
of Hohenasperg. Schubart was a passionate admirer of the young Sturm
und Drang Goethe. On page 413 of this translation will be found
a foolish notice of Goethe's Italian journey, from the paper edited by
Schubart in 1788. Whether Goethe visited Schubart on the Swiss journey
of 1775 is, I believe, not yet certain. It is, however, certain that when
Goethe and Karl August were in Stuttgart at the close of 1779 (see page
304) they went to see Schubart at Hohenasperg. They were accom
panied by Domanenrath Georg Hartmann, to whom Lavater had given
them an introduction. Hartmann's account of the presence in Stuttgart
of Goethe and Karl August is quoted in the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1882
by his great-grandson, J. Hartmann.
38. The footnote No. 1, page 305, is superseded. There is no
longer any doubt that Duntzer is correct in assigning January 14 1780,
as the date of the return of Goethe and Karl August to Weimar.

3°-39'] APPENDIX. 733
39. Herder's invitation to Gottingen, pages 427-431. — In the
spring of 1789, when Herder was in Italy, he received a vocation to a
professor's chair in the University of Gottingen. For the third time in
Herder's life a Gottingen professorship seemed to be within his reach.
In 1775 the intrigues of a coterie had put an end to the negotiation ; in
1784, after a short deliberation, he had himself refused the chair. In
1789 his old friend Chr. Gottlob Heyne undertook the endeavour to per
suade him to leave Weimar. The advantages of the professorship in
Gottingen were forcibly urged by Heyne, whose appeal was supported by
other> voices.
The indecision, the timidity of soul, of Herder at this time are very
remarkable. Full evidence of his pitiable state will be found in his corre
spondence with his wife in the book called Herder's Reise nach Italien
(1859). Life had hitherto had much bitterness and disappointment for
him ; was it to be so always, or did this fresh offer from Gottingen really
promise better things? His journey in Italy had not brought him the
enjoyment that he hoped for, and it seemed a complete failure when con
trasted with Goethe's pleasant artist life in Rome. The very importance
of the issue of his choice made him indecisive and timid. Under these
circumstances he received a letter from Goethe. It was forwarded on
May 10, 1789, by Caroline Herder, and was received by Herder when in
Parma : —
" I want this letter to meet you somewhere in your travel, as I hear
from your wife that you cling more than is desirable to the thought of
leaving this place and going to Gottingen. If it is your advantage, your
economic gain, I am glad of it, I counsel it. But when we wish to make
an exchange that shall benefit us we must not despise .what is in our pos
session already. Do not form any resolve until you return, then let us
weigh everything, and the welfare of you and of your children shall decide.
For the present strive to calm yourself! Alone, without advice, without
the voice of a friend, agitated by the multitude of phenomena, uneasy
amid the discomforts of the journey — that is in truth no place to form a
resolve which is to determine your future lot. The occasion demands
calculating, not feeling ; it is a time for deliberate pondering of advantages,
not for thrusting a hand into a lottery-urn.
" The state that you and your wife are in at present makes me very un-
• easy. If you cannot rely in trust and confidence on a friend whom you have
long known intimately, you are in danger of ruining yourselves for life.
"I repeat it: What concerns me is not the welfare of Weimar or
Gottingen, but of you and yours. Consider that you are not as a young
man who risks his individual fortune in the game — a fortune which may
afterwards improve, though it be once injured ; but that your change
would be made when you are in advanced years and have a large family, and
that your spirit (Gemiith) and your wife's would not sustain the grief of find
ing the situation in Gottingen a failure, and its circumstances oppressive.
" Make a happy journey and come back to us refreshed, then we will
consult, and your welfare shall be the highest law.
" Farewell. I have borne up stoutly and am well and happy. Yet
I need in more than one relation your blessing and your aid, which you
will not refuse me, even though your resolve should incline to departure
from us. Farewell."

734- THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
This letter shows that Goethe understood the Herders well. He
wrote to Caroline Herder a little later : — " Only I beg you henceforth do
nothing in the Electra mood, and be good and ask my advice. I may be
mistaken in single instances ; in the general I will never fail. . . . Only
Write to him again and again not to engage himself to Gottingen further."
(Caroline Herder was the passionate Electra contrasted with the divine
repose of Iphigenia. )
Herder was, however, unable to respond to Goethe's friendliness. In
his letters to Caroline he continually makes little of Goethe. The secret
cause of this was one which Herder would probably have been ashamed
to acknowledge. He was made jealous by the friendship of Caroline and
Goethe. Long ago before he was married he had been jealous of Goethe,
and in those days his letters to Caroline had been full of harsh remarks
about the young friend of whom she wrote with such enthusiasm. So it
was now with his letters from Italy. Moreover, the fundamental difference
between Goethe and Herder as to the relation of art and morals was
beginning to render Herder unjust to Goethe's poetry.
Meanwhile Goethe continued to urge Herder's claims on the Duke.
On June 15, 1789, Caroline forwards to Herder a letter in which Goethe
writes : — "The Duke has lately said to me that he will give you 1800 thalers
annually in order to make you more easy in your domestic circumstances.
Now if he pays your debts — that again is an increase to reckon on, of 200
thalers for ten years, not taking the interest into account. This as prefa
tory." Ere this Caroline had sent to Herder a statement, dated May 3,
1789, ofthe "heads" ofthe Duke's offer to Herder. Herder received it
on May 31, 1789. He was not content with it, and after his return he
succeeded in having it modified in his favour through the influence of
Goethe. Herder's distrust of the Duke made Goethe's task a by no means
pleasant one. I now give the Duke's offer, and the changes in it which
were confirmed by the Duke in August 1789. The Duke writes : —
" 1. I will pay his debts, and in such a way that it will not become
known to the public.
"2. I will make him Vice-President of Consistory, and upon Lyncher's
death he shall be President.
" 3. From the time of his return the private salary which he receives
from me shall be 500 thalers instead of 300. [Herder demanded and
obtained 700 thalers.]
"4. I will guarantee to secure him the Chancellorship of the Uni
versity of Jena through my influence with the other states who have part
in maintaining that University. [This Herder declined.]
" 5. I will guarantee a widow's portion of 200 thalers annually to his
widow. [Herder demanded and obtained 300 thalers.]
"6. I will provide for the expenses of his children's studies and for
their establishment in life."
Herder in becoming Vice-President of Consistory gave up some church
dues, by which he lost 112 thalers annually. Through Goethe's manage
ment he obtained compensation for this. The Duke every year made a
gift of 50 thalers for the provisional education of Gottfried Herder and 50
thalers for August, while the Duchess Luise contributed 50 for Wilhelm.
When Goethe brought word of this Caroline said to him in the presence
of Herder, " Of course the Duke does not suppose that by these gifts he

40-4I-] APPENDIX. 735
fulfils his promise to provide for our children's studies !" " No," replied
Goethe. "We must, however," said she, "have a written assurance on
this point from the Duke." " No," replied Goethe, with signs of vexa
tion, " that is not necessary ; we must not, now, when the Duke displays
generosity, make him angry by such a demand." And so that matter
rested for the time.
In order to lighten the demands on his purse the Duke resorted to a
measure which turned out to be most injurious to Herder. Before Herder's
appointment as Vice-President of Consistory a member of the Government,
one of the senior Councillors of State, had always sat as Councillor of
Consistory at the meetings of Consistory, and had acted as colleague of
the President in matters of administration. For this he had received a
salary of 200 thalers. To save this 200 thalers the Duke ordered that
henceforth there should be no permanent Councillor of Consistory. The
Councillors of State should in turn, each for a year, fulfil the duties of the
post. "Let it be imagined," writes Caroline, "with what a temper all
these gentlemen henceforth entered on their office — embittered against
Herder, whom they looked on as the robber of their salary. Then, chang
ing every year had bad results ; it took each almost a whole quarter to
become familiar with his manifold duties, and these duties were without
interest to him, for what had he to gain by them ? "
It will be shown in a later Article in this Appendix how the Gottingen
vocation and the incidents connected with it had consequences of great
interest to the student of Goethe's life, because they are the proximate
cause ofthe breach between Goethe and the Herders in 1795.
40. Goethe in Erfurt in December 1789, page 434. — On December
I, 1789, Goethe went with Karl August to Erfurt. In the evening they
were present at a Court Assemblie. An eye-witness describes the recep
tion of the Duke. All the officers present went forward to meet him.
He was dressed in his white - and - red regimental uniform, and in great
cavalry boots, and was accompanied by Goethe and by Kammerherr von
Wedel. "Goethe has grown much more formal, more courtier-like; he
came marching along, in a cinnamon-brown, 'roast-meat' suit, chapeau
bas, sword at side, paying compliments, like the most formal Hofjunker. "
The Assemblie was filled with curious observers of Goethe ; but he played
the part of a punctilious servant of his Duke with such thoroughness that
our eye-witness could find nothing more worthy of remark. Goethe's
offence against convention in the matter of Christiane Vulpius made him
more exact in attending to external Court proprieties.
41. Goethe and the Princess Galitzin, pages 458, 459. — The time of
Goethe's stay in Munster has become known through the book entitled
Die Fiirst in Amalie von Gallitzin und ihre Freunde, by Joseph Galland,
which contains some heretofore-unprinted passages from letters of the
Princess and her daughter. Goethe stayed in Miinster Dec. 2-5, 1792.
Goethe's arrival in Pempelfort is more nearly fixed by his letter to
Heinrich Meyer, Diisseldorf, November 14, 1792. This letter is reprinted
in Strehlke's Verzeichniss von Goethes Briefen, vol. i. page 462. " Seit acht
Ta«en befinde ich mich hier bei meinem Freunde Jacobi," writes Goethe.)
In the new edition Duntzer makes use of the correspondence between

736 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [art.
Goethe and the Princess published in the Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1882. On
December 2, 1793, the Princess writes : — " Without knowing it, you have
been the occasion of many a delightful hour to me in Holstein." (She had
been ordered by her physicians to travel on foot for the benefit of her
health, and in the summer of 1793 she had made a pilgrimage to Stolberg's
home in Eutin.) " As one who had seen you face to face, I was repeatedly
called on to speak of you, to which I am not very loath. To Fritz Stol
berg especially it was pleasurable to speak of you, because he loves you so
dearly ; and I know no one who accepts the beautiful and good in all
forms with a more ingenuous, childlike sense than he. With many others
I was for one reason especially glad to speak of you, viz. because I con
ceive myself to have a somewhat more penetrative knowledge than most
of them of that singular nature of yours, at which so many even of the
noblest and best men are occasionally amazed incorrectly, or are not
amazed. Without, however, finding any ground for pride in this know
ledge ! for I feel too sincerely that had you taken pains to play the Proteus
with me, as you have with so many worthy folk, it would not have gone
a bit better with me. And therefore I will not, on my side, play the
ingrate with you ; rather, I will plainly confess that I do not ascribe the
openheartedness and simplicity with which you constantly displayed your
self to me — but especially in a few hours that I can never forget — that I
do not ascribe them to dislike of the trouble of feigning, but to a reason
which I find in my heart so often as I think of you. How often I think
of you, you will only be able to imagine in proportion as you transpose
yourself from the rounded sphere of your proud sufficiency to yourself, into
my neediness and insatiety, and thence look back to the planet Goethe."
When the Princess was at Eutin in August 1793, she had written to
Goethe, and had enclosed a very affectionate letter from Friedrich Stolberg,
with a birthday greeting, for which Goethe thanked Stolberg cordially.
The regret and annoyance which Goethe felt in November 1795, on reading
Stolberg's preface to the Selected Dialogues of Plato (see page 479),
was the more intense because Goethe had really loved Stolberg, and now
he found him engaged in a kind of obscuration of truth and intelligence.
There is a considerable likeness between the case and that of Lavater.
On January 24, 1795, the Princess writes: — "I can make myself
thoroughly melancholy, dear Goethe, when I consider how long it is since
I wrote to you last, and under what circumstances I have been silent.
Precisely since the time when you sent such a straightforward and
friendly reply to my inquisition into your conscience, an inquisition only
justified by my true, unselfish love for you ; precisely at the time when
Jacobi, as he has told me, wrote to you that he had revealed to me your
so-called hypocrisies — never, indeed, more than at that time did I feel a
greater constraint to open myself to you ; to at least say to you : that your
hypocrisies have not in the least bit diminished my love for you ; that in
so far as you really, when with us, thought less of Christ than you showed,
it was because you felt no need to think better of Him (and even had you
felt this need, you could not seek to satisfy it from such spiritual poverty as
mine), for this I owe you thanks ; since in your behaviour I saw only
tender forbearance, which I would not call hypocrisy ; (though this word,
in the mouth of the most honest among the children of men, who confessed

42- J APPENDIX. 737
himself to be a partner in the wrong-doing, could not frighten me). My
conception of you, dear Goethe, is based neither on what you have said
of Christ and of Religion, nor on the opinions which you may have con
cealed by being silent ; but on the belief, that you not only endeavour after
an external comprehension of the Beautiful in all its species and forms,
wherever you become aware of it by that most vivid, most rich, most
delicate emotional sympathy for the Beautiful, with which you are endowed
by Mother Nature, but that you endeavour to adopt into your own being
as much of the Beautiful as you can, by a life resembling it (as Plato
expresses himself in his beautiful letter to Dion . . . ) ; that the portion
of what in my eyes is Beautiful, or in my eyes is uncomely, which you do
not seek to adopt to yourself or to repel, does not appear to your vision
under this or that form ; and that so soon as it does so appear, so soon
will it become one ofthe objects of your regulative effort."
And to this belief concerning Goethe the Princess adhered all her life,
recognising in him and loving the noble Man, one of the most splendid of
the revelations of the Primitive Beautiful.
At the close of the year 1795, Goethe and Schiller began to compose
the stinging little couplets called Die Xenien (pages 480-81, 486).
There were none whom the Xenien hit harder than Goethe's old friends
Lavater and the Stolbergs, whom both Goethe and Schiller considered the
sworn enemies of mental and spiritual clearness, and of pure Art. And of
all those who loved Goethe because they understood him well, there was
none so bitterly wounded by this as the noble Princess Galitzin. The
student will find the utterance of her pain in the letter dated Munster,
November 31, 1801 (printed, Goethe-Jahrbuch, iii. 297-299). It was a
reply to a letter in which Goethe, after an interval of silence, had reopened
their correspondence. When at Gotha in August 1801 (see page 523)
Goethe had spoken to the Duke of Gotha about buying the Hemster-
huis collection of gems. (Goethe had returned these to the Princess in
1797.) The Duke appeared to have some inclination to the purchase
when Goethe spoke to him, and in the earlier part of October 1801 Goethe
wrote to ask the Princess whether she was still willing to sell the gems, as
she had been in former years. She replied in the affirmative ; but the
Duke disappointed them after all.
The Princess's letter gave great pleasure to Goethe ; she assured him
that her affection was cordial as ever. " Act like a Jew !" she writes, with
reference to the bargain about the gems. " Perhaps as a reward for this
love, you will be lifted from the Old Testament into the New. This and
all conceivable good He will give you, whom I daily implore for you. —
Your true Amalie." Then she adds : — " Stolberg, who, as you know, now
lives here, has not come back from a journey to Wernigerode. If he
knew that I am writing to you, he would certainly give me many affec
tionate messages for you, for he is one of those who have never ceased to
feel what you are and to love you." The Princess died in 1806,
42. The breach between Goethe and the Herders in 1795. — In Article 39
of this Appendix the negotiations which ended in Herder's declining Gottin
gen and accepting the Vice-Presidency of Consistory in Weimar have been
described. Their history is important in a Life of Goethe, because they
are an important factor among the causes which led to the estrangement
3 B

738 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [art.
between Goethe and Herder, which lasted from 1795 until Herder's death
in 1803. When Herder found the post of Vice-President of Consistory rendered
so much more laborious, by the withdrawal of a paid Councillor of Con
sistory, he accused the Duke in his heart of faithlessness. The overwork
thrown upon him brought on severe rheumatic illness, and he was com
pelled to leave Weimar repeatedly, and seek restoration at a watering-
place. So bitter against Karl August was he, that, when his elder sons
were beginning their more advanced studies, he omitted to claim the aid
which was promised in the sixth article of the Duke's offer of 1789. But
at the close of 1794, the Herders being in great need of money, Caroline
Herder wrote to Goethe that, as in the spring their sons Wilhelm and
Adalbert must begin to apply themselves to their future calling, they would
ask Goethe to have the kindness to support them in their petition to the
Duke for the loan of iooo thalers for eight years. We know of this letter
only from Caroline Herder's account ; the original must have contained
such abuse of the Duke and of Goethe himself as rendered it impossible
to notice it, for he made no reply. Five weeks later he came to see
Herder. Caroline seized the opportunity, and, in her husband's presence,
she requested an answer to her letter. " He walked up and down the
room ; my husband and I sat and looked at him ; he scarcely glanced at
us, looked straight before him, and murmured something — as well as we
could make out, ' Nicht darauf antworten !' " (" Not reply to it !").
The Duke was very angiy with Herder and his wife. For years they had
told him nothing of their affairs, and he considered that he had a right to
be at least consulted about the future professions of their sons. Imprudent
things that Caroline Herder had said of him had come to his ears through
the offices of tale-bearers. If Herder had in due time asked him for the
annual contribution needed for the young people's studies, the Duke would
have easily and gladly paid it according to the contract. It was a very
different thing to be asked for a large sum unexpectedly ; and the royal
coffers of Weimar were not rapidly filled in those hard times, when con
stant wars were draining the treasuries of all European States. This
statement of the case, which is gleaned from letters a little subsequent to
the date at which we now are, will aid us in understanding the Duke's
attitude. On March 12, 1795, urged by Caroline, Herder himself wrote
to the Duke asking for the loan. The Duke returned an evasive answer.
Upon this Caroline Herder wrote to the Duchess begging her to support
Herder's request. The Duchess sent for Caroline and reminded her of
the Duke's firmness of will ; there would be no use in seeking to change
his decision. The Duchess, however, gave her 300 thalers for Wilhelm,
and desired that when the time for Gottfried's taking his degree drew near
she (the Duchess) should be informed of it.
Thus the matter remained during the spring and summer of 1795. In
the autumn of 1795 tne passionate Electra nature of Caroline could bear
no longer delay, she resolved to seek Justice ! and to appeal to the written
promise of 1789. She wrote to the Duchess stating what the promise
had been, and praying her to endeavour to have it fulfilled. She wrote at
the same time, September 21, 1795, to Goethe begging for his aid, and
enclosing extracts from her letter to the Duchess. On September 22,

42-i APPENDIX.

739

Goethe replied with heartfelt sympathy :—" How grieved I am by the
disclosure of your circumstances I cannot express to you. I will omit no
effort to effect what you wish. May I soon be able to give you good
news ! " A few days after this the Duke appointed a permanent Coun
cillor of Consistory, with the old salary of 200 thalers.
A few weeks later the Duchess sent for Caroline, and told her the
Duke's plan for aiding the Herders as to their children. The Duke
would pay the cost of Gottfried's doctor's degree at Easter. August
Herder should not for the present go to the University, but should work
for a while in the Chancery of Weimar, and Adalbert should be set to
learn farming on an estate in the Duchy of Eisenach. When Caroline
came home and thought over this proposal, she felt it impossible to
mention it to Herder. She wrote to the Duchess : " He would feel it
an intrusion on his paternal rights, that the Duke should desire to arrange
the callings of his sons." She calls on the Duke to fulfil the contract :
"My husband has performed his part of it conscientiously, and more than
duty demanded, and has lost his health by doing so. If he had known
that the Duke would deprive him of his colleague in the Consistory, the
greatest promises would not have detained him. I alone know what he
has suffered in this — which the Duke can never make good to him. He
has fulfilled his duty — more than he ought. His Serene Highness will
now perform his part of the contract." Again : "It is easy for His
Serene Highness to set apart a definite provision for each son ; and I
most respectfully beg your Serene Highness to bring it about that the
sum for Gottfried be most graciously paid to us at once. " Caroline sent
a copy of this letter to Goethe on October 14, 1795. He was at that
time in Eisenach (see p. 479) awaiting the Duke's commission to Frank
furt. As it was supposed that he had gone to Frankfurt, the letter
was sent thither, and it only reached Weimar on October 28, 1795.
Caroline entreats Goethe thus : "Recall compassionately to your memory
that you were the instrument of the Duke in the negotiations [about
Gottingen in 1789]. Do not suffer the Duke so insolently to break his
promise. It is in this instance your duty to save the Duke's honour and
morality. How has my husband deserved this faithlessness ? Do not let
us be driven to extremity, I urgently entreat you. I can prove that my
husband brought his great illness on himself by the continual labour of the
Consistory. Who shall make good to us this loss ? I entreat you, for
God's sake, save your own honour and the Duke's ! I have been silent
long enough, and I do not hesitate to say the plainest things to you. We
need money, and must obtain it from the Duke ; he owes it to us. "
Goethe replied on October 28, 1795 : "I hope that things have changed
since your letter was written. I cannot reply to what you say ; we are too
far apart in our way of thinking to be comprehensible to each other ; and
yet I do not wish to be silent. Perhaps Knebel will undertake to hear
what I think." Caroline replied : " I am perfectly willing to hear what
you think through Herr von Knebel, and whether the words : Further, I
will pay the cost of the studies of his children, can be made to bear any
other sense than that which they utter. . . . O listen to the voice of your
conscience ! All the honest support which you now give to the just
demand of a family of seven children will be richly repaid to you by Pro-

740 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [art.
vidence at a time when you look not for it. It would be very human if
you referred me to Herr Knebel ! I will hear you calmly. Let us not
treat the matter as enemies — appoint an hour, I earnestly entreat."
Though Goethe, just at this time awaiting Christiane's confinement,
was in a mood for ready sympathy with trouble and for charity, he felt it
impossible to continue such a correspondence. He could not continue to
receive letters frantically accusing himself and the Duke as unprincipled
men, who needed to be solemnly reminded of their sacred duty. It was
evident, too, that Caroline would cling to her fixed idea in defiance of all
argument. Goethe accordingly resolved once for all to utter himself to
her in a written statement of his view of the affair, and thus bring his
direct communication with her to a close. On October 30, I795> ne
wrote : "I take up my pen, not in order to modify your opinion, but in
order to place mine before you. ... A personal conversation with you
would not be advisable in these passionate moments ; we should not con
vince one another. You have already written to me what I ought not to
read, I must expect in a conversation to hear what I may not hear."
- Goethe then proceeds to an exact discussion of her charges against the
Duke, and shows how unjust those charges are. He then continues :
"You calumniate the Duke and the Duchess, you tell me of your hasty
step, and summon me with reproaches and threats to do good offices for
you and yours, while at the same moment by your acts you snatch the
power from my hands. Already, perhaps, you can imagine how after such
conduct I am compelled to regard your violent passionate outbreaks, your
illusion that you alone are perfectly in the right, your impression that no
one but you has a notion of honour, a feeling of conscience. I permit you
to hate me as you would any other stage villain, I only beg you to form a
clear conception of me, and not to suppose that I will be converted in the
fifth act. ... By the Duke's offer your future was secured for some time,
the past (we shall omit old reckonings against one another) could have been
set straight by some arrangement, and we might have secured a cheerful
prospect. But the evil lies much deeper. I pity you — that you must seek
support from persons whom you do not love and whom you hardly respect,
in whose existence you have no pleasure, and whose gratification you feel
no call to promote. In sooth, it is easier to make ado in extreme moments
about the obligations of another towards us, than by an even course of
life and conduct to obtain those benefits for which, after all, we must incur
the debt of gratitude. Believe this, however : through all your arguments
and demands your natural disposition is plainly seen. How does it contri
bute to make things more pleasant that August, during his short stay here,
says to every one who will hear him : ' I am choosing the profession of
mining because no one knows how long the present government will last,
but miners will always be needed.' These are the family sentiments calcu
lated to incite a prince to aid in the bringing up and settlement of chil
dren !" After declaring that he will not read any reply to this letter, and
will not again speak of what has occurred, Goethe closes thus : "If you can
command yourself to approach the Duke on the subject of the children's
education and settlement, if you can make reasonable proposals as to the
past and future, let me hear them through Knebel. I know well that
people return no thanks for the possible, to him from whom they have

43-44-] APPENDIX. 741
.demanded the impossible ; but that shall not prevent me from doing what
I can for you and yours."
Such was the shrill ending of the friendship between Goethe and the
Herders — the Herders who many years before had given one another a
mutual pledge never to misunderstand Goethe again.
Goethe kept his promise to Caroline, and he succeeded in obtaining
for Herder a grant of 1200 thalers, 600 to be paid in the beginning of
the new year 1796 and the rest at Easter 1796. Moreover, the Duke
after this paid large annual yearly contributions towards the education of
Herder's sons August, Emil, and Rinaldo.
The student who is anxious for exact knowledge of this episode in
Goethe's life should obtain volume xliii. of the Preussische Jahrbiicher
and read the three articles of Dr. Bernhard Suphan. Dr. Suphan prints
letters from the Herders' Remains which had not hitherto been published,
and passages from Caroline Herder's Recollections which their editor,
Georg Miiller, had suppressed.
43. Goethe and Bottiger, page 526. — The Goethe-Jahrbuch, ii. 250-
252, has printed two letters which Goethe wrote to Bertuch, the editor
of the Journal des Luxus, about the theatrical criticisms of Bbttiger. The
first letter was dated January 3, 1802. Bertuch soon after sent Goethe
Bbttiger's half-printed article on Ion. In the second letter, dated January
12, 1802, Goethe writes : — " I can only say that if you are not yourself dis
posed to set matters right, I go immediately to the Duke, and bring the
whole affair to a head. For I will either be relieved of office at once or
be secured against such infamies for the future. That perpetually busy
distorter of truth may exercise his juggling arts in the Allgemeine Zeitung
or where he will, but I will no longer suffer them to be practised in
Weimar against me in my official capacity. I request your statement on
the matter before four o'clock ; with the stroke of four my representation
goes to His Serene Highness the Duke."
44. Goethe' s period of depression in the beginning of 1803, pages 533-
535. — Duntzer in the new edition adds some interesting details to his
account of this period. One of the causes of Goethe's heart-sickness
was undoubtedly Caroline Jagemann's excessive power in all the affairs of
the theatre. "Die Jagemann imponirt quantum satis!" writes Christian
Vulpius, the brother of Christiane, to Nicolaus Meyer (Goethe-Jahrbuch,
ii. 417). ...
On February 7, 1803, Christian writes : — "Kotzebue has been banished
from the country. He is now selling his garden at Jena. . . . Kotzebue
has made himself hated everywhere. Goethe does not reply to him, but
he shall be chastised nevertheless."
On February 26, 1803, Christian writes : — "I am very much grieved
about the Geheimerath. During seven weeks he has not left the house,
and lately when he went into the open air in his garden he fell down in a
swoon. . . . The Court of the Do wager - Duchess is almost at open
enmity with Goethe, and every one there takes the side of the rascal
Kotzebue. . . . The people do not deserve Goethe. That scoundrel
has even a faction here ; can you imagine it ? Only the Duke stands
firmly by Goethe, and has forbidden his territory to Kotzebue."

742 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
On March 12, 1803, Christian writes: — "That the Geheimerath is
really ill, though not externally, is certain. He has not been beyond the
hall-door now for nine weeks. The Kotzebue affair has been very hard
on him, and he has a great deal of vexation caused by the cantatrice
Jagemann, who is Everything now. . . . The Geheimerath has a concert
every Tuesday. The opera-singers sing at these concerts. This week the
Duke, the Princess [Caroline], and Prince Bernhard attended. He is now
perfecting many poems and his play Die naturliche Tochter. . . . Every
Sunday two actors and an actress dine with the Geheimerath."
On March 17, 1803, Christian writes : — "Things are pretty much the
same with us as when I wrote to you a week ago. Goethe still -remains
indoors. The Duke said to him lately : ' If I were able to make a sun,
I would send one into your house to you.' "
On March 20, 1803, we find Christian telling of the performance of
Schiller's Braut von Messina (see the note on page 535). " Yesterday
Die Braut von Messina was at last given, and many hundred Jena students
who were present — season tickets not being available — were uncommonly
pleased, so well pleased that at the end of the piece they joined in a loud
vivat to the poet, which was proposed by Herr Dr. Schiitz of Jena, a
thing which never happened in this theatre before." Delighted as Goethe
was with the success of Schiller's play, he had to punish the offence against
the rules of the Ducal Theatre.
[Christian's letters to Nicolaus Meyer are skilfully used by Duntzer, in
adding little touches to the narrative during the following years, 1803-6.
Some of these details, however, though so well adapted for insertion in a
narrative, are not important enough for the special notice of an Appendix.]
45. Deaths of Christiane's half-sister and aunt, page 556. — Chris
tian Vulpius writes on April 19, 1805: — "August is in Frankfurt with
his grandmother. Christel [Christiane] is well, but Ernestine has brought
on consumption by her dancing and made it worse, and even Starke
despairs of saving her." Ernestine lived until the beginning of 1806.
On January 7> 1806, Christian writes: — "This morning about eleven
o'clock my sister Ernestine gently fell asleep for ever. I am deeply
grieved. She is the ninth of a series of brothers and sisters who have
died. We have foreseen her death during the last six months, she was
wasting away, and yet we weep now. . . . We do not yet venture to tell
the Geheimerath, that Ernestine is dead. [Goethe was in very bad health.]
Everything agitates and pains him dreadfully. He is not master of his
emotions." Again on March 3, 1806, Christian writes : — " The day before yester
day, at seven in the morning, bur good old aunt died of an apoplectic
stroke after having an attack of chest-illness for two days." This old
aunt and Ernestine Vulpius had lived in Goethe's house probably since
1794. See page 467, and Duntzer's new edition, page 465.
46. The completion of Faust. — To the various notices of Goethe's work
at Faust, 1798-1806 (see pages 497, 498, 515, 517, 521, 522), add the
following: — The work which Goethe did when on February 7, 180 1, he
turned again to Faust (see page 521) was the preparation of a clean
transcript of the Brockenszene. Before going to Oberrossla on March 25,

45-47-] APPENDIX. 743
1 80 1 (page 521), he filled the first great gap in his Faust. On October
22, 1804, Christian Vulpius writes : — " That Goethe will never again write
any poetry, I do not believe, and just for this reason, that at this moment
he has something under his pen ; his Faust, too, he means to finish."
(Probably the unnamed work that Goethe had on hand was a fore-piece.
See page 546. ) In the spring of 1 806 Goethe finished the First Part
oi Faust between March 21 and April 25. At this time the prose Wald
und Hbhle was written. Cotta, returning from the Leipzig Fair, took
away the manuscript in great joy. Faust was published in volume viii.
of the new edition of Goethe's works, which appeared in 1808. See
page 576 of this translation.
47. The French in Weimar, October 1806, see pages 560-564. — The
letters of Christian Vulpius, Goethe-Jahrbuch, ii. 423-424, and the new
documents printed by Keil in his book Goethe, Weimar und Jena im Jahre
1 806, have filled gaps in the narrative of Goethe's life during October 1 806.
In the new edition Duntzer has drawn on these two new sources, and has
moreover re-examined Riemer's account. The documents which Keil
prints are a collection laid aside by Goethe himself, and labelled : Acta,
die traurigen Folgen des 14 Octobers 1806 betreffend, viz. Documents relating
to the melancholy sequel of October 14, 1806. The reader will supplement
the narrative of pages 561-563 from the following : —
When at about five o'clock on the afternoon of October 14, 1806, the
cannonade having ceased, French hussars began to enter the silent deserted
streets of Weimar, Riemer and Goethe's son hurried to meet them with
bottles of wine and beer. Many other citizens did the same. Goethe
joined one group, drew from his blue overcoat a bottle of wine and handed
it to a chasseur on horseback, who received it with a nod of satisfaction
and stowed it away safe in his cloak. Then Goethe handed a package of
tobacco to another rider, but was taken aback by the inquiry, Is it good
tobacco ? He replied smiling, that he could not say, because he was not a
smoker himself. At that moment some shots were heard at a distance, and
the cry " Qui vive ?" The soldiers rode off, and Goethe hastened away.1
It was after this that Wilhelm von Tiirckheim came to Goethe and
that Riemer saw the two going to the Castle. Duntzer in the new edition
corrects " Augereau " in Goethe's message to his home to " Ney," adopting
the theory of Riemer's correctness. (See the translator's footnote, p. 561.)
Among those who took refuge in Goethe's house during the sack of
Weimar were Christian Vulpius and his wife. Hear the plaint of Christian
to Nicolaus Meyer : "Weimar, October 20, 1806. — What a calamity has
befallen us ! On the 14th, the unhappy battle of Jena lost, in the after
noon at five o'clock the sack of our city began and lasted thirty-six hours,
and has stripped me of everything. For three days we were not in our
house. . . . The fearful night, howling, lamentation, and fire, — ah, God !
and my wife and the child for hours in the cold night beneath the open
sky in the Park ! Something good : Yesterday the Geheimerath Goethe
married my sister. His house has been spared. He has marshals in it
continually." We had better take at once all that Christian has to tell
1 The little scene in which Goethe figures is described in a book which I have not
read. Keil gives its name in a footnote : Aus Goethe's Leben. Von einem Zeitgenossen
<W. C), Leipzig, 1849.

744 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
us. On November io, 1806, he writes : — " From the 15th to the 17th
October, we were in the house of the Geheimerath Goethe, and our own
house with all that was in it was free to any one who liked to occupy it.
And that was done with a vengeance ! About sixteen men lived in it,
until at length, Napoleon needing books from the Library, grenadiers,
upon the requisition of his engineer d'Alma, were stationed in my house.
On the 1 8th October I moved into it, but in what condition did I find it ?
Let me be silent as to that ! Then daily billeting of soldiers on us, one
time we had ten men, and no money, no provisions ! . . . My sister
helped us, but it has cost the Geheimerath himself more than 2000 thalers —
twelve eimer of wine alone. His house has not been sacked ; he averted
this on the first evening by wine and prudence, then he obtained a safe
guard, as General Victor, Marshals Ney, Lannes, and Augereau lodged
with him, at times twenty-eight beds in his house ; but it has been a hard
time for him, yet he is well, for which God be thanked."
On October 17, 1806, Goethe made the following entry in his private
papers: — "We are alive! our house remains unplundered and unfired,
saved as by a miracle. The Duchess has lived through the most terrible
hours with us ; to her we owe our sole hope of safety in the future, as at
present the preservation of the Castle. The Emperor of the Occident
resides in it." The last sentence is erased and "The Emperor is come"
substituted. On that day Napoleon left Weimar, and Goethe wrote to
Gunther the letter quoted on page 562.
Dentzel, the Commandant whom Napoleon left behind at Weimar,
had been once a pastor ; and it was in Jena that he had studied theology.
He was a humane and courteous man, and on being appointed Com
mandant of Weimar he did his utmost to reduce the disorder and to
diminish the sufferings of the inhabitants. In the Tag- und Jahres-Hefte
for 1807 Goethe notices the friendliness which Dentzel displayed. On
October 17, 1806, Goethe and Wieland dined with him. Dentzel had
ere this sent the following note to Goethe : — " The General-Adjutant of
the Imperial Staff begs Herr Hofrath Goethe to be quite free from anxiety.
The subscriber, the Commandant of the city of Weimar, will, at the request
of Marshal Lannes and in respect of the great Goethe himself, take all
measures to provide for the safety of Herr Goethe's house. — G. F. Dentzel."
On October 18, 1806, Dentzel wrote to Goethe: "I believe myself to
be doing Herr Hofrath Goethe the greatest service in allotting to him as
guest Monsieur Denon, member of the Institut National and Inspector-
General of Arts and Museums." Goethe gave a warm welcome to Denon.
On this day he sent to Dentzel as a token of gratitude and friendship a
handsome set of Wieland's Wcrrks with this inscription : —
"To General and City-Commandant Dentzel is dedicated this copy
of the Works of our common Friend Wieland, with earnest gratitude for
protection and kindness in terrible days, by Goethe, on October 18, 1806 ;
and do not forget the trefoil of the 17th."
" The trefoil of the 1 7th " is the little group of three friends assembled
at Dentzel's table.
In the weeks that follow we find Goethe very active on behalf of the
University of Jena and its institutions. He constitutes himself a centre
to which complaints and reports flow, and he spares no trouble to °-et

48-50.] , APPENDIX. 745
grievances redressed. The private wants of his friends also were relieved
by his solicitude and generosity. Keil's book has done the great service
of enabling us to prove the large-hearted, humane Goethe's existence in
this period. It had been assumed by the many who are never anxious to
beUeve good things of our great men — who are, on the contrary, appar
ently anxious to prove them selfish and commonplace — that during the
distress of Weimar Goethe "did nothing for the common weal, was not,
in fact, at all concerned about it, retired into his own private existence,
and was troubled about nothing but his manuscripts." This theory is now
no longer possible. Its assumptions are disproved by exact documentary
evidence, and for the thousandth time in the narrative of Goethe's life,
charity where we are ignorant has proved to be true wisdom.
48. Goethe's need of money, 18 1 2. — At the foot of page 582 it
is observed that the dangerous political situation- agitated Goethe very
painfully in March 18 1 2, and he fled to Jena, and thence to Karlsbad.
Duntzer adds in the new edition that Goethe was hard pressed for money
at this time, and that he had to write from Karlsbad to Cotta, asking an
increase of the sum paid for Dichtung und Wahrheit. Cotta cheerfully
granted his request.
49. Riemer and Goethe, page 589. — Riemer became a professor
in the Gymnasium of Weimar at Easter 181 2, and left Goethe's house.
That Goethe three years earlier had thought of such an appointment for
Riemer as desirable is proved by a letter printed in the Goethe-Jahrbuch,
Band i. (1880). On May 19, 1809, Goethe writes to Riemer from
Jena : — "I consider the occurrence of yesterday a fortunate one, for the
bad humour to which you have lately yielded must sooner or later bring
iibout a scene, and I confess that you have been putting my patience to
hard tests." However Goethe will subdue his irritation, and they will
again try to get on together as before. At the same time, he recommends
that Riemer should look out for some appointment.
Here, too, may find place Duntzer's mention of the disagreement be
tween August Goethe and Riemer which occurred in 181 6. The reader
may suppose the following to be inserted on page 634 : — August after
the death of his mother entered with zeal into the management of house
hold affairs, and though Goethe would not cede his general authority
to August, and even desired that it should be externally manifest that he
was the master, we find August acting on his own judgment. We know
of a quarrel between August and Riemer in the period following close on
Christiane's death. The Goethe-Jahrbuch, Band ii. (1881), publishes a
letter from Goethe to Riemer. It is dated July 19, 1 8 16. On July 20
Goethe was to start with Meyer for the Rhine (page 637). Goethe
writes : — "Before leaving I must say how much it pains me to see you,
my good Riemer, in such a relation to my son that I have not been able
to invite you to my house. May all be set right by my return."
50. Goethe and Beethoven, page 593. — The reader will supplement
the account of the first edition with the following particulars. The Goethe-
Jahrbuch, vol. ii. pp. 263-264, publishes a letter from Goethe to Count
Dietrichstein, dated Karlsbad, June 23, 181 1. In this letter Goethe
thanks Dietrichstein for having sent him some of Beethoven's compositions

746 THE LIFE OF GOETHE. [arts.
to Goethe's songs. Ludwig Geiger observes that this letter is especially
interesting, because there is but one other letter printed, in which Goethe
utters an opinion on Beethoven's compositions. Goethe writes : —
" Though I am not in a position to pronounce an artistic criticism on
these compositions, I can at least say this, that I have derived great
pleasure as well from their grace as from a certain singularity of character."
The other utterance upon Beethoven's compositions is in a letter to
Marianne Willemer, dated Weimar, July 12, 1821. It is a reply to her
enthusiastic praise of Beethoven's music to Egmont. The passage will be
found on page 159 of Goethe und Marianne (1878).
Another point of contact between Goethe and Beethoven has to be
mentioned. The Goethe-Jahrbuch (i. 374-5) reprints a letter from Bee
thoven to Bettina, dated Vienna, February 10, 181 1. I quote a passage
from the letter : — ' ' If you write to Goethe about me, seek out all words
that may express to him my passionate reverence and admiration. I am
myself on the point of writing to him about Egmont, which I have set to
music, and in truth merely through love for his writings, which make me
happy ; but who can return sufficient thanks to a great poet, the most
precious jewel of a nation. "
51. Goethe and Friedrich Stolberg. — In June 1812 Goethe met Fritz
Stolberg in Karlsbad. Goethe went to Stolberg of his own accord.
Stolberg writes: — "He was very friendly, showed emotion and joy,
and I too was suffused with recollection of the long past days." But
notwithstanding Goethe's cordial and trustful behaviour, Stolberg was
unable to judge him with fairness ; and we find him adhere to his old
distorted conception of Goethe as a hypocrite and a vain ambitious man.
It is a relief to turn to the judgment of Goethe in the letters of the noble
Princess Galitzin, or to Goethe's generous utterances on Stolberg himself.
Goethe's grief upon Stolberg's death in 1819 is noticed page 639.
Duntzer in his new edition mentions how in June 1816 Goethe sent a
letter to Stolberg by Knebel's son. In this letter he speaks of the recent
death of his wife. Stolberg's reply was friendly. "I feel with you in
your sad loss as it becomes so old and true a comrade, who commends
himself to your remembrance from the bottom of his heart. "
52. Ulrike von Levezow' s age, page 642. — I owe the following note
to a communication from Professor Duntzer : — According to Ulrike von
Levezow's own statement (as given in Schrber's Deutsche Dichtung des
neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, page 440), she was born in Leipzig on Febru
ary 4, 1804. Thus her age in the summer of 1822 would have been about
eighteen and a half. The opposing evidence, which to Duntzer seems of
greater weight, is to be found in Ludwig Speck's book, Moderne Cultur-
stande in Elsass, ii. 97. There Speck says that, in 1822, he enjoyed the
society of Frau von Levezow and her three daughters at Strassburg. The
eldest of these daughters had "bloomed into maidenhood, though but in
her fifteenth year." This, observes Duntzer, is in harmony with all
accounts that have come down to us of Goethe and Ulrike. May there
not be some misprint or mistake in Schrber's figures? — that "4" of the
month and that " 4" of the year — can there be some confusion?
Ulrike von Levezow still lives (1883). She never married. In

5i-52-] APPENDIX. 747
Schrber's book will be found her utterance of the love and reverence with
which she recalls the memory of Goethe.
53. To Nineteen Friends in England, pages 711-712. — This is the title
of the poem with which Goethe acknowledged the gift of a seal. It
was published in Chaos, and is dated there August 28, 1831. In a book
which appeared immediately after Goethe's death, Goethe's letzte literarische
Thdtigkeit, Verhdltniss zum Ausland, und Scheiden, nach den Mittheilungen
seiner Freunde dargestellt, by Dr. Karl Wilhelm Miiller, the gift is described
in detail, then the letter is given with the subscription : From Fifteen
English Friends. Yet, farther on, Miiller speaks of the nineteen
friends, not fifteen, and proceeds to give their names. He gives fifteen
names, and says that the other four are unknown. The fifteen names are
those in the translator's footnote, page 712. Every German Life of Goethe
speaks of nineteen friends, and Herr Professor Diintzer believes this
number to be the correct one ; he guesses that four contributors joined in
the undertaking later than the fifteen others, and that Goethe had private
knowledge of this fact through a letter from Carlyle. Mr. Froude's Life
of Carlyle does not speak of the gift at all. Before I received Professor
Duntzer's note on the subject, I had thought it probable that fifteen is the
correct number. On pp. 255-257 of Goethe's correspondence with Zelter
(vol. vi.) will be found a letter to Zelter from a London correspondent.
This letter Zelter forwarded to Goethe. It contains an account of the gift
to Goethe, " the gift of nineteen Englishmen and Scotchmen, each of whom
subscribed two guineas." " Among these," proceeds the writer — and then
he communicates fifteen names. The order in which he gives them is the
order of K. W. Muller's book, the particulars about their literary work
or relationship are those given by Miiller, and some of the mistakes in
spelling are the same in the letter and the book. I thought that this
letter might have been the originator of a mistake which once adopted in
Chaos would be confirmed and repeated. The article in Eraser's Maga
zine, November 1 83 1, knows only oi fifteen Englishmen. And the poem :
"Worte die der Dichter spricht," is quoted by the writer in Fraser with
the superscription : " Den fiinfzehn Englischen Freunden."

