CHAPTER II. THE PRECOCIOUS CHILD. JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE was born on the 28th August, 1749, as the clock sounded the hour of noon, in the busy town of Frankfurt-on-the-Maine. The busy town, as may be supposed, was quite heedless of what was then passing in the corner of that low, heavy-beamed room in the Grosse Hirsch Graben, where an infant, black and almost lifeless, was watched with agonizing anxiety — an anxiety dissolving into tears of joy, as the aged grandmother exclaimed to the pale mother: Räthin, er lebt! he lives!' But if the town was heedless, not so were the stars, as astrologers will certify; the stars knew who was gasping for life beside his trembling mother, and in solemn convocation they prefigured his future greatness. Goethe, with a grave smile, notes this conjunction of the stars; as Condivi, in his Vita di Michelagnolo, does of his hero, without a smile. Whatever the stars may have betokened, this August, 1749, was a momentous month to Germany, if only because it gave birth to the man whose influence has been greater than that of any man since Luther. A momentous month in very momentous times. It is the middle of the eighteenth century: a period when the movement carried out by Luther was passing from religion to politics, and freedom of thought was translating itself into liberty of act. From theology the movement had communicated itself to philosophy, morals and politics. The agitation was still mainly in the higher classes, but it was gradually descending to the lower. A period of deep unrest, big with events which would distend the conceptions of all men, and bewilder some of the wisest. A few random glances at the notables' may serve to call up something like the historical presence of the epoch. In that month of August, Madame du Châtelet, the learned and pedantic Uranie of Voltaire, died in childbed, leaving him without a companion, and without a counseller to prevent his going to the court of Frederick the Great. In that year Rousseau was seen in the brilliant circle of Mad. d'Epinay, discussing with the Encyclopedists, declaiming eloquently on the sacredness of maternity, and going home to cast his new-born infant into the basket of the Foundling Hospital. In that year Samuel Johnson was toiling manfully over his English dictionary; Gibbon was at Westminster, trying with unsuccessful diligence to master the Greek and Latin rudiments; Goldsmith was delighting the Tony Lumpkins of his district, and the wandering bear-leaders of genteeler sort,' with his talents, and enjoying that careless idleness of fireside and easy chair,' and that'tavern excitement of the game of cards, to which he looked back so wistfully from his first hard London struggles.'* In that year Buffon, whose scientific greatness Goethe was one of the first to perceive, and whose influence has been so profound, produced the first volume of his Histoire Naturelle. In that year Mirabeau and Alfieri were tyrants in their nurseries, and Marat was an innocent boy of five, toddling about in the Val de Travers, untroubled by phantoms of 'les aristocrats.' * Forster's Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith, p. 29. This was the period in which Goethe was born. Of the city- Frankfurt - he has given us a loving picture. No city in Germany seems so well fitted for the birthplace of this cosmopolitan poet. It was rich in speaking memorials of the past, remnants of old German life, lingering echoes of the voices which sounded through the middle ages: memorials, such as the town within a town, the fortress within a fortress, the walled cloisters, the various symbolical ceremonies still preserved from feudal times, the Jews' quarter, so picturesque, so filthy, and so strikingly significant. But if Frankfurt was thus representative of the past, it was equally representative of the present. The travellers brought there by the Rhine-stream, and by the great northern roads, made it a representative of Europe, and an Emporium of Commerce. It was thus a centre for that distinctively modern idea - Industrialism which began, and must complete, the destruction of Feudalism. This two-fold character Frankfurt retains to the present day the storks, perched upon the ancient gables of the past, look down upon the varied bustle of Fairs held by modern Commerce in the ancient streets. : The feeling for antiquity, and especially for old German life, which his native city would thus picturesquely cultivate, was rivalled by a feeling for Italy and its splendors, which was cultivated under the paternal roof. His father had lived in Italy, and had retained an inextinguishable delight in all its beauties. His walls were hung with architectural drawings and views of Rome; and the poet was thus familiar from infancy with the Piazza del Popolo, St. Peter's, the Coliseum, and other centres of grand associations. Typical of his own nature and strivings is this conjunction of the Classic and the German the one lying nearest to him, in homely intimacy, the other lying. outside, as a mere scene he was to contemplate. Goethe was more Greek than German, but he never freed himself from German influence. Thus much on Time and Place, the two great environments of life. Before quitting such generalities for the details of biography, it may be well to call attention to one hitherto unnoticed, viz. the moderate elevation of his social status. Placed midway between the two perilous extremes of affluence and want, his whole career received a modifying impulse from this position. He never knew adversity. This alone must necessarily have deprived him of one powerful chord which vibrates through the life of genius. Adversity, the sternest of teachers, had nothing to teach him. He never knew the gaunt companionship of Want, whispering its terrible suggestions. He never knew the necessity to conquer for himself breathing-room in the world and thus all the feelings of bitterness, opposition, and defiance which accompany and perplex the struggle of life, were to him almost unknown, and taught him nothing of the aggressive and practical energy which these feelings develope in impetuous natures. How much of his serenity, how much of his dislike to politics may owe its origin to this? : That he was the loveliest baby ever seen,' exciting admiration wherever nurse or mother carried him, and exhibiting, in swaddling clothes, the most wonderful intelligence,' we need no biographer to tell us. Is it not said of every baby? But that he really was a wonderful child we have undeniable evidence, and of a kind less questionable than the statement of mothers and relatives. Specimens of his precocity will be given presently; meanwhile, from his mother, we will hear an anecdote or two. At three years old he could seldom be brought to play with little children, and only on the condition of their being pretty. One day, in a neighbor's house, he suddenly That black child must go. And he howled till he was began to cry and exclaim, away! I can't bear him!' carried home, where he was slowly pacified; the whole cause of his grief being the ugliness of the child. A philosopher of a certain school might devote twenty pages of symbolical profundity to show how an innate love of the Beautiful determined this conduct in the child; but perhaps the reader would prefer silence to such philosophy. A quick, merry little girl grew up by the boy's side. Four other children also came, but soon vanished. Cornelia was the only companion who survived, and for her his affection dated from her cradle. He brought his toys to her, wanted to feed her and attend on her, and was very jealous of all who approached her. When she was taken from the cradle, over which he watched, his anger was scarcely to be quieted. He was altogether much more easily moved to anger than to tears.' To the last his love for Cornelia was passionate. His mother spoiled him somewhat. One Sunday morning, while the family is at church, Master Wolfgang finds himself in the kitchen, which looks upon the street. Boylike, he begins to fling the crockery into the street, delighted at the smashing music which it makes, and stimulated by the approbation of the brothers Ochsenstein, who chuckle at him from over the way. The plates and dishes are flying in this way, as his mother returns: she sees the mischief with a housewifely horror melting into girlish sympathy as she hears how heartily the little fellow laughs at his escapade, and how the neighbors laugh at him. This genial, indulgent mother employed her faculty for story-telling to his and her own delight. Air, fire, earth and water I represented under the forms of princesses; and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning, in which |