Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/336

308 dangerous affairs, — I had often enough found opportunity to mediate, to hush up, to divert the lightning-flash, with every other assistance of the kind; in the course of which, as well in my own person as through others, I could not fail to come to the knowledge of many afflicting and humiliating facts. To relieve myself I designed several plays, and wrote the arguments of most of them. But since the intrigues were always obliged to be painful, and almost all these pieces threatened a tragical conclusion, I let them drop one after another. "Die Mitschuldigen" ("The Accomplices") is the only one that was finished, the cheerful and burlesque tone of which upon the gloomy family-ground appears as if accompanied by something causing anxiety; so that, on the whole, it is painful in representation, although it pleases in detached passages. The illegal deeds, harshly expressed, wound the aesthetic and moral feeling, and the piece could therefore find no favour on the German stage; although the imitations of it, which steered clear of those rocks, were received with applause.

Both the above-mentioned pieces were, however, written from a more elevated point of view, without my having been aware of it. They direct us to a considerate forbearance in casting moral imputations, and in somewhat harsh and coarse touches sportively express that most Christian maxim. Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.

Through this earnestness, which cast a gloom over my first pieces, I committed the mistake of neglecting very favourable materials which lay quite decidedly in my natural disposition. In the midst of these serious, and, for a young man, fearful, experiences, was developed in me a reckless humour, which feels