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these Alchemic studies, Religion rose also into serious importance. Poetry seemed quite to have deserted him, although he still occasionally touched up his two plays. In a letter he humorously exposes the worthlessness of the Bardenpoesie then in fashion among versifiers, who tried to be patriotic and Tyrtæan by huddling together golden helmets, flashing swords, the tramp of horses, and, when the verse went lame for want of a syllable, supplying an Oh! or Ha! 'Make me feel,' he says, 'what I have not yet felt, make me think what I have not yet thought, then I will praise you. But shrieks and noise will never supply the place of pathos.'

The trace of a slight love affair, during this summer of 1769, has been discovered by Viehoff. Charity Meixner, of Worms, is not mentioned in the Autobiography, it is true; but neither is Oeser's daughter Frederika, for whom he had a very lively friendship, which probably her satirical tendency kept from warming into love. Charity was the daughter of a merchant, and Viehoff has seen two letters to her which leave no doubt of the warmth of Goethe's feelings for the young poetess. But that heart, which so readily loves and so easily forgets,' wandered from Charity, as it wandered from others; and she buried his inconstancy in 6 a copy of verses' and a rich husband.

Paoli, the Corsican Patriot, passed through Frankfurt at this time, and Goethe saw him in the house of Bethmann, the rich merchant; but, with this exception, Frankfurt presented nothing beyond deadly prose to him, and he was impatient to escape from it. His health was sufficiently restored for his father to hope that now Jurisprudence could be studied with some success; and Strasburg was the university selected for that purpose.

CHAPTER V.

STRASBURG.

He reached Strasburg on the 2d April, 1770. He was now turned twenty, and a more magnificent youth never perhaps entered the Strasburg gates. Long before he was celebrated, he was likened to an Apollo: when he entered a restaurant the people laid down their knives. and forks to stare at him. Pictures and busts give a very feeble indication of that which was most striking in his appearance ; they only give the cut of feature, not the play of feature; nor are they very accurate even in mere form. The features were large and liberally cut, as in the fine sweeping lines of Greek Art. The brow lofty and massive, from beneath which shone large lustrous brown eyes of marvellous beauty, their pupils being of almost unexampled size; the slightly aquiline nose was large and finely cut; the mouth full, with a short arched lip, very expressive; the chin and jaw boldly proportioned, and the head resting on a fine muscular neck: details which are, after all, but the inventory of his appearance, and give no clear image of it.

In stature he was rather above the middle size; but although not really tall, he had the aspect of a tall man, and is usually so described, because his presence was very im

posing.

His frame was strong, muscular, yet sensitive. Dante says this contrast is in the nature of things, for

'Quanta la cosa è più perfetta,

Più senta 'l bene, e così la doglienza.'

Excelling in all active sports, he was almost a barometer in sensitiveness to atmospheric influences.

Such, externally, was the youth who descended at the hotel zum Geist, in Strasburg, this 2d April, and who, ridding himself of the dust and ennui of a long imprisonment in the Diligence, sallied forth to gaze at the famous Cathedral, which made a wonderful impression on him as he came up to it through the narrow streets. The Strasburg Cathedral not inaptly serves as the symbol of his early German tendencies; and its glorious tower is ȧlways connected, in my mind, with the brief but ardent endeavors of his Hellenic nature to throw itself into the old German world. German his spirit was not, but we shall see him, under the shadow of this tower, for a moment inspired with true German enthusiasm.

His lodgings secured-No. 80, on the south side of the Fish-market-he delivered his letters of introduction, and arranged to dine at a table d'hôte kept by two maiden ladies, named Lauth, in the Krämergasse, No. 13. The guests here were about ten in number, mostly medical. Their president was Dr. Saltzmann, a clean old bachelor of fifty, scrupulous in his stockings, immaculate as to his shoes and buckles, with hat under his arm and scarcely ever on his head a neat, dapper, old gentleman, well instructed, and greatly liked by the poet, to whom he gave excellent advice, and for whom he found a valuable repe

* Rauch, the sculptor, who made the well-known statuette of Goethe, explained this to me as owing to his large bust and erect carriage.

tent.* In spite of the services of this excellent repetent, jurisprudence wearied him considerably, according to his account; at first, however, he seems to have taken to it with some pleasure, as we learn by a letter, in which he tells Fräulein von Klettenberg a different story: Jurisprudence begins to please me very much. Thus it is with all things as with Merseburg beer; the first time we shudder at it, and having drunk it for a week, we cannot do without it.' The study of jurisprudence at any rate did not absorb him. Schöll has published a notebook kept during this period, which reveals an astonishing activity in desultory research. † When we remember that the society at his table d'hôte was principally of medical students, we are prepared to find him eagerly throwing himself into the study of anatomy and chemistry. He attended Lobstein's lectures on Anatomy, Ehrmann's clinical lectures, with those of his son on midwifery, and Spielman's on chemistry. Electricity occupied him, Franklin's great discovery having brought that subject into prominence. No less than nine works on electricity are set down in the notebook to be studied. We also see from this notebook that chromatic subjects began to attract him- the future antagonist of Newton was preluding in the science. Alchemy still fascinated him; and he wrote to Fräulein von Klettenberg, assuring her that these mystical studies were

†The medical student will best understand what a repetent is, if I translate it a grinder; the university student, if I translate it a coach. The repetent prepares students by an examination, and also by repeating and explaining in private what the professor has taught in the lecture hall.

*Briefe und Aufsätze von Goethe. Herausgegeben von Adolf Schöll. In this, as in his other valuable work, Schöll is not content simply to reprint papers entrusted to him, but enriches them by his own careful, accurate editing.

his secret mistresses. With such a direction of his thoughts, and the influence of this pure, pious woman still operating upon him, we can imagine the disgust which followed his study of the Système de la Nature, then making so great a noise in the world. This dead and dull exposition of an atheism as superficial as it was dull, must have been everyway revolting to him: irritating to his piety, and unsatisfying to his reason. Voltaire's wit and Rousseau's sarcasms he could copy into his notebook, especially when they pointed in the direction of tolerance, as in the extract from Voltaire ending thus :

'Très sots enfans de Dieu, chérissez vous en frères,

Et ne vous mordez plus pour d'absurdes chimères ;'

or this sentence from Rousseau : 'Le péché original explique tout, excepté son principe, et c'est ce principe qu'il s'agit d'expliquer.' But he who could read Bayle, Voltaire, and Rousseau with delight, turned from the Système de la Nature with disgust; especially at a time when we find him taking the sacrament, and trying to keep up an acquaintance with the pious families to which Fräulein von Klettenberg had introduced him. I say trying, because even his goodwill could not long withstand their dulness and narrowness; he was forced to give them up, and confessed so much to his friend.

Shortly after his arrival in Strasburg, namely in May 1770, an event occurred which agitated the town, and gave him an opportunity of seeing, for the first time, Raphael's cartoons. Marie Antoinette, the dauphiness of France elect, was to pass through on her way to Paris. On a small island on the Rhine a building was erected for her reception; and this was adorned with tapestries worked after the cartoons. These tapestries roused his enthusiasm; but he was shocked to find that they were placed

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