:- '.; is ... v . - : ..-. .-..: . - ' V '''.".-.' " -' - - - - .:". .'' ' H i - ' ..,'"-' I ,. \ m '.,' : '. . ' LIBRARY THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. BY HERMAN GRIMM. TRANSLATED BY SARAH HOLLAND ADAMS. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1880. Copyright, 1880, BY SARAH HOLLAND ADAMS. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND Sox, CAMBRIDGE. THIS TRANSLATION IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON, THE FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR, THE FRIEND OF TRANSLATORS AND TRANSLATIONS, AND THE INSPIRATION OF MANY GREAT MEN IN ALL COUNTRIES. THESE lectures are not intended to give a biog- raphy of Goethe, but to show in what sense he was at once the most real, as well as the most ideal, man and poet that ever lived. I ask for the labor bestowed on this translation the mercy of the reader, and a measure of grati- tude that even so -much of the intrinsic meaning of a very valuable work can be shared by another public than the one for which it was written. A perfect translation would be simply a re-crea- tion, possible only to the genius of the author. Zelle, of Berlin, says Hegel could be translated into Greek, but never into English. No transla- tion can ever bring out the fine psychological differences imbedded in the deposits of language ; but what enthusiasm, sympathy, and earnest study can do toward rendering a clear translation, I have devoted to this work, the fruit of my visit to Germany, and the honor, as well as advan- tage, derived from personal acquaintance with its author. S. H. A. BERLIN, August, 1880. TO THE TRANSLATOR. I RETURN to you herewith the manuscript of your translation of my book, which you have intrusted to me. I have compared it carefully, and find it excellent. It will be a pleasure to me if your work is printed in your fatherland. I am very much indebted to America. I can indeed say that no author, with whose writings I have lately become acquainted, has had such an influence upon me as Emerson. The manner of writ- ing of this man, whom I hold to be the greatest of all living authors, has revealed to me a new way of expressing thought. Although I grew up in the study of Goethe, and had had much intercourse with those who have known him personally, I am in- debted to Emerson for the historical view of Goethe, which taught me to regard him as the great phenomenon in the universal devel- opment, of mankind. In this sense I have sought to represent him in these lectures. Should you give this letter a place in the introduction to your translation, permit me to add a few words which are addressed to my countrymen in America. I have been told that many Germans in America undervalue their own language and read only English books. Without doubt it is right and necessary to speak the language in which the fortunes of the country are decided, where one lives, and which one calls his fatherland. But how much would he lose who would thereby for- get his own language ! Should my book, as an English translation, enter the household of such a German, it may be that he and his family will learn what a man Goethe was, and what an inestimable benefit it is to be able to read his works in his own language. May this book help to draw still nearer together the two nations of the earth, who have before them the most glorious future. HERMAN GRIMM. BERLIN, May, 1880. CONTENTS. LECTURE. PAQI I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. PLAN OF THE LECTURES. GOETHE'S FIRST FRANK- FORT DAYS. STUDY OF LAW IN LEIPSIC. CHANGE TO STRASBURG 18 III. LIFE IN STRASBURG. HERDER. NEW IDEAS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 38 IV. FREDERIKA IN SESENHEIM. DOCTOR'S DEGREE. RETURN TO FRANKFORT 57 V. PRACTISING LAW. His PARENTS. MERCK. "GoTZ VON BERLICHINGEN " 77 VT. GOTZ VON BERLICHINGEN 93 "VII. THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER 117 VIII. "WERTHER" . 140 IX. LAVATER 167 X. FRITZ JACOBI. SPINOZA 184 XI. LlLLI SCHOENEMANN 210 XII. WEIMAR. ANNA AMALIA. VON FRITSCH. WIE- LAND 231 Xni. FRAU VON STEIN 247 XIV. CARL AUGUST AND GOETHE IN THE TEN YEARS . . 264 XV. THE GERMAN AND THE ROMAN IPHIGENIA . 283 Vlll CONTENTS. LECTURE. PAOX XVI. ROME 302 XVII. THE END OF "IPHIGENIA." " TASSO." CHRIS- TIANE. "ROMAN ELEGIES" 321 XVIII. ROME. SICILY. NAPLES. PHILIPP HACKEET. SECOND SOJOURN IN ROME. RETURN TO WKI- MAK. SCHILLEE 343 XIX. SCHILLER AND GOETHE. THEIR ESTRANGEMENT . 364 XX. GOETHE'S SECLUSION. THE UNION WITH SCHILLER. SCHILLER'S WIPE 383 XXI. GOETHE AND SCHILLER IN WEIMAR 404 XXII. SCHILLER AND GOETHE 420 XXIII. STUDY OP NATURAL SCIENCE. " THE NATURAL DAUGHTER." " ELECTIVE AFFINITIES ". . . . 442 XXIV. GOETHE AS A POLITICIAN. NAPOLEON. "FAUST" 475 XXV. "FAUST." CONCLUSION . 500 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 527 INDEX 537 LECTURE I. INTRODUCTION. TT is ninety-nine years, almost to a day, since GOETHE * appeared for the first time in "Weimar. It was on the seventh of November, 1775, when, in his twenty- sixth year, he responded to the call of the Duke, who had himself hardly reached his twentieth year. Goethe, although even then enjoying the reputation of a poet, both in and out of Germany, was just entering that higher ground for intellectual activity, and begin- ning that career in which for himself and for us he became what he is, and what is comprehended in the single word Goethe. From his advent in Weimar the century moves on, stamped with the name of Goethe. Goethe has worked in the intellectual life of Germany as some great physical phenomenon might work in the realm of Nature. Our coal formations tell of times of tropic warmth, when palms grew in this land. Recently explored caverns speak of ice-periods, when the reindeer was at home among us. In enormous spaces of time radical changes have been produced in the German soil, which in its present condition bears so much the appear- ance of eternal unchangeableness. And, to carry our simile further, Goethe has affected the spiritual atmos- 2 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. phere much like some telluric event, which raised the average climatic warmth a certain number of degrees. If this were to happen we should have another vegetation, another kind of cultivation, and with this an entirely new foundation for our whole existence. Goethe has created our language and literature. Be- fore him both of them were valueless in the world- market of the European nations. Such statements must be received as referring not to the exceptions but to the average product. In the year 1801, when Goethe and his followers had already accomplished the principal part of that which could be done for the regeneration of the Ger- man language, Karl August still speaks of the " pitiful German tongue from which Schiller has wrung the sweet- est melody." Goethe himself, fifteen years earlier, had spoken much more severely of the German language. When Goethe began to write, the German language was as limited in its general influence as the German national interest in our politics. The nation existed, had a silent consciousness of its worth, and a presenti- ment of its future course ; but that was all. Among the criticisms which Goethe wrote in the beginning of his literary career, he speaks of the meaning of patri- otism, and asks how one could demand of us such a feeling as inspired the Romans, who felt themselves to be citizens of a world-embracing empire. Any influence beyond our own borders seemed to us impossible. The English, French, and Italian critics noticed German literary productions only so far as our authors (by way of addition to foreign literature) allowed their works to appear as a part of the same. Frederic the Great, if perchance he had the honor to he named at all, was counted in Paris among French authors, and regarded himself as such. INTKODUCTIOtf. 3 French was spoken in all circles of North Germany, and it ranked as the second mother-tongue. In Austria the Italian language prevailed. Voltaire discusses, in the article " Langue " of the Encyclopedia, the peculi- arities of different languages as forms of literary expres- sion ; and in this the German is not mentioned at all. Not until Goethe's " Werther " had been devoured by the French and English, and had penetrated even into Italy, was the possibility conceded in foreign countries of German literature of a higher rank. Attempts had often been made before Goethe so far to perfect the German language that expression might be found in it for the finer shades of thought ; but be- yond a personal circle these efforts were unsuccessful. Klopstock, Lessing, and Wlnckelmann, while they availed tbemselves of the forms of the classic languages and of French and Italian, sought to create their own German ; but all without radical effect. Herder had been more successful in giving higher qualities to German prose than any other writer, save Goethe. Herder assisted Goethe more than any one in producing a true living German language, which later authors have been taught by him to write. This Goethe did by collecting together and turning to advantage the work of all those who had preceded him. Goethe would ascribe this service to Wieland, but he has himself in reality cast all other attempts into the shade. It was Goethe's verses which made Schiller's flow ; and he lent to Schlegel the fulness whereby he converted Shakspeare almost into a German poet. Goethe's prose has become by degrees, in all depart- ments of intellectual life, the standard form of expres- sion. Through Schelling it has penetrated into philos- ophy ; through Savigny into jurisprudence ; through 4 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Alexander von Humboldt into natural science ; and through Wilhelm von Humboldt into philology. We are even indebted to Goethe for our present style of letter- writing. Innumerable expressions which we now use without questioning their source, because they seem to stand so naturally at our command, would without Goethe have been sealed to us. Out of this unity of the language arose among us the true fellowship in higher intellectual enjoyment to which we are solely indebted for our political unity, a unity which could never have been achieved without the un- ceasing activity of those whom we, in the highest sense, call " the educated," and to whom Goethe first gave the common direction. Before Goethe there were three great poets, who ex- erted over the nations from which they sprung a power which may be compared with the influence of Goethe in Germany, Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare. All that is comprehended in the term " spiritual influence " is espe- cially to be claimed as the effect wrought by these men on Greeks, Italians, and English : each in a different way, it is true ; but the success of each places them in almost equal rank. In every single Greek, Italian, and Englishman can the chain, as it were, be traced which binds him irrevocably to one of these three great leaders of the people. Without them Greece and Italy would be cold political abstractions. Homer and Dante have called into being the higher unity of Greece and Italy, which stands far above "the political. And who knows what an exalted role Shakspeare may yet play, if the fragments of English-speaking peoples, the world over, shall at some time seek for a supreme authority in whose word they may feel themselves united ? And who knows what offices are reserved for Goethe in Germany INTRODUCTION. 5 in the future changes of our destiny ? But let us speak of what he has already accomplished. No poet or thinker since the time of Luther has worked in so many different directions at once, and permeated with his influence four successive generations, as Goethe has done. How wholly unlike was Voltaire's work in France ! So far as quan- tity is concerned, Voltaire embraced far more ; certainly he worked more intensively than Goethe. Also during his life his writings penetrated more instantaneously, deeply, and widely among the people. But he was not so unresistingly believed in ; he did not stand upon the same moral height with Goethe. Voltaire destroyed ; Goethe built up. Again, Goethe never tried to create a party for a momentary aim ; he always granted his rivals full scope ; his immortal weapons were too precious to be used against mortals. Goethe worked quietly and im- perceptibly, like Nature herself. We see him every- where recognized, without envy, as a man raised above men : " an Olympian, enthroned over the world," Jean Paul calls him ; to whom no one could give anything, who was enough to himself. Goethe stands lifted above love and aversion. The 'few who have acknowledged themselves his enemies appear from the outset to have much trouble in maintaining their stand-point, while to-day they seem utterly incomprehensible. And, even as regards these, it was good fortune for any one to have been in relation with Goethe ; and it was impossible to ignore him. Almost too much appears to have been said about Goethe even now. An entire library of publications concerning him exists. This increases daily ; latterly scarcely a week has passed in which, either here or there, something new about him has not been printed. And yet these labors dedicated to him are but the faint 6 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. beginnings of a work which must stretch on to a bound- less future. Goethe's first century only has elapsed ; but to none of the following, so far as the future can be foretold, will be spared the trouble of ever anew reshap- ing Goethe for themselves. The German people must change their nature before they will cease to do this. For thousands of years there has been a science called Homeric, which has had its disciples in uninterrupted succession ; for hundreds of years, one that bears the name of Dante, and one that bears Shakspeare's name : henceforth there will be one called Goethe. His name long since designated not his person alone, but the cir- cumference of a whole domain. Each generation will believe that it comprehends his nature better : never, until now, the right stand-point seems to have been attained from which Goethe can be impartially studied. Opinions in regard to his work will vary ; he will appear to stand nearer to, or farther from, the German people, according to the character of the times : but he will never be wholly dethroned, never be resolved into himself, never melt as a glacier, of which, when the last drop has run away, nothing remains. If, however, that should hap- pen which has happened to Homer, that after the lapse of thousands of years, when our German shall have ceased to be a living language, wholly distant generations may be unable to conceive that a single man could have created so many and such various kinds of works, then may the learned men, who will certainly for a time be believed, affirm that Goethe is to be interpreted only as a myth- ical name, under which the entire intellectual work of his age was comprehended. It would seem as if already the time approached in which the German people, after having gone too far in their adoration of Goethe, were inclined in some degree to INTRODUCTION". 7 withdraw their homage. But this is only an appearance. A few have tried to represent Goethe as a discarded aristocrat, who had rendered his service and might rest. Such things have been said ; but what begins to be strange to us about him is not what Goethe is in him- self, but the image bearing his name which the last generation formed of him. We live in a new era, which must create anew its own image of him : it overthrows the old one, but does not touch Mm. To-day, more than ever, it is important that our attention should be turned to him ; but another stand-point must be accepted. This change of stand-point is the natural result of the different position we occupy in Germany to-day towards all historical inquiry. Before Germany was united and free, and stood politically on her own feet, the aim of our historical labor was to burrow into the past, out of which, as secret advocates of a course of proceeding which we did not dare openly to call by the right name, we ven- tured to initiate for ourselves a better Present. All his- torical work bore the secret motto, " It is impossible that things in Germany should remain as they are." But within the last twenty-five years, with the aid of this scholarly labor, the revolution has been accom- plished which we may now regard as finished. We possess a Present far exceeding our expectations. Its benefits are no longer something to be struggled after or hoped for, but to be held fast, developed, and utilized. With the light of this freshly dawning day, the times which lie behind us take on a new aspect. We no longer seek in them the weapons which might avail us in obtaining freedom, but we seek after those which, the struggle for liberty being successfully ended, will strengthen us in the position won, and render per- manent the possession of the blessings gained. We seek 8 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. to fathom the nature of historical movements, and to regulate our own in conformity to them. Many things so contemplated take on a wholly new meaning. Splen- dors fade, and things which were despised rise into un- dreamed-of importance. Goethe, to whose nature every form of agitation was foreign, and who especially in his later years, when his opinion was most frequently asked had the appearance and seemed to have the style of thinking of a comfortable conservative, as statesman and historian now takes a new position. We perceive in him one of those who most confidently foresaw our present freedom, and prepared the ground for it. We read with astonishment how accurately he prophesied the revolu- tionary agitation of the latter half of the nineteenth century. We understand how he came to look upon the dead calm in which his last years fell as an unavoidable necessity ; we see how he held steadfastly in view the free future of his country, and quietly gave to his works the material needed for these days. Goethe's labor helped to create the soil on which we to-day sow and reap ; he belongs among the foremost founders of Ger- man freedom ; without him, in spite of all our conquests, we should be wanting in the ideas which enable us to derive the noblest benefits from them. Naturally, when things of this kind come before us as a new discovery, the career of such a man is to be historically reconstructed. What, then, was Goethe in his main characteristics? Among the many who struggled and aspired with him, he was the most powerful and the most successful : one for whom Fate manifestly smoothed the way ; a husbandman cultivating the field of the mind, with never a sterile year, but ever the full harvest. It might be a dry or a rainy year, but Goethe always had his fruit set in the INTRODUCTION. 9 very field to which the weather was favorable. His pro- gress was never interrupted by useless delays, to which he must look back as upon so much lost time. He was healthy, handsome, and vigorous. He always lived fully in the present and in his surroundings, and was at the same time far in advance of the general progress of man- kind. With an ever-upward development, even to his latest days, he experienced the whole destiny of man on earth. It is well to consider the sum-total of his years. Goethe had a twofold life measured out to him, whose latter half, indeed, proved most important to the full completion of that which he had begun in the earlier part. He was allowed to enter into the enjoyment of a secure and undisturbed inheritance of the conquests of his youth, as if he were his own heir and successor to the throne. To how few has been granted this privilege ! The latter half of the lives of Lessing and Herder were blighted. Schiller began gradually to die just as he was beginning really to live ; Just as lie had begun to unfold his capacities, and freely to make the most of his creative power. "We recall the names of many others, whose ca- reer was interrupted before their fortieth year, although they seemed to possess a vigor which should not have been exhausted in double that number of years. It is curious to reflect with what doubtful aspects Goethe himself entered on the second portion of his life. He seemed to be intellectually exhausted. We gather from many observations made at the close of the last century and the beginning of this, that his friends in Weimar and his admirers all over Germany had resigned them- selves to the idea that he had passed his prime. The cool, reserved Privy Councillor with the double chin, more and more inclining to rest ; past the fiery days of youth, in stately ease he keeps aloof from men and things ; he 10 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. turns aside from whatever reminds him of the old times. He sees again his friends the Jacobis in Dusseldorf, and will read something aloud to them : they put " Iphigenia" into his hand, but he lays the book aside ; it is disagree- able to him to touch again the old feelings. It is only an accident if something in the verses which he now writes here and there reminds us of what once charmed in his poetry. Even those who stand nearest to him realize this change. They pity him, but they must regard it as a change in some degree common to all men. Around him, also, has grown up a new generation (about whom he scarcely troubles himself), who would like nothing better than to shake off the burdensome authority of the old Dictator. As a result of the French Revolution there prevailed in Germany new and unfavorable conditions, which Goethe was unwilling to have anything to do with, or indeed even to try to understand. Schiller was the man of the day ; and, after he had passed away, there seemed no one left to fill his and the former Goethe's place. But Goethe soars again ! " Faust " appears. With this poem, in the new century, Goethe thrills all Germany as if for the first time. No one had expected anything so great. Once more he carries the young away with him, while their elders return to their allegiance. Not until this time had he taken complete possession of Germany. There had always been men among us who had not felt drawn to him. Baron Yon Stein until now had never read any of Goethe's works, and now first makes his ac- quaintance. Goethe's influence manifests itself in quite a different way from what it had done earlier. On all sides he gains the ascendancy. It now seems as if he only needed to stretch out his hand to make his power felt. INTRODUCTION. 11 Goethe had enjoyed what are called the best gifts of Fate : he had come at the right time, and the right time had lasted for him as long as is permitted to mortal man. But we pass on now to speak of the higher gifts, the highest gifts of Fate ; and here we see an harmonious de- velopment of spiritual power, which had perhaps fallen to the share of others before him, but which we have never been able to observe in any one as we may observe it in him. It seemed as if Providence had placed him in the simplest circumstances, in order that nothing should im- pede his perfect unfolding. With a very few words his whole outward life is stated. The child of rich people in Frankfort, he returns after the ordinary university course is ended to his native town, a gradually declining Free City, to practise law. Meeting by accident a Prince, who himself had but just attained his majority, he wins his confidence, almost in a child- like way, and follows him to Weimar, there to take his position as Prime Minister and Court Poet. To the end, Goethe was never anything but Prime Minister and Court Poet of Weimar. He lived there al- most uninterruptedly, and his whole story is included in this. But now we see how, in the course of years, he moulds and shapes these at first merely outward circumstances until they are exactly adapted to his necessities ; and then how he remodels Weimar itself, until it becomes by degrees a perfectly satisfactory soil to his individual na- ture, into which he penetrates deeply with wide-spread roots, and out of which he creates finally the principal literary city of Germany. Goethe was the ideal centre of his new Thuringian /atherland from the day of his first appearance in it, and raised it with himself to im- mortal renown. 12 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. And now we can follow, step by step, the way in which this was accomplished. Goethe was not the poet lost in dreams, nor the writer sitting behind, closed doors, whom nobody dared to dis- turb. His poetical creations imperceptibly perfected themselves, making small demands on his time. Appar- ently they were merely amusements for leisure hours, of which it was best to say as little as possible, lest they should interfere with that which Goethe considered the proper task of his daily life. Goethe had time for every one. When he was advocate in Frankfort, and also when he was minister in Weimar, in law and government, he attended to everything down to the smallest detail, and threw himself into the breach with the weight of his per- sonal power and his own knowledge of the facts, wher- ever the carrying through of measures for the public good was under discussion. Goethe was the first member of the administration in Weimar, and remained so after he had nominally withdrawn himself from business affairs. He not only received the salary of a minister, but he gave the fullest possible equivalent for that salary. He always bore in his heart the destiny of the Duke and of the country for which he was responsible. Always, even to the last, Goethe's personal authority was next to the Grand Duke's. If he spoke of the scientific institutions of Jena, it was just as natural for him to say " my " in- stitutions as " our." Added to these labors, as the most responsible officer of the government, was his second work as a scholar. There was no department of knowledge, with perhaps the sole exception of pure mathematics, the progress of which he did not constantly follow. As naturalist as well as historian meaning by these words to designate, in the most direct way, the extent of all philological and INTRODUCTION. 13 philosophical knowledge he worked with such zeal and success that his result in either one or the other of these directions would have satisfactorily filled the whole measure of the life of a man. His discoveries are known. The value of his co-operation and sympathy was inestima- ble to learned men. He was familiar with many langua- ges, and in his old age able to master new ones. The oversight of a university devolved upon him, which in those days was of far greater importance to Germany than it is now, where he called into existence or promoted institutions for scientific purposes, organized public criti- cism and prescribed its direction. And to these duties he added for many years the office of director of the Weimar theatre, with here also the most painstaking re- sponsibility in regard to technical and esthetic details. And finally all these were only subordinate to the duties of his seemingly highest office; namely, personal inter- course with innumerable people of all ages and in every position, which to his contemporaries appeared to be the real aim of his life. Goethe, without willing it, forced himself upon the thoughts of men. He was incessantly talked of in Weimar from the first day of his appearance there until the last day of his life. Every one there was conscious of his presence, and kept eyes and ears open for him. If ever he were not talked of in Weimar, it was because it was simply impossible to speak only of him. If we meet with a letter anywhere which in the course of his life was written at Weimar, we seek involuntarily for the mention of Goethe in it, and are surprised if it is omitted. If the people have nothing else to say, they announce at least whether Goethe is at home, or on a journey, mention- ing the last as an abnormal circumstance, as if they had a right to his presence among them. 14 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. But his spiritual presence all Germany claimed. From unexpected quarters fresh proofs arise continually of the extent of Goethe's influence with his contemporaries. If one reads his correspondence (of which a great part is still unpublished), one believes he did nothing but re- ceive and answer letters, and these letters treat of all the interests which were afloat in the course of an epoch. With a tact, conscientiousness, assurance, and dexterity, and at the same time with a hearty enjoyment which never allows him to appear bored, but always in the best humor, he holds all the threads in his hand and continually adds new ones ; so that what he achieves in this direction alone seems to prove him endowed with superhuman power. He treats every one according to his nature, often with a touching self-forgetfulness. Every one who comes in contact with him, by the instant surrender of himself, makes the highest demands upon Goethe ; and he fulfils them all. He enters into the details of everybody's case as if he were interested in nothing on earth but precisely this. He talks with each one of his specialty as if it were his own. He wins the confidence of all. Men yield themselves to him like chil- dren, and he listens to each story as if nothing had ever moved him so deeply. Only once in life to have spoken with Goethe, or to have received a letter from him, was the most brilliant episode in the experience of many whose lives in the main could not be said to have been obscure. I spoke in the beginning of the second great period in Goethe's life. Forty years, as intellectual autocrat, Goethe ruled all Germany. He had, as it were, ambassadors at all the Courts who were his champions. He has been sarcasti- cally called Kunstpabst (Art Pope) ; and indeed he did INTRODUCTION. 15 represent something which could be so denominated, taking art in its 'widest range. There went out from him an irresistible authority. In undertakings of the highest kind, his favor and approval were not likely to be dis- pensed with. He did not always grant them without hesitation, and he sometimes refused them : he had his fixed policy, his traditional and fundamental convictions. Early in the nineteenth century the language of Goethe began to be generally accepted, and was employed by Goethe himself as an established idiom. And all this power grew slowly in a natural way as the trees grow, and without the slightest reference to literary pane- gyrics. Goethe had such an aversion to being forced upon the public that he too often incurred the re- proach of being intentionally reserved. His calm, self- sustained personality overcame all opposition. There was much spoken and written in Goethe's favor from the beginning, but it could all have remained unsaid and imprinted without in the least affecting his grand position. So he finally died, after having lived to a great age. The entire land was overwhelmed by his loss. Men felt forlorn and orphaned. But men had to get on without him, and finally they did ; for all that we have recounted as Goethe's labor was as mortal as himself. But now the immortal ! As a mighty current on whose surface one neither sows nor reaps is yet the great stream which gives life to the land, and without which the people would be famished and desolate, so the stream of Goethe's poetry still enriches and animates the fields through which it flows. However much he gave himself to the throng of men and affairs, at the same time he was solitary ; and nothing shared his solitude but what he there created of his own power to be immortal. 16 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Goethe had the inconceivable capacity of living in two worlds at once, two worlds which he wholly united, and which he held at the same time wholly distinct. One by one the incidents of his mortal life will contract to our view. With fewer words constantly shall we dispose of it. Ever more alone will he seem to stand, until finally nothing will remain but Goethe, creator of beings of fresh and immortal power. Whoever speaks as if Goethe's epoch was past should ask himself, Could we in Germany to-day spare Iphigenia, Egmont, Faust, Gretchen, Clarchen, or Dorothea? Do they begin to fade ; does what they say sound like old hackneyed melodies; are they puppets with which the children have amused themselves long enough ? As little is this so as with Homer's Achilles and Ulysses, or with Shakspeare's Hamlet and Juliet ! Goethe lives no more : a very old man, he died half a century ago ; Shakspeare two hundred and fifty, Homer three thousand years ago : but they have left behind to their children the dowry of imperishable youth ; their blood flows forever warm, and they have lost none of their first power. When we who are here to-day shall sit as old people in the theatre, per- haps some eighteen-year-old Gretchen will come upon the stage, and, as if her sad destiny had never been wept be- fore, draw tears from eyes of which we to-day know nothing. Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe himself in their immortal creations touch our hearts. So living are their creations that we almost think they are the legiti- mate children of Nature, instead of having been called out of nothing by the fertile, inventive imagination of a poet. But the times when Goethe will be such a stranger to us are still far in the future. In the mean time we rejoice in the overflowing sources INTRODUCTION. 17 of information with regard to his life. To us a most important task remains, which is to shape out of the abundant testimony that image of Goethe which will be the most helpful, and in which we can have the most con- fidence. Let us now attempt to form this image in these Lectures. 