INDEX.

r Aachen, 614, 617
^Abraham und fsaak, 236
mAbschied, 673
t^bt, Felicitas, wife of Karl Friedrich, 115
jpAcademie Francaise, 711
Accademia degh Arcadi, Rome, 46, 384
fAcerra Pkilologica, by Heidegger, 14
\ " Ach, um deine feuchten Schwingen," 627
hAckillezs, 495, 497, 498, 503, 569
^Acoustics, 447, 534
lActors, Goethe's criticism and training of,
| 444, 447, 461, 502, 535, 537, 539i 542, 565,
595-6, 630, 649
Acts ofthe Apostles, " speak with tongues,"
explained by Goethe, 163-4
Adlertmd Taube, 165 ; sent to Boie, 168
Advocate, Goethe as, 126-7, 158, 171-2, 176,
181, 227, 241, See also Law
Aelteste Urkunde des Menschengeschleckts,
l by Herder, 192
VAVolskarfen, 643
I^Eschylus, 489
l^sthetics, Kant's teaching, 439 Schiller,
475, 481 ; Schlegel, 483
, jEtna, 393
Agatha, St., of Raphael, 373
Agathon, by Wieland, 136
Kkgriculture, 275, 337, 583
Ahlefeld, Frau von, 669
BAja, Frau, origin of name, 226
fAkacs, see Griiner, Karl Franz
Aken, 278
Alarcos, by F. Schlegel, 530, 543
Alba, 378
Alban Mount, 383
Albano, 397, 703
| Albany, Count (the Pretender), 381
[Albrecht, Johann Georg, Rector of the
\ Gymnasium in Frankfurt, character, 30 ;
teaches Wolfgang Hebrew, 35!; troubled
by his doubts, ib.
Albrecht, Johann Karl, 250, 312; accom
panies Prince Constantin on his travels,
321
Album verses, in Moors s album, 52 ; in
Kfose's, 68; Friederike's, 118; in Lenz s,
124: in Johann Peter Reynier's, 207; in
Countess Egloffstein's and Frau Mandel-
sloh's, 684
Alceste, by Wieland, 179
Alchemy, 83, 84, 87, 89, 93, 99, "2, 34i

A Icinotis, Der neue, 539
A Idobrandini Marriage, picture, 494
Alexander the Great, picture of a batfle of,
717
Alexandrine verse, Wolfgang begins a play
in French, 31 ; Alexandrines in Belsazar,
51 ; French Alexandrines in a letter, 59 ;
Clodius's Alexandrines, 65 ; parodied, ib.;
Alexandrines in Die Mitschttldigen, 74
Alexis und Dora, 483
Alfieri, Saul, 596,
Algebra, 345
Algiers, 178, 192
Ali and Fatema, the song of, 164, 168
"All from Love," Goethe's motto, 267, 291
Allesina, Johann Maria, and his wife Fran-
ziska Clara {ne'e Brentano), their golden
wedding, 192, 726. These were the grand
parents of Goethe's friend Schweitzer
Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 73
Allgemeine Jenaische Diteraturzeitung,
537, 539, 547
Allgemeine Literaturzeitung ; Schiller's
paper on Egmont, 423 ; mentioned, 525 ;
removing to Halle, 537 ; mentioned, 741
Allgemeine Zeitung, Cotta's, 500
All-Leben, 616
Alhvills Papiere, by Jacobi, Goethe op
posed to its publication, 234
"Als ich auf dem Euphrat schiffte," 625
Als ich in Saarbriicken, 100
Alsace, see Elsass
Alsatia illustrata, 113
Amadis, Der neue, sent to Jacobi, 209
Amalia, the Duchess, see Weimar
Amos, Johann, of Comna (Comenius), his
Orbis Sensualium Pictus, 13, 19
Ampere, J. J., 676-7
Amyntas, 493
"An des lust'gen Brunnens Rand," 626
,( An Trauertagen," 634 note
Anacreon, 137, 138
Anacreontic poets, the German, 31
Anacreontics, by Goethe, 323
Anatomy, 109, 324, 327, 341-3, 424, 475, 512,
532
Anatomy, Comparative, 475, 532, 653, 716.
See also Morphology
Andr6, Anton, his birth, 241
Andr£, Johann, 180, 214, 220, 225, 236, 241,
278
Andre", Marie Julie {ne'e Hegar), sings in
Goethe's Bundeslied, 236

750

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Anfossi, Pasquale, 388
Angantyr und Hervor, 405
" Angedenken du verklungner Freude," 243
Angelika, see Zucchi
Angelo, Castle of St., 398
Angelo, Michael, 378, 381, 5B
Annalen, see Tag- undjahr shefte
Annchen, or Annette, see Kanne
Anne, St., Russian Order, 581
Anson, Admiral, 16
Antiquarische Briefe, by Lessing, 85-87
Antoninus and Faustina, Temple of, 372
Apolda, 275, 580
Apollo of the Belvedere, Goethe addresses
Herder as, 122; Goethe sees the statue,
376, 381
Appian Way, 383
Arabian poems, 621
Arabian writing characters, 626
Arcadian Academy of Rome, 46, 384, 407 note
Arcadian Society, Buri's, 46-49
Architecture, Cours de t, by Blondel, 271
Architecture, 271, 372, 376, 479, 491, 492.
See also : Gothic ; Palladio ; Roman Ruins
Architektonisch-naturkistorisches Problem,
394
Arends (more correctly Arens), Johann
August, the architect, 428, 430, 435
Arendt, Martin Friedrich, the antiquary, 589
d'Axgenville, Antoine Joseph, his Lives of
ihe Painters, 72
Arheiligen, 724
Ariosto, 236, 373, 565
Aristeia, 577 note
Aristodemo, 380, 388
Aristophanes, Goethe's adaptation of The
Birds, 312
Aristotle, his Poetics, 56
Arithmetic, Wolfgang's lessons in, 20
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 605, 623 note
Arnim, Ludwig Achim von, 557, 588
Arnim, Bettine von, nie Brentano, 565-6,
57o, 573, 584-5, 586, 588-9, 593
Arnold, Gottfried, author of History of
Church, 89
Arnold, Matthew, Quotation from Sonnet,
545 note
As You Like It, Amiens' song, 138
Aschersleben, 420, 427, 432, 450
Assisi, 373
Astronomy, 345, 509
Attila, 455
Attila, by Werner, 572
Atzbach, 151, 152, 722
" Au sommet du bonheur," 59
Auch telescope, 509
Auersperg, Joseph, Count von, 647
Auerstadt, 76
Aufgeregten, Die, 450
" Aufklarung," the, 1, 155, 163
Aufresne, Jean Rival, 113, 123
Augereau, Marshal Pierre Francois Charles,
561, 744
Augsburg, 43, 414, 438, 537
Aus meinem Leben, 652
Attssichten in die Eiuigkeit, by Lavater,
160, 178
Aussohnung, 646
Austria, Maria Ludovika, Empress of, 592 ;
her death, 632

Austria, Marie Antoinette, Arch -Duchess
of> 99
Austria, Francis and Maria Theresa, see
Germany
Austria, Joseph, Arch-Duke of, see Germany
Austria, Franz I. Emperor of (Franz II. of
Germany), 592, 622. See also Germany

B
Baar, 10 1
Babe, see Schulthess
Bacon, Francis, Lord, 340 '
Baden, Karl Friedrich, Markgraf of, 178,
204, 205, 227, 264
Bahrdt, Karl Friedrich ; criticises Lavater's
Sermons on Jonah, 174; Goethe's satire,
188 ; but see 725
Bakis, Weissagungen des, 497
Baldauf, Karl Gottfried, mining expert, 435,
436", 443
Balde, Jacob, a German poet of the seven
teenth century who wrote Latin poetry,
translated by Herder, 469
Ballads, of Goethe and Schiller, 490, and
see names of ballads.
Balloons, 345
Banks, John, one of the authors of Essex,
607
Bard, Rhingulph the, 86, 88
Bard, Sined the, 174
"Bardic Poetry," 86, 88, 136, 174
Bardua, Caroline, young painter, 563
Barenthal, the, 101
Barometer — "When the barometer is low
who can Uve," 420, 513
"Barometer," Goethe calls himself a, 318
Basedow, Johann Bernhard, ig6, 197, 200,
201
Basel, 301
Bathing, 76, 288
Batsch, August Johann Georg Karl; Goethe's
first acquaintance with him, 343, 344 ; a
professor in Jena, 434 ; 446 ; the Fur-
stengarten, 466 ; 475 ; his death, 532 ;
choice of a successor (Schelver), 536
Batteux, Charles, 58
Batty, George, 274, 275, 307, 308, 313, 328,
329
Bavaria, Ludwig L, King of, 412, 670, 681,
686, 698, 699
Bavaria, Order of Merit of, 679
Bayle, Pierre, his Dictionary, 50
"Bear," Goethe calling himself the, 214,
228, '229, 528
Beaumarchais, Pierre Auguste de, his
Mimoires, 191
Becher, Der, by Goethe, 323
Beck, Johann Christoph, actor, 461
Beck, Heinrich, actor, of Mannheim, 442
Becker, Heinrich, actor, 465
Becker, Christiane Amalie Luise {nie Neu-
. mann), 447, 448, 465, 491 ; her death, 493 ;
her monument, 497, 505, 511 ; her name
mentioned, 498
Beer, bad effect, 76
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 593, 745 ; his music
to Egmont, 746
Behrisch, Ernst _ Wolfgang, 61-2; leaves
Leipzig, 69 ; his transcript of Goethe's

INDEX.

751

poems, 71 ; 72 ; 95 ; his successor, 76 ;
sketch dedicated to, 75
Behrisch, Three Odes to, 72
Beireis, Gottfried Christoph, 554
Beitrdge zur Optik, 445 ; second part, 448 ;
third part, 448
Belinden, An, 217
Bellersheim, Fraulein von, her album, 21
Bellomo, Joseph, theatrical manager, under
takes Weimar theatre, 337-8 ; his company
play Italian comic operas, 347 ; the de
gradation ofthe theatre under his manage
ment, 443 ; Bellomo's representations
cease, ib.
' i ' Belmonte, the Princess, nie Filangieri, 390
Belsazar, tragedy by Goethe, 51, 55 ; burnt,
57
Belvedere, a country residence of the
Weimar royal family, 277, 291, 313, 338,
344, 428, 430, 663, 715
Belvedere, the street in Weimar, 256
Bendorf, 198
Bensberg, Castle, 200
Bentzel - Sternau, Christian Ernst, Count
von, Minister of Finance, 584
Be'ranger, Jean Pierre de, 677
Berendis, Hieronymus Dietrich, 546, 549
Bergen, battle of, 27
Berger, Anton, and his wife, 347
Bergmann, Gustav von, 71
Bergschloss, 530
Berka, 613-4, 638, 680
Berlicningen, G5tz von, knight, 131
Berlin Academy of Sciences, no, 534, 559
Berlin, Goethe in, 278 ; Goethe refuses to
go, 355 ; Karl August there, 378, 382 ]"
Berlin, Merck to, 169, 724 ; Go'tz in Berlin,
190 ; Merck's desire to obtain a place
there, 194, 202 ; Knebel's friends there,
210 ; the hostile critics on Werther, 218 ;
Madame Karschin, 234; Mylius, 243;
250 ; Himburg, 284 ; Claudine in Berlin,
432 ; the Grosskophta printed in Berlin,
446 ; Hirt to Berlin, 491J; Tancrede, 517 ;
Hufeland^ 518 ; Gentz, 522 ; Zelter, 528 ;
Schiller invited to Berlin, 544 ; the Nico
le lovius family, 638 ; Ottilie's interesting
! K letters from Berlin, 659
Berlin, National Theatre ; Claudine per-
1 formed there, 432 ; secures Iffland, 486 ;
Eugenie damned, 538 ; Werner's Martin
Luther, 570 ; Epimenides Erwachen,
613, 621 ; the Wolffs taken from Weimar,
629 ; Hans Sachs, 684 _ *
Bernard, Nicolaus, of Offenbach, Lili's uncle,
300, 730
Bernard, Samuel, of Strassburg, Lilis be
trothed, 300, 730
Berne, 301, 302 note
Bernese Oberland, 301, 302 note
Bernis, Francois, Comte de, 408
Bernstorff, Andreas Peter, Count, 216;
marries his wife's sister, Auguste Stolberg,
363
Bernstorff, Auguste Luise, Countess, see
Stolberg . ^ _,
Bernstorff, Johann Hartwig Ernst, Count,
died 1772, 178, 292
^Bernstorff, C. E. {ne'e von Buchwald> widow
of Johann Hartwig), 216, 292, 306, 448 .

Beroldingen, Joseph Anton Siegmund von,
297
Berthier, Alexandre, 578 note
Bertram, Tohann Baptist, 601 note
Bertuch, r drich Johann Justin, 246, 252,
327, 40; *§ ; editor of the fournal des .
Luxus, s& j, 740 ; 563
Bertuch, Friederike {nie Slevoigt), 252, 563
Besser, Johann von, poet, 15
Bessunger Forest, 138, 141
Betti Jacobi,. see Jacobi, Helene Elizabeth
Bettine, see Arnim
Beulwitz, Friedrich August von, 690, 692,
note
Beuther, Friedrich, 620
Bex, 302 note
Biberich, 617
Bible, 14, "35, 37, 83, 109, 121, 163, 168, 189,
489
Bibliothek der scho'nen Wissenschaften,
conducted by Weisse, 50 ; Neue Biblio
thek, 72 ; Klotz' s Deutsche Bibliothek,
. 73 ; Nicolai's Allgemeine deutsche Biblio-
' thek, 73
Biedermann, W. Frh. von, 531 note, 652 note
Biel, 301
Bildung, Ideen iiber organische, 568
Billets, Les deux, by Florian, 461
Bingen, 463, 617
Birds, The, 312
Birthday, Goethe's, a day chosen for im
portant acts, 77 ; always a day of serious
reflection, 235
" Bisch guet !" Lavater's, 195
Bitsch, 10 1
" Bizarre," used with reference to Goethe
by Kestner, 145 ; by Boie, 205-6
Blanc, Mont, 302
Blankenhain, 581
Blondel, Jacques Francois, 271
Blue colour, 410, 444
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 341
Blumlein WunderschSn, Das, 498
Boars at Eisenach, 325 ; on the Ettersberg,
353
Boccaccio, 283
Bockel, Jonas, Friederike's entry in his
album, 299
Bockenheim, French church there, 50
Bockmann, Johann Lorenz, 205
Bode, Johann Joachim Christoph.; trans
lator of Tristram Shandy, 234-5 , free
mason, 306 ; meets Lavater, 363
Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 230
Boerhaave, Hermann, 89
Bohl, Christiane Susanne, 334
Bohme, Johann Friedrich, 54, 58, 63
Bohme, Frau, 55, 56, 66
Boie, Heinrich Christian, 144, 166, 168, 178,
192, 205-6, 210, 211
Boissere'e, Melchior, 600, 601, 618, 619
Boissere'e, Sulpiz, first intercourse with
Goethe, 600-602 ; with Goethe in 1814,
618-9; in 1815, 623-8; Christiane's death,
634 ; panned by an article in Kunst und
A Iterthum, 653 ; the negotiations with
Cotta, 663, 665, 667-8, 685 ; visits Weimar,
669-670 ; the Rainbow, 716
Bologna, 373
Bonn, 198, 623

752

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Bookstalls in Frankfurt, io ; in Leipzig, 72 ;
on the Corso, Rome, 379
Borghese Gardens, Rome, 410
Born, Ignaz von, 148, 154
Borne, Ludwig, 657
Bostel, Lucas Andreas von, Advocate, 723
Botany, 285, 343-345 ; 371 ; (the fan-palm)
372; 376; (the type-plant) 391, 392; (the
gilliflower) 401 ; 420, 433-4, 565 ; see also
Morphology }Metamorp/iose der P/lanzen,
Kecht
Bottiger, Karl August, 446, 448 note, 468
charmed with Hermann und Dorothea,
486 ; sells the poem to Vieweg, 488 ; 491
his love of telling news, 500 ; at Goethe's
house, 502 ; his attack on Ion, 526, 741
mentioned, 542 note
Boulet, von, met by Goethe in Berlin, 278
Bourbon-Conti, Stephanie Louise de, 511
Braga, ode by Klopstock, 136
Branconi, Marchesa di, 236, 302 ; her por
trait, ib. ; comes to Weimar, 312
Brandt, Heinrich Franz, the engraver, 664
Brandt, Ferdinand Wilhelm, of Wetzlar;
his house, Das Deutsche Haus, 146, 151
Brandt, Anna Sophie, 168-9
Brandt, Dorothea, 151 ; 723 ; 158, 159
Braunfels, 154
Braunschweig, see Brunswick
Braut von Corinth, Die, 490
Brazil von Messina, 503, 534
Brautigam, Der, 602
Breitinger, Johann Jacob, 230
Breitkopf, the family, 64, 66, 75, 77
Breitkopf, Bernhard Theodor, 64 ; sets G.'s
songs to music, 75, 78, 90, 91
Breitkopf, Christian Gottlob, 64, 77, 90
Breitkopf, Johann Gottlieb Immanuel,
printer, 64 ; 432, 433
Breitkopf, Sophie Constanze, 64, 73, 88, 93,
129
Brenner Pass, 371
Brentano, Peter Anton, 182, 183 ; marriage,
184 ; insults G-, 185 ; G. avoids his house,
192 ; G. meets him at the play, 207 ; G.
congratulates him, 221 ; G- visits his house,
232
Brentano, Maximiliane Euphrosyne {nie
Laroche) 140, 141, 155-6, 182 ; marriage,
184 ; wretchedness, 186, 202, 206 ; Goethe's
passion, he avoids her, 192, 194, 202 ;
her birthday, 188 ; she is not a figure in
Werther, 204 ; met at the play by G.,
207; her eldestson, Georg, born, 221;
her friendship with Goethe's mother, 232 ;
Goethe visits her, 232 ; sends her greeting
from Weimar, 249 ; her death, 507
Brentano, Bettine, see Arnim
Brentano, Georg Michael Anton, eldest son
of Max Brentano, 221
Brentano, Adelgunde, in Osmannstedt, 507
Brentano, Sophie, in Osmannstedt, 507
Brentano, Clemens, 557, 570
Brentano, Melanie, 570
Brentano, Kunigunde, see Savigny
Brentano, Ludovica, see Jordis
Brentano, Franz, 617
Breslau, 320, 439, 440
Briefe aus der Schweiz, 302 note, 307
Brief des Pastors, 163

Briefe die netteste Literatur betreffend, 50,
Bnenz, 301 note
Brinkmann, Gustav von, 496
Brion,, Johann Jacob, Pastor, 105, 106
Brion, Magdalena Salomea, Pastorin, 106 ;
visits Strassburg, 115
Brion, Christian, 106; pastor at Rothau, 297
Brion, Katharina Magdalena, eldest daugh
ter (married to Pastor Gockel before
Goethe knew the Brions ; she lived at
Eichstetten), 106
Brion, Maria Salomea, second daughter (the
eldest in Goethe's narrative, she married
Pastor Marx), 106 ; burns Goethe's letters
to Friederike, 108 ; no ; comes to Strass
burg, 115 ; dancingwith Goethe, 116 ; her
husband, 298
Brion, Jakobea Sophia, the fourth daughter
(not mentioned in Dichtung und Wahr
heit), 106 ; Goethe sends her kisses, 108 ;
able to repeat Goethe's lines in 1835, 115 ;
opens a shop with Friederike at Rothau,
297
Brion, Friederike Elisabetha, the third
daughter, 106-8, uo-n; Goethe "wins
her heart in play," 114; the Grove of
Nightingales, 115, 119; visit to Strass
burg, 115; becomes ill, 116; Renuncia
tion, 1x6-117 » Goethe's wretchedness, 117-
120 ; his farewell to Friederike, 123-124 ;
tells his sister of his pain, 128 ; sends
Friederike engravings, 128 ; 137, 139, 153 ;
Gotz sent to her, 177 ; slandered by Lenz,
229 (cp. 167) ; her story incorrectly told
to Lib, 237 ; Goethe's last meeting with
her, 297 ; her subsequent history, 297-8 ;
a facsimile of verses by her, 299
Britannicus, by Racine, 34, 578
Brocken, the, 270
Brockhaus, Friedrich and Heinrich, pub
lishers, 662
Broglio, Due de, commander of the French
garrison in Frankfurt, 27
Bronner, Heinrich Ludwig, publisher* 667
Bruckner, Johann Gottfried, actor, 55
Briihl, Karl Friedrich Moritz, Count, 684
Bruhl, the, street in Leipzig, 58
Brunner, Sebastian, 385
Brunswick, 341, 347, 352, 357
Brunswick, Ferdinand, Prince of (1721-
1792), 27
Brunswick, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand (born
1734, succeeded to his father, Duke Karl,
in 1780, died of a wound received at Auer-
stadt in 1806), secretly married to the
Marchesa Branconi, 302 ; mentioned, 454
Biickeburg, Count Wilhelm of, 104
Buckeburg; Herder goes to, 115; 133
Buff, Heinrich Adam, 146
Buff, Magdalena Ernestine {nie Feyler\
148 ; 722 ; their children, Charlotte Amahe
Angela, see Riedel, and —
Buff, Charlotte Sophie Henriette, see
Kestner
Buff, Caroline Wilhelmine, 148
Buff, Hans, 167
Buff, Helene (Lenchen), 161, 165
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de,
310

INDEX.

753

Euilding Department, Weimar, 269
Biilow- Pluskow, Friedrich von, 32
Bundeslied, by Goethe, 236
Buonaparte, Napoleon, see France
Buonaparte, Louis, see Holland
Buqncompagni, Ignaz Lodovico, Principe
di, 408
Burgau, 683
Burger, Gottfried August, 187, 213 ; Wer
ther, 217 ; 218, 242
Biirgergeneral, Der, 415, 461, 547
Buri, E. K. Ludwig, Isenburg von, 46-49,
198
Buri, Friedrich Karl von, 46
Burkhardt, Goethe und Kayser, 276, and
Passim
Burning of Goethe's manuscripts, 57, 71, 95
Burning of Goethe's friends' letters, 492
note, 669 note
Bury, Friedrich, the painter, 375, 379, 398,
402, 406, 412, 438 ; in Weimar, 511 ;
painting Goethe, 514; in Karlsbad, 575
Busch, Strassburg Surgeon, in
Biittner, Christian Wilhelm ; his library,
338 ; a botanist, 343 ; his prisms, 441 ;
446 ; his death, 524 ; his library, 526, 528.
Also see t Jena_; Biittner Library
Byron, Lord, 696 note, 704 note

Cabalistic studies, 93
Casar, by Voltaire, 580
Casar, see Julius Casar
Cagliostro, Alexander, Count, (Joseph
Balsamo), 465
Calderon, 558; The Constant Prince, 596;
Lifers a dream, 596 ; Zenobia, 620
Caltanisetta, 393
Calvario, Santa Elena al, 73
Calvinist, see Reformed
Camburg, village, 692
Camera obscura, Goethe's, 450, 497
Campagna, Rome, 382-3
Campagne in Frankreich, published, 652
Campaign in France, the, 452-459
Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 378, 380
Camper, Andreas Gilles, 405
Camper, Peter, 342 ; 405 note
Camsdorf, 636
Candolle, August Pyrame de ; Orga?io-
graphie Vigetale, 685, 687, 691
Canitz, Friedrich Rudolf, Freiherr yon, 15
Cannon-Fever, the, Goethe's experiment at
Valmy, 454 „ , , ,
Canut, by Elias Schlegel, 34
Capitol, the, 381, 384, 406 ; last visit, 413
Capuchins' Hospice on the Gotthard Pass,
303 note
Carlyle, Thomas, 506 note, 676 note, 712, 747
Carlyle, John, 712
Carnival, the Roman, 388, 4°9> 425
Carriage horses, gift from the Duke, 591
Casa di Goethe, in Pompeii, 703, 717
Casa Santa, Goethe's parents' house called,

.Caserta, 391 .
Caspers, 'Manon (Manechen), 5
her younger sister, Fanny)
Casseh, 188, 226, 295 ; the anatomical

(Not

theatre, 341 ; the elephant's skull, 341 ;
524, 566 note
Cassel, Landgrafof, see Hessen-Cassel
Castel Gandolfo, 397, 403
Casti, Giambattista, 399 ; 466 note
Castrop, Jean Antoine de, 273, 307, 310, 338
" Cat," Goethe calls himself, 228
Catania, 393
Cathedrals, see Magdeburg, Milan, Koln,
Speier, Strassburg
Catullus, 407
Cellarius, Christof, 9, 21
Cellini, Benvenuto, his Autobiography, 477,
497, 512, 53*, 533
Cento, 373
Ceres, Hymns to, 122
Cestius, Pyramid of, 410, 704
Chalons sur Marne, 454, 455
Chamber of Finance, Weimar, see Kammer
Chamouni, 301 note
Chaos, Das, 697, 747
Chap - books, popular, bought by the child
Goethe, 10, 16
Charpentier, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm
Tcussaint von, his mineralogical map, 340
Chemistry, 88-9 ; needful for mineralogical
study, 341 ; chemical part of the Theory of
Colour, 464; Gottling, 475; Humboldt, 489;
Dobereiner, 597, 683 ; Wackenroder, 715
Chess, Goethe playing, 129
Children, Goethe and, 139, 145, 149, 184,
249, 333"4. 477, 483, 662, 670, 713
China, Goethe studying, 608, 675
Chinese in Rom, Der, 485
Chine sisch- Deutsche Jahres- und Tages-
zeiten, 677
Chladni, Ernst Florenz Friedrich, 534
Chodowiecki, Daniel Nikolaus, 278
Chrien, the Greek XPeLCLh 20
Christ Jesus, the Saviour, 97-8, 99, 102, 163,
189, 194, I95, 374, 5?8, 736-7
Christ, Johann Friedrich, 86
Christgeschenk, sonnet by Goethe, 571
Christianity, 32, 77, 89, 91, 97-8, 102, 103,
108-9, 12I» I45-6, 163, 189, 195, 261, 374,
479. See also : Religion, Herrnhuter,
Pietists, Lord's Supper, Christ
Churchand State, Goethe's essay on, 114, 121
Cicero, De Oratore, 54 ; De Senectute, 715
" Cidli," Klopstock's (Meta Moller), 136
Cimarosa, 398 .
Clara von Hoheneichen, by C. H. Spiess,
55o
Clarke, Samuel, his translation o£ Homer,
118
Classical Walpurgis-Night, 698, 699
Claude Gele'e, called Lorraine, 397, 416
Claudine von Villabella, 729 ; 211-12, 224-5 ;
mentioned to Herder, 227 ; sent to Knebel,
229 ; sent to Merck, 241 ; G. thinks of re
casting it, 348 ; begins to do so, 403, 409 ;
Reichardt's music, 427 ; brought out in
Berlin, 432 ; in Weimar, 476
Claudius, Matthias, 178
Clauer, David, 9
Clauer, son of David, 9, 34, 39, 40, 47
Clavigo, 191; given to Weygand, 193; to
Jacobi and Sophie Laroche, 202 ; hostile
criticism, 202 ; praised by Klopstock, 205 ;
1 played in Weimar, 338

3 c

754

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Clerfayt, Francois, Due de, 454
Clodius, Christian August, 58, 63, 65, 6g, 86
Coblenz, 155, 197, 451, 457, 583, 623
Coblenz, Dini zu, 198
Coburg, Goethe's father there, 2 ; Goethe
there, 329
CobiTTg, Der Dichter in Audienz zu, 329
Cocoa-nuts, dissection of, 343
Coffee, bad effect of, 76, 286, 429, 468
Coins, Goethe's collection, 532, 533, 541
Coler, Johann, 189
Colla, Heinrich, 377
Collina, Filippo, son of G.'s landlord, 402, 404
Colmar, 122; 501
Cologne, see Koln
Colomies, 296
Colosseum, 376, 413
Colour, Goethe's study of, 441, 443, 444, 445,
446-7, 453, 463, 465, 469, 476, 495. 497,
500, 502, 512, 519, 523, 532, 534, 536, 556,
559, 598. See also ^Optics, Farbenlehre,
Malus, Newton
Colour, blue no, 410
Colours, Ent-optic, 654
Coloured Shadows, Goethe's essay on, 463
Comenius, see Amos
Co?nische Erzahlungen, hy Wieland, 56
Commandments, the Ten, 121, 163
Comparative Anatomy, see Anatomy and
Morphology
Concerto dra?nmatico, 164
" Concerts, the Great," Leipzig, 55, 66, 72-3
Concerts at Goethe's house in Weimar, 519,
535, 543, S^9j 59°, 6o3, 6o8> 641, 643, 66o,
742
Concerts in Strassburg, 113
Confirmation, Goethe's, 32
Confiscable Erzahlungen, by Wagner, 209
Conradin, 355, 366, 375
Consenvoy, 456
" Consequence of Nature," 345
Constant, Benjamin, 541, 542
Constantinople, Russian designs on, 404
Constanz, 413
Consumption, Goethe in danger of, 81-82
Conte, II, see Grosskophta
Conversations in Lyrics, 492
Conversations with Goethe, Eckermann's,
702, 705, 707
Corneille, Pierre, 31 ; the Cid, 557
Cornelius, Peter Joseph, 587
Coronations at Frankfurt : of the Emperor
Francis, 17 ; of the King of Rome, 43 ;
ofthe Emperor Peter Leopold, 436
Corso, Rome, 375, 379, 388, 409
Cosmogony, 339-40, 342, 345
Cossacks in Weimar, 608
Cotta, Johann, Friedrich Baron von ; Die
Horen, 469 ; Die Propylden, 498, 499,
507; Allgemeine Zeitung, 500; Pocket-
Book for Ladies, 515, 598 ; undertakes
edition of G.'s Works, 550, 555 ; men
tioned, 552, 576, 642, 645 ; the final edition
of G.'s Works, 660, 662, 665, 668, 675;
the Schiller-Goethe Correspondence, 685 ;
generosity to Goethe, 745
Coudenhoven {properly Coudenhove), Lud
wig von, 458
Coudenhoven, Sophie von {nie Countess von
Hatzfeld), 458

Coudray, Clemens Wenzeslaus, 637, 661,
662, 673, 681, 697, 715
Cracow, 439
Cramer, Andreas, 51
Cramer, Ludwig Wilhelm, 617, 623
Craniology, 285
Cray-fish, boys drowned in Lahn, 201-2
Creation, The, by Haydn, 518
Creizenach, editor of Goethe und Marianne
von Willemer, 618
Crespel, Peter Paul, father of Goethe's play
mate, 40-1
Crespel, Franziska, 41, 90, 100, 128
Crespel, Johann Bernhard, 40-1, 81, 129, 142,
175, 191, 207
Crespel, Maria Katharina, 41, 90, 128
Creutz, Friedrich von, poet, 15
" Crow," Herder calls Goethe a, 134
Crown -Lands, Weimar, see Weimar, State
Domains
Crusade of St Louis, 455
Cumberland, Richard, play writer, 256, 265
Curtius, Michael Conrad, 56
Custine, Adam Philippe, Due de, 456
Cuvier, Georges, Baron de, 559, 700, 701, 702
Czenstochowa, 439

D

"Da droben auf jenem Berge," 530
Daemonic, 581
Dalberg, Karl Theodor Anton Maria von,
249, 252, 255, 261, 277, 310, 385, 394, 434,
573, 578, 636
Dalberg, Johann Friedrich Hugo von,
Canon, 413
Dancing, Rath Goethe gives his children
lessons in, 23 ; Sauveur, 99-100 ; Goethe
dancing with Friederike's sister, 116 ;
with Caroline Flachsland, minuets, 137 ;
with Lotte, 148
Dancing, Christiane Goethe's love of, 441,
512, 531, 583, 586, (cp. 742)
Daniel in the Lions' Den, by Moser, 39
Dannecker, Johann Heinrich, his bust of
Schiller, 529, 672, 711
Darmstadt, Princesses of, see Hessen-
Darmstadt
Darmstadt, 104; Goethe in, 137-8, 139,
141-2, 160-1, 169; Boie in, 206; Goethe
and the Stolbergs in, 227 ; Goethe in, 232 ;
again, 296 ; again, 305 ; French imigres
in, 478 ; Goethe in, 619 ; again in 1815,
626 ; Marianne's songs to the West Wind
and the East Wind written there, 626, 627
Darsaincourt, Madame, 351
Daru, Pierre, Comte de, 578, 579
David, Pierre Jean, his bust of Goethe, 697,
7.", 7H
Demet, Johann Konrad, 133, 135, 182, 236
Deinet, Frau, 133
Deinhardstein, Johann Ludwig, 684
Delph, Helene Dorothea, 225, 237, 243, 463
" Dem Himmel wachs' entgegen," 115
Dernars, French lieutenant, 174, 175
Demetrius, 543, 548
"Den kleinen Strauss den ich dir binde,''
218
Denon, Dominique Vivant, 744

INDEX.

