The Youth of Goethe Part 10

1773-4

If we are to accept Goethe's own statement, during the years 1773-4--the distracted period, that is to say, which followed his experiences at Wetzlar, and of which _Werther_ and _Clavigo_ are the characteristic products--he came under the influence of a thinker who transformed his conceptions, equally of the conduct of life and of man's relations to the universe--the Jewish thinker, Benedict Spinoza.

The pa.s.sage in which he expresses his debt to Spinoza is one of the best known in all his writings, and is, moreover, a _locus cla.s.sicus_ in the histories of speculative philosophy. "After looking around me in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, I at last chanced upon the _Ethica_ of this man. To say exactly how much I gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my own reading of him would be impossible; enough that I found in him a sedative for my pa.s.sions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free outlook on the material and moral world. But what specially attached me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from every sentence. That marvellous saying, 'Whoso truly loves G.o.d must not desire G.o.d to love him in return,' with all the premises on which it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole thinking. To be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practice; so that that bold saying of mine at a later date, 'If I love Thee, what is that to Thee?' came directly from my heart."[171]

[Footnote 171: Saying of Philine in _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, bk.

iv. ch. ix.]

What is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period to which he refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be engaged, but Spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms which confirm his later testimony. In a letter to a correspondent who had lent him a work of Spinoza we have these casual words: "May I keep it a little longer? I will only see how far I may follow the fellow (_Menschen_) in his subterranean borings." Whether he actually carried out his intention, or what impression the reading of the book made upon him, we are nowhere told, though, if the impression had been as profound as his Autobiography suggests, we should naturally have expected some hint of it. In his _Prometheus_, indeed, as we have seen, there are suggestions of Spinozistic pantheism, but these may easily have been derived from other sources, and, moreover, in the pa.s.sage quoted, the pantheistic conceptions of Spinoza are not specifically emphasised. We know, also, that in preparing his thesis for the Doctorate of Laws he had consulted Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, and the scathing criticism on the perversions of the teaching of Christ in that treatise may have suggested certain pa.s.sages in a poem presently to be noted.[172] Yet, so far as his own contemporary testimony goes, we are led to conclude that in his retrospect he has a.s.signed to an earlier period experiences which were of gradual growth, and which only at a later date were realised with the vividness he ascribes to them. If we turn to his actual life during the same period, it is equally hard to trace in it the results of the tranquillising influence which he ascribes to Spinoza. As we have seen him, he was in mind distracted by uncertainty regarding the special function for which nature intended him; and in his affections the victim of emotions which by their very nature could not receive their full gratification. Nor can we say that his relations to his father, to Kestner, or Brentano were characterised by that "disinterestedness" which he claims to have attained from his study of Spinoza. As we shall presently see, Goethe was so far accurate in his retrospect that at the period before us he was already attracted by the figure of Spinoza, but it was not till many years later that a close acquaintance with Spinoza's writings resulted in that indebtedness to which he gave expression when he said that, with Linnaeus and Shakespeare, the Jewish thinker was one of the great formative influences in his development.

[Footnote 172: An entry in his _Ephemerides_, the diary which he kept in his 21st year (see above, p. 102), shows that Spinoza's philosophy, as he conceived it, was then repugnant to him. The pa.s.sage is as follows: "Testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sententia, rectae rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanativum (he is thinking specially of Giordano Bruno); licet nulli subscribere velim sectae, valdeque doleam Spinozismum, teterrimis erroribus ex eodem fonte manantibus, doctrinae huic purissimae, iniquissimum fratrem natum esse."--Max Morris, _op. cit._ ii. 33.]

To the same period to which Goethe a.s.signs his transformation by Spinoza he also a.s.signs the original conception of a work in which Spinoza was, at least, to find a place. As has been said, there are pa.s.sages in the fragments of this poem that were actually written which may have been suggested by the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ of Spinoza, but the general tone and tendency of the fragments are equally remote from the temper and the contemplations of the Spinoza whom the world knows. The dominant note of _Der Ewige Jude_, as the fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of Spinoza, but of him who may already have been in embryo in Goethe's mind--Mephistopheles. Mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in _Der Ewige Jude_ of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest aspirations.

