CHAPTER IV.

VARIOUS STUDIES.

Ar length, June 1761, the French quitted Frankfurt; and studies were seriously resumed. Mathematics, music, and drawing were commenced under paternal superintendence. For mathematics Wolfgang had no aptitude ; for music little he learned to play on the harpsichord, and, subsequently, on the violoncello, but he never attained any proficiency. Drawing continued through life a pleasant exercise.

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Left now to the calm of uninterrupted studies he made gigantic strides. Even the hours of recreation were filled with some useful occupation. He added English to his polyglott store; and to keep up his several languages, determined, like the late Ducrow, to ride six horses at once.' Thus he invented a Romance, wherein six or seven brothers and sisters scattered over the world corresponded with each other. The eldest describes in good German all the incidents of his travels; his sister answers in womanly style with short sharp sentences, and nothing but full stops, much as Siegwart was afterwards written. Another brother studies theology, and therefore writes in Latin, with postscripts in Greek. A third and a fourth, clerks at Hamburgh and Marseilles, take English and French; Italian is given to a musician; while the youngest, who remains at home, writes in Jew-German.

This romance led him to a more accurate study of geography. Having placed his characters in various parts of the globe, he was not satisfied till he had a distinct idea of these localities, so that the objects and events should be consonant with probability. While trying to master the strange dialect Jew-German he was led to the study of Hebrew. As the original language of the Old Testament, this seemed to him an indispensable acquisition. His father consented to give him a Hebrew master; and although he attained no scholarship in that difficult language, yet the reading, translating, and committing to memory of various parts of the Bible, brought out the meaning more vividly before him; as every one will understand who compares the lasting effect produced by the laborious school reading of Sallust and Livy, with the facile reading of Robertson and Hume. The Bible made a profound impression upon him. To a boy of his constitutional reflectiveness, the severe study of this book could not fail to exercise a deep and permeating influence; nor, at the same time, in one so accustomed to think for himself, could it fail to awaken certain doubts. • The contradiction,' he says, between the actual or possible, and tradition, forcibly arrested me. I often posed my tutors with the sun standing still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon; not to mention other incogruities and impossibilities. All my doubts were now awakened, as in order to master the Hebrew I studied the literal version by Schmidt, printed under the text.'

One result of these Hebrew studies was a biblical poem on Joseph and his Brethren; which he dictated to a poor half idiot who lived in his father's house, and who had a mania for copying or writing under dictation. Goethe soon found the process of dictation of great service; and through life it continued to be his favorite mode of com

position. All his best thoughts and expressions, he says, came to him while walking; he could do nothing seated.

Connected with his biblical studies, and his Confirmation which took place in 1763, we catch a glimpse of Fräulein von Klettenberg, whose letters and conversations subsequently furnished him with the Confessions of a Fair Saint' in Wilhelm Meister.* Her influence was avowedly very great, both now and subsequently. It was not so much the effect of religious discussion, as the experience it gave him of a deeply religious nature. She was neither bigot nor prude. Her faith was an inner light which shed mild radiance around her. Moved by her influence, he wrote a series of Religious Odes, after the fashion of that day, and greatly pleased his father by presenting them copied neatly in a quarto volume. His father begged that every year he would present him with such a volume.

A very different sort of female influence has now to be touched on. His heart began to flutter with the emotions of love. He was not quite fifteen, when Gretchen, the sister of one of his disreputable companions, first agitated his imagination with her charms. The story is told in a rambling way in the Autobiography, and may here be very briefly dismissed. He had often turned his poetical talents to practical purposes, namely, writing wedding and funeral verses, the produce of which went in joyous feastings. He was thus almost daily thrown with Gretchen; but she, though kind, treated him as a child, and never permitted the

* In Varnhagen von Ense's Vermischte Schriften (vol. iii. p. 33), the reader will find a few significant details respecting this remarkable person and some of her poems. (I cannot pass this reference to my oldest German friend without a word of acknowledgment for the unwearying kindness he has ever shown me, and the many ways in which he has assisted me in this biography.)

slightest familiarity. A merry life they led, in picnics and pleasure bouts; and the coronation of the Kaiser Joseph II. (so circumstantially narrated by him), was the occasion of increased festivity. One night, after the fatigues of a sight-seeing day, the hours rolled unheeded over these thoughtless, merry heads, and the stroke of midnight startled them. To his dismay, Wolfgang found he had forgotten the door-key with which hitherto he had been able to evade paternal knowledge of his late hours. Gretchen proposed they should all remain together, and pass the night in conversation. This was agreed on. But, as in all such cases, the effort was vain. Fatigue weighed down their eyelids; conversation became feebler and feebler; two strangers already slumbered in corners of the room; one friend sat in a corner with his betrothed, her head reposing on his shoulder; another crossing his arms upon the table, rested his head upon them and snored. The noisy room had become silent. Gretchen and her lover sat by the window talking in undertones. Fatigue at length conquered her also, and drooping her head upon his shoulder she too slept. With tender pride he supported that delicious burden, till, like the rest, he gave way and slept.

Gretchen was

It was broad day when he awoke. standing before a mirror arranging her cap. She smiled on him more amiably than ever she had smiled before; and pressed his hand tenderly as he departed. But now, while he seemed drawing nearer to her, the dénouement was at hand. Some of the joyous companions had been guilty of nefarious practices, such as forgeries of documents. His friend and Gretchen were involved in the accusation, though falsely. Wolfgang had to undergo a severe investigation, which, as he was perfectly innocent, did not much afflict him; but an affliction came out of the

investigation, for Gretchen in her deposition concerning him said, ' I will not deny that I have often seen him, and seen him with pleasure, but I treated him as a child, and my affection for him was merely that of a sister.' His exasperation may be imagined. A boy aspiring to the dignity of manhood knows few things more galling than to be treated as a boy by the girl whom he has honored with his homage. He suffered greatly at this destruction of his romance; nightly was his pillow wet with tears; food became repugnant to him; life had no more an object.

But pride came to his aid; pride and that volatility of youth which compensates for extra sensitiveness by extra facility in forgetting. He threw himself into study, especially of philosophy, under guidance of a tutor, a sort of Wagner to the young Faust. This tutor, who preferred dusty quartos to all the landscapes in the world, used to banter him upon being a true German, such as Tacitus describes, avid of the emotions excited by solitude and scenery. Laughter weaned him not from the enjoyment. He was enjoying his first sorrow the luxury of melancholy, the romance of a forlorn existence, drove him into solitude. Like Bellerophon he fed upon his own heart, away from the haunts of men,

Ον θυμον κατεδων, πατον ανθρωπων αλεείνων.

He made frequent walking excursions. Those mountains which from earliest childhood had stood so distant, haunting him like a passion,' were now his favorite resorts. He visited Homburg, Kronburg, Königstein, Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, Biberich, etc. These filled his mind with lovely images, and became poems.

Severer studies were not neglected. To please his father he was diligent in application to jurisprudence; to