755

Dentzel, Georg F., 562, 744
" Der du von dem Himmel bist," 254
Derones (Derosne?), 29 ; his sister, 30
Descriptions of Goethe ; by Kestner, 145-6 •
by Gerstenberg, 178 ; by Lavater, 195 ;
by Boie, 205-6 ; by Wieland, 246 ; by
Schiller, 440 ; by Johanna Schopenhauer,
559, 564 ; by Griiner, 640
Deserted Village, Goldsmith's, 146, 152
Dessau, 75-6, 196, 250, 258, 278 note, 288,
323, 35o, 423, 470, 487
Dessau, Luise Henriette Wilhelmine, Prin
cess of, 323
Dessau, Franz Leopold, Prince of, 69, 258,
277, 278, 310, 352 ; his reverence for La
vater, 362-3, 487
Destouches, Philippe Nericault, 28, 55
Deutsche Gesellschaft, Die, 98-9, 120, 130
"Deutsche Haus, Das," at Wetzlar, 146,
151, 153: 7=2
Deutsche Literatur, Gesprdch iiber die, 317
Deutsche Merkur, Der, see Merkur
Deutsche Theater, Das, plan ofa periodical
so called, 536
Deutschen Kleinstddter, Die, 597
Deutscher Baukunst, Von, 160
Deutscher Pamass, 498
Deutschland, periodical, 487
Dialogen des Diogenes, by Wieland, 94-5
Dialogues, G.'s early compositions, 18-19
Diamond Necklace, story ofthe, 400, 432
Dice, throwing, for Goethe's drawing, 162 ;
for husbands, 165, 191
Dichter im Staatswagen, Der, 329 note
Dichtung und Wahrheit, 299, 576, 586, 590,
598, 602, 605, 606, 607, 608, 609, 612, 652,
704, 707, 710, 715, 745
Diderot, Denis, his Pe*re de Famille, 28,
73-4 ; Neveu de Rameau, 546, 548, 550
Dido, Leben und Thaten derKonigin, 282-3
Dieburg, 203
Diego and Julia, in Sterne, 235
Diene, Johann Heinrich, interpreter, 27
"Dieses ist das Bild der Welt," 52
Diet ofthe German Bund, 661-2
Dietendorf, 310
Dietrich, Philip Friedrich, Baron von, 101
Dietrich, Friedrich Gottlieb, 344
Dietz, the town, 154
Dietz, Procurator in Wetzlar, 143
Dietz, Frau, see Lange. (Her son by
Procurator Dietz married Caroline Wil
helmine Buff, p. 148)
Dilettantism, 506, 511
Dine zu Coblenz, 197-8
"Diotima," the Princess Galitzin, 359
Divan, see Westostlicher Divan, and Hafis
Debereiner, Johann Wolfgang, 597, 683
Doctor, the Strassburg Faculty offer to make
Goethe a, 160, (cp. 666)
Doctor's Dissertation, Goethe's, 103, 114,
118, 121, 163-4
Doctor, Goethe generally called, 184
Dodd, William, his Beauties of Shakespeare,
63
DSderlein, Johann Christoph, 338-9
Dog of Aubry, 649
Dogs, 523 note
Dohm, Christian Konrad Wilhelm von, and
his wife, nie Helwig, 458

Dolce, Carlo, 587
Dolitz, 70, 75, 78-9, 82
Doll, Friedrich Wilhelm, 505, 511
Don Giovanni, 448, 521, 625
Don Karlos, 448
"Don Sassafras," 74. (See Goethe-Jahr
buch, i. 377)
Doria Gallery, Rome, 380
Doric ruins at Paestum, 390-1, 393
Dornburg, 292, 328,^688-693, 698 note
Dorothe'e, Goethe's housekeeper, 260
Drakendorf, 528
Dramatic Unities, see Unities
Drawing Academy, see Weimar Drawing
Academy
Drawing, Goethe, 82, 83, 84, 160-1, 162, 163,
178, 180, 188, 207 ; portfolio for Johanna
Fahlmer, 207 ; for Merck, 209 ; 285 ;
drawing from the nude, 309 ; Hackert's
teaching, 391, 397, 403 ; see also Sketching,
Etching, Landscape, Painting, Perspec
tive
Dreikonigenlied, 316, 603
Dresden, 69, 71-2 ; 423 ; Meyer there, 467 ;
Meyer's return, 472 ; mentioned, 575
Dresden, Goethe's visits to, 71-2 ; again,
439 ; again, 440 ; again, 470 ; again, 587 ;
again, 605 ; again, 607
Dresden Gallery, 71, 72, 97, 470, 587 note,
600, 605
Dritte Wallfahrt nach Erwins Grab, 231
Drollinger, Karl Friedrich, 15, 18
Drusenheim, 105
"Du"used by the Duke towards Goethe,
248 ; used by Goethe towards Charlotte
von Stein, 318, 319, 323 ; she writes " Du "
to Goethe, 323, 325-6 ; used by Goethe to
Zelter, 606 ; used to Marianne, 639
" Du prophet' scher Vogel Du," 530
" Du versuchst, O Sonne, vergebens," 633
Duel, Goethe's, with Bergmann, 71 ; August
Goethe's, with Werthern, 613 ; death of
Willemer's son in a duel, 638
Dufay, merchant in Frankfurt, 234
Dufay, Rahel Gertrud, see Ewald
Duisburg, 458
Dumeix, Damian Friedrich, Dean, 140, 183,
186, 192, 727 ; his garden, 192 i
Dumouriez, Charles Francois, General, 454
Duntzer, Heinrich, editor of Briefe Goethe's
an Herder, 156 ; on the song of Ali and
Fatema, 164 ; on Lotte's birthday, 165,
722 ; on the inaccuracy of Dichtung und
Wahrheit, 166 ; on the date of the return
of Goethe and Karl August from the
Swiss journey, 305, 732 ; on the date of
Das Neueste von Plundersweilern, 326 ;
editor of Wilhelm Meister, 346 ; editor of
Die Italianische Reise, 369, 374, 379, 381,
383, 39o, 398, 403, 405., 4°6, 4°7, 4°9> 4*2^
Goethe's last night in Rome, 414 ; his
book, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, 408 and
passim ; Duntzer on Christiane's portrait,
417 ; Aus Goethe's Freundeskreise, 427;
Goethe und Karl August, 446, and passim
afterwards ; the time occupied in writing
the Biirgergeneral, 461 ; Prometheus and
Pandora, 475 ; Schiller und Goethe, 476 ;
Sulpiz Boisserie, 601 ; the marches out of
the Jager volunteers, 611 ; Duntzer on

75^

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Goethe's Westostlicher Divan, 614, and
passim; Life of Schultz, 617
Diirer, Albrecht, 309
Diirkheim, Franz Christian Eckbrecht,
Baron von, 217
Diisseldorf, 175, 179, 194 ; Goethe in, 198 ;
457-8
Diisseldorf Gallery, 199, 458
Dutch, see Netherlandish
Duttweiler coal-mine, 101
Dyk, Johann Gottfried, 607

Earthquake of Lisbon, 14
East Wind, Song to the, 626
Eberstadt, 296
Ebert, Susanne (Sannchen), daughter of
Johann Ebert, the girl with whom young
Kayser was in love. See Appendix,
article 30 ; page 729
Eberwein, Franz Karl Adalbert, 590, 641, 660
Eckard, Johann Ludwig, 268, 335
Eckart, Der getreue, ballad, 606
Eckart, The Faithful, Eckermann called,
7°5
Eckermann, Johann Peter, his account of
Goethe's letter from Strassburg to Horn,
no ; the Biirgergeneral, 461 ; his history
and meeting with Goethe, 645 ; men
tioned, 647, 648 ; taken to the garden in
the park, 659 ; Eckermann aiding Goethe
in preparing an edition of his Works, 660 ;
the burning of the theatre, 661-2 ; a
Doctor, 666 ; Boisseree's description of
E., 670; the drives in 1827, 680-683; i°
Italy, 702 ; return, 705
Eco, L\ Milan review, 685
Eddas, the, 589
Edelknabe und die Mullerin, 492
Edward, ballad by Herder, 137
Edwin and Angelina, by Goldsmith, 180
Eger, 575, 640, 642, 646-7
Egloffstein, Henriette, Countess von (nie
Freiin von Egloffstein), and by an after
marriage (in 1804), Freifrau von Beaulieu-
Marconnay, 524, 529
Egloffstein, Caroline, Countess (nie von
Aufsess), 522, 684
Egloffstein, Caroline, Countess, the younger,
660
Egloffstein, Friedrich Gottfried von, Cap
tain, 524
Egloffstein, Julie, Countess, 637, 660 note
Egmont, 725, 179, 181, 211-12, 241, 242 ;
Charlotte von Stein's interest, 250; 293,
328 ; Goethe working at Egmont in Rome,
399 ; " Egmont is done," ib. ; plan about
Kayser composing to Egmont, 400 ; per
fected, 401 ; critical objections in Weimar,
406 ; Karl August's criticism, 411 ; Schil
ler's, 423 ; discussed with Schiller, 471 ;
Iffland acting in Schiller's adaptation,
482 ; Inland forgets his part, 498
Ehrenbreitstein, 155, 202, 457
Ehrmann, J. C. (the son), 109
Ehrmann, J. F. (the father), 109
Eichenberg and wife, 133
Eichstadt, Heinrich Karl, 537, 621 note

" Ein grauer triiber Morgen," 124
Einfache Nacliahmung der Natur, 420
Einsiedel, Privy Councillor von, crazed,
323 note
Einsiedel, Friedrich Hildebrand von, 246,
250, 252, 312, 338, 436, 475, 519 ; death, 693
Einsiedeln Convent, 730
Eisenach, 269, 325, 328, 341, 347, 352, 445,
.47o, 479, 578
Eisenach, Estates of, 269, 335, 341
Eislauf, Ode by Klopstock, 136
Eis-Lebens-Lied, by Goethe, 252
Eissert, Adolf Friedrich, 490
Elberfeld, 199
Elbogen, 646
Electors, Ecclesiastical, see Koln, Mainz,
Trier
" Electra," Caroline Herder, 734
Electric battery, 312
Elegiac poetry, Goethe's, 487, 510, 514
Elegie, the Karlsbad, 646, 648
Elegien, see Rdmische Elegien
Elegien, the Second Book, revised by
Schlegel, 514
Elephant fcetus, 341-2
Elephant's skull, 341
Elpenor, begun, 321 ; 346
Elsass (Alsace), 93; ballad poetry of, 112,
118, 122, 128, 130; antiquities of, 101,
113, 128
Elysium an Uranien, 143
Emigris, 478, 481
Emilia Galotti, Lessing' s, 150
Emmendingen, 117 ; Schlosser has to go to,
206 ; Goethe in, 229 ; Goethe visits Em
mendingen after his sister's death, 300-301
Empfndsamen, Die, 282
Ems, Goethe in, 155, 195-6, 197, 201-2 ;
Charlotte von Stein in, 429
Engel, Ernestine (as actress Engcls), 603
Engel, Johann Jakob, plays in Minna, 73-4 ;
in Pere de Famille, ib. ; his Philosqphfur
die Welt, 208
Engelbach, Moritz Joseph, law student, g8,
100, 102, 103
Engelhaus, 368
Engelhauser Bduerinnen, Abschied itn
Namen der, 368
England, Travels ofa German in, 378
England, trees from, 338 ; Jacobi in Eng
land, 458
English girls, friends of young Goethe, 90
English language learned by the young
Goethe, 33 ; poems in English, 59 ; gives
Johanna Fahlmer lessons in, 167 ; Lenz
gives Charlotte von Stein lessons, 289 ;
Goethe gives the Milan maiden of Castel
Gandolfo lessons, 403 ; Moritz gives Karl
August lessons, 424
English literature, 111-12, 131-2. See also
Shakespeare, Sterne, Swift, Fielding,
Richardson, Goldsmith, Scottish Ballad,
Lillo, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Jonson
Englishmen, fifteen (or nineteen), gift to
Goethe, 711-712, 747
Engraving, 499
Ent-optic Colours, 654
Ephemerides,Q3,gg, 123
Epic Poetry, Goethe considering the nature
of, 488-489, and see : Israel, Jagd, Achil-

INDEX.

757

lei's, Wilhelm Tell, Hermann und Doro
thea.
Epigramme, see Venediger Epigramme
Epilogues, by Goethe, to Schiller's Lay of
the Bell, 557, 596, 622 ; to Essex, 607
Epimenides Erwachen, Des, 613, 614, 621,
6.30
D'Epinay, Louise Florence Petronille, Coun
tess, Rousseau's friend, 214
Epiphaniasfest, 316
JEpistel an die Akademisten, Jacobi's, 202-3
Epoques de la nature, 310
Erfurt, 249, 252, 258, 260, 310, 323, 414, 434,
(and 735), 443, 445, 478, 549, 556, 578
Ergo bibamus, 598
Ernesti, Johann August, 51, 54-5, 63
Erthal, Friedrich Karl Joseph, Freiherr
von, see Mainz
"Erwache Friederike," 119 _
Erwin von Steinbach, architect of Strass
burg Cathedral, 231 ; see also Deutscher
Baukunst, Von
Erwin und Elmire, 180, 198, 211, 214, 217 ;
given to Liii, 222 ; acted in Frankfurt,
228, 229 ; Goethe thinks of recasting it,
348-9 *, recast, 401
Erzbischof von Prag, 399
"Es war ein Buhle frech genung," 201
Essex, 607-8
D'Ester, Quirin Joseph, 156, 198
D'Ester, Frau Katharina, 156, 198
D'Ester, Johanna (daughter), 156, 198
Etching, 13, 75 ; unwholesome effects, 76,
83 ; mentioned, 82, 161
Ettersberg, 254 ; quarries, 271 ; wild boars
353 ; mentioned, 578, 680
Ettersburg Castle, the Duchess Amalia
there, 281-283, 312; Goethe there, 470;
Schiller there, 515, 680 ; Napoleon, 580 ;
Goethe and Eckermann, 678-680
Eugenie, see Naticrliche Tochter
Euphrosyne, 447, 493, 497, 49s
Euripides, 179, 676 note
Eutin, 468, 736
Ewald, Johann Ludwig, 234, 236-7
Ewald, Rahel Gertrud, 234, 236-7
tEwigeJude, Der, 203, 374 _
"Excellency," Goethe acquires the title,
546
Exodus xxxiv., verses 10-28, 163
Eybenberg, Frau von (Marianne Meyer),
575 note, 595 note; see also Meyer

F . . ., Mamsell, 100, 107
Fabricius, Katharina, 81-2, 83, 84, gi
Facius, Friedrich Wilhelm, 431
Fahlmer, Johanna, see Schlosser
Fair Penitent, 308 note
Falcon, Order of the, 630, 665
Falk, Johannes, 529 note, 548 note, 591
note
Falke, Der, 283
Fan-Palm at Padua, 372
Farbenlehre, Zur, 495, 498, 500, 502, 512,
523, 532, 534, 536, 556', m the printers
hands, 559 ; printing interrupted during
the Jena days, 563 ; mentioned, 564, 570 ;
published, 598 ; Schultz's studies, 617 ;

Marianne's interest, 623ft ^mentioned, 654;
Hegel, 683; instruction! to Eckermann
about it, 711 ; revision, 716; the Rain
bow, ib.
Faust, the chap-book, 16
Faust, plan of, hovering in Goethe's mind,
172, 725 ; not mentioned to Schonborn,
178 ; begun, 203; read to Klopstock, 205 ;
read to Boie, 729, 205-6 ; read to Jacobi,
215 ; read to the Stolbergs, 730 ; Auer-
bachs Keller, 238; Zwinger, 240 note;
read aloud to Karl August and his friends,
250 ; to be revised for Goschen's edition,
400; the Hexeiikiiche scene, 410; "the
mountain Faust," 411 note; resolution to
publish Faust as a fragment, 430 ; men
tioned, 432 ; fragment finished, 433 ; goes
to the printer, 435 ; printed, 438 ; Goethe
thinks of giving parts of it to Schiller for
the Horen, 477 ; Goethe makes up his
mind to attack Faust again (1797), 491 ;
Meyer making sketches for it, 497' ; laid
aside for the Achilleis, 498 ; Goethe dis
covers how to introduce Helena, 515 ;
Helena begun, 516 ; Faust again taken
up, the Brocken, 517 ; the Brocken tran
scribed, 521 (see 742-3) ; 522, 564, 569 ; pub
lished, 576 and see 742-3 ; Cornelius's
drawings, 587 ; Goethe talking about,
677 ; Holtei's adaptation, 684-5 ; scenes
from, played in Frankfurt on Goethe's
birthday, 701, 702; Faust finished, 712;
read to Ottilie, 716
Faust, The Second Part of, see Helena,
and 677, 680, 684, 685, 698, 699, 700, 705,
707, 709, 710, 712, 715
" Fehlt der Gahe gleich das Neue," 684
Feldberg, the, 45
Felix of Wilhelm Meister, August Goethe
compared with, 478, 508
Felsweihegesang, 143, 150
Fencing lessons, 40 ; Goethe fencing, 286
Fe'ne'lon, his Tilimaque, 16
Fernow, Karl Ludwig, 539, 564
Ferrara, 373
Fichte, -Johann Gottlieb, 467, 469 ; Goethe
visits him in Jena, 470 ; how he left Jena,
504 ; account of Eugenie in Berlin, 538
Fichtelgebirge, 340, 344, 358, 642
Fielding, Henry, 112, 115
Fierabras, 590
Fiesko, 471
Figaro, Le Nozze di, 466
Filangieri, Gaetano, 390
Finance, 269, 274, 307, 327 ; Goethe enters
the Kammer, 330 (and see Kammer) ;
August Goethe studying Finance, 583
Fire in Apolda, 275
Fire in Jews' quarter, Frankfurt, 192
Fire signalled, Goethe unmoved, 319
Fire-brigade in Weimar, 274, 275, 338
Fire-engine, 312, 338
Fischer, Der, ballad, 270 note, 541. [This
ballad was written late in 1778 or in the
beginning of 1779, and is not connected
with Fraulein von Lassberg's death.—
Duntzer, Goethe's lyrische Gedichte, i.
155-6] ,
Fischer, Johann, 39
Fischer, Franz, 460

75*

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Fischerin, Die, 321, 350
Fiumicino, 379
Flachsland, Caroline, see Herder ; (see also
Hesse)
Flauto Magico, II, 466, 683
Fleischer, Johann Georg, 53, 54, 64, 8g
Fleming, Paul, 15
Flogging, Goethe opposes, 272
Florence, 373, 382 ; Goethe's second visit,
413; Meyer there, 485; August Goethe
there, 703
Florian, Jean Pierre Claris de, 461
Flute, Wolfgang able to play, 33
Foligno, 373 ,
Forster, Johann Georg Adam, the traveller,
295, 310, 317 note, 341, 453
Fouque", Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de
la Motte, 605
Fragmente zur Deutschen Literatur, by
Herder, 103 ; first read by Goethe, 150
France, 92-3, 96 ; Herder on, 112 ; Goethe
rejects the thought of entering the service
of, 113-114 ; Knebel's dislike of, 228 ;
Goethe regrets the political weakness of,
404
France, Marie Antoinette, Queen of, 99, 433
note
France, St. Louis, King of, 455
France, Louis XVI., King of, 99, 298, 433
note ¦
France, Napoleon, Emperor of, 558, 562 ;
meeting with Goethe, 578-581 ; mention
of, 591, 592, 603, 604 ; "the man is too
great for you," 606 ; the Epilogue to
Essex, 607 ; Goethe's thought of persuad
ing. Napoleon to yield, 610; Rochlitz's
anecdote, ib. ; the campaign of 1814, 612 ;
Napoleon's abdication, ib. ; his escape
from Elba, 622 ; " L'Empereur ne connait
autre maladie que la mort," 632 ; August
Goethe's admiration, 640
France, Marie Louise, Empress of, 592'
Frankenberg, Silvius Friedrich Ludwig von,
424
Frankfurt-on-the-Main, a city ofthe empire,
1 ; a good place to be bom, 1 ; though
decaying, 1-2 ; the Council offends Goethe's
father, 2 ; its festivities and fairs, 10 ;
feeling there during Seven Years' War,
17 ; has to send a contingent, 20 ; French
troops marching through, ib. ; occupied
by the French, 26-38 ; the Gymnasium,
30 ; strong footing obtained by Pietists,
Herrnhuters, and other sectaries in the
city, 34 ; the Jews in Frankfurt, 37 ; the
election and coronation of the king of
Rome, 44 ; autumn fair of 1765, 51 ;
Frankfurt dialect, 55, 235 ; hard to hear of
the new books, 87 ; Goethe thinks Frank
furt improved in 1814, 616
Frankfurt occupied by Neuwinger, 456 ;
again captured by the French, 485
Frankfurt on the route of travellers, 177
Frankfurt obstinacy, 181
Frankfurt increasing in population, 452
Frankfurt, Goethe revisits, in 1779, see
295-6, 732, 305 ; his hope of revisiting
Frankfurt when returning from the Italian
journey, 394 ; has to give it up, 414 ;
again a design of going thither, 436 ; in

Frankfurt (in 1792), 452-3 ; (in 1793), 461,
464 ; Karl August's plan of sending
Goethe thither, 478-9 *, Goethe there (in
1797), 492 ; his plan of going thither in 1803,
538 ; Goethe there in 1814 (three times),
616, 618, 619; in 1815 (twice), 622, 623-6 ;
starts for Frankfurt in 1816, 637
Frankfurt actors unable to act Erwin und
Elmire, 180
Frankfurt coronations, 17, 43-44, 436, 505-
See Germany
Frankfurt Council, Goethe offered a seat in
the, 457 ; he declines it, 459
Frankfurt, Grand Duchy of, 637. See
Dalberg
Frankfurt takes no notice of Goethe in 1814,
619 ; nor in 1825, 666 ; Goethe withdraws
his property from Frankfurt, 584 and
636-7 ; the Senate resent this, ib. ; a
monument to him proposed, 639 ; the
failure of the plan, 641 ; change of feeling,
701-2
Frankfurt visited by Christiane Goethe (in
1797), 492 ; (in 1808), 577
Frankfurt visited by August Goethe (m
1797), 492 ; (in 1805), 549 ; (April 1808),
573 : (Sept. 1808), 577 ; (in 1814), 610
Frankfurter gelehrte A nzeigen, 144 ; Merck
withdraws from, 162; Goethe's Nachrede,
262; Goethe again writes for, 174 ; Ecker
mann employed to extract Goethe's arti
cles, 645.
Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen; its begin
ning, its contributors, 133, 135 ; Goethe
writing in it on Sternheim, 135 ; on Wie
land, 136; on Gellert, ib. ; on the Poems
of a Polish Jew, 152 ; on Zacharia's
Mdhrlein, 158 ; on Sulzer's Allgemeine
Theorie der Schonen Kunste, 235 ; Wie
land's Goldner Spiegel, 160; ih&Gottingen
Musenalmanach for 1773, ib. ; Lavater's
Aussichtenin die Eiuigkeit, ib. ; Sulzer's
Die schonen Kunste, 162 ; on Joch, ib. ;
Lavater On Jonah, 174 ; Sined the Bard,
ib. ; Holland on the Systhne de la nature,
ib. ; Goethe's Declaration about the
authorship of Wagner's farce, 223-4
Franzensbrunn, 575-6
Frascati, 378, 397, 402, 405
Frauenplan, Weimar, Goethe's house on the,
324, 330 ; rebuilt for him, 450, 459, 464,
467 ; mentioned, 494, 664, 675
Frauenthor in Weimar, 256, 430
Freemason, see Mason
Freiberg, 269, 432, 473
Freimiithige, Der, Kotzebue's paper, 534,
537
French actors in Frankfurt, 28-9, 43, 50;
in Strassburg, 113
French Drama and its rules, 31, 51, 113, 130
French Drama, Karl August's partiality for,
502, 509, 513, 547
French language, 27, 28, 50 ; poems and
letters in ' French, 45, 59, 99 ; Goethe
writing to Charlotte von Stein in French,
r^357t_French literature, 50; Herder on, 112;
Goethe_ and, 144; 455, 549. See also
Rabelais, Racine, Rousseau, Rameau,
Montaigne, Voltaire, Comeille, Des-

INDEX.

759

touches, Diderot, Marivaux, Hugo, Stap-
fer, Ampere, Joinville
French occupation of Frankfurt, 26-38
French Protestantism, see Calvinist, Re
formed
French Revolution, 432, 433, 442, 444, 453,
461, 470, 471, 492, 511. See July Revolution
French, sermons in, 50
French tragedies, parody themselves, 130
Fresenius, Johann Philipp, baptizes Wolf
gang, 721 ; confirms Wolfgang, 32, 721 ;
his stout opposition to the sectaries in
Frankfurt, 34 ; his successor Plitt, ib.
Friday evening meeting at the Duchess
Amalia's, 445, 446, 448 ; at Goethe's house,
473, 486
Friday gathering at the Duchess Luise's,
5Q0, 609, 620
Friedberg, 159-160, 204
Friedrich, Goethe's servant, 688
Friedrich, Kaspar David, painter, 600
Friedrichsthal, 101
Friess, Johann, Count von, 399, 501
Friess, Moritz, Count von, 501
Fritsch, Friedrich August von, 714
Fritsch, Jakob Friedrich von, Privy-Coun
cillor, 255, 260, 261, 268, 272 ; " fatal
humour," 273 ; sends in resignation, 275-6
the Duke averse to dismissing him, 280
Master of the Masons of Weimar, 306
does not approve of Schlosser's coming to
Weimar, 360
Fritsch, Karl Wilhelm von, 535-6 note, 583
Fritsch, Henriette von, wife of K. W. von
Fritsch, see Wolfskeel
Frommann, Alwine, 643
Frommann, Hermann, 575 note
Frommann, Johanna Charlotte (nie Wessel-
hoft), 556, 559, 571-2 . , _ , , „
Frommann, Karl Friedrich Ernst, bookseller
in Jena, 517 note, 532, 556, 559, 5^3 note,
570, 571, 678 note, 683, 689, 691, 701
Froriep, Fraulein von, 660
Froriep, Ludwig Friedrich von, 671
"Fruh wenn Thai, Gebirg und Garten,"
692
Frz'ihlingsorakel, 530
Furka Pass, 301
Furniture, Goethe's objection to pretty, 710
Furstenberg, Friedrich Wilhelm Franz,
Freiherr von, 358-9, 459
Furstenbund, 336 note, 352, 353, 355
Fiirstengruft, see Weimar, Fiirstengruft
Fiirstenhaus, see Weimar, Furstenhaus
Fiirstengarten, see Jena, Furstengarten
Fussli, Johann Heinrich, painter, 190, 305 ;
377
Future life, 146, 153

Galitzin, Amalie, Princess, nie Countess von
Schmettau, visits Weimar, 358-9; meets
Charlotte von Stein, 359 > Wl11 not corre
spond with Goethe, ib. ; Goethe visits
Munster, 458-9 and 735 ; Goethe's after
relation with the Princess, 735-7
Galitzin, Dimitri III., Prince, 359 ; his
death, 546
Gall, Johann Joseph, 554-5

Garbenheim, 145, 146, 151, 152, 722
Garda, Lake, 371
Garden in the Park, Goethe's, 259 ; picture,
260 ; the Duchess visits him there, 277 ;
Wieland's portrait drawn there, 285 ; 313 ;
Garve there, 320 ; Goethe leaving the
Garden, 330 ; Christiane there, 418, 426 ;
mentioned, 450 ; Goethe goes to live there
ini79g, 5°8-g; Goethe takes Eckermann
thither in 1824, 659 ; resides there in 1827,
678; frequently visits it, ib., 685 ; resides
there in 1829, 696
Garden-room, 9 ; in Goethe's house in Wei
mar, 468, 686, 693
Garve, Christian, 70 ; friendly to Werther,
208 ; visits Weimar, 320-321
Gebirgslehre, 340
"Geek," Goethe called a, 62, 102, 159
GeJieimnisse, Die, Goethe's poem, 346, 357,
421
Gehler, Johann, his Physikalisches Worte?--
buch, 452, 456
Geiler von Kaisersburg, Johann, 50
Geist der Jugend, Der, 325, 326
Geistesgruss, lyric poem by Goethe, 197,
530
Gelehrtenrepublik, by Klopstock, 192-3
Gellert, Christian Furchtegott, one of the
poets on Rath Goethe's shelves, 15; 51 ;
the poverty of his criticism, 54, 55, 56,
57, 58, 63 ; his novel, 61 ; good opinion
of Behrisch, 62, 69; criticised in the Frank
furter Anzeigen, 136
Gems, 416, 434, 459, 460, 737. See Coins
Generalbcichte, 528
Genesis, the Book of, 109
Geneva, Goethe in, 302 ; Soret' there, 642 ;
Eckermann there, 702
Geneva, Lake of, 131
Genialisch Treiben, 598
Genoa, 702-3
Genoveva, by Tieck, 512
Gentz, Heinrich, architect, 522, 523
Geoffroy, Louise Seidler's lover, 586
Geognostisches Tagebuch der Harzreise, 340
Geographical distribution of plants, 565, 634
Geology, 310, 313, 314, 328 ; Goethe's re
markable conclusions anticipating modern
geologists, 340, 371 note, 548, 576, 598,
607, 623, 637, 654
George Barnwell, by Lillo, a German trans
lation of, 29
"Gerams," the, 8, 21
Gerbermiihle, the Willemer's house, 623,
625, 628 note
German artists in Rome, 375-6, 377, 380, 381,
7°3
German language, "barbarous language,"
349 ; "unlucky German," ib., and 366
German poets, read by the young Goethe,
15, 31-2 ; begins to make verses under
their influence, 31 ; adversely criticised
by Frau Bohme, 55-6 ; by Morus, 56 ; 77
German literature, 15-16, 30-31, 50-51, 55-6,
56, 77 ; Friedrich of Prussia on, 317 ;
Goethe's and Justus Moser's replies, ib. ;
Das Neueste von Plundersweilern, 326
German metre, 514-5
German stage, Goethe on the state of the,
442, 444, 482, 497. See Weimar Theatre

76o

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Germany, Franz I., Kaiser (reigned 1745-
1765, the husband of Maria Theresa, he
was Grand - Duke of Tuscany by birth) ;
his coronation, 17 ; allusion to it, 43
Germany, Karl VII., Kaiser (elected at
Frankfurt in 1742, died 1745), makes
Johann Kaspar Goethe an Imperial Coun
cillor, 2 ; inspires a passion in Goethe's
mother as a child, 6 ; death, ib.
Germany, Maria Theresa, Kaiserin, gives
Textor a chain, 17
'Germany, Joseph IL, Kaiser (reigned 1765-
1790) (while Arch -Duke of Austria, he
was crowned King of Rome at Frankfurt
in 1764), 43-4, 385 note, 404
Germany, Peter Leopold, Kaiser (reigned
1790-92) ; his coronation mentioned, 436
Germany, Franz II., Kaiser (began to reign
1792), declares the Empire dissolved, 558.
See also Austria, Franz I. of
Germany, a great future for, Goethe's con
viction, 609
Gerning, Johann Isaak, 505-6, 548
Gerock, Johann Georg, 41, 162
Gerock — His daughters, Charlotte, Antoi
nette and Katharine, 41, 90, 128 ; Merck's
description of them, 157; 162; "To the
Gerocks not a word," 237 ; Goethe greets
the Gerocks from Weimar, 249 ; meets
them at Emmendingen, 301
Gerock, Antoinette, especially fond of
Gdethe, 41 ; " is bewitching," 157 ; Goethe
and Kestner visit her, ib.
Gerock, Charlotte, kisses Goethe, 157
Gerock's house, 162
Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm ; his Ugo-
Uno, 82, 86 ; Herder on, 112 ; friend of
Schonborn, 178 ; Goethe sends a few lines
to, 178
Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, 298
Gervinus of Zweibriicken, 88
Geschwister, Die, 277, 282, 288
Gesellige Lieder, Goethe's, 525, 526, 528,
'532, 536, 539, 598, 607
Gesner, Johann Matthias, 50
Gesprdch iiber . die deutsche Literatur,
3*7
Gesprdche in Liedern, 4*92
Gessner, Salomon, admired by Herder, 112 j
visited by Goethe, 230
Geyser, Wilhelmine, 70
Gickelhahn, 313 note, 352, 713-14
Giebichenstein, 531
Giessen, Goethe's father in, 2; 142; Goethe,
Merck, and Lotte Buff in Giessen, 151 ;
722-3 ; Klinger in Giessen, 726, 728, 729 ;
Klinger truant from Giessen, 731
Gilliflower, 401
Gingo biloba, 625, 627
Gioeni, Joseph, 393
Giovinazzi, teacher of languages, 33, 34
Giredo, in the Apennines, 373
Girgenti, 393
Glatz, 439, 539
Gleichen, Friedrich Wilhelm, called Russ-
wurm, 343
Gleim, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig, his Ver-
such i?i scherzhaften Liedern, 31 ; a
poem of his, Der reiche Mann, copied by
Goethe into Klose's album, 68 ; Herder

appreciates, 112 ; his hopes in the French
Revolution, 432 ; his death, 555
Globe, Le, Parisian review, 670, 676, 699
Glocke, Die wandelnde, 606
Gluck, Christof, Ritter von, 321 ; music to
Iphigenie, 518
Gochhausen, Luise von, 265, 290, 295, 312,
475, 519. S24
God and the World, 89, 93, 651
God, Goethe's trust in, 7 ; Goethe's concep
tion of, 15, 200, 270, 431, 454, 600, 610, 644
God; Some Dialogues on Spinoza's System,
by Herder, 420
God save ihe King, 557
Goethe, Christof Justus, the poet's cousin,
5,8
Goethe, Hans Christian, the poet's great
grandfather, 5
Goethe, Friedrich Georg, the poet's grand
father, 2, 13, 21, 24, 721
Goethe, Anna Elizabeth (nie Lutz), 2, 721
Goethe, Cornelia, the poet's grandmother
(nie Walter widow Schelhorn), 2, 3, 6, 8,
14, 15, 721
Goethe, Hermann Jakob, half-brother of
poet's father, 8, 33, 721
Goethe, Hermann Jakob, the poet's brother,
8, 27
Goethe, Cornelia Friederike, the poet's sister,
born December 7, 1750, died June 8, 1777 ;
birth, 8 ; union with Wolfgang, 8 ; Italian
lessons, 21 ; acting at Olenschlager' s, 34 ;
friends and character, 41-42 ; portrait,
42; mentioned, 51; letters to Wolfgang,
57 ; her gladness on his return, 80 ; hard
ness towards her father, 80 ; in love, 82 ;
Friederike, 1*9, 128 ; hears the Alsatian
ballads, 128 ; hears Gotz, 131 ; engaged
to Schlosser, 152; meets Kestner, 157;
marriage, 179. See Schlosser
Goethe, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father
(1710-1782) ; birth, 2 ; baptism, 721 ;
education, 2 ; travels, 2 ; and see 389
note ; created Imperial Councillor, 2 ;
looks around for a wife, 3 ; married
August 20, 1748, 6 ; his character, 3, 7 ;
his desire for a son of intellectual great
ness, 5 ; his portrait, 4 ; his silhouette, 6 ;
gives his wife lessons, his uncomfortable
house, 9 ; hisvineyard, 9 ; begins to teach
Wolfgang very early the history of Frank
furt, 9; rebuilds house, 11-13; large col
lection of books, and of art-treasures from
Italy, 14 ; the poets on his shelves, 15-16 ;
favourite poet Tasso, 16 ; takes Prussian
side in Seven Years' War, 17 ; teaching
Cornelia Italian, 21; account of his travels
in Italy, ib. ; auction in his house, 21-2 ;
love of Italian, 21, 23 ; fondness for rhyme,
23 ; dislikes Klopstock's Messias, ib. ; his
maxim, "Always finish what you have
begun,'' ib. and 34 ; gives his children
lessons in dancing, ib. ; wrath at the pre
sence of French, 26-28, 29 ; his opinion of
the Gymnasium of Frankfurt, 30; has
Wolfgang confirmed, 32 ; lets ground-floor
when Thorane leaves, 32 ; liked playing
lute and flute, 33 ; makes Wolfgang begin
law, 40, 43 ; the coronation, hears of
Wolfgang's keeping low company, 44 ;

INDEX.

761

urges on Law, 50-5 1 ; plagues Cornelia with
teaching, 57, 80; hospitable reception of
Kestner, 157; " sordid " letter, 160; makes
concessions to Wolfgang, 171 ; likes
Knebel, opposed to princes, 211 ; urges
Wolfgang to Italy, 242; his closeness in
money matters, see Monetary Affairs ; dis
appointment when Goethe settles in Wei
mar, 262 ; Goethe and Karl August visit
Frankfurt, 295-6 and 752 ; again, 305
(Goethe's last meeting with his father) ;
growing weak-minded, 315 ; death, 330
Goethe, Johanna Maria, the poet's sister,
born in March 1757, died in August 1759,
21, 29
Goethe Katharina Elisabeth, the poet's
sister, born September 1754, died Decem
ber 1755, g, 11, 15
Goethe Katharina Elisabeth (nie Textor),
born February ig, 1731, married August
20, 1748, died September 13, 1808 ;
married to Johann Kaspar Goethe, 3 ; her
portrait, 4 ; beautiful qualities, education,
passion as a child for Kaiser Karl VII.,
grief on his death, 6 ; her silhouette, 6 ;
her brown eyes, ib. ; inherited by her son,
7 ; the qualities which he inherited from
her, 7; receives lessons from her husband,
7 ; she tells her son stories, 9-10 ; teaches
him morning prayer, 14 ; intimacy with
Fraulein Klettenberg, 21 ; religious feel
ing, 7, 14, 21 ; contribution to an album,
21 ; her beautiful sympathy with her
children, 21, 23; her presence in He-nnann
und Dorothea, 23 ; learns French from
Diene, 27 ; saves her husband, 28 ; great
power with her husband, 28 ; the snuff
box ordered for her, 35, 39 ; the Gretchen
episode, 44 ; draws closer to the Kletten
berg circle, 80; "the word of her son is
everything with her," 157; her wise medi
ation between her husband and son, 171 ;
called Frau Aja, 226 ; Goethe and Karl
August visit her when going to Italy, 295-
6, 732 ; when returning, 305 ; the Duke
indemnifies her for the cost of his visit,
315 ; the Duke visits her in 1784, 352-3 ;
Charlotte von Stein writing to her, 357 ;
visit of Fritz Stein in 1785, 358 ; her
"joyous life," ib. ; one of her letters to
Goethe in Rome stolen, 385 ; Goethe's
hope of visiting her on his return from the
Italian journey, 394 ; has to give it up,
414 ; Charlotte von Stein visits her, 429 ;
Goethe visits her, 452, 461 ; writing to
Christiane, 464 ; makes ready to fly from
Frankfurt, 470 ; Goethe takes Christiane
to see her, 492 ; his last parting from his
mother, ib. ; the friendship of the Queen
of Prussia, 462, 506; Goethe's praise of
Christiane's behaviour during his illness,
521 ; Goethe's plan of paying her a visit
in 1803, 538; Goethe saves her from the
restraint of guardianship, ib. ; Madame
de StaeTs visit to her, 541 ; her grandson
August visits her, 549 ; her silhouette, ib. ;
Bettine Brentano, 565-6, 573; August
going to Heidelberg University, 573 ;
death of the Frau Rath, 576-7; the
stories of Goethe's early life which she

told to Bettine, 586 ; the feeling of strange
ness in Frankfurt that Goethe felt after
her death, 618
Goethe's mother ; letters of Goethe's to her
quoted, 267, 286, 296, 315, 322 ; his letter
. to her from Italy, 376 ; his letter of thanks
after August's visit, 551
Goethe, Walther Wolfgang, the poet's eldest
grandson ; born, 636 ; breaks his arm,
660 ; mentioned, 666, 667, 670, 687, 68g,
6g8, 707, 708, 713, 715, 717
Goethe, Wolfgang Maximilian, the poet's
second grandson born, 641 ; mentioned,
662, 666, 667, 670, 68g, 698, 707, 708, 713,
_7I5. 717 ' .
Goethe, Alma Sedina Henriette Cornelia,
the poet's grand-daughter, 684, 698, 707,
708, 717
Goethe, Christiane Sophie (nie Vulpius), wife
ofthe poet, 417-418 ; her slipper, 421 ; Mor-
genklagen, 424 ; discovery, 426 ; Goethe's
devotion, ib. ; his letter to Charlotte von
Stein about her, 428-9 ; commits her to
Herder'scare, 436-7 ; affectionate reference
to her in letter, 440 ; love of dancing, 441,
512, 531, 583, 586; painted by Meyer, 446;
left in Meyer's charge, 451 ; Goethe's
mother's feeling about her, 452 ; Goethe's
return from France, 459; called "Die
Kleine," 460 ; Goethe's return from
Mainz, 464 ; Goethe's mother writing to
Christiane, ib. ; Christiane lives in the
back of Goethe's house, 467 ; Charlotte
von Stein's sneers, 482, 526, 543 ; Goethe's
reply to Dora Stock's question, 482 ;
Schiller's prejudice, 484 ; taken to Frank
furt to see Goethe's mother, 492 ; Weimar
gossip, 496 ; Goethe's receptions at which
Christiane is not the hostess, 496, 498 ;
in Oberrossla, 505, 521 ; sent to Jena,
508 ; Nikolaus , Meyer dissecting mice,
512; brought to Leipzig Fair, 515; ac
count of Goethe's ravings in fever, 518 ;
great love for Goethe, 519; Goethe's praise
and resolve to marry her, 520 ; hostess at
Goethe's table, 522 ; meets Goethe at
Cassel, 523 ; Court pageant, 527 ; letters
to Nikolaus Meyer, 530 note, 531 note,
534, 535 j Halle and Lauchstedt, 531,
532, 536, 554, 586 ; Schiller's sympathy
on death of child, 533 ; Goethe drives in
a sleigh with her, 526, 543 ; to Erfurt with
August, 549 ; tells Goethe that Schiller is
dead, 551 ; presides at Goethe's table, 554 ;
saves Goethe's life, 561 ; insolence of
officers, 561 ; Goethe marries her, 562
(and see 744) ; Johanna Schopenhauer's
kindness, 562-563; introduced to Frau
Frommann, 572 ; sent to Frankfurt upon
the death of the Frau Rath, 577-8;
Goethe's endeavour to introduce her into
good society, 584 ; Bettine's kindness,
584-5 ; taken to Karlsbad in 1811, 588 ;
breach with Bettine, ib. ; brought to
Karlsbad in 1812, 589 ; acting in a Court
masquerade in 1809, 591 ; comes to Char
lotte von Stein's house, 605 ; attacks of
cramp, 621 ; her death, 633
Goethe, Julius August Walther (son of the
poet); buried near the Pyramid of Cestius,

762

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

410 note; birth, 434 ; mentioned, 436, 440,
447, 451, 452, 45g, 460; with his father at
Ilmenau, 477-8, 486 ; with Karl Schiller
at Charlotte von Stein's, 482 ; playing
with Luise Seidler, 483 ; Charlotte von
Stein's account of him, 486 ; tutor, 490 ;
taken to see his grandmother, 492 ; in
Jena playing with Karl Schiller, 498 ;
Oberrossla, 505, 521 ; an ctAmorino,"
508 ; quickness in learning, ib. ; Schiller
leaves Karl with August, 511 (cp. 484);
Nikolaus Meyer, 512 ; Leipzig Fair, 515 ;
legitimation, 521, 522 ; taken to Pyrmont,
523; an "A mor," in a pageant, 527; con
firmed by Herder, 529-531 ; Lauchstedt,
53T, 554 > inherits Heinrich Meyer's
room, 532 ; Voss's lessons, 536 ; Madame
de StaeTs entry in his album, 543 ; visit
to grandmother, 549, 551 ; Helmstedt,
554 ; forbidden to make verses, 557 ; his
mother's marriage, 562 ; brought t.o Karls
bad, 567 ; Heidelberg University, 573 ;
visiting Frankfurt on his grandmother's
death, 577 ; his return to Weimar and
entry on official life, 5S3 ; visiting Wei
mar in 1809, 591 ; Wieland's funeral, 604 ;
Court page to Crown Prince, ib. ; a
volunteer, 609, 610; sent to Frankfurt,
6ir, 612 ; his duel, 613 ; Kammer -
assessor, 583 ; Kammerrath, 623 ; Gchei-
mer Kainmerraih, 658 ; mother's death,
633-4 \ betrothal, 635 ; sensuality, 635, 639-
640, 657-8, 677, 694-5 ; marriage, 635 ; first
son born, 636 ; surprises his father at
Paulinzelle, 637 ; on the Superintendence,
638 ; visits Berlin, ib. ; Ernst Schiller
leaves Weimar, 638 ; August's care of
collections, 640, 695 ; admiration for Na
poleon, 640 ; difficult position in Weimar,
639 ; love for his father, 639, 658 ; his
poems, 640 ; second son born, 641 ; on the
Intendance of the Theatre, 649, 650 ;
negotiations with Cotta and other pub
lishers, 662, 665, 667-8 ; Boisseree's opinion
of him, 669 ; Schiller's skull, 672 ; Ernst
- Schiller's departure, 673; Abschied, ib.;
Charlotte von Stein's funeral, 675 ; Holtei's
friendship, 685, 697 ; Karl August's death,
686 ; in Dornburg, 689 ; journey to Italy,
696, 699, 700, 702 ; Odyniec likes August,
696-7 ; Pompeii, Naples, Rome, and
death, 703 ; the news in Weimar, 704 ;
Eckermann hears it, 705 ; duties fall to
Goethe, 707 ; Goethe sends friends ex
tracts from August's diaries, 708 ; the
Freemasons, ib. ; his place in the Super
intendence, ib.
Goethe's children, either born dead, or who
survived only a few days, 446, 465, 479,
533
Goethe, Ottilie Wilhelmine Ernestine Hen
riette (nie von Pogwisch), the poet's
daughter - in - law ; parentage and be
trothal, 634 ; marriage, Goethe's fond
ness, 635 ; first son born, 636 ; younger
sister Ulrike, 637 ; second son born, 641 ;
visits Berlin, 638, 659 ; affection for
Goethe, 647 ; on bad terms with August,
657, 695; singing in the Messiah, 660;
visits Schlangenbad, 660 ; Karl August's

jubilee, 664 ; fall from a horse, 669 ;
Boisseree likes her, 670 ; sickly and cross,
677 ; the cause, pregnancy, 679 ; the
birth of a daughter, 684 ; friendly with
Holtei, 685 ; visiting Goethe in Dornburg,
689 ; in Karlsbad, 605 ; breach with
August, ib. ; Mickiewicz, 696 ; Chaos,
697 ; death of the Duchess Luise, 698 ;
death of August Goethe, 703-5 ; Ottilie's
goodness to her father-in-law, 708, 715 , ;
Faust read aloud to her, 716; Doris
Zelter's visit, ib. ; sitting with Goethe
during his last hours, 718
Goldne Spiegel, Der, by Wieland, 160
Goldoni, Carlo, La Guerra, 465
Goldschmiedsgesell, 576
Goldsmith, Oliver, Vicar, no, 167, 180 ;
Deserted Village, 146, 152
Gore, Charles, 416, 419, 420, 423, 463, 474
Gore, Elise, 416, 419, 420, 423, 474
Gore, Emilie, 416, 419, 420, 423, 474
Gore, " a Miss Gore buried in Rome," 410
Gortz - Schlitz, Johann Eustachius, Count
von, 210, 211, 246, 247, 251
Goschen, Georg Joachim, 367 ; bad print
and paper, 402 ; Christian Vulpius, 432
Gotha, Gotter in, 174, 252 ; Garve there, 320
Gotha, Goethe will not visit, 251-2 ; his
first visit, 307 ; again, 311, 323, 325 ; great
friendliness, 325; again, 326, 328, yzgnote
349 note, 355, 366, 414, 422, 424, 445,
523, 737 . ,
Gotha Court, its share in Jena University,
425, 650
Gotha Park, inscriptions, 328
Gotha, August, Prince of, 422, 523
Gotha, Ernst II. Duke of, 375, 377, 382
note, 384, 737
Gotha, Friedrich, Hereditary Prince of, 498
Gothic architecture, 125, 160, 372, 600-602.
See also Koln, Strassburg, Deutscher
Baukunst, Von
Gott und die Bajadere, Der, 490, 625 note
Gott, by Herder, see God
Gotter, Friedrich Wilhelm, poet, charac
teristics, 144 ; Deserted Village translated
by, 146; Gotz sent to him, 173-4; in
Gotha, 174, 225 note, 252 ; his farce, 425 ;
Vasthi, 516; his daughter, 575
Gotter, Pauline, 575
Gotter Griechenlands, Die, 421
Gotter Helden und Wieland, 179, 187, 210-
211, 725, 727
Gottfried, Johann Ludwig (pseudonym,
actual name, Johann Philipp Abelin), 14
Gotthard Pass, Goethe on the, 231, 234, 243 ;
the second time, 303, 366 ; the third time,
493
Gottingen, 178 ; Klopstock in Gottingen,
205; Stolbergs, 226; Karl Stein, 358
Gottingen University, Wolfgang's wish to,
go to the University, 51 ; Herder's first
call to, 170, 733 ; the Stolbergs studied
there, 216 ; Herder again invited, 427 and
733 ; Lichtenberg, 465 ; the enthusiasm of
the students, 523 ; Goethe spends four
weeks in Gottingen, ib.
Gottingischer M-usenalmanach, 144, 160,
164, 166, 168
Gottling, K. W., 673

INDEX.