Near the close of his life it was said of Goethe that the world would come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes,[173] and the contrast between the author of _Werther_ and the author of _Der Ewige Jude_ is an interesting commentary on the remark. Yet the subject of the abortive poem, as we have it--the perversions of Christianity in its historical development--was not a new interest for him. During his illness after his return from Leipzig he had, as we saw, a.s.siduously read Arnold's _History of Heretics_,[174] with the result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. His two contributions to the short-lived Review also show that religion, doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him.

Moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts, there were external promptings to his choice of the subject which is the main theme of the fragments in question. The religious world of Germany at this period was distracted by the controversies of warring theologians. There were the rationalists, who would bring all religion, natural and revealed, to the bar of human reason; there were the dogmatists, who thought religion could never rest on a secure foundation except it were embodied in an array of definite formulas; and, lastly, there were the pietists, or mystics, for whom religion was a matter of pious feeling independent of all dogma. In the spectacle of these Christians reprobating each others' creeds Goethe saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its place with the most powerful efforts of his genius.

[Footnote 173: By Felix Mendelssohn.]

[Footnote 174: See above, p. 65.]

Yet, as originally conceived, _Der Ewige Jude_ was apparently to have been worked out along other lines. What this original conception was, Goethe tells in some detail in his Autobiography; and, as it is there expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken its place with _Faust_ among the great imaginative works of human genius. The theme of the poem was to be the Wandering Jew, with whose legend Goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood.

The poem was to open with an account of the circ.u.mstances in which the curse of Cain was incurred by Ahasuerus, the name a.s.signed in the legend to the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was to be represented as a shoemaker of the type of Hans Sachs--a kind of Jewish Socrates who freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual pa.s.sers-by. Recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and opinions, even the Sadducees and Pharisees, would stop by the way and engage in talk with him. He was to be specially interested in Jesus, with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding. When, in the teeth of his protestations, Jesus pursued his mission and was finally condemned to death, Ahasuerus would only have hard words for his folly. Judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force Jesus to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but Judas receives no comfort from Ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own life. Then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--Jesus fainting at Ahasuerus's door on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be developed, it was to ill.u.s.trate the outstanding events in the history of Christianity--one incident in the experience of the Wanderer marked for treatment being an interview with Spinoza.

In concluding the sketch of the poem as he originally conceived it, Goethe remarks that he found he had neither the knowledge nor the concentration of purpose necessary for its adequate treatment; and in point of fact, in the fragment as it exists there is little suggestion of the original conception. The t.i.tle which Goethe himself gave it at a later date, _Gedicht der Ankunft des Herrn_, more fitly describes it than the t.i.tle _Der Ewige Jude_. Of the two main sections into which the poem is divided, the first, extending to over seventy lines, corresponds most closely to the original conception. In twenty introductory lines the poet describes how the inspiration to sing the wondrous experiences of the much-travelled man had come to him. The note struck in these lines is maintained throughout the remainder of the fragment. It is a note of ironic persiflage which is plainly indicated to the reader. In lack of a better Pegasus, a broomstick will serve the poet's purpose, and the reader is invited to take or leave the gibberish as he pleases. Then follows a description of the shoemaker, who is represented as half Essene, half Methodist or Moravian, but still more of a Separatist--certainly not the type originally conceived by Goethe as that of the Wandering Jew. The shoemaker is, in fact, a sectary of Goethe's own time, discontented with the religious world around him, and convinced that salvation is only to be found in his own petty sect. Equally as a picture of historical Christianity in all ages is meant the satirical presentment of the religious condition of Judaea--of indolent and luxurious church dignitaries, fanatics looking for signs and wonders, denouncing the sins of their generation, and giving themselves up to the antics of the spirit.

But it is in the last and longest segment of the poem that its real power and interest are to be found. Its theme is the second coming of Christ and his experiences in lands professing his religion. In a scene, compared with which the Prologue in Heaven of Faust is decorous, G.o.d the Father ironically suggests that the Son would find scope for his friendly feeling to the human kind if he were to pay a visit to the earth. Alighting on the mountain where Satan had tempted him, the Son, filled with tender yearning for the race for whom he had died, has already anxious forebodings of woe on earth. In a soliloquy, which we may take as the expression of Goethe's own deepest feelings, as it is the expression of his finest poetic gift, he gives utterance to his boundless love for man, and his compa.s.sion for a world where truth and error, happiness and misery, are inextricably linked.

