had conceived a liking for him which soon deepened into friendship, and pressingly invited the poet to his court. He went to Weimar in November, 1775, and remained at his new home, except when travelling, till his death. What were the attractions of the little town on the Ilm, that it could keep to itself Germany's greatest man, whose presence Vienna solicited in vain for more than half a century? There is but one answer to the question: it was the duke, Karl August, and his influence that gave to Göthe a happy home in Weimar. His wife, the Princess Louise of Baden, a woman of a highly-cultivated mind and dauntless courage, stood as a worthy helpmate at his side. Round them gathered a brilliant circle—Herder, Musæus, and Knebel, besides Bertuch, Bode, and other minor celebrities. Wieland and Schiller make up the list of the dii majores who were congregated in this German Athens. These men were attracted chiefly by one another; the remunerations of Weimar were necessarily limited, and its pleasures surprise the present century by their simplicity. Court theatricals, to which Göthe supplied many small pieces, such as "Die Geschwister," and others; occasional hunts and picnics; skating, which Klopstock had made fashionable; and excursions to the neighbouring villas of the duke—make up the sum of Weimar's dissipation. But the joyousness of spirit which distinguished both the Duchess Amalia and her son, and spread among all that surrounded them, compensated for the greater brilliancy of Vienna and of Berlin. The two houses Göthe successively inhabited at Weimar were both singularly simple, though the art collections with which he adorned the house on the Frauenplan compensated for the pleasant wood and stream upon which the Gartenhaus looked. At this period dates his connection with the Frau von Stein. This lady, living almost in separation from her husband, sought to console herself by winning the friendship and sharing the interests of the poet. Göthe's letters to her have been published, and present a picture of a sincere affection, which, in spite of the scandal to which it gave rise, there is reason to believe preserved its purity.
The fears of those who apprehended that Göthe in the service of a duke would forget the service of the muses, seemed near verification during the first years of his Weimar life. His days were spent partly in court gaieties, partly in assiduous attention to the duties of the duke's service, who successively made him councillor, privy councillor, president of the chamber, and minister for war, and conferred on him a patent of nobility which he was forced to accept. It is pleasant, throughout this period of the poet's life, to trace the action of a benevolence generally exercised in secret, and often at great personal inconvenience. Great men are pestered with begging letters of different kinds, but few treated them with such conscientious charity as Göthe. This benevolence was the moving-spring of his celebrated winter journey to the Hartz, originally undertaken for the purpose of visiting and comforting a wretched misanthrope who had written for advice to the author of "Werther." This journey gave rise to the well-known noble poem. At the same time, the poet was not without larger plans. "Iphigenia" was written in prose; "Egmont" and "Faust" were occasionally continued; arid the main part of "Wilhelm Meister" composed. In 1786 he went to Italy where he remained a year and a half, chiefly at Rome and Naples. During that period a change passed over his mind which gave rise to a corresponding development of his literary tendencies. He learnt to acknowledge that genius, to be in harmony with nature, stands in need of the guidance of certain laws, which laws he thought best recognizable in the essential rules of classical poetry and of antique art. The impulse resulting from this view induced him at one time to entertain the idea of dramatizing the story of Nausicaa, and at a later period to write an epic poem entitled the "Achilleïs." Neither of those schemes was fully carried out; but a third, of similar character, which had occupied him for several years, was completed. The "Iphigenia in Tauris," written in prose in 1779, appeared in verse in 1786. In beauty of language and intensity of pathos none of Göthe's works surpass this tragedy. But the calm which overspreads it is hyper-Greek, and Euripides himself appears rugged in contrast to his German rival. All the struggles through which the drama is carried are mental; and the Deus ex Machinâ is a noble burst of generosity. Scythians as well as Greeks are humanized; all the rougher distinctions of character are effaced, and the whole depends on a subtle play of feelings which it requires a psychological study to appreciate.
The publication of "Egmont," a tragedy in five acts (1788), apparently interrupts the period of his classical designs. But though this play is in prose, it is marked by more characteristics of this part of Göthe's life than of the days of Werther and Götz. The plot of "Egmont" rests on the history of a great national movement, the workings of which in all classes of society are depicted with a masterly skill; yet the author's object seems more to lie in the delineation of characters in their relation to this movement, than in the development of its ideas and tendencies. The prose, too, in which the play is written, is often poetical, and sometimes rhythmical. "Egmont" has always been a favourite of the German stage.
"Torquato Tasso," which, like "Iphigenia," had been originally composed in prose, was published in verse in 1790. The glow of its language, and the delicacy with which all the characters of the piece are dramatically developed, would alone immortalize this drama; but it derives additional interest from its evident relation to conflicts in the author's own mind. In earlier days, Göthe might have painted as well the difficulties which beset the poet in his intercourse with the thousand currents that make up the stream of life, but he could not then, as in "Tasso," have conducted the conflict to a harmonious termination, and finished the play with the expression of a hope amounting almost to a consciousness of victory.
The "Roman Elegies" (1788) bring us back to Göthe's personal adventures. The lady celebrated in these warm southern elegies, which resemble a collection of the most delicately cut cameos, is generally supposed to be Christiane Vulpius, whom Göthe married in 1806, and who became the mother of his only son that lived to man's estate. There is little poetry about the attachment, but a great deal that redounds to the credit of the poet's heart, who remained true to the poor girl he had chosen, in spite of Weimar gossip and the wrath of Frau von Stein, whose jealousy grew as her charms waned.
In 1790 Göthe again visited Italy, and the poetical fruits of his journey were the "Venetian Epigrams," in which the keen edge of his satire is directed against his detractors and Philisterthum in general. In the same year he accompanied the duke in a campaign into France which terminated ingloriously, and left no satisfactory impression on the poet's mind. He was, however, brought by this expedition into closer contact with politics, and published the farce of the "Citizen-General" (Burgergeneral), and began a comedy, "The Excited Ones" (Die Aufgeregten), satirizing the hairbrained politicians of the day. A work, whose tendency is not very different, is his version of the old "Beast-epos" (Reineke Fuchs), written with great spirit and humour.
We have arrived at a period of our poet's life which it is impossible to contemplate without heightened interest—the period of his friendship with Schiller. In spite of several introductions, the difference between the characters and literary views of these illustrious men had hitherto operated as a bar to their intimacy; but about this time they often met at Weimar or Jena, where Schiller held the position of professor of history, and entered into a close correspondence. Subsequently he, too, came to live at Weimar, and the Dioscuri, as the Germans love to call them, formed an alliance which lasted without intermission until Schiller's death, and exerted an influence incalculably beneficent on the career of both. At the date of their union the one was in the zenith of his fame, the other was just composing his Wallenstein. Their very differences made this influence more important; their concord was the more complete from being the harmony of variety. Its main results may be summed in two words—Schiller gave Göthe enthusiasm, while Göthe supplied Schiller with clearness. The letters in which their mutual obligations are confessed should be studied by everyone wishing to form a correct idea of their relation.
Their first joint undertaking was a magazine, edited by Schiller, entitled the Horen, to which Göthe contributed several poems and prose articles. It failed commercially, and the authors took their revenge by the publication of the "Xenien"—a thousand epigrams, whose wit was directed against vulgar nature and low art, and their representatives. Kotzebue and Nicolai were among the victims of this German Dunciad, which produced an effect hardly intelligible to readers of other nations. The two poets found a field for their efforts after practical reformation in the Weimar theatre, of which Göthe was director.
