BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER I.

DR. GOETHE'S RETURN.

On the 25th, or 28th, of August 1771, he quitted Strasburg. His way led through Mannheim; and there he was first thrilled at the beauty of ancient masterpieces, some of which he saw in plaster cast. Whatever might be his predilection for Gothic Art, he could not view these casts without feeling himself in presence of an Art in its way also divine; and his previous study of Lessing lent a peculiar interest to the Laokoon group, now before his eyes,

Passing on to Mainz he fell in with a young wandering harpist, and what must he do but invite the ragged minstrel to Frankfurt, promising him a public in the Fair, and a lodging in his father's house. It was lucky that he thought of acquainting his mother with this invitation. Alarmed at its imprudence she secured a lodging in the town, and so the boy wanted neither shelter nor patronage.

Rath Goethe was not a little proud of the young Doctor. He was also not a little disturbed by the young Doctor's manners; and often shook his ancient respectable head at the opinions which exploded like bombshells in the midst

of conventions. Doctoral gravity was but slightly attended to by this young hero of the Sturm und Drang. The period known as the Storm and Stress period was then about to astonish Germany, and to startle all conventions, by works such as Gerstenberg's Ugolino, Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen, Klinger's Sturm und Drang (from whence the name), and Schiller's Robbers. The wisdom and extravagance of that age united in one stream. The masterly criticisms of Lessing, the enthusiasm for Shakespeare, the mania for Ossian and the northern mythology, the revival of ballad literature, and parodies of Rousseau, all worked in one rebellious current against established authority. There was one universal shout for nature.' With the young, nature seemed to be a compound of volcanoes and moonlight; her force was explosion, her beauty sentiment. To be insurgent and sentimental, explosive and lachrymose, were the true signs of genius. Everything established was humdrum. Genius, abhorrent of humdrum, would neither spell correctly, nor write correctly, nor demean itself correctly. It would be German - lawless, rude, and natural. Lawless it was, and rude it was, but whether it was natural, according to the nature of any reputable type, may be doubted.

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It is not easy, in the pages of the Autobiography, to detect in Goethe an early leader of the Sturm und Drang; but it is easy enough to detect him as such in other sources. Here is a glimpse, caught in a letter from Mayer of Lindau (one of the Strasburg set) to Saltzmann, worth chapters of the autobiography on such a point. Corydon, Corydon que te dementia cepit! According to the chain in which our ideas are linked together, Corydon and dementia put me in mind of the extravagant Goethe. He is still at Frankfurt, is he not?'

O

That such a youth, whose wildness made friends nick

name him the 'bear' and the wolf,' could have been wholly pleasing to the steady, formal father, is not to be expected. Yet the worthy sire was not a little proud of his attainments. The verses, essays, notes and drawings which had accumulated during the residence in Strasburg were very gratifying to him. He began to arrange them. with scrupulous neatness, hoping to see them shortly published. But the poet had a virtue, perhaps of all virtues the rarest in youthful writers, -a reluctance to appear in print. Seeing, as we daily see, the feverish alacrity with which men accede to that extremely imaginary request, request of friends,' and dauntlessly rush into print,seeing the obstinacy with which they cling to all they have written, and insist on what they have written being printed Goethe's reluctance demands an explanation. And, if I may interpret according to my own experience, the explanation is, that his delight in composition was rather the pure delight of intellectual activity than a delight in the result: not in the work, but in the working. Thus, no sooner had he finished a poem than his interest in it began to fade; and he passed on to another. Thus it was that he left so many works fragments, his interest having been exhausted before the whole was completed.

He had a small circle of literary friends to whom he communicated his productions, and this was publication enough for him. We shall see him hereafter, in Weimar, writing solely for a circle of friends, and troubling himself scarcely at all about a public. It was necessary for him to occupy himself with some work which should absorb him, as Götz did at this time, for enly in work could he forget the anguish and remorse which followed his renunciation of Frederika. If at Strasburg he had felt that an end was approaching to this sweet romance, at Frankfurt, among family connections, and with new prospects widen

ing before him, he felt it still more. He wrote to her. Unhappily that letter is not preserved. It would have made clear much that is now conjectural. Frederika's answer,' he says, 'to the letter in which I had bidden her adieu, tore my heart. I now, for the first time, became aware of her bereavement, and saw no possibility of alleviating it. She was ever in my thoughts; I felt that she was wanting to me; and, worst of all, I could not forgive myself! Gretchen had been taken from me; Annchen had left me; but now, for the first time, I was guilty; I had wounded, to its very depths, one of the most beautiful and tender of hearts. And that period of gloomy repentance, bereft of the love which had so invigorated me, was agonizing, insupportable. But man will live; and hence I took a sincere interest in others, seeking to disentangle their embarrassments, and to unite those about to part, that they might not feel what I felt. Hence I got the name of the "Confidant," and also, on account of my wanderings, I was named the "Wanderer." Under the broad open sky, on the heights or in the valleys, in the fields and through the woods, my mind regained some of its calmness. I almost lived on the road, wandering between the mountains and the plains. Often I went, alone or in company, right through my native city as though I were a stranger in it, dining at one of the great inns in the High Street, and after dinner pursuing my way. I turned more than ever to the open world and to Nature; there alone I found comfort. During my walks I sang to myself strange hymns and dithyrambs. One of these, the Wanderer's Sturmlied, still remains. I remember singing it aloud in an impassioned style amid a terrific storm. The burden of this poem is that a man of genius must walk resolutely through the storms of life, relying solely on himself;' a