Continuing his descent, he first visits the Catholic countries where he finds that in the mult.i.tude of crosses Christ and the Cross are forgotten. Pa.s.sing into a land where Protestantism is the professed religion, he sees a similar state of things. He meets by the way a country parson who has a fat wife and many children, and "does not disturb himself about G.o.d in Heaven." Next he requests to be conducted to the Oberpfarrer of the neighbourhood, in whom he might expect to find "a man of G.o.d," and the fragment ends with an account of his interview with the Oberpfarrer's cook, Hogarthian in its broad humour, but disquieting even to the reader who may hold with Jean Paul that the test of one's faith is the capacity to laugh at its object.

Goethe forbade the publication of _Der Ewige Jude_, and we can understand his reason for the prohibition.[175] To many persons for whose religious feelings he had a genuine respect--to his mother among others--the poem would have been a cause of offence of which Goethe was not the man to be guilty. Moreover, a continuous work in such a vein was alien to Goethe's own genius. As we have them, the fragments are but another specimen of that "G.o.dlike insolence" which, in his later years, he found in his satires on Herder, Wieland, and others.

[Footnote 175: It was first published in 1836, four years after his death.]

CHAPTER XII

GOETHE IN SOCIETY

1774

The publication of _Gotz von Berlichingen_ in the spring of 1773, we have seen, had made Goethe known to the literary world of Germany, and a figure of prime interest to its leading representatives. Hitherto, nevertheless, with the exception of Herder, he had come into personal contact with no men of outstanding note who might hold intercourse with him on anything like equal terms. In the summer of 1774, however, when _Clavigo_ and _Werther_ were on the eve of publication, he was brought into contact with three men, all of whom had already achieved reputation in their respective spheres; and all of whom had visions as distinct from each other as they were distinct from Goethe's own. As it happens, we have records of their intercourse from the hands of three of the four, and, taken together, they present a picture of the youthful Goethe which leaves little to be desired in its fidelity, in its definiteness, in its vividness of colour. During the greater part of two months (from the last week in June till the middle of August) he comes before us in all the splendour of his youthful genius, with all his wild humours, his audacities, his overflowing vitality.

The first of these three notabilities who came in Goethe's way was one of whom he himself said, "that the world had never seen his like, and will not see his like again." He was Johann Kaspar Lavater, born in Zurich in 1741, and thus eight years older than Goethe. Lavater had early drawn the attention of the world to himself. In his sixteenth year he had published a volume of poems (_Schweizerlieder_) which attained a wide circulation, and a later work (_Aussichten in die Ewigkeit_) found such acceptance from its vein of mystical piety that he was hailed as a religious teacher who had given a new savour to the Christian life. At the time when he crossed Goethe's path he was engaged on the work on Physiognomy with which his name is chiefly a.s.sociated, and it was partly with the object of collecting the materials for that work that he was now visiting Germany. But the personality of Lavater was more remarkable than his writings. By his combination of the saint and the man of the world he made a unique impression on all who met him, on Goethe notably among others. That his religious feelings were sincere his lifelong preoccupation with the character of Christ as the great exemplar of humanity may be taken as sufficient proof. To impress the world with the conception he had formed of the person of Christ was the mission of his life, and it was in the carrying out of this mission that his remarkable characteristics came into play. With a face and expression which suggested the Apostle John, he exhibited in society a tact and address which, at this period at least, did not compromise his religious professions. Next to his interest in the Founder of Christianity was his interest in human character, and his divination of the working of men's minds was such that, according to Goethe, it produced an uneasy feeling to be in his presence. Be it added that Lavater was in full sympathy with the leaders of the _Sturm und Drang_ as emanc.i.p.ators from dead formalism, and the champions of natural feeling as opposed to cold intelligence. Such was the remarkable person with whom Goethe was thrown into contact during a few notable weeks, and who has recorded his impressions of him with the insight of a discerner of spirits. As time was to show, they were divided in their essential modes of thought and feeling by as wide a gulf as can separate man from man, and in later years Lavater's compromises with the world in the prosecution of his mission drew from Goethe more stinging comments than he has used in the case of almost any other person.[176] In the pa.s.sages of his Autobiography, where he records his first intercourse with Lavater, though his tone is distinctly critical, of bitterness there is no trace, and there is the frankest testimony to Lavater's personal fascination and the stimulating interest of his mind and character.

