BOOK THE SECOND. 1765 to 1771. "In grossen Städten lernen früh "Eser taught me that the Ideal of Beauty is Simplicity and Repose, and thence it follows that no youth can be a Master." CHAPTER I. THE LEIPSIC STUDENT. IN the month of October 1765, Goethe, aged sixteen, arrived in Leipsic, to commence his collegiate life, and to lay, as he hoped, the solid foundation of a future professorship. He took lodgings in the Feuerkugel, between the Old and New Markets, and was by the rector of the University inscribed on the 19th as student "in the Bavarian nation." At that period, and until quite recently, the University was classed according to four "Nations", viz., the Misnian, the Saxon, the Bavarian, and the Polish. When the inscription was official, the "nations" were what in Oxford and Paris are called "tongues"; when not official, they were students' clubs, such as they exist to this day. Goethe, as a Frankfurter, was placed in the Bavarian.* If the reader has any vivid recollection of the Leipsic chapters in the Autobiography, let me beg him to dismiss them with all haste from his mind; that very work records the inability of recalling the enchanting days of youth " with the dimmed powers of an aged mind ;” * Otto Jahn, in the Briefe an Leipziger Freunde, p. 9. and it is evident that the calm narrative of his Excellency J. W. von Goethe very inaccurately represents the actual condition of the raw, wild student, just escaped from the paternal roof, with money which seems unlimited in his purse, with the world before him which his genius is to open. His own letters, and the letters of his friends, enable us "to read between the lines" of the Autobiography, and to read there a very different account. He first presented himself to Hofrath Böhme, a genuine German professor, shut within the narrow circle of his speciality. To him, Literature and the Fine Arts were trivialities; and when the confiding youth confessed his secret ambition of studying belles lettres, in lieu of the jurisprudence commanded by his father, he met with every discouragement. Yet it was not difficult to persuade this impressible student that to rival Otto and Heineccius was the true ambition of a vigorous mind. He set to work in earnest, at first, as students usually do on arriving at seats of learning. His attendance at the lectures on philosophy, history of law, and jurisprudence, was assiduous enough to have pleased even his father. But this flush of eagerness quickly subsided. Logic was invincibly repugnant to him. He hungered for realities, and could not be satisfied with definitions. To see operations of his mind which, from childhood upwards, had been conducted with perfect ease and unconsciousness, suddenly pulled to pieces, in order that he might gain the superfluous knowledge of what they were, and what they were called, was to him tiresome and frivolous. "I fancied I knew as much about God and the world as the professor himself, and logic seemed in many places to come to a dead standstill." We are here on the threshold of that experience which has been immortalised in the scene between Mephistopheles and the Student. Jurisprudence soon became almost equally tiresome. He already knew as much law as the professor thought proper to communicate; and what with the tedium of the lectures, and the counter-attraction of delicious fritters, which used to come "hot from the pan precisely at the hour of lecture," no wonder that volatile Sixteen soon abated attendance. Volatile he was, wild, and somewhat rough, both in appearance and in speech. He had brought with him a wild, uneasy spirit struggling towards the light. He had also brought with him the rough manners of Frankfurt, the strong Frankfurt dialect and colloquialisms, rendered still more unfit for the Leipsic salon by a mixture of proverbs and biblical allusions. Nay, even his costume was in unpleasant contrast with that of the society in which he moved. He had an ample wardrobe, but unhappily it was doubly out of fashion : it had been manufactured at home by one of his father's servants, and thus was not only in the Frankfurt style, but grotesquely made in that style. To complete his discomfiture, he saw a favourite low comedian throw an audience into fits of laughter by appearing on the stage dressed precisely in that costume, which he had hitherto worn as the latest novelty! All who can remember the early humiliations of being far behind their companions in matters of costume, will sympathise with this youth. From one of his letters written shortly after his arrival, we may catch a glimpse of him. "To-day I have heard two lectures: Böhme on law, and Ernesti on Cicero's Orator. That'll do, eh? Next week we have collegium philosophicum et mathematicum. I haven't seen Gottsched yet. He is married again. She is nineteen and he sixty-five. She is four feet high, and he seven feet. She is as thin as a herring, and he as broad as a feathersack. I make a great figure here! But as yet I am no dandy. I never shall become one. I need some skill to be industrious. In