will love you, and the second is sweeter to kiss than the first:

Es küsst sich so süsse der Busen der Zweiten,

Als kaum sich der Busen der Ersten geküsst.

Another acquaintance, and one more directly influential, was that of Oeser, the director of the Drawing Academy. He had been the friend and teacher of Winckelmann, and his name stood high among connoisseurs. Goethe, who at home had learned a little drawing, joined Oeser's class, where, among other fellow-students, was the Hardenberg who afterwards made such a noise in the Prussian political world. He joined the class, and did his best to acquire by labor the skill which only a talent can acquire. That he made little progress in drawing, we learn from his subsequent confession, no less than from his failure, but tuition had this effect at least, it taught him to use his eyes. In a future chapter* I shall have occasion to enter more fully on this subject. Enough if for the present a sentence or two from his letters tells us the enthusiasm Oeser inspired. 'What do I not owe to you,' he writes to him, 'for having pointed out to me the way of the True and the Beautiful!' and concludes by saying, the undersigned is your work!' Writing to a friend of Oeser's, he says that Oeser stands beside Shakespeare and Wieland in the influence exercised over him. • His instruction will influence my whole life. He it was who taught me that the Ideal of Beauty is Simplicity and Repose, and thence it follows that no youth can be a master.'

Instruction in the theory of Art he gained from Oeser, from Winckelmann, and from the incomparable little book which Lessing at this period carelessly flung upon the

* See Book V. ch. v.

world-the Laokoon. Its effect upon Goethe can only be appreciated by those who early in life have met with this work, and risen from it with minds widened, strengthened and inspired. It opened a pathway amid confusion, throwing light upon many of the obscurest problems which torment the artist. It awakened in Goethe an intense yearning to see the works of ancient masters; and these beckoned from Dresden. To Dresden he went. But here, in spite of Oeser, Winckelmann, and Lessing, in spite of grand phrases about Art, the invincible tendency of his nature asserted itself, and instead of falling into raptures with the great Italian pictures, he confesses that he took their merits upon trust, and was really charmed by none but the landscape and Dutch painters, whose subjects appealed directly to his experience. He did not feel the greatness of Italian Art; and what he did not feel he would not feign.

It is worth noticing that this trip to Dresden was taken in absolute secrecy. As, many years later, he stole away to Italy without letting his friends even suspect his project, so now he left Leipsic for Dresden without a word of intimation. Probably the same motive actuated him in both instances. He went to see, to enjoy, to learn, and did not want to be disturbed by personal influence-by other people's opinions.

On his return he was active enough with drawing. He made the acquaintance of an engraver named Stock, and with his usual propensity to try his hand at whatever his friends were doing, he forthwith began to learn engraving. In the Morgenblatt for 1828 there is a detailed account

*This Stock had two amiable daughters, one of whom married (1785) Körner, the correspondent of Schiller, and father of the poet.

of two of his engravings, both representing landscapes with small cascades shut in by rocks and grottoes; at the foot of each are these words: peint par A. Theile, gravé par Goethe. One plate is dedicated à Monsieur Goethe, Conseillier actuel de S. M. Impériale, par son fils très obéissant. In the room which they show to strangers in his house at Frankfurt, there is also a specimen of his engraving — very amateurish; but Madame von Goethe showed me one in her possession which really has merit.

Melancholy, wayward, and capricious as he was at this time, he allowed Lessing to pass through Leipsic without making any attempt to see the man he so much admired: a caprice he afterwards repented, for the opportunity never recurred. Something of his hypochondria was due to mental, but more to physical causes. Dissipation, bad diet (especially the beer and coffee), and absurd endeavors to carry out Rousseau's preaching about returning to a state of nature, had seriously affected his health. The crisis came at last. One summer night (1768) he was seized with violent hæmorrhage. He had only strength enough to call to his aid the fellow-student who slept in the next room. Medical assistance promptly came. He was saved; but his convalescence was embittered by the discovery of a tumor on his neck, which lasted some time. His recovery was slow, but it seemed as if it relieved him from all the peccant humors which had made him hypochondriacal, leaving behind an inward lightness and joyousness to which he had long been a stranger. One thing greatly touched him—the sympathy expressed for him by several eminent men; a sympathy he felt to be quite undeserved, for there was not one among them whom he had not vexed or affronted by his caprices, extravagances, morbid opposition, and stubborn persistence.

One of these friends, Langer, not only made an ex

change of books with him, giving a set of Classic authors for a set of German, but also, in devout yet not dogmatic conversation, led his young friend to regard the Bible in another light than that of a merely human composition. 'I loved the Bible and valued it, for it was the only book to which I owed my moral culture. Its events, dogmas and symbols were deeply impressed on my mind.' He therefore felt little sympathy with the Deists who were at this time agitating Europe; and although his tendency was strongly in favor of the Rationalists against the Mystics, he was afraid lest the poetical spirit should be swept away along with the prophetical. In one word, he was in a state of religious doubt-'destitute of faith, yet terrified at scepticism.'

This unrest and this bodily weakness he carried with him, September 1768, from Leipsic to Frankfurt, whither we will follow him.

CHAPTER IV.

RETURN HOME.

He returned home a boy in years, in experience a man. Broken in health, unhappy in mind, with no strong impulses in any one direction, uncertain of himself and of his aims, he felt, as he approached his native city, much like a repentant prodigal, who has no vision of the fatted calf awaiting him. His father, unable to perceive the real progress he had made, was very much alive to the slender prospect of his becoming a distinguished jurist. The fathers of poets are seldom gratified with the progress visible in their sons. Only your perfectly stupid young gentlemen uniformly delight their parents: they tread the beaten path, whereon are placed milestones marking every distance; and the parents, seeing how far their sons have trudged, are freed from all misgivings. Of that silent progress which consists less in travelling on the broad highway, than in development of the limbs which will make a sturdy traveller, parents cannot judge.

Mother and sister, however, touched by the worn face, and, woman-like, more interested in the man than in what he has achieved, received him with an affection which compensated for the father's coldness. There is quite a pathetic glimpse given of this domestic interior in the Autobiography, where he alludes to his father's impatience