18 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. LECTURE II. x PLAN OP THE LECTURES. GOETHE'S FIRST FRANKFORT DAYS. STUDY OF LAW IN LEIPSIC. CHANGE TO STRASBURG. /^OETHE'S life is divided into two periods, of unequal ^ length, the Frankfort period, from 1749 to 1776 ; and the Weimar period, from 1776 to 1832. Almost all his greatest works were begun in the Frank- fort period ; " Werther," " Gotz," and " Clavigo " were then published. The Weimar period must also be divided. A complete episode is concluded in the first ten years, extending from his twenty-sixth to his thirty-sixth year. When he went to Weimar, he resigned the idea of devoting himself wholly to poetry. Having accepted a place of great responsi- bility, he determined to be governed solely by the desire to devote his whole ability to the service of the Prince and the interests of his people. Only his leisure hours were to be reserved for poetry. In this epoch " Iphige- nia " was finished in its prose form ; and " Tasso," " Eg- mont," "Wilhelm Meister," and "Faust" (for all of which he had brought materials with him from Frank- fort) were carried forward. Then follows the one striking year in Italy, which di- vides the Weimar epoch. We may regard this brief period, so rich in its experiences (from 1786 to 1787), either as the conclusion of the first, or as the beginning MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY. 19 of the second period. In it " Tasso," " Iphigenia," and " Egmont " received a new and perfect form, while " Wil- helra Meister " and " Faust " progressed. Goethe re>- turns to Weimar, and the last and longest period of his life begins. The struggle in his breast as to what he shall demand of himself, and what others have a right to demand of him, is over. Independent of outward co- operation, a calm, steady development goes on within him until lie attains absolute intellectual clearness. Even the companionship with Schiller, which for a number of years affected him so deeply, makes no special break in his life. In this long course of years follow, one upon another, the completion of " Wilhelm Meister," " Her- mann und Dorothea," " Die Natiirliche Tochter," " Das Buch iiber Winckelmann," " Die Wahlverwandtschaften," " Dichtung und Wahrheit," " Die italianische Reise," "Der westostliche Divan," and " Faust." At every stage we meet " Faust." Goethe began it as a student, and never ceased to occupy himself with it. Its conclusion was left in manuscript, and not printed until after his death. In this historical sketch of Goethe, let us connect the incidents of his life with his principal works as they appear in the course of the three epochs, thus adopting the simplest plan for our Lectures. My delineation will be based not on any peculiar arrangement of my own, but will follow the natural divisions of his life and the progress of his works. The material afforded us for the study of Goethe's life is very extensive ; and of this, in order to give an idea of the whole, my division will be somewhat arbitrary. But it is of little moment what categories we accept if only they are comprehensive. I divide the material into two parts, his own account, and the testimony of oth- ers. What a field is opened to our investigation by the 20 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. extraordinary breadth of his intercourse, which reached to the time of his death, with several generations of con- temporaries ! During the fifty years Goethe was in full possession of his powers scarcely a significant man lived in Germany who was not almost forced, once in his life, to describe the relation he bore to Goethe, formed either by his personal intercourse with the poet or through his works. These judgments, confessions, or whatever form their writers gave them, have been often collected, and whole series of such intellectual associations made the subject of special investigation. But we have not yet reached the end of even the preliminary work ; and in all directions additional material is being collected. Goethe's personal evidence is of three kinds : first, his works, as the most important gauge of his growing power ; second, his diary and letters, as the most trust- worthy records of each day and hour ; third, his own biographical attempts, showing how his life, as a com- pleted work, stood in his own eyes. Our second division of the biographical material here is of immense scope. Its extent is not yet wholly known. Goethe's works lie in many editions before us ; but we can follow only certain of them through all the stages of their development. Many letters, and the like, are still wanting. Entire correspondences are missing, or in a mutilated form ; and only the smallest part of his diaries is known. But what we possess is so much that it requires some experience to find our way through the labyrinth. Unceasingly to render an account to himself and others of his thoughts and actions was Goethe's peculiarity. It seems as if Nature had foreseen that every hour of his life would be of importance, and had furnished Goethe with a wholly extraordinary capacity to gratify our desire for HIRZEL'S CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX. 21 knowledge in this respect. Goethe was the greatest re- porting genius ; pen and paper were his natural tools. In moments of intense enthusia-sm, when alone with himself, unless his thoughts become a poem, he knows no better outlet for his emotions than to write down, as faithfully as possible, all he feels. Now-a-days we have so com- pletely lost the habit of committing our thoughts and feelings to paper, that this peculiarity of a former gen- eration calls for especial remark. In the very moment of feeling, people in Goethe's time sought to represent their emotion in words, and thus to enhance their enjoy- ment, not consciously for others, but for themselves, and not with the intention of producing a literary effect. They fell upon pen and paper as if it were impossible to feel without recording what was felt. Of such pages we have a quantity from Goethe's own hand. Many of his works are, as it were, composed of them ; and all record inward experiences so transformed by imagination that the individual is eliminated and re- solved into the universal. Various persons in the same story are often repetitions of their author ; so that, in many dialogues, it is only Goethe talking with himself. Therefore his works, unless abused by indiscreet inter- pretation, furnish most important material for the story of his life. I will now proceed to contemplate this life. As a source of information with regard to the first Frankfort period, Dr. Solomon Hirzel, in Leipsic, has published, ex- cellently arranged, the whole series of Goethe's own testi- mony. Hirzel was in possession of the fullest collection of Goethe's printed and written works. His chronologi- cal index of this Goethe library, which appeared in manu- script from time to time, had long been an indispensable source of information. The " Jungen Goethe " consists 22 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. of letters and works, chronologically arranged, in three volumes. The works are given in their original form. To-day they are usually read in the form which, at a later period, Goethe himself gave them. The curious, . faded manuscripts and printed pages, which in many cases Hirzel's eyes alone had rested on, were now made accessible to everybody. Still, the principal source for the clear understanding of Goethe's childhood and youth was, and remains, his own narration. Under the title, " Wahrheit und Dich- tung," it is in the possession of all the world. We are so accustomed to this title, " Wahrheit und Dichtung," that the form " Dichtung und Wahrheit," which was lately proved to have been the original one, will only slowly be accepted. Goethe's secretary, Riemer, made the inversion, and we next find it in G. von Loeper's latest and best edition of the work. Goethe composed this autobiography on a basis of insufficient material. He was almost sixty years old before he earnestly at- tempted it. He had been accustomed carefully to collect and place in order everything of importance which he should remember ; but in spite of this he had to bewail a great gap of his own making. In the year 1797, previous to a second intended trip to Italy, which was prevented by the war, he had burned all the letters he had received up to that time. To us the loss does not seem so great, because Goethe's own letters have by de- grees come to light, and are now at our service ; but he could avail himself of very few of these, as it was not until later that he adopted the habit of retaining copies of his letters. What he drew from sources at present concealed will later become known to the public through the publication of the Goethe Archives, to which at pres- ent no one is allowed access. Goethe's heirs, guided THE "DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT." 23 by motives not understood, hold the bequest of their great ancestor under lock and key, thereby making it in the highest degree difficult to prepare a thoroughly satis- factory edition of his works. Since these important papers are withheld, and all efforts to obtain them prove fruitless, there remains only the hope that possibly the authorities may buy Goethe's house and its contents for the benefit of the nation. How much help these family papers afforded Goethe for his work we know not. From his autobiography it is evident that many of the occurrences he relates had taken a mythical form in his memory. Still, we cannot decide whether to assume a sort of organic confusion, such as always arises when memory unaided is called to judge past events, or whether to believe that Goethe, intending to make of his biography a work of art, pur- posely displaces dates and events ; enough that such variation is proved. It might therefore appear that Goethe, conscious of this state of things, chose the title of " Dichtung und Wahrheit " because fiction filled the first place in books. Nevertheless, this was not so. No- where can it be proved that Goethe added anything to the actual incidents of his life ; nowhere do we perceive any violation of the true coloring. Whatever new fountains of information are open to us confirm for the most part Goethe's narration. What mistakes or transformations are brought to light are trifling by the side of the striking truth with which events and characters are in the main represented. We possess in Goethe's autobiog- raphy a narration which can be designated as a most truthful one throughout. Certainly, the combination of the two words dich- tung- and wahrheit sounds like a challenge. This was instantly perceived by Goethe's friends and taken advan- 24 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. tage of by his enemies, and finally led him (although lie usually took no heed of such things) to explain his meaning. He has done this in several places, so that to-day no doubt exists as to what he intended by the title of " Dichtung und Wahrheit." Goethe declared he had chosen to relate only the circumstances of his life, which, when looking back upon them, seemed to him the steps in his development. Allowing all else to escape, the part chosen by him received a simpler, nobler, more artistic construction, though needing some connecting links ; and so far it became a work of fiction. But at the same time the truth was not sacrificed. This handling increased not only the beauty but the value of the book. It is more important for us to see how Goethe's childhood and youth, as related to his whole life, mirror themselves in his soul, and where he discovers the first steps in his future career, than to have a great mass of authentic detail, which by no skill in mere arrangement could ever become an organic whole. Goethe, in thus representing his life in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," gives an account of the Frankfort period only. It extends to his departure from Frankfort for Weimar in the year 1775. It seemed to him that he had done enough, perhaps all that was possible, in showing how the child developed into the man. For the representation of his later life he adopted the annalistic form. He then preserved according to a definite method complete records of each year. A comparison of the two methods enables us to realize how much we are indebted to the earlier one. " Dichtung und Wahrheit " has given the earlier years ' of Goethe's life their decidedly greater importance, and has placed by the side of the grand, mature Goethe the young Goethe, as a special creation in our literary his- THE HOME AT FRANKFORT. 25 tory. Without " Dichtung und Wahrheit " Hirzell's ttiree volumes would be scarcely comprehensible. Per- haps it would have been better had Hirzell made a fourth of " Dichtung und Wahrheit." The letters alone do not explain why these early works are presented again in the antique dress which Goethe himself later changed for the form in which he wished them to be read. Goethe's Weimar life pales by the side of the clear sunbeam which streams from " Dichtung und Wahr- heit." Even " Die italianische Reise," in which Goethe gives an account of what were for him, perhaps, the most important years of his life, is not to be compared with it. So far as I -am acquainted with literature, there is only one work which can be said to rival " Dichtung und Wahrheit," perhaps the very one whose method Goethe followed, "The Confessions" of Jean Jacques Rous- seau, in which he, too, narrates only the first half of his life, and in which we find the same wonderful blending of the individual with the universal which poets alone have the power to achieve. It is well known that Goethe was born in Frankfort- on-the-Main, on the 28th of August, 1749. His father's house still stands in the Hirschgraben. It is inwardly and outwardly somewhat changed, but the company which bought it have restored, so far as possible, its early ap- pearance, and have filled it with a variety of relics con- cerning former changes : the account of the rebuilding ordered by Goethe's father, with the odd pedantry so characteristic of him, is one of the best known episodes in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." Goethe's mother sold the house ; and we cannot now say with certainty which was Goethe's room. That it was a Mansard room we know from his autobiography, and from letters dated 2G LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. there. He describes the view from the window, reach- ing over houses and gardens far as the horizon, and the ever-flowing fountain below in the court. We be- lieve that we breathe the air which he breathed, and watch the same floating clouds which his eyes followed. Through his whole life Goethe loved to describe the spot where he was, to analyze, as it were, the atmosphere which surrounded him. In his works the locality is described with such exactness, and so kept in view, that maps might be drawn of the paths through which his imaginary beings wandered. The roar of the sea across whose waves Iphigenia's eyes sought her home no one since Homer has brought so distinctly -to our cars. The park in which the drama of the " Wahlverwandt- schaften " was played is as familiar as if we had trodden every avenue in it. The house in Frankfort stands so vividly before us that we could find our way about it in the dark. In thus building up from the firm earth the story of his childhood, Goethe gives his narration that high degree of credibility which makes it so attractive. With the same accuracy does he describe his native city. What would the old Frankfort be to-day without this most distinguished of all chroniclers ? What " Dichtung und Wahrheit" left untouched Goethe's letters added. At all hours of the day and in all seasons of the year he leads us through the streets of the venerable city. On New Year's Eve we listen with him at the open window ; and every sound which breaks upon our ear in the stillness of night thrills us. From the Main bridge we watch the dark waves as they stream toward him in the weird moonlight. At break of day we hear with him the awakening of the city traffic. Goethe is inexhaustible in terms and forms of expression by which he arrests and communicates the fleeting sentiment or presentiment of the moment. THE GERMAN FREE CITIES. 27 Nevertheless, we now look at these Frankfort things, which Goethe so graphically described, from a greater distance, and more as if in a bird's perspective. We ask about the position which the old and free Reichsstadt occupied in Germany in the middle of the last century. Goethe describes times already too long past for us. Men's minds have no longer any knowledge of the state of things which, when Goethe wrote, were still fresh enough in the memory of all. Cities are passing historical phenomena. They arise and fade away. To-day, when all boundary lines grow faint, when in Germany, thanks to railroads, every city seems almost like the suburb of some other city, we can scarcely conceive the time when, surrounded by immovable walls, a number of independent republics, sole centres of education, covered the German soil. In the thirteenth century these states within the state the German Free Cities formed a political alliance. They were fortified ; each had its own peculiar constitu- tion ; and all resolved to close their gates, even against the Emperor himself, if he should attempt to interfere with their freedom. Republics have always been based upon the sovereignty of a few powerful families, and this was true of the Ger- man Free Cities. Their heroic time was from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Their power was destroyed in the age of the Reformation, when it became apparent that great ideas can only gain ground when every individual, even the most insignificant, may be appealed to. Events did not go so far at that time as to give the power to the masses ; but the supremacy was placed in the hands of those whom the masses outside the cities willingly obeyed, the princes of the land. Moreover, the old and powerful families in the cities were 28 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. dying out, as is always the case when a certain number of generations continue without any influx of fresh blood. This influx failed. The great mass of the people no longer pressed inside the cities to reinvigorate their blood, too fast becoming exhausted, and it appeared more lucrative to serve princes than to obey citizens. So matters stood in the age of the Reformation. The transition went on slowly and imperceptibly, for the power of the princes grew but gradually; and the strength of the cities was by no means broken when the Thirty Years' War a frightful malady, brought upon us from without, and artificially nourished blighted all the young shoots of our development. The significance of this war in the history of human culture was never so clearly presented to my mind as when, in the retired Boboli Gardens in Florence, I read an inscription on a monument erected in the sixteenth century. It was dedicated to " The Public Felicity " which " permitted all the arts of peace to flourish in Italy, while abroad devastating war had trampled down all the growths of peace to their very roots." The Thirty Years' War left among us both physical and spiritual stagnation, and when peace smiled again on the German waste men found that they had become older, but nothing more. Principalities and cities still existed, but the first were as much exhausted as the latter. Slowly and gradually the power of the land-princes rose, and that of the cities fell ; but, beyond that, everything stood still in Germany. It seemed impossible that anything could hasten the national development. So we see Goethe born among conditions which a draft of air, such as to-day blows around every corner, would have destroyed, root and branch. And yet they con- tinued as undisturbed as if their pasteboard foundations THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS. 29 had actually been hewn out of solid rock. It is this mere fiction of an individual political existence which Goethe represents so vividly in his description of Frankfort, his native city. The Imperial Cities were, in 1750, still enthroned, free, proud, and unmolested, with walls, towers, and gates. Their " burgers " still moved majestically, with the pomp of traditional government-machinery clothed with the glim- mer of time-honored magnificence. A huge amount of mutual homage in all imaginable forms was daily required and rendered. It was high treason to question any of these forms ! But it would have been impossible, even in a dream, to fancy these pompous old citizens really in arms prepared to defend their walls, or to come out in battle array, as the Niirnbergers did under Pyrkheimer, to re- inforce the imperial troops. Hard-baked in their own fat like some curious old cake, covered with sugar and dotted with raisins, these gentry believed themselves sufficiently protected if they could find their way amid the intricate maze of rights and privileges on which their existence was based, the magistrates without initiative, the citi- zens without a suspicion that anything could possibly be changed ! The idea of a political union in Germany, a rising of the whole nation, was inconceivable, no repre- sentation of interests, no rights of debate, no parties in the sense of to-day, not even desires in common ! Every city for itself, every house for itself, and each citizen for himself. This must be considered in order to appreciate the in- estimable value of the single independent element among us in those times ; namely, literature. There were no political institutions in Germany, where the free, ener- getic character of a man could be developed ; but there was among us the Republic of Letters ! 30 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Scholars and poets alone had opportunities of touching the mass of the people. To them alone was it permitted to manifest their enthusiasm publicly and to develop themselves, surrounded by an expectant, sympathetic cir- cle, which at that time not so indistinct and formless as now, but better disciplined and with purer personal relations assisted and sustained the men who had once gained its confidence, and who at the same time depended upon its support. Goethe's narrative of his childhood and youth contains the following : A boy is described, who grows up on the most luxurious soil of this Free-City life. His father a rich, pedantic, punctilious man educates and trains his son for the agreeable continuance of a life like his own. From the moment the boy steps out of his childhood coarse and fine threads are laid around him on all sides, from which the net is spun out of which escape seems year by year less possible. But in the boy the desire for freedom becomes ever stronger, as he realizes that the more desperately he exerts himself to escape the more tightly his chains are fastened about him ; until at the last moment, when, as we see, it seems impossible for him to gain freedom, he wrenches himself away, and, leaving his native city forever, seeks and finds a soil wholly suited to the development of his nature. To show that this was the purport of his youth seemed to Goethe of the utmost importance. His later experiences have nothing in com- mon with this first grand climax in his life. This is the reason why " Dichtung und Wahrheit " breaks off at the point where Goethe's Frankfort history ends. Goethe's father was an Imperial Councillor. He had procured this dignity for himself, that he might by a sounding title compensate for his lack of old patrician blood. His family did not belong to the aristocrats. In HIS EARLY EDUCATION. 31 Krieg's published account of Frankfort life in Goethe's youth new light has lately been thrown on these matters. Goethe's mother's relations were judges and mayors, but his father never held any public office : to the son should be given what to the father had been denied. All the other children had died early. Wolfgang and his sister Cornelia alone remained to be submitted to the father's experiments in education, and the father lived henceforth for this single purpose. They grew up under a guardian- ship such as is rarely the lot of the children of this gen- eration. Young Goethe was educated with an intensity which would frighten our children, and that not with se- verity, but through his father's unintermitting watchful- ness. No city authorities at that time presumed to decide how children should be treated regarding most important details, as is the case at present, when by a decree of the State a certain quantity of fresh air is pumped into every child's room. Goethe describes amid what curiously con- flicting influences his mind was early developed. In the warm lap of his family he felt no rough breath of actual life ; no blasts like those among which Schiller worked his way to eminence ; no trace of the indigence of Les- sing, or the wretched poverty of Winckelmann, who, in all weathers, were exposed under an open sky, and only here and there gladdened by a mild sunbeam. In Goethe's case the gifts of this world were in excess ; but united with this abundance was an entire deprivation of personal freedom, against which no resistance seemed possible, be- cause it enveloped him like a fine ether. Goethe was better prepared for intercourse with women than men, owing to the fact that lie had been educated for the most part with his sister. In the midst of the all-powerful city gossip, which at that time supplied the place of news- papers and public life, he soon learned to move as a skilled 32 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. diplomat between the families with whom relationship brought him in contact. He knows how to win his way to the confidence of the many originals who had spun themselves into all sorts of odd webs in out-of-the-way places, where they allowed no strange hands to meddle with them. He ransacks the corners of the city and understands more and more of its organism, of which he considers himself a part. What more natural than that out of this knowledge should arise the conviction that sooner or later it would be his fate to be an active par- ticipator in all these whimsical doings ? What other plans could Providence have for him ? Where but in Frankfort could a future be prepared for him ? Germany had then no central point attracting young talent with mysterious and irresistible force. We possessed no Paris, which received Corneille, Racine, and Moliere (indiffer- ent whence they came), when their hour struck; no Lon- don, to which Shakspeare fled from Stratford; no Berlin, now drawing to itself all rising talent. What city could have enticed from Frankfort the son of a rich burger ? Vienna was far away, a Catholic, half Italian, half Spanish residence. Berlin was poor, and seemed at that time as far removed from the rich centre of Germany as St. Petersburg is to-day. And so we see Goethe depart at sixteen years of age to study law at Leipsic, with his plan of life already mapped out. He will take his degree, return home, enter on his practice as a lawyer, marry a rich patrician's daughter, take possession of his father's house, receive by degrees the city honors, and possibly once before he dies fill the position of mayor. We read in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," and find it con- firmed in the meagrely-preserved correspondence of these years, that he did little more as a Leipsic student than HE STUDIES AT LEIPSIC. 33 to continue the narrow life begun in Frankfort. Cer- v tainly the Elbe and the Pleisse flowed through a land dif- ferent from the picturesque country watered by the Main and the Rhine. Everything was new in Leipsic, and yet wholly the same. Here, also, stagnation reigned, walled in and protected by a reverence for old customs. It is true that the general intellectual commotion, which, ris- ing in France, thrilled all Europe, vibrated almost imper- ceptibly in Leipsic. Lessing and Herder were already at work, and had made a sensation in Germany. But Gel- lert and Gottsched still remained the leading men in Leipsic, the two oracles from whom the student of litera- ture took his cue. Gottsched, the pedantic empty-headed representative of the old French culture, so deliciously sketched by Goethe in his impertinent Grandezza ; Gel- lert, old and inflexible, of somewhat finer mental fibre, both kept pace with the progress of things, but even while imitating did not understand. Gellert wrought his old- fashioned plots into the new form of sentimental comedy, and composed a panegyric on it. He even made of his own novel, " Die schwedische Grafin," a perfect extrav- aganza, which rivals the latest sensation novels. And yet he is in every respect antiquated. I had for Gellert a special personal reverence : he was the favorite writer of my dearly-loved mother, who repeatedly and fervently commended his songs to me. From his works, which I had early received as a gift, I made excerpts for the "Worter Buch," and thereby obtained a more exact knowledge of them than I should otherwise have had. But I cannot help finding in Gellert's character a mixture of benevolence and humanity with servility and dry ness, and an absence of breadth and freedom of thought which is insufferable. Goethe revered Gellert, but never ap- proached him. He was vexed that Gellert ignored the 3 34 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. new writers, whom the young generation respected, and, in his lectures on literature, passed them over as if they did not exist. Goethe was indebted to him for calling his attention to his handwriting, the improvement of which Gellert demanded of all his scholars, intimating that it had its moral value. Goethe was accessible to such admonitions. In spite of all his enjoyments, a conscientious regulation of his inner life was ever conspicuous in his thoughts, and showed itself in his earliest years in the tendency toward Freemasonry and asceticism. His first letter, in the year 1764, contains a request to be admitted to one of the fraternities which at that time rose among us, and whose aim was " Virtue." This word, which to-day (although it has lost nothing of its real nobility) has become less used on account of a certain vagueness bordering on inanity, was at that time full of pregnant meaning, indicating, in an earnest, aspiring, active sense, the highest spiritual good within the reach of man. We see Goethe in Leipsic continuing to interest him- self in all the little city excitements. There prevailed here, heightened by reflection from the court of Dresden, but at the same time as a genuine native specialty, Leipsic u gallantry." The students could not go about rough-shod, like the bullies in Jena and Halle. Goethe adapted himself easily to this more refined life, seeking to visit only the families with whom his intercourse could be as free as it was delightful. He has his acquaintances among women and his love affairs ; renders his homage to the ruling taste in poetical effusions ; and finally re- turns home little changed from what he was when he left. Shakspeare's dramas had already been much admired by Goethe ; but they had not, as yet, influenced his writ- HIS EARLIEST LYEICAL PRODUCTIONS. 35 ings. He speaks of Wieland and Shakspeare as his in- structors in poetry ; but, in truth, in his poetry written at that time lie proves himself to be a genuine scholar of Gottsched and Gellert. He begins a translation of Cor- neille's " Menteur." He writes " Die Mitschuldigen " whose earlier, if not the earliest, printed form Herzel first made known in Alexandrines. If Goethe were not the author of this work, it would to-day be difficult for any one to read it through. Curiously enough, he had always a cer- tain tenderness for it, and enjoyed reading it aloud. The beginning of his lyrical productions, on the other hand, was a series of little songs, adapted to musical compositions, which then appeared in print, but it would be no marvel if we should find a French original for each of them. In their time they were little noticed, and accepted only with a half-patronizing air by Goethe's best friends. Such of them as were afterward reprinted underwent great alterations. In these little songs, which contain mere gallantries, Goethe reveals for the first time his enchanting talent for expressing a feeling by a few simple words or combinations, and, while exhausting it, showing it to be inexhaustible. In Goethe's letters, written at this time, the dependence on French taste for forms of expression is very striking. Some are outright French compositions, interspersed with verses of his own in French ; and all betraying, in the arrangement as well as in the ideas, the playful French style which was so des- potic at that time. Even Voltaire and Frederick, when dealing with the most serious things, could not overcome this manner. Goethe never wrote anything worthy of note in this style. In this correspondence, the radiant Leipsic maidens, whom Goethe describes so charmingly in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," assume a character of mediocrity, insipidity, and littleness, which afterward 36 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Goethe himself was obliged to see. After seven years, when he returned to Leipsic, he looked with eyes long since disenchanted on the whole manner of life there. Otto Jahn and Freiher von Wiedermann have given us the history of Goethe's life in Leipsic. Jahn, for the first time, made Hirzel's collection useful, and justified a very proper local patriotism. The book, adorned with pleasing lithographs, excited at its appearance the live- liest interest, and stimulated an admiration for Goetlie as an author in the period previous to the Weimar days, which later, when degenerated, becomes a kind of cul- tus, an enthusiasm comparable to the apotheosis of the early days of Raphael in Perugia and Florence. But let us remember that if there had been no Weimar and Rome for Goethe and Raphael, very little would now be said of their youthful works or of the men themselves. He who is too eager to prophesy the grand meaning of the later masterly productions of a genius from his early attempts takes a portion of the glory from the mature powers of the man, which alone are able to create such perfection. Goethe's early works can only be rightly estimated in connection with all he accomplished ; and they fall into the shade by the side of the productions of his later years. Goethe made no acquaintances in Leipsic who had decided influence on his life. He spent three years there, felt himself quite at home, and intended to return thither after passing for the first time his autumn vacation in Frankfort. This was in 1768. He was hurried home, as it seems, because his irregular life had brought on a hemorrhage, the effects of which he could not recover from in Leipsic. Ill, and in a sad frame of mind, he reached his father once more. He had not studied even law earnestly, and must rest for months before he would HE MEETS HERDER AT STRASBURG. 37 be well enough to resume his studies, as was now found advisable in Strasburg. A journey to Paris and into Italy, where his father had been, was proposed at the end of his education. On the 19th of October, 1765, Goethe matriculated in Leipsic ; on the 28th of August, 1768, he leaves for home ; and on the 2d of April, 1770, he goes to Stras- burg. He was already over twenty years of age. Now begins the time when every word which t drops from Goethe's pen is memorable, as of historical impor- tance. Now, for the first time in his life, he meets a superior nature, a man whom he felt to be greater than himself. We must now speak directly of the man who, of all his contemporaries, had the most enduring influence upon Goethe. Goethe and Herder met in Strasburg. 38 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. LECTURE III. LIFE JN STRASBURG. HERDER. NEW IDEAS OF THE NINE- TEENTH CENTURY. /^OETHE'S Strasburg experiences, as well as those in ^-^ Leipsic, have been enlarged upon by writers with a sort of local patriotism. He himself describes this short period with loving minuteness. Again he enters heart and soul into the fulness of life. The inn, " Zum Geist," at which Goethe alighted, no longer exists. But we follow him to-day on his first walk from there to the Cathedral, passing the very same old houses which he passed. Many thousands since then have read from the platform of the tower Goethe's name chiselled high in the stone, and thought of him as they gazed around on the glorious extent of country, and then looked down upon the houses of the crooked city which at that time was so perfectly German that he scarcely felt himself outside his native land. - It was so essential for Goethe to see men, and to hear the world in a certain confusion whirling about him, that he was quickly drawn into a varied intercourse. " My life," as he expresses it in one of his letters, " is like a drive in a sleigh, speeding along with tinkling of bells, but with as little to satisfy the heart as there is much to fill eye and ear." Five years later, when he came to Weimar, he made use of the same figure ; and at HIS LIFE AT STRASBURG. 39 no time, in the course of his long life, did Goethe fail to have his sleigh-ride. He was always moving forward with sound of cymbals and waving of banners, with a retinue constantly about him whom he ruled, and by whom he in turn allowed himself to be ruled. In this respect Goethe was educated like the child of a -prince, about whom, from his first entrance into the world, crowds of men are busy, and by whom he is surrounded to the very end of his life. This Strasburg life, considered in the light of a sleigh- ride, Goethe has so beautifully and faithfully depicted that his representation of the town, like that of Frank- fort and Leipsic, has the value of a chronicle. To-day we observe with some misgivings how the educated classes, from having become almost French, begin to return to German ways ; at that time, however, the transition from genuine German to French life was just beginning, and it was hastened on by the first Revolution. In the old French kingdom these Rhine provinces were quite distinct from the others. It would never have occurred to any one at that time to claim Alsace as French soil : the Alsace soldiers were called "les troupes allemandes, de sa Majeste*," and the Alsace people "les sujets allemands du Roi de France." Goethe had wholly the feeling that he was continuing his studies at a German University, and even somewhat later no soul in Frankfort would have hesitated to recognize the claims of a " Strasburg Doctor." Goethe does justice to the French as well as to the German element. He describes most charmingly the family of his French dancing-master, and not less pleas- ingly the costume of the German burger maidens, the neat, closely-fitting bodice, and the needle in the hair. He paints the festal procession of Marie Antoinette, the 40 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. blooming young wife of the Dauphin. He transports us into the very midst of the curious university life, the last remnants of which have been again incorporated with the newly founded university. There is no corner of the city which he does not creep into and describe ; and he makes us as familiar with the state of things at that time as if we had ourselves been present and breathed the air of Strasburg in 1770. He describes the dinner-company of which he was a member. Two old maiden ladies, by the name of Lauth, cooked for a number of people of various ranks and ages. At the head of the table sat Dr. Salzmann, a sort of Gel- lert in Strasburg ; an excellent, irreproachable old gentle- man, born in 1722, well-known in the city, and by reason of his good citizenship a man who had won universal confidence, and, although without any special literary merit, not to be banished from literary history. His cor- respondence with Goethe, preserved in the Strasburg library, was destroyed in the last bombardment of the city. If Salzmann was the most respectable of the com- pany, Lenz was the most brilliant. He, however, joined the circle later and as tutor to two young noble Liefland- ers. Lenz is, of all the friends of Goethe, the one whom he most freely recognized as a poet and his equal, and who afterward was his greatest source of trouble. But the most upright and honorable of them all was Lerse, whom Goethe immortalized in " Gotz," although in the first form of the work the tall blue-eyed theologian is converted into a little black-eyed groom. It is possible that Lerse himself demanded better treatment, for, though the black eyes remain, the " little " man is changed into a " stately " one in the rewriting of the drama. Lerse did not live to be old, but died a teacher in the military school at Colmar, in 1800. At the same table WAGNER AND JUNG STILLING. 