defer its fulfilment; if, indeed, a man can undertake anything in opposition to destiny. Formerly I wrote to you somewhat enigmatically about what was to become of me. Now I may say more plainly that I am about to change my place of residence, and move farther from you. Nothing will any more remind me of Leipsic, except, perhaps, a restless dream; no friend who comes from thence; no letter. And yet I perceive that this will be no help to me. Patience, time, and distance will do that which nothing else can do; they will annihilate every unpleasant impression, and give us back our friendship, with contentment, with life, so that after a series of years we may see each other again with altogether different eyes, but with the same heart. Within a quarter of a year you shall have another letter from me, which will tell you of my destination and the time of my departure, and which can once more say to superfluity what I have already said a thousand times. I entreat you not to answer me any more; if you have anything more to say to me, let me know it through a friend. This is a melancholy entreaty, my best! you, the only one of all her sex, whom I cannot call friend, for that is an insignificant title compared with what I feel. I wish not to see your writing again, just as I wish not to hear your voice; it is painful enough for me that my dreams are so busy. You shall have one more letter; that promise I will sacredly keep, and so pay a part of my debts; the rest you must forgive me.'

To round off this story, the following extract may be given from the last letter which has been preserved of those he wrote to her. It is dated Frankfurt, January, 1770.

That I live peacefully is all that I can say to you of myself, and vigorously and healthily and industriously, for I have no woman in my head. Horn and I are still

good friends, but, so it happens in the world, he has his thoughts and ways, and I have my thoughts and ways, and so a week passes and we scarcely see each other once. But, everything considered, I am at last tired of Frankfurt, and at the end of March I shall leave it. I must not yet go to you, I perceive; for if I came at Easter you could not be married. And Käthchen Schönkopf I will not see again, if I am not to see her otherwise than so. At the end of March, therefore, I go to Strasburg; if you care to know that, as I believe you do. Will you write to me to Strasburg also ? You will play me no trick. For, Käthchen Schönkopf, now I know perfectly that a letter from you is as dear to me as from any hand in the world. You were always a sweet girl, and will be a sweet woman. And I, I shall remain Goethe. You know what that means. If I name my name, I name my whole self, and you know that so long as I have known you I have lived only as part of you.'

Sic transit! So fall away the young blossoms of love which have not the force to ripen into fruit. 'The most loveable heart,' he writes to Käthchen, with a certain bitter humor, is that which loves the most readily; but that which easily loves also easily forgets.' It was his case; he could not live without some one to love, but his mobile nature soon dried the tears wrung from him by her loss.

Turning once more to his domestic condition, we find him in cold, unpleasant relations with his father, who had almost excited the hatred of his other child, Cornelia, by the stern, pedantic, pedagogic way in which he treated her. The old man continued to busy himself with the writing of his travels in Italy, and with instructing his daughter. She, who was of a restless, excitable, almost morbid disposition, secretly rebelled against his tyranny, and made her brother the confidant of all her griefs. The

poor mother had a terrible time of it, trying to pacify the children, and to stand between them and their father.

Very noticeable is one detail recorded by him. He had fallen ill again: this time with a stomach disorder, which no therapeutic treatment in the power of Frankfurt medicine seemed to mitigate. The family physician was one of those duped dupers who still stood to the great promises of Alchemy. It was whispered that he had in his possession a marvellous panacea, which was only to be employed in times of greatest need, and of which, indeed, no one dared openly speak. Frau Aja, trembling for her son, besought him to employ this mysterious salt. He consented. The patient recovered, and belief in the physician's skill became more complete. Not only was the poet thus restored once more to health, he was also thereby led to the study of Alchemy, and, as he narrates, employed himself in researches after the virgin earth.' In the little study of that house in the Hirsch-graben, he collected his glasses and retorts, and following the directions of authorities, sought for a time to penetrate the mystery which then seemed penetrable. Through these pursuits he was induced to read not only Theophrastus, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and other alchemists, but also the more serviceable Chemical Compendium of Boerhaave, whose 'Aphorisms' greatly delighted him. These studies were preparations for Faust.

6

Renewed intercourse with Fräulein von Klettenberg, together with much theological and philosophical reading, brought Religion into prominence in his thoughts. He has given a sketch of the sort of Neoplatonic Christianity into which his thoughts moulded themselves; but as this sketch was written so very many years after the period to which it relates, one cannot well accept its authenticity. For biographic purposes it is enough to indicate that beside

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 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