7^3

Gottling, Johann Friedrich August, Pro
fessor of Chemistry (died 1809), 475
Gottsched, Johann Christof, 50, 55
Gottsched, Luise Adelgunde Victoria (nie
Culmus), 55
Gd'tz von Berlichingen, Tischbein's picture,
375
Gd'tz von Berlichingen, 42, 101, 128 ;
written in six weeks, 131 ; sent to Herder
and Salzmann, 134; Salzmann's criticism,
135 ; 136; shown to Merck, 138, 142;
Caroline Flachsland on Gotz, 139 ; Her
der's silence, 142 ; his harsh criticism of
Gotz, 150 ; Gd'tz must be recast, ib. ;
Merck will print Gd'tz, 166 ; Goethe re
models Gd'tz, ib. ; first copy sent to Kest-
ners, 171-2; its fame, 172, 175, 190; copies
sent to friends, 173 ; to Friederike Brion,
177; Goethe undertakes the publishing
of, 182 ; copy sent to Biirger, 187 ; Gd'tz
shall remain unaltered, 187 ; £cted in
Berlin, 19a ; Wieland's generous criticism,
727 ; revised for the stage, 536, 543, 545 ;
acted, ib.
"Gotz von Berlichingen der Redliche,"
Goethe dubbed, 144
Gotze, Johann Georg Paul, Goethe's Ser
vant (afterwards Bauinspector in Jena),
_ 436, 437, 439, 452, 456, 461
Gou6, August Siegfried von, 144, 145 ; false
report of suicide, 158
Gozzi, Carlo, Turandot, 525, 527
Graff, Anton, 2go
Grdfin O' Done I als Eleonore, 593
Granite, 620
Granite, Essay on, 340
" Grasaffe," Liii called the, 298
Grebischen, 439
Greek Anthology, 328
Greek ruins in Southern Italy, see Paestum,
Pozzuoli ; in Sicily, see Girgenti, Segeste,
Taormina. See also Roman ruins
Greek, the young Goethe learning, 22 ;
learns but little from Scherbius, 27, 30 ;
neglected as not useful to a lawyer, 40
Greek Drama, 130
Greek literature, 76, 77, in, 130, 137, 146,
*5°y 433, 479, 545- See also ^Eschylus,
Anacreon, Aristophanes, Euripides,
Homer, Pindar, Plato, Sophocles, Theo
critus, Xenophon
Gretchen, 42-5
Gretchen, in Offenbach, 730. (See Der
junge Goethe, iii. 107)
" Gretchen scenes " in Faust, 206
Grey Friars' Church, Frankfurt, 32, 34,
724
Gries, Johann Dietrich, 68g, 691
Griesbach, Johann Jakob, 510
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Baron, 323
Grimm, Hermann, 626
Grimmer, the actor, 537
Groning, Georg 76 ,77
Groschlag, Friedrich Karl Wilhelm, Baron
von, 203 .
" Grosse bete, La, Goethe subscribes him
self, 214
Grossheringen, 691
Grossrudestedt, 273
Grosskophta, Der (or // Conte), 400, 432,

439, 443 ! finished, 446 ; read by Herder,
447 ; acted, 447-8 ; mentioned, 450 ; to be
published in Goethe's Neue Schriften, 465
Grossmuth fur Grossmuth, by Weisse, 82
Grotthus, Frau von, see Meyer
Griiner, Karl Franz (actual name Akacs),
537
Griiner, Johann Sebastian, 640, 643 note,
645 note, 646, 665
Guercino da Cento, il (Giovanni Francesco
Barbieri), 373
Gujer, Jakob (called Klijog), 230, 730
Giinderode, Hieronymus Maximilian, 100,
209, 728
Giinderode, Susanne Marie Elisabeth (nie
von Stalburg), 100
Gunther, Johann Christian, 69
Gunther, Wilhelm Christof, 562, 744
Guien Weiber, Die, 515 note
Gymnasium of Frankfurt, 30
Gymnasium of Weimar, see Weimar, Gymna
sium H
H  , Herr (?), 123
Hackel, Heinrich Jakob, Baron von, 35
Hackert, Philipp, painter, 389, 391, 393, 397,
403, 416 note
Hackerts Leben, by Goethe, 416 note, 572
Hafis, Mahommed Schems-eddin, 611, 614,
621, 627
Hagedorn, Friedrich von, poet, 15
Hagestolzen, Die, play by Iffland, 622
Hahn, August Johann, Freiherr von, 211
Haimonskinder, The, 226
Hainberg, The, 523 note
Hainbund, in Gottingen, Klopstock visits
the, 205
Halberstadt, Goethe in, 554
Halle, 476 ; Goethe in Halle, 531, 536 ;
mentioned, 537, 541 ; Goethe there, 554,
555 ; the Weimar actors there, 596, 613
Halle University, students at Lauchstedt,
531 ; the University Church used as a
theatre, 596
Haller, Albrecht von, 15, 520
Hamann, Johann Georg, 103 ; imitated by
Goethe, 160, 163 ; eleven of his books
asked for by Goethe, 243
Hamburg, 216, 223 ; Goethe invited to, 250 ;
the Schopenhauers, 559
Hamilton, the diplomatist, Sir William, and
Miss Emma Harte, 391
Hamlet, 448
Hammer, Joseph von, 611, 627
Hanau, Goethe there, 305
Handel, Georg Friedrich, 660
Handel, Samuel, 65
Handel, Address to, by Goethe, 65s 69
" Hans Adam war ein Erdenkloss," the first
Divan lyric, 614
Hans, town in France, 454
Hans Sachs, by Deinhardstein, 684
Hans Sachsens poetische Sendung, 684
Harbauer, Franz Joseph, 517
Hardenberg, Friedrich Georg von (Novalis)
(1772-1801), 508, 512 note
Hardenberg, Karl August von, 608, 623, 626
Harlequin's Adventures in Wonderland, 123
Harlequin's Prologue, 66, 69

764>

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Harrach, Maria Josephine, Countess von
(nie Princess von Liechtenstein), 380
Harry, a young Englishman, 82
Harte, Emma, 3gi
Hartenberg, Castle, 646
Hartmann, Georg, 732
" Harz, the, 270-271; the second Harz jour-
neY, 339, 356 ; the third Harz journey, 340
Harzreise, Geognostisches Tagebuch der,
340 .
Harzreise im Winter, poem, 270
Hasse, Johann Adolf, his Santa Elena, 73
" Hdtschelhans," term of endearment, 296,
732
Haugwitz, Christian Heinrich Karl, Frei-
herr von, 226, 230, 505, 729
Hausgenossen, Die ungleichen, 348
Hausminister, Goethe as, 310, 311, 315
Haydn, Joseph ; his oratorio, The Crea
tion, performed in Weimar, 518
Hebel, Johann Peter, 628
Hebrew, lessons in, 34-5
Hector and Paris, Tischbein's painting, 384
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 563, 683
Hegelian Philosophy, the, 683
Heidegger, his Acerra Pkilologica, 14
Heidelberg Castle, 626-7
Heidelberg (Goethe's first visit is not men
tioned in this book, he went there with
the Stolbergs in May 1775) ; Goethe in
vited to Heidelberg, 237 ; his second
visit to the town, 243 ; another visit, 463 ;
Goethe there in 1797, 492 ; Voss going
thither, 550, 552, 553 ; August Goethe,
573, 577, 583 ; Goethe there in 1814, 619 ;
in 1815, 626-8
Heidelberg University, 550, 552, 553, 573,
577, 619
Heilbronn, 492
Heine, Heinrich, 513 note, 657
Heinse, Johann Jakob Wilhelm, 199, 200,458
Helena, 515, 516, 669, 670, 673, 674, 675, 685
Helena, Saint, by Hasse,_73
Helmstedt, Karl Stein at, 358; Goethe
there, S54
Helvig, Karl Gottfried von, 541
Helvig, Amalie (nie von Imhof ), at Goethe's
house, 488, 496, 508, 524, 541 ; Die
Schwestern von Lesbos, 503, 505, 509 ;
Kotzebue's Schiller-fete, 529
Hemsterhuis, Franz, 358, 459 ; his gems,
459, 46o, 737
Henckel von Donnersmark, Ottilie Countess
von (nie von Lepel), 634, 685
Hendrich, Franz Ludwig von, 526, 583
Herbst, Goethe in Wetzlar, 165, 722, 723
Herbstgefiihl, poem, 235
Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1 744-1803),
saw destiny in being born at midnight,
1 ; calls Goethe "sparrow-like," 62-3, 134 ;
Kritische Wdlder, 86, 96, 103-105 ; his
early life, 103 ; meets Goethe, 104 - 5 ;
Fragmente, 103,^ 150 ; portrait, 104 ; his
sickroom, 109 ; his teaching, 109, no ; and
philosophy of history and literature, 111-
112 ; his bitterness, 109, no, m, 112, 113 ;
chastisement of Schmid, 113, 15.1 ; 114;
leaves Strassburg, 115; 118; his "Helle
bore letter," 122 ; in Mannheim, 125 ;
visit to Goethe's parents, 125, 128, 130 ;

his essay on Shakespeare, 130, 161 *, his
gloom in Buckeburg, 133 ; Gd'tz sent to
him, 134 ; 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 142 ;
calls Goethe a crow, 134 ; hard word about
Gd'tz, 150 ; the Felsweihegesang, 150 ;
calls Goethe a woodpecker (Specht), 150 ;
blesses Goethe for Gd'tz, 161 ; Leuch
senring poisons his mind against Goethe,
170 ; a new silence, 170 ; high opinion of
Gd'tz, 174 ; directs Lavater to Goethe as a
draughtsman, 189-90 ; his Aelteste Ur-
kunde, 192 ; Herder again friendly, 216,
222, 227; Goethe meets Herder in Darm
stadt, 232; Goethe aids in bringing Herder
to Weimar, 250-1, 253, 254-5 '¦> Herder's
parsonage, 269; visits Jena University, 274;
at Goethe's garden, 320 ; his bitterness,
320 ; Herder and Goethe begin to grow
friendly again, 323, 335 ; Herder and
Doderlein's case, 338-9 ; Herder and school
reform, 339; Herder ridicules "hammer
ing at deaf stone, " 341, 368-9 ; his sympathy
with Goethe's theory of the intermaxillary
bone, 342 ; his theory of man and the
brutes in the Ideen, 342 ; his good judg
ment in music, 348 ; reading aloud the'v
Ideen to Goethe and Charlotte von Stein,
357;- the renewal of friendship in 1783,
360 ; Herder aids Goethe in revising his
works, 367, 386 ; Herder in Karlsbad, 367-;
Herder urges Goethe to work at Iphigenie,
368 ; of all Goethe's friends, understands
him best, 378 ; mention of Herder during
'the Italian journey, 372, 373, 378, 384,
391, 393, 401 7to te ; (the Ideen), 402;
(Angantyr und Hervor), 405 ; 406 ;
(urges Goethe's return), 410 ; the false re
port that Herder had gone to Italy, 413,
414 ; Herder mentioned, 416 ; starts for
Italy, 419; Herder's Gott, 420; Herder's
call to Gottingen, 427 (and 733) ;
Herder's return from Italy, 431 ; praises
the Romische Elegien, ib. ; praises Tasso,
ib. ; appointed Vice-President of Consis
tory, ib., and 734 ; baptizes August
Goethe, 434 ; Goethe gives Christiane and *
August into his charge, 436 ; discussing
optics, 444 ; reading the Beitrdge zur
Optik and the Grosskophta, 445-6 ; brings -
Bottiger to Weimar, 446 ; friendly with
Goethe, 460 ; reads Reineke, 461 ; urges
Voss to see Goethe, 467 ; in the company
of Voss and Goethe, 468 ; translation of
Balde, 469 ; narrow criticism of Wilhelm
Meister ; ib. ; his "Freedom vertigo,"
- 470 ; joins the Horen, ib. ; follows an
Eesthetic tendency different from Goethe's,
471 (and see 477 and 734) ; coldness be
tween Goethe and Herder, 472 ; Herder
one of the evening circle at the Duchess
Amalia's, 474-5 ; his objection to the publi
cation of the Romische Elegien, 477 ; the
breach between Goethe and Herder, 480
(and see 737 -740); the effect of Die
Propylden on Herder, 502 ; Herder at
Goethe's house, ib. ; friendly to Gerning,
506 ; Queen Luise of Prussia talks to him,
ib. ; at Goethe's house, 513 ; Goethe's
dreadful illness, 519 note; confirming
August Goethe, 529, 531 ; his complaint

INDEX.

765

about the Gymnasium, 533 ; his last meet
ing with Goethe, 536 note; illness, 539
note ; death, 540 ; professorship advo
cated in Weimar Gymnasium, 542 ;
critical objection to Werther., 579
Herder, Maria Caroline von (nie Flachs
land), 62, 104; portrait, ib. ; in, 134;
meets Goethe first, 137 ; hears Gd'tz, 138-9 ;
speaks of The Wanderer, 139 ; account
of Frau Laroche, 140-141 ; Goethe reads
Sterne to, 142 ; Goethe sends her a poem,
Felsweihegesang, 143; account of Goethe
at Merck's house, 160-161 ; Goethe's
Jahrmarkt, 168, 724 ; marriage, 169, 170 ;
Goethe meets her with her husband in
Darmstadt, 232 ; she directs Herder's
bitterness towards Goethe, 320 ; in Karls
bad, 367; mentioned, 407, 412 note, 416;
Goethe's friendliness during her husband's
absence, 419, 420, 42r; 424 note, 426, 428;
Goethe's letter from Venice, 437 ," Carol
ine's explanation of Goethe's dreadful ill
ness, 518
Herder, Sigmund August Wolfgang von,
43i, 436, 523, 558, 734, 74i
JHerder, the other children, Adalbert, Gott-
frieoVEmil, Rinaldo, Wilhelm, 734, 738-40
Herder, Luise, 691
Hermann, by Elias Schlegel, 65
Hermann, Christian Gottfried, (Goethe's
Leipzig friend, son of Johann Gottfried
Hermann), 61, 72, 75, 77, 94; copy of
Gotz sent to him, 174; Goethe asks his
legal advice, 174; 487 note, 514 note
Hermann, Johann Gottfried Jakob, the
metrist, 514
Hermann und Dorothea, the idyll, depicts
Goethe's parents, 23 ; 484, 485, 486, 487,
488, 489, 490, 493, 639 ; dramatised by
Karl Topfer, 660 ; mentioned, 674
Hermann und Dorothea, the elegiac, 487
Hermannstein Cave, 286-7, 3I3
Hero und Leander, 483, 484> 491
Herrgottsberg, 142, 143
Herrnhuters or Moravians, 21, 34,87-88,90-91
Herzan, Franz, Count von, 385, 408
Herzlieb, Christian Friedrich Karl, 556
Herzlieb, Wilhelmine, 556, 570, 571, 575
Herzog Michel, by Kriiger, 66
Hesse, Andreas Peter, 137, 138
Hesse, Frau, Caroline Flachsland's sister,
Hessen- Cassel, Friederike Christiane Au
guste, Electoral Princess of (nie Princess
of Prussia), 575 r _ , .
Hessen-Cassel, . . . Landgraf of, 295
Hessen -Darmstadt, Charlotte Wilhelmine
Christiane Maria, Princess of, going to
Berlin with Merck, 167, 169, 724
Hessen - Darmstadt, Henriette Christiane
Caroline, Landgrafin of; going to Ber
lin with Merck, 167, 169, 724 ; her death,
190
Hessen-Darmstadt, Ludwig X., Landgraf
of; (1753-1830); as Hereditary Prince a
member of Buri's Arcadian Society, 47 ;
friendly to Goethe, 277 ; asks Christiane
Vulpius what flowers bloom beneath her
hand, 418; comes to Eisenach with two
hundred horse, 478

Hessen-Darmstadt, Luise, Princess of, after
wards Duchess of Weimar, see Weimar
Hessen - Darmstad t, Wilhelmine, Princess
of;. going to Berlin with Merck, 167,
169, 724
Hessen-Homburg, Friedrich Ludwig, Land
graf ol, 139
Hessen-Homburg, Caroline Luise, Land
grafin of, 139
Heuschrecke, An die, 323
Hexameter, used by Goethe, 460, 468
Heyden, Johann Philipp, senior Burger-
meister, 213
Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 51, 737
Hildburghausen, Goethe in, 329
Hiller, Johann Adam, 55, 91
Himburg, Christian Friedrich, 284
Hirt, Aloys, 377, 380 ; in Weimar, 491
Hirzel, Hans Kaspar, physician of Zurich,
230
" Hoch auf dem alten Thurne steht," 197
" Hochbegliickt in deiner Liebe," 625
Hochkirchen, Battle of, 25
Hochst, 9, 42
Hochzeitlied, 528 note
Hof, 485, 558, 576
Hohenasperg, 732
Hohenfeld, Christof von, 156
Hohenlohe-Ingelsingen, Friedrich Ludwig,
Prince, 559
Hohenzollern - Hechingen, Luise Pauline,
Princess (nie Princess of Courland), 588
Holbach, Baron d', Systeme de la nature,
112, 174
Holland, Louis Napoleon, ex- King of, 591
Holland, Georg Jonathan, Freiherr von,
174
Hollenfahrt Christi, 51
Hollenthal, The, 301
Holstein-Gottorp, Friedrich August, Duke
of, 104
Holstein-Gottorp, Peter Friedrich Wilhelm,
Prince of, 104, 105, 109
Holtei, Karl von, 677, 684-5, 697-8
Homburg, visited by Goethe, 45, 139, 169 ;
Goethe at the Court of, 305
Homburg, Landgraf of, see Hessen-
Homburg
Homer, Wolfgang's first acquaintance with,
30; Herder on Homer, 111 ; Goethe
reading, ib.; to Friederike, 118; Hector,
121 ; reading to Cornelia, 128 ; 130, 131,
152 ; quotation from, 165 ; the Odyssey
bought at Palermo, 392 ; 465 ", Voss in
Weimar, 467 ; his Odyssey, 468 ; Voss's
Iliad, 473 ; Wolf, 476 ; Homer and
Schiller's Taucher, 493 ; Homer an anti
dote to Hafis, 621. See also Nausikaa,
Ulysses
Homerum, Prolegomena ad, by Wolf, 476
Hopfner, Ludwig Julius Friedrich, 133, 151,
178, 188, 728
Hoppe, Joachim. 40
Horace, 18, 407
Horen, Die, periodical, 469, 470, 471 ; in
jures Wieland's Merkur, 472 ; Goethe's
Tales for it, 473 ; 475, 476, 477, 478 ; at
tacked, 479 ; 480, 487
Hornberger, sculptor, 299
Horn, Johann Adam, Goethe's friend, 40 ;

•j66

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

" Goethe is a greater philosopher than
ever," 49, 64 ; comes to Leipzig, 57-8 ; his
description of Kathchen, 60 ; of Goethe's
fantastic behaviour, 62 ; his explanation
of it, 64 ; recites Harlequin's Prologue,
66 ; sends copies of it about, 69 ; called
the Pegauer, 71 ; acting, 73 ; lodged at
the Schonkopfs', 74 ; avoids seeing Less
ing, 75 ; 77, 84-5 ; return from Leipzig,
88 ; in love, ib . ; 89, 93, 95 ; the letter of
December 1770, no; 119, 129, 175
Hottelstedt Ecke, 680
House, the Goethes', on the Hirschgraben,
3-", no garden, 6; described, its discom
fort, 9 ; rebuilding, n ; described as re
built, 11-13 ; picture of it, 12 ; picture of
the coat of arms on it, 13 ; Wolfgang's
room, 13 ; arrangement of the books and
objects of art, 14 ; Goethe finds fault with
its architecture, 94; plan of dividing it, ib.
Houses in Weimar, Goethe's, see Jager-
haus, Frauenplan, Garden in the Park
Howard, Luke, 654
Huber, Michael, 70
, Hufeland, Christof Wilhelm, 446, 467, 469,
518, 528 note
Hufeland, Gottlieb, 512, 528, 532
Hufeland, Frau, 528
Hugo, Victor, 697
Huldigung der Kunste, 546
Human Form, the, 309, 387, 399, 401, 405,
407
Human race, Herder on, 111-112
Humboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alexander,
Freiherr von, ^73, 475, 488 ; his presence
"in itself sufficient to fill a whole life with
interest," 489, 565; "An Trauertagen"
addressed to him, 634 ; visits Weimar in
1826, 674
Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm, Freiherr von,
407 note ; visits Goethe, 434 ; the Horen,
469 ; 473, 475, 476 ; translating ./Eschylus,
489 ; prosodic court of justice on Hermann
und Dorothea, 489 ; Riemer, 539 ; visits
Goethe in 1823, 648 ; visits Goethe in 1826,
674 ; Goethe writing to, 706 note
Hunting, Karl August's love of, 278, 325,
35o, 354, 487
Hiisgen, Heinrich Sebastian, 24, 37
Husgen, Wilhelm Friedrich, and his wife,
36-7
Hutton, R. H., Essay on Goethe, 393, 53a
Hypermnestre, by Lemierre, 28

Ibycics, Die Kranichc des, 491 note
Ice-chokes in Saale, 338, 502, 512 note
Iceland, 589
" Ich komme bald, ihrgoldnen Kinder,'' no
Ideen aber organische Bildung, by Goethe,
568
Ideen zur Geschichte, Herder's, 342, 357,
360, 402
Idris, 82
Idylle, cantata by Goethe, 604
Iffland, August Wilhelm, Die Jdger, 444 ;
mentioned, 480 ; in Weimar, 481-2 ; 485 ;
goes to Berlin, 486 ; in Weimar a second
time, 497 ; the Piccolomini sent to him,

501 ; Tancrede, 517 ; Schiller's account
of Eugenie, 535 ; Werner's Martin
Luther, 570 note ; his third visit to
Weimar, 596 ; his fourth, ib. ; Iffland
asks Goethe for a play, 613-4 > Iffland's
death, 622 ; Die Hagestolzen, ib. ; refer
ence to Iffland, 647
Iffland, his wife (nee Greum), 498
Igel, 457
Iliad, Voss's translation, 473
III, river, at Strassburg, 121, 228
Ilm, the river, 259, 270, 496, 613, 665, 691
Ilmenau, the poem, 346, 352, 713
Ilmenau mines, 268-9, 271-2, 309-10, 319-20,
321, 329, 335-337, 372, 416, 423, 433, 435-
6, 442, 444, 460, 465, 467, 477-8, 486 ; their
failure, 501 ; closed entirely, 605
Ilmenau, Goethe's first visit to, 268-9;
mentioned, 274 ; Kraft, 274-5 ; wild con
duct of Goethe and the Duke there, 276 ;
Charlotte and Goethe there, 288-9; Goethe
and the Duke there, 313; again, 321;
Goethe in Ilmenau, 329, 336, 344 ; Karl
August takes Constantin there, 352 ;
Goethe and Karl August living there after
"forest fashion," 355, 360; Goethe takes
Fritz Stein there, 356 ; Fritz and Ernst
taken, 357; Goethe there, 366 note;
Goethe there, 423, 436, 465 ; with August,
477-8 ; again there with August, 486 ;
Knebel living there, 502 ; Goethe there in
1813, 607 ; in 1831, 713-4 ; the old days
there recalled by Karl August in 1825,
664
Ilten, Caroline von (married in 1788 to Ober
forstmeister von Moser ofDiirlach), 280,
291
"Im ernsten Beinhaus," 672
Imhof, Amalie von, see Helvig
Imhof, Katharina, dining at Goethe's house,
488
Imhof, Luise (nie Schardt), Charlotte von
Stein's sister, 311, 488 ; her death, 540
Impresario in angustie, L'} opera, 398
Indian ink, Goethe drawing in, 402
Indian poetry (Lassen), 676
"In Hygiea's Form beliebt's Armiden,"
646
Innsbruck, 371
Insel Fe Isenburg, 16
Intermaxillary bone, 341-2, 653
Intermezzos, 347, 388
Ion, by A. W. Schlegel, 525, 526
Iphigenie auf Tauris ; begun, 274; fin
ished, 283 ; acted, 279, 282 ; Charlotte von
Stein's influence, 293; acted, 317; again,
338 ; transcribed, 366, 367 ; the aid of
Herder and Wieland in revision, 367 ;
Herder commends Iphigenie to Goethe's
attention, 368 ; the Brenner Pass, 371 ;
history of Iphigenie during the Italian
journey, 372, (St. Agatha) 373, 379 - 80 ;
Abate Tacchi wishes to translate it, 381 ;
does not interest the Prince of Waldeck,
385 ; does not interest the artists in Rome,
386 ; to be submitted to Herder, ib.; affects
Anton Zucchi deeply, 387 ; Angelika's deep
feeling for it, 388 ; mentioned, 423, 450, 493
note ; Goethe undertakes to prepare it for
the stage, 513 ; butcannot, ib.; performed

INDEX.

767

with Gluck's music, 518 ; Goethe asks
Schiller to adapt it, 526 ; Schiller's adapta
tion acted, 530 ; played in 1825, 667
Iphigenie in Delphi, 373
Iris, periodical, 209, 217, 223
Ischia, 390
Israel, 163
Israel in the Desert, 489
Isenburg-Budingen, Ludwig Casimir, Count
von, 91
Isenburg-Budingen, Sophie Charlotte Er
nestine, Princess of, 198
" Ist es moglich ! Stern der Sterne," 627
" Ist es denn wahr was man gesagt?" 368
Italian comedy, 372, 388
Italian fashion in house-building, 450
Italian language, how Wolfgang learned,
21 ; poems in, 59 ; mentioned, 349, 366 ;
studying Italian with Fritz Stein, 366
Italian master of languages, 21 ; his singing,
33
Italian Opera ; in Frankfurt, 43 ; in
Eisenach, 347 ; in Brunswick, ib. ; in
Venice, 372 ; in Rome, 388
Italian painting, at Dresden Gallery, 72
Italian praise of Gd'tz, 172
Italianische Reise, Die, 374 note, 420, 612,
621, 652 ; Zweiter Rd'mischer A ufenthalt,
695, 696 note
Italy, Goethe in, 371-414 ; again, 437-8
Italy, Goethe telling about, at Rudolstadt,
421 ; at Pempelfort, 458 ; at Munster,
459
Italy, Goethe's father in, 2, 366, 372, 389 ;
Herder starting for, 104, 155 ; Goethe's
wish to go, 178, 233, 234 ; assures Kayser
that the Duke is not going, 276 ; Goethe
on the Gotthard, again overcomes the
longing for Italy, 303 ; Kayser going to
Italy, 346-7 ; Goethe almost betrays his
intention to Kayser, 349 ; does not to
Charlotte, 359 ; the foretastes of Italy
reckoned, 366; the Duchess Amalia's plan
of going to Italy, 402, 404, 407-8, 410,
412 ; starting for Italy, 419 ; in Italy, 422-
3 ; returning, 436, 438 ; Herder starts for
Italy, 4ig, 733 ; his return, 431 ; Goethe's
thought of joining the Duchess Amalia,
427 ; abandoned, 430 ; Meyer^ to Italy,
477-8 ; starting, 479 ; Goethe's plan _ of
joining Meyer, 477, 478, 479 ; has to give
it up, 483; hope of going in spring of 1707,
485, 487 ; Goethe gives up the thought,
492 ; August Goethe, 699, 703-4
Italy, Goethe and Meyer plan a great work
on Italy, 477, 478 j
Jabach, Everard von, 200
Jacob, wrestling, 122, 401
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 141, 156; his
half-sister Charlotte, 168; his wife, 175,
197 ; Goethe meets him, 199-201 ; Jacobis
Epistel an die A kademisten,202-3\ Jacobi's
utterance on Werther, 204; Boie visits
him, 205-6; Jacobi in Frankfurt, 215 ; hears
Faust, ib. ; entreated to go away by
Goethe, 217 ; a second visit to Frankfurt,
218-219; hears the beginning of Stella, 219;

Stella transcribed for him by Johanna
Fahlmer, 219, 221 ; laments the dinoue-
¦ment, 224 ; A llwills Papiere, 234 ; Goethe
borrows money of Jacobi, 237, 361-2;
Wieland praises Goethe to him,. 246 ; the
Woldemar affair, 281, 295, 296, 300-1 ;
friendly again, 333, 334, 343, 358; the
Princess Galitzin, 358-9; visited by Knebel,
361 ; how the reconciliation came about,
361-2 ; Jacobi visits Weimar, 361-2 ;
Spinoza ib. and note; Jacobi mentioned,
418 note, 424 note, 444, agnate; Goethe's
visit to Jacobi, 457-8 and 735 ; 524 note;
Jacobi visits Weimar in 1805, 553 ;
Schelling's attack on him, 599-600 ; his
death, 638
Jacobi, Helene Elisabeth (nie von Cler
mont), wife of Fritz Jacobi ; comes to
Frankfurt, 175 ; wishes to reconcile
Goethe and the Jacobis, 179, 197, 199 ;
her death, 361-2
Jacobi, Clara, daughter of Fritz, 358, 458
Jacobi, Max, son of Fritz, 458, 461
Jacobi, Johann Georg, brother of Fritz
Jacobi, 141, 156 ; sings Johanna Fahlmer
as "Adelaide," 167; 175, 179, 180, 194,
726 ; Goethe meets him, 199 ; Iris, 209
Jacobi, Charlotte, half-sister of Fritz Jacobi,
168, 175, 362, 458
Jacobi, Helene, half-sister of Fritz Jacobi,
458, 553
Jacobis, Das Ungliick der, farce, 723 ; 178,
188 ; sent to Klopstock, 192 ; Johanna
Fahlmer questions Goethe about it, 727
Jagd, Die, 490 and note ; 674
Jagemann, Caroline, 488, 509, 519, 521, 522,
535 note, 590, 593, 594, 595, 628, 649, 662,
666
Jagemann,  , younger sister, 519
Jagemann, Christian Joseph, 488
Jagemann, Ferdinand, painter, 631
Jdger, Die, by Iffland, 444
Jagerhaus, Goethe's residence, 256 ; fitted
up for Prince Constantin, 311 ; Goethe
there again, 430, 433, 441
Jahrmarkt, the first, 168, 724, 725
Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern ; its
date, 725 ; given to Klinger, 726 ; men
tioned, 728 ; 208 ; played at Ettersburg,
281
Jaup, Georg Daniel, 138, 140
Jean Paul, see Richter
Jena, 252, 273, 292, 323 ; the ice-choke, 338 ;
Loder 324, 341; Biittner, 343; Batsch,
343, 344 ; algebra, 345 \ Knebel, 354, 358,
423 ; Loder, 424; Werner, 432 ; Schiller
and Batsch, 434; "a complicated mis
chief," 436 ; Loder, 440 ; Prof. Voigt,
443 ; Schiller and Fichte, 470. [Here I
cease to index Goethe's visits to Jena until
182?.] Goethe there in 1827, 681-683; in
1828, 688, 690 ; in 1830, 700
Jena Anatomical Cabinet, 597, 682
Jena, Battle of, 560-561, 665, 743-745
Jena, Biittner Library, 338, 524, 526, 528,
532
Jena Cabinet of Minerals, 559, 597, 682,
701
Jena Cabinet of Natural History, 640
Jena Cabinet of Physical Science, 597

INDEX.

Jena Castle, 472-3, 483, 515, 517, 518, 541,
559, 57= note, 597, 636, 700
Jena Chemical Laboratory, 597
Jena Collection of Coins, 495, 640
Jena, Fiirstengarten, (Botanic Garden),
434, 466, 532, 636, 641, 682, 700
Jena institutions, 612, 620, 622, 629-30, 651
Jena Library, 495, 526, 530, 532, 650-51, 700
Jena Mineralogical Society, 546, 548, 636,
note
Jena museums, 532, 597, 612, 620, 622, 629-
30, 650, 651, 682, 700
Jena Observatory, 597, 650-51, 682
Jena Osteologic-Zoological Cabinet, 597
Jena Society of Natural History,466, 546
Jena " Superintendence," see Weimar
Superintendence
Jena University, 274, 324, 338-9 ; Batsch,
343 ; 409, 416 ; Schiller's appointment,
424, 425 ; the four Courts who had share in
Jena University government, 425 ; 427, 434,
443, 461 ; Fichte, 467, 504; her great losses,
537, 539, 55°» 556, 557 ; Napoleon's bene
ficence, 581 ; Goethe's work, 597, 612,
620 ; confers degrees on Goethe, 666
Jena University Library, 650, 700
Jena University Senate, 650
Jena University students, 535, 583, 742
Jenaische allgemeine Literaturzeitung,
537., 539-54°, 547
Jenkins, Thomas, 403
Jentschen, Court-gardener, 270
Jeremiah xxxi. 5 ; 83, 576
Jerusalem, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm von,
62, 250
Jerusalem, Karl Wilhelm von, in Leipzig,
calls Goethe a Geek, 62, 159; in Wetzlar,
suicide, 159 ; friend of Lessing, ib. ; Kest-
ner's account of his suicide, 160 ; his story
used in Werther, 186, 187, 190, 203-4,
208
Jery und Bately ; begun, 304-305 ; sent
to Kayser, 305 ; Kayser very slow, 307 ;
SeckendorfFs music, 311 ; played, 312 ;
revised, 411
Jestetten, 4g3
'Jetzt fiihlt der Engel," 114-115
Jew-German, 34
Jews, Wolfgang curious about their cus
toms, 37
Jews' quarter, Frankfurt, ig2
Johanna Sebus, 590, 598 note
John, J., 589, 605, 606, 611 note, 646 note;
portrait of him, 658 ; Dornburg, 688
Joinville, Jean, Sire de, 455
Jonah, Lavater's sermons on, 174
Jonson, Ben, 508 note, 512 note
Jordis, Karl, 566
Jordis, Ludovika (nie Brentano), 566, 570
Joseph, 37, 39
Journal des Luxus und der Moden, 526,
527
Joux, Vallie des, 301
Julius Casar, of Shakespeare, 489, 539
Julius Casar, Goethe plans a drama, 123 ;
speaks to Schonborn of it, 179, 180, but
see 725 ; mentioned to Schonborn, 192 ;
allusion to it, 580
"Julie — ce n'est plus," from Rousseau's
Nouvelle Hiloise, 258

July Revolution in Paris, 700
Juncker, Justus, 35
Jung, a maker of lay-figures, 81
Jung, Johann Heinrich, called Stilling,
108-9, IIJ, «5-i6 ; I"5 marriage, _ 121 ;
123, 124, 130, 138 ; Goethe meets him in
Elberfeld, igg ; he visits Frankfurt, 218 ;
Goethe's last meeting with him, 628
Jung, Christine (nie Friedenberg), 108,
115, 121
Jungfrau von Orleans, Die, 515 note, 521
522, 535
Junggesell und der Miihlbach, Der, 492
"Junker Berlichingen," Goethe called, 168
Juno Ludovisi, 381
Jupiter Serapis, Temple of, at Pozzuoli,
T 39;3-4 , „ .,.
Jupiter, the Smiling, 381
Jupiter, Goethe modelling a profile of, 431
Justinus, the historian, 22
K
Kaaz, Karl Friedrich, 575, 600
Kabale und Liebe, 471
Kalb, Karl Alexander von, 242-3, 244, 256
Kalb, Johann August Alexander von, 241-
2-3, 244, 252 ; writes to Goethe's parents,
261 ; 268, 269, 271 ; his bad finance, 307,
308-9, 327 ; Kalb's disgrace, 330
Kalb, Charlotte von (nie Marschalk von
Ostheim ; her husband was Heinrich Julius
Kalb), 419, 428, 469, 482, 484, 565
Kalb, Heinrich Julius, 419
Kammer, the, (Chamber of Finance), 261,
330-1; Goethe sets its affairs in good order,
T^ 334-5; 394, 412
Kammerberg, the, 575-6
Kammerberg, Goethe's essay on, 576, 598
Kampf family, of Worms, 91
Kanne, Johann Gottfried, 74, 85, 8g
Kanne, Anna Katharina (nie Schonkopf),
52 ; Horn's description of her, 60 ; her
portrait, 60 ; 64-5 ; her initials on the linden,
65, 67-8 ; her singing, 66 ; Goethe's rude
ness, 68, 74 ; his poetic atonement, 68,
and 74 ; Kanne comes to SchSnkopFs ,
74 ; Goethe's grief, ib. ; his lyrics, 75 ; gifts
to Kathchen, 74, 75, 82, 93 ; farewell,
7&-g ; letters to her, 81-2, 84, 85, 86,
113, 91-92, 93 ; her saucy letter, S2 ; her
concern on account of Goethe's illness,
84 ; Goethe's dream of marrying her,
86, 93 ; his dream that she is married,
92 ; her betrothal, 89 ; she asks for a
marriage poem, 91-2 ; her wedding post
poned, 93 ; her marriage, 95 ; 114, 125,
139 *, Goethe sees her again, 258
Kant, Immanuel, 103, 438-9, 440
Kapp, Christian Erhard, 566
Karl, Goethe's servant, 616
Karlsbad, 340, 341, 344, 354 ; Goethe and
Charlotte von Stein there (1785), 35S ;
(1786), 367 ; Goethe owes "a new exist
ence " to these springs, 365 ; the gather
ing in Karlsbad (1786), 367-370, 380, 385 ;
(I795), 476 ; (1806), 558 ; (in 1807), 566-7 ;
(in 1808), 574-6 ; (in 1810), 582, 5S4, 585-6,
592 ; (in 1811), 582, 588 ; (in 1812), 582,
589, 592; (in 1818), 637; (in 1819), 639;

INDEX.