society, concerts, theatre, feastings, promenades, the time flies. Ha! it goes gloriously. But also expensively. The devil knows how my purse feels it. Hold! rescue! stop! There go two louis d'or. Help! there goes another. Heavens! another couple are gone. Pence are here as farthings are with you. Nevertheless one can live cheaply here. So I hope to get off with two hundred thalers-what do I say? with three hundred. N.B. Not including what has already gone to the devil.” Dissatisfied with College, he sought instruction elsewhere. At the table where he dined daily, kept by Hofrath Ludwig the rector, he met several medical students. He heard little talked of but medicine and botany, and the names of Haller, Linnæus, and Buffon, were incessantly cited with respect. His ready quickness to interest himself in all that interested those around him, threw him at once into these studies, which hereafter he was to pursue with passionate ardour, but which at present he only lightly touched. Another source of instruction awaited him, one which through life he ever gratefully acknowledged, namely, the society of women. "Willst du genau erfahren was sich ziemt, So frage nur bei edlen Frauen an !"* So he speaks in Tasso; and here, in Leipsic, he was glad to learn from Frau Böhme not only some of the requisites for society, but also some principles of poetic criticism. This delicate, accomplished woman was able to draw him into society, to teach him l'ombre and * "Wouldst clearly learn what the Becoming is, inquire of noble-minded women!" picquet, to correct some of his awkwardnesses, and lastly to make him own that the poets he admired were a deplorable set, and that his own imitations of them deserved no better fate than the flames. He had got rid of his absurd wardrobe at one fell swoop, without a murmur at the expense. He now had also to cast away the poetic wardrobe brought from home with so much pride. He saw that it was poetic frippery-saw that his own poems were lifeless; accordingly, a holocaust was made of all his writings, prose and verse, and the kitchen fire wafted them into space. But society became vapid to him at last. He was not at his ease. Cards never amused him, and poetical discussion became painful. "I have not written a long while," he writes to his friend Riese. "Forgive me. Ask not after the cause! It was not occupation, at all events. You live contented in Marburg; I live so here. Solitary, solitary, quite solitary. Dear Riese, this solitude has awakened a certain sadness in my soul : It is my only pleasure, Away from all the world, But contented as I am, I still feel the want of old companions. I sigh for my friends and my maiden, and when I feel that my sighs are vain, Then fills my heart with sorrow,— My eye is dim; The stream which softly passed me, No bird sings in the bushes, The zephyr which refreshed me Now storms from the north, And whirls off the blossoms. With tremor I fly from the spot, I fly, and seek in deserted streets Yet how happy I am, quite happy! Horn has drawn me from low spirits by his arrival. He wonders why I am so changed. He seeks to find the explanation, Smiling thinks o'er it, looks me in the face; But I must tell you something of myself: Quite other wishes rise within me now, Dear friend, from those you have been wont to hear. You know how seriously I wooed the Muse; And not the Muses beckoned. And you know Who in the dust beholds the eagle soar, Sudden the wind doth rise, and whirls the dust But in another moment lulls the wind, The cloud of dust drops gently on the ground, And with the dust the worm, who crawls once more! Don't be angry with my galimathias. Good bye. Horn will finish this letter." Not only is this letter curious in its revelations of his state of mind, but the verses into which it spontaneously flows, and which I have translated with more jealous fidelity to the meaning than to poetical reproduction, show how among his friends he was even then regarded as a future poet. The confession uttered in the final verses, clearly owes its origin to Frau Böhme's criticisms; but it is not every young poet who can be so easily discouraged. Even his discouragement could not last long. Schlosser, afterwards his brotherin-law, came to Leipsic, and by his preaching and example once more roused the productive activity which showed itself in German, French, English, and Italian verses. Schlosser, who was ten years his senior, not only awakened emulation by his own superior knowledge and facility, but further aided him by introducing him to a set of literary friends, with whom poetic discussions formed the staple of conversation. This circle met at the house of one Schönkopf, a Weinhändler and Hauswirth, living in the Brühl, No. 79.* To translate these words into English equivalents would only mislead the reader. Schönkopf kept neither an hotel, nor a public house, but what in Germany is a substitute for both. He sold wine, and kept a table d'hôte; occasionally also let bed *The house still stands there, but has been almost entirely remodelled. |