[Footnote 176: In one of his _Xenien_ Goethe speaks thus of Lavater:--

"Schade, da.s.s die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf, Denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff."]

Relations between the two had begun a year before their actual meeting. Lavater had read Goethe's _Letter of the Pastor_, and his interest in its general line of thought led him to open a correspondence with its author. The reading of _Gotz_, a copy of which Goethe sent to him, convinced him that a portent had appeared in the literary world. "I rejoice with trembling," he wrote to Herder; "among all writers I know no greater genius." Before they met, indeed, Lavater was already dominated by a force that brought home to him a sense of his own weakness to which he gave artless expression. In some lines he addressed to Goethe he takes the tone of a humble disciple, and prays that out of his fulness he would communicate ardour to his feelings and light to his intelligence. Yet in Lavater's eyes Goethe was a brand to be plucked from the burning, and, born proselytiser as he was, he even made the attempt to convert Goethe to his own views of ultimate salvation. In response to his appeal Goethe wrote a letter which should have convinced Lavater that he was dealing with a son of Adam with the ineradicable instincts of the natural man.[177] "Thank you, dear brother," he wrote, "for your ardour regarding your brother's eternal happiness. Believe me, the time will come when we shall understand each other. You hold converse with me as with an unbeliever--one who insists on understanding, on having proofs, who has not been schooled by experience. And the contrary of all this is my real feeling. Am I not more resigned in the matter of understanding and proving than yourself? Perhaps I am foolish in not giving you the pleasure of expressing myself in your language, and in not showing to you by laying bare my deepest experiences that I am a man and therefore cannot feel otherwise than other men, and that all the apparent contradiction between us is only strife of words which arises from the fact that I realise things under other combinations than you, and that in expressing their relativity I must call them by other names; and this has from the beginning been the source of all controversies, and will be to the end. And you will be for ever plaguing me with evidences! And to what end? Do I require evidence that I exist? evidence that I feel? I treasure, cherish, and revere only such evidences as prove to me that thousands, or even one, have felt that which strengthens and consoles me. And, therefore, the word of man is for me the word of G.o.d, whether by parsons or prost.i.tutes it has been brought together, enrolled in the canon, or flung as fragments to the winds. And with my innermost soul I fall as a brother on the neck of Moses! Prophet! Evangelist! Apostle! Spinoza or Machiavelli! But to each I am permitted to say: 'Dear friend, it is with you as it is with me; in the particular you feel yourself grand and mighty, but the whole goes as little into your head as into mine.'"

[Footnote 177: The letter is addressed to Heinrich Pfenninger, an engraver in Zurich, who engraved some of the plates in Lavater's book on Physiognomy.--_Werke, Briefe_, Band ii. pp. 155-6.]

On June 23rd Lavater arrived in Frankfort, where during four days he was entertained as a guest in the Goethe household. The news of his coming had created a lively interest in all sections of the community, and during his stay he was besieged by admiring crowds, especially of women, who insisted even on seeing the bedchamber where the prophet slept. "The pious souls," was Merck's sardonic comment, "wished to see where they had laid the Lord"; but even Merck came under the prophet's spell. The meeting of Lavater and Goethe was characteristic of the time. "_Bist's?_" was Lavater's first exclamation. "_Ich bin's_," was the reply; and they fell upon each other's necks. On Lavater's indicating "by some singular exclamations" that Goethe was not exactly what he expected, Goethe replied in the tone of banter which he maintained throughout their personal intercourse, that he was as G.o.d and nature had made him, and they must be content with their work.

"All spirit (_Geist_) and truth,"[178] is Lavater's comment on Goethe's conversation at the close of their first day's meeting.

[Footnote 178: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 33.]