769

(in 1820), 640; (in 1821), 641; (in 1823),
646
Karlsbad, Christiane taken to (1811), 588*
(1812), 589
Karlsbad, August Goethe taken to (1807)
567; (1812X589 "'
Karlsruhe,_ 158, 177, 204, 206, 210, 211 ;
Goethe in, 227 ; mentioned, 284 ; Goethe
in, 305 ; again, 628
Karschin, Anna Luise (nie Durbach), 234,
278
Karstens, actor, 649
Kassel, see Cassel
" Kaum dass ich dich wieder habe," 628
Kastner, Johann Friedrich, 490
Katharine's Church, Frankfurt, 18
Katharina, the Princess, see Oldenburg
Kathchen, see Kanne, Anna Katharina
Kauffmann, Angelika, see Zucchi
Kaufmann, Christof, the Kraftapostel, 295,
731
Katzbach, battle of the, 607
Katzenpastete, 598
Kayser, Johann Matthias (not Matthaus),
Organist at Grey Friars' Church, Frank
furt (not at St. Katharine's), 191, 724
Kayser, Philipp Christof, his friendship with
Goethe and Klinger, 724 ; his unhappy
love for Susanne Ebert, 729 ; Lavater's
description of his character, 191 ; Goethe
meets him in Ziirich, 230 ; Goethe writes
to him from Weimar, 276 ; meets him in
Zurich, 304 ; his Gesdnge mit Begleitung
des Claviers, ib. ; Goethe sends him Jery
und Bately, 305 ; Kayser very slow in
composing to it, 307, 311 ; Kayser in
Weimar, 316 ; Kayser a zealous Mason,
319 ; Kayser leaves Weimar, 320 ; Goethe's
endeavour to bring him into intercourse
with Gluck, 321, 322 ; Kayser going to
Italy, 346-7 ; Kayser, Goethe, and the
comic opera, 347-349 ', Kayser's letters
from Italy, 366 ; Goethe writes to Kayser
from Rome, 388, 400, 402 ; Kayser comes
to Rome, 403-4 ; mentioned, 405, 412 ; ac
companies Goethe home to Germany, 413 ;
will go away with the Duchess Amalia,
419; Kayser leaves "the Duchess's party,
422-3 ; begins to compose ScJierz List und
Rache for the third time, 433
Keats, John, 704 note
Kecht, Johann Sigismund, 691
Kehl, Gd'tter Helden und Wieland printed
at, 187, 727
Kehr, Isaak, 40, 618 note
Keil, Robert, Corona Schroter, 55, 66 ;
Frau Rath, 286 ; his harsh judgment of
Charlotte von Stein, 293 ; Frau Rath,
385 note
Keller, Auguste, 252
Kestner, Johann Christian, Goethe meets
him, 145 ; Kestner's description of Goethe,
145-6 ; his description of Lotte, 148 ; his
generous behaviour, 149 ; his first ac
quaintance with Lotte, 722 ; fetches Lotte
from Giessen, 723 ; his birthday, 152 ;
comes to Frankfurt, 157 ; harsh judgment
of Goethe, 159 ; his marriage, 167-8 ;
leaves Wetzlar, 170 ; pained by Werther,
203-4 ; forgives Goethe, 207 ; mentioned,

254, 333 ! friendship revived, 360-361, 363 ;
Kestner's death, 634
Kestner, Charlotte Sophie Henriette (nie
Buff) ; Goethe's first meeting with her,
146-149 ; Kestner's first meeting, 722 ; her
portrait, 147 ; Goethe and Lotte compan
ions, 149, 722 ; Goethe kisses her, 722 ;
her visit to Giessen, 151, 722 ; Goethe's
last evening with Lotte, 153, 168 ; Goethe
revisits Wetzlar, 159-60; her marriage,
167 ; leaves Wetzlar, 170 ; Goethe sends
her his silhouette, 724; birth of her first
son, igi ; Goethe mentions Werther to
her by name, 193 ; pained on reading
Werther, 203-4; forgives Goethe, 207;
mentioned, 216, 235, 254 ; Goethe's last
meeting with her, 634 ; her son, 704.
See also Silhouette; Werther; Brandt;
Lotten, An
Kestner, Georg, Lotte's eldest son ; his birth,
191
Kestner, August, Lotte's fourth son, 704
Kielmansegge, Christian Albrecht, Freiherr
von, 144, 159
Kieser, Dietrich Georg, 608-611
King John, by Shakespeare, 447
King R other, 590
Kirms, Franz, 443, 485 note, 497 note, 499
note, sg^note, 613 note, 629, 630
Klaproth, Heinrich Julius von, 608
Kleist, von, Courland nobleman, 120
Klettenberg, Susanne Katharina von,'2i, 80,
83, 84, 87-8, 89, 91, 102, 109, 128, 163, 171,
189, 194, 195; her death, 211 ; Goethe is
proctor for her heirs, 241
Klinger, Johann, father of the poet (died
Feb. 1760), 41
Klinger, Cornelia Margarete Dorothea (nie
Fuchs), mother of the poet, 725
Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian, his boyhood,
41 ; his friendship with Goethe, 724 ; his
mother's house, his sister Agnes, 725 ;
goes to Giessen, 726 ; his Otto, ib. ; en
deavouring to sell the Puppenspiel, 728 ;
Weygand buys it, ib. ; Klinger and the
Stolbergs, 729, 730, 227 ; Klinger comes
to Weimar, 266, 731 ; breach with Goethe,
731 ; renewal of friendship, 709 ; Klinger's
play Das Leidende Weib, 190-1, 730;
Goethe talking of Klinger, 710
Klinger, Agnes, 725
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb (1724-1803);
his Messias, 1. 23, 37 ; his plays, 51 ; his
Salotno, ib. ;'iog, 112 ; his Odes, 136 ; Ice
Odes, 136, 138 ; friend of Schonborn, 178 ;
Goethe writes to him, sends him Das
Ungliick der Jacobis, 192 ; the Gelehrten-
republik, 192; asks Goethe to meet him,
204 ; their meeting, 204-5 ; Faust read to
Klopstock, 205 ; the Stolbergs his friends,
216 ; Klopstock returning to Hamburg
meets Goethe, 223 ; Goethe sends him the
Declaration, 224 ; his breach with Goethe,
263-4, 363, 730-31 5 his view of the French
Revolution, 432
Klose, Karl Friedrich, Goethe writes in his
album, 68
Klotz, Christian Adolf, 73, 86, 103
Kndben Wunderhorn, Des, 557
Knebel, Karl Ludwig von, first meeting

3 D

770

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

with Goethe, 210 ; reconciles Goethe and
Wieland, 210-11 ; " Am I in good remem
brance among you?" 215 ; inquiring about
Wagner's farce, 224 ; meeting Goethe at
Karlsruhe, 228 ; Claudine sent to Knebel,
229 ; 280 ; hypochondria, 292 ; anger with
Prince Constantin, 311 ; persuaded to go
to Switzerland, ib. ; Charlotte and Knebel
are Goethe's " best and only public," 316 ;
acting in Winter, 317 ; goes with Goethe
among the mountains, 321 ; Knebel as the
confidant of Goethe, 332-3, 334, 337, 339-
40, 341 ; account of the Miinchen stage,
348 ; Knebel as the confidant of Goethe,
345, 349, 354 \ comforts Goethe in April
J785, 354, 358; dejection and vacillation,
360 ; Goethe writing to Knebel from Italy,
376 note, 379 note, 387 note, 401 note, 413 ;
Knebel mentioned, 384, 416 ; his depres
sion, 419 ; mentioned, 425 ; his belief in
the French Revolution, 444 ; Voss, 468 ;
Wilhelm Meister, 469; the "Freedom
vertigo," 470 ; in Jena Castle, 472-3 ; the
medium between Goethe and Herder,
480 (and see 739, 740) ; brings Richter
to Goethe, 484 ; Goethe writing to him,
489, 492, 498 ; in Ilmenau, 502, 506 ;
Gerning, 505-6 ; living in Jena, 549, 563,
570, 571, 572 ; the character of August
Goethe, -583; translation of Saul, 596;
August Goethe proposing his health in
1825, 667 ; his grief for Charlotte von
Stein, 675 ; Goethe visits him in 1827, 682 ;
in 1828, 688, and see 692 ; Crabb Robinson,
696 note
Knebel, Luise (nie Rudorf), 502, 572 note
Knebel, Magdalena Henriette, 210; comes
to Weimar, 444 ; governess of Princess
Caroline, 555 ; mentioned, 729
Kniep, Christof Heinrich, 390, 3g2, 3g3,
3g5-6, 406
Koblenz, see Coblenz
Koch, Christof Wilhelm, 113-14
Koch, Heinrich Gottfried, 55
Kochberg, near Rudolstadt, 245 ; Goethe
there, 250 ; mentioned, 254, 286-7 '¦> Lenz
there, 287 ; Goethe forbidden, 287 and 292 ;
spends eleven days there, 293 ; Goethe
and the Duke there, 314; again, 315;
Goethe there, 356 ; mentioned, 419 ;
Goethe there, 421
Kollin, Battle of, 18
Koln, 198, 200, 623, 638
Koln, Maximilian Friedrich, Elector of, 44
Koln . . . Elector of, 458
Koln, cathedral of, 125, 200, 600-602, 6ig
note, 623, 626, 628 note
" Komm, Liebchen, komm," 624
Konig, Dr., in Wetzlar, 145
Konig, Johann Ulrich von, 123
Konig von Konigsthal, Gustav Georg, 43
Kopp, Johann Friedrich, his Tasso, 16
Koran, the, 164
Korner, Anna Maria Jakobea (nie Stock),
75 ; in Jena, 482
Korner, Christian Gottfried, 440, 470 ; in
Jena, 482 ; 544, 605
Korner, Emma, in Jena, 482
Korner, Karl Theodor, 596, 605
Kotzebue, Amalie von (sister of the drama

tist, she became Frau Gildemeister), 282,
288, 2go
Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von,
dramatist (born in Weimar 1761, murdered
at Mannheim by Sand 1819) ; comes to
Weimar, 513 ; favoured by the Duchess
Amalia, ib. (and 741) ; Die Deutschen
Kleinstddter, 527; the fite to celebrate
Schiller's Name-Day, 529 ; Der Freimii-
thige, 534, 537 ; Schadow, 538 ; Der neue
Alcinous, 539; Der Schutzgeist, 649
Kraft (pseudonym), -2Jl\, 334
Kranz, Johann Friedrich, Capellmeister,
521
Kranzchen, see Wednesday Krdnzchen,
Thursday Krdnzchen
Kraus, Georg Melchior, the artist, 81, 82,
197, 246, 252 ; his picture of Goethe, 262 ;
formally appointed director of the Draw
ing Academy, 276 ; 291 ; Das Neueste
von Plunder svoeilem, 324, 326 ; sketch
ing rock-forms, 340 ; 386, 427, 463 ; his
sketch of the evening circle at the Duchess
Amalia's, 473-475 ; his death, 563
Kraus, Johann Georg, father of the artist,
81
Krauter, Friedrich Theodor, 642
Krebel, Gottlob Friedrich, 61; Goethe sends
him a copy of Gotz, 174 ; and of GStier
Helden ttnd Wieland, 187
Kretschmann, Karl Friedrich, 86, 88
Kreuchauff, Franz Wilhelm, 70
Kriegsgliick, 612
Kritische Walder by Herder, 86, 103, 105
Kronberg, 45
Kriiger, Johann Christian, 66 !
Kiigelgen, Franz Gerhard von, 600 ; his
portrait of Goethe, ib. note
Kulm, Battle of, 607
Kulmus, Dr., going to Strassburg, 82
Kunst und A lterth?t??z, 619, 623, 626, 629,
63°, 633, 645, 652-3, 670, 695
Kiinstlers Apotheose, 422
Kiinstler 's Erdewallen, 197; sent to Klinger,
728 ; mentioned, 422
Kunstler's Vergotterung, 198, 422

La Chaussee, Pierre de, 28
Lahn, the river, 144, 723, 154, 197; boys
drowned in the Lahn, 201 ; 478
Lahneck Castle, 197
Laidion, by Heinse, 199
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 653
Landscape, sketching or painting, 387, 390-
391, 392, 397, 3gg, 402, 567, 575, 600-601
Lang verdorrte halb verweste Blatter/*
284
Lange, Frau Susanne (nie Lindheimer,
widow Dietz), 143, 153
Lange, Johanna, and sister, the daughters,
143, 146
Lange in Wetzlar. 143
" Lange leben heisst viele iiberleben," 706
Langen, Merck's printing press there, 161;
Goethe and Merck there, 202 and 223
Langer, Ernst Theodor, 76, 77
Lannes, Jean, Marshal, Due de Montebello,
561 581 744

INDEX.

771

Laokoon, of Lessing, 63, 86-7, 125
notT"' Ueber> Goethe's ^ssay, 125, 491
Laroche, Franz von, youngest son of Sophie,
2O0 - K }
Laroche, Georg Michael Frank von, 155 •
visits Frankfurt, 185
Laroche, Luise von, 155
Laroche, Maria Sophie von (nie Gutter-
mann von Guttershofen); her Sternheim,
135-14° ; Goethe meets her, 140 ; her char
acter, 140-141 ; her portrait, 141 ; Goethe
visits her house, 155-157 ; she visits Frank-
turt, *74 ; again, 184-6 ; again, 191-2 ; she
thinks Werther dangerous, 193-; hostile
to Johanna Fahlmer, 194 ; Goethe meets
her at Frau von Stein's, 197 ; visits her
with Basedow, 201 ; borrows money from
her, 202 ; gives her a copy of Clavigo, ib. ;
Boie visits her, 205 ; mentioned, 252 ; her
visit to Osmannstedt and Weimar, 507-8 ;
her death, 565
Laroche, Maximiliane von, see Brentano
Lassberg, Christiane von, 270
Lassen, Christian, 676
Latin, lessons in, 9, 18-19, 22; Scherbius
teaching, 27, 30; the Latin classics, 40,
50 ; Latin composition, 54
Latin literature, see Catullus, Horace, Livy,
Plautus, Propertius, Virgil
Latinitatis liber memorialis, g, 21
Lauchstedt, 443, 444, 447-8, 491, 531-2, 536,
_ 537, 539, 545, 554, 555, 586
-Lauchstedt Theatre, 491, 527, 531, 532,
545
Laune des Verliebten, 74 ; read to Cornelia,
83 ; not burned, g5 ; acted in Weimar,
548
Lausanne, 301 note, 302
Lautensack, H., 35
Lauth, the ladies, their table dkdte, 98,
loo, 108
Lavater, Johann Kaspar ; Aussichten,
160, 163 ; his sermons on Jonah, 174 ;
knows of Goethe's critique on the Aus
sichten, 178 ; sends Goethe a silhouette
very like Lotte, 181-2 ; sends greeting by
Steiner, 189 ; Goethe sends him Fraulein
Klettenberg's portrait, 194 ; Lavater
comes to Frankfurt, 194-5 ; to Ems, 195 ;
the trip down the Rhine, 197-8 ; Ems
again, 201 ; with Goethe's parents, 201 ;
admiration for Werther, 208 ; Goethe visits
Zurich, 229-231, 730; Goethe and Karl
August visit Lavater, 280, 303-4 ; the
breach with Lavater, 362-3 ; Lavater in
Weimar, 362-3 ; friend of Tischbein, 374-5,
381 note ; attack on Lavater in the
Xenien, 487-8 ; Goethe's last sight of him,
494 note ; his death, 518
Law, Wolfgang begins to study, 40, 43, 50 ;
lectures on law at Leipzig, 54, 55 ; studies
at home, g4 ; studies at Strassburg, 98-99 ;
Law Examination, 102-3; Doctor's Disser
tation, 103, 114, 118, 121 ; the Disputation,
121 ; Goethe not in earnest about law,
116 ; his knowledge scanty, 181. See also
Advocate, Goethe as
Lay ofthe Bell, Schiller's, see Lied von der
Glocke

Lebrun, Charles, painter, 200
Legion of Honour, Cross of, 581
Leidende Weib, Das, by Klinger, 190, 730
Leipzig, clinging of Goethe's thoughts to,
8i0 82, 85, 86, (better place for books than
Frankfurt) (87, 90 ; the bond to Leipzig
severed by Kathchen's marriage, 95, 125
Leipzig, expensiveness of living, 53-4
Leipzig Fair, 53-4
Leipzig, Goethe's father in, 2, 51
Leipzig, Goethe in, 53-79, 258, 278 note,
288, 310, 323, 350, 365, 433, 470, 487, 514-
T 5I5
Leipzig ladies, 55 ; contrasted with Frank
furt ladies, 81, 89
Leipzig, Lerse in, 500-501
Leipzig taste in architecture, 94
Leipzig Theatre, 55 ; new building, 63 ;
opened, 65 ; operettas, 66, 68 ; Minna, 68,
73-4
Leipzig, the Battle of, 607-8, 6ig
Leipzig, the Weimar actors in, 566
Leipzig University, its new rector, see
Ludovici ; its lectures, classes, students,
and professors, 51, 54-5, 57, 58, 62-3, 71, 72
Leipzig, Vulpius sent to, 432
Lemierre, Antoine Marie, author of Hyper-
mnestre, 28
Lenchen, see Buff, Helene
Lengefeld, Caroline von, see Wolzogen ;
Charlotte von, see Schiller
Lengefeld, Luise Juliane von (nie von
Wurmb), 421
Lenz, Christian Ludwig, 557
Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, 120-121,
122 ; Goethe's verses in his album, 124 ;
his adaptations from Plautus, 166, 177 ;
his endeavour to make Friederike think
ill of Goethe, 2g7 ; copy of Gd'tz sent to
him, 174; Ueber unsere Ehe, 177; Gotter
Helden und Wieland, sent to him, 179;
prints the farce, 187 ; Lavater brings news
of him, igs; Goethe meets him again, 228 ;
slanders Friederike, 22g ; Goethe and
Lenz on the Cathedral platform, 231 ; in
Weimar, 258; at Kochberg, 287;" Lenzens
Eselei," 288; has to leave Weimar, ib. ;
at Goethe's parents' house, 295 ; revisits
Friederike, 297 ; madness, 297
Lenz, Johann Georg, professor of mineral
ogy in Jena, 446, 548
Leonhardt, Karl Caesar, 598
Leopold, Order of, 622
Lerse, Franz Christian, 100, 101, 121 ;
Goethe gives him a copy of Othello, 124 ;
his speech on Shakespeare, 130 ; meets
Goethe in later life, 500, 501 ; his death,
5*5 . .
Lersner, Friedrich Maximilian von (father
and son), 41
Lersner, Max, operated on for cataract,
218
Lesbos, Die Schwestern von, 503, 505, 509
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (i72g-i78i), 1 ;
his Miss Sara Sampson, 29, 51 ; the
Literaturbriefe, 50, 73 ; Philotas, 51 ;
Laokoon, 63, 86-7, 125 ; Minna, 68, 73, 74,
75 ; in Leipzig, never seen by Goethe, 75 ;
Antiquarische Briefe, 85-87; 105, 112;
Emilia Galotti, 150 ; a friend of Jerusa-

772

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

lem's, 159 ; a copy of Gd'tz is not sent to
him, 174 ; Minna, 175 ; Goethe sends a
message to, 188 ; Lessing's ill-will, 188 ;
hostile to Werther, 208 ; to Gfftz, ib. ; his
death, 317, 442 ; Nathan, 525
Lessons, 7, 9, 13, 15, 18-23, 27, 30, 33.
See also Writing, Geography, Greek, Latin,
French, Italian, Hebrew, History, Piano-
playing, English, Dancing
Letter, the first complete, from Goethe's
own hand still preserved, 47-8
Letters, Eckermann examining Goethe's, 707
Letters, great burning of, 492 note
Letters to Friederike burnt, 108
Leuchsenring, Franz Michael, 156 ; befools
Caroline Flachsland, 156, 725-6 ; figures
in Goethe's Jahrmarkt, 168,724; poisons
Herder's mind against Goethe, 170
Leucippus, Rape ofthe Daughters of, 448
Leuthen, Battle of, 20
Levandofsky, 588
Levezow, Amalie von, 558, 642, 646
Levezow, Ulrike von, 642, 643, 646, 647, 746
Lewes, George Henry, Lif e of Goethe, 653,
688
Library, see Jena Library, Weimar Library
Lichtenberg, Friedrich von, Rittmeister,
272
Lichtenberg, Georg Christof, physicist, 465,
480
Liebholdt, law-clerk, 128
Liechtenstein, Karl Borromaus, Prince, 380,
384
Liechtenstein, Princess, see Harrach
Lied von der Glocke, 529, 554, 557, 596, 622
Light, see Optics
Light, Polarisation of, 654
Lila, Goethe's comedy, 277, 282 ; revised,
411
"Lila, ' see Ziegler
Lila, Pilgers Morgenlied an, 143
" Liii," see Turckheim
Lili's Park, 237
Lillo, George, dramatist, George Barnwell,
29
Limburg, 154
Limprecht, Johann Christian, 56, [71, 76,
97, 98
Lmd, Jenny, 627 note
Lindenau, Heinrich Gottlieb, Count von,
69, 76
Lindenau, Heinrich Gottlieb, Count von,
Behrisch's pupil, 62, 69
Lindheimer, Cornelius, Dr., 143
Lindheimer, Susanne, see Lange
Linnaeus, 344, 370
Lips, Johann Heinrich, 245, 430, 433, 440
Lisbon, earthquake of, 14
Literaturbriefe, 50, 73
Liieraturzeitung, see Allgemeine Litera-
turzeitung and Allgemeine Jenaische
L iteraturzeitung
Livy, 379
Lobeda, 334, 683
Lobstein, Johann FriedricK, 109
Loder, Justus Christian, 324, 327, 341, 342,
424, 440, 441, 475,. 517 note* 5*9, 532, 540
Loeper, G. von, his Briefe Goethe's an
Sophie von La Roche und Bettina Bren
tano, 156, and afterwards passim; his

edition of Goethe's Westostlicher Divan,
616, and afterwards passim
Loggia of Raphael, 381
Lojano, 373
London, 351 note, 386, 471
Longwy, 453
Lord's Supper, the, 88, 102, 145, 515
Loretz, Johann, 91
Lorraine, see Claude
Lotten, An, 173, 724
Louisenfest, the, 271
Low, Frau von, 691
Low, Luise von, 691
Low German art, 600-601, 619
Lucchesini, Girolamo, Marchese di, 395
Ludecus, Johann August, 351, 529 note,
531
Luden, Heinrich, Nemesis, 609
Ludovici, Karl Gunther, Rector, 54
Ludwig, Christian Gottlieb, Professor, 56
Ludwigsburg, 492
Luise, by Voss, 542
Lustspiel in Leipzig, 85
Luther, Martin, 98
Luther, Martin, play by Werner, 570
Lutzow, Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von, 605
Luzern, 302, 493

M
Macchiavelli, Niccolo di, 189
Magisches Netz, 535
Mahr, Johann Christian, 713-714
Mailied ("Wie herrlich leuchtet") sent to
J. G. Jacobi, 209
Mailied ("Zwischen Weizen und Korn"),
598 note
Maillard, 533 note
Mainz, Coadjutor Elector of, see Dalberg
Mainz, Emmerich Joseph (died June 1774),
Elector Bishop of Mainz, 44 (see Koln
and Trier), 203
Mainz, Friedrich Karl Joseph, Elector of
(died 1802), 385, 394, 458, 478
Mainz, Goethe's first visit to, 45 ; passes
through Mainz, 95 ; Fraulein Kletten-
berg's remark, 128-9 -" Goethe in Mainz,
157 ; with the princes of Weimar, 210-11 ;
the Stolbergs, 729-30; Goethe in Mainz,
453 ; captured by Custine, 456, 458 ; siege
of Mainz, 460-463 ; visit to Mainz in 1814,
617 ; in 1815, 623
Mainz, the officers shot at, 464
Malone, Edmund, 512 note
Malsesina, 393 note
Malta, Villa, Rome, 412
Malteser, Die, Schiller's play, 471, 473
Malus, Etienne Louis, 654
Mandelsloh, Clementine von, 684
Mannheim, casts from the antique, 125,
372 ; Goethe plans going thither with
Merck, 160 ; goes thither with Klopstock
perhaps, 205 ; with the Stolbergs, 227 ;
the actor Beck from Mannheim, 442 ;
captured by the French, 478 ; Caroline
Jagemann sent there for training, 488;
Goethe visits Mannheim in 1814, 619; in
1815, 628 ; invited to Mannheim by Caro
line Jagemann, 628

INDEX.

773

Mantua, 438
Manzoni, Alessandro, 678
Mara, Gertrud Elizabetha (nie Schmehling),
see Schmehling
Marburg University, 51
Mdrchen, Das, 476, 478, 479
Mdrchen, Goethe composing short, 473,
476, 479
Maret, Hugues Bernard, 581
Maria Stuart, 513 ; finished at Etters
burg, 515 ; and acted, ib.
Marienbad, 641, 642, 645-646, 660, 681
Marienborn, 91, 462, 464
Marivaux, Chamblain de, 28
Marksuhl, 351
Marriage, Goethe's, 418 note, 482, 562, 578
Martial, his Epigrams, 437 ; his Xenia,
480
Martigny, 301 note
Martius, Karl Friedrich Philipp von, 694, 715
Marum, Martin von, 499
Marx, Gottfried, Friederike Brion's brother-
in-law, 298
Mason, the Order of Freemasons, Goethe
becomes a member of, at the Midsummer
Lodge of 1780, 306 ; becomes a Master
Mason, 318-19 ; the Lodge of Mourning
for Wieland, 604; for Karl August, 693 ;
for August Goethe, 708
Massena, Marshal, 518 note
Mathematics, 20, 32 ; Goethe without an
organ for, 345, 447
Matinies, the Weimar, 250
Matthisson, Friedrich von, 233-4
' May, Oswald, 283-284
Mechel, Christian von, of Basel, 301 _
Mecklenburg - Schwerin, Karl Friedrich
Ludwig, Crown-Prince of, 585-6
Mecklenburg - Schwerin, Caroline Luise,
Crown- Princess of, see Weimar
Mecklenburg- Schwerin, Gustav, Prince of,
585-6
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Auguste Wilhelmine,
Princess of, see Prussia
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Friederike Caroline,
Princess of, see Prussia
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Karl Ludwig Fried
rich, Grand-Duke of, 693
Medical students, in Leipzig, 56 ; in Strass
burg, 98
Medicine, Goethe attends lectures in, 109
Medon, by Clodius, 65, 69
Medusa Rondinini, 381
Megaprazons, Reise der Sdhne, 450, 458
Meiningen, August Friedrich Karl Wilhelm,
Crown - Prince of, and Friedrich Karl
Georg, Prince of, 217, 239-40, 329
Meiningen Court, Goethe at, 314, 328-29
Meissen, 605
Meister, see Wilhelm Meister
Meixner, Charitas, 41, 49, 59, 65, 91
Melber, Georg Adolf, 8
Melber, Johanna Maria (nie Textor), the
younger sister of Goethe's mother, 6, 8, 12
Melber, one of Goethe's cousins, 97
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 642, 699-700
Mendelssohn, Moses, 50 ; Phddon, 99 ; his
daughter Dorothea, 512 note
Mengs, Anton Raphael, 378
Mennonites, 198

Menzel, Wolfgang, 657
Mephistopheles, Merck called, 134, 315, 732
Merck, Henri, 156
Merck, Johann Heinrich ; Herder meets
Caroline at Merck's house, 104 ; Hfe and
character, 131-134 ; portrait, 132 ; 135, 136 ;
Goethe visits him in Darmstadt, 137-8 ;
criticism of Gd'tz, 138, 142 ; Merck and
"Lila" and "Urania," 139-140; and Sophie
Laroche, 140-41 ; 150, 151 ; Merck and
Goethe in Giessen and Wetzlar, 151,
723 ; Merck at Ehrenbreitstein, 156-157 ;
sails up Rhine with Goethe, 157 ; Goethe's
visit for four weeks,i6o-i6i; Merck's Rhap-
sodie, i6x ; withdraws from Frankfurter
Anzeigen, 162 ; promises to print Gotz, 166;
starts for Berlin, 169-170 ; return from St.
Petersburg, 181-182 ; wrath at Max Bren
tano's marriage, 184 ; does not understand
Goethe's conduct, 186 ; intercourse with
Goethe ceases for a time, 190 ; goes to
Switzerland, 190 ; returns, 193 ; his wife's
unfaithfulness, 193-4 \ Goethe with him at
Langen, 202 ; bitterness increasing, 209 ;
Goethe sends him a portfolio of drawings,
209; Goethe meets him at Langen, 223 ;
the Stolbergs' visit, 227 ; Goethe returning
from Switzerland, 232 ; Goethe confides
his thought of flying to Italy, 234 ; bor
rows money from Merck, 241 ; sends him
Stella and Claudine, ib. ; Merck sells
Stella, 243;", lends Goethe money, 253;
visits Goethe at the Wartburg, 269, 278 ;
visits Goethe at Weimar, 274-5 ; visits
Ettersburg, 282 ; meets Goethe and the
Duke on their journey, 296, 732 ; bitter
ness, 732 ; aids Goethe in collecting draw
ings, engravings, etc., 309 ; Goethe meets
Merck at Muhlhausen, 314-315 ; does not
understand Goethe's life, 315 ; brings news
that Rath Goethe is ill, 315 ; praises
Goethe's Gesprdch aber die deutsche
Literatur, 317 note ; co-operation in
Goethe's scientific studies, 340, 341, 342 ;
at first sceptical about the os intermaxil-
lare, 342 ; Karl August writing to Merck,
338, 350-351; increasing bitterness, 360;
mad despair, 423 ; rallies, 427 ; suicide,
445. See also Switzerland, Mannheim,
Mephistopheles, Morges, Moser, Nicolai
Merck, Louise Franziska (nie Charbonnier),
133, I5°, J56, ^57; goes to Switzerland,
169 ; unfaithful to her husband, 193-4
Merck's daughter, 133
Merian, Matthaus, 14
Merimee, Prosper, 677
Merkel, Garlieb, 534
Merkur, Deutscher, Wieland's ^ review ;
founded, 179 ; mentioned, 180; its gene
rous criticism of Gd'tz, 727 ; of Go'tter
Helden und Wieland, ib. ; it disgusts
Goethe again, 223; Goethe aids it, 250;
its description of Tischbein's picture of
Goethe, 383 ; Goethe contributes to it,
420-421 ; injured by the Horen, 472
Messiah, Handel's, 660
Messias, Klopstock's, 1 ; disliked by Rath
Goethe, 23 ; its verse, 37
Messina, 393 note
Metamorphose der Pflanzen, Die, Goethe's

774

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

essay, 420, 433, 435, 438 ; Soret's trans
lation, 685, 687, 691, 695,699, 701, 709, 711
Metamorphose der Pflanzen, Die, Goethe's
poem, 498
Metamorphoses of plants, 372, 391, 392,
401, 420
Metaphysics, 54, 57, 58. See also Hegel
Meteorology, 345, 630, 650, 654-5, 693, 716
Metrists, see Hermann, Moritz, Schlegel,
Voss
Metternich, Prince, 608, 661
Metz, Johann Friedrich, 83, 84, 89
Meyer of Lindau, 113, 122
Meyer, Heinrich, (.Goethe's first meeting
with him, 377 ; increasing worth to Goethe,
386, 398, 406, 412 ; Goethe writes to
Meyer about coming to Weimar, 431-2 ;
Goethe and Meyer meet in Venice, 438 ;
Meyer goes to Switzerland, 438 ; comes to
Weimar, 446; mentioned, 447, 448, 451, 459,
460 ; goes to paint at the Dresden Gallery,
467 ; mentioned by Voss, 468 ; Goethe's
letter to him about Voss, 468 ; his return
from Dresden, 472 ; goes to Jena with
Goethe, 472, 475 ; one of the Duchess
Amalia's evening circle, 475 ; mentioned,
476 ; to go to Italy, 477, 478 ; his drawing
of the Parcse, 478 ; starts for Italy, 479 ;
in Rome, 481 ; mentioned, 482 ; in Flor
ence, 485 ; Riemer's suppression of parts
of Goethe's letters to Meyer, ib. ; Meyer
mentioned, 489; Meyer ill in Italy, 490;
news that Meyer has gone to Switzerland,
490-491 ; Goethe meets him in Switzerland,
493 ; return to Weimar, 494 ; Meyer men
tioned, 495, 496 ; the work on Art planned
by Goethe and Meyer, 497 (and see Pro
pylden) ; Meyer making outline sketches
for Faust, 497 ; his design for Christiane
Becker's monument, 505 ; Goethe plans to
write with Meyer's aid a history of Art in
the eighteenth century, 509 ; ¦. the prize
drawings, 509 ; Meyer visiting Schiller in
illness, 514 ; Meyer and Schiller visiting
Goethe in Jena, 516 ; kindness to Goethe
recovering from illness, 519 ; meets Goethe
in Cassel, 523 ; a member ofthe Wednes
day Kranzchen, 524 ; leaves Goethe's
house being about to marry, 532 ; his
essay on Winckelmann and History of Art
in the Eighteenth Century, 549 ; Schiller's
death, 551 ; loses everything in the Jena
days, 563 ; becomes director of the Draw
ing Academy, 563 ; mentioned, 587, 589 ;
negotiating in the affairs of the theatre,
594 ; Goethe's intercourse with, in matters
of art, 600; Meyer starting in 1816 with
Goethe for Frankfurt, 637 ; a frequent
visitor at Goethe's house, 637 ; writing in
Kunst und Alterthum, 652 ; Brandt's
medal, 664 ; mentioned, 693 note, 715
Meyer, Marianne, 476-7, 491, 575, 595
Meyer, Nikolaus, in Weimar, 512 ; again,
530 ; Christiane's letters, 530 note, 532,
534, 548, 586 ; Goethe writing to him,
572-3 „
Meyer, Sara, 476
Michaelis, bookseller of Neustrelitz, 473
Michaelis, Johann Benjamin, 63
Mickiewicz, Adam, 696, 697

Microscope, Goethe using the, 343-344
Midwifery, 109
Mieding, Johann Martin, 327
Miedings Tod, 328
Mignon, An, 490
Mignon in Wilhelm Meister, 346 note,
?7»
Milan Cathedral, 413
Milan, Goethe in, 413
Milan maiden, at Castel Gandolfo, 403,
409, 412-413
Milder, Anna Pauline, 646
Milton, John, 696 note
Mineralogy, 285, 310, 312, 340-341 ; Pa-
derno spar, 373 ; 413, 486 ; August Goethe,
523, 532 J 0°seph Miiller) 558 ; 559, 567,
606, 623, 640, 641-2, 647
"Minerva, Birth of," 322
Minerva, Church of Santa Maria di, 373
Minerva of Velletri, 547
Mines, Goethe's first acquaintance with, 100-
101 (and see Ilmenau mines)
Minna von Barnhelm, appears, 68 ; played
by Fraulein Schulze, 73 ; influence on Die
Mitschuldigen, 74, played by the amateur
theatre, 73 ; Lessing present at a perfor
mance of it, 75 ; the first German national
comedy, 175
Mistress, Goethe's, in Rome, 407, 413, 426
Mitschuldigen, Die, 74 ; read to Cornelia,
83 ; new draft of, 95 ; not burned, ib. ;
shown to Herder, 105 ; a copy to Fried
erike, 118 ; reference to, 123 ; acted in
Weimar, 547, 548
Modelling, Goethe, 401, 410, 412, 431
"Mogt zur Gruft ihn senken," 692 (see
Wolff, P. A.)
Moir, David Macbeth, 712
Moliere, Midecin malgre lui, 281; Schlegel's
unjust criticism, 676 note
Moller, Georg, an architect, 619 note
Moller, Johann Philipp, name assumed by
Goethe, 367
Monday, " Damenkranzchen,'' 590
Mondo alia riversa, 123
Monetary affairs, Goethe's, 53-4, 166, 182,
202, 234, 237, 241, 253, 257, 261, 264,
322-3, 354, 367, 408, 538, 555, 577, 584,
629, 636, 668, 745
Montaigne, Michel de, 50
Monti, Vincenzio, 380
Moors, Friedrich Maximilian, playmate of
Wolfgang, 19, 23, 24 ; his album, 52 ; an
advocate, 127
Moors, Johann Isaak, father of Wolfgang's
playmates, 19
Moors, Wilhelm Karl Ludwig, born on
same day as Wolfgang, 19, 23 ; Horn's
letter to him (of October 1766), 49, 60,
64 ; (of August 1766), 62 ; Goethe's letter
to him (of October 1766), 52, 64
Moravian sect, see Herrnhuter
Morgenblatt, 511 note, 620, 630
Morgenklagen, 424
Morgenstern, Johann Ludwig Ernst,:84
Morhard, Otto, 593
Morhof, Daniel Georg, 50
Moritz, Heinrich Friedrich, 32, 43
Moritz, Johann Friedrich, teaches Wolfgang
mathematics, 32 ; Charitas Meixner at

INDEX.

