lips after so solemn a consecration (a process which looked less heroic when item'd in the bill next day), and otherwise demeaning themselves like true children of "genius", they passed a wild and merry time. This journey need not longer detain us. Two visits alone deserve mention. One was to Karl August, who was then in Karlsruhe arranging his marriage with the Princess Luise, and who very pressingly invited the poet to Weimar. The other was to his sister Cornelia, who earnestly set before him all the objections to a marriage with Lili. "I made no promises," he says, "although forced to confess that she had convinced me. I left her with that strange feeling in my heart with which passion nourishes itself; for the boy Cupid clings obstinately to the garment of Hope even when she is preparing with long strides to depart." The image of Lili haunted him amid the lovely scenes of Nature: Dearest Lili, if I did not love thee How entrancing were a scene like this! What were any bliss ? It was her image which endeared him to his native land. His father, always desirous he should see Italy, was now doubly anxious he should go there, as the surest means of a separation from Lili. But "Lombardy and Italy," says the poet, "lay before me a strange land; while the dear home of Germany lay behind, full of sweet domesticities, and where—let me confess it—she lived who so long had enchained me, in whom my existence was centred. A little golden heart, which in my happiest hours I had received from her, still hung round my neck. I drew it forth and covered it with kisses." On his return to Frankfurt he learned that Lili's friends had taken advantage of his absence, to try and bring about a separation, arguing, not without justice, that his absence was a proof of lukewarmness. But Lili remained firm; and it was said that she had declared herself willing to go with him to America. A sentence from the Autobiography is worth quoting, as a specimen of that love "so unlike the love to be found in novels", which he declared had given a peculiar tone to his narrative. It is in reference to this willingness of Lili to go to America: "the very thing which should have animated my hopes depressed them. My fair paternal house, only a few hundred paces from hers, was after all more endurable and attractive than a remote, hazardous spot beyond the seas!" A sentence which recalls Gibbon's antithesis, on his resignation of his early love: "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." He was restless and unhappy during these months, for he was not strong enough to give up Lili, nor sufficiently in love to marry her; jealous of those who surrounded her, hurt by her coldness, he was every now and then led captive by her tenderness. There were moments when by-gone days seemed once more restored, and then instantly vanished again. His poem of Lili's Menagerie expresses his surly disgust at the familiar faces which surround her. The Bear of the menagerie is a portrait of himself. Turning to Art for consolation, he began the tragedy of Egmont, which he completed many years afterwards in Italy. It was a work which demanded more repose than could be found in his present condition, and I hasten to the denouement of an episode, which, amid fluctuations of feeling, steadily advanced to an end that must have been foreseen. The betrothal was cancelled. He was once more free. Free, but not happy. His heart still yearned for her, rather because there lay in his nature a need of loving, than because she was the woman fitted to share his life. He lingered about the house o' nights, wrapped in his mantle, satisfied if he could catch a glimpse of her shadow on the blind, as she moved about the room. One night he heard her singing at the piano. His pulses throbbed, as he distinguished his own song: Wherefore so resistlessly dost draw me Into scenes so bright ?— the song he had written in the morning of their happiness! Her voice ceased. She rose, and walked up and down the room, little dreaming that her lover was beneath her window. To give decision to his wavering feelings, there came, most opportunely, a visitor to Frankfurt. This was in September. Karl August, with his bride, on his way to Weimar, once more pressed him to spend a few weeks at his court. The rapid inclination which had sprung up between the Prince and the Poet—the desire to see something of the great world—the desire, moreover, to quit Frankfurt, all combined to make him eagerly accept the invitation. father, indeed, tried to dissuade him; partly because he did not like the intercourse of plain citizens with princes; partly because the recent experience of Voltaire with Frederick the Great seemed to point to an inevitable termination in disgrace, if not evaded by servility. His consent was extorted at last, however, and Goethe quitted for ever the paternal roof. His BOOK THE FOURTH. 