41 sat Leopold "Wagner, the first person who in Goethe's opin- ion was guilty of a literary theft from him, using in his play, "Die Kindermorderin," the idea of "Faust," a drama, whose passionate, glaringly-portrayed scenes bear so little resemblance to " Faust " that, without Goethe's express declaration of plagiarism, we should scarcely have suspected it. It has been believed that Goethe wished to revenge himself on Wagner by giving to Faust's Famulus, who is the type of the narrow, pedantic book- worm, the name of Wagner ; and in all the old puppet- shows we find that Faust's associate is called Wagner. Nor was this the only time that Leopold Wagner came into literary collision with Goethe. He is the only per- son who, later in life, forced Goethe to give a public explanation concerning some literary matters. The most prominent man at ,the table was Jung, better known by his nom de plume of "Jung Stilling." His autobiography will always be one of the books no one can repent having read. Jung Stilling, born in 1740, raised himself from a peasant boy to a journeyman tailor, a school-master, and lastly to the position of professor and renowned oculist. Jung lived wholly in his idea. He was one of the leading Pietists of the last century, a widely disseminated religious sect, whose members be- lieved themselves to stand in direct intercourse with the ruling powers of Nature. Goethe had from his childhood a similar tendency, and was only radically cured of it by his experiences with Lavater. But it was only the person from whom he then turned aside, not the thing itself. Fraulein von Klettenberg, who had so great an influence on his early development and whose memory he held dear all his life, was the purest and noblest representative of this form of Christianity, which, by the effect of the French Bevolu- 42 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. tion, was so wholly uprooted among us that the remnant which still exists gives no idea of its earlier significance. The " communications " of the Spiritualists of England and America to-day may be compared with it, bearing in mind the fact that, instead of the prosaic coarseness with which these matters are now handled, they were then treated with the delicacy which was a characteristic of European life before the French Revolution. Jung Stilling's biography contains one of the earliest remarks of a contemporary about young Goethe. He describes the first meeting with him at 13 Krammergasse, where the gentlewomen Lauth resided. He had gone there with a friend, and, being the first that day at ta- ble, watched the company assemble for dinner. " One, especially, with large clear eyes, splendid brow, fine figure, came into the room, full of animation." He impressed them instantly. " He must be an extraordinary man," remarked Jung's companion softly to him. Jung as- sented, but feared " they might be somewhat annoyed by him, he seemed such a wild, rolicking fellow;" to which the other added, " Here it is best to withhold one's opinion for a fortnight." No notice, however, was taken of Jung and his friend, except that Goethe " sometimes rolled his eyes toward them." But soon an opportu- nity occurred for him to do more. An apothecary from Vienna, who was of the dinner-company, gave this op- portunity. Jung wore an old round wig, which, for economy, he insisted on retaining to its last hair ; and the Vienna man, with a glance at this bit of antiquity, put the question : " Whether they thought Adam had worn a round wig in Paradise ? " Goethe now interfered in a way which made Jung his friend for life. Goethe edited Jung's autobiography. Dr. Salzmann was the founder of the German Associa- THE MEETING WITH HERDER. 43 tion, to which Goethe was admitted. Goethe had gone to Strasburg with the idea of becoming a thorough French scholar, and of going on to Paris later to receive the final polish. He describes how these plans were counteracted. It came over him and his companions like an unexpected discovery, that French literature was insipid. The young people felt that it was old and ex- hausted, though they were not prejudiced against it by any of the political ideas of to-day. They did not them- selves know under what influence they stood. Rousseau's renowned " Contrat Social," which at that time agitated the world, was but indifferent reading to them, and gave them no new ideas. On the other hand, Shakspeare was revered. In power and originality he appeared to surpass everything else in the whole sphere of literature. Such was the beginning of Goethe's life at Strasburg. From all sides the advantages poured in upon him which ordinary life brings with it to those who have wealth and introductions to the most desirable people, and are also richly endowed by Nature. But how much must be added to such abundance by special accident, if all these favored conditions are really to be made service- able, is proved also in his case. The man had yet to come who was to teach Goethe to recognize the world as a living whole ; who would show him the way whither this whole is moving, and how the individual must exert himself in order to take part in the great work whose result we call the progress of humanity. To render Goethe this service was the mission of Herder, who appeared in Strasburg in the autumn of 1771. We are accustomed now-a-days to consider Herder only as among those grouped around the pedestal on which Goethe stands in solitary grandeur ; but when Herder and Goethe first met in Strasburg, it soon became 44 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Goethe's highest wish merely to revolve around Herder as his planet. What was wanting in Herder's career has already been mentioned : the latter half of his life did not yield him the joyous, prolific harvest which the great result of his early days promised. And yet in his youth he had been marvellously fitted out for this early career. Those privations were his lot which to conquer is an indispensable part of the education of energetic natures, loneliness and solitude, which develop all the powers of resistance in man, and without which it is almost im- possible to attain reliance on oneself, or that stoical bravery, that indifference to the caprices of outward life, which passionate natures need in order to pursue stead- fastly their own way. As the best of all the gifts of fate, a friend was early given to Herder ; and this friend's doctrines offered worthy problems to test his ability, at a time when his thoughts would not otherwise have been called to them. Herder was born in Mohrungen, in 1744, into a family not absolutely poor, but in straitened circumstances. At twenty years of age, when Goethe still sat aimless and unprepared for the duties of life in his father's house, Herder, having long passed his student years, had received the position of preacher at Riga on the ground of his "Fragments on German Literature," which had made him famous. During his years of study, 1762 to 1764, he had become acquainted in Kb'nigsberg with the man who first directed his thoughts to the highest aims, Hamann. It is difficult to speak of Hamann. He stands too much outside of the great lines on which the men of the past are drawn up that we may review them. Hamann must be studied ; the casual observer finds in him little of general interest or significance. He has been called the " Magus of the North." Goethe said HERDER AXD LESSING COMPARED. 45 that his writings would be read hereafter like Sibylline books. Hamarm sought to embody his thoughts, as it were, in philosophic and magic formulas. A magic for- mula is one which produces a sudden effect with words seemingly incomprehensible, or even inconsistent. Ha- mann has written pages which instantly arrest attention, fill us with expectation, and hold us captive, but whose meaning only dawns upon us gradually and after re- peated readings. Their deep contents disclose them- selves as if a real illumination irradiated them. He who finally understands Hamann ranks him among the heroes of literature, and we constantly meet with emi- nent scholars who devote their entire faculties to the study of his writings. The story of his outer life is scarcely credible. For the sake of his daily bread he held a subordinate office, lived in continual embarrass- ment, and showed in all his dealings a mixture of obsti- nacy and docility which is rarely to be seen. He goes to the bottom of everything. To a young and fiery mind like Herder's nothing could be more beneficial than intimate communion with such a spirit during the years when he was forming his opinions. The great critic in Germany at this time was Lessing. Herder's criticisms struck a new tone. Lessing knew only one system of tactics, which was with fixed bayonet to run his rival through the body. He made no prisoners. When the work was over, there was nothing left of his antagonist. Herder, on the contrary, never attacks ; he seeks from all sides to influence his antagonist and to induce him to retreat. He is inexhaustible in resources. He appears at great disadvantage to-day in comparison with Lessing, whose sharp, concise use of words, pressing directly to their aim, loses nothing of its original perspi- cuity ; while Herder's florid style, his involved periods, 46 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. and his odd attempts to create a language of his own, in which new and curious words and combinations of words occur, make his style sound antiquated and foreign. Herder was a poet and a theologian : he would convince and rule, but hurt no one. In the depths of his soul lay a quiet mirror, in which the history of humanity was pictured as a work of art. The beauty and the power of his language shows itself most purely when, in hours of rapturous contemplation, he forces into his service the truest and most pertinent words ; but it becomes dim and confused when he engages in controversy, which, alas ! in his later days he was too often tempted to do. Herder had, in 1769, published a new work, which added to his renown, called " Die kritischen Walder," new fragments of a grand creed, which comprehended the whole world. In a somewhat romantic manner he was then driven to Strasburg. He had given up his position of pastor, and gone by ship from Riga to France. Torn from his former sphere, on a voyage of discovery seeking a new existence, his thoughts given to the con- templation of the infinite, all-surrounding sea, he wrote down all that moved him, trying to make clear the whole horizon of his knowledge, experiences, and expectations. These pages were published long after his death. They give the best idea of his grand theory of life. They dis- close an acute and comprehensive mind which includes all phenomena in its system, and a power in the use of lan- guage which fills us with astonishment when we think how little our mother-tongue was at that time fitted to express such speculation. We must bear this in mind in order to understand the mass of French words which fill the writings of Lessing, as well as of Herder ; and which are also to be found in great numbers in the writings of Schiller and Goethe. RESULTS OF THE THIKTY YEARS' WAR. 47 From Paris Herder went to Eutin, where he was court preacher. He left there to travel with a young Holstein prince. Herder had an eye disease, necessitating a te- dious and painful operation, and chaining him to Stras- burg, "a most wretched, chaotic, disagreeable place," as he wrote Merck. Under these circumstances, needing help and accustomed to command, Goethe's willingness to serve came very opportunely. They became acquainted by accident, and an intimacy sprang up. The enthu- siasm at first was all on Goethe's side : he perceived clearly what was to be won, and would not allow Herder to escape him. When Goethe had become older by the few years necessary to cancel the disparity which at their time of life made the difference between the men so striking, there grew up the real attachment which we might say death alone could have severed, if the out- ward intercourse of the two men had not (apparently through Herder's fault) in later years come to an end. Inwardly they were never estranged. We shall see that Herder at this time gave to Goethe what no other person in Germany could have given him. It is necessary here again to begin with some general observations. In speaking of the results of the Thirty Years' War, we have hitherto considered only its effect upon Ger- many ; but the mental stagnation which prevailed among us had, so far as it concerned political life, extended almost all over Europe. The independence of " Burger- ship " was destroyed, and the citizens subordinated them- selves to the nobles, whose sole aim was to maintain the existing order of things. The ruling lords reigned with absolute authority ; and it seemed as if the further devel- opment of European history was to consist of incessant struggles to uphold the majesty of the families possessed 48 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. of power. All public institutions served, directly or in- directly, this single aim. Catholic and Protestant clergy alike sustained, with entire willingness, such views. With all European nobles and officials one question only came to be of importance ; namely, whether they were in favor or disfavor at court. To win the former, and to avoid the latter, was the secret of all superior education. An overthrow of such conditions was nowhere attempted ; and one may say that in the year 1700 the European world had so conformed to this state of things that it appeared as immutable as the elements, or as man him- self. No one could believe that while Europeans lived together they could possibly maintain other social rela- tions than such as had existed. It seemed to have been always so, and that it must ever remain so. There is an anecdote of a picture of the Flood, in which one of the men swimming for his life is represented bear- ing in his hand a roll of parchment, while a card hangs from his mouth, on which is written, " Sauvez les papiers de la famille Montmorency." Of course, the Montmo- rencys were not so far lost as to assert that they actually existed before the Flood ; but the hypothesis was that powerful families were of almost any age, like the great Roman families who derived their origin from the gods themselves. They believed in an eternal continuance as much as Horace did, who, when wishing to express the idea of infinitude, wrote, "so long as the Tarpeian maiden shall mount the Capitol." Hence the universal uncon- cern when, in the face of these conditions, the feeling arose that all was not right. Hence, also, sprang up among those looking farther, and seeing the absolute im- possibility of continuing these relations, the conviction that men could not by degrees work out of them and pass over to something relatively better ; but that a total EUROPE IX THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 49 overthrow must ensue, from the ruins of which, perhaps (as something wholly new), simple natural conditions might be evolved. These two moods the one a feeling of absolute se- curity in the enjoyment of the present, the other awaiting a chaos to result in an entirely new creation charac- terized the first half of the last century. Men lived merrily on, and regarded the course of things with frivo- lous irony. This is the meaning of the phrase, " apres nous le de'luge." Louis XV. the sublimest representa- tive of this monstrous frivolity, which hurried the people recklessly on candidly admits the impending end of all things, but commits it to future generations to atone for the sins of their forefathers. But that he himself, or his immediate family, could be concerned in it never oc- curred to him. He believed in a deluge in the vague future ; at all events he calculated on a postponement of the Day of Judgment for at least one or two hundred years. For this reason, and without much anxiety, men left it to the philanthropists (who were beginning to be busy with the subject) to construct new kingdoms in which freedom might find a home, and where philosophers should reign supreme. Attempts of this kind became more significant as the signs increased that not the distant future, but a living generation was to pass through the experience of universal bankruptcy. The history of Rob- inson Crusoe, who like Adam was forced to begin life anew and alone upon a desolate island, was the embodi- ment, in the form of an innocent romance, of the thought that each one like Robinson might suffer shipwreck, and with somewhat pitiful household implements be driven to fabricate a new life. Ideas of this kind began to be pop- ular. And now it happened that just in the middle of the century a sudden maturity of the public mind an- 4 50 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. nounced itself, and that one morning the hitherto indif- ferent and frivolous masses were overpowered by the thought, and passionately grappled with the question, of the possible improvement of the world. The three men who brought about this revolution in France, or rather in Paris, which at that time in quite a different sense from to-day was called " the brain of mankind," were Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. Voltaire had ploughed up the soil of France, and made it ready for the new seed, which Rousseau began imme- diately after to sow. Diderot, scarcely to be compared with the two former, must notwithstanding be named, because he was the most able of all the writers of the sec- ond rank who, in the spirit of Voltaire and Rousseau, labored to accelerate the growth of the young seed. Diderot succeeded, although he was no poet, in investing these new ideas with an aesthetic literary form. He invented prosaic tragedy, the so-called " come'die lar- moyante," whose representative in Germany was Les- sing. Lessing's principal drama in this vein is " Miss Sarah Sampson," and Goethe's chief work upon this model is " Clavigo." Diderot figures to-day, among classic writers, only as a critic and narrator. His theat- rical works are insufferable and thrown aside. Voltaire was best characterized by Goethe, when he said that he was an incarnation of all the qualities of the French nation, good and bad. Voltaire is the most glorious Frenchman to be found in all history. Even the element of personal bravery was not wanting. He once challenged a nobleman who had insulted him, and would not give up the duel until he was imprisoned in the Bastile at the instigation of his antagonist. Goethe has emphatically declared Voltaire to be the originator of the French Rev- olution, by saying that he loosened all the ties which VOLTAIRE'S INFLUENCE ON EUROPE. 51 had hitherto bound men together. Voltaire died before its outbreak. The only circumstance which hindered him from working with even mightier power was that entrance into the highest Parisian circles had been made too easy for him. Had his agitating head been set on the body of a man in the lower ranks of life, whom poverty and destitution had embittered and filled with antipathy to these higher classes, Voltaire might have saved the men coming after him a great part of their revolutionary work. On the other side, it need scarcely be said that an extraordinary opportunity was afforded Voltaire, by his unlimited social intercourse, to spread his ideas in all directions. Never has a writer so entirely governed the epoch in which he lived as Voltaire. Even to-day he is considered one of the greatest of historians. As a young author, Voltaire, driven from Paris, had taken refuge in England, which, with the United Neth- erlands, represented in the last century German Prot- estant freedom. Political independence and undisturbed philosophical convictions were there granted to every one. If it were possible to find a model anywhere for the reconstruction of the rest of Europe, England natu- rally presented herself as that model. And it was this which Voltaire perceived on the spot. He studied English philosophy. To him was vouchsafed the marvellous double gift to become quickly imbued with, foreign ideas, and then to revolve them with indefatigable care until, having eliminated every superfluous word, he was able to give his writings that ease and grace which all literary form demands in order to be effec- tive. Voltaire added to an unlimited power of pro- duction an immense capacity for self-criticism. The works in which he brought the moral and political aspects of English philosophy before the Parisian public 52 LIFE AOT) TIMES OF GOETHE. produced a tremendous sensation. From that moment began the earnest agitation of mind in France. Voltaire had created with his writings the elements with which Rousseau could work. Rousseau was younger than Vol- taire, and found his public ready for him. As an artist, Rousseau stood far below Voltaire's height. But he did not need to adapt and polish his writings so much, for his style naturally possessed the quality the only one which, perhaps, Voltaire's lacked of vital heat, pene- trating instantly to the heart of the reader, and, where it is a question of success with one generation only, far exceeding any effect of art. Rousseau had raised himself from the dregs of society, and, although inter- course with the highest circles was forced upon him from many directions, he always remained a plebeian. Rousseau moved forward recklessly because it was his nature, arid because he so willed it. He had nothing to do with generalizations, but attacked things practically. In colossal literary efforts he discussed, one by one, the seething ideas which disquieted the minds of men, and aroused for himself, far and wide, undisguised hatred and open love. Voltaire, in all his writings, always remained the artist. He had exhibited the existing order of things in such a light, by turning them hither and thither, that finally every one was convinced that their condition was no longer tenable or practicable ; but he had addressed himself chiefly to the higher classes. Rousseau, on the contrary, appealed to every one. Each felt him to be like himself. Voltaire had only been able to interest the Germans : Rousseau agitated them. His ideas had penetrated Herder's soul. He was related to Rousseau in his whole nature ; for as a solitary, poor young man, in the extreme east of Germany, Herder had striven to raise himself in the opinion of the people. He came out against Rousseau EOUSSEAU'S " STATE OF NATURE." 53 and criticised him, but bore him in his soul all the while. We have seen that in Strasburg Goethe knew not what to make of Rousseau's writings. A great man is not always immediately understood : he needs his prophet. In Rousseau's influence over Herder I refer not so much to definite statements which he accepted from him, but to something which might be compared to electricity, passing through Herder to Goethe, who would not other- wise have come in contact with it. Rousseau saw only one means of freeing the people from their burdensome tyranny : each one of them must be made sensible of the laws and duties imposed upon him by the fact that he is a part of his nation. In his eyes each nation was an individual, responsible for its own fate. Rousseau addressed himself to the French nation as if that alone was in question ; but every other nation might apply his theories to itself, and so other countries merely substi- tuted " mankind " for " France." The distinctly national political feeling which now-a-days is thought to belong to a true patriotism, was at that time wholly unknown. Even in France men regarded humanity only as a whole. The development of mankind, which was the fundamen- tal idea in Herder's soul and the basis of all his works, would never have been built up within him without the help of Rousseau. Rousseau's dogma, that all civiliza- tion is but deterioration from an originally perfect state, corresponded so exactly to the universal feeling that it was accepted without question : " All is good that comes from the hand of the Creator ; all is ruined by man. The way must be found back to our original condition." To-day the theory most widely accepted assumes it to be scientifically proved that mankind has been developed from the animal ; and it is not regarded as necessary for 54 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. the*individual to furnish any proof of this before accept- ing it. In the time of Rousseau the contrary doctrine of original perfection was received with universal credulity. In a certain sense it offered nothing new. Theology has always repeated the story of a lost Paradise ; but Rous- seau wished to show how, without Christianity, philoso- phy led back to this Paradise. Herder was the first to draw from these teachings conclusions applicable to poetic art : " The poet should go back to pure Nature." Nature here meant " his own creative power obeying the inward voice." We should go back for teachers to those poets who stood prominent among their people. Winckelmann had pointed to the Greeks, and showed how art with them was the blossom of the entire life of the nation. Herder studied the Psalms, the songs of Homer, Pindar, Ossian, and above all Shakspeare ; and with these, like woodland flowers sown by no human hand, but which spring up about the trunks of giant oaks, the Folksongs. While the stormy wind tosses the branches overhead, the grasses beneath are gently stirred by the sighing breath from the yearning heart of Nature. Herder did not present to the people a critically ingenious exegesis of these studies : he was ever the preacher. Herder's writings are intelligible only as sermons. It is not for the preacher to offer on special occasions carefully studied productions afterward to be printed, but at every opportunity to pour out from a full heart living words. We must think of what Herder says as spoken words if we would rightly judge him. Goethe was twenty-one years old when he met Herder. He was in a state of ferment. He sought a master. He had never found anybody who made him say to himself : " This man knows more than I do ! He is in the pos- session of secrets which can help me!" At last came one whose first words were decisive : to him he submit- GOETHE'S FIRST EARNEST LOVE. 55 ted. And what strengthened Herder's mastery over Goethe was the manner in which he received his devo- tion. Herder, accustomed to such submission, saw nothing peculiar in Goethe's homage, and treated him with indifference. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Herder secretly felt Goethe's strength, and perhaps un- consciously tried to hinder his rising too high beside him. The beginning of Goethe's real productiveness we may date from this time. His previous labors had been only aimless attempts. Goethe had intuitively recognized the right direction : now Herder came to show him the way. Goethe enters that period of joyous, youthful, self-con- fidence which made him so attractive, and which he so fully sustained in the years which followed. But now we have something to place in opposition to all this. Goethe, feeling that it was the most important event of his life, has related at some length in " Dichtung und Wahrheit" his meeting with Herder in Strasburg. Yet even this, and his experiences with all his other friends and acquaintances, seem only the frame for an event which was the true centre of his Strasburg life. How he found and loved Frederika Brion in Sesenheim is described with quite another pen. If Goethe had be- come only a great philosophic statesman or scholar, he would, perhaps, in later years, when recounting and arranging the events of his life, scarcely have mentioned Frederika ; but the eye of the poet looked at the matter from a higher point. Goethe felt, when recalling the days of his youth, that in the opening bloom of this love whose long-exhaled perfume had once enchanted him were contained the most precious moments of his life, and knew only too well that it had been more to him than all else. To Frederika he owed most, and to her he was the most grateful. To her his eyes turned back 66 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. more fondly than to all else, and everything about her he remembers more clearly than all else. Goethe has shown his utmost skill in painting this maiden in the purest and most beautiful colors. His Leipsic love-affairs seem child's play compared with this. They arose in sport ; and when they were ended they were spoken of in a graceful strain of sad despair. She was the first he earnestly loved, the first whose heart he broke, and whom he never could forget. After a long life, full of much excitement, which had ever more and more dimmed his memory, he was forced, in describing that life, to linger over every moment of this experience. To write is more than merely to remember. In order to surround Frederika with the utmost glamour, Goethe has treated himself with a harshness in which alone is im- plied, if it were really necessary, a late expiation. Fred- erika, in Goethe's delineation, is invested with something inexpressibly touching, as if youth had again been given to him and to her, and once more the possibility granted them never to separate. FEEDERIKA IN SESEXIIEIM. 57 LECTURE IV. FEEDERIKA IN SESENHEIM. DOCTOR'S DEGREE. RETURN TO FRANKFORT. TpREDERIKA, as represented in " Dichtung und *- Wahrheit," is not, as we say, copied from nature ; but Goethe endows the being created in his imagination with so many of the minor features of his friend that it bears a striking resemblance to her. This appearance of reality which the artist lends to his pictures is the high- est effect of art. It is as if not he, but Nature, had wrought, and he had only faithfully copied the model. Indeed, the better he succeeds in this the more perfect will his creations be, and the more vivid their effect upon others ; while he who does not first carefully go through this process of simply copying what Nature offers will at best produce only an unpleasant counterfeit, dumb and lifeless, because he could not invest it with speech and motion. This is why many portraits which are striking likenesses frighten us; and why photographs reproducing the sharpest reality can never be considered as works of art, however much skill and experience may be expended in preparing them. Photographic portraits, to which the retoucheur has not lent a deceitful conventionality, when long examined, give the impression of some one before us in a state of cramp-like rigidity. As regards Frederika, Goethe has succeeded in an eminent degree in convincing us that the portrait lie has 58 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. drawn is a most faithful likeness of the actual parson's daughter at Sesenheim, whom he once lovedi Therefore we are ready to swear that Frederika must have been ex- actly like this, only in our secret souls we are inclined to believe her to have been much more charming than Goethe describes her. We think he has not done her justice. And this is the effect produced by truly artistic creations. that he who contemplates them believes he understands them better than the artist himself ; as if the poet had been only a chosen instrument commissioned by Providence to bring a being into the world which lives a life of its own. Like children who as soon as they are individuals show themselves independent of their parents, so creations like Hamlet, Juliet, and Faust appear to as- sert a certain independence of their creator, and strangers approaching them believe that they understand them bet- ter than their authors do. Many of the interpreters of Hamlet seem to imagine that they knew the prince at least as well as Shakspeare did himself. In the representation of this drama the public has objected to the tragic end of the prince ; while Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who has rendered the tragedy in French Alexandrines, just at the end makes the ghost of the father appear again and ad- vise Hamlet to seize the reins of government, and wishes him the best success, which then really happens. I re- member that one of my young friends repeatedly insisted that Shakspeare had no right to kill Romeo and Juliet. If similar discussions had gone on in his lifetime Shak- speare would only have found in them most flattering proofs that he had been so fortunate as to create genuine living beings ; and Goethe, when exposed to the severest reproof for having faithlessly deserted such an enchanting creature as Frederika, only found the assurance that the result had been attained which he sought to produce. THE DANCING-MASTER'S DAUGHTERS. 59 It would be in vain to try to decide how nearly Goethe's Frederika and the original Frederika coincide. Influ- enced as we are by Goethe's poetry, we find the maiden as captivating as he describes her. I will try, so far as possible, to distinguish the two figures, the ideal and the real. In order to do this, it isnecessary to consider with what artistic means the delineation of his experience at Sesenheim was accomplished. By way of introduction, in order to excite the anticipa- tion of a tragic end, he relates his adventure with the daughters of the old French dancing-master, a little narrative complete in itself, whose close makes a thrilling dramatic scene ; the whole, in its way, a model for a modern novel. The story runs thus : Of the two daugh- ters of the dancing-master, the younger excites Goethe's interest ; while the elder, Lucinda, without his dreaming of it, falls in love with him. Goethe describes how one day Lucinda storms into the room just as he is on the point of committing himself to the younger aister, inter- rupts them passionately, declares her love, and, after renouncing him in favor of her younger sister, bids him farewell and closes his lips with a kiss, which she avows shall bring ruin to the one next kissed by those lips. Goethe leaves the house, never to enter it again. The reader, with a certain fluttering of the heart, waits to hear on whom this curse will fall. Before Frederika appears, in order still further to heighten the effect, and at the same time to prepare us to see the inmates of the clergyman's house at Sesenheim as in a mirror, Goethe gives an account of Herder's read- ing the "Vicar of Wakefield." This romance only known to-day as an old-fashioned novel, out of which one takes his first lessons in English, as one learns French out of " Paul and Virginia," and Italian out of " I Pro- 60 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. messi Sposi " possessed at that time the charm of per- fect novelty. Goethe relates how Herder read it to his young friends, and the conversation which grew out of it exposes a new side of Herder's character. Herder knew how to produce the greatest effect, and at the same time to destroy it again ; and, even at this early day, he showed the power to inspire and elevate, and at the same time to depress and dishearten. The Vicar of Wakefield is the head of a family, which, through a series of calami- ties, sinks into a condition of the greatest misery ; but at last, after all the characters have been purified and strengthened by these trials, their hard fate is mitigated, better times come, all obstacles disappear, and we take leave of the family in the full sunshine of the happiness they enjoyed when we first made their acquaintance. In this way we are prepared for Sesenheim without knowing it. It seems as if we were opening a wholly new chapter, which has nothing to do with the foregoing. It was in the spring of 1771. Herder has left Stras- burg. Goethe has every reason to concentrate himself upon the study of law, since he wishes to obtain in the autumn his degree. But the glorious country allures him, and there is also his inborn impulse never to leave a spot of earth on which he has once dwelt without hav- ing thoroughly explored it. Alsace between the Rhine and Vosges, a separate province, reminds one, it is said, of Switzerland. People have wandered through the prov- ince from end to end, until at last every path in valley or mountain has been traversed. There have always been learned men and lovers of Nature who were at home in Alsace, and who thoroughly knew its history and exact topography. The laud has its own history and its peculiar character. Among Goethe's acquaintances was a born Alsatian, HE LOVES TO TRAVEL INCOGNITO. 