775

his house, 41 ; intimate with Miiller, 45 ; I
85, 88, 90; death, 129 ; his daughter, 549
Moritz, Karl Philipp, 378, 379 ; breaks arm,
380; Deutsche Prosodie, ib. ; 398, 406, 412;
in Weimar, 424-425 ; leaves, 425 ; comes
to Weimar very ill, 443-444 ; his death, 464
Morphologie, Zur, periodical, 653
Morphology, animal, 341, 437, 438, 440
(metamorphosis of insects) 532, 653
Morphology, vegetable, 343, 344, 345, 372,
391, 392, 401
Mort de Cisar, by Voltaire, 580
Morus, Samuel Friedrich Nathanael, 56
Moscow, burning of, 602
Moselle, Goethe sailing on the, 457
Moser (not Moser), Karl Friedrich Ludwig,
president, his prose-heroic Daniel, 39 ;
his remark upon Frankfurt character, 181;
hostile to Merck, 194 ; 228
MSser, Justus, author oiPatriotische Phan-
tasieen, 210 ; defends German literature
against Friedrich of Prussia, 317
Moser, Johanna, see Voigts
Moses, 109 ; Law of Moses, 121, 163 ; the
prayer of Moses in the Koran, 164; 189 ;
Goethe studying the books of Moses,
489
Moses of Michael Angelo, 587
Mosses, Goethe studying the, 343
Motz, President von, of Jena, 690
Mouse-Tower on the Rhine, 463
Mozart, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang
Amadeus, Don Giovanni, 448, 521 ;
Figaro, 466 ; Zauberflote, 466, 683
Muffling, Friedrich von, 603
Miihlberg, Goethe asleep on the, 234
Miihlhausen, 314
Miiller, Friedrich, the painter, 295, 377
Miiller, Friedrich von (Chancellor von
Miiller), 578 note, 581 ; August Goethe's
duel, 613-614 ; Miiller a constant visitor at
Goethe's house, 637, 647-648, 661 note;
at Belvedere with Goethe, 663 ; prologue
to Iphigenie, 667 ; Ottilie's cut face, 669 ;
Goethe in his garden, 670 ; Schiller's
skull, 671, 672, 673 ; Goethe's parting with
the Princess Marie, 678 ; Schukowsky,
679 ; Zahn's Pompeian paintings, 679 ;
Hegel, and Hegel's philosophy, 683 ; visit
ing Goethe in Dornburg, 68g ; August
Goethe's death, 704 ; Goethe's will, 707
Miiller, Goethe's friend, 45, 59, 84
Miiller, Johannes von, the historian, 541
Miiller, Joseph, the lapidary, 558, 567
Miillerin, Der Edelknabe und die, 492
MUllerin Reue, Der, 492
Mullerin Verrath, Der, 4g8
Miillner, Adolf, his play, Schuld, 620
Munch, Anna Sibylla, 164, 191, 202
Munch, Philipp Anselm, 164
Munch,' Susanna Magdalena, 164-5, 191
Miinchen (Munich), 5 > Knebel's account
of the Miinchen stage, 348 ; Goethe in,
369 note; 371 note; Jacobi dies there, 638
Munster, 359 ; Goethe there, 458 and 735
Miinsterthal, the, 301
Murten (Morat), 301
Musageten, Die, 498
Musarion, by Wieland, 78, 136
Musen und Grazien in der Mark, 483

Musenalmanach, Gd'ttingischer, see Gd't-
iingischer Musenalmanach
Musenalmanach, Schiller's, 471, 473, 477
480, 483, 497, 498, 499, 503, (Gerning)
506, 509
Music, Goethe's grandfather fond of,
2 ; Goethe's mother well taught in, 5,
7, 33 ; the great concert in Leipzig, 55,
66, 72-3 ; music in Strassburg, 113. See
also : Cimarosa, Concerts, Flute, Gluck,
Handel, Hasse, Kayser, Mendelssohn,
Mozart, Opera, Paisiello, Piano, Reichardt,
Schroter, Violoncello, Zelter
Mylius, Christlob buys Stella, 243
Myology, 424, 440
Mysticism, 571, 589-go, 611

N
Naples, August Goethe in, 703
Naples, Ferdinand IV., King of, 389-90,
505
Naples, Goethe in, 389-391, 393"396, 403
Naples, Goethe's father in, 389
Naples, Maria, Queen of, 505
Napoleon, see France
Nassau, Goethe in, 154, 197, 617, 623
Nassau - Saarbriicken, Friedrich Wilhelm'
Heinrich, "the late Prince" of, 100
Nassau- Usingen, Friedrich August, Duke
of (since 1806), 617
Nassau-Usingen, Luise, Princess of, 238
Nathan der Weise, 525
Nature, external, and her influence on
Goethe, 45, 57, 58, 71, 75, 119, 144, 146,
149, 153, 154, 155, 162, 168, 201, 218, 230,
237, 389, 493, 689 note
Nature (viewed from the stand-point of
philosophy), 344-345, 592, 599"6oo, 6875
700
Naturliche Tochter, Die (or Eugenie), 511,
514, 525, 533, 5355 acted, 535 ; shown to
^ Voss, 536 ; damned in Berlin, 538 ; Fichte's
praise, ib. ; Goethe loses interest in, 539
Naturwissenschaft, Zur, Goethe's periodi
cal, 653
Nausikaa, 392, see also Ulysses
Necker, Jacques, death, 544
Neisser, F. W., 91
Nemesis, Luden*s, 609
Nemi, 405
Nesselrode, Karl Franz, Count von, 458
Netherlandish painters, at Dresden Gallery,
72 ; at Diisseldorf Gallery, 458
Neue Liebe Neues Leben, 217
Neue Lieder, Goethe's first printed collec
tion, 78, 90, 91
Neue Melusine, Die, 590
Neuen Jahr, Zum, lyric, 526
Neuenheiligen, 197, 318, 319, 350
Neujahrslied, 1769, 84
Neukirch, 101
Neukirch, Benjamin, his Tilimaque, 16
Neumann, Christiane, see Becker
Neumann, Johann Christian, 447
Neunzehn Freunde in England, An die,
712, 747
Neuwied, 198
Neuwinger, Victor, 456

776

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Newspapers, "mymost dangerous foes," 453
Newton, Isaac, 441, 446, 598 note
Ney, Michel, Due d'Elchingen, 561, 743-4
Nibelungen-Lied, 589-90
" Nicht Gelegenheit macht Diebe," 624
Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich, 50, 73 ; Gotz
not sent to him, 174 ; Herder praises Gotz
to .him, ib. ; Merck thinks of getting a
place in Berlin through his help, 194 ; his
Freuden des jungen Werthers, 219 ; his
dispute with Herder about Bacon's House
of Solomon, 340
Nicolovius, Alfred, 663, 664, 666, 668-9, 671
Nicolovius, Georg Heinrich Ludwig, 638
Nicolovius, Maria Anna Luise (nie Schlos
ser), 220, 638
Nidda, stream, 185
Niederbronn, 101, 113, 138
Niedermendig, 623
Niederrossla, 510, 559
Niethammer, Friedrich Immermann, 516
Nobility, Goethe's certificate of, 329
Nothnagel, Johann Andreas Benjamin, 35,
207
Novalis, see Hardenberg
Novel in letters composed by young Goethe,
33-4
Novelle, Die, 674
Numismatics, 382, 501, 533'4, 541
" Nun sitzt der Ritter an dem Ort," no
"Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt," 346 note
Niirnberg, 311, 343 note, 414, 417, 494
Nussbraune Mddchen, Das, 598

O
" O, du loses, leidig liebes Madchen," 424
"Ob's Unrecht ist was ich empfinde," lines
by Charlotte von Stein, 287
" Oberaufsicht," Die, see Weimar, "Ober-
aufsicht"
Oberbronn, 101
Oberland, the Bernese, 301 note
Oberland, the Weimar, 313-314, 328
Oberlin, Jeremiah Jakob, 113-114
Obermann, Fraulein, concert-singer, 66
Oberon, Opera, by Weber, 686
Oberon, by Wieland, 283-284, 309, 481
Oberrossla, Goethe's property there, 496,
498, 500, 505, 507 ; Goethe in Niederrossla,
510 ; in Oberrossla, 521-522 ; the property
sold, 536
Oberweimar, 271, 285
"October Riots" (1780), 433
Ode, antique, Goethe imitates the, 68
Ode, religious, Wolfgang imitates the, 50-51
Ode for the marriage of his uncle Textor,
57, 63, 65
Ode of Pindar translated by Goethe, i4g
Ode to Zacharia, 68
Odes for Kathchen's marriage - day, at
tempted, gi-92
Odes to Behrisch, 72
Odilie, Saint, 101
O'Donel als Eleonore, Grdfin, 593
Odyniec, A. E., 696, 697
Odyssey, in Sicily first becomes "a living
word" to Goethe, 392 ; Voss's translation,

CEdipus at Colonos, 406-7
Oeser, Adam Friedrich, the drop-scene of
the new theatre of Leipzig, 65 ; Goethe's
lessons from him, 67 ; simplicity and re
pose, 67-68 ; paints Caroline Schulze, 68 ;
invites Goethe to his house, 70 ; his country
house, at Dolitz, ib., 75, 77; 72; takes
part in the farewell to Caroline Schulze,
73 ; Winckelmann's- murder, 75-6 ; 81, 82,
83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 94, 95; 125 ; Goethe
meets him again in Leipzig, 258 ; Oeser
employed by Weimar Court, 308 ; scene-
painting at Ettersburg, 312 ; Goethe prob
ably visits him, 487 ; dead, 514 note
Oeser, Friederike Elizabeth, 69-70 ; her
portrait, 70 ; 73 ; cheers Goethe, 75, 78 ;
82, 85, 86, 88, 514 note
Offenbach sweetheart, Goethe's, 730. (See
Goethe to Auguste Stolberg, September
17, 1775, Der junge Goethe, iii. 107)
Offenbach, 180; Goethe there, 214; again,
220 ; again, and Liii comes thither, 221 ;
Goethe and Liii there, 225-6 ; Goethe
goes thither with the Stolbergs, 730 ;
Goethe and Liii there, 232-235 ; again, 236 ;
Goethe flees thither to avoid Liii, 238 ;
writes Auerbachs Keller there, 238 ;
Goethe's farewell visit to Offenbach, 241 ;
the Gerbermiihle, 622 ; Goethe talking
of his visits to Liii, 628 note
Offene Tafel, 607
Oken, Lorenz, 653
Oldenburg, Katharina Paulowna, Princess
of, by birth a Princess of Russia ; the
Prince of Oldenburg, her first husband,
died in 1812; in 1816 she married the
Crown-Prince of Wiirttemberg, 612
Olenschlager, Johann Daniel von, judges
handwriting, 20 ; has amateur theatri
cals at his house, 34 ; one of Wolfgang's
chief grown-up friends, 36, 49
Olenschlager, Johann Nicolaus von, second
son of preceding, 24 ; acting, 34
Olenschlager, Johann Philipp von (deaf and
dumb), 24
Opera Buffa, 347, 388, 398, 400
Opera by Goethe, Mondo alia riversa, 123
Opera, Goethe, Kayser, and the, 347-349,
388
Opera, Goethe at the, in old age, 683, 685
Opera in Weimar, 448, 460, 466, 518, 533
534, 536, 594, 595, 683, 685
Opera, Italian, in Frankfurt, 43 ; in Eise
nach, 347 ; in Venice, 372 ; in Rome,
388, 398-9
Operettas, Goethe bringing out, 460
Operettas, at Leipzig, 66
Optics, 441, 443, 444, 445, 446, 448, 463,
464, 465, 469, 473, 483, 495, 497, 498, 500,
502, 512, 519, 523, 532, 534, 536, 555-6,
559, 598-9, 654. See also Rainbow, Lich
tenberg, Voigt, Farbenlehre, Malus
Optik, Beitrdge zur, 445, 448
Oratorios, see Handel, Haydn, Hasse
Orders, Goethe's ; Legion of Honour, 581 ;
Order of St. Anne of Russia, 581 ; Leopold
of Austria, 622; the White Falcon of
Weimar, 630, 665 ; Order of Merit of
Bavaria, 679
Organographie vigiiale, see Candolle

INDEX.

777

D Orvdle, Jean George (husband of Johanna
Rahel D'Orville) rides out with Goethe
and Liii, 233. (See Appendix, art. 32)
D Orville, Jean Noe, the father of Susanna
Elizabeth Schonemann, 213
D'Orville, Johanna Rahel, niece of Nico-
laus Bernard, 730
D'Orville, Peter Friedrich, an uncle of Liii
who lived in Offenbach, 221, 233 (see
Appendix, art. 32)
Os intermaxillare, 341-342 ; 653
Osmannstedt, 328, 496, 507
Ossian, 109, 112, 115 ; the Sofigs of Selma,
118; 129; Temora, 130; the bard-name,
Ryno, 265
Ostade, Hadrian van, 72
Osteology, 34*-343, 463, 523
Ostheim, 313, 314
Othello, 124
Ovid, 16, in, 407, 426, 607 note

Paderno, 373
Padua, 371 note; fan -palm, 372 ; Goethe's
second visit, 438
Paestum, the Temple of, 390, 393
Painter or poet ? 155, 207, 366
Painting, Goethe, 207, 209, 285
Paisiello, Giovanni, 300, 466
Palaophron und Neoterpe, 516
Palermo, 370 note, 392-3
Palladio, Andrea, 372, 376
Palms sown by Goethe in Rome, 412
Pamfili, Villa, 379
Pandora, 558, 569-70, 571, 573, 574
Pantheism, 600
Pantheon, Rome, 125, 372, 376
Pantomimisches Ballet, 325, 326
Paoli, Pasquale, 91 *
Parasit, Der, 539
Paris, 81, 93, 104, 129, 210, 298, 351, 379,
454, 528, 547 ; Napoleon invites Goethe
to, 580 ; the allies, 612
Paris Revolution of 1830, 700
Park of Weimar, see Weimar Park
Passavant, Jakob Ludwig, 43, 230, 493 note
Pastors, Brief des, 163
Pater Brey ; date, 725 ; given to Klinger,
726, 728
Patriotische Phantasieen, by Moser, 210
Patriotism, 367, 612. See also Kieser,
Epimenides, Politics
Paulinzelle, 637
Paulowsk, 690
Paulsen, Johann Jakob Heinrich, 367
Paulus, Caroline (nie Paulus), 626
Paulus, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob, 532,
619, 626
Pausias und sein Blumenmddchen, Der
neue, 490
Pavie, Victor, 697
"Pegauer," Horn called the, 71
Peglow, Herder's faithful Russian, iog
Pellegrino, Monte, 392
Pempelfort, 199, 457x458
Penseroso, II, Goethe called, 357
People, Goethe and the, 192, 210, 236, 270,
274; the "true peasant blood," 314;

" the weary lot of the peasant," 329 ; " the
poor people must always bear the bag,"
335 ; the charcoal-burners at Ilmenau, 713
Pire de Famille, 28, 73-4
Persian poetry, 621, 626. See also Hafis
Perspective, 387, 390, 405, 410
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 236
Peter and Paul, Feast of, 398
Peter, the Apostle, 376
Peter's Church, Frankfurt, 53
Peter's Island, 301
Peter's, St., Rome, 376, 398
Petersen, Georg Wilhelm, 133, 138
Peucer, Heinrich Karl Friedrich, 607 note,
622, 697 note
Pfaff, Heinrich Wilhelm, 151, 723
Pfaffenspiel, 609
Pfalz-Zweibrucken, Maria, Duchess of, 139,
151
Pfeffel, Gottlieb Conrad, 501
Pfeil, J. G. B., 61, 72
Pfenninger, Johann Conrad, 189, 231
Phddon, of Mendelssohn, 99
Phaedo, of Plato, 99
Phidias, 620
"Philistine," 130
Philosophfilr die Welt, 208
Philosophia Botanica, of Linnaeus, 344
Philosophical J ournal, Fichte's, 489, 504
Philosophie Zoologique (Lamarck), 653
Philosopkie Zoologique (St. Hilaire), 702
note
Philosophy, study of, 45 ; Goethe fond 01
discussing, 49 ; 84, 86-7, 89, 95-6, 99 ;
Phaedo, no; 118, 131, 145-6; Spinoza,
188-9, 200 ; Kant, 438, 440 ; Fichte, 469,
470, 489 ; Niethammer and Fr. Schlegel,
516 ; Schelling, 517, 518 ; Schelling against
Jacobi, 5gg-6oo ; Hegel, 683
Phosphorus, burning, in nitrogen, 475
Physics, 58, 516. See Gehler
Pkysiognomische • Fragmente, Lavater's,
195, 201, 218, 225 ; the publisher Reich,
225 ; discussed with Lavater, 231 ; 236,
280, 285
Physiognomischen Zeichners, Lied eines,
225
Physiognomy, 178, i8g, 285, 419
Physiological Optics, 599, 617
Physiology, see Morphology
Piano-playing, lessons in, 33 ; young Schon
kopf 's playing, 66 ; Cornelia's playing, 82,
157. See Szymanowska, and Mendelssohn
Picard, Schiller's adaptation from, 539
Piccolomini, Die, see Wallenstein
Pietists, 34, 87, 95-6, 97, gg, 163, 359
Pilgers Morgenlied, an Lila, 143
Pincian Hill, 375, 376, 412
Pindar, 137, 138, 149, 153
Pine-seedling, 412
Planert, Mayor, 691
Planetentanz, 337
Platinum, 701
Plato, Phaedo, 99 ; 135, 137 ; Stolberg's .
preface to Selected Dialogues, 479
Plautus, 166, 177
Pleisse, 97
Plessing, Friedrich Victor Leberecht, 270,
458
Pliny, 86

778

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Plitt, Johann Jakob, 34
Plundersweilem, Das Neueste von, 324, 326
Plundersweilern, Jahrmarkstfest zu, 72$,
726, 208, 281
Plutarch, 715
Pocket-Book for Ladies, Cotta's, 515, 598
Poeten nach der Mode, Die, by Weisse, 55.
Poetische Gedanken iiber die Hollenfahrt
Christi, 51
Pogwisch, Henriette von, 634, 659, 660, 685,
695
Pogwisch, Ulrike von, 634, 637, 659, 670,
695, 696
Polarisation of light, 654
Polish Jew, Poems by a, 152
Politics, Goethe and, 278, 352-355, 404, 450,
453, 454, 461, 492, 559, 568, 603, 605-609,
" great plans," 609-10, 611, 612, 613
Pollnitz, Karl Ludwig Freiherr von, 354
Polycrates, 309
Polygnotus, 540
"Polypus-like" tasks, 501
Pomey, Franz, his Pantheum mythicum, 31
Pompeian paintings, 679, 716
Pompeii, 390, 391 ; August Goethe there,
703 ; Zahn there, 716
Pontiles Pilatus, by Lavater, 362
Portici, 391, 394
Potsdam, 278
Poussin? Nicolas, 397
Pozzuoh, 390, 393
Prague, Battle of, 18
Preller, Friedrich, 718
Proctor, Bryan Waller, 712
Prolog zu den neuesten Offenbarungen
Gottes, 725
Prometheus, a magazine, 569
Prometheus, Deukalion und seine Recen-
senten, by Wagner, 223-224
Prometheus, dramatic poem, 176, 178, 725
Prometheus, the lyric poem, 214. [Duntzer
in the new edition omits mention of the
lyric Prometheus in this context, being
perhaps convinced by Daniel Jacoby
(Goethe-Jahrbuch, i. 201) that it was
written about the same time as the drama]
Prometheus Unbound, 475
Pronunciation, Goethe's, 55
Propertius, 407, 426
Propylden, Die, 125, 497-498, 499, 500, 502,
503, 504, 507, 525 ; the last number, 516 ;
Schultz and the Propylden, 617
Proserpina, 282, 620
Prussia, Friedrich II. King of, " the
Great" (1712-1786), 17 ; Goethe's enthusi
asm for him, 17 ; Minna von Barnhelm
throws light on him, 68-g ; 273 ; his unjust
essay De la littirature allemande, 317
. Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II. (reigned
1786-1797), camp in Silesia, 438 ; in
Breslau, 439 ; speaks to Goethe at Longwy
in 1792, 453 ; counsels march on Paris,
454 ; his regret on losing the services of
Karl August, 466
Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III. (reigned
1797-1S40), Claudine performed on his
birthday, 432 ; betrothed to a princess
of Mecklenburg - Strelitz, 462 ; visits
Weimar in 1799, 505 ; chooses to see
Wallenstein, 506 ; entering Dresden with

the Czar in 1813, 605 ; his return to Berlin
in 1814 expected, 613 ; Willemer goes to
him to beg mercy for Bockum-Dolffs, 638
Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., son of
Friedrich Wilhelm III. (reigned from
1840 to 1861), when Crown-Prince comes
to see Goethe, 675
Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, the
present Emperor of Germany, brother of
and successor to Friedrich Wilhelm IV.,
visits Goethe in 1827, 675 ; the betrothed
of Princess Auguste of Saxe-Weimar, 696
Prussia, Heinrich, prince of, admirer of
Goethe, 278
Prussia, Ludwig Friedrich Karl, Prince of
(died 1796), brother of Friedrich Wilhelm
III., betrothed to a princess of Mecklen
burg-Strelitz, 462
Prussia, Ludwig Christian, Prince of, the
son of Ferdinand, brother of the Great
Friedrich, usually known as Prince Louis
Ferdinand (he was killed at Saalfeld,
October 1806), 556
Prussia, Friedrich Karl Alexander, Prince
of, brother of Friedrich Wilhelm IV., and
of the present Emperor of Germany, be
trothed to the Princess Marie of Weimar,
674 ; visits Goethe, 675 ; taking] away
his bride, 678 ; his son, likewise named
Friedrich Karl Alexander, is the great
grandchild mentioned, 686
Prussia, Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie Luise,
the wife of Friedrich Wilhelm III., gen
erally known as Queen Luise of Prussia,
by birth a princess of Mecklenburg-
Strelitz, seen by Goethe at Mainz, 462 ;
visits Weimar in 1799, 506
Prussia, Friederike Caroline Sophie Alex
andrine, Princess of, the sister of Queen
Luise, by birth a princess of Mecklenburg-
Strelitz, seen by Goethe at Mainz, 462
Prussia, Marie Luise Alexandrine, Princess
of (born 1809), by birth a princess of
Weimar, grand-daughter of Karl August,
betrothed to Prince Karl of Prussia,
674 ; her parting from Goethe, 678
Prussia, Marie Luise Auguste Katharine
(born 1811), the present (1883) Empress of
Germany, by birth a princess of Weimar,
grand-daughter of Karl August, her part
ing from Goethe, 696 ; his praise of her,
ib.
Prussian service, Karl August in the, 355,
368, 420 ; leaves it, 466 ; re-enters it, 4gg
Psyche, 315
Psyche, Felsweihegesang an, 143, 150
Publishers, Goethe's, see Cotta, Deinet,
Frommann, Goschen, Himburg, Michae
lis, Mylius, Reich, Unger, Vieweg, Wey-
gand
Puppenspiel, Neuerdffnetes moralisch-poli-
tisches, in Klinger's hands, 728 ; offered
to Nicolai, 202, 728 ; published by Wey-
gand, 728 ; strange contrast to Werther,
209
Puppet-show, 8, 15
Pustkuchen - Glanzow, Friedrich Wilhelm,
the author of the parody of the Wander
jahre, 657
Pygmalion, by Rousseau, 596

INDEX.

779

"Pyramid of my being," 313
Pyrmont, 265, 287, 354, 519 note, 523

Quarantines, Goethe's, 533-4, 535, 541-542,
_74*
Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques, 697
Ouirinal Gallery, Rome, 577
"Quodlibet of industry," 466
R.
Rabe, Friedrich, 523
Rabelais, Francois, 50
Rabener, Gottfried Wilhelm, 47
Racine, Jean, Goethe begins to read
Racine, 28 ; Racine's prefaces, 31 ; his
Britannicus, 34, 578 ; Phidre, 547 ;
Andromaque, 578
Rainbow, the, 444, 445, 716
Rameau, Jean Philippe, Goethe's essay on,
225
Rameaus Neffe, 546-7, 548, 550
Ramler, Karl Wilhelm, 65, 210
Raphael, 99, 162, 373, 378 ; the Loggia,
381 ; cartoons in the Vatican, 397 and
548 ; Madonna della Sedia, 447
Raspe, Rudolf Erich, 188
Rduber, Die, 482
Rauch, Christian, 641
Raynal, the Abbe-, 329
Re Teodoro in Venezia, 399, 466
Reading aloud, Goethe, 118, 139, 164, 191,
195, 485, 569, 589, 609
Rechenschaft, 508
Recke, Elisabeth Charlotte von der, 588
Regelnfur Schauspieler, 539
Regen u?td Regenbogen, 6og
Reich, Philipp Erasmus, publisher, 64 ;
his summer residence, 70-71, 75 ; shows
Goethe proofs of Musarion, 78 ; sends
Goethe Dialogen des Diogenes, 94-5 ;
publisher of Lavater's Physiognomische
Fragmente, 225 ; Goethe will not trouble
him with his writings, 241 ; asks him for
some of Hamann's works, 243
Reichardt [more correctly Reichert], Jo
hann, 344
Reichardt, Johanna and Louise, 532 note
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, the musician,
427, 432, 441, 442, 444, 447, 448, 450, 476 ;
attacks Schiller, 487-8 ; hard hit by the
Xenien, 520 ; friendly again, ib.; at Lauch
stedt, 532 ; Goethe visits him, 531
Reichel, Georg Christian, 77
Reiffenstein, Johann Friedrich, 377-378, 387,
402
Reil, Johann Christian, 613
Reineck, Friedrich Ludwig, his son Adal
bert, and his daughter Marie Salome
(Klenck by marriage), 36
Reineke Fuchs, 460, 461, 463, 464, 465 ; in
print, 467 ; Voss's opinion, 468
Reinhard, Franz Volkmar, 567
Reinhard, Karl Friedrich von, 567, 578
note; introduces Boissere'e to Goethe,
601 ; visits Goethe, 647 ; Goethe writing
to him, 670

Reinhard, Peter (Conrector of Gymnasium)
22
Reise der Sd'hne Megaprazons, 450, 458
Reisseissen,- Professor of Jurisprudence at
Strassburg, 121
Religion and the State, 114
Religion, Goethe's, 7, 14-15, 32, 35, 52, 57,
77, 83, 84 ; the Lord's Supper, 88, 102,
145-6 ; 89, 91, 95-6, 97-8, 102, 103, 108-9,
no, 121, 128-9, 145-6, 150, 163, i88-g, ig3,
*94, ^95) 200-1, 206, 218, 230, 232, 233,
239, 261, 270, 286, 342, 345, 34g, 363, 406,
408, 410, 459, 600, 610, 644, 68$, 736-7.
See also : Christianity, Christ, Lord's Sup
per, Herrnhuters, Pietists, Galitzin, God
Rembrandt, 280
Reudnitz, 65, 71, 75
Reuss, Johann Martin, 184
Reuss-Plauen-Greiz, Heinrich XIIL, Prince,
453, 558
Revelation of St. John,. 232
Reynier, Johann Peter, 207
Rezzonico, Abondio Faustino, Principe di,
" Senator of Rome, 408, 410
Rhein und Main, Reise am, 617, 620
Rheinbund, 558, 564, 609
Rheingau, 463, 617
Rhine, the, Goethe's first sight of, 45 ; sails
on, 155, 157 ; Rhine Falls, 229, 304 ; sails
on, 457, 463 ; Rhine Falls, 492 ; sails on,
623
Rhingulph the Bard, 86, 88
Rhodius, Rentmeister, and his wife, 151,
723
Rhone, 301 note
Richardson, Samuel, 112
Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich, 484, 485, 558,
635
Riding lessons, 40
Riedel (more correctly Ridel), Cornelius
Johann Rudolf, 361, 431 (the Prince's
tutor), 564, 634
Riedel, Charlotte Amalie Angela, 361, 634
Riemer, Friedrich Wilhelm, on the date of
Das Neueste von Plundersweilern, 326 ;
his Mittheilungen, 348, 369, 447 ; on
Christiane's portrait, 447 ; 456 ; his sup
pression of parts of Goethe's letters to
Meyer, 485 ; the date of Eugenie, 511-
512 ; becomes Goethe's secretary, 539 ;
Schiller's death, 551-552 ; mentioned as
Goethe's companion and secretary, 554,
557,558; the Jena days, 560-561 ; mentioned,
566 ; Bettine, 570; Pandora, ib.; Wirkung
in die Feme, 573 ; Dichtung und Wahr
heit planned, 576 ; Aristeia, 577
note; Riemer in Goethe's house, 587;
Riemer becomes a professor in Weimar
Gymnasium, 589 ; reading aloud instead
of Goethe, 589 ; Falk's credibility, 591 ;
Goethe wishes to have Riemer again in
his house, 608 ; Was wir bringen, 614 ;
visitor at Goethe's house, 637 ; collabora
teur with Eckermann, 660, 661 note ;
cantata for the Duke's jubilee, 664 ; pro
logue for the new Weimar Theatre, 665 ;
cantata for Goethe's jubilee, 665 ; address
at the library, 667 ; reading the Zelter cor
respondence, 673 ; revising Helena, 673
Riese, Johann Jakob, 40, 49, 50 ; goes

78o

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

to Marburg, 51 ; 54, 58 ; his great chess
board^ 129; 175; Goethe playing ombre
with him, 220 ; Goethe applies to him for
help in the matter of Madame Darsain
court, 352 ; Goethe meets him in 1814,
618
Riesengebirge, 340
Rietschke, stream, 71
Riga, 103
Rinaldo, cantata, 598
Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, physicist, 516
Roads, Public, Department, 273, 307, 337
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 535, 540, 696 note
Robinson Crusoe, 16
Rochlitz, Johann Friedrich, 566 ; Anti
gone, 595 ; anecdote of Goethe, 610
Rodelheim Meadows, 137, 185
Rbderer, Johann Gottfried, letter to, 129
Roman Amphitheatre at Verona, 372 ; at
Rome, see Colosseum
Roman Elegies, see Romische Elegien
" Roman House," the, in Weimarj Park,
460, 466, 664, 686
Roman ladies at Castel Gandolfo, 403
Roman local names, see : Angelo, Castle
of St. ; Appian Way ; Borghese Gardens ;
Campagna ; Capitol ; Colonna ; Colos
seum ; Corso ; Doria ; Malta, Villa; Pam-
fili, Villa ; Pantheon ; Peter's ; Pincian
Hill ; Quirinal ; Rondanini Palace ; Six-
tine Chapel ; Vatican ; Vicolo della Fon-
tanella
Roman mistress, Goethe's, 407, 413, 418,
426
Roman ruins, 101, 372 ; Roman Temple
of Augustan age, 373
Romantische Poesie, Die, 583-591
Rome, art treasures from, 14 ; Winckel
mann in, 67
Rome, Goethe in, 374-388, 397-414
Rome, Joseph, King of, see Germany
Rome, Senator of, see Rezzonico
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's, 596
Romeo und Julie, by Weisse, 68, 115
Romer, the Frankfurt, 157
Rdmische Elegien, 407, 426, 431, 432, 435 ;
cease to be written, 437 ; repeated to
Korner, 440 ; Herder opposes their publi
cation, 440 ; read to Schiller, 471 ; revised
for the Horen, 476 ; their publication
rouses anger, 477 ; Schlegel's revision, 510,
514 '
Rdmische Kameval, Das, 409, 425, 465
Rdmische Nebenstunden, by Kayser, 433-
Romischer Aufenthal, Zweiter, see Ital
ianische Reise
Rondinini Palace, 375, 398, 410
Rosa, Salvator, 397
Rosaliens Briefe, 185, 186
Rosenstiel, Heinrich Karl and his wife Luise
(nie Weyland), 298
Rossini, Gioachino, Semiramis, 665
Rossbach, Battle of, 20
Rossmarkt, street in Frankfurt, 28, 37
Rosstrappe, 433
Rothau, 297
Rothe, Wilhelm, the tutor of Goethe's
grandchildren, 670
Rothschild, Karl von, 384
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Herder's opinion

of, 112 ; Goethe's esteem for, 145 ; Lettre
d'un Vicaire the precedent for Goethe's
Brief des Pastors, 163 ; influence on
Goethe and Klinger, 190 ; Basedow a
disciple of, as to educational reform, 196;
Heinse a disciple, 199 ; called " the bear"
by Madame d'Epinay, 214 ; allusion to
the Julie of the Nouvelle Hiloise, 258 ;
St. Peter's Island, 301 ; letters on Botany,
343 ; Goethe comprehends education in
Rousseau's deep meaning, 356 ; the Prin
cess Galitzin a disciple of, as to education,
358-9 ; Pygmalion acted in Weimar, 596
Roussillon, Fraulein von ("Urania"), 139;
Goethe's poem to, 143 ; her death, 169
Roveredo, 371
Rowe, Nicholas, 308
Riidesheim, 463
Rudolstadt, 245, 250, 329, 421, 509 note
Ruhla, 431
Riihlmann, August Bernhard, 610
Runge, Philipp Otto, 600 ,
Runkel, Karl A., 220
Runkel, Lisette, 220, 727
Russia, Alexander I., Emperor 0^556, 578,
579-580, 581, 604, 605, 613 ; his death,
668
Russia, Catherine II. , Empress of, 404
Russia, Katharina, Grand Duchess of, see
Oldenburg
Russia, Maria Feodorowna, Dowager-Em
press of (by birth a princess of Wurttem-
berg), 546, 611, 637-8
Russia, Maria Paulowna, Grand Duchess
of, see Weimar
Russwurm, see Gleichen
Ryno, 265

Saale, the ice - choke, 338 ; Goethe and
Schiller strolling beside the Saale, 421 ;
floods, 433 ; works to confine it to a straight
course, 475; ice- choke, 502; floods, 512
note ; Goethe and Eckermann driving by
the Saale, 682-3
Saarbriicken, Goethe's visit to, 100; "the
late prince," see Nassau- Saarbriicken ;
mention of Saarbriicken, 209, 728
Saarbriicken, Als ich in, poem by Goethe,
100
Saint-Aignan, 590-591, 603
Saint Anthony, 256
Saint Cecilia, 293, 587 note
Saint-Hilaire, Auguste de, 435
Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy de, 700, 701, 702,
716
Saint Katharine's Church, Frankfurt, 18,
191
Saint Leonhar,d's, 140
Saint Peter's, 43
Saint Peter's Island, 301
Saint Rochus, 617
Saint-Zauper, J., 574 note
Salary, Goethe's, see Monetary Affairs
Salerno, 390
Salieri, his Scuola di Gelosi, 347
Salomo, by Klopstock, 51
Salzmann, Johann Daniel, 98-9 ; his philoso
phy, 103 ; loves music, 113 ; confidant of

INDEX.

781

Goethe's love for Friederike, 116, 117, ng-
120, 123, 124 ; Goethe's letters to him from
Frankfurt, 127-128, i2g ; tells him of Gd'tz,
131 ; sends him transcript of Gotz, 134 ;
Salzmann's criticism, 135 ; Goethe ceases
to write to him, 138 ; the doctor's degree,
160 ; the essay on revenge, 166 ; Lenz's
Plautus, ib. ; printed copy ot Gd'tz sent to
him, 174 ; asked to send a copy to
Friederike, 177 ; questioned about Wag
ner's farce, 224 ; Goethe revisits Strass
burg, 229, 231
" Samaria, Thou shalt yet plant vines on
the mountains of," 83, 576
Sammler und die Seinigen, Der, 500, 504
Samson Agonisies, 696 note
Sandrart, Joachim von, 16
Sankt-Rochusfest zu Bingen, 617
" Sannchen," Kayser's sweetheart, see
Ebert
Santa Elena, of Hasse, 73
Sara Sampson, Miss, by Lessing, 29, 51
Sartorius, Georg, 612
Saturn, the planet, 122
Satyros, new evidence as to date, 724, 727 ;
old date, 203
Saul, by Alfieri, 596
Saussure, Horace Benoit de, 302
Sauveur, dancing-master, 100
Savary, Rene", 578 ?zote
Savigny, Friedrich Karl, his wife Kunigunde
(nie Brentano), and daughter, Bettine,
647
Savoy, 302
Saxony, Friedrich August, Elector of, 491,
504
Scaliger, Joseph, 407 note
Schadow, Johann Friedrich, in Weimar,
532 note ; places hooters for Etigenie, 538
Schaffhausen Falls, 229, 304, 492
Schalken, Gottfried, 72
Schardt, Ernst Constantin, Regierungsrath
von, Charlotte von Stein's elder brother,
291
Schardt, Sophie von, the wife of Ernst Con
stant in, 292, 356, 416, 421, 424, 546, 555,
566, 584, 635
Schardt, Luise von, see Imnol
Schatzgrdber, Der, 490
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von,
517, 518, 525; his controversy with Jacobi,
5gg-6oo
Schenk, Heinrich, 458
Scherbius, Johann Jakob Gottlieb, teaches
Wolfgang the ancient languages, 27, 30
Sclierz, List und Rache, 347, 348, 366
note, 388, 433 ,
Schiller, Goethes correspondence with
Schiller, 418 note, 660, 673, 685, 6g8 ;
Schiller, Johann Friedrich Christoph von,
56 ; his first sight of Goethe, 304 ; Char
lotte von Kalb, 419 ; Goethe's first con
versation with Schiller, 421 ; Schiller's
portrait, 422 ; his paper on Egmont, 423 ;
professorship, 424, 425 ; visits Goethe, 425;
Dalberg endeavours to obtain a salary for
Schiller, 434 ; Schiller and Goethe discuss
ing Kant, 440 ; Schiller ill, 443 ; Die
Horen, 469 ; Schiller's remarkable letter
to Goethe, 470 ; the union between Goethe

and Schiller, 471, 472. [Here tlie in
dexing under the head Schiller slackens;
the reader must seek the names of Schil
ler's works, of other individuals, etc.] ;
the invalid Schiller contrasted by Char
lotte von Stein with the stout Goethe, 481 ;
Schiller's hostility to Christiane, 484 ; plan
of coming to Weimar in the winter, 494 ;
gives it up, 495 ; comes to look after the
rehearsal of Die Piccolomini, 501 ; invited
to dinner by the Duke, 502 ; cheering
Goethe, 503 ; driving with Goethe, 504 ;
Goethe takes a house for Schiller in Wei
mar, 509 ; Schiller's increase of salary,
509; the Duke wishes to be consulted
about Schiller's plays, 509 ; Schiller comes
to live in Weimar, 512 ; takes Goethe's place
at rehearsals, 513; Kotzebue's file, 529;
Schiller raised to the nobility, 533 ; his
sympathy with Christiane, ib. note; his
invitation to Berlin, 544; Karl August
raises his salary, 545; illness, 547 note;
Goethe very ill, 548 ; their last meeting,
550; Schiller's death, 551-552; Schiller's
bones and skull, 671-672, 681
Schiller, Charlotte von (nie von Lengefeld),
421 ; her portrait, 422 ; mentioned, 434,
443 ; Goethe gives her a writing-desk, 471 ;
she comes to Weimar to see Iffland act,
481 ; her second son born, 484 ; in Weimar
to see Iffland, 497-8 ; writing to Goethe,
497 ; a daughter born, 510; dangerous ill
ness, ib.; convalescent, 512 ; Goethe invites
her to his house for the first time, 513 ;
her grief during his illness, 518; she visits
him, 519; her unreasonable behaviour
about the theatre, 521 ; a member of the
Wednesday Krdnzchen, 524 ; measles in
her household, 525 ; Madame de Stael,
540 ; at Goethe's Thursdays, 547 ; the
"air of the Court," 547; visits Goethe
after Schiller's death, 555, 564; Goethe's
endeavour to make her friendly to Chris
tiane, 584 ; her sneers at Christiane, 588,
589 ; her account of Lotte Kestner, 634 ;
her account of the birth of Walter Wolf
gang Goethe, 636 ; her death, 671
Schiller, Ernst von, second son of the poet ;
his birth, 484, 532 ; he goes to live in
Koln, 638 ; he revisits Weimar, 671-673 ;
August Goethe's poem, 673
Schiller, Karl von, eldest son of the poet,
481-2, 484, 498, 511, 532
Schiller, Caroline Henriette Luise von,
daughter of the poet, Goethe one of her
sponsors, 510
Schiller's garden, 498, 682
Schiller s Schddel, Bei Betrachtung von
672
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 641
Schirmer, Johann Michael, 20
Schlag, Goethe's landlord in Strassburg, 97
Schlangenbad, 617, 623, 660
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, son of
Johann Adolf Schlegel; Goethe meets
him, 483 ; translating Shakespeare's
Julius Casar, 489 ; dining at Goethe's
house with Tieck and Novalis, 508 ;
Goethe's elegiacs and hexameters, 510;
the sonnet, 511, 512, and note ; introduces

782

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Dorothea Schlegel to Goethe, 512 note ;
revising Goethe's Elegien, 514 ; Ion, 525,
526 ; Calderon, 558 ; his visit to Weimar
in 1827, 676
Schlegel, Caroline, August Wilhelm's wife,
512 note
Schlegel, Dorothea (nie Mendelssohn),
510 note, 512 note
Schlegel, Friedrich von, 510, 512, note, 516 ;
Alarcos, 530, 543 ; friend of Boissere'e,
600 note
Schlegel, Johann Adolf, 51
Schlegel, Johann Elias, brother of Johann
Adolf ; his Canut, 34 ; his Hermann, 65
Schlettstadt, 122
Schlosser, Hieronymus Peter, 127, 133,
209 ; his sons, 524-5 ; hi's widow, 577, 618
Schlosser, Susanne Marianne (nie Orth),
577, 61S
Schlosser, Christian Heinrich, 524-5, 619
Schlosser, Johann Friedrich Heinrich, his
Nachlass, 376 note, 524-5, 577, 584, 606,
607 note, 6i.\note, 616 note, 618, 633-4, 636
note; visits Weimar a Roman Catholic, 641
Schlosser, Sophie (nie Du Fay), 641
Schlosser, Johann Georg, brother of Hier
onymus Schlosser, 49 ; comforts Wolf
gang at Leipzig, 58-9 ; perhaps directs him
to Dodd's Shakespeare, 63 ; return to
Frankfurt, 91 ; 127 ; his portrait, 134 ;
I35, J37, T42; engaged to Cornelia, 152 ;
betrothed, 158 ; takes Goethe to Wetzlar,
159 ; leaves the Frankfurter Anzeigen,
162 ; anxiety about his appointment, 177 ;
formal betrothal, 178 ; marriage 179 ; has
to go to Emmendingen, 206 ; Goethe en
deavours to find how President Hahn is
disposed towards him, 211 ; marries
Johanna Fahlmer, 300 ; Goethe's esteem
for his character, 301 ; Goethe does not
favour his coming to Weimar, 360-361 ; hope
of visiting him when returning from Italy
disappointed, 414 ; Goethe meets him
in Heidelberg, 463-4 ; his death, 510 note ;
his son Eduard, 524 ; his daughter
Henriette, 577 ; his relative mentioned on
page 538, see Starck
Schlosser, Cornelia, Goethe's sister, the first
wife of J. G. Schlosser (see Goethe,
hitherto), 195, 206 ; birth of her eldest
daughter, 220 ; Goethe visits her, her
advice to break with Liii, 229 ; her mar
riage-portion, 257 ; her death, 291 ; Goethe
visits her grave, 300 ; her children, 300
(and see Nicolovius)
Schlosser, Maria Anna Luise, Cornelia's
eldest daughter (born October 1774),
220, 638. The name of Cornelia's other
daughter was —
Schlosser, Elizabeth Katharina Julie, these
are the two children, 300
Schlosser, Johanna Katharina Sibylla (nie
Fahlmer), the second wife of J. G. Schlos
ser, known as Tante Fahlmer ; Goethe's
first acquaintance with her, 167 ; called
" Tante " by Goethe, 168 ; goes to Diissel
dorf, 175 ; her endeavour to reconcile
Goethe and Wieland, 180 ; a new endea
vour almost successful, 726-8 ; Goethe
for a short time avoids her, 194 ; at

Jacobi's instigation goes to see her again,
202 ; his confidante in the time of love for
Liii, see passim, 219-235 ; writes to her
from Weimar, 253, 254-5, 257, 259, 300 ;
her marriage to Schlosser, 300-301 ; she
speaks to Goethe about the Woldemar
affair, 300 ; her son, 524 note, 525
Schlosser, Eduard, son of J. G. Schlosser
by his second wife, 524
Schlosser, Henriette, daughter of J. G.
Schlosser by his second wife, 577-8
Schmehling, Gertrud Elisabeth, 66, 73
Schmeller, Johann Joseph ; portrait of
Goethe dictating to J. John, 658
Schmid, Christian Heinrich, 113, 151
Schmidt, Johann Christof, 334, 394, 411-
12, 546
Schmoll, Georg Friedrich, 194, 195, 197
Schnabel, J. H., 16
Schnauss, Christian Friedrich, 276, 495
Schneeberg, 367, 435
Schneider, Johann Kaspar, Klopstock's
Messias, 23 ; the Gretchen episode,
44-5
Scholl, A., editor of Briefe und Aufsdtze,
93, 99, 123, 241
Scholl, goldsmith, 35
Scholl, Christian Gottlieb, and his wife
Elisabeth, 100, 106
Schonborn, Gottlob Friedrich Ernst ; his
letter to Gerstenberg describing Goethe,
178 ; Goethe writing to him 192, 196,
199
Schonemann, Johann Wolfgang, the father
of Liii, 213
Schonemann, Susanne Elisabeth (nie D'Or
ville), Lili's mother, 213, 216 ; begins
to be prejudiced against Goethe, 219-220,
222 ; Fraulein Delph, 225 ; offended, 233 ;
strong opposition to Goethe, 237, 239
Schonemann, Anna Elisabeth (Liii), see
Tiirckheim
Schonemann, Friedrich and Georg, Lili's
brothers, 214, 219
Schonkopf, Christian Gottlieb, 58 ; his
house, 59, 60, 61 ; the Sunday assembly
there, 66 ; the amateur theatre, 66, 73-4 ;
mentioned, 75, 78
Schonkopf, Katharina Sibylla (nie Hauk),
59, 77
Schonkopf, Anna Katharina, see Kanne
Schonkopf, Adam Peter, 66
School, Wolfgang goes to, 12. See also
Gymnasium, Weimar Gymnasium
School Reform, 33c?
Schopenhauer, Heinrich Floris, 559
Schopenhauer, Johanna, her portrait,
560 ; first meeting with Goethe, 559-560 ;
kindness to Christiane, 562-3; her admira
tion for Goethe, 563-4 ; her receptions,
564; Bettine_ at her house, 566; Goethe
at her receptions, 590 ; her remark about
August Goethe, 6gg
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 560, 563
Schopenhauer, Adele, sister of Arthur, 636
Schopflin, Johann Daniel, 113
Schreiber, Johann Gottfried, Berg-gesch-
worener (mining - expert), 269. [There
was another Johann Gottfried Schreiber,
also a mining-expert, who came to Ilmenau

ijnuEx..

