burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma.  And what is Homer in the Ilias?  He is THE WITNESS; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do not behold him.  Now compare, with these two Poets, any other two; not of equal genius, for there are none such, but of equal sincerity, who wrote as earnestly and from the heart, like them.  Take, for instance, Jean Paul and Lord Byron.  The good Eichter begins to show himself, in his broad, massive, kindly, quaint significance, before we have read many pages of even his slightest work; and to the last he paints himself much better than his subject.  Byron may also be said to have painted nothing else than himself, be his subject what it might.  Yet as a test for the culture of a Poet, in his poetical capacity, for his pretensions to mastery and completeness in his art, we cannot but reckon this among the surest.  Tried by this, there is no writer that approaches within many degrees of Goethe.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born in Frankfort on August 28, 1749.  His parents were citizens of that imperial town, and Wolfgang was their only son.  His father was born on July 31, 1710.  He married, on August 20, 1748, at the age of thirty-eight, Catherine Elizabeth Textor.  In December, 1750, was born a daughter, Cornelia, who remained until her death, at the age of twenty-seven, her brother’s most intimate friend.  She was married in 1773 to John George Schlosser.  Goethe’s education was irregular.  French culture gave at this time the prevailing tone to Europe.  Goethe could not have escaped its influence, and he was destined to fall under it in a special manner.  In the Seven Years’ War, which was now raging, France took the side of the empire against Frederick the Great.  Frankfort was full of French soldiers, and a certain Comte Thorane, who was quartered in Goethe’s house, had an important influence on the boy.

Goethe, if we may believe his autobiography, experienced his first love about the age of fifteen in the person of Gretchen, whom some have supposed to be the daughter of an innkeeper at Offenbach.  He worshipped her as Dante worshipped Beatrice.

In the autumn of 1765 Goethe traveled to Leipsic.  On the 19th of October he was admitted as a student.  He was sent to Leipsic to study law, in order that he might return to Frankfort fitted for the regular course of municipal distinction.  He intended to devote himself not to law, but to belles lettres.  He attended Gellert’s lectures on literature, and even joined his private class.  His real university education was derived from intercourse with his friends.  First among these was J. G. Schlosser, who afterwards married his sister.  He had a great influence upon him, chiefly in introducing him to a wider circle of German, French, English and Italian poetry.

But the person who had the strongest effect on Goethe’s mental development was Adam Frederick Oeser, at this time director of the academy of arts in Leipsic.