The following days were taken up with excursions and social gatherings in which Lavater was the central figure, entrancing his hearers by his social graces and his apostolic unction. In the Fraulein von Klettenberg he found a kindred soul, and Goethe listened, as he tells us, with profit as they discoursed on the high themes in which they had a common interest. If he derived profit, it was not of a nature that Lavater and the Fraulein would have desired. With the religious opinions of neither was he in sympathy, and when they rejected his own, he says, he would badger them with paradoxes and exaggerations, and, if they became impatient, would leave them with a jest. What is noteworthy in Lavater's record, indeed, is Goethe's communicativeness and spontaneity in all that concerned himself. "So soon as we enter society," is one of his remarks recorded by Lavater, "we take the key out of our hearts and put it in our pockets. Those who allow it to remain there are blockheads."[179]

[Footnote 179: _Ib._ p. 34.]

During his stay in Frankfort Lavater was so constantly surrounded by his admirers that Goethe saw comparatively little of him. On June 28th Lavater left for Ems, and it is a testimony to their mutual attraction that Goethe accompanied him. The day's journey seems to have left an abiding impression on Goethe's memory, as he makes special reference to it in his record of Lavater's visit; and, as it happens, Lavater noted in his Diary the princ.i.p.al topics of their conversation.

Travelling in a private carriage during the long summer day, they had an opportunity for abundant talk such as did not occur again. One theme on which Goethe spoke with enthusiasm, it is interesting to note, was Spinoza and his writings, but, as his talk is reported by Lavater, there was no hint in it of the profound change which the study of Spinoza had effected in him. It was to the man and not the thinker that he paid his reverential tribute--to the purity, simplicity, and high wisdom of his life. But Goethe's own literary preoccupations appear to have been the chief subject of their talk. He spoke of a play on Julius Caesar on which he was engaged, and which remained one of his many abortive ambitions; he read pa.s.sages from _Der Ewige Jude_, "a singular thing in doggerel verse," Lavater calls it; recited a romance translated from the Scots dialect; and narrated for Lavater's benefit the whole story of the Iliad, reading pa.s.sages of the poem from a Latin translation. The memorable day was not to be repeated. At Ems, as at Frankfort, Lavater was taken possession of by a throng of worshippers, and the state of his own affairs at home afforded Goethe an excuse for leaving him.

By a curious coincidence, shortly after Goethe's return, there arrived another prophet in Frankfort--also, like Lavater, out on a mission of his own. This was Johann Bernhard Basedow, whose character and career had made him one of the remarkable figures of his time in Germany.

Born in Hamburg in 1723, the son of a peruke-maker there, in conduct and opinions he had been at odds with society from the beginning. In middle age he had come under the influence of Rousseau, and thenceforth he made it his mission by word and deed to realise Rousseau's ideals in education. He had expounded his theories in voluminous publications which had attracted wide attention, and the object of his present travels was to collect funds to establish a school at Dessau in which his educational views should be carried into effect.[180] Goethe, as he himself tells us, had as little sympathy with the gospel of Basedow as with that of Lavater, but, always attracted to originals, Basedow's personality amused and interested him. What gave point to his curiosity was the piquancy of the contrast between the two prophets. Lavater was all grace, purity, and refinement; "in his presence one shrank like a maiden from hurting his feelings." In appearance, voice, manner, on the other hand, Basedow was the incarnation of a hectoring bully, as regardless of others'

feelings as he was impermeable in his own. His personal habits, also, were a further trial, as he drank more than was good for him and lived in an atmosphere of vile tobacco smoke. Such was the singular mortal whose society Goethe deliberately sought and cultivated during the next few weeks as opportunity offered.

[Footnote 180: The school was actually founded in 1774, but subsequently, owing to quarrels with his colleagues, Basedow had to leave it. It was closed in 1793.]

