restlessness. About this time, a trip to Dresden first evoked the love of art which never forsook him, and Œser's drawing class became one of his favourite haunts. During his residence at Leipsic he made his first essays at connected production in the shape of two ghost comedies in verse—"Die Laune des Verliebten" and "Die Mitschuldigen"—the latter of which was in after days acted at the Weimar private theatricals. Home gave him no rest; his father could not well be satisfied with the progress of his legal studies; and he had again fallen in love. He went to Strasburg in the year 1770, and entered upon a course of life here different from the wild days of Leipsic; besides his law-reading he studied art with enthusiasm, fed by the constant view of the Strasburg Minster and the casual exhibition of Raphael's cartoons. This was the date of his acquaintance with Jung-Stilling and with Herder, whose warm friendship for Göthe was returned by admiration and gratitude. Herder directed his young friend in an attentive study of national poetry, especially song; and accompanied him in an enthusiastic worship of Shakspeare. The poems written by Göthe at this time were, however, chiefly inspired by a lady, whose name is familiar to every reader of his autobiography, Frederika Brion of Sesenheim. It is known how Göthe loved her when he saw her in her rustic beauty, surrounded by a scene which his fancy associated with the vicarage of Wakefield; how he cooled towards her when she came to Strasburg; and how at last he deserted her, and she resigned him. There is nothing to be added to the story: the accusations made against Göthe are often as absurdly exaggerated as the defences, which he never attempted to make for himself. That he destroyed her happiness by leaving her is certain; that he would have destroyed his as well as hers by marrying her, is nearly as certain: his genius had nothing to do with the matter. Göthe returned to Frankfort with the degree of doctor juris in 1771, and was there received by his father with open arms. With this year his career as an author begins, with a series of contributions to the Frankfurter Gelehrte Auzeigen, a literary paper.
German literature in those days was passing through the throes of revolution. The Sturm und Drang period was at its height; Lessing had cast down from their altars the gods of French taste and French culture, and pointed to better models—the Elizabethan drama and the ancients. Klopstock had shown the Germans that a national poet could triumph over his Gallicizing rivals; and Wieland, while he could and would not free himself from French frivolity, was, after his fashion, reviving the ancients, translating Shakspeare, and creating a German prose. Finally, Frederick the Great had made a German power the arbiter of the European peace, and done more at Rossbach to expel French ideas from Germany than many volumes of Alexandrines could counteract. But in the minds of the youth of Germany, whose efforts made up the Storm and Press, the criticisms of Lessing and the aspirations of Klopstock were hurled together into a confused jumble of enthusiasm. A cry for nature became the password of the "geniuses" of the new period—for nature in its fullest and most literal sense. Among these youths, many became friends of Göthe; the painter Müller may be named on account of his failure in dramatizing the subject of Faust; and Klinger and Lenz as those whose dramatic efforts present most similarity to "Götz von Berlichingen." This tragedy, written in 1771, was revised and published in 1773. It was hailed by Merck of Darmstadt—a critic who exercised the greatest influence over Göthe at this time, and who shared some of the aspirations of the new school without being blind to its extravagances—as an epochal work, and all Germany endorsed his opinion. The tragedy was founded on an old chronicle of the hero, one of those robber barons whose castles covered the German empire in the centuries before the Reformation. The play itself partakes of the character of a chronicle, and the much-abused dramatic unities are violated with a hearty goodwill amounting almost to wilfulness. The effectiveness of some of the scenes is intense, and the vigour of the language throughout unrivalled. At the same time, it is wanting in an idea which should make it an organic whole. "Götz," whose very irregularities only heightened its popularity, created an immense sensation, and became the parent of a vast number of so-called Ritterstucke (plays of chivalry), the taste for which has not yet died from off the German stage.
