Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/753

Rh GOE Duisburg on his return from the campaign in France. A visit to Dessau inspired. the improvements of the park and grounds at Weimar, which now make it so attractive. The close of 1779 was occupied by a winter journey to Switzerland, undertaken with the duke and a small retinne. Two days were spent at Frankfort with Goethe’s parents. Sesenheim was visited, and left with satisfaction and con- tentment. At Strasburg they found Lili happily married, with a new-born child. At Emmendingen Goethe stood by his sister’s grave, and saw her successor Johanna Fahlmer, Jacobi’s aunt. The Swiss journey began at Basel. The chief object of it was to forward the health and education of the young duke. It was a bold plan to execute in October and November. Frmn Bern they made the tour of the Bernese Oberland. From Geneva, by the advice of De Saussure, they visited Mont Blane and the valley of Chamouni ; they crossed the Furka, not without danger, in the middle of November, descended the St Gotthard to Lucerne, and visited Lavater at Zurich, the seal and sum- mit of their tour. From this time Lavater lost his influ- ence over Goethe, and in 1786 he would gladly have run away from Weinnr to avoid him. In December they went by the Lake of Constance and the falls of the Rhine to Stuttgart, where, on December 14, Goethe saw Schiller for the ﬁrst time. He was a student at the Academy, and in Goethe’s presence received the prize. The return to Veimar, on January 13, was the beginning of a new era. The period of genius and eccentricity was at an end; that of order and regularity succeeded. As an out- ward sign of the change, the duke cut off his pigtail, an example which was long without imitators. Wieland said that the Swiss winter journey was the greatest of Goethe’s dramas. In the same serious mood Goethe began to write history. He chose for his subject Duke Bernhard of Saxe— Weimar, the knight-errant of the Reformation. He spent much time and trouble in collecting materials, but at length reasonably concluded that his strength lay elsewhere. At this time also he began to write Tasso, and adapted the Birds of Aristophanes to modern circumstances. His deeper thoughts were concentrated in W-il/zelm. Elleister. Countess Werther, the sister of the great minister Baron von Stein, whom he visited at N eunheiligen, was transferred in living portraiture to its pages. His efforts for the development of the duke’s dominion naturally led him to the study of science. The opening and direction of mines induced him to study geology ; the classiﬁcation of ancient forms of life led him to osteology and anatomy. Goethe was always fond of children. The young Herders and Vielands spent 111ucl1 time in his garden, sometimes digging for Easter eggs which had been carefully concealed. In the spring of 1783 Fritz, the son of Charlotte von Stein, then ten years old, came to live with him in his garden house. In the autumn they took a journey together in the Harz. At Ilmenau was written the touching poem of that name on the duke’s birth- day. Goethe reviews in it their common friendship and activity as far as it has yet gone, and a few days afterwards, as he slept in the hut on the Gickelhahn, he wrote in pencil the world—known lines in which he anticipates for himself that rest and silence which then held enchained the summits of the hills and the birds of the wood. I11 the following year another journey was undertaken in the Harz for the study of mineralogy. But this was only a relaxation from more serious affairs. In 1785 the Fiirstenbund or league of princes was formed, under the supremacy of Frederick the Great, to resist the ambition of Austria under Joseph H. The duke of Saxe-VVeimar took an important part in forming this league, and in the negotiations which preceded it. Goethe was his indispensable adviser, and nmst on this occasion, if not on others, have taken a keen interest in politics and in the independence of Germany. THE The year 1786 marks an epoch in Goethe’s life. 729 own inward development, and the work which he was most ﬁtted to do in the world, were not advancing as favourably as they should. He had written little of ﬁrst—rate import- ance. His L_'z/rics were of intense beauty and of deep meaning, but they were short and fugitive. He had brought with him from Frankfort the sketches of Faust and E5/moat, but little had been done to them since. His occa- sional writings for the amateur theatre, or for court festivi- ties, were not such as to add to his solid reputation in Germany. Ipln',r/enie was the one great work of poetry which belongs entirely to this period, but that had not re- ceived its ﬁnal form. Tasso was conceived, but only two acts were written, and these in prose. Wilhelm .l[ez'slcr is the most exact expression of this portion of Goethe’s life; but loftily as it now towers above the level of his dramas, it did not then satisfy the author, nor was it in a state to be published. For the completion of these works Goethe required leisure and repose, impossible to obtain in the dis- traction and pleasures of the court. This became more apparent to him as he set himself to collect his scattered writings. Four volumes were soon completed, but the pre- paration of the other four convinced him how much labour many of his poems still required for perfection. Another cause of discontent was his relation to Frau von Stein. It could not have been more intimate. She was all to Goethe and more than Gretchen, Frederike, Lili, or his sister Cornelia had been. He communicated to her every thought and every action of his life. The relation was blameless, to a character like Goethe’s it was natural ; but it became every year more difficult and more full of danger. The ardent devotion which sat well on the in-ipetuosity of youth was less becoming and less possible to the man of middle age. Yet the tie could not be severed without a struggle, and the wrench could not be effected without an enforced absence. To these necessities, the need of quiet for compo- sition, and for deliberately rearranging the circumstances of his life, was added the stress of other impulses. Goethe had all his life been fascinated by the practice of art. In- deed it was not until he had discovered at Rome the limitation of his powers that he deﬁnitely renounced the hope of becoming an artist. He tried almost every branch in turn. He drew in pencil and in sepia, sketched, "painted in oil, engraved on copper and wood, and etched. For these occupations he had but little leisure ; at this time he attributed his slow improvement rather to want of labour than to want of power. He saw inﬁnite possibilities of advance in a life of freedom spent under the inspira- tion of sunny skies, and amidst the environment of the highest art. Of still deeper interest and importance were his scientiﬁc Science. researches. In these he aspired to detect the secrets of nature; he succeeded in seeing, as in a vision, the great scheme of evolution applied to all phenomena of the natural and moral world, which the labours of many workers have revealed to us in our own day. He longed for time and leisure to perfect these ideas, to base them on solid fact. Goethe has not added much of positive value to the treasury of scientiﬁc truth, but he deserves the credit of having dis- cerned the right method of inquiry when it was obscure to many, and of having thrown that glow of imagination over dry and technical inquiry, without which no great discoveries can be made. His inquiries into the nature of light belong to a later time. He began with physiognomy under the auspices of Lavater. From this he was led to the study of anatomy, and especially to the comparison of the skeletons of men and animals. In this department he made a real discovery, that the intermaxillary bone which exists in the lower animals is found in the human subjgct in a rudimen- . . ~— J2 He had Leaves now been ten years in Weimar, and he must have felt that his W°im‘“'-