“Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Von Mütterchen die Frohnatur,
Die Lust zu fabuliren.
Urahnherr war der Schonsten hold,
Das spukt so bin und wieder;
Urahnfrau liebte Scbmuck und Gold,
Das zuckt wohl durch die Glieder.
Sind nun die Elemente nicht,
Aus dem Complex zu trennen,
Was ist denn an dem ganzen Wicht
Original zu nennen?"[1]
The first glimpse we get of his ancestry carries us back to about the middle of the seventeenth century. In the Grafschaft of Mansfeld, in Thuringia, the little town of Artern numbered among its scanty inhabitants a farrier, by name Hans Christian Goethe. His son, Frederick, being probably of a more meditative turn, selected a more meditative employment than that of shoeing horses: he became a tailor. Having passed an apprenticeship (not precisely that of "Wilhelm Meister"), he commenced his Wanderings, in the course of which he reached Frankfort. Here he soon found employment, and being, as we learn, "a ladies' man," he soon also found a wife. The master tailor, Sebastian Lutz, gave him his daughter, on his admission to the citizen-
- ↑ "From my father I inherit my frame, and the steady guidance of life; from dear little mother my happy disposition, and love of story-telling. My ancestor was a 'ladies' man,' and that habit haunts me now and then; my ancestress loved finery and show, which also runs in the blood. If, then, the elements are not to be separated from the whole, what can one call original in the descendant?"
This is a very inadequate translation; but believing that to leave German untranslated is unfair to those whose want of leisure or inclination has prevented their acquiring the language, I shall throughout translate every word cited. At the same time it is unfair to the poet, and to the writer quoting the poet, to be forced to give translations which are after all felt not to represent the force and spirit of the original. I will do my best to give approximative translations, which the reader will be good enough to accept as such, rather than be left in the dark.
