commercial activity by its varied literary culture. It was filled with notabilities, among whom are to be noticed particularly Wieland, Herder, Musäus, Knebel, Seckendorf, Corona Schröter, the dowager duchess Amalia, Frau von Stein, and afterward Schiller. In this circle Goethe at once took his place as the presiding deity. “He rose like a star in the heavens,” says Knebel; “everybody worshipped him, and especially the women.” His first years there were spent in wild and tumultuous enjoyments, in which “affairs of the heart” did not always end with the heart. But Goethe's nature was too profound, his intellectual activity too great, to be long beguiled by the frivolities of masking, hunting, drinking, dancing, and dicing, and he resumed his more serious pursuits. The first fruit of his return (1779) was Iphigenie auf Tauris, a prose drama, which he afterward turned into a beautiful drama in verse. After a visit to Switzerland the same year, described in his Briefe aus der Schweiz, he composed a little opera, called Jery und Bätely, full of Swiss inspirations. He also began to devote himself strenuously to the study of natural science, in which he became a proficient. The novel of Wilhelm Meister was at the same time in progress, and many of his best small poems were produced at this period (l780-'83). In 1786 he made a journey to Italy, where he passed nearly two years in the most laborious study of its antiquities and arts, and in the composition of Torquato Tasso, a drama suggested by the life of that poet at the court of Ferrara. He was so absorbed in the past of Italy that he paid little attention to its present condition or people. The narrative of his travels, Die italiänische Reise, contains the most charming descriptions of the scenes through which he passed. On his return to Weimar in 1788, he published Egmont, a romantic drama, full of passion and interest, representing a sombre and tragic episode in the revolution of the Netherlands, but in which he has not confined himself at all to the incidents of actual history; the character of Clärchen is by many regarded as one of his most successful female creations. A relation with Frau von Stein, which Goethe had long maintained, was now broken off, but he soon formed another with Christiane Vulpius. She was uneducated, and lived in some domestic capacity in his house; but Goethe afterward married her, to legitimate his son (born Dec. 25, 1788, died Oct. 27, 1830). In 1792 he accompanied the army of the king of Prussia and the duke of Brunswick in their campaign into France, of which he wrote an account. Soon after appeared his metrical version of Reinecke Fuchs. The results of his scientific studies appeared in his Beiträge zur Optik and his Farbenlehre, in the latter of which he had the hardihood to question the correctness of the Newtonian theory of colors. He wrote also on the metamorphosis of plants, and on topics of comparative anatomy. In all these he displayed a re- markable penetration and sagacity, and his remarks on the morphology of plants are now reckoned among the earlier enunciations of the theory of evolution. His acquaintance with Schiller, who divided with him the suffrages of the poetic German world, began at Jena in 1794; and though their intercourse was cold at first, it ripened into one of the most enduring and beautiful friendships recorded in literary annals. Schiller's influence upon him was both stimulating and ennobling, and from this time forth we find him engaged in producing his grandest works. The first part of Wilhelm Meister (the Lehrjahre) appeared in 1795. Hermann und Dorothea, a pastoral poem in hexameters, the most perfect of his minor productions, was written in 1797; the Achilleis was executed the same year; and he engaged in friendly rivalry with Schiller in bringing forth a series of ballads, of which Goethe's part, Die Braut von Corinth, Der Zauberlehrling, Der Gott und die Bajadere, and Die Schatzgräber, are among the masterpieces of German literature. Even these, however, were only the preludes of what he was destined to do; for the Faust was still revolving itself in his thoughts, and the Wilhelm Meister went steadily forward. At last, in 1805, the great work of his life saw the light. The legend of Faust had been familiar to him as a child, he had thought of it and labored upon it during the whole of his youth, and now in the ripeness of his manhood it had taken its final shape. “It appeals to all minds with the irresistible fascination of an eternal problem, and with the charm of endless variety. It has every element — wit, pathos, wisdom, buffoonery, mystery, melody, reverence, doubt, magic, and irony; not a chord of the lyre is unstrung, not a fibre of the heart untouched.” This work raised Goethe to the highest pinnacle of fame, and he was universally acknowledged to be the first poet of his age. If Goethe had died in 1806, he would have achieved a greater renown than any other modern man of letters; but he was destined to live 26 years longer, years of contentment, labor, productiveness, and honor. The stormy and errant impulses of his youth had been subdued; he had mastered himself and his circumstances; the great problem of life, which had filled him with strife and impatience, lay clear before him; his circumstances were easy; and his position at the head of German literature, which he had himself brought out of chaos or formalism into orderly vigor, gained him the homage of Europe. Schiller and other friends were dead; others again, friends of earlier days, were separated from him in sympathy by the large strides which his intellect had made in various paths of thought; and a sombre hue fell upon, without clouding, the serenity of his later years. Moreover, the external events of the world were full of trouble and agitation. It was the era of Napoleon's conquests. Germany palpitated with the rest of Europe in throbs of