1775 to 1779. 'Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes ? Virgil. "Tolle Zeiten hab' ich erlebt und hab' nicht ermangelt, CHAPTER I. WEIMAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ON the 7th of November, 1775, Goethe, aged twenty-six, 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.* Frederick the Great and Wolfgang Goethe have raised these Courts into centres of undying interest. Of Weimar it is necessary we should form a distinct idea, if we would' understand the outward life of the poet. Klein ist unter den Fürsten Germaniens freilich der meine, "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 *VEHSE: Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe seit der Reformation, vol. XXVIII, p. 3. the surface of Europe, a dot of earth, feeding some twenty thousand freemen, who not only extended the 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 civilized 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 snuff-box, 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. Weimar is an ancient city on the Ilm, a small stream rising in the Thuringian forests, and losing itself in the Saal, 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 Shakspeare calls it—will give an idea of this stream. The 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."* On a first acquaintance, Weimar seems more like a village bordering a park, than a capital with a Court, having all courtly environments. It is so quiet, so simple; and although ancient in its architecture, has none of the picturesqueness which delights the eye in most old German cities. The stone-coloured, light brown, and applegreen houses have high-peaked slanting roofs, but no quaint gables, no caprices of architectural fancy, none of the mingling of varied styles which elsewhere charms the traveller. One learns to love its. quiet simple streets, and pleasant paths, fit theatre for the simple actors moving across the scene; but one must live there some time to discover its charm. The aspect it presented, when Goethe arrived, was of course very different from that presented now; but *Topographia Superioris Saxonia Thuringia, etc., 1650, p. 188. by diligent inquiry we may get some rough image of the place restored. First be it noted that the city walls were still erect; gates and portcullis still spoke of days of warfare. Within these walls were six or seven hundred houses, not more, most of them very ancient. Under these roofs were about seven thousand inhabitants—for the most part not handsome. The city gates were strictly guarded. No one could pass through them in cart or carriage without leaving his name in the sentinel's book; even Goethe, minister and favourite, could not escape this tiresome formality, as we gather from one of his letters to the Frau von Stein, directing her to go out alone, and meet him beyond the gates, lest their exit together should be known. During Sunday service a chain was thrown across the streets leading to the church, to bar out all passengers, a practice to this day partially retained: the chain is fastened, but the passengers step over it without ceremony. There was little safety at night in those silent streets; for if you were in no great danger from marauders, you were in constant danger of breaking a limb in some hole or other; the idea of lighting streets not having presented itself to the Thuringian mind. In the year 1685, the streets of London were first lighted with lamps; in 1775 Germany had not yet ventured on that experiment. If in 1854 Weimar is still innocent of gas, and perplexes its inhabitants with the dim obscurity of an occasional oil-lamp slung on a cord across the streets, we can understand that in 1775 it had not even advanced so far. And our supposition is exact.* The palace, which now forms three sides of a quadrangle, and is truly palatial in appearance, was in ashes when Goethe arrived. The ducal pair inhabited the Fürstenhaus, which stands opposite. The park was not in existence. In its place there was the Welsche Garten, a garden arranged after the pattern of Versailles, with trees trimmed into set shapes, with square beds, canals, bridges, and a Babylonic spiral tower called Die Schnecke, in which the people assembled to hear music, and to enjoy punch and sweet cakes. To the left of this garden stood the nucleus of the present park, and a wooded mass stretching as far as Upper Weimar. Saxe-Weimar has no trade, no manufactures, no animation of commercial, political, or even theological activity. This part of Saxony, be it remembered, was the home and shelter of Protestantism in its birth. Only a few miles from Weimar stands the Wartburg, where In a decree made at Cassel, in 1775, this sentence is noticeable: "In every house as soon as the alarum sounds at night, every inhabitant must hold out a lighted lantern, in order that the people may find their way in the streets." Quoted by BIEDERMANN: Deutschland im 18ten Jahrhundert, 1, p. 370. |