61 who was in the habit of enlivening his quiet existence by occasional visits to relatives and friends in the neighbor- hood : with him Goethe planned a visit to one of his relatives, the Parson Brion in Sesenheim. Goethe always had a fancy for presenting himself in disguise, or under a feigned name. According to his ten- dency to contemplate things objectively, he was most comfortable incognito. When a Leipsic student he made in this manner his renowned journey to Dresden, where he took up his abode with the Socratic shoemaker, whose household he so picturesquely describes. In later years, on his lonely winter journey into the Hartz from Wei- mar, he allowed himself to be presented under a feigned name to Plessing, in Wernigerode, who had repeatedly appealed to him by letter for advice in his spiritual need. Goethe left him without acknowledging who he was. In Rome he lived the first few weeks unmolested, shielded by a disguise ; in Sicily he thus visited the Balsamo fam- ily ; and the list of his adventures of this kind might be greatly increased. In his visit to Parson Brion his fancy for assuming a disguise also appears. He resolves to make his debut in the character of a shabby theological student ; borrows a suit of threadbare clothes, brushes his profuse and orna- mental locks straight back, and rides off with his friend one morning in May, 1771. The ride is so graphically described that the reader believes himself to be an invisible member of the party, trotting along with them. First of all, in Goethean fashion, we must have firm ground under our feet, the excellent road, the splendid weather, the Rhine so near, the fruitful country, the plain, with the misty mountains in the distance. Finally, the two riders turn aside from the broad road into the blossoming lane leading to Sesenheim, leave their horses 62 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. in the village, and betake themselves to the parson's house. How exactly we are informed in regard to every detail of this house ! Where building was to be done, Goethe was constantly at hand. A rebuilding of the parson's house was necessary, and Goethe's interest in the plans was one of the ways in which he later won the old parson's favor. He drew sketches for it with his own hand, some of which Riemer Goethe's amanuensis in the last years of his life discovered among his papers. The parson receives the two students alone : the daughters are out. Now we see with what skill Frederika is brought into the scene. Here we recognize, not alone the experienced writer, but the theatre-director. First, he allows the older sister to storm in inquiring for Fred- erika. A slight impatience seizes us, and with it the expectation to find in Frederika the opposite of this vehe- mence ; but he still holds her back. For a second time must the sister, Salomea, Goethe calls her Olivia, in remembrance of the oldest daughter in the " Vicar of Wakefield," come hurriedly into the room again, and ask for Frederika. " Let her alone : she will come back of herself," quietly replies the father. Frederika is be- lated in her ramble. Now is added to mere expectation the anxiety lest something has befallen her. Finally, she appears ; and now, when curiosity is at its highest point, with a few masterly touches he paints the beautiful girl. Frederika is introduced as heroine and principal charac- ter, without having done anything more than simply allow- ing herself to be expected. She wears the German cos- tume a short white skirt, with a furbelow; "the daintiest feet visible ; " a closely-fitting white boddice, and a black taffeta apron, the whole dress something between a city girl's and a peasant's. Merry blue eyes ; pretty nose, slightly retroussd; a straw hat, which she bears on FREDERIKA, THE P ARSON'S DAUGHTER. 63 her arm, the whole effect charming. With a few touches a lovely picture is here painted. Father, mother, and daughters now try to make the two poor students comfortable. The sisters begin an amusing gossip about the entire neighborhood. Frederika then plays on the piano, as one plays in the country, on an out-of-tune instrument. " Let us go out," she said, "and then you shall hear some of my Alsace and Swiss songs." Now Goethe is struck with the resemblance of the family to that of the Vicar of Wakefield. This completes the picture for the reader, and at the same time hints that stormy days are coming, and that these good, quiet people are to be exposed to trials. At night, in the tavern, Goethe reviews with his friend the occurrences of the day. The likeness of the family to the one in the romance is talked over, and Goethe's thoughts instantly anticipate all the consequences of such a comparison. Into the family of the Vicar, Thornhill, the seducer of one of the daughters, had also stolen in disguise. Goethe compares himself to this man ; and this alone though without a shadow of guilt is suffi- cient to awaken in him the most violent remorse. This is perfectly conceivable. The innocence and truth of the people likewise create in us- a feeling of aversion to Goethe's deception. He had observed in his walk through the fields the respect with which the peasants greeted the young maiden. He had walked with Frederika in the moonlight ; but " her talk had nothing moonshiny in it, for the clearness with which she expressed herself made the night day." In contrast to all this, he had been acting a part. The next morning, overwhelmed with the unworthiness of his rdle, he throws himself upon his horse and rides away. He intends to return to Strasburg ; but, as each particular event of the previous 64 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. day recurs to his inind, he rides more slowly, and finally turns back. In Drusenheim lie stops. Before the tavern he meets the son of the landlord in his Sunday clothes, with ribbons in his hat, just starting to carry a christen- ing-cake to the parson's wife at Sesenheim. With him Goethe exchanges clothes, to attempt a new masquerade. Bearing the cake in his hand, he soon again reaches the parsonage at Sesenheim. He is not recognized until Frederika comes towards him, and even she at first takes him for the person to whom the dress belongs, and says familiarly, " George, what are you doing here ? " Then she suddenly becomes aware of her mistake, and " her delicate cheeks are suffused with the loveliest blushes." We now hear, little by little, what further happens at Sesenheim, how Goethe fascinates the whole family; how he establishes himself in some special relation to each member of it ; and how wildly he surrenders himself to his rapture. We are still touched by the poems he dedicated at this time to Frederika. Herder had been the first to draw his attention to the songs of the people. Now he hears Frederika sing them, collects them from the very mouth of the people, and adds to them his own glorious verses written in the very spirit and tone of the " Volkslied." How conceivable this unrestrained heed- lessness in Goethe ! How conceivable, also, the artless- ness with which Frederika responded to his fancy, as she soon with a sisterly confidence attached herself to him ! And here it is well to consider that at that time such an intimacy was not peculiar. The intercourse between young people at that period was perfectly free and natural. As a young man, when music comes in as a third ele- ment, may take a young lady in his arms and move with her to the measure of the dance, so the universal feeling throughout Europe at that time, that all were moving on THE ROMANCE OF FREDERIKA. 65 toward a higher existence, came like music into every relation, and permitted a familiarity which is no longer allowed. People associated, wrote to each other, and talked openly of many things which to-day are no longer discussed among young people ; nor was the boundary be- tween affianced and unaffianced at that time so sharply denned. Yet the more freedom allowed, the more neces- sary in special cases was it to discriminate how far matters might go. It was owing to this that Goethe, who was soon looked upon and treated by Frederika, her parents, and her relatives as her lover, took this position without having declared himself. He was bound to nothing, and could at any moment go as he had come. Now Goethe describes how, in the fulness of his en- thusiasm for Frederika, a consciousness dawned upon him that his love, after all, existed only in imagination. He makes this discovery before one binding word has been said. At a rural feast this struggle reaches its climax. Goethe, who has not decided whether to fly or to remain, brings Frederika to the confession that she loves him ; and the first kiss is given and received by the lips upon which the curse had fallen. This recurs di- rectly to Goethe's mind. In the night Lucinda appears to him in a dream and repeats the curse, while Frederika stands opposite to her, stiff and speechless with fright, not comprehending what it all means. The narration is wrought up to the highest dramatic reality, and we await a tragedy. Instead of this, again an artistic stroke to remind us that this is not a romance, but a simple account of what happened. The story continues in the old calm tone, as the life of the maiden and her parents flows quietly on again. Goethe, considered as Frederika's betrothed lover, enjoys the growing confidence of the family. He 5 66 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. comes gut oftener to Sesenheim, stays there for weeks, and is in constant correspondence with Frederika ; but lie grows ever more quiet at heart. We have letters from him to Salzmann about these visits to Sesenheim. In one of these he expresses his state of mind : " I am not really in my inmost soul serene. I am too much awake not to realize that I am trying to grasp shadows." The finishing stroke was given by a visit of the sisters to Strasburg, where Goethe saw them torn from their rural life, and transplanted into a society for which they were not educated. But Goethe tells how Frederika conducts herself becomingly notwithstanding, and here discloses a feature of her character which has always seemed to me very touching. She claimed, as she was justified in doing, what Goethe called his " services," and one evening confides to him that the ladies in the house with whom they are staying wish to hear him read. Goethe takes " Hamlet," and reads it with fire from beginning to end, eliciting great applause. Frederika, it is said, had from time to time breathed deeply, and the color came and went in her cheeks, the only tokens by which she allowed him to know how proud she was of the applause bestowed upon her Goethe. He tells us further of the elder sister's pas- sionate conduct, who felt much more keenly than Fred- erika their unfortunate position, and wished to get away from Strasburg. A stone was lifted from his heart when he finally saw them both depart. Goethe had to confess to himself that his dream was ended. But there was no violent rupture ; and this gives to the last moments a peculiar sadness, like a melody dying gently on the ear ! Slowly, leaf by leaf, as the trees in autumn lose their foliage, the early confidence held fast to the very end ! No word of reproof when NATURE OF HIS RELATIONS WITH FREDERIKA. 67 Goethe, on the point of leaving Strasburg forever, ap- pears before the door for the last time, and, while the tears stand in Frederika's eyes, says farewell, giving her his hand from his horse ! Only later he receives from her a heart-rending letter in answer to his written adieu. Goethe gives us to understand that it remained unanswered. Goethe's conduct is such that it is almost impossible not to draw from it inferences with regard to his charac- ter ; and since " Dichtung und Wahrheit " was published this has been done, many persons on" this account having lost their enthusiasm for Goethe. One would for- give him much ; but to have broken the heart of such a maiden was inhuman. In that same summer Herder wrote of Goethe that he did not consider him capable of genuine enthusiasm. Meanwhile the time is past for any personal defence of Goethe. We may to-day revere in him the greatest Ger- man poet, without making it a duty to vindicate all he did. We look at things not more coldly, but more crit- ically. We understand him, therefore, when in his own criticism of the Sesenheim affair he says : " The question is not with regard to sentiments and actions, how far they were blamable or praiseworthy, but whether such things could possibly have happened." He seems to say, " Amuse yourselves with the story. So far as I am con- cerned it was necessary that I should become what I am, with my faults as well as my virtues ! " To look at the matter in this way is in accordance with our present ideas ; and the more so because, when we see men placed as high as mortals can be placed, we are not, psychologically considered, comfortable in mind until we have discovered to a certainty that our heroes have their weak sides like common men, and, above all, like our- 68 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. selves. Then we feel en famille with them, and recog- nize their virtues only so much the more unreservedly. But before this mental operation is needed for Goethe, we should be sure that all happened as recounted in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." I call attention to one ex- pression : Goethe says, " The question is, whether such thoughts and deeds could occur, and not whether they really did." This is a distinction. With the word could, the whole Sesenheim story is transferred from the realm of fact to that of possibility. And, indeed, Goethe has not only idealized Frederika's character, but in the whole account of the Sesenheim episode given us a romance, an idyl, as Loeper calls it, in which the fact is proven that the outlines are truth and all the details fiction. In one of the explanations which Goethe has given of the mean- ing of " Dichtung und Wahrheit," he says : " There is no event related in my autobiography which was not a real experience, but nothing as I really experienced it." Goethe thus stipulates beforehand for the most unlimited freedom in the handling of his facts. Some minor matters should here be mentioned. It seems quite possible that the Socratic shoemaker with whom Goethe took up his abode on his clandestine trip to Dresden was but a mythical person ; and the same may be true with regard to his young friend in Frank- fort, whom he called Pylades, and possibly also as regards the two daughters of the dancing-master. But these are only suppositions. Concerning Sesenheim we may say with safety this much, that the affair never could have ended as Goethe represents. There is proof also that he did not become acquainted with the parson's family in the manner described ; that their circumstances were not exactly as pictured ; and, probably, the farewell itself was very different. TRUTH AND FICTION ABOUT FREDERIKA. 69 I have given you a somewhat detailed account of Goethe's first appearance at Sesenheim. We have seen what a part Goldsmith's romance played in it, how Goethe recognizes in the Sesenheim family the principal characters in the " Vicar of Wakefield ; " indeed, he even introduces the names. Two sisters only, according to Goethe's story, belong to the Brion family, the elder Salomea, whom he calls Olivia, and the younger Riek- chen. But there were four, one older, already married; and another fifteen years of age, and still at home. The brother, by Goethe called Moses, was named Christian. All this amounts to very little. Loeper proves that Goethe's first visit to the village was not in the spring of 1771, but in October, 1770, when Goethe had not yet heard of the " Vicar of Wakefield." Accepting this, the fundamental facts given about the first visit are de- stroyed. If this be really so, we are justified in going further. In Goethe's narrative, we find the events in Sesenheim from first to last placed in ideal relations, one coinciding exactly with another, so that the conclusion follows as a tragic necessity. In regard to the farewell, Goethe con- fesses that he did not remember the last days very dis- tinctly, and that in this part of the narrative he made no attempt to be accurate. Therefore, I believe we know how to interpret Goethe's remark, " I spoke of deeds and feelings which might have been," which means that of the details he no longer had any knowledge, but they might have been as he related. Loeper has shown un- common care in collecting and arranging the notes in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," which may be considered authentic regarding the Sesenheim affair. At the first glance they appear to afford a significant picture to place by the side of Goethe's description. But, more carefully 70 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. studied, they give us only color ; often in the most deli- cate shades, but no outlines. What is needed in outline is found in Goethe's fiction alone. It may possibly hap- pen that some one who could boast an acquaintance with Frederika or her family has left memorials containing confidential communications received directly from them, which one will yet be allowed to read. We have learned quite lately from Goethe's diaries, published by Keil, that he received a letter from Frederika while in Weimar ; as we also find, by a letter to Salzmann, that he sent her from Frankfort his newly published works. But what kind of relation continued to exist between them will only become clear when those inform us who knew exactly how things were. Until then, of the actual ex- perience in Sesenheim we know only this : that Goethe met an honest and lovable family, to whom he attached himself as if forever, whom he through his presence brought into embarrassment, and whom he finally deserted in a manner which even he himself could not forgive. Yet Goethe's own account really loses nothing in value because we are obliged to regard it as a mingling of only dim remembrance with the most vivid poetic fancy. It adds to Goethe's immortal poems one of the finest. The suggestion that the actual Riekchen Brion was another than the Frederika who is so touchingly represented in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," injures her memory as little as Charlotte Buff's has been injured by the certainty that Werther's experience in no wise corresponded to what in truth took place between Goethe and Charlotte in her father's house at Wetzlar. In spite of this, Goethe has given to both maidens a share in his immortality. Frederika remained unmarried. Goethe saw her again in 1779. The story in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " closes with the account of how, as he rode away from Sesen- HIS LAST VISIT TO FREDERIKA. 71 heim after the farewell, he saw his own figure, dressed in gray clothes trimmed with gold, suddenly coming towards him on a horse. It was a fantasy which he interpreted as meaning that he should return to Sesen- heim ; and so it happened. Of his visit in 1779 we possess only the letter to Frau von Stein, with a descrip- tion of Alsace scenery, one of the loveliest Goethe ever wrote, and which shall serve as fitting epilogue to this idyl : " A rarely beautiful day ; a charming country, all still green, only here and there a yellow leaf on beech or oak ; the willows yet in their silver beauty ; a mild, grate- ful breath over the whole land ; grapes with every step, and every day better ; each peasant's house vine-clad even to the roof ; each door-way a full, rich cluster- ing arbor ; the heavenly air, soft, moist, and warm. Man becomes, like the grape, ripe and sweet at heart. Would to God we dwelt here together ! we should not so quickly freeze in winter or dry up in summer. The Rhine and the clear mountains near; the changing woods, meadows, and garden-like fields bespeak refreshment to men, and fill me with a delight I have long missed." So he writes at mid-day, September 25. In the evening he repairs to Sesenheim, of which, three days later, he gives the following account : " 25th Sept. ; toward evening. I turned aside from the broad road to go to Sesenheim, while the others straightway continued their journey. I found the family together just as I had left them eight years before, and was received in the most cordial way. As I am now as serene as the air I breathe, the atmos- phere of these good and unpretending people was most grateful. The second daughter of the house had formerly loved me much more generously than I deserved, and more than others on whom I have lavished greater passion and loyalty. I was forced to leave her at a moment when 72 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. it almost cost her her life ; but she treated me with con- sideration, spoke lightly of the remains of the illness she had at that time, and from the first moment when I met her unexpectedly at the door conducted herself in the most lovely manner, and showered upon me such tokens of hearty friendship that I felt quite at ease. I must do her the justice to say that she did not attempt, by the slightest allusion, to awaken in my soul the old feeling. She took me into each arbor, and in each I must sit, and all was pleasing. We had the most beautiful full moon. I inquired about everything. A neighbor who had for- merly helped us to make some improvements was called in, who told me he had asked for me only eight days before. And the barber also must come. I found old songs I had composed, a carriage I had painted ; we re- called many frolics of that time, and I found my memory as keen about them as if I had only been gone half a year. The old people were true-hearted ; they found I had grown younger. I remained overnight, and left the next morning at sunrise. They bade me adieu with friendly faces. And I may now once more think with pleasure of this little nook in the world, and live in a feeling of peace with the spirits of these reconciled ones." This letter explains something that is not fully ex- plained in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," Goethe's pro- longed despair after the parting and his inward conflicts. He wandered about lonely, stung by remorse, and could find no rest. Nevertheless, Frederika had forgiven him, and what had happened that should awaken in Goethe years after such painful thoughts ? From a letter which Goethe wrote to Salzmann at Sesenheim we learn what Frederika's pale cheeks meant, which he said were over- spread with such a lovely rose color when she recognized him in the guise of the landlord's son of Drusenheim. PKOFICIENCY IN LEGAL STUDIES. 73 The young girl was ailing; she was consumptive. Goethe's leaving her brought on an attack which endan- gered her life. It is believed that Gretchen in "Faust" is to be traced back to Frederika ; but she bears a closer analogy to Marie Beaumarchais in " Clavigo." All Goethe's re- proaches, all that he must say' to himself in regard to Frederika, is said by Clavigo ; while the heroic gentleness of Marie and her frail human form correspond with what Goethe writes to Frau von Stein of Frederika in the year 1779. By recognizing Marie Beaumarchais as a picture of Frederika, we see her as it were through another per- spective, which enhances greatly the idea given of her in " Dichtungund Wahrheit." In reality, the catastrophe of the idyl almost took a tragic turn, and we divine in the real Frederika an admirable character. And so, as she in truth lived and acted, she was no unworthy sister of the ideal Frederika in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." In the midst of these excitements Goethe's prepara- tions for taking his degree went on. This must be ob- tained, and then he would directly begin the practice of law in Frankfort. It was not difficult for Goethe to master the necessary knowledge. His father had early drilled him in law studies. Goethe was good authority in " Corpus Juris." To this fundamental training he was indebted for the knowledge which enabled him so soon to give up the persistent taking of notes, which he began at Leipsic. It tired him to write down what he already knew. At this point Goethe takes the opportunity to speak of the bad results which follow, when young men have too much professional knowledge before entering the 74 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. University. He had chances enough during his long life to acquire from experience trustworthy opinions on this subject. In Strasburg he submitted himself for the study of jurisprudence to the direction of Salzmann, and pursued it with as much ardor as was necessary to enable him to graduate witli honors. In his leisure hours he stud- ied everything possible. Medicine attracted him most. Schb'll has printed Goethe's notes on the books he read at this time, as well as his abstracts from them. We see from this how Goethe's early habits made it possible for him every day to read through something like an octavo volume, as he when old boasted to Chancellor Miiller he had done. He desired to possess knowledge on all sub- jects, and gathered into his mental treasury all that it was possible to acquire. Goethe had, also, the genuine impulse of learned men to wish to diffuse his views. If he had had some taste for a University life, and had the power been his to concentrate himself on a specialty, he would scarcely have escaped the destiny of becoming a Professor. But he was more fitted for the position of an author, who from his lonely post addresses the great public, and who is not accountable to any one for any- thing he may say. On the 6th of August, 1771, Goethe received his de- gree of Licentiate, but not of Doctor, although from that time he bore the title. We still have his thesis, ex offl- cina Henrici Heitzii. This, although composed in good Latin, which it was easy for him both to speak and write, was never printed. His father had demanded a literary work : the young Doctor should enter the ranks with a respectable volume. The old gentleman had approved of the theme and its treatment ; but it had not satisfied the Faculty. Goethe's treatise asserted that it was the duty HE WRITES A LEGAL TREATISE. 75 of the lawgiver to prescribe a certain cultus, which the clergy and the laity should be bound to sustain. To this, indeed, Herder and Rousseau had already given their sanction. We see how ideas even at that time had spread in the direction which, twenty years later, produced such mad results. The French republic was not merely destructive, like the Commune in our day : it was con- structive. If it abolished the Catholic religion, it was not because the people in general were to be exempted from the trouble of maintaining any kind of worship. French legislation introduced the worship of Reason, for which sacrificial fires were kindled on the public altars. But all this bears to-day too much the appearance of mere eccentricity. We know at present far too little of the positively romantic experiments of this first French republic. They attempted even a costume appropriate to the new age. It was Rousseau who, in the conclusion of his " mile," first gave an external form to this religion of the future. On blessed islands, purified and regenerated human beings were to find themselves united in Greek temples where the Supreme Being is worshipped. The Greek at that -time served as the type of the purely human. How far Goethe in his treatise presented his own ideas, and how far he sympathized with those of Rousseau, we do not know. Goethe himself has tol'd us that Rousseau asserts the establishment of all religions to be the fruit of legislative enactments, and cites the origin of Prot- estantism as the strongest evidence of this. That the Dean did not wish this treatise published under the aus- pices of the University, we believe ; since it contains expressions contrary to the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Perhaps we shall, at some future time, find this manuscript among his papers. 76 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. His graduating day passed off happily. The usual feast was given, and Strasburg was done with. On the 28th of August, 1771, he presented "Doctor" Goethe's petition begging admission to the bar. Kriegk in his " Deutschen Culturbildern " gives the address : J " Wohl und hochedelgeborene vest und hochgelehrte, hoch und wohl fiirsichtige inbesonders hochgebietende und hochgeehrteste Herren Gerichtsschultheiss und Schoffen. Ew. Wohl und Edelgeborene, Gestreng und Herrlichkeit, habe ich die Ehre, etc." Three days later followed his promotion to the bar. 1 " Well, high and nobly born, vastly-learned and masterly, high and mighty guardians, and especially grand commanders, and highly-honored Lord Mayor, Gentlemen of the Bar and Sheriffs ! Your high and nobly born Worships and Magnificences, I have the honor, &c." PRACTISING LAW. 77 LECTURE V. PRACTISING LAW. HIS PARENTS. MERCK. " GOTZ VON BERLICHINGEN." "\ T 7HEN Goethe had been admitted a member of the * * bar and enrolled a Frankfort citizen, his father submitted willingly to the coming and going of his liter- ary associates. Tins gave the whole family the benefit of the friendship of many distinguished men ; and as the old man saw with what ease, in the midst of all disturbances, the young Doctor exercised his juridical knowledge, his satisfaction mounted to admiration. He is reported to have said : "Asa jurist, I should have envied my son if I had not been his father." "NVhat Goethe said in regard to his legal practice has been fully made known to us of late by Kriegk, who has revised existing documents and brought a series of his legal opinions to light. The stand-point Goethe takes shows how entirely his nature at this time was cast in a certain mould. He works as an advocate with energy and passion. The result of the Revolution was felt in the adminis- tration of public justice as in other departments of mental labor. Instead of the pedantic and scholarly treatment which had hitherto prevailed, the purely human point of view became the standard. Goethe said he had taken the plaidoyers among the French lawyers as his 78 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. models, but he seems to have far outrun his exemplars. In his first lawsuit, the counsel for the opposite party became so excited that the legal strife degenerated into a personal affair. Something bordering on sheer insult was exchanged, until at last both advocates received a reproof from the Court. Theiss, the attorney, afterward claimed that he was wrought into an unusual passion by Goethe's rejoinders ; and we can well understand this when we examine the documents given by Kriegk. Goethe won the suit ; but in later cases he identified himself less with the party he had to defend. Seldom, indeed, has a young jurist begun with such glorious prospects. His father studied the briefs as private referee, and prepared them for his son, who analyzed them with a facility which excited his father's admiration. But Goethe evidently began at that time to practise law because he would fain content the old gentle- man until he had made up his own mind where he could best apply his talents. He has been censured for the manner in which he criticises his father in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." But Goethe, in recapitulating the events of his life to give them to the world as a w r ork of art, considered only how best to exhibit in the most favor- able light the various people who had influenced him in reference to this purpose. He had discovered that when it is intended to present a man as an historical fact, only very little concerning him is worthy of mention. A man may possess the most excellent qualities, and neverthe- less fail to create from their combination the harmony which shall stamp itself on posterity as his character- istic feature. On the contrary, a man, through deeds which neither increase the honor due to him nor require any special gifts for their performance, may yet become a power by CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS FATHER. 79 means of a certain life which inheres in the deeds them- selves. He must be satisfied to be known by this one manifestation of his ability, even while, perhaps, deeds proving nobler tendencies are lost in oblivion. Goethe's sketch of his father was drawn from his experiences and the observation of his own nature in riper years. In his earlier life, he had once in a letter to the " Fahlmer," to whom he could speak openly of his parents, written in reference to his father : " Am I then destined by fate to become so narrow-minded ? " And later he must have discovered in himself many of the pedantic traits of his father. The habit of recording everything descended to him from this side, as well as the collecting and preserv- ing of trifles. His father forced him to finish what he had begun, less out of interest in the subject than from a love of order. He pasted up his unfinished drawings, and put a border round them. We shall see how this predilection for outward order, which was inherited by Goethe, went so far as to take a peculiar literary form. The hoarding up, to which we are indebted for the bulky romance which "Dichtung und Wahrheit" finally be- came, must be attributed to this pedantry ; and, perhaps, even the disconnected form of "Faust" would admit of the same explanation. Goethe's father had no spiritual elements in him by which his weak points could be transformed into strong ones. He worried himself more and more about the ex- ternals of life. He was in all that concerned the spend- ing of money precise and captious. He even compelled his son at last to give up all free intercourse with him, and to prepare carefully beforehand what he wished to say to him, that he might not be hindered by opposition. If anything was desired of the old man, it had to be asked for in a carefully composed letter. In the little verse in 80 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. which Goethe explains his nature as an inheritance from father and mother, he attributes to his father his stature and his methodical habits. In Lavater's " Physiognomy " there is a portrait of his father which Goethe considered tolerable. To his mother he ascribes his buoyant nature and his love of story-telling. And, indeed, this was just what distinguished the " Frau Rath." The mother had in her the material to make an historical personage. Goethe's father can be set aside : we do not need him to un- derstand Goethe. But his mother is inseparable from him : she forms a part of his being. She understood him from the beginning: she divined him. All that Goethe gloriously fulfilled corresponded but to a part of the still greater expectations which this woman cherished. But who is so truly commissioned, so capable of seeing the beauty and the promise of another, as a mother in judging her son ? The most miserable and cast-away man was once found beautiful by one pair of eyes. But what a discovery, what a royal future, when superiority really exists ! And here we must say that Goethe's mother had received peculiar gifts for her mission. She had a vein of genius in her nature. An indestructible vitality stood at her command, and her every shade of thought had a deeply-marked originality which only in- creased with years. She had, as we say, been given in marriage to Goethe's father ; and took her place as companion and housewife to a man whose occupations and individuality were alike indifferent to her. We only see her becoming happy, and more and more roused, as she realizes what a giant she has brought into the world in her son. She under- stands Goethe's nature fully ; most of all in its inconsist- CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS MOTHER. 