A very different sort of female influence has now to be touched on. His heart began to flutter with the emotions of love. He was not quite fifteen, when Gretchen, the sister of one of his disreputable companions, first set his youthful pulses throbbing to the movements of the divine passion. The story is told in a rambling way in the Autobiography, and may here be very briefly dismissed. He had often turned his poetical talents to practical purposes, namely, writing wedding and funeral verses, the money produce of which went in joyous feastings. In these he was almost daily thrown with Gretchen; but she, though kind, treated him as a child, and never permitted the slightest familiarity. A merry life they led, in picnics and pleasure bouts; and the coronation of the Kaiser Joseph II. was the occasion of increased festivities. One night, after the fatigues of a sightseeing day, the hours rolled unheeded over these thoughtless merry heads, and the stroke of midnight startled them. To his dismay, Wolfgang found he had forgotten the doorkey with which hitherto he had been able to evade paternal knowledge of his late hours. Gretchen proposed that they should all remain together, and pass the night in conversation. This was agreed on. But, as in all such cases, the effort was vain. Fatigue weighed down their eyelids; conversation became feebler and feebler; two strangers already slumbered in corners of the room; one friend sat in a corner with his betrothed, her head reposing on his shoulder; another, crossing his arms upon the table, rested his head upon them—and snored. The noisy room had become silent. Gretchen and her lover sat by the window talking in undertones. Fatigue at length conquered her also, and drooping her head upon his shoulder, she too slept. With tender pride he supported that delicious burden, till like the rest he gave way, and slept.

It was broad day when he awoke. Gretchen was standing before a mirror arranging her cap. She smiled on him more amiably than ever she had smiled before; and pressed his hand tenderly as he departed. But now, while he seemed drawing nearer to her, the dénouement was at hand. Some of the joyous companions had been guilty of nefarious practices, such as forgeries of documents. His friend and Gretchen were involved in the accusation, though falsely. Wolfgang had to undergo a severe investigation, which, as he was perfectly innocent, did not much afflict him; but an affliction came out of the investigation, for Gretchen, in her deposition concerning him, said, "I will not deny that I have often seen him, and seen him with pleasure, but I treated him as a child, and my affection for him was merely that of a sister." His exasperation may be imagined. A boy aspiring to the dignity of manhood knows few things more galling than to be treated as a boy by the girl whom he has honoured with his homage. He suffered greatly at this destruction of his romance nightly was his pillow wet with tears; food became repugnant to him; life, he thought, had no longer an object.

But pride came to his aid; pride and that volatility of youth, which compensates for extra-sensitiveness by extra-facility in forgetting. He threw himself into study, especially of philosophy, under guidance of a tutor, a sort of Wagner to the young Faust. This tutor, who preferred dusty quartos to all the landscapes in the world, used to banter him upon being a true German, such as Tacitus describes, avid of the emotions excited by solitude and scenery. Laughter weaned him not from the enjoyment. He was enjoying his first sorrow: the luxury of melancholy, the romance of a forlorn existence, drove him into solitude. Like Bellerophon, he fed upon his own heart, away from the haunts of men. He made frequent walking

excursions. Those mountains which from earliest childhood had stood so distant, "haunting him like a passion," were now his favourite resorts. He visited Homburg, Kronburg, Königstein, Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, Biberich. These filled his mind with lovely images.

Severer studies were not neglected. To please his father he was diligent in application to jurisprudence; to please himself he was still more diligent in literature; Morhof's "Polyhistor," Gessner's " Isagoge," and Bayle's Dictionary, filled him with the ambition to become a University professor. Herein, as, indeed, throughout his career, we see the strange impressibility of his nature, which, like the fabled chameleon, takes its colour from every tree it lies under.

The melancholy fit did not last long. And he again. felt a fluttering of the heart in the society of Charity Meixner, one of his sister's friends, of whom we shall catch another glimpse during his stay at Leipsic. A circle of lively friends, among them Horn, of whom we shall hear more anon, drew him into gaiety again. Their opinion of his talents appears to have been enormous; their love for him, and interest in all he did, was of the kind which followed him through life. No matter what his mood in the wildest student-period, in the startling genius-period, and in the diplomaticperiod whatever offence his manner created, was soon forgotten in the irresistible fascination of his nature. The secret of that fascination was his own overflowing lovingness, and his genuine interest in every individuality, however opposite to his own.

With these imperfect glances at his early career we close this book, on his departure from home for the University of Leipsic. Before finally quitting this period, we may take a survey of the characteristics it exhibits, as some guide in our future inquiries.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN.

As in the soft round lineaments of childhood we trace the features which after years will develop into more decided forms, so in the moral lineaments of the Child may be traced the characteristics of the Man. But an apparent solution of continuity takes place in the transition period, and the Youth is in many respects unlike what he has been in childhood, and what he will be in maturity. In youth, when the passions begin to stir, the character is made to swerve from the orbit previously traced. Passion rules the hour. Thus we often see the prudent child turn out an extravagant youth; but he crystallises once more into prudence, as he hardens with age.

This was certainly the case with Goethe, who, if he had died young, like Shelley or Keats, would have left a name among the most genial, not to say extravagant of poets; but, who, living to the age of eighty-two, had fifty years of crystallisation to acquire a definite figure which perplexes critics. In his childhood, scanty as the details are which enable us to reconstruct it, we see the main features of the man.

And first of his manysidedness. Seldom has a boy exhibited such variety of tendencies. The multiplied activity of his life is prefigured in the varied tendencies. of his childhood. We see him as an orderly, somewhat formal, inquisitive, reasoning, deliberative child, a precocious learner, an omnivorous reader, and a vigorous logician who thinks for himself; so independent, that

at six years of age he doubts the beneficence of the Creator, and at seven, doubts the competence and justice of the world's judgment. He is inventive, poetical, proud, loving, volatile, with a mind open to all influences, swayed by every gust, and yet, while thus swayed as to the direction of his activity, master over that activity. The most diverse characters, the most antagonistic opinions interest him. He is very studious: no bookworm more so; alternately busy with languages, mythology, antiquities, law, philosophy, poetry, and religion; yet he joins in all festive scenes, gets familiar with life in various forms, and stays out late o' nights. He is also troubled by melancholy, dreamy moods forcing him ever and anon into solitude.

Among the dominant characteristics, however, are seriousness, formality, rationality. He is by no means a naughty boy. He gives his parents no tremulous anxiety as to" what will become of him." He seems very much master of himself. It is this which in later years perplexed his critics, who could not reconcile this appearance of self-mastery, this absence of expressed enthusiasm, with their conceptions of a poet. Assuredly he had enthusiasm, if ever man had it: at least, if enthusiasm (being "full of the God") means being filled with a sublime idea, and by its light working steadily. He had little of the other kind of enthusiasm that insurrection of the feelings carrying away upon their triumphant shoulders the Reason which has no longer power to guide them. And hence it is that whereas the quality which first strikes us in most poets is Emotion, with its caprices, infirmities, and generous errors; the first quality which strikes us in Goethe the Child and Man, but not the Youth — is Intellect, with its clearness and calmness. He has also a provoking immunity from error. I say provoking, for we all gladly overlook the errors of enthusiasm: some, because these errors appeal to compassion; and