"So long as I was absent, I believed in the parting, not in the final separation. All recollections, hopes, and wishes had free play. Now I had come back; and as the meeting of free and happy lovers is a heaven, just so the meeting of two persons, only separated by prudential considerations, is an insupportable purgatory, an entrance-court of hell. I therefore resolved on flight; and there was nothing I desired more than that the young ducal pair of Weimar should come from Carlsruhe to Frankfort, and that I, in conformity with earlier and later invitations, should follow them to Weimar."

They arrived soon afterwards; and it was speedily arranged that he should follow them to Weimar, although with no understanding that he was to become a permanent member of their court. His departure was delayed by an accident; and, rambling round the city one evening to take a last look at the houses of his friends, he could not resist the temptation of stopping before Lili's window. Her apartment was on the ground-floor; and though the blinds were down, he could make out that the lights stood in their usual places, and that she was singing at the piano:

I

"It was the song, 'Ach, wie ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich!' (‘Ah, how unresistingly dost thou attract me!') which I had addressed to her not quite a year before. I could not help thinking that she sang it more expressively than ever. could hear every word. After she had finished singing, I saw by the shadow upon the blinds that she was standing up: she walked up and down, but I sought in vain to catch the outline of her lovely form through the thick blind.”

Mademoiselle Delf, the matchmaker, although approving his resolution to give up Lili, makes a last effort to detain him; and he breaks from her, exclaiming, in the words of Egmont :

"Child, child! no more! As lashed by invisible spirits, the sun-born horses of Time bear along the light car of our destiny, and nothing remains for us but, with collected courage, to hold fast the reins and to guide the wheels, now right, now left, from a stone here, from a precipice there— who knows where it is going? He scarcely recollects where he came from."

CHAPTER XVI.

WEIMAR.

WEIMAR at this time, 1775, was little known. Such reputation and attraction as it could boast were principally owing to the Duchess Anna Amalia, the mother of Goethe's patron and friend, Duke Karl August. She was early left a widow, and governed as regent till the accession of her son (born 3d September 1757) on attaining his eighteenth year. She is described by contemporaries as combining a masculine strength of understanding with feminine gentleness and amiability. She had a decided turn for literature and the fine arts, drew, composed, and excelled in private theatricals. She engaged Wieland, and two or three others of intellectual note, to undertake the education of her sons; and thus was formed the nucleus of the circle which afterwards became so celebrated. Karl August, despite his training, had no particular fancy for intellectual pursuits. He made fun of the literary and scientific society as "creating so rarefied an atmosphere that it was no easy matter to breathe in it." He liked to throw off the prince, and was fond of rough practical jokes. It was by falling in with his humour that Goethe first won his

heart; and it was the genial companion rather than the poet that the Duke was anxious to retain about him. His wife, Louise, the reigning Duchess, was generally beloved. Goethe calls her an angel. But she had no taste for the pursuits which were to make Weimar famous; and Prince Constantine, the younger brother of the Duke, agreed in this matter with his sister-inlaw.

Arriving at Weimar (November 9, 1775) in his twenty-sixth year, Goethe was received with the most flattering attentions by all the principal personages. The Duke could not move without him. The Duchesses vied with each other in making him talk. The brilliancy of his conversation, set off by his personal advantages and unaffected cordiality of manner, took everybody by storm. Wieland, who had an old grudge against him and might have been excused a shade of jealousy, was the first to be emphatic in his praise. After meeting Goethe two or three times, he writes to Fritz Jacobi:

"Since the morning, my soul is as full of Goethe as a dewdrop of the morning sun. Think of that, and everything it implies. I am too full to be able to write. The godlike

...

man will, I think, remain longer with us than he himself thought at first; and if it is possible that anything choice should come out of Weimar, it will be effected by his presence."

There were many, less charitable than Wieland, who thought that Goethe's presence there was doing more harm than good that he was encouraging the young Duke in every wild extravagance instead of checking him. There were skating-parties, hunting-parties, and

excursions to the neighbouring villages, in which all restraint was thrown aside. "Many eccentricities went on," writes Major von Knebel, a man of letters attached to the court, "which I have no pleasure in describing, which, however, did not procure us the best name in the vicinity." At the same time, Goethe gave a refined turn to their amusements; and the best proof that he kept the Duke tolerably within bounds was, that he was equally a favourite with both the Duchesses, especially the Duchess-mother. He also found means of lightening the cares of government to the Duke by counsel and aid.

Of course, all sort of calumnies were circulated; and in May 1776, Klopstock wrote to Goethe, assuming the truth of the current rumours, to warn him of the responsibility he was incurring in case the Duke's career, so promising amongst princes, should be cut short by excess. Goethe answered tartly, begging to be spared such epistles. Klopstock retorted angrily, saying that one who received well-meant advice thus was not worthy of it, and vowing that Stolberg should not come "if he listens to me, or rather if he listens to himself." It is a singular proof of the extent to which the evil reports were circulated and believed, that the bookseller Heinburg, of Berlin, ventured to publish a collection of Goethe's minor works without his permission, and stated in the advertisement that "Goethe and his bosom friend the Duke led the most dissolute life in the world. There is nothing more to hope from him, since he is besotting himself with brandy the livelong day." In the meantime, he was becoming every day more necessary to the Duke. "Goethe," writes Wieland to Merck so early as January 26, 1776, "will never again go free