783

in 1789, and who died there in 1806 ; he is
not the surveyor mentioned on page 310.
See Biedermann's Personenregister to
Goethe's Tag- und Jahres-Hefte]
Schreiber, surveyor, 310. [See Bieder
mann's caution, Hempel's Goethe, xxvii.
379 line 2]
Schroder, Friedrich Ludwig, 443, 497
Schroter, Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine,
singing at Leipzig, 66 ; her birth, ib. ;
her performance in Santa Elena, 73 ;
Goethe's lines quoted, ib. ; she plays in
Minna at Schonkopf's, 73 ; Goethe sees
her again, 258 ; the Duke's passion, 277 ;
again, 279 ; Corona angry with Goethe,
279 ; appointed Court singer, 281 ; Goethe
draws her portrait, 285 ; her coming to
Weimar, 2S8 ; Goethe resists a passion
for her, 289, 291 ; Graff's portrait of her,
290 ; Goethe's quarrel with her, reconcilia
tion, 292 ; acting in Iphigenie, 293 ; Keil's
opinion that Goethe and Corona would
have married but for Charlotte von Stein,
zg^note; Corona acting in Kallisto, 311;
singing in the Dreikdnigenlied, 316 ;
her praise in Mieding's Tod, 328 ; trains
Christiane Neumann -Becker, 447 ; her
death at Ilmenau, 532
Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 413-
4*4, 732
Schubarth, Karl Ernst, 642
Schuckmann, Friedrich Wilhelm, 439, 440,
445
Schukowsky (Joukovsky), Wasili Andreje-
vitch, 679
Schuld, play by Milliner, 620
Schultheiss, Barbara, 231
Schultz, Christian Ludwig Friedrich, 617 ;
visits Goethe, 641, 647, 711 ; Goethe writ
ing to Schultz, 642, 645, 647, 652
Schultze, Karl Adolf, Biirgermeisier, 529
Schulze, Karl, 68
Schulze, Caroline, gifted actress, comes to
Leipzig, plays in Weisse's Romeo und
Julie, 68 ; plays in Minna von Barn-
helm, 73 J her final performance in Leip
zig, 73 ; reference to hex Julie, 115
Schiitz, Christian Gottfried, editor of the
Allgemeine Literatttrzeitung, 537
Schiitz, Johann Georg, painter, 375, 379,
398, 402, 409, 618 note
Schutze, Dr. Stephan, 564, 566
Schutzgeist, Der, by Kotzebue, 649
Schwabe, Karl Leberecht, 671, 673
Schwager Kronos, An, 205
Schwalbach, 45 , n lt
Schwarze Mann, Der, farce by Gotter,
Schwedischen Grafin, Leben der, by
Gellert, 61 . . .
Schweitzer [the name was originally Suaizar.
and the family was of Verona origin], Karl
Allesina von, 24, 47-48-. See also Allesina
Schweitzer, Franz Maria von, father ^ of
Goethe's playmate, 24. (He married
Paulina Allesina, daughter of the old
couple whose golden wedding is men
tioned, 192)
Schweiz, Briefe aus der, account of the
journey of 1779, 302 note, 307

Schwesiern von Lesbos Die, 503, 505, 509
Sciences, Fichte's Theory of the, 469, 489
Sckell, Karl August Christian, 689, 692,
698 note
Scott, Walter, 712
Scottish ballad poetry, 112, 137
Sculptors, the ideals of ancient, 387, 401,
405-6, 419, 421, 431
Sculpture, 125. See the names of sculptors
and statues
Scuola di Gelosi, 347
Seals, antique, 86, 112. See Coins, Gems
" Sebastian Si?npel," 314
Sebbers, Ludwig, 670-671
Seckendorf, Caroline von (nie von Uechtritz),
575
Seckendorf, Leo von, 569
Seckendorff, Karl Sigmund, Freiherr von,
251, 256, 258, 265, 271 ; Kallisto, 307-8,
308, 311 ; his music to Jery utid Bately,
311 and 312
Seekatz, Johann Conrad, 8r
Segesta, 393
Seidel, Philipp Friedrich. (Born 1755, died
1820. Beside being Goethe's servant and
secretary he was a Kainmerkalkulator
and Rentkommissarius and from 1789
was Re?itamtmann. In 1810 he fell out
with Goethe. In Im Neuen Reich for
1871 there is an article by Burkhardt on
the relations between Goethe and Seidel.)
Probably transcribes Gotz, 134 ; men
tioned, 242, 244, 252, 256, 260, 295, 316,
351, 37° \ Goethe's letters to Seidel from
Italy, 375, 386, 402 ; about Egmont, 406-7 ;
Seidel's account of Weimar discontent, 393;
Seidel Rentamtmann, 496
Seidler, Heinrich, father of Luise, 483'
Seidler, Luise, playing with August Goethe,
483; an eye-witness during Napoleon's
stay in Weimar, 581 note; meets Bettine
at Goethe's house, 586 ; her account of
Goethe's home, 587-8 ; her history, 586-7
note ; Kieser's letters about Goethe, 608-
611 ; Goethe writing to her about Chris
tiane's death, 634 ; introduced to Jacobi
by Goethe, 638
Selinunt, 393
Sellerhausen, 70, 75
Selma, Songs of, 118
Selz, 297
Semiramis, by Rossini, 665
Senator of Rome, see Rezzonico
Senckenberg, Johann Christian, 46, 82
Sentiment, 139, 140
Sentimental in Art, Schiller's essay on, 480
Servants, Goethe's, see Friedrich, Dorothee,
G5tze, Karl, Seidel, Sutor, Stadelmann
Servian poetry, 675 note
Sessenheim, Goethe in, 105, no, 114, 116,
123 ; Goethe's last visit to, 297
Sessenheim, parsonage, picture, 106
Shakespeare, Wieland's translation, 51, 63
93 ; Dodd's Beatities, 63 ; Oeser's alle
gorical figure, 65 ; Voltaire's criticism,
86 ; one of Goethe's teachers, 95 ;
Herder's praise of, 111-12 ; Goethe intro
duces Jung to Shakespeare, 115 ; Lenz's
enthusiasm, 120 ; Othello, 124 ; Lerse's
oration, 129-130; Goethe's oration, 130-1;

784

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

"Under the greenwood tree," 138 ; Her
der's remark, "Shakespeare has quite
spoiled you," 150 ; Herder's essay on
Shakespeare, 130, 161 ; Shakespeare read
aloud at the Duchess Amalia's, 442 ;
King John, 447 ; Hamlet, 448 ; Schiller
reading, 488 ; A. W. Schlegel translating
Julius Casar, 489 ; Malone's essay, the
apocryphal plays, 512 note; Macbeth, 513,
515 ; Julius Casar acted in Weimar,
539 \ Romeo and Juliet, 596
Shelley, 704 note
Sicily, 382, 390, 392-393
Siebengebirge, 200
Siewers, Dr., 285
Sihl, river, 230
Silbermann, Johann Andreas, 124, 129
Silesia, Goethe in, 43g-44o
Silhouette of Herder, 189
Silhouette of Goethe, 36
Silhouette of Goethe, 172; sent to Lotte,
724
Silhouette of Goethe, 672
Silhouette of Lotte, 158, 160, 164-5
Silhouette of Goethe's father, 6
Silhouette of Goethe's mother, 6 ; 549
Silhouette of Charlotte von Stein, 231, 236
Silhouette of Fritz von Stein, 358
Silhouette of Liii, 233
"Simplicity and Repose," 67, 68
"Sind es Kampfe die ich sehe," 535
Sined the Bard, 174
Singspiele, see Operettas
Sixtine Chapel, 381 ; the music, 410
Skates, Klopstock on, 205 ; skates for the
Duchess Luise, 277
Skating, 136-7, 165, 185, 207, 222 ; in
Weimar, 252 ; the Duchess Luise, 277,
316, 343
Skeleton, the human, 324, 387
Sketches by Goethe reproduced in this
work ; portrait of Cornelia, 42 ; portrait
of Wieland, 285; pen-and-ink sketch,
461 s
Sketches, Goethe's, 45, 84, 190, 575-6
Sketches, Kniep's, 390, 393
Sketches by Schiitz of the Carnival, 409
Sketching, Goethe, 45, 61, 157, 161, 218;
"the sketching fever driven away by the
bitter bark of life's timber," 345 ; sketch
ing at Rome, 387 ; at Caserta, 391, 3g7 ;
sketching the human form, 401, 405, 407 ;
sketching landscape, 410 ; 461, 474-5,
sketching landscape, 558 ; sketching and
talking at the same time, 559, 564 ; 567 ;
Kaaz's teaching, 575. See also Per
spective, Drawing, Landscape
Skull, a metamorphosed vertebra, 437
Skulls, Goethe's interest in, 285, 301
Slevoigt, Friederike, see Bertuch
Slevoigt, Traugott Friedemann, 252
Smiling Jupiter, the, 381
"So ist der Held," 726
"So walz' ich ohne Unterlass," 598
"Socrates, Life and Death of," 135, 136.
See also Hamann
Socrates, character of, 135, 137
Soden, Friedrich Julius Heinrich, Count
von, 417
Soissons, Jean, Comte de, 455

Solger, K. W. F., critic uf Die Wahlver
wandtschaften, 574 note
Solomon's Song, 168, 233 note, 241
Somme Tourbe, 454
Sommering, Samuel Thomas von, 341, 342 ;
in Mainz, 453; in Frankfurt, 461, 464;
Goethe writing to him, 466 note; Sebbers's
portrait of Goethe, 671 ; death, 706
Sonnet, Goethe and the, 511-12 and note,
571-572
Sonnet t, Das, 511 note
Sonnette, the group in Goethe's works, 571
Sophie ... an English girl, Fritz Stol
berg's sweetheart, 227, 228
Sophocles, 130 ; GSdipus at Colonos, 406-7 ;
Schiller reading Sophocles, 488 (cp.579) ;
Goethe studying Sophocles with Heinrich
Voss, 545 ; quotation from Matthew
Arnold's characterisation of Sophocles,
ib.; Antigone, 595
Soret, Friedrich, comes to Weimar, 642 ;
translating the Metamorphoses qf Plants,
see Metamorphose der Pflanzen; visits
Goethe in Dornburg, 692; August Goethe's
fossils, 695 note ; the death of the Duchess
Luise, 698-9 ; the July Revolution anec
dote, 700
Sorge, Georg Andreas, 191
Soult, Marshal, 579
South Sea Islanders, 295
Southey, Robert, 712
"Sparrow-like," Goethe called, 63, 134
Speccius, Christian, 19
" Specht, Hinangeflogen da kam ein," 150
note
Spectacles, Zelter's, 528
Speier, 297 ; the cathedral, ib.
Spielmann, Jakob Reinhold, 109
Spiess, Christian Heinrich, 550
Spinning -house for the poor, 338
Spinning-school for soldiers' children, 316
Spinoza, Baruch (or Benedict), begins to
influence Goethe, 188-189 , Goethe's talk
with Jacobi, 200 ; Goethe's difference
with Jacobi as to Spinoza, 361 ; reading
Spinoza with Charlotte von Stein, 'ib.;
Herder's book on Spinoza, 420 note;
mentioned, 439
Spoleto, 374
Spontini, Gasparo, composer, 710
Sprache, epigram by Goethe, 166 ; sent
to Boie, 168
Spriiche, composed by Goethe, 483
Spruchgedichte, 190, 609
Stadel, Rosine or Rosette (nie Willemer,
Thomas by her second marriage), 618,
624, 625, 626 note, 638 note, 702 note
Stadelmann, Goethe's servant, 647 note
Stael-Holstein, Anne Germaine, Baroness
de (nie Necker), 540-541, 542"3, 544, 566,
574, 579
Stafa, 493
Stahr, Adolf, 575
Stalburg, Philipp Jakob von, 100
Stapfer, Albert, 670, 676-7
Starck, Anna Maria, Goethe's aunt, 18, 40
Starck, Johann Jakob, 17-18, 29, 30, 51 ;
wishes to have Goethe's mother placed
under guardianship, 538
Starke, Johanna, actress, 55

INDEX.

785

' Staub 1st eins der Elemente," 616
¦ Stechschriften," 19
Steffens, Heinrich, 517-518
Stein, Gottlob Ernst Josias Friedrich, Frei
herr von, husband of Charlotte von Stein,
born March 15, 1735, died December
I79.3 » Goethe meets him, 210 ; 248, 251 ;
visits Goethe's parents, 255-6; 269, 291, 303,
313 ; losing money, 314 ; acting in Winter,
317 ; a bad farmer, 337 ; assents to
Goethe's taking Fritz, 356 ; Goethe writes
to Karl Stein in his father's name, 360 ;
his death, 471 note
Stein, Charlotte Albertine Ernestine von
(nie von Schardt, born in Weimar
December 25, 1742, married to Freiherr
von Stein on May 8, 1764, bore seven
children between 1765 and 1774, three
sons and four daughters, all the daugh
ters died in childhood, Charlotte von
Stein died January 6, 1827); her silhou
ette shown to Goethe, 231 ; " conquers
with nets," 236 ; Zimmermann praises
Goethe to her, 240 ; absent when he
arrives in /Weimar, 245 ; meets him,
248 ; portrait, 248 ; Goethe visits her at
Kochberg, 250 ; fails to understand his
position at Court, 251 ; her writing-table,
250, 314, 315 ; Goethe's passion for her,
254, 256-7 ; her melancholy nature, 248,
257, 263 ; Goethe's love, 264-5, 266 ; Char
lotte's comedy Ryno, 265 ; Goethe's rela
tions with Charlotte from i776-i77g, 286-
294 ; the Swiss journey, 296, 303, 307 ;
Charlotte goes to Morlach, 311 ; her
return, 312 ; Goethe writes to Lavater
about her, 313-14; Goethe'smad fit of jea
lousy, 314 ; reconciliation, 315 ; Tasso,
3og, 316; Winter, 317, 326; "Du,"3i8,
319, 323, 325 ; Charlotte a mediator be
tween Goethe and the Duke, 319; "an
evil genius abuses my remoteness from
you," 321 ; a quarrel, 355 ; Fritz, 356 ; //
Penseroso, 357 ; Die Geheimnisse, 357 ;
Goethe's depression, 358 ; Karlsbad, 1785,
358 ; Goethe's mother and Charlotte, 358 ;
the Princess Galitzin, 358-9 ; Ernst Stein,
359 ; Goethe's desperate depression, ib. ;
Goethe writes to Karl Stein, 359-360 ;
Charlotte transcribes Goethe's shorter
poems. 367 ; farewell, 368 ; the more im
portant occurrence of Charlotte's name
during the Italian journey, 371, 372, 373,
374, 378, 384, (Palermo) 392, 405, 406,
410 ; Goethe's return, the remarkable
change in their relations, 415 ; bitterness
grows, 416, 417, 418-419 ; Goethe's last
visit >to Kochberg, 421-422 ; Schiller's
professorship, 424 ; Moritz, 424-5 ; Der
schwarze Mann, 425 ; discovery of Chris
tiane, 426 ; Charlotte starts for the Rhine,
visits Goethe's mother, 427, 429 ; the final
breach with Goethe,v42 7-430 ; she declines
all intercourse on her return, 431 ; her
hostility to the French Revolution, 442 ;
Goethe after a long silence visits her
again, 471 ", Goethe " horribly stout,"
Schiller "like a heavenly genius," 481 ;
Charlotte interested in August Goethe,
481-2 ; her description of him, 482, 486 ; she

visits Goethe's house, 488 ; again, at one
of the Iffland dijeuners, 498 ; the marriage
of Karl von Stein, 498 ; meets Frau von
Laroche at Goethe's house, 508 ; Charlotte
Schiller at her house, 513 ; Goethe's
dreadful illness, Charlotte's grief, 518-519;
visits Goethe, 519 ; her sneers at Chris
tiane, 526, 543 ; Goethe invites Charlotte
to come and see his coins, 541 ; she comes
to his Thursday mornings, 543, 545, 547 ;
Goethe visits her on New Year's Day,
1805, 547 ; visits her after Schiller's death,
552 ; she attends his Wednesday lec
tures, 555; Goethe visits her just before
the battle of Jena, 560; Goethe's marriage,
563, 564 ; mentioned, 565 ; Goethe writ
ing to -her, 566, 570, 574 ; Goethe reading
aloud at the Duchess's, 569 ; Charlotte's
account of Werner, 572 ; Goethe reading
at Charlotte's house, 574 ; August's fine
voice, 583 ; Goethe's endeavour to make
her friendly to Christiane, , 584, 589 ;
Goethe seeks comfort with her after Wie
land's death, 604 ; Christiane comes to
Charlotte's house to bid farewell in
Goethe's name, -605; Nicolovius sent to
Charlotte by Goethe, 668-9 ; death, 674 ;
funeral, 675 ; the - question- about her
letters to Goethe, 669 note
Stein, Karl von, first-born of Charlotte von
Stein, born March 8, 1765 ; 358, 359, 360,
367 ; his marriage, 498 ; story about
Goethe at the time of Schiller's death, 552 ;
story about Goethe at the time of the
death ofthe Frau Rath, 577
Stein, Ernst von, second son of Charlotte
von Stein, born September 29, 1767 ; 357,
359, 367
Stein, Friedrich Constantin von, youngest
son of Charlotte von Stein, born October
26, 1772 ; 291 *, Goethe takes him to
Dessau, 323 ; Goethe takes him under his
care, 329-330 ; dictates Botanica to him,
344 ; Fritz goes to live with Goethe, 356 ;
taken to Ilmenau, 356, 357 ; taken
to the Harz, 356 ; writes to Goethe's
mother, 357 ; adopted by Goethe, 357-8 ;
visits Goethe's mother, 358 ; Lavater
writes verses in his album, 363 ; Fritz
remains in Goethe's house when Goethe
is in Italy, 370, 378 ; Goethe's letters
to Fritz from Italy, 378, 384, 392, 402, 410;
Fritz ceases to be an inmate of Goethe's
house, 418; drives to Kochberg, 421 ; goes
with Goethe to Jena, 424 ; finds Christiane
at the garden, 426 ; appointed Hof junker,
427 ; visits Goethe often, 429 ; in London,
Goethe writing to him, 471, 490 ; men
tioned, 523 ; visits Weimar in 1825, 669
note
Stein, Gottlob Sophie Christiane Johanna
Friederike Charlotte von, born 1732, the
sister-in-law mentioned on page 291
Stein, Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und
zum, the great statesman, 197 ; Goethe
meets him in Dresden _ (1813), 605 ;
Goethe and Stein meet in 1814, 617 ;
Goethe and Stein in 1815, 623
Stein, Henriette Caroline vom und zum (nie
von Simmern, widow von Low), 197

3 E

786

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Steinbrecher, Caroline Elisabeth, 55
Steiner, Heinrich, 189
Steinthal, the, 297
" Stella," applied to Ulrike von Levezow,
646
Stella, Goethe's drama, 215 ; the begin
ning of it read to Jacobi, 218 ; Johanna
Fahlmer presses Goethe to finish it, 219 ;
again, 220 ; she transcribes the first four
acts for Jacobi, 221 ; Goethe fears that
the dinouement will displease her, ib. ;
the character of Fernando, 221 ; Jacobi
laments the dinoueynent, 224 ; given to
Merck to sell, 241 ; sold to MyliuSj 243 ;
read aloud to Karl August and his friends,
250 ; a copy sent to Liii in the beginning
of February 1776, 259 ; revisal, 367 ;
Schiller's adaptation acted in Weimar,
556 ; Goethe's change of the denouement,
ib.
" Stella," Swift's friend Esther Johnson, 215
Sternberg, Kaspar, Count von, 642, 670
note ; visits Weimar, 678
Sterne, Laurence, 112, 115, 142, 234-5
Sternheim, Geschichte des Frauleins von,
by Sophie Laroche, 135, 140
Stetten, 252
Stichling, Theodor, Dr., Herder's grand
son, 691
Stichling, Dr., Wieland's grandson, 691
Stichling, Luise, Herder's daughter, 691
Stiebel, Dr. S. F., 701
Stieler, J., his portrait of Goethe, 686, 688
Stiftungslied, 525
Stilling, see Jung
Stock, Esther, 549
Stock, Johann Michael, 75
Stock, Marie Helene, his wife, 75 .
Stock, Johanna Dorothea, his daughter,
75 ; Goethe meets her in Jena, 482
Stock, Anna Maria Jakobea, his daughter,
see Korner
Stockhausen, Johann Christof, 54
Stolberg, Auguste Luise, Countess zu (she
married her brother-in-law the minister
Andreas Count von Bernstorff), writes to
Goethe, 216; Goethe's letters to her,
216-7, 2I8, 220, 222, 224 ; Goethe invited
by her brothers to Hamburg, but cannot
go, 250 ; she marries her sister's widower,
363-4 ; her letter to Goethe in old age,
644 ; his reply, 644
Stolberg, Christian, Count zu, writes to
Goethe, 216 ; Goethe expecting the
coming of the brothers, 224 ; they come
to Frankfurt, 226-7, 729-730 ; Switzerland,
227-231, 730 ; the Stolbergs in Weimar,
249-250, 730 ; Christian visits Weimar in
1784, 363 ; visits Weimar in 1792, 448
Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, Count zu,
writes to Goethe, 216 ; Goethe expect
ing the coming of the brothers, 224 ; they
come to Frankfurt, 226-7, 729-30 ; Fritz's
unhappy love affair, 227, 228 ; Merck
attracted by the noble presence of Fritz,
227 ; Switzerland, 227-231, 730 ; the Stol
bergs ¦ in Weimar, 249-250, 730 ; Fritz
especially mad, 249 ; they ask Goethe to
Hamburg, 250 ; Fritz arranges to come
to Weimar as Chamberlain, 258 ; is pre

vented by Klopstock, 263-264 ; visits
Weimar, 363 ; his Selected Dialogues of
Plato, 479 (and see 736-7) ; his death,
639 ; mentioned, 644 ; how Goethe met
him in 1812, 746 ; how Goethe wrote to
him in 1816, ib.
Stolberg, Luise, Countess zu (by _ birth
Countess von Reventlow), the wife of
Christian Stolberg, 363, 448-9
Stolberg, Eleonore Agnes (nie von Witz-
leben), the first wife of Friedrich Stolberg,
363
Stoll, Max, physician, 569
Stoll, Johann Ludwig, son of Max, 569
Stomann Castle, at Dornburg, 688, 690, 692
Stoutness, Goethe's, 455, 506, 541, 640
Strassburg Cathedral, 124, 125, 129, 131,
228-9, 231-2, 300, 602
Strassburg mentioned, 82, 84, 87, 92, 93 ;
Goethe starts for, 95-6 ; his description
of, to Limprecht, 98 ; to Mamsell F . . .,
107 ; Goethe not liked in Strassburg,
121-2 ; Goethe revisits Strassburg, 228-9,
231-2, 298-300
Strassburg takes no notice of Goethe in
1825, 666
Strassburg Theatres, 113
Strassburg University, 98, 99, 102, 103,
108-9, 121-2
Strassburg University, its students and pro
fessors, see Ehrmann, Engelbach, Jung,
Lenz, Lerse, Lobstein, Meyer of Lindau,
Peglow, Spielmann, Reissenstein, Wey
land
Straube, Johanna Elisabeth, 53, 56
Streicher, Andreas, 641
Stromeyer, Heinrich, 593
Struve, Georg Adam, 43
"Sturm und Drang " movement, 326, 377,
732
Stuttgart, Goethe in, 304, 732 ; Henriette
von Wolfskeel from, 473 ; Goethe there
again, 492
Stiitzerbach, 276, 313
Suicide of Jerusalem, 159 ; Goethe con
templates suicide, 187; suicide of Merck,
445 ; of Zelter's eldest son, 606
Suleika in the Westostlicher Divan, 624,
625, 627
Sulzbach, 101
Sulzer, Johann Georg, 162 ; hostile to
Wertlier, 208 ; meets Goethe, 235 ;
" Herder has spoiled Goethe, " ib. ; Reif
fenstein his follower, 377-8
Sunday concerts at Goethe's house, 543,
569, 59°
Sunday gatherings of Wolfgang and friends,
24, 31
Sunday morning gatherings at Goethe's
house, 542, 590
Sunsets, Wolfgang watches the, 9, cp. 162
"Superintendence, The," 597, 638, 650,
655, 679, 708, 717
Sutor, Christof, 260
Sweden, Gustavus IV., King of, 538
Swift, Jonathan, 112 ; Stella and Vanessa,
215
Switzerland, Goethe in, 229-231, 301-304,
492-494, 730
Switzerland, ^Merck in, 131 ; Goethe plans

INDEX.

787

going to, 150, 178 ; the plan abandoned,
168 ; ' ' Goethe will not go to Switzerland, "
186 ; Merck goes, 190 ; returns, 193 ;
Goethe proposes journey to Karl August,
280 ; Knebel goes there, 311
Sylvio von Rosalva, Don, by Wieland, 51
Syndesmology, 475
Synthetic Method, 700
Systeme de la nature, by D'Holbach, 112,
174
Szymanowska, Maria (nie Wolowska), 646,
648, 696

Tabor, Geheimerath, 255, 261
Tacchi, Abate, 380-381
Tag- und J akreshefte, 652, 656, 659
Tagebuch, Das, poem by Goethe, 598
Talleyrand, Prince, 578 note
Talma, Francois Joseph Charies, 581, 595
Talma, Madame Charlotte (nie Vanhove),
581
Tancrede, of Voltaire, 515, 517, 519, 521
Tannroda, 351
" Tante," Friederike Brion called, 298
" Tante," Johanna Fahlmer called, 168
Taormina, 393
Tarnowitz, 439
Taschenbuch fur Damen, Cotta's, 515, 598
Taschenbuch fur Miner alogie, Leonhardt's,
598
Tasso, .Goethe's drama, 117 ; conception
occurs to him, 309 ; begun, 316 ; first act
finished, ib. ; cannot advance further, 316 ;
taken up again, 319, 346, 392, 400; "the
hill Tasso," 411 ; in Florence, 413 ; in
Weimar, 420, 423, 425, 427, 428 ; finished,
428; submitted to Herder, ib.; final touches,
431 ; mentioned, 450 ; brought on the stage
by the Wolffs, 565 ; acted at Teplitz, 592 ;
in Weimar, 595 ; the fictitious description
by Willemer, 619-620 ; acted in 1823,
643-4 > Goethe telling about, 677
Tasso, Torquato, 16, 373
Taucher, Der, by Schiller, 490, 492
Tilimaque, 16
Tell, see Wilhelm Tell
Temps, the, 699
Tepl, the Abbey of, 641
Teplitz, Goethe's visits to (in 1810), 582,
585, 587, 591 ; (in 1812), 582, 592-3 5 (in
1813), 605-607
Terni, 374
Tesdorpf, Johann Matthaus, 187
"Testamentary Years," Goethe's, 656, 706
Teutonic Order, 146, 722
Textor, Johann Wolfgang (1638 - 1701),
Goethe's great - great - grandfather, 3 ;
Goethe named after him, 7
Textor, Christoph Heinrich, Goethe s great
grandfather, 3 .
Textor, Johann Wolfgang (1693 - 1771),
Goethe's grandfather, Chief Magistrate,
3 ; his character, 6 ; his castellated house,
5-6; his fine garden, r6-8 ; takes part
in civic shows, 10 ; takes Austrian side in
Seven Years' War, 17, 25 ; violent quarrel
with Goethe's father, 29; Senckenberg's
hostility, 46 ; Textor"s paralysis, 81 ; his
death, 126

Textor, Anna Margarete Maria (nie Lind
heimer), Goethe's grandmother, 5-6
Textor, Anna Maria, Goethe's aunt, see
Starck
Textor, Johanna Maria, Goethe's aiint, see
Melber
Textor, Johann Nicolaus, great -uncle of
Goethe's mother, Major and Town-Com
mandant, 21, 26
Textor, Katharina Elisabeth (nie von
Klettenberg, widow von Barckhausen), (
the wife of Johann Nicolaus Textor, 21
Textor, Johann Jost, Goethe's uncle ; Goethe
writes a poem for his marriage, 57 ;
receives charge ofa case from him, 127-8,
158 ; his being on the Council prevents
Goethe from being on it, 181 ; his death,
457
Thalehrenbreitstein, Goethe in, 155 - 157,
201-202, 457
Theatre, see Puppet - Show ; the French
theatre in Frankfurt, 28 ; alternates with
German, 29 ; Italian Opera, French
comedy and German drama in Frankfurt,
43-4 ; theatre in Leipzig, 55, 63, 65, 66, 68,
69, 72-74 ; French and German theatres
in Strassburg, 113. See Weimar theatre ;
Opera
Thidtre Francois in Erfurt, 578 ; in
Weimar, 579-580
Theatricals, amateur, at Olenschlager's, 34 ;
at the Schonkopfs, 66, 73-4 ; at Weimar,
256, 265, 282-3, 311, 317, 326, 516 ; at Etters
burg, 281, 312 ; Goethe gives up acting,
337, 338
Theocritus, 130, 137, 138
Theophrastus on Colours, 519
Theory of Colour, Goethe's, see Farbenlehre
Thibaut, Anton Friedrich Justus, 583, 619
Thomas, Dr. Johann Gerhard Christian,
702
Thorane, Jules Hercule, Count of the
Empire, billeted on Goethe's father, 26 ;
takes Wolfgang's room, 27 ; rouses great
rage in Goethe's father, 28 ; 29 ; leaves
Frankfurt, 32
Thorwaldsen, Albert Berthel, 704
Thouret, Nicolaus Friedrich, 492 ; sum
moned to Weimar, 495-6 ; delay, 498 ; ar
rival, ib. ; quarrels with Wolzogen and
leaves Weimar, 501
"Three Kings," The, 10
Three Kings, Song ofthe, 316, 603
Thun, 301 note
Thiiringia, 197
Thiiringia, the Goethe family from, 2
Thuringian Forest, 328
Thurmberg, the, 692
Thurn und Taxis, Alexander Ferdinand,
Prince, 41
Thursday concert rehearsals at Goethe's
house, 590,
Thursday Krdnzchen, Kotzebue's, 529
Thursday receptions, Goethe's, 543, 547
Thursday visits from the Crown Princess,
Goethe's, 643, 694, 708, 710, 717
Thusnelde, the nickname of Fraulein von
Gochhausen, 265
Tiber, 379
Tibullus, 407, 426

788

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Tieck, Christian Friedrich, sculptor, 641
Tieck, Johann Ludwig, poet, 508, 694 note
Tiefurt, 246, 280, 289, 309 ; the Duchess
Amalia goes to live there, 321 ; improves
the park, 338 ; Die Fischerin. performed,
350; the Duchess Amalia there, 484;
Goethe there, 507 ; the old days there
recalled by the Duke, 664
Tiefurt Park, 321, 338
Tiefurter Journal, 322, 323
" Tiger-like," Merck's eyes, 132
Tischbein, Johann Heinrich, 70 ; Conradin,
355, 366 ; Goethe meets Tischbein, 374-
375 J 376, 377, 379-80 ; letter to Lavater,
381 note; his picture of Goethe, 382-383,
397; Hector and Paris, 384; "Tischbein
the strongest influence to keep me in
Italy," 384 ; goes to Naples with Goethe,
389; introduces Venuti and Hackert, 389;
introduces Kniep, 390 ; 393, 397, 398, 403-
4 ; the last of Tischbein, 600
Tischlied, 528
Tivoli, Goethe in, 397
Tochter, Die naturliche, see Eugenie
Todtentanz, Der, 606
Tonndorf, 680
Td'pfer, Der, operetta by Andr<5, 180
Topfer, Karl ; his dramatisation of Goethe's
Hermann und Dorothea, 371
Torbole, 660
Torgau, 686
Torremuzza, Gabbrielle Lancilot Castelli,
Principe di, 392
Tragedy, Italian, 372 ; Goethe studying
the nature of Tragedy, 489 ; talks finely
about Tragedy to Madame de Stael, 543
Trapp, Augustin ; Goethe's letter to Trapp
in French, 45, 59 ; cousin of Charitas
Meixner, 49 ; another letter in French,
65 ; mentioned, 91 ; letter to, from Strass
burg, 102
Trebra, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von,
268-9
Treptow, 58, 91
Trier, Clemens Wenceslaus, Prince of
Saxony, Elector of, 155, 156
Trier, Goethe in, 457
Trier, Johann Philipp, Elector of (died
1768) ; his entry into Frankfurt, 44
Trilogie der Leidenschaft, 646
Trippel, Alexander ; his bust of Goethe,
frontispiece ; in Rome, 379 ; making a
bust of" Goethe, 401
Tristan and Isolde, 590
Tristram Shandy, by Sterne, 142, 234-5
Triumph der Empfindsamkeit, 282, 367
" Triumviri amoris," 407, 426
Tubingen, 492
Tuesday evening teas at Goethe's house, 643
Tuesday mornings, Goethe visited by the
Grand Duchess on, 643, 694
Tuesdays, Goethe visiting the Princess
Caroline on, 569
Tugenden, Die weibliclien, masque, 326
Tumour on Goethe's neck, 77, 83-4
Tunis, 190
Turandot, by Gozzi, 525^ 527^
Tiirckheim, Bernard Friedrich von, Lili's
husband, 300
Tiirckheim, Anna Elisabeth (nie Schone- |

man) ; " Liii," Goethe's first meeting with
her, 214; her portrait. 215; Goethe
calls to see her, 216: " Liebe ! Liebe I
lass mich los," 217 ; society" life, 218 ;
Goethe rebels, 219; Liii in Offenbach,
221 ; Goethe gives Liii a copy of Erwin
und Elmire, 222 ; Fraulein Delph, 225 ;
Lilijand Goethe in Offenbach, 225-6 ; cool
ing again, ib. ; the stage performance of
Erwin und Elmire, 228 ; Cornelia ad
vises Goethe to break off with Liii, 220 ;
Lavater, 230; Lili's birthday, 230-231 ; Liii
revisited, 232 ; Liii and Goethe in Offen
bach, 232-5; again at Ewald's wedding,
236 ; rich presents for Liii, 237 ; Friede
rike's story, ib. ; Lili's Park, ib. ; Liii at
the theatre, 239 ; again, ib. ; Goethe's
mind made up, ib.; Liii lost, Frankfurt
is unendurable, 240 ; the lines to the little
golden heart, 243 ; verses to Liii, 252
("Holde Liii, warst so lang"); Goethe
enraged with Liii and her family, 25g ;
Goethe visits her in Strassburg, 298-300 ;
her history, ib. ; Liii mentioned, 463 ; her
son, 561, 743 ; mentioned, 612, 628 note, 652
Tiirckheim, Elisabeth, Lili's only daughter,
299 ; her married name was Brunck
Tiirckheim, Friedrich Wilhelm von, Lili's
third son (he was very like his mother,
"er war ja ganz sie selbst," writes his
eldest brother), 561, 743
Tyrol, the, 371 U
" Uber Thai und Fluss getragen," 490
" Ubermuthig sieht's nicht aus," in facsimile,
¦" 260
' ' Ueber Graber, vorwarts ! " 706
Ugolino, by Gerstenberg, 82, 86
Uhland, Johann Ludwig, 144
Ulrich, Caroline, married to Riemer in 1815,
577, 586, 587, 588, 607 note
Ultimatum, 534
Ulysses auf Phda, 373 ; see also Nausikaa
" Und wenn mich am Tag die Feme," 692 ;
(Hempel's Goethe, iii. 166)
Undine, 605
Unger, Johann Friedrich, 505, 509, 514
Ungleichen Hausgenossen, Die, 348
Unities, the dramatic, 31, 112, 176, 190
Universities, see Giessen, Gottingen, Halle,
Heidelberg, Leipzig, Jena, Marburg,
Strassburg, Wurzburg
Unstrut, river, 2
Unterhaltufigen deutscher Ausgewander-
ten, 237, 476
Unterseen, 301 note
" Unwiderstehlich muss die Schone uns
entziicken," 73
Unzelmann, Friederike Auguste Conradine,
524
"Urania," see Roussillon
Uranien, An, 143
Uz, Johann Peter, 31

Valais, the, 302

INDEX.

