Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 13.djvu/442

404 LIFE AND WORKS OF GOETHE is destined by nature to be an author and nothing else. " I have a purer dehght than ever, when I have writ- ten something which well expresses what I meant. . . ." "I am truly born to be a private man, and do not understand how fate has contrived to throw me into a ministry and into a princely family." As he grows clearer on the true mission of his life, he also grows happier. One can imagine the strange feehngs with which he would now take up " Werther," and for the first time these ten years read this product of his youth. He made some alterations in it, espe- cially in the relation of Albert to Lotte ; and intro- duced the episode of the peasant who commits suicide from jealousy. Schöll, in his notes to the " Stein Correspondence," ^ has called attention to a point worthy of notice, viz., that Herder, who helped Goethe in the revision of this work, had pointed out to him the very same fault in its composition which Napoleon two and twenty years later laid his finger on ; the fault, namely, of making Werther's suicide partly the con- sequence of frustrated ambition and partly of unrequited love — a fault which, in spite of Herder and Napoleon, in spite also of Goethe's acquiescence, I venture to think no fault at all, as will be seen when the inter- view with Napoleon is narrated. 1 Vol. iii. p. 268. END OF VOLUME I.