81 encies, because she is a woman. She defends him. She mediates between him and his father. His successes, which never surprise her, fill her with indescribable pride. When Goethe finally left for Weimar, still dependent pe- cuniarily upon his father, his mother remained behind as commander of a place which must be held. There she was enthroned in state as plenipotentiary, and drew her percentage of the honors which fell to the great Goethe. She later wrote to him in Rome that his Frankfort friends said : " We were, all of us, nothing but his lack- eys, you know !" but they should all have something good to eat at her table when Goethe returned. For his sake she kept open house for all his friends as they passed through Frankfort, and they all called upon her as a mat- ter of course. But especially did she expand when his father at last died. As early as 1779 Goethe, in pass- ing through Frankfort, found his father more quiet, while his mother was as vigorous as ever. In 1782, ten years after the time of which we have been speaking, Merck writes to a friend : " Goethe's father is now out of the way, and his mother at last has a chance to breathe ! " And the Frau Rath did not fail to take advantage of it. Mistress of her property and her time, a new era began for her. Her constitution was like iron. She did what she had to do at once in a fresh, ready way, and swallowed the devil without stopping to look at him. She sells the house with the consent of her son, and moves into a new one. Her first stipulation on hiring was, " No gossip to be repeated." But everything new, great, and world- stirring, especially all of literary significance, she seizes with eagerness. These things were to her a delight. She judges all with cleverness and ndivett. She was large and stately, and wore imposing head-dresses; and she had 6 82 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. always a circle of young girls about her, who followed her with enthusiastic love. In the theatre she sat in her own box, and applauded as if she had a special com- mission from Goethe. From there she presented her little grandchildren to the public. She has been described most beautifully and truly, quite in the spirit of " Dich- tung und Wahrheit," by Bettina. There are many let- ters from her, natural, graphic, true grandmother's letters, with no dead word in them. But more important than father and mother, Frankfort and law-practice, and next to the Strasburg experience, was the acquaintance with a man who won an influence over Goethe such as Herder only had possessed, Merck in Darmstadt. Goethe had been led to Darmstadt by Herder. In Darmstadt lived Caroline Flachsland, to whom Herder had become engaged before he went to Strasburg. " The" Flachsland or " Demoiselle," as was the mode of address at that time, moved in a circle which came much in con- tact with the Court, and, according to the prevailing standard, was highly educated. It was a species of society such as Jean Paul describes in his romances, and the memory of which is lost together with much else which preceded the French Revolution. A predominance of spiritual life, a soaring among higher contemplations, a mental energy, and withal a simplicity and positive faith such as the world no longer possesses characterized it. In this circle Goethe soon became at home, and here he appeared as poet only. Here he found Merck, a young man, but much older than himself ; and, though not long established in Darmstadt, with an official posi- tion. About his past life little was known. I have spoken of Goethe as an historian. In doing so I did not allude to the fact that Goethe once intended to HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH MERCK. 83 write the history of Bernhard of "Weimar, for which pur- pose he studied certain archives ; neither do I refer to the fact that Goethe, by systematic study, had acquired a thorough knowledge of general history, but I had the following in mind. Two things constitute the historian : first, that the events of the past should stand before his mind in organic coherence ; and, second, that he should be able to reproduce artistically what he has thus seen. Both lay in Goethe's power. It is only necessary to read the introduction to his theory of colors to be convinced that the historical method stood naturally at his com- mand. We need only analyze the language and com- position of " Dichtung und Wahrheit " to see with what conscious skill he has sustained the autobiographical form. In " Dichtung und "Wahrheit " Goethe has given a series of characterizations so completely wrought into the text that they attract no special attention. Consid- ered by themselves they strike us as masterpieces, whose handling is so evidently on Roman models that if they were translated into Latin by some one familiar with the language of Tacitus, they would seem genuine fragments stolen from this old Roman author. While Johannes von Miiller attempted a superficial imitation, for which he was ridiculed, Goethe has wholly concealed the study of his model. Let us hear what he says of Merck : " Of his early education I know but little. Gifted with wit and intellect, he had gained for himself a desirable amount of knowledge, especially of new literature, and was well versed in men and things of all times and countries. His judgment was sound and acute. He was valued as an energetic, decided business man, and a ready reckoner. He entered all social circles with ease, and was thought a very agreeable companion by those who did not fear his biting 84 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. satire. He was tall and thin in person. A sharp, protrud- ing nose made him conspicuous, while his light blue, or rather gray, eyes, which wandered observantly from one object to another, gave to his whole expression something tigerish. Lavater's 'Physiognomy 'has preserved a profile of him. In his character there was the strangest inconsistency. By nature an honest, noble, trustworthy man, he embittered himself toward the world, and so nourished this whimsical frame of mind that he felt irresistibly tempted purposely to play the part of rogue, yes, even of knave. Sensible, quiet, and good at one moment, in the next it would occur to him, as a snail sticks out its horns, to do a thing which would trouble, wound, or in some way injure another. Yet, as we willingly handle a dangerous, thing if we believe ourselves safe, so I felt only the greater inclination to live with him and enjoy his good qualities, feeling confident he would never show me his bad side." Merck's influence, which he himself says was the great- est, is the more striking because Goethe expressly denies Merck all positive qualities. In his old age, when Merck had long passed from the recollections of men, Goethe refers to him again. In the earlier conversations with Eckermann, and later, he was often the subject of their talk. What motive could Goethe have had to talk to one whose mental range he knew so well about this odd character, whom Eckermann could never have under- stood ? Surely, Merck's character had something in it which, to the last, gave Goethe food for thought, and which needed to be unriddled. He once said to Ecker- mann : " Such a man coming into the world now, in 1830, could never become what Merck was." What really puz- zled Goethe was that Merck, with the most absolute knowledge of men and things, and with marked personal influence over others as well as himself, was in the face of all this, if measured by the highest standard, compara- HIS CHARACTERIZATION OF MERCK 85 tively a nullity. Goethe asserts this with real severity. He denies, out and out, that Merck was noble. We know how much Goethe meant by this word. To the noble he opposed the base; and it is the peculiar dia- bolical quality of Mephistopheles that he lacks all posi- tive, creative power ; but, in spite of this, it is so indis- pensable to Faust that, to produce an effect or even to make his presence felt, he must first put himself in oppo- sition to the thought of another. If this material is wanting, his spirit will not become phosphorescent, and it is as though he did not exist. Goethe once wrote in his diary that Merck was the only person who wholly appreciated what he did; but Goethe nowhere expressed a longing, or even respect, for Merck. He saw all his hollowness from the beginning ; but he could not dispense with him as the incorruptible mirror of things around him. Merck is like an excellent dictionary, in which information is given in regard to every word ; while, at the same time, the all-comprising book does not contain a single thought for its own sake. It has been asserted that Merck did not receive his due at the hand of Goethe. Loeper, in his observations on " Dichtung und Wahrheit," and Haym, in his book about Herder, have refuted this charge on good grounds. It cannot be denied that Goethe speaks with harshness of Merck ; yet he acknowledges, at the same time, the obli- gations which he is under to him. If Goethe's sketch had been written when he was a young man, and in the immediate feeling of what Merck was to him while he was with him, he would perhaps have written more in consonance with the notice in his diary. But when he wrote " Dichtung und "Wahrheit" the artistic considera- tions which decided the point of view from which to char- acterize the old Rath Goethe influenced him, also, in 86 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. describing Merck. Goethe saw that Merck, after the power of his presence and the circle of those who had known and felt it had passed away, only continued to exist in the qualities with which he invested Mephis- topheles, impersonal criticism and the incarnation of a spirit whose only power lay in denial. If Goethe in painting Merck had not chosen his colors with this idea in mind, we should have had a portrait much lower in tone, but with blurred outlines, which would have been lost among the millions of good and honest- people who lived in Germany then as now, but who were not strong enough to leave behind the faintest trace on the bronze tablets of history. But the most remarkable feature in Goethe's sketch of Merck is that while we have a picture of a thoroughly eccentric individual, which one would believe to be altogether unique, he has at the same time delineated a common type of man to which many a character we have known in life corresponds, and to whom we can imagine ourselves bearing exactly the same relations. Since Goethe has insured Merck's immor- tality, benevolent people may find excuses for his faults, and try to smooth off his rough angles ; but to obliter- ate what Goethe has said of him would be to shroud his memory with oblivion. Merck was the centre of Darmstadt society. Such a society first realizes a feeling of entire union, when one among them on whose judgment it places absolute con- fidence plays the part of unmerciful critic. This was Merck's role in Darmstadt, and soon also in Frankfort, where he became acquainted with Goethe's parents. In Merck's printing establishment in Langen, near Darm- stadt, " Gotz " was afterwards printed. The house still stands, and has lately received a commemorative tablet ; and an inscription on the rock of the Herrgottsberge, in CAROLIKE FLACHSLAND. 87 Bessungen-wood, marks the spot where Goethe in the circle of his Darmstadt friends wrote, in 1772, the " Ded- ication of the Rocks to Psyche." These events are described in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " with evident en- joyment, while the letters of the Flachsland add a yet finer and more detailed account of special days. She describes how they read and walked together ; shared each other's ecstasies ; drank punch together, a kind of modern nectar, which was offered as a matter of course whenever the gods of this earth assembled ; danced together, and, it may be, kissed each other. Caroline Flachsland was not only in the Darmstadt days an important personage to Goethe, but, as Herder's wife, through a long life was ever near him, and one of the women who gave him the most trouble. The mixture of rapturous passion with the most ordinary calculating practicality which formed her character produced, taking all in all, rather an unpleasant result. Nevertheless, in 1772, young, energetic, and ele- vated by the consciousness of being beloved by one of the first men of Germany, her stormy nature was rather an advantage to her. She was Goethe's particular friend, and his advocate with Herder. She introduced Goethe in Darmstadt, where soon, owing to her and to Merck, he was accepted as a man who, different from and superior to others, had a right to an exceptional position. In Darmstadt he was allowed to sentimentalize over the loss of Frederika. He tells us how on the road thither, which he traversed on foot, striding along through storm and rain, he rehearsed to himself the poems which as spontaneous creations sprang to his lips. Thus arose the " Wanderer's Storm Song," " Wenn du nicht verlas- sest Genius." Many of his most beautiful verses were written at this time. From few epochs, on the contrary, has so little of his correspondence come down to us. 88 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. From 1771 to 1772 only three of his letters have been preserved : all his letters to Merck at this time have been destroyed. A change had come over Goethe ; his old correspondents were dropped, and no new ones as yet had taken their place. He was still too young for Herder, who had other friends to whom he could open his heart. Herder, moreover, had to cultivate the friend- ship of people who could help him to a professorship, as he was not happy in Biickeburg. If Caroline Flachs- land had not stood between Goethe and Herder, they would perhaps have shaken each other off forever. Her- der seems to have had a presentiment of what was later fulfilled, that the weight of Goethe's mind would some day crush him to the earth. Mockingly he calls Goethe in one of his letters " loo sparrowlike ; " and then again " the great Goethe." Such jokes were not made of empty air. But Herder at a distance could no longer judge Goethe. When they had separated, Goethe was wanting in much which, like a gift from heaven, came to him after the conclusion of his Strasburg sojourn. "Faust" and " Gotz " were considered contraband in Strasburg : his studies were there the principal thing. In Frankfort also, under the eye of his father, he had at first to make a show of pursuing his career as a lawyer ; yet he rose from his bed and retired to it with his mind full of liter- ary projects. After his return to his father's house his life was so enlarged, that when he came to the account of this period in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " the chronologi- cal thread broke on which the events had previously been strung. Goethe, whose mind now begins to show immense fertility, and who is daily brought into contact with the most superior men in Germany, and who, at the same time reads and assimilates everything which appears "GOTZ VON BERLICHINGEN." 89 in literature, now leaves the usual path, soars into the ether, and, as it were, disappears from our sight. But who could ever expect to describe adequately a man of such gifts, in the inspired hour of early manhood, a moment in which even ordinary men are apt to seem endowed with something extraordinary ? If all young maidens prove to be what they seem between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and all the young men what they promise between twenty and twenty-five, then beauty and intellect and genius with inexhaustible vitality would not in later years be regarded of such inestimable value. It is fortunate that every one in the enjoyment of this spring- time of life believes it to be enduring. This faith in the inexhaustible power of youth, in a degree commensurate with his superiority, is an essential factor in picturing to ourselves Goethe's extraordinary appearance in the years which now begin. To his ever-increasing power there seemed no limit. Herder knew well that there may be men raised, in this wonderful manner, above the rest of mankind ; but, as a critic, he could not make up his mind, without the most decisive tests, to concede to Goethe the right to step forward regally as a favorite of the gods ! But now the proofs were given. Goethe wrote " Gotz von Berlichingen." The manner in which Herder received this work helps us to understand what, with reference to Goethe, may be called Herder's conversion. "We must now speak of " Gotz." " Gotz von Berlichingen " was Goethe's first Frankfort work. It is also his first great poem. It raised him, at one stroke, to the very highest rank in Germany. With " Gotz " he hit the mark in the centre, and there was no more thought of competition. Homage was paid to him who had taken the first place, and, indeed, before his name was known ; for this drama was first published anony- 90 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. mously. His opponents were now only those who envied him, those who either wilfully closed their eyes, or those who were too old to be moved by the fresh spirit which animated its pages. This accounts for Frederick the Great's opinion of it. Frederick could not be expected, in his old age, to appreciate Shakspeare and Goethe. In order to understand clearly what Goethe accom- plished in this work, we must go back a few hundred years and survey cursorily the development of the drama in Europe. Goethe's " Gb'tz " was the first successful attempt to present to the German people, to whom fate seemed to deny the development of their own drama, an historical play, although it was no acting-play, but only a drama to be read. We shall see in how far the term reading-drama (" Biicherdrama"), which is now considered reprehensible, was justified, and had for Ger- mans a history. The present European theatre is no indigenous creation of modern times : it is the theatre of the ancients, which by a series of transformations has come down to us through the ages. The same continuity and legitimate succession which is seen in poetry, painting, sculpture, law, and politics is to be traced here. The Greek drama, taken up by the Romans, was performed both in its own language and in Latin imitations, and passed through the various stages in the history of the Empire, first flour- ishing, then stagnant, then in its decline, until at last it only vegetated. But tragedy and comedy will never cease to be read and played so long as Greek and Latin are studied. In the sixth century, when the Goths conquered Gaul, the Gaelic Roman Sidonius Apollinaris, who was a Christian minister, delighted himself and his friends by reading Menandcr ; and among Goths, Franks, and Van- dals hexameters were constructed after the model of Virgil, ORIGIN OF THE EUROPEAN THEATRE. 91 history after that of Suetonius, and the art of conversation was learned from Terence. Einhardt's history of Charles the Great is made up chiefly of Suetonic phrases. The comedies of Terence and Plautus, which bear the stamp of the genuine Greek drama, have certainly been played in Italy in all centuries. Through the darkest years in Italy, cheerless years, although every spring the roses bloomed and every autumn the wine was pressed out, the Roman drama was preserved, in a pitiable condition to be sure, but living ; so that at the time when classic culture witli fresh impulse again sprung up (modestly at first, and then more and more luxuriantly), it was able to take its part in the universal Renaissance. In the fifteenth century the performance of classic plays, often with a vast amount of scenic display, is something quite customary ; and in the sixteenth century, the time of Raphael and Ari- osto, the Italian stage with tragedy, comedy, and opera took its rise. About the middle of this century Italian actors were recognized as a special class ; they had their own literature, and began to visit other countries in or- ganized bands, wherever brilliant courts attracted them. But this was only in three countries, Spain, France, and England. Germany had no capital, and no nobility educated up to the standard of other nations. This is the primary cause why dramatic art was not developed in Germany as elsewhere. From the union of Italian classic stage-practice with the existing elements of native dra- matic art, there arose in each of these three countries a national stage, having its own distinguished poets. This is the soil upon which in Spain Lope da Vega and Calde- ron, and in England Shakspeare, arose ; while Italy and France could at first boast no important names. Cor- neille's youthful works show the same influences, but he soon rose into -his own brilliant style, and drew MolieTe 92 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. and Racine after him. Henceforth the supremacy of the French in the drama, as well as in the sphere of politics, aesthetics, and scholarly achievement, was decided. Every- where the French were imitated ; and, about 1700, the su- premacy of France in the drama was so fully established throughout the whole of Europe, that learned men, as well as the general public, believed beyond a doubt that the French drama had thrown even Greek tragedy into the shade. And when, added to all this, the first tragedy of Voltaire appeared, which in the united judgment of all his most competent contemporaries surpassed Corneille, Racine, and all the Greeks put together, it seemed as if such a height had been reached that further steps on this ladder were beyond the power of the wildest imagination. This unanimity of opinion that the highest literary merit had now been attained is in unison with those other symp- toms of extreme self-satisfaction which we have already spoken of as the characteristic feature of the first half of the last century. But now came the change here, as else- where. Voltaire, instead of striving to sustain the convictions of his fellow-men who had assigned to him such high rank, became himself the great destroyer of the very con- victions upon which his sovereignty was based. Voltaire was not a man of the second rank, who carefully consid- ered only that which would conduce to his personal renown. He stood too high to be so paltry. He would above all things move onward, and he shook the old machinery to pieces without thinking of himself. He prepared the people for that change of opinion in Europe which soon gained ground in all departments of intellectual activity. The stage was too important a factor in the public life at that time not to be affected at once by this change. Here, also, a return to Nature was necessary : the world was THE GERMAN NATIONAL DRAMA. 93 tired of the conventional hero raised above the changes of time and the frailties of humanity, and longed for distinct national and historical characters. Voltaire, who has unjustly been called the disparager of Shak- speare, whom he naturally only so far understood as was possible in his day, and whom he criticised, it is true, with the same overweening confidence which he had shown regarding Corneille, was the first who at- tempted to fit Shakspeare's characters into the frame of standard French tragedy ; and he initiated the change which took place in France consequent upon the knowl- edge of the English stage as it was before the autoc- racy of the French. For though in England the so-called French classic tragedy had been triumphant, it could only be called a succes cTestime ; and the old English theatre with Shakspeare was never really supplanted. The inherent realism of the English people would not allow their own drama, the natural product of the soil, to perish. They admired the French form, but enjoyed Shakspeare none the less. Voltaire discovered, with as- tonishment, that Shakspeare had made of Julius Caesar almost a modern political character, giving to him traits entirely beyond the pale of French stage practice. In proportion as English political theories gained recognition, the English drama also began to be imitated in Paris. Diderot, following the English model, created the comtfdie larmoyante, presenting tragic subjects in modern costume and in prose form. From Diderot Germany now received her first incentive to the formation of a national stage. The " weeping comedy" just suited us, a story striking anguish to the hearts of the hearers, but ending in laughter. In France, after a tragedy a farce was played ; but the German pub- lic prefers to draw this comforting sensation from the 94 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. last act of the drama itself. We know what Lessing owed to Diderot. The history of the German stage was first given by Gervinus in his work on German literature. I have known the time when Gervinus was considered among us to be infallible authority in aesthetics. Now, however, we hear him abused, and see the great man's well-deserved renown plucked from him feather by feather, as if his were borrowed plumes. But wherever I look I see others decked out in his feathers. What Gervinus's " History of German Literature" contains about our stage has received additions in the way of facts from many sources ; but hitherto every writer has been indebted to Gervinus for the leading points of view. Gervinus is the creator of our liter- ary history. Neither this nor his other valuable services to Germany can ever be cast into the shade, either by his political conduct in the last years of his life, or by the attacks of his opponents who now would deprive him of almost all his merits as a writer. We owe to Gervinus the first scientific analysis of Lessing. This analysis alone comprises almost the entire history of the growth of our national stage in the middle of the last century. Why no national theatre could be formed in Germany has been already stated. More than any other field of art the stage needs, if it is to rise to a higher level, a never-failing audience* representing the real criticism of the people. Only where the theatre is controlled by and dependent on the incessant and minute observation of the educated classes, as well as the more or less noisy applause of the uneducated, whose important share in the general criticism must be recognized, can real growth and the best results be anticipated. This is especially true if the actor is the first consideration : for the poet another element must be added, which is only furnished by great POLITICS AND THE DKAMA. 95 national centres. A real political life must display itself before his eyes in living characters, whose activity is watched over and controlled by this same wide-spread public. Where else should he seek the types for his dramatis personce ? The heroes of Corneille are those of the war of the Fronde ; those of Racine, the victorious princes of the royal house in the first intoxicating cam- paigns of Louis XIY. Moliere found the models for his characters among the nobility of Paris and Versailles, whose brilliant traits and many foibles were conspicuous before the eyes of the people and the subject of general admiration or derision. In Madrid also the Hapsburg dynasty was developing a monstrous activity, which, in spite of its secretiveness, it could not keep secret ; its favorites and generals were lifted up and over- thrown, and every kind of human fate bartered and sold. In London, before Shakspeare's eyes, it was the same. Everywhere it was a question of life and death, for the highest as well as the lowest ; and everywhere it was understood that the interests of the country were involved in its politics. The people at large were not mere blind spectators. They felt it all. They whispered to each other what might not be said aloud : they could not prevent the outrages of which they were witnesses. In France, people disappeared ; in Spain, they were burned ; in England, they were beheaded. English his- tory, with its formidable apparatus of men and women, passed in a medley before Shakspeare's eyes. If he brought the tower upon the stage, every spectator knew what great lord had last been murdered there. The poet of that time had only to open his eyes ; and as in an aquarium the glass walls give us an opportunity to observe the large and little fishes swimming about together, so at every street corner the poet stumbled 90 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. against nobles and common people just as he wanted them for his plays. But what material stood at the command of the Ger- man poet ? With us political life does not come to the surface. Our great developments go on within the heart and brain. We gesticulate little. When we are excited, the hands find a snug place in the pockets ; while for an Italian a dozen arms and hands would not be enough. Our fiercest storms often rage without rippling the sur- face of the waters : they work in the depths. Our na- ture and our life are wanting in every thing theatrical. Our centres of mental and political excitement, so far as they existed at the time of which we have been speaking, never put all classes of the people in commotion. There were no acting masses. That was no genuine national spirit, no real political life, which in the last century showed itself in the court intrigues of Vienna or Dres- den, even though all Dresden and Vienna talked of it in the streets. The real decisions were veiled. Our poets had no opportunity to watch important revolutions among the people, in the midst of which the seed-corn of his- tory was shaken out and ground before their eyes, and the bread kneaded and baked on which high and low must live. They were obliged, when they needed heroes, to bring before their fancies the heroes of whom they had read ; and they ended by reproducing these paper heroes. To Lessing only had it been granted to see a bit of the world. He had experienced the camp life of the Seven Years' War, and worked for his daily bread as an author. He had a hard struggle ; but he lived through it, and became eminent. There was something aristocratic in his nature and in his appearance which he fully sustained. Lessing was the first who, having obtained a knowledge of the LESSING S EFFORTS TO CREATE A DRAMA. 97 French, Spanish, and English stage, so far as one can gain an acquaintance with it at home, had added to such knowledge all the experience which the miserable German stage could afford. He wrote " Minna von Barnhelm," a work which reaped the full benefit of all this experience. It was the first truly German production of the class which could be called a drama. Characters were here offered to the actor which appealed to the whole heart. In spite of this success, Lessing's efforts were frus- trated. To understand this we have only to read " Ham- burgische Dramaturgic," a programme rich in promise ; a kindly, painstaking criticism of the representations given at that time ; then a gradual turning aside from the subject ; and finally mere investigations of literary history, these ending very abruptly. What could Ham- burg offer to a mind like his ? Lessing was disgusted with the actors and the public. " Emilia Galotti," though prepared for the stage, was accepted only as a " read- ing-drama ; " and " Nathan the Wise " was written as such. Lessing foresaw a possible representation of this play in the distant future ; but this was all the connec- tion it had with the stage in his eyes. With these, the condition of theatrical art in Germany had been tested. Lessing, who was born pre-eminently fitted for such a sphere, separated himself most openly from the German stage, and wrote, when he chose the dramatic form for the last time, only a poem for which he needed neither stage nor actor. 98 LIFE AJSTD TIMES OF GOETHE. LECTURE VI. GOTZ VON BERLICHINGEN. '"THHE portion of Goethe's life in which he appears as -^- stage enthusiast, stage poet, actor in his own plays, critic, and theatrical director can be so minutely followed, that, as in every case where the facts are before us, we can give an account of it in a few words. It was from French actors in Frankfort that he re- ceived his first theatrical impressions. This forms a delightful chapter in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." At Leipsic he found Gottsched as the representative of the French stage, who together with his wife translated many of its productions. The position Goethe himself took in relation to all this is best shown in his " Mitschuldigen." His translation of the " Menteur " of Corneille into Alex- andrines was at that time just as natural an undertaking as it would be to-day for a young philologist to imitate Greek hexameters, choruses, or the measures of Horace. In Strasburg, also, he found nothing so attractive as the French theatre, and became acquainted with eminent act- ors there. Then Shakspeare rose before him ; while at the same time he became deeply impressed with the language of the old German stage. But all this did not awaken in him any thought of writing for the stage. He who in writing the " Mitschuldigen " had taken such pains to adapt it to the wants of the stage now undertakes HIS FIRST ATTEMPT AT DRAMATIZING. 99 " Gotz," which he writes without plan or regard to the stage, like a romance in dialogue. Goethe would not write for that stage which he had before his eyes. He was not even acquainted with Hamburg or Berlin ; but without Lessing's experience, and through his own intu- itions, he placed himself on Lessing's stand-point. He felt that he was in opposition to all the existing tenden- cies. " We are up to our ears in Gottschedism," lie says in one of his letters while " Gotz " was being printed. We translate this to-day : " We allow ourselves to be led astray by the common stage routine, and are guided by the wishes of the actors, who want only grand climaxes, opportunities for change of costume, and the like." He could never conceive of submitting to such demands in an inspired work. It was, however, no deliberate inten- tion with Goethe : he could write only for that stage which every one builds in his imagination. In this sense his " Gotz " was accepted. Goethe was so fully conscious of having used the dramatic form only in a general way, that he did not at first give to his poem even the title of " play," but called it the " Tale of Gottfried of Berlich- ingen with the Iron Hand, dramatized." In Goethe's " Gotz von Berlichingen " four stages of the work are to be considered. The original conception in Strasburg, of which nothing written remains ; the first copy in Frankfort, which as a manuscript lay unknown until after Goethe's death, when it was printed ; thirdly, the definite form of the drama as it was given to the public in 1773 ; and, lastly, the attempt to arrange it for the stage in Weimar. An edition of the latter is still extant, but very little known. In Strasburg only the ground- work of the poem was completed. Gottfried von Berlichingen's autobiography, which ap- peared in print in Nuremberg in 1731, had fallen into 100 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Goethe's hands. Nothing could have suited his mood of mind better at that time than this unalloyed product of nature, a simple story, free from art or artifice, which dropped into his hands like ripe fruit from the tree ! Rousseau himself could not have given a more convincing proof that authorship must arise spontaneously from the nature of the thing. Gotz von Berlichingen, who had known nothing but the roughest military work, who had beaten about in the midst of the endless feuds of his day, his only knowledge being of horses and weapons, doomed at last to involuntary idleness, sits down to write an account of his life from his childhood up, his only thought being to relieve an overburdened heart. Goethe under- stood this ; his own poems had grown out of the same desire : he, too, had sat at his writing-table, and let his pen flow without knowing what would come. Gotz also dashes on, in wild, outspoken German, no syntax, no punctuation, only pauses, as if in his narra- tion he must stop to breathe ; no thought of printing, or even of reading it aloud to others. Only the dim idea that posterity ought to know, truly and candidly, how noble his intentions had been, and how unjustly he had been treated. In this spirit he recalls one adventure after another. No doubt he was ready to strike the table with his iron fist to confirm the truth of every word, to vouch for it that all had happened exactly as he had represented, and to declare that he would prove it, too, in the face of whoever might dare to assert the contrary. Gotz was born in 1480, in Wiirtemberg, at " Jaxthau- sen on the Jaxt." The family still exists, and is pros- perous. Count Friedrich Wolfgang von Berlichingen (I do not know whether the second name had anything to do with Goethe) republished the history of Gotz, Avith all the documents, in 1861. STORY OF THE MAN OF THE IRON HAND. 101 At fifteen years of age Gotz went with his uncle to the Imperial Diet at Worms. He early learned how things went on at these Diets, which allowed the instigators of the strifes and contentions which filled all Germany an opportunity for personal contact, when they could plague and pummel each other. He entered while young into military service, attached himself to various princes, and passed through many campaigns, but always as an inde- pendent man, reserving to himself the right to criticise the cause for which he enlisted. At the siege of Lands- hut, in the war of the Landshutian succession, he lost one of his hands, which he replaced by a most skilfully- wrought iron one. The Emperor now commanded a general peace in his realm. Orders like these, however, were mere illusions, because the mania for quarrelling among the knights and princes would not allow peace to exist. We see Gotz going from one fight to another ; imprisoned, and set at liberty ; recklessly rushing again and again into the strug- gle, and earning a reputation as the truest and bravest man in Germany. In 1525 we find him prepared to accept a position, which to us is now incomprehensible, as the chief leader of the rebellious peasants. Towards the end of the war he is taken prisoner, but is set at large on condition that he will appear at the proper time to answer for his share in the rebellion. He accepts these terms, and at the proper time goes to Augsburg to be tried, where he remains two years, and proves clearly that he had only accepted the command of the peasants to avert a greater evil. On this ground, in 1530, he is acquitted, although under conditions. He must remain quietly in his castle of Hornberg, must give full satisfac- tion to Mentz and Wiirzburg, or pay twenty-five thousand guilders. As security for all this he leaves many host- 102 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. ages, and lives henceforth according to his promise. But once again he appears in arms to join the troops of the Emperor Charles against the Turks, and afterward against Prance. When a peace is concluded he returns to Horn- berg, where he continues to reside until his death, on the 23d of July, 1562. in the eighty-second year of his age. In this career there is nothing tragic, only the ad- ventures of a knight, who after a turbulent life dies a peaceful death ! So might it have been with Hutten had not a fatal illness brought him to an untimely end ; and Luther, who is the best type of the energetic, contending, invincible German of the sixteenth century, closed his life in this way. The motto in that day was, " God help me, I cannot do otherwise ; " and then in the universal confusion to press on until strength was exhausted. The accusation has been brought against the age of the Reformation that nothing was actually accomplished, and that with endless compromises no unity was achieved. But look at particulars and individuals ! What hard heads and what hard fists ! And when we rightly con- template and weigh the aggregate, we find with no end of haltings the most satisfactory progress. What possessed Goethe to give to this long career, ending in the most natural death, a tragic conclusion ? Goethe's drama gives us, with such additions and sub- tractions as pleases him, the life of Gotz, up to thirty years before his death ; Gotz, in the play, reaches Augs- burg, and there dies in prison. In the moment of death he receives the news that his sentence has been remitted ; but it is too late. In flagrant violation of the facts, Goethe seems in this conclusion to throw upon the German people the guilt of having sacrificed one of their best men. Can this be allowed ? HISTORIC AND POETIC TRUTH. 