Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 13.djvu/27

Rh “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?"

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-