the one being who had prescribed her path in life to her, who had generously refused the sacrifice she had offered him, and whose spiritual influence had made her what she was.1 1 See Stahr: "Goethe's Frauengestalten." 3d Aufl. 1870, i. p. 239. 66 Book the Fourth 1775 to 1779 Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes ? - Virgil. "Tolle Zeiten hab' ich erlebt und hab' nicht ermangelt, Selbst auch thöricht zu sein wie es die Zeit mir gebot." CHAPTER I. WEIMAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ON the 7th of November, 1775, Goethe, aged twentysix, arrived at the little city on the banks of the Ilm, where his long residence was to confer on an insignificant duchy the immortal renown of a German Athens. Small indeed is the space occupied on the map by the duchy of Saxe-Weimar; yet the historian of the German courts declares, and truly, that after Berlin there is no court of which the nation is so proud.1 Frederick the Great and Wolfgang Goethe have raised these courts into centres of undying interest. Weimar it is necessary we should form a distinct idea, if we would understand the outward life of the poet. Of "Klein ist unter den Fürsten Germaniens freilich der meine, Kurz und schmal ist sein Land, mässig nur was er vermag." "Small among German princes is mine, poor and narrow his kingdom, limited his power of doing good." Thus sings Goethe in that poem, so honourable to both, wherein he acknowledges his debt to Karl August. The geographical importance of Weimar was, and is, small; but we in England have proud reason to know how great a place in the world can be filled by a nation whose place is trivial on the map. We know, moreover, that the Athens, which it is the pride of Weimar to claim as a patronymic, was but a dot upon the surface of Europe, a dot of earth, feeding some twenty thousand freemen, who not only extended the 1 Vehse; "Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe seit der Reformation," vol. xxviii. p. 3. empire of their arms from Euboea to the Thracian Bosphorus, but who left their glories in Literature, Philosophy, and Art, as marvels and as models for the civilised world. It is interesting, therefore, to know how small this duchy of Saxe-Weimar was, that we may appreciate the influence exercised by means so circumscribed. We must know how absurdly scant the income of its generous prince, who, as I am credibly informed, would occasionally supply the deficiencies of his purse by the princely unprinceliness of selling to the Jews a diamond ring, or ancestral snuffbox, that he might hand the proceeds to some struggling artist or poet. I mention this lest it should be supposed that a sarcastic spirit has dictated the enumeration of unimposing details, in the following attempt to reconstruct some image of Weimar and its court. The Weimar is an ancient city on the Ilm, a small stream rising in the Thuringian forests, and losing itself in the Saale, at Jena; this stream (on which the sole navigation seems to be that of ducks) meanders peacefully through pleasant valleys, except during the rainy season, when mountain-torrents swell its current, and overflow its banks. The Trent, between Trentham and Stafford "the smug and silver Trent," as Shakespeare calls it will give an idea of this stream. town is charmingly placed in the Ilm valley, and stands some eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. "Weimar," says the old topographer, Mathew Merian, "is Weinmar, because it was the wine market for Jena and its environs. Others say it was because some one here in ancient days began to plant the vine, who was hence called Weinmayer. But of this each reader may believe just what he pleases." 1 On a first acquaintance, Weimar seems more like a 1 "Topographia Superioris Saxoniæ, Thuringiæ," etc., 1650, p. 188. |