103 And here we come to an important subject, the dif- ference between historic faithfulness and poetic truth. Why is the charge never brought against Goethe of having falsified history, although we have known, as peo- ple knew then, that his drama does not correspond to the course of the actual story ? It is because in " Gotz " such a graphic picture of German manliness and German life in the age of the Reformation is given, that it has never entered the mind of any one to compare the reality with Goethe's poem. The Gotz who wrote his own biography, from which Goethe drew his creation, and the Gotz who is the hero of the drama, are two persons whose identity is indifferent to us. When we study the works of a great poet who borrows historical names for his characters, we must stand before them as before the pictures of a great painter whose subjects are taken from history. I use the adjective " great" in both cases, because in such dis- cussions only masterpieces of the first rank are to be considered. We admire in a picture the composition, the coloring, and the drawing ; in a statue, the handling of the marble, the firm moulding of the figure, and the different points of view. When we see a life-like figure, we do not ask if it is a good likeness ; but whether it is characteristic, well painted, and effective. There have been thousands of pictures painted of the Madonna, often with marked indi- vidual features ; but it has never occurred to any one to suggest that they must all be false, because no two of them are alike. We have blond, black-haired, and brunette Madonnas ; yet no objection is made to these differences : we only ask if the picture is beautiful, desiring nothing more of it or of the artist. When Michael Angelo had wrought in stone the statues upon the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici, and was reproved because they 104 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. bore no resemblance to the two dukes, he answered : " Who in the future is to know how Giuliano or Lorenzo actually looked ? " To-day we distinguish one from the other only by the great difference of character expressed in the statues. We experience this oftener than we know. We imagine we find in many historical works the facts accurately and truly stated, while in reality we have only the impressions formed in the mind of the nar- rator himself. Poems, on the contrary, are often made to serve as historic coin. We know certainly that Schil- ler's Mary Stuart does not correspond to the actual Mary : this matter has often enough been discussed ; but we are not so clear what difference existed between Shakspeare's historical plays and the actual events of English history which he has dramatized. As soon as we know that we are dealing with a real work of art, the question as to authentic foundation for the facts becomes indifferent. Equally immaterial is the question whether Goethe, in describing the scenery in " Gotz," had previously been in Jaxthausen to study the locality. The Jaxthausen which rises before our eyes in the drama, and the trees over whose tops it projects, are as well known and dear to us as a second home ; while the actual place as we drive by it has as little interest for us as Romeo and Juliet's tomb at Verona, or Tasso's prison which is to-day exhibited in Ferrara. We would not miss one stone from Goethe's Jaxthausen, even if most convincing proof were given us that the actual castle is wholly different from the one described. The truth of an historical work of art lies not in the exact representation of what was peculiar in the period in which it was laid, but rather in what is comprehensible in all times. The historical costume is only the visible garb in which something is presented which in truth BEFOKE AND AFTER THE REFORMATION". 105 lacks all geographical and chronological foundation. There was never in any century an England in which Shakspeare's Lear or Richard could have lived ; only an England raised above time and accident is the native land of both. And the fatherland of Gb'tz von Berlich- ingen is not the Germany of 1480 and 1562, but our un- changeable Germany whose forests are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago. We have seen what harassed Goethe and the younger generation about him ; how they saw all progress impeded by omnipotent conventions which ruled the whole order of existence, of whose worthlessness they were thorough- ly convinced, and yet to whose laws it was necessary to conform. For there was nothing to take the place of these conventions. In the course of time, indeed, the French Revolution made the desperate attempt to call forth artificially a new and better existence, and where resistance was offered to force it upon mankind by the most extreme measures ; but no one dreamed of such things in the days when Goethe in Strasburg or Frank- fort found Gbtz's biography. With amazement he now became aware, as he read, that it was not the first time that these oppressions had weighed upon the Ger- man people. He saw in Gb'tz one of the martyrs re- quired by Germany in times like his own, although now long past from remembrance. He saw his fatherland, at the beginning of the Reformation, involved in a boundless web of political intricacies, whose smallest thread was nevertheless carefully and scrupulously guarded from vio- lent hands. He had only to use his eyes to see that the conditions which were so mighty and potential, and at the same time so impotent and powerless, around Gb'tz were still existing in full force. Not Gotz's world stirred him, as he read the book, but his own world, whose mirrored image he believed he saw in it. 106 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. At the head of all was the Emperor, the highest con- ceivable power in the land, whose authority was not limited by any written statute, but who nevertheless encountered a justifiable resistance at the slightest exer- cise of his power. This was also true of the Germany of 1771. Goethe needed only to observe it. Next to the Emperor was the clergy, theoretically sub- ject to the Emperor and the Pope, but in fact perfectly independent of both ; in theory poor and without possessions, yet in reality owning the richest parts of Germany ; supposed to be the leaders of all spiritual movements, but in truth mortal enemies to all pro- gress. Goethe had only to look at what was going on around him, on the Rhine or in Strasburg, where that Rohan was Archbishop who was so completely duped by Cagliostro, and where the people lay benumbed in the old superstitions, to see a similar 'condition of things. Next to the Emperor and the clergy were the cities, the marrow of Germany; the only powers which represented to the outer world the fatherland, and which were able in their own might to defend their families and possessions. Here also was amassed the money which emperors and princes must borrow, if they were to have any scope in carrying out their undertakings. But these towns, be- cause they had long ceased to act in harmony, were con- demned to political stagnation and a sterile conservative existence. This also was still visible in Goethe's time. But the condition of the German cities then has been already discussed. Next in order were the Secular Princes, whose sole endeavor was to make themselves independent lords of the land, but who had no opportunity to control events in such a way as to increase their power; and, finally, A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHAOS. 107 the Knights, the enfants terribles, the proudest, most dangerous, and most indispensable element, in theory bound in duty to support the Emperor and their liege lords in all their wars ; but in fact wild, independent people, who, if their service was to be had, must each be separately won. They reserved to themselves the right to fight on the side which best suited their interests. Carrying on continual feuds with each other, and ever ready to rebel against their superiors, they were never- theless filled with a tremendous esprit de corps, which found expression in the most complicated regulations and ceremonies, to which the Emperor himself must pay the greatest regard, especially if he wished assistance in carrying on a war. The Princes had found in Frederick the Great their last distinguished representative. Knighthood, it is true, in 1771, was 110 longer what it had been of yore. But with the spirit of the knights Goethe identified himself and his friends ; that is, the young, independent, patriotic generation, who, though ready for action, could not see clearly what they were to assail or where they were to begin the attack. Thus the waves of political excitement rose and fell : no one is presumptuous, but each demands his right ; no one willingly injures another, but no one will bear an injury ; each submits willingly to the law and to the tribunals which have a right to pass sentence on him, but none will allow law or tribunals to be forced upon him which he does not acknowledge as legitimate ; and, finally, each one reserves to himself a revision of the case before his own conscience, and if the public decision does not stand this test he annuls it by his own sovereign right. We ask where, in the midst of such circumstances, lay the solid coherence of Germany ? What held the great sea within bounds, and prevented its devastating 108 LIFE AXD TIMES OF GOETHE. overflow ? What saved each man from blindly attacking and fighting his neighbor ? The elements which had wrought all this confusion possessed also the power to ward off the danger : they were our inborn honesty and the intention to deal justly with every man ; the trustworthiness of a person who had once pledged his word ; and the controlling influence of a public opinion, always striving to maintain an ideal stand-point, against which vulgar egotism played a losing game. With these elements it was possible to find a way through this maze, and to introduce a reformation which with slowly increasing power was bringing about a new and prosperous order of things, whose last delectable blossom must have borne fruit if it had not been nipped in the bud by the Thirty Years' War. As a political part of our history the Reformation is held in no especial esteem. We see so much intellectual power, so much attempted, so much done, and yet as a whole nothing which took a permanent form. It fills us with impatience to wade through the history of these compromises. It would seem as if Germany should have come out of this chaos a clear crystal with radiant sides and sharply defined outlines ; on the contrary, it was the steady but almost imperceptible working on of things which was gradually raising us to a higher level, and without injury to any one of the factors. The Thirty Years' War which put an end to this quiet development is as little to be considered the result of these prosperous conditions as a pestilence which suddenly breaks out and carries off the people. All these elements of German life in the sixteenth cen- tury, without exception, met in and had a perceptible influence over the career of Gb'tz, who was himself in such a measure the product of his age that, although with his memory no important deed is connected, he is NATIVE AND FOREIGN FORCES AT WORK. 109 yet a striking illustration of the condition of things in his century. Goethe here saw, for the first time, what the peculiar German element was. He recognized how Gotz's times resembled his own also in this, that each man must follow his individual intuitions if he hoped to find the true path in the midst of conditions which .were impracticable, and in a state of general disintegration. There was only this difference, that the situation in 1771 was far more difficult than two hundred years earlier. Goethe, who looked upon his own time as the sequel of the Reformation, must have asked himself how things could have become so wretched among us after such a glorious beginning. No one could explain this better than Gb'tz von Berlichingen. In this time of national confusion and yet of budding hopes Goethe sees foreign views gaining ground among us, and discords arising in the hearts of the German people, by which, according to him, the best men are ruined. His hero, a German of the purest stamp, follows the bent of his own noble nature and moves blamelessly on German earth so long as it is fertilized by its own native fountains ; but now treacherous foreign waters suddenly overflow the land and draw from the soil a poisonous crop which springs up all around him. He is bewildered ; his ideas grow confused ; he becomes a rebel without willing it, and a criminal without knowing it. What did the new Roman law know of that old German legislation in which every village, one might almost say every house, had its own natural laws differing one from another, just as the horizon itself changes to each man when seen from his own doorstep ? It thrills us to the heart when Gotz, be- fore the Augsburg citizens in the judgment hall, asks, first of all, what has become of his followers. Gotz is at his wits' end, thus confronted with a law which acknowl- .110 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. edges no distinction in circumstances. "Weislingcn also is ruined at a court to which foreign subtlety and deceit have found their way. Everything finally succumbs to the charms and intrigues of Adelheid, whose German blood has been corrupted, and whom Goethe has so seductively painted that, as he tells us in " Dichtung und Wahrheit," he became enamored of her himself. Everywhere hon- esty seems to play a losing game against Machiavellian policy, and the impersonal Roman formula overmasters the recognition of the individual in the German law. The German knight, the peculiar representative of the people in Goethe's thoughts, forsaking the seclusion of rural life forces himself into cities and courts ; hence is derived Goethe's motto for his drama : " The heart of the people is trodden in the mire, and they are no longer capable of noble ambitions." What do we think of these views ? We see Goethe prejudiced by an imperfect knowledge of our history, and we estimate what we owe to foreign nations to-day very differently. We have renounced the idea of indigenous art, poetry, and language in the sense of former generations ; we see the great universal progress in the countries around us, and feel that the movement in Germany is in closest sympathy with it. Our reform- ation in art we owe to the study of the Greeks and Romans, and our present German style to the influence of classic syntax. We should have had no development of our own without the introduction of foreign ideas ; and we now see that our national task does not consist in holding on to our traditions and customs because they are German, but in retaining those only which are really good. At the same time, our history teaches us that there are permanent traits in the German character which con- LEADING INCENTIVE IN HIS NATURE. Ill stantly reappear, taking their own peculiar line of devel- opment ; and we are patriotic enough to admire these traits, and to discover in them the foundation of our greatness : and therefore it is that we love and honor what is German. But while this German nature in Goethe's times seemed the sole possession of earlier and almost mythical races, whose vigor no subsequent gener- ation could reach, we to-day postpone our ideal as some- thing only to be attained in the future, and hope to do our part toward the fulfilment of what stands before our eyes as the mission of the German people in the history of the world. Of all this Goethe knew nothing when his drama first awoke in his mind. While he cast his thoughts back to the period of ancient German glory, and saw his own time both politically and aesthetically in such pitiable dependence upon foreign nations, he thought he discovered, captivated by Rousseau's theory of a return to Nature, a fundamental cause for this unhappy change in the adoption of foreign customs and institutions which began in the age of the Reformation. We do not know how far Goethe advanced with " Gotz" in Strasburg. It would seem as if he only worked upon it in imagination. The political element stood foremost in his mind while he wished to give a picture of public and private life in the good old times, something the Germans should aspire again to arrive at, and such as Rousseau had intended in his " fimile." But this was not enough to tempt Goethe to give his ideas visible shape in a poem. Wholly new and personal elements must be added to the original material before this could be accom- plished. If we read thoughtfully " Dichtung und Wahr- heit " and his correspondence, we are convinced that the leading incentive in his nature, which like the mainspring of a watch sets all the machinery in motion, was to free 112 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. himself from all the merely outward and conventional limitations of life. Evidently, as soon as Goethe began to feel himself at home again in Frankfort he saw what his position was and would have to be in his native city, in his father's house, and under his father's authority ; and he said to himself that a man was justified in breaking away when he saw the essential rights of his spiritual existence in danger. But circumstances offered no op- portunity to act upon this philosophic conclusion. On the contrary, he saw himself pledged as a lawyer to the pursuit of a profession which he never could be satisfied to regard as his life-work. As a Frankfort citizen he saw himself incorporated into a civic body whose very breath was enough to drive him away. To be compelled to live in Frankfort was just as unbearable to Goethe as the forced retirement of Hornberg to Gotz. Nevertheless, on quiet reflection he acknowledges to himself that it must be endured, and submits, though his desire for freedom constantly rebels against it. " I, dear fellow," he says in one of his letters, " let my father do as he pleases ; and every day he tries to draw me more and more into the web of all these city affairs. So far my submission con- tinues ; but one wrench, and- all the seven-corded ropes of hemp are severed ! " Two ways presented themselves, one real and one ideal, to gain the longed-for freedom. The real was some fine day just to go off. But for this extreme measure I have said already that the opportunity was not to be wilfully taken : it must be offered by the manifest hand of destiny in order to justify his going away to his family and to himself. The ideal was to seek a fictitious being on whom to heap all his burdens and sufferings. Of this imaginary being he makes a mouthpiece to say all that he is forbidden to HE SPEAKS THROUGH HIS CHARACTERS. 113 utter ; its words have the secret import of a manifesto ; the more lie himself is obliged to conform to circum- stances, the more freely he makes his poetical representa- tive give vent to the feelings of his innermost heart. It was always with this end in view that Goethe selected and arranged the material for his poems. He com- pares the life he actually leads with what he should have led. In imagination he foresees his own ruin, like that of Gotz in the prison at Augsburg, if he continues his career under the hitherto depressing circumstances. Foreign conventionalities, wholly alien to his German nature, must gradually crush out in him what he recog- nizes as best and holiest. Gotz now stands before him in a new light. Goethe feels this historical figure draw nearer to him, and assume features resembling his own. Gotz's inward struggles become now an image of what he himself is passing through. Early also in the first stage of the drama in Frankfort an added element made the poem assume a prominent place in Goethe's imagination, and the new stimulant came from a wholly different direction. Goethe himself tells us about it. It is no longer his country, nor the situation of Gotz von Berlichingen, but quite another figure in his soul which presses forward to be represented. Filled with the consciousness of the wrong he has done Fred- erika, he seeks relief in whatever way it is to be found, and undertakes to express through another the reproaches he is heaping on himself for the desertion of this maiden and for the faithless betrayal of a heart which was so unwary that it could not even comprehend the meaning of faithlessness. In like manner Weislingen deserts Gotz's sister, and Weislingen's character now takes the first place in Goethe's interest. From this moment it has a vital power, and is a living thing in his imagination. 114 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. It was curious how he was finally brought to commit to paper the scenes which filled his mind. He cannot resolve to take up his pen, but relates so much of what he is thinking to his sister Cornelia, who is his confidant, that she compels him to go to work. By fits and starts, and hurrying forward with great strides, he now writes the whole play, reading it aloud to her just as it is thrown off. Her praise induces him to continue the work, which in the autumn of 1771 is completed. "I dramatize the story of one of the noblest Germans," he writes in November, 1771, to Salzmann, " to rescue from oblivion the memory of a brave man ; and though it costs me much labor it is a real diversion, which I need here, for it is sad to live in a place," etc. In six weeks the work is done. It is all written off-hand. He reads single scenes to the Flachsland, and sends copies of it to Salzrnann, Merck, and Herder. Salzmann quickly re- turns the manuscript with a careful and favorable criti- cism, and Merck likewise ; but not so Herder. Here Herder's nature shows itself again. That the piece has pleased him we see from what he says to the Flachsland ; but at the same time Goethe shall not gain ground. He ridicules Goethe ; he jokes about him and his work, but all indirectly. He neither writes to him nor sends the piece back ; and when at last he does write, it is in a hard, unfriendly tone, assuming such superiority of judgment that Goethe feels, as he had in Strasburg, that he is standing before a man who is stronger than himself and who must teach him. Whenever real criticism was offered Goethe, we see him always grateful and humble, even if it took the sharpest form ; and so it was in this case. He replies to Herder with a touching submission. The letter is dated July, 1772. He admits all. It is true that Shakspeare has ruined him ; that his drama is cold and HOW "GOTZ" WAS RECEIVED. 115 intellectual. " Enough," he concludes ; "it must be melted over, freed from dross, supplied with nobler material, and recast, when it shall again appear before you." This letter contains, also, something which shows how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to grasp the deep symbolic meaning of a poem if the poet himself does not give the clew. We are reminded of the beautiful passage in which George appears before Gotz in a suit of armor much too large for him, and expresses his earnest desire to ride with him and fight at his side. To this scene Goethe now refers while characterizing his relation to Herder. He feels that in writing his drama of Gotz he is only a beginner, and has no right to go along with Herder whose full-grown shoulders completely fill out his suit of armor. How charming the modesty implied in this parallel ! But now did this innermost consciousness of insufficient power which overwhelmed Goethe as he compared himself with Herder, who, a practised comba- tant, had long held the position he was hoping to reach, really suggest to him the character of George ? Is the life-like figure of this youth to be regarded only as the poetical result of this sensitiveness; or did the scene oc- cur to him by chance as he was writing to Herder, and strike him as the most convenient way of expressing what he wished to say? To answer this question is beyond the critic's power. Without changing anything in the old plot, in a few weeks Goethe rewrote the entire drama. This must have been in the autumn of 1772, a year after the first manu- script was finished. His work amounted chiefly to prun- ing the piece unmercifully, like a hedge which had thrown out too luxuriant shoots on all sides. In the winter of 1772-73 it was printed, Merck sharing the expense. In the following June the book appears. Now Herder is 116 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. honest enough openly to confess that he is impressed by the work ; and from that time he grants Goethe equal- ity, and perhaps superiority, to himself. The applause which the drama received in wider spheres came only by degrees to Goethe's ears. A cun- ning knave of a printer ran off with the largest share of the profits, and the business was so badly managed that he was forced to ask his friends to help on the sale, be- cause he had not money enough to pay for the paper. He issued a new edition himself ; but the profit of all the other editions was pirated by the notorious Berlin bookseller Himburg. But one thing Goethe must have been assured of, that he had created an excitement of the most extraordinary kind. In August, 1773, he exclaims in one of his letters : "And now my dear Gb'tz! I rely upon his healthy na- ture : he will continue to make his way. He is a human child with many faults, and yet withal one of the best. Many will take offence at his dress and some rough angles. But already I have received so much applause as to astonish me. And I do not believe I shall again pro- duce anything which will find such favor with the public." In the mean time, while attempting with broad strokes to picture the origin of " Gotz," I have left immentioned events which independently of this work made the years 1772-73 the most important in Goethe's mental develop- ment. When he undertook " Gotz," his sister, the Flachs- land, Merck, Herder, and a few others formed his whole public ; when the work came out this circle was extended in many directions. The personal feeling which Goethe hoped to assuage by this task had long been outgrown, and his heart had formed other ties out of which a new poem arose in his soul, whose success was destined far to ex- ceed that of " Gotz." NEW LAW PKACTICE AT WETZLAR. 117 LECTURE VII. THE SORROWS OP YOUNG WERTHER. 'I "'HE first Frankfort manuscript of "Gb'tz" was just -*- completed and had been given into the hands of his distinguished friends, when it was thought best (in the spring of 1772) that the young doctor, who had only entered upon his professional career, should be again interrupted that he might for a while be a practitioner in the Imperial Chamber at Wetzlar. This Imperial Cham- ber was the highest central court for the suits which arose among the countless divisions of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The rulers in these States, owing to their complicated rights and titles, fur- nished abundant material for fresh disputes. But the number of active jurists did not correspond to the cases ; hence arose favoritism and neglect. The chief consider- ation was simply how to command influence enough to bring the cases on. For one hundred and sixty years had this condition existed, when the Emperor Joseph ordered an investigation which brought to light the most shameful malpractices. There-was no better opportunity for a young man ambitious of distinction than to be en- gaged for a time in this work at Wetzlar ; and, added to this, Wetzlar was only a day's journey from Frankfort. Goethe was so absorbed in his Frankfort and Darmstadt friends that it seemed scarcely possible that new attach- 118 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. ments could spring up in his heart, and yet he now fell into a family circle which soon absorbed him as wholly as the clergyman's family at Sesenheim had done. Now begins his friendship for Lotte, which every one interested in Goethe's life believes he fully comprehends. Yielding to his desire to feel himself at home in some agreeable family, Goethe became a frequent visitor at Amtmann (steward) Buff's, in the renowned " Deutsches Haus," which still stands in Wetzlar. Lotte, the eldest daugh- ter, had already as good as plighted her heart and hand to the young Kestner ; and the happy man, half her lover, went in and out (it was one of the conscientious con- nections of those days), and became Goethe's particular friend. Now arose the struggle in Goethe's soul as to whether he could, as perhaps was possible, out-rival Kest- ner in Lotte's heart. He was true to his friend. The intercourse continues a few months. It becomes neces- sary for him to leave Wetzlar, and one fine day he goes off like a shot. But there remains as the result of this episode a life-long friendship between him and the whole Buff family, as we are now certain from a correspond- ence which for a long time was so jealously guarded by the Kestner family that it was only known to exist ; but it has now been in print for more than twenty years. These were the simple facts. How was it possible to make'out of this experience, which included no passionate or violent scenes, the most beautiful and thrilling German romance which has ever been written ? We will make it our task to investigate. The genesis of this masterpiece is clearly before us. As we became acquainted with the incidents from which the Sesenheim idyl arose, which Goethe transfigured into poetry forty years after they occurred, so we may now follow by degrees Goethe's fancy for Lotte, which, LOTTE BUFF IN WETZLAR. 119 in the course of a single year, shaped itself in his imagi- nation into the " Sorrows of Werther." It is curious to see Goethe at that time spontaneously converting all the realities of his life into poetry. He seems to us like one upon a chase through the realm of humanity. A consuming desire urges him on continu- ally to new experiences ; he surrenders himself wholly to each, and then with pain tears himself free, only rest- lessly to seek new ties by which to be again made captive. All these anticipations, illusions, and excitements leave behind various images in his soul which enter upon a life of their own, uniting, separating, and changing until they finally come forth glorious creations moulded to com- pleteness ; but even then the elements are not quite set at rest, but are subject to endless transformations. He does not always, however, pursue the same method. To represent Frederika poetically, Goethe has exhibited her under different forms. Even before he thought of leaving her, as the first reflected image Gretchen had become detached from her ; then Marie Clavigo ; perhaps, also, Marie von Gotz ; and, lastly, the form which bears Fred- erika's own name in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." But we find Goethe's imagination taking quite another way to present Lotte as a poetical vision. The Lotte who held sway in the " Deutsches Haus" in Wetzlar, and whom Kestner had married, was not fitted by her simple nature and destiny to be made the heroine of a romance. The suicide must take place of a man who was a perfect stranger both to Goethe and Lotte, to suggest the climax. This suicide happened more than a month after Goethe left Wetzlar ; but even this was not sufficient to furnish all the material necessary for the romance. Another figure moving in a sphere apart from Lotte was yet to be added ; and from these two the ideal being was created 120 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. whose romantic beauty shed its lustre finally on the single form of Lotte Buff in Wetzlar. Let us carefully examine the details of what happened in Wetzlar. From the 9th of June until the 10th of September, 1772 (exactly three months), Goethe lived with Lotte and Kestner in Wetzlar. Kestner belongs so intimately to both that he is not to be separated from Lotte or Goethe. If we compare what the romance tells us about their relation with the statement in " Dich- tung und Wahrheit," and also with what Goethe's cor- respondence contains regarding it, and again with what Goethe as well as Kestner occasionally say about the matter, it follows that not only is the story to be consid- ered merely as a poem, but also that in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " a myth has been created, as in the case of Frederika, although from other motives. Mere friendly consideration for Lotte, whom Goethe would not deprive of the renown she had so long enjoyed of having inspired him in his youth with a beautiful passion, made it im- possible for him to state at a later period just what act- ually occurred. Indeed, he confesses that he had, like Zeuxis for his Helen, made use of a series of models, and that several Lottes are united in the Lotte of the romance ; but even this is so expressed that the glamour is not stolen from Lotte Buff, and she does not lose her lustre because of rival suns. Goethe mentions no name but hers. Still, in the bare exposition of the reason why he left Wetzlar, a contradiction is implied. In one instance, he leads us to think that regard for Kestner had caused his retreat directly he lost his self-control ; and then again he tells us that Merck appeared in Wetzlar, and by his criticism cooled his enthusiasm for Lotte. Either the one or the other must be true, for both at the same time seem FACT AND FICTION ABOUT LOTTE. 