CHAPTER XII.

GÖTHE THE MAN.

In the world's literature of the last two hundred years, it is right, I think, to say there is no name so great as Göthe; in many ways his life is the most interesting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The family from which he sprung can be traced from the middle of the seventeenth century, at which time his great-grandfather lived as a farrier at Mansfeld, in Thuringia. With the generations that follow comes a gradual rise from this humble condition. The son of the farrier becomes a tailor, removes to Frankfort-on-theMain, and, by a fortunate marriage with the landlady of a popular inn, acquires wealth. The son of the tailor and the landlady, Johann Caspar Göthe, is well educated, and becomes accomplished by travel in Italy. He reaches the dignity of imperial counsellor among the burghers of the free city, and marries, at length, the daughter of the chief magistrate. Here at last we have the parents of the poet. The father is cold and formal, but upright and truth-loving. From him Göthe inherits a well-built frame, an erect carriage, and measured movement, and for spiritual qualities a certain orderliness and stoicism. The reader of

Göthe's life respects the figure of the father as it is painted to us, but is not attracted by it. The figure of the mother, on the other hand, is very charming. At her marriage she is a lovely girl, simple, hearty, joyous, and affectionate; she is full of mother-wit, attractive to children, and with many accomplishments. She has health like iron. Later in life she becomes large and stately. She has always a circle of young girls about her, enthusiastic for her, and is also a favorite with poets and princes. There are many letters of hers extant, of which it is said, "There is no dead word among them." While the father moves upon the scene, his figure always somewhat stern and cool, disappointed at his son's choice of a career, never cordially recognizing his success, the mother is always a most amiable personality, full of genius, sunshine, and sympathy, even in the deep old age which she at length reaches ; going almost hand in hand with her great son, to whom she gave birth when she was but eighteen, until he at last, himself an old man, bids her a heart-broken farewell.

August twenty-eighth, 1749, was the date of the girl-mother's memorable travail. The air was full at the time of the free, bold spirit which, developing, was destined, before the end of the century, to produce the French revolution. Frankfort, the centre of wide-extending traffic, was an appropriate birth-place for a cosmopolitan poet. His education, from first to last, was of a kind to lift him above

1 Hermann Grimm: Vorlesungen über Göthe.

all narrow limits. He was taught especially to admire Italy. Going from the station at Frankfort, it is but a short walk to the old house in the Hirschgraben, the memorial stone in whose front tells the stranger that it is the place of Göthe's birth. Though quite different from the fashion of our time, it has a look most solid and respectable, standing close upon the street, the upper stories projecting over the lower in a manner to suggest a beetling Olympian brow; the many windows looking upon the passing back and forth of the human tide, as if, like the child it gave to the world, it was, before all that moved about it, wide-awake and impressionable. In Göthe's famous autobiography, written in age, the great man reverts affectionately to his earliest childhood, painting with lingering and vivid touch his child-life here, the dimly recalled pranks of infancy, the first beginnings to which memory goes back, the quarrels with the neighbors' children, the mother's story-telling, the pageants in the street, the first love. Read once the old poet's bright reminiscences, and you will long to see the house in the Hirsch-graben, and Frankfort's quaint streets and squares.

Göthe was a precocious boy. Before he was eight years old he wrote German, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek; many of his boyish exercises are still preserved. He early became the favorite of eminent artists, and tried ardently to become a painter. Perhaps the genius of no human being has come so near being universal, but it had its limitations, and this was one direction where they made themselves

felt. As regards music too, though he faithfully tried, his accomplishments were but slender; nor could he at this time, or later in his career, do much with mathematics, more, no doubt, through defect of inclination than power. In other directions his energy and success were extraordinary. He tells us himself minutely the circumstances that aided his development; his father's training, faithful but unsympathetic, his mother's cherishing, and a thousand other influences. A French army - it is during the Seven Years' War-occupies the city, and his father's house becomes the headquarters of officers of rank. These treat the boy kindly, and, during the time of their stay, surround him with a French atmosphere. He is impressible to an extraordinary degree,-"like a chameleon, taking a hue from every object under which it lies." learns not only the language, but acquires a French culture, which, however, is far from absorbing him. He studies English and Hebrew as well, and in spite of all this occupation, by no means neglects his body, which he perfects by abundant exercise. Precocious in everything, at fifteen comes a love affair, the first of a long series running through his life almost to his eightieth year.

He

At sixteen it is felt that the boy needs the influence of a broader world, and he is therefore sent to Leipsic. It was his father's wish that he should be a lawyer, but he soon turned in disgust from study of that kind, working in directions

1 Lewes' Life of Göthe.

which seemed unpromising enough to his father and the professors to whom he had been committed. He became interested in medicine and botany. He read Molière and Corneille, and gave the rein to his theatrical taste. We find him performing in private theatricals, appearing as Tellheim, in " Minna von Barnhelm ; " he even wrote dramas of his own, two of which are included in his works, -the firstlings of his genius. At this time he was profoundly moved by the "Laokoon" of Lessing. He visited Dresden to see the great pictures of the gallery, pursued faithfully his drawing, and began also to learn engraving. His intercourse with society made him conscious of awkwardness. Moreover, there are indications enough that he saw a wild side of life; but dissipation could not absorb him. With soul as sensitive as an iodized plate, his life at Leipsic does not pass without the reception of an impress from the figures of the maidens with whom he moves in society. After a two or three years' sojourn he returns to Frankfort, really vastly developed by experience and culture; though not unnaturally, his father considers that he has begun his career most unpromisingly. The relations of the two become cold and unpleasant, and the son falling sick, his time passes drearily. When he is once more able to work, he turns his attention to alchemy, reading books of old magicians, which in those days, when as yet there was no science of chemistry, still had authority. Still another love affair, — ardent and transitory as those that had preceded. At length, in 1770, when twenty years

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