After spending some days in Frankfort, Basedow, on July 12th, set out to join Lavater at Ems, whether at Goethe's suggestion or of his own accord we are not told. Goethe had seen enough of Basedow to make him wish to see more of him, and, moreover, it would be a piquant experience to see the two incongruous apostles together. "Such a splendid opportunity, if not of enlightenment, at least of mental discipline," he says, "I could not, in short, let slip." Accordingly, leaving some pressing business in the hands of his father and friends, he followed Basedow to Ems on July 15th. Ems, then as now, was a gay watering-place crowded with guests of all conditions, and therefore an excellent field for the two proselytisers. Goethe did not spend his days in the company of the two lights; while they were plying their mission, he threw himself into the distractions of the town, as usual making himself a conspicuous figure by his overflowing spirits and his practical jokes. Only at night, when he did not happen to have a dancing partner, did he s.n.a.t.c.h a moment to pay a visit to Basedow, whom he found in a close, unventilated room, enveloped in tobacco smoke, and dictating endlessly to his secretary from his couch; for it was one of Basedow's peculiarities that he never went to bed. On one occasion Goethe had an excellent opportunity of observing the contrasted characters of the two prophets. The three had gone to Na.s.sau to visit the Frau von Stein, mother of the statesman, and a numerous company had been brought together to meet them. All three had the opportunity of displaying their special gifts; Lavater his skill in physiognomy, Goethe the gift he had inherited from his mother of story-telling to children; but in the end Basedow a.s.serted himself in his most characteristic style. With a power of reasoning and a pa.s.sionate eloquence, to which both Goethe and Lavater bear witness, he proclaimed the conditions of the regeneration of society--the improved education of youth and the necessity for the rich to open their purses for its accomplishment. Then, his wanton spirit as usual getting the better of him, he turned the torrent of his eloquence in another direction. A thorough-going rationalist, his pet aversion was the dogma of the Trinity, and on that dogma he now directed his batteries, with the effect of horrifying his audience, most of whom had come to be edified by the pious exhortations of Lavater. Lavater mildly expostulated; Goethe endeavoured by jesting interruptions to change the subject, and the ladies to break up the company. All their efforts were in vain, and the apostle of Rousseau had the satisfaction of completely unbosoming himself and at the same time forfeiting some contributions to his educational scheme. As they drove back to Ems, Goethe took a humorous revenge. The heat of a July day and his recent vocal exertions had made the prophet thirsty, and as they pa.s.sed a tavern he ordered the driver to pull up. Goethe imperiously countermanded the order, to the wrath of Basedow, which Goethe turned aside, however, with one of his ever-ready quips.

The strangely-a.s.sorted trio were not yet tired of each other's company, for, when on July 18th Lavater left Ems, both Goethe and Basedow accompanied him. Their way lay down the Lahn and the Rhine, and on the voyage Basedow and Goethe conducted themselves like German students on holiday--the former discoursing on grammar and smoking everlastingly, the latter improvising doggerel verses and the beautiful lines beginning: _Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht_. On landing at Coblenz the behaviour of the pair was so outrageous that all three were apparently taken by the crowd for lunatics. At Coblenz they dined, and the dinner has its place in literature, for both in his Autobiography and in some sarcastic lines (_Dine zu Coblenz_) Goethe has commemorated it. He sat between Lavater and Basedow, and during the meal the former expounded the Revelation of St. John to a country pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid dancing-master that baptism was an anachronism.

On the 20th they continued their voyage down the Rhine as far as Bonn--Goethe still in the same madcap humour. Lavater gives us a picture of him at one moment on the voyage--with gray hat, adorned with a bunch of flowers, with a brown silk necktie and gray collar, gnawing a _b.u.t.terbrot_ like a wolf. From Bonn they drove to Cologne, Goethe on the way inscribing in an alb.u.m the concluding lines of the _Dine zu Coblenz_:--

Und, wie nach Emmaus, weiter ging's [Transcriber's Note: corrected error "Emaus"]

Mit Geist und Feuerschritten, Prophete rechts, Prophete links, Das Weltkind in der Mitten.

At Cologne they parted for the day, Lavater proceeding to Mulheim[181]

and Goethe to Dusseldorf. On the 21st Goethe was at Elberfeld, where his former friend Jung Stilling was settled as a physician. Stilling has related how Goethe made him aware of his presence. A message came to him that a stranger, who had been taken ill at an inn, wished to see him. He found the stranger in bed with head covered, and when at his request he leant over to feel his pulse, the patient flung his arms round his neck. On the evening of the same day there was a social gathering at the house of a pious merchant in the town in honour of Lavater, who had come to Elberfeld and was the merchant's guest. As described by Stilling, the guests, chiefly consisting of persons of the pietist persuasion, were as remarkable for their appearance as for their opinions, and the artist who accompanied Lavater in his travels busily sketched their heads throughout the evening. Goethe was in his wildest mood, dancing round the table in a manner familiar to those who knew him, but which led the strangers present to doubt his sanity.