121 impossible. Comparing the authentic letters written by Goethe at the time of departure with these two concept tions, we find that he breaks off abruptly in an excited moment as if it were a matter of life and death, and goes away feeling that every additional hour near Lotte is fatal ; and he writes, after he is gone, like a desperate man. Yet he writes not to Lotte but to Kestner, to Lotte's betrothed, whom he must have hated. This despairing tone at the loss of Lotte*, who should properly have been his, is from this time sustained as his stereo- typed mood. In thought he converses with her; he dreams of her ; has her silhouette over his bed ; selects the wedding-rings ; is present in imagination at the wed- ding, and all in the same tone. But let us compare with this the other incidents connected with Goethe during this not brief period, and we shall find that the Kestner- Buff correspondence really includes very little of it. Lotte and her surroundings form an Arcadian pastoral in Goethe's mind, a wide, lonely region, where in one spot Lotte and her family dwell in their cottage ; and in another Goethe, apart from her, sits in solitude. And now farther we will compare with this what Kestner, who was a pedantic lover of the truth, has recorded in letters and diaries, as, for instance, his assertion that Goethe behaved mucli more magnanimously than the romance would lead us to believe ; and, again, that Goethe never stood in such close relations to Lotte as Werther in the fiction. Indeed, it seems as if Goethe was more t intimate with Kestner than with Lotte. Something, at all events, has been withheld which would afford an explanation of these contradictions. Let us recall the fact that, according to his own narration, Goethe was seized when near Frederika with the feeling that he was trying to grasp shadows, and this even 122 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. before they had mutually uttered the decisive words that they loved each other. Can it be possible that in Lotte's case he had the same impression, and that Merck like Mephistopheles only finished a work which Goethe, fol- lowing the law of his nature, had already half done him- self ? Goethe seems to have begun to criticise his feeling for Lotte before Merck came to Wetzlar : a document showing this to be so has been preserved. From the beginning of 1772 Goethe was an active critic in the " Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen." The most able of all his articles for this journal was written in Wetzlar, and published Sept. 1, 1772. It must have been composed some days earlier, at least ; and even before that have been clearly wrought out in his thought. It is a critique of the poems of a Polish Jew, which were published that same year in Mitau and Leipsic. We pass over what Goethe says of the poems, to come to the close of the essay, which alone interests us. It runs thus : " Genius of our Fatherland ! May a youth soon arise who, full of youthful merriment and vigor, will in his circle be the most genial companion, suggesting the most pleasing games, singing the most joyful songs, animating the chorus and roundelay ; to whom the best dancer will gladly give her hand to dance a series of the newest and most varied figures ; before whom the fairest, the wittiest, and the gayest displays her charms to ensnare him ; whose sensitive heart is made captive ; who in a moment proudly tears himself free again, and on awak- ing from his poetic dream finds that his goddess is only beautiful, only witty, only gay ; or, his vanity offended by the indifference of a reserved maiden, intrudes himself upon her, and by feigned sighs, tears, and tokens of sympathy, added to manifold tender attentions during the day and melting songs and music by night, finally A RAPTUROUS ESSAY. 123 conquers her, only again to leave her because she is only coy ; who, with the daring freshness of an unsubdued heart, jeers arid exults over his defeats or victories, yes, over all his follies and humiliations ! " But we should glory in this fickle boy, who cannot find a few commonplace feminine charms. " And, Genius ! be it publicly known that neither shallowness nor weakness is the cause of his fickleness. Let him but find a maiden who is worthy of him ! If, led by holier feelings, he seeks a solitude far from the whirl of society, and finds in his wanderings a maiden, whose soul all gentleness, whose form all grace, has harmoniously developed in the quiet circle of active do- mestic love and duty ; the darling, the friend, the support of the mother, indeed, herself a second mother in the home ; whose love-enkindling soul irresistibly attracts all hearts ; to whom poet and philosopher would willingly go to school, seeing so much courtesy and grace united to intrinsic virtue : and oh ! if she in hours of solitude feels that with all this overflowing love she yet longs for a heart which, young and warm as hers, will anticipate with her the more distant felicities of this world, and in whose animating presence she may hope to realize the golden visions of eternal companionship, lasting union, and immortal, evergrowing love ! should these two find each other, they at once divine what an embodiment of bliss each has secured in the other, and that they never can be parted. Then let him stammer foreshadowing, hoping, enjoying what none with words have ever spoken out ; none with tears, none with the long, lingering look and the soul in it. Truth and living beauty will then be in his songs, not the glittering baubles floating in so many German melodies. But are there such maidens ? Can there possibly be such youths ? " 124 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. We see thus early the language in which " Werther " was afterward written : it gushes. Undoubtedly Lotte ia here sketched, and the closing questions show that Goethe thought it necessary to ward off the suspicion that it was drawn from lif.e. At the same time, however, he speaks again of awaking from the poetic dream : and the ques- tion is, whether this awakening had not in the actual case already occurred ; so that the ideal picture he has given us is not Lotte as she was, but as she must have been to have really captivated him. In the mean time, whether I have guessed rightly or not, Merck arrives one day in Wetzlar, and proceeds to test Goethe's extravagant admiration for Lotte. It does not stand the test. He succeeds in so far cooling his en- thusiasm that Goethe tranquilly plans his departure, and shortly after Merck's visit actually leaves Wetzlar. If the honest Kestner, in the beginning, had to go through a severe conflict as to whether he ought to surrender his claims to Goethe as being his superior, now at least there was no longer any question about the matter. The relation had reached its natural climax, and exhausted itself without injury to either of the three concerned. But if Goethe was so very calm when he left Lotte and Wetzlar on the 10th of September, 1772, how are we to account for the letters in which he bade farewell to Lotte and Kestner ? If Goethe wished, for Kestner' s sake, to maintain his reserve as regards Lotte, why this glowing language, which at the last moment might have taken Lotto's heart by storm and drawn her irresistibly to him ? And how is it consistent with the despairing tone of these last hours that Goethe directly after writing the letters should, in the most tranquil frame of mind, wander along the banks of the Lahn, find new friends, and attach himself to them most heartily ? This contra- THE KESTNER LETTERS. 125 diction is only to be explained by trusting Goethe's let- ters and the assertions he makes at the time of his sep- aration from Lotte, and by setting wholly aside all that is contained in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " and the romance, as has been done by the editor of the Kestner letters. We give the letters : GOETHE TO KESTNEK. Sept. 10, 1772. He is gone when you receive this note : he is gone ! Give Lotte the enclosed letter. I was quite composed, but the conversation with you tore me all to pieces. I can say nothing to you at this moment but farewell. If I had remained with you an instant longer, I could not have con- tained myself. Now I am alone, and to-morrow I go. Oh, my poor head ! GOETHE TO LOTTE. [Enclosed in the above.] I certainly hope to return, but God knows when ! Lotte, what did I feel at your words, when I knew I was with you for the last time ! No, not the last time ; and yet to-morrow I go away ! He is gone ! What spirit led you to that discus- sion? When I might have said all I felt, ah! I only thought of this world, of her hand, which I was kissing for the last time, of the room which I shall not see again, and the dear father who accompanied me for the last time ! I am now alone, and may weep. I leave you happy, and do not go away from your heart. And I shall see you again, but not to see you to-morrow seems to me like never. Say to my boys, he is gone ! I cannot go on. GOETHE TO LOTTE. [Enclosed in the former.] My things are packed up, and the day breaks. One quar- ter of an hour more, and I am off ! The pictures which I 126 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. have forgotten, and which you will divide among the chil- dren, must be my excuse for writing, when I have nothing to say; for you know all, know how happy these days have been to me. And I go to the dearest and best of men but why from you? It is so ; and my fate is, that I can- not add to to-day to-morrow and the next day, what I so often added in joke. Be always cheerful, dear Lotte : you are happier than hundreds. Only do not be indifferent ; and I, dear Lotte, am happy to read in your eyes that you have faith. I shall never change. Adieu, a thousand times adieu ! GOETHE. To explain these letters we borrow the following pas- sage from a letter written to Kestner six mouths later, dated " April, 1773 " : - "I have had a beautiful day, so beautiful that labor and joy, striving and attaining, were one. And when the glorious stars appeared in the evening sky my whole heart was full of the rapturous moment when I sat at your feet, and played with the fringe of Lotte's dress; ami, ah ! with a heart which was to enjoy even that, spoke of the beyond, and did not mean the clouds, but the mountains only." What, then, had happened? Goethe, fully resigned, sits one evening at Lotte's feet. A conversation carried on by the three suddenly takes a turn which excites him so powerfully that he feels things must be brought to an end. What moves Goethe so deeply is a misconception of Lotte's. He had spoken only of a short absence from her ; but in a highly excited, ideal mood. She declares herself prepared to resign Goethe wholly for this life. But does it not now appear like wounded vanity ? At times, when reviewing his past life in later years, Goethe reproached himself for what he called Ins obtuseness and THE CRISIS IN THE WETZLAR IDYL. 127 his predilection for doubtful connections. He had with his passionate nature led himself and others into situa- tions in which a prompt and clear explanation was neces- sary ; but he becomes suddenly like one paralyzed ; sees what is before him without being able to take any resolute steps, and lives on, not exactly hoping for a fortuitous solution, but recognizing it as the only possible means of release. Goethe himself speaks of this so openly, accus- ing himself of having yielded to this tendency where im- portant questions were involved, that it can be spoken of confidently. So matters stood in this case. Goethe, who at the same time had the wonderful gift of following out in all their consequences and of fore- telling the slow development of things, had seen a double calamity impending in Lotte's fancy for him and in the generous withdrawal of Kestner in his favor. He per- haps felt himself unable either to respond to the one or to accept the other. Goethe did not trust his own heart. The lot of two human beings would have been uselessly sacrificed for him. He saw just how matters stood, and knew what to do and what not to do. It had been the same in Sesenheim ; only there he could not resign the sweet habit of living on in close proximity to the beloved one as he had begun to live. With Lotte, however, he had felt himself quite safe, until that evening when an experience touched him for which he was not prepared. Sitting together, they had talked of Goethe's approaching departure, by which Goethe only meant his going to Frankfort. But the in- difference which makes Lotte misunderstand him, accept quietly the idea of seeing him in another life, and calmly extend to him her hand, never, as she says, expecting to see him again in this world, this suddenly kindles in him a feeling of which he had not the slightest concep- 128 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. tion. He had been strong enough, so long as it lay in his might and choice, to go away from Lotte ; but now that it is she who resigns him at once with such equa- nimity, a demoniac desire is instantly roused to prove to this maiden that a heart like his was not to be thrust aside Avithout ceremony. And now he finds that he has given himself credit for more strength than he possesses ; and it becomes clear to him that he must make an end of it at once. It is this sudden outburst of a comparatively new pas- sion which fills the two notes written on the evening of the 10th of September. Even the next morning he re- gards the matter more calmly, and adds a few words in an altered tone ; while a half year later he speaks with light irony of himself at that time. Nothing of all this is to be found in " Dichtung und Wahrheit." If I declare Goethe's representation of his love for Lotte in " Dichtung und Wahrheit " to be a myth, I do not mean that it is untrue ; but only that he has lent to the whole narration certain figurative universal lineaments, which while betraying the facts still veil them. Goethe prefers to conceal what drove him away from Wetzlar ; and who has any right to know it ? Hence the some- what mysterious words : " I separated myself from her not without pain, and yet without repentance." It was Merck who exerted himself to take Goethe away from Wetzlar, probably he knew well what he was doing; and it was also Merck who, to work out the cure before Goethe settled himself again in Frankfort, pro- posed the journey which ultimately led to the writing of the " Sorrows of Werther." He invited Goethe to meet him at Frau von Laroche's on the Rhine, and they agreed to meet at Coblenz. Goethe sent his baggage in advance, and went on foot himself down the Lalm valley. He de- THE OLD AND THE NEW EHINE. . 129 scribes the way he took, which few people to-day, when the convenient railroad is scarcely to be avoided, would be tempted to follow. He saunters along so slowly that he is several days in reaching Ems. From there he pro- ceeds by boat. " Here the ' alte Rhein ' revealed itself to me." There is an earlier and a later Rhine poetry. To the earlier belong the times when Clement Brentano sang the " Lorelei," Gunderode and Bettina rhapsodized on the Rhine, and Goethe himself again visited and de- scribed its glorious banks ; to the later, the younger Romanticists, whose key-note was sounded by Simrock, and who were localized in Cologne and Dusseldorf, while the former belonged rather to the Rheingaue. The earlier was more lyrical ; the later more political and historical ; and to-day, when the steamboat is scarcely used because the railroad takes one more rapidly along the banks of the river, which is hardly seen from the car- windows, and whose hurrying waves and vessels seem to be lagging idly behind, even this has come to an end, and the lonely traveller with difficulty works himself up to a fictitious enthusiasm from what he reads about it in the guide-book. But in 1772, when Goethe was young, no worn-out ro- mantic glamour was needed ; for the Rhine was really in its own majesty still the " alte Rhein." All the castles and monasteries mirrored in its waves were then filled with rich ecclesiastical and secular nobles, and all the motley immemorial order of things was filled with a life of which no one remains to-day to tell the tale. How many different lords' territories at that time bordered on the river or were intersected by it ! Over its surface, still waved the full, warm breath of South Germany ; while to-day it has become North Germany and cool. Goethe 9 130 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. tells us about his journey slowly and quietly, for his progress was slow. " Finally, grand and majestic, the castle of Ehrenbreitstein appears." At his feet in the valley lay the country house of the Privy Councillor von Laroche. The site, the different views from the place, the interior ornamentation, are brought before our eyes with a pleasing garrulousness, as if they must remain so forever. Goethe, when writing his final description, had himself seen other times, had lived through the whirlwind in France which had put an end to all this abundance, but he writes with the certainty with which an aged man may tell how things were on the Rhine in the old days when he was young. These times, and with them Frau von Laroche and the many volumes she then published, are at present forgotten in Germany. Her romances no longer make any eyes moist. Recently, books and magazine- articles have been written about her ; but the world at large knows nothing of Sophie von Laroche. Her expe- riences are antiquated. There is no intrinsic power in them. Fate had, indeed, blown the poor woman hither and thither ; but she never encountered the actual storm which might have completely unfolded her nature. She was engaged in her youth to a handsome Italian, from whom, for her father's sake and on account of his religion, she separated. She next failed in a matrimo- nial affair with Wieland, whose mother stepped between them, although he remained through life her devoted friend. Ten years later she married, from external mo- tives, Herr von Laroche; and it was not until her children were almost grown up that her first work appeared, ed- ited by Wieland. It was a sensational romance, called " Die Geschichte des Fraulein von Sternheim," which made her known, or, as the phrase is now-a-days, " re- SOPHIE VOtf LAROCHE. 131 nowned." In criticising this romance, Goethe gained his first literary spurs. I have spoken of the " Gelehrten Frankfurter Anzei- gen " started by Merck and Schlosser. Goethe's critical essays, long since included in his works, and also to be found in Hirzel's collection, form a considerable series. On the 14th of February, 1772, a discussion as to the merits of this romance appeared, in which the second part, or sequel, was treated in a manner which gave Madame von Laroche nothing to complain of. Goethe's criticisms showed, as the work of a beginner, perfect facility in the use of language and a wealth of sound thought stated with provoking self-reliance. We feel at once that the older writers, who were a power at that time, must have felt an electric shock at his tone ; and it was natural that they should seek to establish some sort of friendly relations with this rising young genius. Although now over a hundred years old, with a few changes in the leading words these essays would maintain their rank among modern productions. In the review of " Die Geschichte des Fraulein von Sternheim," the previous criticism of the first part of the novel is analyzed and refuted. Goethe's judgment of the book was so flattering that he was perhaps indebted to it for his first meeting with Madame von Laroche, which took place in the spring of 1772 before the visit to Wetzlar. She then went to Darmstadt, where they were disappointed in her ; for, instead of a simple soul, like the Fraulein von Sternheim, a lady appeared who, with knowledge of the world and not without pretensions to beauty, usurped the first place in the salon. Caroline Flachsland, exasperated at this, wrote to Herder. She said Goethe was so sick of Madame already in Frankfort that he would not come with her to Darmstadt; and the Flachsland, who always painted 132 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. in strong colors, uses these words : " Goethe was furious as a lion against her." In " Dichtung und Wahrheit " no reference is made to this journey. Goethe felt, when recording his recollec- tions, that to introduce Madame von Laroche worthily, she should be presented as the presiding genius of a country-house at Thai on the Rhine. He therefore passes over unnoticed what occurred earlier. We receive the impression that on his Rhine journey in 1772 he was struck for the first time with the real charms of Madame von Laroche and the beauty and grace of her daughter Maximiliane, who had also accompanied her mother to Frankfort in the spring. He describes the appearance of Madame von Laroche, whose social position was between noble lady and citizen's wife ; her dress always the same, simple but distinguished, corresponding to her manner. Added to this was the tact and friendliness of her husband, and the loveliness of her children. Maximiliane was just entering maidenhood, rather small than large, with the blackest eyes, and a complexion as fresh and blooming as it is possible to conceive, still half a child, but through her intercourse with her father, to whom she clung with special tenderness, superior to her years. Maximiliane Laroche was the mother of Bettina and Clement Bren- tano. These will be spoken of later ; and I only call attention to them here as explaining why Bettina, in printing her letters, called them Goethe's " Correspond- ence with a Child." Maximiliane's children, as formerly Lotte Kestner's, believed themselves to hold a sort of kinship to Goethe. In the house of Madame Laroche, where friends were constantly coming and going, Goethe came in contact for the first time with what we may call the dominant literature. THE FAMILY AT THAL. 133 In Leipsic he had seen Gellert and Gottsched working as leaders of powerful factions, but was naturally much too young to take part in such things either to co-operate or to oppose. What he wrote himself at that time were only flie crude efforts of a student, who does not yet know what direction to follow. In Strasburg he cer- tainly felt more self-reliance ; but even there he was not known beyond the circle of his sympathizing friends. In Frankfort, at last, he touched the pulse of the great public. But the "Anzeigen" and its contributors looked upon themselves as a younger generation ; their watch- word was battle ; a path was first to be hewn out ; they were a new departure, represented by new people. Madame Laroche on the contrary, under the protection of Wieland, was a member of an old and tried system of power and experience. Wieland was a man of some sig- nificance in Germany. His influence was not a thing of yesterday ; and, as he felt himself thoroughly safe and strong, so likewise those who were allowed to be partners with him regarded themselves as under his protection. The relations of Goethe to Wieland for the next three years were founded on the maintenance of the different stand-points they had taken. Wieland attempted, with the skill of a real business man, to assert his authority, until it finally dawned upon him that he must submit. But of this we shall speak in its proper place. Goethe's pleasing description of his visit to the house at Thai hardly allows us to believe that he was only there five days, as Loeper asserts. We feel as if he must have been there at least a fortnight. The different phases of social life there are described, as it were, in organic succession ; the different characters of the people who gathered there, sketched ; and he finally tells us how near all came to having a bad time at the end. Merck arrives 134 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. with his family. A ferment directly begins among the guests : incompatibility of temper manifests itself. Merck's sneers, his coldness and restlessness, arouse a feeling of discomfort in the company ; so that, just at the right time, the signal for breaking up is given.* But note well how Goethe allows that Merck works here, as at Wetzlar, in Mephistophelian fashion. Goethe takes the returning yacht (the representative of the official trade of the Rhine), sails slowly along the stream to Mentz, and reaches home again in the best possible humor. In enthusiastic words he thanks Madame La- roche for the kind attention he has received. No hint yet of those moods out of which, after Maxi- miliane's appearance in Frankfort, the second part of " Werther " arose. Goethe had conceived a hearty affection for this clever and fascinating girl ; but she was so young that it was of a purely brotherly nature, and the feeling never changed. The circumstances, however, into which Maximiliane was transplanted in Frankfort were of so peculiar a kind, that, combined with the impression he had already received in "Wetzlar, it excited ideas in his imagination which formed the romance. Nothing of a thrilling or surprising nature happens, however ; things move on slowly, and the effect produced upon Goethe is gradual. Between him and the Wetzlar friends no shade of mis- understanding had arisen. Kestner came to Frankfort in September, immediately after Goethe's return from his visit to Madame Laroche, and spent most of his time with him. He departs. Goethe's letters give full ac- counts of the distractions of his life in Frankfort. He is active in helping on Schlosser's engagement to his sister, and is successful. A medley of men press around him to whom, according to his nature, he gives himself up HE FALLS INTO MELANCHOLY. 135 wholly ; but at the same time his thoughts are wont to turn to Wetzlar, as the spot where stillness and peace reign. He sends, from time to time, a kind of journal or leaves from his diary, indifferent to whom they go : they are addressed simply to " the Kestners." In these letters he treats of himself and his relation to Lotte as a continuous romance, but one that does not bear the slight- est resemblance to the " Sorrows of Werther." In di- rect contradiction to this his outward behavior was a certain inward mood, revealed to no one, but which might have been guessed by putting together and inter- preting certain words which he occasionally dropped. When Goethe went back from Wetzlar to Frankfort, he shuddered at the thought of the life -to which he was returning. At that time "Gb'tz" had not been worked over for the press ; and no anticipation of his later fame animated and refreshed him. He saw himself thrust anew into the old swamp, in which it was insufferable to wade about. He felt himself above Frankfort society, and hated it. He hated his father's house, and at the same time could not do without it. He saw his only con- fidant, his sister Cornelia, through her engagement to Schlosser, already in a certain sense separated from him ; and so, while seeming to be in the midst of life's enjoy- ments, he really brooded over the most despairing thoughts. Some one said to him, at that time, that the curse of Cain was upon him. Goethe relates this him- self. His unstable nature was alarmed the more in proportion as he was led to criticise it, and as he became convinced that there was no remedy for it. And this reaches so high a point that he actually wrestles with the temptation to suicide which springs up within him. While in this frame of mind the news reaches him that Jerusalem, a young man of about his own age, and who 136 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. had worked as he had in the Imperial Chamber at Wetz lar, had shot himself out of disgust with life. Kestner announces it. Kestner had lent Jerusalem the pistols ; and the note in which they were asked of him, having been first thrown into the waste-paper basket, was later hunted out, and is in " Goethe and Werther" given in fac-simile. Goethe describes what passed before his fancy when he received Kestner's letter telling of the misfortune. Jerusalem was the son of an esteemed and renowned theologian. He had studied with Goethe in Leipsic, but never made much impression on him. Goethe found him again in the Imperial Court at Wetzlar ; but there, also, they were only distant acquaintances. Sundry literary productions of Jerusalem's had been published, and among them a letter in which he asserts that he does not like Goethe. Jerusalem was in love with the wife of a Wetzlar official, and shot himself for her sake in October, 1772, a month after Goethe left Wetzlar, and under circumstances which exactly correspond to what we find related in " W^erther." This occurrence struck Goethe like a thunderclap ; but, from reasons which had little to do with Lotte Buff, nei- ther the memory of her, nor even that of Jerusalem, is especially awakened in his soul by this deed. The rea- sons why it took such hold on his imagination were of a deeper and more personal nature. He and Jerusalem became suddenly one and the same person. He sees himself as in a mirror ; and at the same time Jerusa- lem's beloved one assumes the form and features of Lotte, and he and she, Werther and Lotte, the two characters in the romance, stand before Goethe living creations, divorced from himself, two finished works of art. Now begins the serious work of the fiction. In No- vember, a business journey leads him to Wetzlar. He "THE SOEROWS OF WERTHER" BEGUN. 137 sees Lotte again ; collects exact details of Jerusalem's character and death ; and receives from Kestner, after his departure, full particulars of what he could not find out on the spot. The idea of writing a romance in mem- ory of Jerusalem seems now to have become a fixed plan. But for the present the project is laid aside ; the vision slowly faded again, as wholly other subjects claimed his attention. At first, he published the little work on the Strasburg cathedral ; then, in the beginning of 1773, he prepared " Gb'tz " for the press. In the spring Lotte and Kestner were married, with Goethe's friendly sympathy. He provided the rings, and took upon himself many other little duties. But after the youthful pair went to Hanover longer intervals in his intercourse with them naturally occurred. Other people interested him, and Goethe had no longer as a necessity to fly in thought for repose to the "Deutsches Haus" at Wetzlar. Finally " Gdtz " ap- peared ; the fame which attended it turned Goethe in a wholly new direction and roused in him a new desire. Since " Gb'tz " had inspired so much admiration, he would write something which far exceeded " Gb'tz." A letter to Kestner, in which he says he shall find it difficult again to write anything which will elicit so much ap- plause, indicates that even then the idea had sprung up in his mind. On the loth of September, almost a year after Jerusalem's death, he says to Kestner in a letter : " I am writing a romance ; but it goes slowly." This must have been " Werther ; " for why should Goethe have written to the distant Kestner of a thing only just conceived, to whom he was not in the habit of speaking of such things ? Hints like this are ' occasionally dropped ; and, in the winter of 1774, Merck was allowed to see the work. 138 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. The success of " Gtitz " had a decisive influence upon Goethe. We feel it directly in the tone of his corre- spondence. Goethe had gained at last what he needed, and the want of which had made him so restless, a manifest right to lr*e as he lived, and to he what he was. Until then he had been forced to say to himself that he antici- pated future applause, and had staked a considerable sum upon the credit of his coming fame. At last Fate had opened to him unlimited credit. Now he was master in his own house, and a literary career was before him as a matter of course. In spite of all this, however, the romance did not pro- gress. The elements which had gathered in Goethe's experience showed a void which, owing to his peculiar tendency to nourish his fancy only from the fulness of actual life, was not at that time to be supplied. A suita- ble conclusion for the second part of the romance was wanting. It needed to take a certain air of tragedy. A type for Albert, as Lotte's husband, was wanting. Goethe knew Kestner only as a lover, and had never seen him jealous. Goethe would only write what he had experi- enced. His experience, indeed, took another form in his mind ; but it must first be there. Moreover, he had not the experience to enable him to portray Werther as the lover of a married woman ; and even that Goethe could not invent. But now, so providential was the disposition of things that even for this want relief was vouchsafed. A mar- riage unexpectedly took place which especially concerned Goethe. Maximiliane Laroche, who was only seventeen years old, became, through the mediation of good friends in whose eyes favorable outward circumstances were the chief consideration, suddenly engaged and married to the Frankfort Brentano, still a young man, but a widower "THE SORROWS OF WERTHER " COMPLETED. 139 with five children. In January, 1774, the marriage was celebrated, and the youthful ' pair, accompanied by the bride's mother, came to Frankfort, where Goethe was charged with the burden of making the young wife, who was yet half a child, enter comfortably into the life of a strange city ; indeed, into a wholly new existence. Max- imiliane was accustomed to intercourse with superior men as a matter of course. Her husband was a business man in the strictest sense of the word, and besides an Italian. Goethe foresaw at once what might arise, and what in very deed happened. Brentano became jealous to such a degree that Goethe, who had been influenced by no other feeling than that of the purest benevolence, made an end of the trouble by withdrawing, notwithstanding that Madame Laroche besought him not to give up visiting her daughter. But before this had happened, even in the beginning of the intercourse and before the jealousy of the man had exhibited itself, Goethe had foreseen that it must come ; and the second part of Werther stood com- plete before his soul. The denoument of the plot was found. Upon Kest- ner's tolerant and absolutely trusting nature was grafted that of the suspicious Italian spouse of Maximiliane ; and from this union came the insufferable Albert of the romance, who afterward caused Kestner so much grief, which Goethe then sought in vain to allay. Goethe de- scribes these circumstances in the most delicate manner. He saw himself implicated in Maximiliane's house in family relations in which his heart had really no share. While his natural kind-heartedness would not allow him to break off with them, he at the same time sought an outlet for his feelings, and finished his romance ; and in April, 1774, was able to speak of it in his letters as a com- plete work, the reading of which he promised his friends. 