the Countess von Werther, who was to Karl August what the Baroness von Stein was to Goethe. She, as is well known, is the original of the charming countess in "Wilhelm Meister," and her husband was still more eccentric than the eccentric count. It is related of him that once when the duke and some other illustrious guests were in his château, he collected several of his peasants, dressed them in his livery, and blacked their faces to make them pass as negroes!

To close this list we have Major von Knebel, the translator of Lucretius and Propertius, an honest, upright, satirical republican, the intimate friend of Karl August and Goethe, the "philanthropic Timon," as Herder called him, severe against all shams and insincerities, but loving the human nature he declaimed against. As one looks upon his rough, genial, Socratic head, one seems to hear the accents of an independent, thoroughly honest nature give weight to what he says.

I have omitted Herder. He did not come to Weimar till after Goethe, and indeed was drawn thither by Goethe, whose admiration for him, begun at Strasburg, continued unabated. The strange bitterness and love of sarcasm in Herder's nature, which could not repel the young student, did not alter the affection of the man. In one of Goethe's unpublished letters to the Duchess Amalia, there is an urgent appeal on behalf of Herder, whose large family had to be supported on very straitened means; the duke had promised to provide for one of the children, and Goethe writes to Amalia, begging her to do the same for another. No answer coming to this appeal, or at any rate no prompt notice being taken, he writes again more urgently, adding that if she does not provide for the child, he (Goethe), out of his small income, will! And this was at a time when Herder was most bitter against Goethe. Well might Merck exclaim: "No one can withstand the disinterestedness of this man!"

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST WILD WEEKS AT WEIMAR.

THIS was the circle into which Goethe entered in all the splendour of youth, beauty, and fame: Youth, which, according to the fine conception of the Greeks, is "the herald of Venus;" Beauty, which those Greeks adored as the splendour of Truth; and Fame, which has at all times been a halo dazzling to mortal eyes. Thus equipped for conquest, how can we wonder that he conquered? Even Amalia, angry with him for having ridiculed her darling Wieland, could not with

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He

stand the magic of his presence. Her love of genius left her no choice. She was fascinated by his wild ways, and by his splendid talents. One moment he startled her with a paradox, the next moment he sprang from his seat, waltzing and whirling round the room with antics which made her scream with laughter. And Wieland? - he was conquered at once. shall speak for himself, in a letter written after their first interview: "How perfectly I felt, at the first glance, he was a man after my own heart! How I loved the magnificent youth as I sat beside him at table! All that I can say (after more than one crisis which I have endured) is this: since that morning my soul is as full of Goethe as a dewdrop of the morning sun. . . . I believe the godlike creature will remain longer with us than he intended; and if Weimar can do anything, his presence will accomplish it." This is very honourable to Wieland: Nestor gazes with unenvious delight upon the young Achilles. Heroic

eyes are always proud to recognise heroic proportions.

After Wieland and the duchess, the rest were easy to conquer. "He rose like a star in the heavens," says Knebel. "Everybody worshipped him, especially the women." In the costume of his own Werther, which was instantly adopted by the duke, he seemed the ideal of a poet. To moderns there are no very sentimental suggestions in a costume which was composed of blue coat and brass buttons, top-boots, and leather breeches, the whole surmounted by powder and pigtail; but in those days this costume was the suggestion of everything tender and romantic. Werther had consecrated it. The duke not only adopted it, but made all around him adopt it also, sometimes paying the tailor's bill himself. Wieland alone was excepted; he was too old for such masqueradings.

Thoroughly to appreciate the effect of Goethe's influence with women, we must remember the state of feeling and opinion at the time. Those were the days of gallantry, the days of

"Puffs, paints, and patches, powders, billets doux."

The laxity of German morals differed from the more audacious licentiousness of France: it had sentimentalism, in lieu of gaiety and luxuriousness, for its basis. The heart of a French marquise was lost over a supper-table sparkling with champagne and bons mots; the heart of a German Gräfin yielded more readily to moonlight, melancholy, and a copy of verses. Wit and audacity were the batteries for a Frenchwoman; the German was stormed with sonnets, and a threat of suicide. For the one, Lothario needed sprightliness and bon ton; for the other, turbulent

1 It should be remembered, that in Germany, at that time, boots were only worn in very bad weather; and in the presence of women no one ever appeared except in shoes and silk stockings.

disgust at all social arrangements, expressed in interjectional rhetoric, and a deportment outrageous to all conventions. It is needless to add that marriage was to a great extent what Sophie Arnould with terrible wit called it, the sacrament of adultery;" and that on the subject of the sexes the whole tone of feeling was low. Poor, simple, earnest Schiller, whom no one will accuse of laxity, admired "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," and saw no reason why women should not read it; although to our age the infamy of that book is so great as to stamp a brand upon the society which produced and applauded it. Yet even Schiller, who admired this book, was astounded at the condition of women at Weimar. "There is hardly one of them," he writes to Körner," who has not had a liaison. They are all coquettes. . . . One may very easily fall into an 'affair of the heart,' though it will not last any time." It was thought, apparently, that since Eros had wings, he must use them and fly.

With this tone of society we can understand how, as Goethe in after-life confessed to Eckermann, the first years at Weimar were "perplexed with loveaffairs." A great admirer of women, and greatly admired by them, it was natural he should fall into their snares. Many charmers are named; among them, Fräulein von Kalb, Corona Schröter, and Kotzebue's sister, Amalia: but I am bound to say that, after the most diligent inquiry, I can find no reliable evidence for believing any one of those named to have been really loved by him. We must content ourselves with the fact of his having flirted considerably: making love to every bright pair of eyes which for a moment could make him believe what he said. 1

For the first few months he gave himself up to the

1 "Ich log und trog mich bei allen hübschen Gesichtern herum, und hatte den Vortheil immer ein Augenblick zu glauben was ich sagte," he says in a letter to the Frau von Stein, vol. i. p. 5.

excitement of this new life. Among other things he introduced skating. Weimar had hitherto seen no gentleman on the ice; but now, Klopstock having made skating famous by his poetry, Goethe made it fashionable by his daring grace. The duchess soon excelled in the art. Skating on the Schwansee became "the rage." Sometimes the banks were illuminated with lamps and torches, and music and fireworks animated the scene. The duchess and ladies, masked as during carnival, were driven in sledges over the noisy ice. "We are somewhat mad here," Goethe writes to Merck, "and play the devil's own game." Wieland's favourite epithet for him was wüthig-outrageous, and wüthig he was. Strange stories are told of him, now dashing across the ice, now loosening his long hair in Bertuch's room, and, with locks flowing over his shoulders, whirling round in mad Bacchante waltz; and, finally, standing in the Jena market-place with the duke, by the hour together, smacking huge sledge whips for a wager. Imagine a duke and a poet thus engaged in a public market-place!

His constant companion, and in all devilries and dissipation his most jovial associate, was Karl August. All ceremony was laid aside between them. They dined together, often shared the same bedroom, and called each other by the brotherly thou. "Goethe will never leave this place again," writes Wieland; "K. A. can no longer swim or wade without him. The court, or rather his liaison with the duke, wastes his time, which is really a great pity and yet with so magnificent and godlike a creature nothing is ever lost!" Weimar was startled in its more respectable circles by the conduct of these two, and their associates: conduct quite in keeping with the period named "the genial." 1 In their orgies they drank wine out of

1It is difficult to find an English word to express the German genial, which means pertaining to genius. The genial period was