It was apparently during the same evening that there occurred an incident which, as recorded by Lavater, shows us another side of Goethe. Among the guests was one Hasenkamp, a pietistic illuminist, who suddenly, when the company was in the full flow of amicable conversation, turned to Goethe and asked him if he were the Herr Goethe, the author of _Werther_. "Yes," was the answer. "Then I feel bound in my conscience to express to you my abhorrence of that infamous book. Be it G.o.d's will to amend your perverted heart!" The company did not know what to expect next, when Goethe quietly replied: "I quite understand that from your point of view you could not judge otherwise, and I honour you for your candour in thus taking me to task. Pray for me!"[182]

[Footnote 181: Basedow remained for a time at Mulheim. As we shall see, he and Goethe met again later in the month.]

[Footnote 182: As _Werther_ was not published till the autumn of 1774, there must be some confusion in Lavater's narrative.]

Among the guests who were present at the same motley gathering was the third distinguished personage whose acquaintance Goethe made during these memorable weeks. This was Fritz Jacobi, one of the interesting figures in the history of German thought, alike by his personal character and the nature of his speculations. Goethe and he had common friends before they met, but their relations had been such as to make their meeting a matter of some delicacy. Goethe had satirised the poetry of Jacobi's brother Georg, and in his correspondence even vehemently expressed his dislike to the characters of both brothers as he had been led to conceive them. Three women--Sophie von la Roche, Johanna Fahlmer, the aunt of the Jacobis, and Betty Jacobi, their sister, all of whom Goethe counted among his friends--had endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between Goethe and the two brothers, but eventually it was Goethe's own impulsive good nature that led to their meeting. The Jacobis lived in Dusseldorf, and the morning after his arrival in the town he called at their house, but found that Fritz had gone to Pempelfort, a place in the neighbourhood where he had an estate. Goethe at once set out for Pempelfort, and in a letter to the wife of Fritz he characteristically describes the circ.u.mstances of the meeting. "It was glorious that you did not happen to be in Dusseldorf and that I did what my simple heart prompted me. Without introduction, without being marshalled in, without excuses, just dropping straight from heaven before Fritz Jacobi! And he and I, and I and he! And, before a sisterly look had done the preliminaries, we were already what we were bound to be and could be."[183]

[Footnote 183: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 180.]

Fritz Jacobi possessed a combination of qualities that were expressly fitted to impress Goethe at the period when they met. Handsome in person, and with the polished manners of a man of the world, he conjoined a practical talent for business with a pa.s.sionate interest in all questions touching human destiny. About six years Goethe's senior, he was, on Goethe's own testimony, far ahead of him in the domain of philosophical thought. After Herder, Jacobi was indeed the most stimulating personality Goethe had met. While his intercourse with Lavater and Basedow had been only a source of entertainment, from Jacobi he received a stimulus which opened up new depths of thought and feeling.

Both Goethe and Jacobi have left records of their intercourse, and both are equally enthusiastic regarding the profit they derived from it. From the first moment of their meeting there was a spontaneous interchange of their deepest thoughts and feelings, unique in the experience of both. In Jacobi's company Goethe became another man from what he had been in the company of Lavater and Basedow. "I was weary,"

he says, "of my previous follies and wantonness, which, in truth, only concealed my dissatisfaction that this journey had brought so little profit to my mind and heart. Now, therefore, my deepest feelings broke forth with irrepressible force." After a few days spent at Pempelfort, during which Georg Jacobi joined them, the two brothers accompanied Goethe to Cologne on his homeward journey. It was during the hours they were together at Cologne that the conversation of Fritz and Goethe became most intimate, and these hours remained a moving memory with both even when in after years divided aims and interests had estranged them. A visit to the cathedral of Cologne recalled Goethe's enthusiasm for the cathedral of Stra.s.sburg, but its unfinished condition depressed him with the sense of a great idea unrealised, for in his own words "an unfinished work is like one destroyed." The emotions evoked by another spectacle in Dusseldorf, according to Goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining for life the confidence of both Jacobis. The sight which equally moved all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of Cologne named Jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as an amateur of the fine arts. But what specially impressed them was a picture by Le Brun representing Jabach and his family in all the freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was the sole memorial that they had ever lived. "This reflection," Georg Jacobi comments, "made a profound impression on our stranger,"[184]