789

Vallendar, 156, 198
Valmy, 454
"Vanessa" (Hester Vanhomrigh), 215
Vamhagen, Rahel (nie Levin), 476, 625 note
Vasthi, Die stolze, by Gotter, 516
Vatican, the, 397 ; the statues by torch
light, 405
Vaud, the, 301 note
Veit, Dorothea, see Schlegel
Venediger Epigramme, 437, 440 ; arranged
for Schiller's Musenalmanach, 477 ; sent
to Schlegel for revision, 514
Venetian painting, 438
Venice, art-treasures from, 14 ; Goethe in,
125, 372-3, 437-8
Venice, Goethe's father in, 372
Venuti, Lodovico, 389, 395
Verdun, 453, 456
Vergebliche Milhe, 614
Vermischte Gedichte, the first collection of
the boy Goethe's poems, 40
Verona, 372, 438
Versailles, 114, 2g8, 433
Verschaffelt, Max von, 3gg
Vesuvius, 3go, 391, 395
Vevay, 301 note
Vicar of Wakefield, no, 167, 180
Vicenza, 372, 438
Vicolo della Fontanella, Rome, 375
Victor, Claude Perrin, 561
Vienna, 321, 377
Vier Weltalter, Die, 326
Vieweg, Friedrich, 488
" Vigilando ascendimus," 630
Vigny, Alfred de, 677
Violoncello, Goethe playing, 113, 129, 184
Virgil, 209
Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio), 376
Vogel, Die, 312
Vogel, Christian Georg Karl, 367, 454
Vogel, Karl, physician, 687, 705, 708, 715,
717
Vogel, Professor, of Dresden, 587 note
Vohs, Friederike, 521
Vohs, Heinrich, actor, 502
Voigt, Christian Gottlieb von (i743-l8i9),
331, 335, 412, 416, 424, 425, 430, 435, 446,
450, 466, 467, 469, 477, 486 note, 502,
508, 519, 524, 526 note, 546, 580, 594,
603, 605, 609, 611, 620 note, 622 note, 627,
note, 629, 630, 631 ; death, 638 ; 650, 718
Voigt, Johann Karl Wilhelm, brother of
Christian Gottlob, 269, 310, 3I2» 335, 34o,
Voigt, Johann Heinrich (1751-1823), Pro
fessor of Mathematics at Jena, 443, 447,
557
Voigts (not Voigt), Johanna (Jenny), 210
Volcanoes, see iEtna, Kammerberg, Vesu
vius
Volgstedt, Karl Albrecht, 307, 3°8, 316
Volkslieder, 112, 118, 122, 128, 130 ; in Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, 557! Marianne
singing Volkslieder, 625
Vollmonde, Dem aufgehenden, 692
Vollmondnacht, 627
Volpertshausen, 146
Voipone, by Ben Jonson, 508 note
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de, 52, 86 ;
an Alexandrine of his quoted, 193 ; his

Mahomet translated by Goethe, 509-510
(and see Mahomet)', his Tancrede, 515
(and see Tancrede) ', Napoleon on Maho
met, 579 ; Mort de Cisar, 580 ; Zaire,
595
" Vor die Augen meiner Lieben," 709
" Vor vierzehn Tagen harrten wir," 337
Voss, Abraham, son of Johann Heinrich, 525
Voss, Johann Heinrich, his first visit to
Weimar and meeting with Goethe, 467-
468 ; comes to Jena, 532, 533; poor judg
ment as to Eugenie, 536; Goethe hopes
to gain him for the University, 539 ; he
visits Weimar, 542 ; Luise, 542 ; visits
Weimar, 544 ; Goethe procures him allow
ances, ib. ; invited to Wurzburg, 545 ; to
Heidelberg, 550 ; Goethe's regret, 552 ;
Voss comes to take leave, 553 ; in Heidel
berg, 583 ; Goethe in Heidelberg in 1814,
619 ; attack on Stolberg, 639
Voss, _ Heinrich, 525 ; professorship in
Weimar Gy?nnasium, 542 ; visits Goethe,
542 ; doctor's diploma, 543-4 ; he takes up
his new duties, 544 ; invited to Wurzburg,
545 ; his love for Goethe, ib. ; anecdotes,
547 note, 548 ; Schiller's illness, 549, 550 ;
Schiller's death, 551-552 ; the elder Voss's
farewell, 553 ; in Heidelberg, 583
Voss, Ernestine (nie Boie), her flower-
borders, 536 ; visits Weimar, 542 ; again,
544 ; memories of her in Jena, 682
Vulpius, Christian August, brother of
Goethe's Christiane, 417, 418, 432, 433,
465 note, 529-530, 556 note, 741-744
Vulpius, Christiane Sophie, see Goethe
Vulpius,f Helene (nie Deahne), wife of
Christian August, 743
Vulpius, Johann Friedrich, father of Chris
tiane, 417
Vulpius, Juliane Auguste, aunt of Christiane,
467 ; her death, 742
Vulpius, Sophie Ernestine Luise, sister of
Christiane, 417, 467 ; her death, 556 and
742 W
W  , the initial of the girl with whom
Goethe was in love just before going to
Leipzig, 52
W. K. F-, see Weimarer Kunst-Freunde
Wackenroder, Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand
Professor of Pharmacy in Jena, 715
Wagner, HeinrichLeopold, 728-9 ; 209, 223-4,
258
Wagner, Johann Adolf, the stranger whom
Goethe recommended, 42, 44
Wagner, Otto, 260, 449
Wahlverwandtschaften, Die, 101, 574, 582,
590, 597-8
Waitz (or Waiz), Johann Christian Wilhelm,
342
Waldeck, 252 _
Waldeck, Christian August, Prince of, 385
390 ; commissions Trippel to make a bust
of Goethe, 401
Waldeck, Christiane, Princess of, 233, 238
Waldner von Freundstein, Luise AdeJheide,
280 note ; Goethe draws her portrait, 285 ;
attractive to Goethe, 291, 432

790

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

Wallenstein, the general subject^ 481, 487,
489, 494, 496-7, 1 4gg ; the division into
several plays, 499 ; Wallenstei?is Lager
played, 500, 504 ; the King of Sweden,
538 ; 611 ; Die Piccolomini, 500 ; a copy
sent to Iffland, 501 ; played in Weimar,
502, 504; the King of Sweden, 538;
Wallensteins Tod, forming, 502 ; the con
cluding acts sent to Goethe, 503 ; played,
504 ; the King and Queen of Prussia, 506 ;
the Duchess Luise's gift of silver plate,
509; 538; Wallenstein, the trilogy played,
504, 538
Walpurgisnacht, Erste, ballad, 508-9
Walpurgis Night, 698, 699
Walter, Georg, father of Cornelia Schelhorn,
great-grandfather ofthe poet Goethe, 721
Wanda, by Werner, 571, 572, 573
Wandelnde Glocke, Die, 606
Wanderer, Der, 138, 139, 146, 166
Wanderers Nachtlied (17 76), 254
Wanderers Nachtlied (1783), 713-714
Wanderers Sturmlied, 138
Wa?iderjahre, see Wilhelm Meister
Wandsbecker Bote, 178
War Department, Weimar, 272, 274, 307,
312, 316, 322, 328, 337
War, Goethe's dislike of, 350, 450, 456 1
War, Karl August's love of, 278, 350, 353-4
Wartburg, the, 269, 314
" Warum stehen Sie davor," in facsimile,
449
Was bedeutet die Bewegung," 626
"Was gehst du, schone Nachbarin?" 525
"Was reich und arm," 165
Was wir bringen (1802), 531, 532
Was wir bringen (acted in Halle, 1814), 613
Wasenburg, the; 101
Wasserzoll, the inn near Strassburg, 121, 228
Waterloo, Battle of, 622
Weather, harsh, torments Goethe, 318, 333,
345, 37°, 4X9> 42o note, 742
Weber, Bernhard Anselm, 614
Weber, Karl Maria von, his opera Oberon,
686
Wedel, Otto Joachim Moritz von, 246, 250,
2g5 note, 301, 312, 425
Wednesday breakfasts at the Princess
Caroline's, 590
Wednesday Krdnzchen, 524, 525, 526, 528,
529
Wednesday receptions, Goethe's, 555, 556,
565, 59o, 591
Wegelin, Jakob, 278
Weger, August, 302
Weiber, Die gitten, 515 note
Weiblichen Tugenden, Die, masque, 326
note
Weidmann, Marie Luise, 64
Weilburg, 154
Weimar Park, 76, 270-71, 305, 312, 338, 417,
445, 460, 466, 495, 522, 552, 743. See also
' Ettersburg, Tiefurt, Belvedere
Weimar Art Exhibition, 503, 524, 532, 540,
, 545, 555
Weimar Castle, 245, 269, 271, 425, 427, 428,
430, 435, 44<>, 445, 460, 466, 491, 492, 495,
496, 501, 507, 5o'9, 5", 5^5, 517, 52i, 522,
523, 527, 536 ; at length occupied by the
ducal family, 537 ; 546, 561, 743

Weimar Furstengruft, 661, 672-3, 681, 719
Weimar Fiirstenhaus, 245-6, 271, 322, 468
Weimar Gymnasium, 340, 444, 446, 533, 542,
557,589
Weimar "Palais," 246, 595
Weimar " Oberaufsicht," 597, 638, 650, 655,
679, 708, 717
Weimar citizens amateur theatre, 250
Weimar city church, 562
Weimar court and garrison church, 562
Weimar amateur theatre, 507 note (cp.
5rf)
Weimar ducal amateur theatre, 264, 265,
271, 274, 304 ; Kalliste, 307 - 8, 311 ;
317, 326, 337-8. See also Ettersburg,
Tiefurt, and Theatricals
Weimar Theatre, under Bellomo, 337-8,
442, 443 ; under Goethe, 442-3, 444, 446,
447, 448, 460, 461, 464-5, 466, 467, 475 ;
Goethe begs to be relieved, 480 ; 481,
482 ; Goethe again desires to be free from
the theatre, 485; the "Regie" arranged,
486 ; 488, 492, 498 ; rebuilding, 499 ; open
ing performance, 499-500 ; 501, 502, 504,
506, 513; Kotzebue, 515; 519, 521, 522;
Madame Unzelmann, 524 ; Nathan, 525 ;
Ion, 526 ; Turandot, 527 ; Kotzebue, ib. ;
Iphigenie, 530 ; Alarcos, ib. ; Herder's
complaint about the Gymnasium, 533 ;
535, 536, 537, 539, 543, 545, 546, 547, 548,
556-7 ; reopened after Jena, 564-5 ; visits
Leipzig, 566 ; 567, 572, 580 ; its history
from 1808 to 1812, 5g3-597 ; Goethe desires
to be relieved, 593 ; 603, 604 ; Essex, 607 ;
608, 611, 613, 614, 620, 621-2 ; the Wolffs'
departure, 628-9, 630 ; Goethe's final re
lease, 649-650 ; Goethe and Coudray
sketch a plan for a new theatre, 660-661 ;
the old one burnt, 661; the new one built,
662 ; the new one opened, 665 ; Iphigenie,,
667. See also Alarcos, Beck, Becker, Braut
von Messina, Claudine, Don Giovanni,
Egmont, Eugenie, Euphrosyne, Figaro,
Flauto Magico, Florian, Gotz, Hamlet,
Iffland, Ion, Iphigenie, King John, Kot
zebue, Lauchstedt, Leipzig, Mahomet,
Mozart, Opera, Rochlitz, Tancride,
Turandot, Unzelmann, Wallenstein.
Weimar, the Estates of, 269, 632, 708
Weimar state domains (or crown lands),
274, 307, 535, 466. See also Batty
Weimar Drawing Academy, 246, 276 ;
Goethe's lectures on the skeleton, 324 ;
386 ; exhibitions, 486, 509, 692-3 ; the
public competitions at these exhibitions,
503, 509, 510-11, 515-16, 524, 525, 532, 540,
545, 555 ; Kraus's death, 563 ; the
Academy brought into closer connection
with the Library, 597 ; mentioned, 664
Weimar Library, 526, 538, 559, 597, 667,
672, 679, 681
Weimar Town Hall, 529, 583 ¦
"Weimar contingent" to the Rheinbund,
605
Weimar regiment, 450, 453, 454, 457
Weimar Schiesshaus," 538, 554, 588
Weimar, the Biirgermeister of, in 1802, see
Schultze
Weimar, Bernhard the Great, Duke of
(1604-1639), 307, 450

INDEX.

791

Weimar, Anna Amalia, Duchess of (by birth
a princess of Brunswick-Liineburg, born
October 24, 1739, married to Ernst
August Constantin, Duke of Weimar," in
1756, widowed in 1758, Regent of Weimar
until 1775, died April 10, 1807, in her sixty-
.eighth year) ; her cordial reception of
Goethe, 246; her portrait, 247; "per
sonified good-sense," 250; "jokes and
pranks," 255 ; she wins over Fritsch, 261 ;
Goethe's friendship with her, 281-282 ; her
visit to his parents, 295-6, 732 ; Goethe
gives her a copy of his unprinted writings,
350 ; she is pleased .with Lavater, 363 ;
her plan of journeying to Italy, 402, 404,
407-408, 410 ; her place of residence when
in Rome, 412; starting for Italy, 419;
Kayser leaves her train, 422-3 ; she invites
Goethe to meet her in Italy, 436 ; her
arrival in Venice, 438 ; return with\ Goethe
to Weimar, 438 ; social gatherings at her
house, 442 ; persuades Goethe to work at
Wilhelm Meister, 442 ; Friday gatherings,
445, 446, 448 ; her interest in the Hemster-
huis gems, 460 ; death of Constantin, 464 ;
her evening circle sketched by Kraus, 473-
475 ; residing in Tiefurt, 484 ; kindness to
Caroline Jagemann, 488 ; Kotzebue in
her favour, 513, 741 ; Paldophron und
Neoterpe, written for her private theatre,
516 ; visits Goethe after his dreadful ill
ness, 519 ; Goethe visiting her, 535 ;
Winckelmann's letters to Berendis, 546 ;
Goethe visiting her after Schiller's death,
552 ; her flight from Weimar, 560 ; she
returns, 563 ; visited by Goethe, 564 ; her
death, 565 ; memories of her in Ettersburg,
681
Weimar, Friedrich Ferdinand Constantin,
Prince of (1758-1793), first meeting with
Goethe, 210-211, 228 ; cold to Goethe, 246 ;
Caroline von Ilten, 280-1, 291 ; he quarrels
with Knebel, 311 ; his new house-estab
lishment, 311, 315 ; acting, 317 ; he starts
on his travels, 402 ; his shameful adven
tures, 351 ; the kind behaviour of Karl
August, 352 ; Constantin made a Lieu
tenant-Colonel in the Saxon army, 352 ;
his death, 464
Weimar, Karl August, Duke of (born
September 3, 1757, entered on his reign
in September 1775, married Luise of
Hessen-Darmstadt in October 1775, be
came Grand Duke in 1815, died June 14,
1828) ; first meeting with Goethe, 210-11 ;
commissions Knebel to make inquiries
about Wagner's farce, 224 ; his betrothal
227-228 ; 1 invites Goethe to Weimar,
240 ; his marriage, 241 ; his portrait,
245 ; addresses Goethe as "Du," 248 ;
Goethe's work on his character, 276-
280 ; the Swiss journey, 295-305 ; his
collection of engravings, etc., 280, 309,
310, 314 ; "vivid and luminous" conversa
tion, 313 ; the Countess von Werther, 318 ;
Goethe refuses to go to Cassel, 319; "a
very weighty conversation," 320 ; the
Duke's passion for hunting and extrava
gant life, 325, 326 ; a " radical explana
tion," 327 ; " a long and satisfactory con- J

versation," 327; "a prince's obliquities,"
350; "playing at soldiers," 350; "Ed
egli fu pittore," 351; Constantin, 351 ;
Furstenbund, 352 ; wild boars, 353 ;
Goethe and the Duke nearly quarrel, 354 ;
the Duke a great believer in salvings of
conscience, 354; "puts away the courtiers,
puts on the dogs," ib. ; "after forest
fashion," at Ilmenau, 355 ; Goethe begs
leave of absence, 368 ; Goethe writes to
the Duke, from Verona, 372 ; from Venice,
373 J from Rome, 378 ; the Duke's fall from
his horse in Berlin, 382 ; quotations from
Goethe's letters to Karl August, 385-6,
(from Naples) 394-5, 399-400, 404-5, 408-9
410-n, (from Florence) 413 ; Emilie Gore,
416, 420, 423-4 ; hurt foot, 420 ; Aschers-
leben, 420, 427, 432-3 ; fall near Dresden,
423 ; Merck's despair, ib. ; Schiller's pro
fessorship, 424, 425 ; the Duke hears
some of the Romische Elegien, 427 ; fond
of August Herder, 431 ; godfather of
August Goethe, 434 ; his Bohemian chaise,
436 ; in Silesia, 438, 439-440 ; the Theatre,
see Weimar Theatre ; makes Goethe a
present of a house, 450; the campaign
in France, 451, 453-457 ; the siege of
Mainz, 460-463 ; his brother's death, 464 ;
the Duke leaves the Prussian service,
465-6 ; angry at the publication of the
Rd'mische Elegien, 477 ; re-enters the
Prussian service, 4gg ; his love of the
French drama, 502, 509 ; art prizes, 503 ;
Fichte's dismissal, 504 ; enthusiasm for
the drama, 509 ; increases Schiller's salary,
ib. ; Caroline Jagemann, see Jagemann ;
interest in Mahomet, sog, 513, 514; the
Holy Communion in Ma?ia Stuart, 515 ;
opposed to the plan of celebrating the new
century, 517 ; banishes Kotzebue, 741 ;
increases Schiller's salary, 545 ; makes
Goethe a Wirklicher Geheimerath,
546 ; absent from Weimar when Schiller
died, 552; "a pregnant conversation,"
shortly before Jena, 559 ; Napoleon's
anger, 562; Napoleon in, Weimar, 578-
581 ; harsh treatment of Goethe in the
affairs of the theatre, 593-4 ; in Ilmenau
with Goethe (1813), 607 ; leaves the
Rheinbund, 609 ; Goethe's petition about
his son, 610-611 ; the Duke goes to the
. Netherlands, 611 ; his return to Weimar
expected in vain, 614 ; meets Goethe at
Mainz (1814), 617 ; meets Goethe at
Heidelberg (1815), 627-8 ; makes Goethe
first Minister, 629 ; the Order of the Falcon,
630-631 ; the new Constitution, 631 ; the
Dog of Aubry, 649 ; the Fiirstengruft,
661, 681-; the jubilees, 663-667 ;3 death,
686 ; Goethe's memories of him at Ilmenau,
714
Weimar, Karl Friedrich, Grand Duke of,
born 1783, married Maria Paulowna of
Russia in 1804, became Grand Duke in
1828, on Karl August's death ; his birth,
337 ; is followed by a change for the better
in Karl August, 350-351 ; a very weakly
child, 353 ; mentioned, 353, 361, 423,
428, 431 ; dining at Goethe's house, 488 ;
betrothal, 507 ; at the Wednesday Kranz-

792

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

chen, 525, 528 ; acting in a pageant, 527,
528 ; starting for Paris, 528 ; back again,
535 ; his bride, 536 ; he brings her to
Weimar, 546 ; he flies from Weimar, 560 ;
returns with his wife, 567 ; August Goethe
his page, 604 ; his desire to keep the actor
Wolff in Weimar, 629 ; mentioned, 664 ;
in St. Petersburg at the time of his father's
death, 686 ; Beulwitz*s letter, 690 ; return
to Weimar, 693 ; visiting Goethe, 708,
710
Weimar, Luise Auguste Amalia, Princess of,
daughter of Karl August, only lived five
years (1779-1784); her birth, 279; Goethe
arranges for her " maintenance," 322 ; her
death, 352
Weimar, Caroline Luise, Princess of, born
1786, married Karl Friedrich Ludwig of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1810, died in
1816 ; her birth, 362; dining at Goethe's
house, 488 ; at the Wednesday Krdnz
chen, 525 ; acting in a pageant 527 ;
again at a Krdnzchen, 528 ; at Goethe's
concerts, 742 ; at Goethe's Thursda3^
mornings, 545, 546, 547 ; at his Wednes
days, 555 ; her talent for drawing, 558 ; her
flight from Weimar, 560 ; Goethe visits
her on Tuesdays, 569 ; her Wednesday
breakfasts, 590 ; Werner's reading at
Goethe's house, 572 ; her marriage, 583,
5?5
Weimar, Luise, Duchess of, by birth a
princess of Hessen-Darmstadt, born Janu-
-ary 30, 1757, died February 14, 1830 ;
mentioned, 167; Goethe's first sight of
her, 169, 724 ; Goethe meets her at
Karlsruhe, 227-8 ; her betrothal, 228 ;
her marriage, 241 ; her early trials in
Weimar, 245-246; displeased with Goethe,
247, 251 ; Stolberg's praise of her, 249-50;
Goethe's praise of her, 255 ; mentioned
by Klopstock, 263 ; the Louisenfest, 271 ;
she grows friendly to Goethe, 277 ;
Goethe provides for her birthdays, 282-3;
her relations with her husband, 277,
318, 325 ; improve, 350 ; Emilie Gore,
420 ; her generous judgment of Goethe's
relation with Christiane, 426 ; her interest
in Tasso, 428 ; her hostility to the French
Revolution, 442 ; visits Goethe's house,
416, 488 ; gift of silver plate to Schiller,
509 ; her quarrel with Goethe about the
theatre, 521 ; Goethe draws near to her
again, 544 ; she comes to his Thursday
morning receptions, 545, 546/547; she
alone of the Ducal family remains in
Weimar, 560, 744; she 'meets Napoleon,
562, 665 ; Goethe visiting her, 565 ; Goethe
reading aloud in the evenings in her
apartments, 569," 574 ; Werner reading at
Goethe's house, 572 ; her Friday evening
gatherings, 590, 597 note, 609, 620, 621 ;
the Duchess urges Goethe to go to a
watering-place in 1815, 622 ; visits Goethe
on Tuesday mornings, 643, 694 ; enter
taining F. A. Wolf, 660 note ; her golden
wedding, 665 ; her message to Goethe on
the death of Karl August, 686-7; Goethe
writing to her, 687; visits Goethe on
- Tuesdays, 694 ; death, 698-9

Weimar, Karl Bernhard, Prince of, son of
Karl August, born 1792, 450, 525, 742
Weimar, children of Karl August born dead,
„ 323, 353, 427 , ^ .
Weimar, Maria Paulowna, Grand-Duchess
of, by birth a princess of Russia, born
1786, married to Karl Friedrich of Weimar
in 1804; became Grand-Duchess in 1828,
5°7, 53s ; comes to Weimar, 546 ; at
Goethe's Thursday receptions, 546, 547 ",
visits Goethe, 555 ; return to Weimar after
the Jena flight, 567 ; Goethe's reading
aloud in the Duchess's apartments, 569 ;
she subsidises the Cabinet 'of Physical
Science of Jena, 597, 67g ; her anxiety
when the Czar advanced into Germany,
604 ; she flies from Weimar, 605 ; Goethe
finds her at Teplitz, 606 ; she visits Goethe
on Thursday mornings, 643, 694 ; her
farewell to Madame Szymanowska, 648 ;
F. A. Wolf, 660 note ; Beulwitz's letter,
690 ; visits Goethe on Thursdays, 694,
708, 710, 717 ; her message to Goethe on
the death of the Duchess Luise, 6gg ; her
last visit to Goethe, 717
Weimar, Marie Luise Alexandrine, daugh
ter of Karl Friedrich. Born 1808 ; mar
ried in 1827 to Friedrich Karl Alexander
of Prussia, see Prussia
Weimar, Marie Luise Auguste Katharine,
daughter of Karl Friedrich, born 1811,
married in 1829 to Friedrich Wilhelm
Ludwig of Prussia, is at present (1883)
Empress of Germany, see Prussia
Weimar, Karl Alexander August Johann,
Crown Prince of, son of Karl Friedrich,
born 1818, became Crown Prince in 1828
on the death of his grandfather Karl
August ; Soret, his tutor, 642 ; visited
by Goethe's grandson, 687 ; visits Goethe
in Dornburg, 692 ; visiting Goethe in
Weimar, 708, 71 r
Weimarer Kunst - Freunde (W. K. F.),
652
Weisen und die Leute, Die, 614
Weisenau, see Weissenau
Weissagungen des Bakis, 497
Weisse, Christian Felix, 31, 50, 55, 68, 69-
70, 72, 73, 78, 82, 115 ; Goethe visits him
in 1797, 487 note
Weissenau (not Weisenau), 463
Weissenstein (now Wilhelmshbhe), 2gs
Weller, Christian Ernst Friedrich, 700
Wellesley, Arthur, Richard, and Charles,
sons ofthe Duke of Wellington, 690
Welling, Georg von, 89
"Welt, Die Beste," Goethe's album verses
ridiculing, 52
Wenck, Helfrich Bernhard, 133, 138
" Wenn_ einen seeligen Biedermann," 172,
724 ; in facsimile, 173
"Wenn einst nach uberstandnen Lebens-
miih- und Schmerzen," 152
Wermetswyl, 230
Werner, Abraham Gottlob, 432, 558
Werner, Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias, 511
note; in Jena and Weimar, 571-573;
again, 589, 590; mentioned, 595
" Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass," allu
sion to, 506

INDEX.

793

Wernigerode, 270
Werther, Jakob Friedemann, Count von,
197
Werther, Johanna Luise, Countess von (by
birth Freiin vom und zum Stein), 197
note, 280, 318
"Werther Uniform, the," 227
Werthers, Freuden des jungen, by Nicolai,
219
Werthers, Leiden des jungen, anticipations
of, jn the Strassburg period, no; antici
pations of, 148, 152, 172, 176, 179 ; writ
ten, 186-187; mentioned to Lavater, igo ;
read by Sophie Laroche, 193 ; given to
Weygand, ib. ; mentioned by name to
Lotte, 193 ; sent to the Kestners, 203 ;
Jacobi on Werther, 204 ; Kestner's par
don, 207 ; the critics on Werther, 208,
218-219 (and see Burger, Garve, Jacobi,
Lavater, Lessing, Nicolai, Sulzer, Zimmer
mann) ; the name of the author betrayed,
208 ; compared with Stella, 221 ; alluded
to, 282, 326 ; slightly altered, 366 ; revised,
ib., and 367; Herder's aid, 367; men
tioned, 493 ; Napoleon's criticism, 579
Werthern (or Werther), von Beichlingen zu
Frohndorf, Emilie (nie von Munch -
hausen), 265, 290
Werthern von Beichlingen zu Frohndorf,
Hans Karl Leopold, 613
Werthes, Franz August Clemens, 726, igg
Wesselhoft, Betty, 6gi
West Indian, by Cumberland, 256, 265
West Wind, Song to the, 627
Westostlicher Divan, 614, 616, 617, 620-628,
629, 630, 639, 651
Wetstein, Johann Rudolf, his edition of
Homer, 152
Wette, Die, 593
Wetzlar, 127, 168
Wetzlar, Goethe in, 143-153, 159-160, 722-3
Weygand, Christian Friedrich, Leipzig pub
lisher, 177 ; takes Clavigo and Werther,
193 ; publishes the Puppenspiel, 728 ; be
trays the name of the author of Werther,
208, 223
Weyland, Elisabeth Katharine, see Scholl
Weyland, Friedrich Leopold, 98, 100-101,
106-298
Weyland, Luise, see Rosenstiel
Weyrach, Obristwachtmeister von, 450
" Whimsical," Lenz's mind, 120
"Wie das Gestirn," quoted, 712
"Wie des Goldschmieds Bazarladchen, 628
Wied, Johann Friedrich rAlexander Chris
tian, Count von ; his Court, 198
Wiederfinden, 627
Wiegenlied dem jungen Mineralogen
Walter von Goethe, 636
Wieland, Christoph Martin (1733-1813);
mentioned, 1 ; Don Sylvio, 51 ; Shake
speare, 51, 63, 93 ; Comische Erzahlun
gen, 56 ; Musarion, 78, 136 ; Idris, 82 ;
Dialogen des Diogenes, 94 ; Goethe's
reverence for him, 95, 96 ; mentioned,
112, 135 ; Agathon, 136 ; Gedanken iiber
eine alte Aufschri/t, 136; Der Goldne
Spiegel, 160 ; declining in Goethe's estima
tion, 177; Der deutsche Merkur, 179;
Alceste, 179; Gd'tter Helden und Wie

land, 725 ; Johanna Fahlmer's endea
vour to reconcile Goethe and Wieland,
180 ; renewed with some success, 726-
728 ; Knebel reconciles Goethe and Wie
land, 210-211 ; Goethe's first letter from
Wieland, 211 ; Wieland still timid, will
not come to Frankfurt, 215-16 ; Goethe and
Wieland enemies again, 223 ; Goethe's
friendly intentions, 240 ; Wieland's first
meeting with Goethe, 244 ; his friendly
relation with him, 246, 249 ; Goethe sup
ports the Merkur, 250 ; Wieland approves
of Goethe's influence on the Duke, 279 ;
Oberon; 283 - 284 ; Goethe's portrait of
Wieland, 285 ; Wieland's visit to Goethe's
parents, 295 ; calls their house Casa santa,
296 ; Goethe sends him a laurel wreath,
309 ; their steady friendship, 360 ; Wie
land pleased with Lavater, 363 ; Wieland
aids Goethe in revising his works, 367 ;
Goethe writes to Wieland from Rome, 377
note, 378 ; friendly on return, 420 ; men
tioned, 442 ; invites Voss to Weimar,
467-8 ; the Freedom Vertigo, 470 ; the
injury done to the Merkur by the Horen,
472 ; Wieland bitter towards Goethe and
Schiller, 480 ; Goethe aids in the revision
of Oberon, 481 ; Wieland in Osmannstedt,
496 ; his self-seclusion not approved of by
Goethe, 505 ; Gerning contributes to the
Merkur, 506 ; Frau von Laroche in Os
mannstedt, 507-8 ; Wieland disapproves of
the adaptation of i,Gdtz, 545 ; Wieland
draws near to Goethe again after Schiller's
death, 553-4 ; the Emperor of Russia, 556 ;
his bust crowned at a representation of
Tasso, 565 ; mentioned, ib. ; Napoleon
in Weimar, 580-581; Wieland's death,
604
Wieland, Dorothea, nie Hillenbrand, wife
of the poet, 249, 468
Wieland's children, 249, 334, and see
Stichling
Wieland's grandson, see Stichling
Wieliczka salt-mines, 439
Wiesbaden, 351, 429, 614
Wiesbaden, visited by Goethe, 45 ; (in 1814),
616-617; C"1 T8i5), 622-623
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, the puppet-
show story, 115 ; the novel begun, 283;
interests Charlotte von Stein, 293 ; con
tinued, 307; mentioned, 334 note; con
tinued, 340 note; the completion of six
books, 346-7 ; excluded from Goethe's plan
of remodelling in 1786-9, 366-7 ; Vicenza,
Mignon's home, 372 ; Wilhelm Meister
mentioned, 394 ; allusion to Wilhelm, 402 ;
the Duchess Amalia urges Goethe to
work at the novel, 442 ; Goethe at length
resolves to revise it, 467 ; sends Herder
the first book, 469 *, Herder's narrow
criticism, ib. ; Goethe working at the
novel, 469 ; its printing begun, 473 ; the
Third Book discussed with (Schiller, 475 ;
477, 478 ; the publisher eager, 478 ; the j
Third Book well received, 479 ; to finish/
Meister Goethe's chief anxiety, 480,
481, 482, 483; the Last Book sent to
Schiller, 484 ; final revision, 485 ; the
Queen of Prussia and Wilhelm Meister

794

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

506-7; Goethe's personal presence makes
Dorothea Schlegel think of Wilhelm
Meister, 512 note; revised for Cotta's
edition, 555 ; Bettine Brentano's Mignon
craze, 565
Wilhelm. Meister's Wanderjahre ; the
drowned boys, 201-2 ; the short stories,
566 ; begun, 573-4, 590, 598 ; published in
its early form, 651 ; recasting, 670, 674,
. 675, 685, 694, 695
^ Wilhelmiade, my existence has become
a," 402, 408
Wilhelm Tell, the subject considered by
Goethe, 493, 497, 499, 557, 677
Wilhelm Tell, Schiller's play, 539, 541,
543
Wilhelmshohe, see Weissenstem
Wilhelmsthal, a residence of the Weimar
royal family in their Duchy of Eisenach,
325 ; Goethe there, 351, 431, 445 ; men
tioned, 484, 687
Willemer, Johann Jakob von {born March
29, 1760, died October ig, 1838, was
married three times, by his first wife he
had three daughters, by his second, one
son) ; described, 618"; his kindness to
Marianne Jung, 618 ; the invented perfor
mance of Tasso, 619-620 ; marriage to
Mairanne, 6ig ; Goethe's visit in 1815,
623-4 ; Goethe goes to live in Willemer's
town house, 624 ; returns for a short time
to the Gerbermiihle, 625; parting, 626; the
Willemers come to Heidelberg, 626-7; they
leave for home, 627 ; Goethe writing to Wil
lemer, 629-630 ; Willemer visits Weimar,
638-9
Willemer, Maria Anna Katharina Therese
von (nie Jung), (born November 20, 1784,
at Linz on the Danube, taken into Wille
mer's household in 1800, married to
Willemer, 1814, died December 6, i860),
591 note ; her early life, 618 ; her marriage,
619 ; Goethe's first meeting with her in
1814, 618 ; returns from Heidelberg and
finds her married, 619 ; Goethe's visit in
1815,623-4; exchange of verses, 624; Mari
anne's portrait, 624 ; the Frankfurt Fair,
625 ; singing, ib. ; parting, 626 ; the Wille
mers' visit to Heidelberg, 626-7 '¦> the last
parting, 627 ; Goethe writing to the Wille
mers, 629-30 ; Goethe starts for Frankfurt
in 1816, but is prevented by the over
turning of his carriage, 637 ; a passionate
outbreak in 1819, 63g ; Goethe's silence
for a while in 1822, 643 ; the poem Dem
aufgehenden Vollmonde, 6g2 ; the change
in Frankfurt feeling towards Goethe,
701-2 ; her letters made into a packet,
7og ; Marianne told of the packet, 716
Willemer, Abraham, son of J. J. Willemer
(born May 24, i7g4, killed in a duel June
19, 1818), 624 note; killed by Bockum-
Dolffs, 638
Willemer, Rosine, the eldest daughter of J.
J. Willemer (died March 16, 1845) see
Stadel
Willemer, Amalie Henriette, Willemer's
second daughter, married Friedrich Scharff
in 1803, 618
Willemer, Maximiliane Eleonore, Wille

mer's third daughter, married Johann
. Andrea in 1809, 618
WillkommeJi, 614
Wilson, Professor ("Christopher North'),
712
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, the pupil
of Oeser, 67 ; his murder, 75-6 ; men
tioned, 112, 125 ; known to Reiffenstein,
378 ; Geschichte der Kunst, 386 ; Goethe
studying his life and writings, 509 ; letters
to Berendis, 546, 549 ; Goethe's essay on
Winckelmann, 546, 549
Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert, 549
Winckler, Johann Heinrich, 54, 58
Wine, Goethe moderate in the use of, 286
Winkel, 617
Winter, the masque, 317, 326
"Wir, die Deinen," 326
Wirkung in die Fer?ie, 573
Wissenschaflslehre, Fichte's, 469, 489
"Wo bist du itzt, mein unvergesslich Mad-
chen," 100
Woldemar, by Jacobi, 281, 295, 296, 300-
301
Wolf, Friedrich August, Goethe first meets
him, 476 ; at Lauchstedt, 531 ; Riemer
a philologist of his school, 53g ; he visits
Weimar, 541 ; his essay on Winckelmann,
549 ; he visits Weimar after Schiller's
death, 553 ; Goethe in Halle, 554 ; Wolf
goes with Goethe to see Beireis, 554 ;
quotation from a letter to Wolf, 561 note ;
lecturing at Goethe's Wednesday recep
tions, 565 ; visiting Goethe at Berka, 614 ;
616 note; his last visit to Goethe, 660
Wolf, Wilhelmine, daughter of Friedrich
August, 532 note, 553
Wolff, Pius Alexander (born at Augsburg in
1783, died August 28, 1828), comes to
Weimar, 537 ; mentioned, 557 ; brings
Tasso on the stage, 564-5 ; 595 ; how he left
Weimar, 628-9 ; his death, 692 note
Wolff, Amalie (nie Malcolmi, married to
Becker after the death of Christiane Neu
mann Becker, divorced from B.ecker, she
married P. A. Wolff in 1805) (1783-1851),
557, 565, 566, 595, 607, 620, 628-9, 630
Wolff, Christian, Freiherr von, his collegium
pkilosophicum et mathe?naticum, 54, 57
Wolfskeel - Reichenberg, Henriette Freiin
von, 473, 475 ; acts in the masque Peace,
495 ; at a dijeuner at Goethe's house,
498 ; Paldophron und Neoterpe dictated
to her, 516 ; she visits Goethe after his
illness, 519 ; a member of the Wednesday
Krdnzchen, 524 ; her marriage, " 535 ;
Goethe thinks of getting her to preside
over evening receptions at his house, 647
Wolkengestalt nach Howard, 630, 654
Wolowska (not Wotowska), Casimira, 646,
648 ' * '
Wolowska, Maria, see Szymanowska
Woltmann, Karl Ludwig von, historian, 469
Wolzogen, Caroline von (nie von Lenge
feld), at Goethe's house, 496 ; mentioned,
524, 584
Wolzogen, Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst, Frei
herr von, (married to the sister of Schiller's
wife), 501, 524, 528
Woman, Goethe's reverence for, 145

INDEX.

795

Women love more beautifully than men,
u II7
Woodpecker," Goethe called a, x$onote
Wordsworth, William, 712
" World Literature," sgs, 675
World Theatre, 595
Worlitz and Worlitz Park, 76, 270
Worlitz, Goethe in, 278 note
Worms, Goethe visits, 91
" Worte die der Dichter spricht," 712, 747
Wreden, Ferdinand Joseph, 243
Wreden, Karl Philipp Joseph (afterwards
Prince), 243
Wreden, two daughters, Franziska and
Maria, 243
Writing, Goethe's mother gets lessons in,
7 ; Goethe gets lessons in, 19-20 ; Gellert's
anxiety about, 55, 57 ; Clauer's fondness
for, 39 ; Cornelia's imitation of Wolf
gang's, 80 ; Goethe's imitation of Her
der's, 113; Kayser's imitation of Goethe's,
igi
Writing-desk given by Goethe to Charlotte
Schiller, 471
Writing-table at Kochberg, Goethe's initials
on it, 250, 314, 315, 421
Writing-table given by Goethe to Charlotte
von Stein, 2g2, 303
Wunderhorn, Des Knaben, 557
Wunderschon, Das Bliitnlein, 498
Wiirttemberg, Friedrich Eugen, Duke of, 58
Wiirttemberg, Friedrich Karl Wilhelm I.,
King of, 711
Wiirttemberg, Karl Eugen, Duke of, 304
Wiirttemberg, the Duchess of, wishes Goethe
and Wieland to sit to the painter May, 283
Wurzburg, 352, 583, 628
Wurzburg University, 545
Wyttenbach, Jakob Samuel, 302

X
Xenia, of Martial, 480
Xenien, Die, of Goethe and Schiller, 481
483, 486-7, 488, 520
Xenien, Zahme, of Goethe, 675 712 note
Xenophon, 135

Zacharia, Justus Friedrich Wilhelm ; his
songs, 66; his visit to Leipzig, 68 ; his
Mdhrlein criticised by Goethe, 158
Zacharia, An, by Goethe, 68
Zacharia's brother, 68
Zahn, Wilhelm, 679, 716-717
Zaire, by Voltaire, 595
Zauberflote, Die, see Flauto Magico
Zaubergesprdch Angantyrs und Hervors,
405
Zauberlehrling, Der, ballad, 490
Zedlitz, Karl Albrecht von, 278
Zeittcngfiir die elegante Welt, 534
Zelter, Goethe's correspondence with, 673,
707, 708
Zelter, Karl Friedrich (1758 to May 1832),
visits Weimar, 528-529 ; a hope of visiting
Weimar, 534 ; visits Weimar, 536 ; visits
Goethe in Lauchstedt, 554 ; visits Goethe

in Berka, 614 ; meets Goethe in Wies
baden, 616 ; goes with him to the festival
of St. Rochus, 617 ; visits Weimar in 1818,
637 ; visits Weimar in 1821 with Mendels
sohn, 642 ; visits Weimar in 1823, 648 ; in
1826, 670 ; in 1827, 683 ; in 1829, 698 ; in
1831, 711 ; writing to Goethe, 538 note;
Goethe gives Madame de Stael an intro
duction to Zelter, 543 ; Zelter's melodies
sung at Goethe's concerts, 543 ; Goethe
writing to Zelter after Schiller's death, 552 ;
Goethe on Die Wahlverwa?idtschaften,
574 ; Eberwein sent to Zelter, 590 ; his
music to the Song of the Three Kings,
603 ; the suicide of Zelter's eldest son,
606 ; Goethe addresses him as " Du," ib. ;
gives him a. copy of the Propylden for
Schultz, 617
Zelter's eldest son, 606
Zelter's youngest son Georg, 706
Zelter's daughter Doris, 642, 670, 707, 716
Zenobia, by Calderon, 620
Ziegenhain, 344
Ziegesar, August Friedrich Karl, Freiherr
von, father of Silvie (1746-1813), 575
Ziegesar, Anton, Freiherr von, brother of
Silvie, visits Goethe at Dornburg, 689-690
Ziegesar, Silvie, Freiin von, born at Draken-
dorf June 21, 1785, married to Friedrich
August Goethe of Jena in 1814, died 1855,
528, 575, 576 tr . . , ,. ,
Ziegler, Luise von, "Lila, maid of honour
to the Landgrdfin of Hessen-Homburg,
married in 1774 to von Stockhausen ;
visited by Goethe and Merck, 139 ; in
Darmstadt, 142 ; Goethe's poem Elysium,
143 ; in Darmstadt at " Urania's" death
bed, 169
Zikade, An die, 323
Zimmermann, Eberhard August, physician
residing at Brunswick, 342
Zimmermann, Johann Georg, Ritter von
(1728-1795), celebrated physician residing
at Hannover ; his admiration for Werther
208, 231 ; shows Goethe silhouette of
Charlotte von Stein, 231 ; his reverence
for the Marchesa Branconi, 236 ; Zimmer
mann visits the Goethes, 239-240 ; Char
lotte von Stein writes to him about Goethe,
263
Zimmermann, Jakob, son of Johann Georg,
231
Zimmermann, Katharina, daughter of Jo
hann Georg, 239-40
Zinunermannsspruch, by Michaelis, 63
Zinck, Johann Kaspar, 41
Zinnwalde, 606
Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig, Count von
91
Zorndorf, Battle of, 25
Zucchi, Angelika (nie Kauffmann); her
portrait of the Duchess Amalia, 247 ;
Goethe makes her acquaintance, 386-7 ;
deeply affected by Iphigenie, 388 'K great
friendship with Goethe, 398 ; gives him her
"general pardon," ib. ; Goethe improvises
a concert for her, 398 ; Angelika at Castel
Gandolfo, 403 ; she almost fills the place of
Charlotte, 405 ; her fine feeling for the
character of the hero in Egmont, 406 ; her

796

THE LIFE OF GOETHE.

kindness to the Milan maiden, 409 ; paints
a landscape without any blue, 410 ; fare
well, 412-413
Zucchi, Anton, 386-7, 398, 437
Zueignung, to the Neue Lieder, 78
Ziillichau, 556
"Zur Erinnrung guter Stunden," 124
Zur Naturwissenschaft, Goethe's periodi
cal, 653
Zurich, Goethe in, 230-231, 303-4; Kayser
in, 276 ; Karl August in, 352, 362 ; Tisch
bein there, 375 ; birthplace of Heinrich

Meyer,. 377 ; Goethe there again, 493,
-'49.4
Zweibrucken, 352
Zweiter Romischer Aufenthalt, 695, 696,
note
Zwingenberg, 305
"Zwischen dem Alten, Zwischen dem
Neuen," 526
"Zwischen Lavater und Basedow," 198
"Zwischen Weizen und' Korn," 598
Zwischenknochen, Das, .342, 343, 653
Zwo wichtige biblische Fragen, 163-4, 166

THE END.

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Printed by R. & R, Clark, Edinburgh.