140 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. LECTURE VIII. " WERTHER." TN a letter of Goethe's to Lavater dated April 26, 1774, *- we read : " I will try to send you a manuscript, which will not be printed immediately. You will sym- pathize greatly with the sorrows of the dear boy I have described. We were near each other six years without being drawn very close together, but now I have lent to his story my own feelings, making a strange whole." Goethe therefore regarded the romance as follows : The memory of the unfortunate boy Jerusalem, with whose fate he feels so much sympathy, is to be rescued from ob- livion, and his friends are informed beforehand that the incidents related are not Goethe's personal experience. But how far were Lotte and her husband in the secret ? Had they a suspicion of what was before them ? Here we meet with a curious thing. Goethe cannot find it in his heart to be silent about his work to those with whom he is in uninterrupted confidential communication, but expresses himself in such terms that they cannot possi- bly understand what he means. If Goethe ever needed any consolation on Lotte's account, in the year 1773 when he began his romance he had certainly ceased to mourn her loss. Both she and Kestner, through their removal to Hanover, had become to him half-mythical beings. It has often been charged against Goethe that OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND? 141 the proverb, " Out of sight, out of mind," fitted him only too well. He openly confesses that those with whom he did not live in actual propinquity scarcely existed for him. This indeed did not apply to persons especially dear to his heart, as his' correspondence sufficiently testifies. Yet, te have his friends live vividly in his imagination, he needed an actual sight of their surroundings. If a back- ground of landscape was wanting, the outlines of the people began to grow misty. Lotte Buff in Wetzlar in the " Deutsches Haus," or in the streets of the city, al- ways surrounded in her walks by the well-known horizon, was quite another being to Goethe from Lotte Kestner in Hanover, a North German city with which he was unac- quainted. Separated from her home, her father, her brothers and sisters, Lotte lost more and more the power to draw Goethe's thoughts to herself. He found ever less and less to confide to her and Kestner in his letters. They were happy, and did not need him. What stirred his emotions was now confided to other correspondents, to new friends to whom he was indebted for fresh experi- ences. Lotte had become historic to him. But now the working on the romance renews the old feeling : it is amazing how the dry leaves and stiff, hard blossoms of the summer of 1772 come to life again in his fantasy. In a letter of March, 1774, he writes to ijie Kestners that their letters had indeed remained unan- swered, but that his thoughts had been busier than ever with Lotte. " I shall soon have it [the romance] printed for you he says ; it is good, my dearest." In the same measure in which the growing work compelled him, as it were, to renew his acquaintance with Lotte as a young maiden, and to mount once more by slow steps the entire scale of his feelings for her, she rises before him more beautiful and enchanting than perhaps he had ever seen 142 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. her in reality ; and he naturally transfers all these imag- inary charms to Lotte Kestner, whom he must always think of as the young maiden he left in Wetzlar. But now the real Lotte puts Goethe's imagination to the severest test : she expects a child. In the mean time, the Lotte of the romance was already so strongly thrown on the canvas that the living reality could not change those ideal outlines. It was far more difficult to over- come another trouble. Lotte's picture in the romance was too manifestly a likeness. Goethe had made the persons and events too realistically exact. The public at that time had little other excitement than that derived from new books and fresh family scandals ; and here the two were united. Goethe was aware beforehand what would be the result. He was resolved not to be misled by these fears ; but his friendship for the Kestners seemed to demand that he should not proceed without at least giving them a hint of what was before them. This he does in the most peculiar manner. In May, 1774, Lotte's first son was born, who from over-scrupulousness was not even to bear the name of Wolfgang. Goethe was seeking a publisher for " Wer- ther," which, if tradition be correct, had been refused by a Leipsic bookseller. He writes to Kestner : " Kiss for me the boy and the immortal Lotte ; say to her that I cannot imagine her in childbed : it is simply impossible. I see her always as I left her; neither do I know you as a married man or in any other relation than the old one. And now I have utilized a chance to follow out and patch up other people's passions, at which I beg you not to take offence. I pray you let this enclosed chit-chat rest until you have heard something further : time will explain all." It was scarcely possible to express anything more myste- riously, and Kestner could only wait for time to reveal its EFFECT OF "WERTHER" ON THE KESTNERS. 143 meaning. In the next letter, dated the llth of May, we find another allusion: "Adieu, you people whom I hold so dear! (so dear that I had to lend and adapt the fulness of my own love to the dream-picture of the misfortune of our friend.) The parenthesis is to remain sealed until further notice." This parenthesis was even less compre- hensible than the former. And now for a long time nothing follows ; but at last on the 16th of June a letter ends with the words : " Adieu, dear Lotte ! I shall soon send you a friend who much resembles me ; and I hope you will receive him well. His name is ' Werther ; ' and he is and was what he shall tell you himself." Goethe with this seems to have unburdened his conscience, and believed he had done enough. The following letters coiir tain nothing more about his work. Three months later, on the 23d of September, he sends Lotte the completed book. She is to show it to no one. At the Leipsic fair it is to be offered to the public. " I wish," he writes, "each of you to read it alone, you alone, and Kestner alone, and then each of you write me a few words." Goethe seems so convinced that both of them will find heavenly enjoyment in the book, that he quite ignores the pos- sibility that it may be otherwise. We have not Kest- ner's letter to Goethe, in which his feelings and his wife's on the first reading of the book are expressed ; only a part of the rough-draft of a letter has been found, couched in the most unvarnished language. Goethe's reply to it, alas ! lacks a date ; so that we cannot know whether he wrote immediately, or after a lapse of time. The storm came upon him not unexpectedly. He begs to be forgiven, but not very earnestly. No sound of the enormous European applause had, indeed, at that time reached him ; but he is filled with a consciousness of the power of his work, compared with which Kestner's resentment is of little 144 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. account. And it is remarkable how soon this feeling predominates with the Kestners also. However much they may feel themselves injured or aggrieved, they are even more sensible that he has shown them an honor far exceeding their deserts. Kestner, indeed, might seem to have a right to feel wounded by the intolerable part Al- bert plays in the romance ; but, on the other hand, it was manifest that at the time Jerusalem shot himself, and also when Goethe saw Lotte for the last time, she was still unmarried. This with all desirable clearness proved Albert's character in the romance to be a fiction, not- withstanding the fact that Kestner lent Jerusalem the pistols with which the poor wretch shot himself. And, more than all this, the Lotte who is raised above all ide- alized beings in the romance was now in very truth his wife. In Lotte Goethe had atoned for any injustice to Kestner : what he was deprived of himself was restored to him in his wife ; for although Lotte Kestner had fair hair and blue eyes, while the Lotte of the romance had black, still there could be no doubt that Kestner's wife and Werther's Lotte were one and the same person. Kestner had a friend, to whom from time to time he unburdened his soul. To him he now poured out his whole heart. We see that all the Hanover gossip had broken out over the young married pair, a beautiful woman, a stranger and a South German, for whose sake a young Brunswick man had shot himself ; and the most renowned poet of Germany who has told the story in all its details. "With such an inextricable mixture of truth and fiction a statement of how things really were seems almost impossible. They must just let the storm pass by : enough if only the most intimate friends can be made to understand clearly the relation which existed. More- over, it was a powerful antidote for this grievance that THE TRUE POET'S PRIVILEGE. 145 Lotte soon appeared surrounded with such a halo that Kestner, the fortunate man who in the first place had won Lotte, and in the second now possessed her, could take a right royal share of this glory to himself. He writes of Goethe to a friend, and treats the whole subject with the most delicate consideration ; indeed, he seems most anxious that nothing should reach Goethe's ears which might sound in the least like complaint on their part. How do we view Goethe's conduct ? An author who insinuates himself into the confidence of a family in order to obtain material for literature de- grades his profession. A poet, on the contrary, who is urged forward by the unconscious inspiration of genius, cannot allow external considerations to repress what wells up in his fancy because it may happen to coincide with actual events. Here, however, two objections occur : first, what are the distinctive characteristics of such a poet? and here feeling alone can decide ; secondly, gov- erned as we are at present by the idea that high and low should be measured by the same standard, is it not very difficult for us to admit of any exceptions ? Here, how- ever, it is we who make the exceptions and not the poet, who seems to offend against the law. Were we as we should be, then all human relations might be exposed without reserve. Any misunderstandings, any suspicions would be impossible : the pure would be pure to all, and the spurious would be rejected by all. How spotless are the hands with which Shakspeare unfolds the most fright- ful crimes before us ! A true poet goes through the world like a child, who knows of no secrets, and with innocent lips repeats the most horrible things, never sus- pecting with what he is dealing. What decides our ques- tion is the conviction we have as to what the poet intended. In the Lotte of his romance Goethe has given 10 146 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. us an ideal creation whose beauty alone elevates his work above all reproach. In Albert he describes a char- acter whose disagreeable qualities owe their origin solely to the aesthetic demand for artistic contrast ; but there is absolutely nothing to show that he meant it for Kest- ner. How true this is was proved afterward, when Goe- the, out of regard for Kestner, sought to modify Albert's character, but gained nothing with all his softening of single features. We know what was intended in the per- son of Werther. These three beings, owing to a singu- lar combination of events, were created, perfected, and matured in Goethe's soul, and finally, as if by force, thrust into the light. I should not have needed to follow the course of things which were the outward incentives to the romance, if the knowledge of these details had not been so essential to an ultimate moral decision in regard to it. If Goethe had not undertaken the work with a pure conscience, plain innocent people like the Kestners would never have spoken of him behind his back with such high esteem. In Kestner's letters, for instance, in which he gives his friend some account of the real relation on which the romance was founded, we find the remark, before quoted, that Goethe in truth behaved much more magnanimously than the romance would lead us to believe. The outward satisfaction of his vanjty, to which I have alluded, would never have been able to take the sting out of the wound in such a straightforward, honest heart as Kestner's, if the poison had once entered it. In fact the gossip soon died out. The public cared lit- tle for Albert, and all the interest centred in Werther. With most convincing reality the unhappy man stands before their eyes, surveying the misery of this temporal world of which he is still a part ; who like Hamlet is too NAPOLEON EEADS " WERTHER." 147 much in the sun ; to whom no opportunity offers for a great deed until he makes himself the object of it ; and who, maddened by a hopeless passion, feels growing within him an insane propensity to criticise himself even to the finest fibres of his nature, until at last he can endure it no longer. Whither could Werther have flown ? Every young man at that time who turned his thoughts in upon himself acknowledged something Wer- therian in his own nature. He saw the history of his innermost feelings written by a stranger, who knew them better than himself. And this was not alone the experi- ence among the Germans ; but, wherever the romance forced its way, it awakened the same emotions. How was it that Werther and Lotte, two radical German nat- ures, were understood by French, Italian, and English as if they were of Celtic, Roman, or Norman-Saxon origin ? It is known that Napoleon when a young man had read " Werther," and probably, knew no other of Goethe's works ; so that it must have been on this account alone that he asked to have Goethe presented to him, as the greatest German poet, when he hurried triumphantly through Germany. I have proposed these questions, because their answer will direct our attention to an element contained in the romance, and in the characters figuring in it, which until now has been too much overlooked. Tims far, I have only considered Goethe's personal relations as possible sources of the romance. I have tried to explain the sort of persons it was necessary Goethe should come in contact with, to shape in his imagination Werther, Lotte, and Albert. No doubt these persons were indispensable, but it needed co-operation from another direction to cause them to take root in his imagination ; or, to express it more clearly, these persons only blended with something 148 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. which already existed in Goethe's soul. Werther may present ever so clearly Goethe's ideas and the fate of Jerusalem, still the combination of the two would not have been sufficient to create Werther. Even before Goethe went to Wetzlar, before he knew Lotte and Kest- ner, and Maximiliane and Brentano and Jerusalem, there already lay outlined in his soul the poetic possibility of Werther : not as Goethe's creation, but as that of an- other poet, from whose dove-cot he had stolen a brood of young birds to send out into the world as his own. And this leads us, beyond the limits of personal experience, to the universal literary experience of modern nations. It was essential to a full understanding of " Gotz von Berlichingen," to examine cursorily the history of the drama. In treating of the novel we must pursue the same method, with only this difference, that we are not obliged to trouble ourselves with antiquity ; since the novel is a modern production, consequent on the inven- tion of the art of printing. It is essential to the idea of the novel that it is to be printed, widely circulated, and read by many people at the same time, though by each for himself. To comprehend fully an artistic work we must have in view two parties, the artist who produces and offers the work, and the nation who receives and enjoys it. A drama would be inconceivable, if we should speak only of the poet and the actors, omitting the public gathered to- gether for mutual enjoyment, who on the spot bestow praise or censure. We have seen in " Gotz " of what decided importance the nature of the theatre public in Germany was to the German stage, and how it led to the creation of dramas merely intended for reading ; while in France and other countries where the public was dif- ferent, nothing of the kind is to be observed. Now as THE NOVEL AND THE NATIONAL EPIC. 149 the reading-drama is to the stage-drama, so is the novel to the national epic. The novel arose in Europe, when a series of external circumstances had made the reception and enjoyment of the national epic on the part of the people an impossibility, while yet the need remained for mutual enjoyment in narrative fictions. All nations re- quire food for their imagination ; like children, the people must have their fables. We like to be told marvellous tales in which every one can sympathize. Not only do we wish to hear them for our own part, but we like to feel that others are hearing them as well. Not the mere fact that Homer was a great poet, and that it was a joy to listen to his songs, accounted for his influence over the Greeks ; but it was quite as much due to the fact that he was equally at home in every part of his fatherland, and that the people came to- gether in great masses the better and more fully to be entertained by his poems. The national epic, which had ruled the antique world in the so-called Middle Ages, disappeared when an easier and safer way for the people's simultaneous enjoyment of a poem was made by the art of printing. The funda- mental distinction between the national epic and the novel lies in the different way in which these ideal cre- ations, otherwise essentially the same, are presented to the public. To the enjoyment of the national epic it was essential that the people should assemble at certain places and definite times in order to participate in it. This was not essential for the novel. Neither poet nor public are here necessarily visible, nor do they know each other. In some place, which nobody needs to know, is seated the poet, whom nobody needs to see or hear. In solitude he prepares his work, while his public spreads over an enormous circle around him, each one alone and 150 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. invisible alike to poet and companion, with his eyes riv- .eted on the printed page, drinking in the thoughts and images it contains. To make the novel possible there must be a poet to write it, booksellers to circulate it, and people to read it. When these conditions are fulfilled, the national epic exists only for those who cannot read, and becomes the entertainment of beggars and peasants-, or forms the material lor the fables among dairy-maids and in children's nurseries. This quiet intellectual enjoyment always accompa- nied, however, by the feeling that many others were read- ing this same book, at the same time first appeared among modern nations in Italy, then in Spain and France, and later in England and Germany. This order corre- sponds to the succession of the brilliant eras of romantic lit- erature in the different countries. In respect to Italy, the novel did not develop there as one would have naturally expected. We observed the same in regard to the drama in Italy. At the time when romance-literature became an important element in the book-trade of Europe, the prostrate political condition of Italy had reduced literature there to a mere plaything. All earnest feeling expressed itself in music, for the novel had not power enough to overthrow the form of the national epic. Ariosto and Tasso were novel writers, whose works however did not get beyond the form of the old epic. Spain was a wholly different soil. There poems were not recited, but read. In stillness and alone men pored over their romances, as Cervantes represents Don Quixote brooding over his books. An incredible rage for reading, and an equally strong conviction that all they read was true, prevailed in the sixteenth century among the people of Spain. I am indebted for these observations to the work of the American Ticknor, who has written the best history of ENGLISH NOVELS IN THE 18TH CENTURY. 151 Spanish literature. This faith is especially necessary, if narrative-literature is to flourish. To the Spanish ro- mance-literature succeeded the French. When Goethe appeared, the literary life of Spain had long been ex- hausted, while that of the French was tending towards its decline. In England, on the contrary, it was in its full glory. What has been said of the drama might in regard to England be said of the novel. In the handling of the material the two literary forms now move on in the same direction. I need, therefore, only repeat in a few words what has been already said of their development. About the middle of the last century novels of Eng- lish family-life began to fill a leading position in European literature. We saw what a sensation Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield " made, when it was read aloud by Herder to the students of Strasburg, after having read it three times to himself. The English novel not only reached Germany in the direct way, but through France also. Diderot had helped us to appreciate the sterling form of the English drama ; but, to affect our romance-literature, came a mightier than he, Rousseau. The English had simpler aims than the French authors. They delineated noble characters to challenge imitation ; bad ones to repel and disgust ; humorous ones to enter- tain and amuse. The most prominent of the English novel writers of that time was Richardson. Gellert called the British Richardson (" der britte Richardson ") the great- est benefactor of mankind. In his verses 'To Inno- cence," written in Leipsic, Goethe says, " More rare and ideal than Byron and Pamela," these two being the hero and heroine of Richardson's novel " Pamela," which had appeared in 1780. No higher conception existed at that time of a virtuous pair. In his epistle to Frederika Oeser in 1768 Goethe reproves the Leipsic maidens, 152 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. " Who will not one of them submit To be Sir Charles' devoted slave ; And, blindlings still, will not admit All the Dictator's teachings brave. But sneer and jeer, and run away, And hear no more he has to say." " Sir Charles Grandison," published in 1753, was Rich- ardson's most celebrated romance. The hero is a huge compendium of noble qualities, in whose possible existence every one firmly believed. My uncle Jacob used to tell me of having, as a child, seen his mother absorbed in reading " Sir Charles Grandison." And such reading was no trifling matter ; it required much time and thought. These romances came like great events into our life, which at that time had little to do with political agita- tions. The translations spread in every direction among us. The marvellously broad and plain treatment of uni- versally-useful and well-understood moral problems made a thorough knowledge of these romances almost a duty as well as an enjoyment. There seemed to be no more agreeable way of appropriating to oneself a life experi- ence of the noblest kind than this convenient and most innocent one. Romances of this kind proved the best form in which to comprise all that might be conducive to genuine moral training. They came in as a supplement when the sermon from the pulpit had not fulfilled its task ; and for this reason a great number of the romance writers belonged to the clerical profession. Farther the English and Germans did not go : the French must usurp the novel, as they had the drama, be- fore it could attain its rank and become a vehicle for the discussion of social problems. In 1760 Rousseau's " Nou- velle Heloise" appeared, and in 1762 his " Emile," two didactic romances which caused a tremendous excitement EOUSSEAU'S "HELOISE" AND " EMILE." 153 in Europe. The English romances had entertained and interested men ; Rousseau seized and convulsed them : the publication of these two works is the most important event in the history of modern literature. Enchanting debates over virtue and innocence are introduced into the midst of the corrupt French world. Paris was not the chief scene of the events described, nor was it indeed a Parisian who described them. It was provincial French life colored with unusual intensity and filled with sensu- ous vigor : people were beside themselves. Rousseau rose as a great moral prophet and reformer. The romance acquired, through him, new and unsuspected honors. Richardson had written entertaining books for women, in which the tendency to a pulpit tone and the broad illustrations calculated for moderate understandings were conspicuous features. Rousseau raises inevitable prob- lems, treats of questions which men and philosophers acknowledge to be the most important of the age, and solves them by the most radical discussions, yet as easily as if he were at play. Not the critical intellect which may err, but the sensitive heart which is always perfectly sure of itself, is constituted judge over the question of the moral order of the world. Nobody was found to rebel against these things. It is marvellous how clearly we see all this to-day. As poems, Rousseau's two works can no longer be enjoyed. They contain an almost mechanical series of letters and debates, in which the questions of the age are passionately discussed. The characters are not real, not artistically finished creations, but are every- where simply tools to serve a purpose. But at the time nobody perceived this. The world admired St. Preux and Julie as glorious representatives of the ideas which stirred the age, and they believed in them as they had in Richardson's creations. Their highest wish was to feel 154 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. as these souls felt and to see the world as they saw it. The air which Goethe breathed was filled with Rousseau's spirit ; and we have only to compare Werther and Lotte with St. Preux and Julie to be convinced that without the latter the former would never have been created. Werther's distinguishing characteristic, which even before the unhappy passion for Lotte seized him had marked him as the spoil of fate, was the place he gave himself outside of humanity. Werther is an alien not from mankind, but from corrupt human relations. He knows how to read the most delicate emotions of every heart, but reads them only to pass by with a shake of the hea TIMES OF GOETHE. isolate themselves ; but they do not succeed, and the con- viction that they are essential to each other ever finally becomes the ruling one. I will not say that the four men whom I have men- tioned are in themselves the most distinguished repre- sentatives of these four elemental peoples, or that they have produced none mightier ; for with Homer we should mention Phidias and Plato ; by the side of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Dante ; with Shakspeare, Luther ; and with Spinoza, the men of the Old and New Testa- ments: but in Goethe's mind Homer, Shakspeare, Raphael, and Spinoza occupied the first place. In the degree in which he became acquainted with them the feeling of a common humanity sprang up in him, as distinct from all that was merely national ; and he was indebted to them for an introduction to the historic views on which his own mental growth depended. Homer and Shakspeare were first known to him. It was in Strasburg and Frankfort that the might of these kings among men became revealed to him ; and now Spinoza was added to them. Goethe's attitude towards Homer and Shakspeare is easier to comprehend than to- wards Spinoza, because the first two exercise over us to-day the old power ; and all attempts to deprive Homer of his individuality, or to depreciate Shakspeare, do not affect it. Spinoza, on the contrary, is less known, and from various causes stands, at present, much farther re- moved from us. And here a digression is necessary, in order to lay clearly before you Goethe's point of view. Goethe had grown up in a religious family, and in full knowledge of what the Christian faith rests on. He who to-day can repeat the Lord's prayer, the ten commandments, the creed, and some hymns without hesitation, and who HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THEOLOGY. 197 knows something about the books of the Old and New Testaments and the history of the Church, believes him- self well instructed in religious matters. But in the last century it was quite different. The comprehension of the Christianity of the former century, as an historical fact, becomes again of importance now that our whole spiritual development seems colored by its religious ten- dency. Whatever our own personal belief may be, we must at any rate make ourselves familiar with the whole course of religious development in Germany. Everybody in the last century was well versed in the Bible, and thoroughly schooled in the differences of the creeds and sects even to the subtleties, which are now-a-days familiar to the professional theologian alone. As at present every one is acquainted with what concerns the army, and every family knows all the necessary facts about its organization, its duties, promotions, etc., as well as where the different regiments are stationed, and who the com- manders are in the prominent places, because every fam- ily is in some way or other connected with the army, so at that time men were at home in all matters appertain- ing to the Church, and knew the names and relative im- portance of the leading ministers. In science, poetry, and theology alone was free discussion or agitation allowed, as has been already said. Who would really catch the flavor of this state of things should read the romance of the (during his life) renowned Berlin bookseller Nicolai, " Sebaldus Nothanker." The four volumes contain nothing but a series of rows between the hero who is a philosophic, liberal, open-hearted country preacher and Fate, in the shape of some bigoted old theological wrestlers. Without an acquaintance with these circumstances it is impossible to have an idea of the fights into which Les- sing was constantly drawn, or to comprehend the power of 198 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. Herder, who as a free-thinking theologian had made him- self master of all the subjects that were in fermentation about him. Goethe had been, even as a child, initiated in these matters, through his connection with the Moravian Fraulein von Klettenberg. And again in Strasburg he made use of an introduction he had taken with him to a family inclined to this faith. Goethe was therefore per- fectly familiar with the Bible. The active part he took in the religious discussions of the day, as shown by a number of his essays on the leading topics and his intimate friend- ship with the prophet Lavater, was natural. Goethe's earliest poem is a bombastic song on the " Descent of Christ into Hell," which is in the ranting style of the preachers of the last century ; but nevertheless we ob- serve that while he was perfectly at home on religious subjects they never completely absorbed him, nor turned him aside from ideas which came from other sources. Herder and Lavater were to him the two great streams whose unsteady current bore onward the ecclesiastical life of the time. Herder started from an historical point. Through his tendencies to the universal he attempted to utilize Hebrew and Greek literature, under whose con- joined influence the early Church was formed. He rec- ognized in the Christian idea the mightiest lever which had ever been applied to lift the sinking spiritual life of European nations. Herder gives us in magnificent and even to-day thrilling language an historical confir- mation, drawn from universal literature, to the fact of the revolution by which Paganism fell before a new regen- erating power which had come into the world, and a de- scription of how this power was diffused and obtained the mastery. Hence came Herder's extraordinary respect for Christianity. But it was only respect. Herder was a scholar. Later in life, when influenced by his work as a THE GREAT QUESTION IN RELIGION. 199 minister, his convictions became somewhat changed ; but they always rested on a scientific basis. Lavater started from a practical point. He had found out by experience that the ethical contents of the Bible were sufficient to meet all human wants ; that remedy for every defect was therein to be found ; and that faith leads farther than knowledge. And he lived all this out in his own way : he appeared as a prophet, but did not make converts in the true sense of the word, rather sought to win sympathetic disciples, and to attach them to him- self by means of the smoothest diplomacy. Neither of the two men could offer Goethe anything. He did not need the religion which either Herder or La- vater held to be the best : he would only know how the solitary man, limited to himself, stands towards tran- scendent realities. He could better have learned this from Jung Stilling ; but Stilling who lived and moved in wholly Christian ideas, and who was the only Pietist in whom Goethe really believed, was of such a peculiar nature that one could learn nothing from him. It would have been necessary to have been just like him. We all come in contact with the great question of religious need, even those among us who are affected by the prevailing scepticism, or who have been educated in such indifference to the Church as to consider such things almost foreign to them. This, however, is only in appearance, for a negative relation is yet a relation. What is here in question ? The question is not how to find out the form and the contents of religious creeds, or how the clergy are best treated and ranked for the good of the people, or what the relation is between Church and State, or how we understand the history of the Church or judge the critical exegesis of the Gospels ; but the ques- tion is how to ascertain, without any concealment from 200 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. ourselves of our deepest spiritual wants, what relation we bear to things which lie beyond this earthly life and human experience. This question arises in each of us, troubles us, and will not be thrust aside ; and each takes his answer from any source that can satisfy him. Whether we are again to meet the departed, and how and where ; whether we shall be able to recall the past, and what our new existence will be ; and whether in this new existence there will be yet further development, of these things every one would have some idea : if it be only to answer " No " to these questions, he would have some reason for this " No ! " Now the religious training which Goethe had received at home, and the Christianity of Herder and Lavater gave him nothing which he could make available for his individual needs. He cherished and expressed only two convictions : first, that there is a personal God, who in all that concerns the his- tory of mankind has an overruling power and aim ; second, that there is a personal immortality. These two articles of faith Goethe accepted, without giving or desiring proof ; for he found them built into the very groundwork of his nature. Beyond these, nothing fur- tlier. He rejected all details. All supernaturalism, de- manding more than these two ideas, was powerless over him. But he required, what every man should require, a theory for the moral organization of humanity, and would have this verified by the surest possible proof. We are certain that we are all, whether high or low, members of one fraternity. We feel that this associa- tion is no merely accidental or mechanical one, but that within it a great intellectual work is going on, which, pressing forward to a common aim, constitutes its cohe- sive and impelling power. This aim we call the " Just," the " Good," the " Beautiful," the " Highest Ideal," BENEDICTUS SPINOZA. 201 " God." All history seems the effort of the world to at- tain and realize this final highest Good. But how are we to know it? And before we answer this question we ask, " How do we know anything ? " The man who has never put to himself these questions, and who has never made the attempt to answer them, stands on a very low plane. But to find an answer here is not possible with- out much practice of the thinking powers, and therefore we study philosophy. For this reason the study of phi- losophy is something that has been recognized in all ages as of the highest interest. Goethe, in the degree that he towered above other men, was the more keenly alive to the study of these earnest problems ; and now as he looked about for a master, no philosopher satisfied him like Spinoza. We see Goethe during his long life testing many philosophical systems, and coming in personal contact with many philosophers ; but Spinoza's system is the only one to which he adheres, and which he never criticises. He says modestly that he did not know what he picked out of Spinoza's u Ethics ; " but the book attracted him, and contained secrets which were useful to him. Let us now sec how Spinoza's book was written. Baruch, or (the name being translated into Latin) Beno dictus, Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. % He be- longed to a Jewish-Portuguese family. From Portugal, where the Jews were treated in a most inhumali manner, one of the greatest emigrations started. The Jewish colony arrived by ship in Holland, and there, while retain- ing a constitution of their own, occupied a distinguished position in the body-politic. If we look at Rembrandt's pictures and etchings of Biblical events, we shall see that the persons represented from the Old and New Tes- taments wear a very peculiar costume, the men in long 202 LIFE AND TIMES OF GOETHE. kaftans and fur-trimmed garments, and the women with very curious ornaments. This was the costume of the Portuguese Jews living in Holland, which Rembrandt found artistically appropriate, and which is in such strik- ing contrast to the garments in which the Italian artists of the classic age draped the same figures. Spinoza carried his dissent from the religion of his peo- ple so far, that he was first cast out of the synagogue and then out of the Jewish community. Gutzkow lias made such a banishment the subject of his " Uriel Acosta," and gives us an idea of what passions here came into play. Spinoza went to a Holland physician of whom he learned Greek and Latin. He had a love affair with the daughter of this man, which, however, did not end in a union. I may as well add at once that he never mar- ried. He was a lonely being, rejected by his own people. An attempt was even made, on the part of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, to assassinate him ; but he escaped. He threw himself wholly into his philosophical studies ; but at the suggestion of his teacher Descartes he learned to cut optical glasses, by which he gained an independent livelihood. This occupation brought him in contact with the most distinguished naturalists of his time. The