Before the publication of "Götz," Göthe had left Frankfort for Wetzlar, ostensibly to complete his study of law. We may omit all speculation regarding his legal researches, in order to give a short account of the circumstances that led to the publication of the work of his which is undeniably the most widely known of all—the characters of which, as he tells us, Chinese paint on glass; which gave rise to shelvesful of imitations, continuations, and refutations; and by which Göthe was so solely known in England, that Scott prefaced his translation of "Götz" by stating the German poet to be the "elegant author of 'Werther.'" At Wetzlar lived a gentleman of the name of Kestner, attached to one of the embassies, who was betrothed to Charlotte, daughter of Amtmann Buff. With this pretty, sufficiently sentimental, but always very sensible maiden, Göthe, as usual, fell in love. On learning she was betrothed to Kestner, the three seem to have come to a tacit understanding, which resulted in an intimate friendship between them equally honourable to all parties. Göthe's passion never broke out, as does that of Werther; Charlotte never encouraged it; and Kestner, sure of his friend's honour, treated him with the utmost confidence. An extraneous element is introduced in the person of Jerusalem, a young man, whose reason had been almost unhinged by an unhappy and hopeless passion for the wife of an acquaintance and superior. In the end he committed suicide. These were the materials from which Göthe worked up his celebrated novel. On its publication, Kestner and Charlotte were naturally indignant, pointing out that, though they were not the Albert and Lotte of the tale, yet everybody would take them for these. Göthe himself has shared their fate; and it used to be impossible to persuade readers of Werther that the hero was not intended as a representative of the author. The answer is plain. He had shown by his conduct that his solution of the problem was resignation; and now, moved by the death of Jerusalem, he showed in his book what the solution of the problem is for a character like Werther, a man solely occupied by tormenting himself with the antinomies of nature and society, the opposition between the wishes of the heart and the realities of life, and prefixed the motto—"Be a man, and follow him not." Meanwhile, Göthe was elated by its success, and astonished at Kestner's not sharing his delight. The admiration for Werther was universal, and spread far and wide; Napoleon himself read it several times, and it accompanied him through his Egyptian campaigns. We must still admire in Werther a fascinating gracefulness of style, everywhere tinged with the romantic manner of the times.
Göthe was now living at Frankfort, surrounded by a circle of friends and admirers, where he continued his contributions to the Frankfurter Anzeigen, and ventured to make a humorous attack on Wieland for his emasculation of antiquity, which the genial Agathon soon forgave. The prose tragedy of "Clavigo" was written during this period in the space of a week, at the command of a fair lady for whom the poet had formed a passing attachment. This play, which bears all the marks of haste, has kept its place on the German stage. The tragedy of "Stella" may be said to have deserved the more unfavourable verdict which was pronounced upon it. Greater schemes engaged the higher energies of the poet's mind. Faust was begun in a fragmentary fashion; and to the previously conceived idea of a drama on the subject of Mahomet were added those of the Wandering Jew and Prometheus; of the latter a noble fragment remains. Few poets escape the attraction of those eternal themes; but Göthe formed plans for treating them in an original way, many of which may still be read with interest. This period of his life was peculiarly rich in experience and mental culture. He eagerly studied Spinoza, and many visitors of note passed through Frankfort, with few of whom he failed to associate. There was the patriarchal Klopstock, and Lavater and Basedow—each of the strange pair mad after his fashion—and Jacobi, with whom Göthe contracted a more intimate friendship. The Stolbergs, too, appeared, and carried the poet with them to study nature in Switzerland. They had found him in the toils of a lovely Frankfort patrician, Anna Elizabeth Schöne-mann, the Lili of the matchless little poems dedicated to her praises. Few of Göthe's passions seem to have equalled this in ardour, and none have been more beautifully immortalized in prose and verse; but even this ardour cooled, and the engagement, which had never been to the taste of the parents, was cancelled by mutual consent. Lili did not emulate Frederika in her constancy to Göthe's memory, but was soon afterwards happily married; she was made of different stuff from the sweet Sesenheimerin, who has been rewarded for the loss of Göthe's love by that of all the readers of his autobiography. At this juncture arrived in Frankfort, Karl August, duke of Weimar, whom Göthe had twice seen,
