No prince was ever more concerned to promote in every way the welfare of his subjects than Karl August; and in all his works undertaken for this purpose, Goethe was his foremost counsellor and aid. The most important were either suggested by him or executed under his direction. Had he never written a poem, or given to the world a single literary composition, he would still have led, as a Weimar official, a useful and beneficent life. But the knowledge of the world and of business, the social and other experience gained in this way, was precisely the training which he needed,--and which every poet needs,--for the broadening and deepening and perfection of his art. Friedrich von Müller, in his valuable treatise of "Goethe as a Man of Affairs," tells us how he traversed every portion of the country to learn what advantage might be taken of topographical peculiarities, what provision made for local necessities. "Everywhere--on hilltops crowned with primeval forests, in the depths of gorges and shafts--Nature met her favorite with friendly advances, and revealed to him many a desired secret." Whatever was privately gained in this way was applied to public uses. He endeavored to infuse new life into the mining business, and to make himself familiar with all its technical requirements. For that end he revived his chemical experiments. New roads were built, hydraulic operations were conducted on more scientific principles, fertile meadows were won from the river Saale by systematic drainage, and in many a struggle with Nature an intelligently persistent will obtained the victory.
Nor was it with material obstacles only that the poet-minister had to contend. In the exercise of the powers intrusted to him he often encountered the fierce opposition of party interest and stubborn prejudice, and was sometimes driven to heroic and despotic measures in order to accomplish a desired result,--as when he foiled the machinations of the Jena professors in his determination to save the University library, and when, in spite of the opposition of the leading burghers, he demolished the city wall.
In 1786 Goethe was enabled to realize his cherished dream of a journey to Italy. There he spent a year and a half in the diligent study and admiring enjoyment of the treasures of art which made that country then, even more than now, the mark and desire of the civilized world. He came back an altered man. Intellectually and morally he had made in that brief space, under new influences, a prodigious stride. His sudden advance while they had remained stationary separated him from his contemporaries. The old associations of the Weimar world, which still revolved its little round, the much-enlightened traveller had outgrown. People thought him cold and reserved. It was only that the gay, impulsive youth had ripened into an earnest, sedate man. He found Germany jubilant over Schiller's "Robbers" and other writings representative of the "storm-and-stress" school, which his maturity had left far behind, his own contributions to which he had come to hate. Schiller, who first made his acquaintance at this time, writes to Körner:--
"I doubt that we shall ever become intimate. Much that to me is still of great interest he has already outlived. He is so far beyond me, not so much in years as in experience and culture, that we can never come together in one course."
How greatly Schiller erred in the supposition that they never could become intimate, how close the intimacy which grew up between them, what harmony of sentiment, how friendly and mutually helpful their co-operation, is sufficiently notorious.
But such was the first aspect which Goethe presented to strangers at this period of his life; he rather repelled than attracted, until nearer acquaintance learned rightly to interpret the man, and intellectual or moral affinity bridged the chasm which seemed to divide him from his kind. In part, too, the distance and reserve of which people complained was a necessary measure of self-defence against the disturbing importunities of social life. "From Rome," says Friedrich von Müller, "from the midst of the richest and grandest life, dates the stern maxim of 'Renunciation' which governed his subsequent being and doing, and which furnished his only guarantee of mental equipoise and peace."
His literary works hitherto had been spasmodic and lawless effusions, the escapes of a gushing, turbulent youth. In Rome he had learned the sacred significance of art. The consciousness of his true vocation had been awakened in him; and to that, on the eve of his fortieth year, he thenceforth solemnly devoted the remainder of his life. He obtained release from the more onerous of his official engagements, retaining only such functions as accorded with his proper calling as a man of letters and of science. He renounced his daily intercourse with Frau von Stein, though still retaining and manifesting his unabated friendship for the woman to whom in former years he had devoted so large a portion of his time, and employed himself in giving forth those immortal words which have settled forever his place among the stars of first magnitude in the intellectual world.
Noticeable and often noted was the charm and (when arrived to maturity) the grand effect of his personal presence. Physical beauty is not the stated accompaniment, nor even the presumable adjunct, of intellectual greatness. In Goethe, as perhaps in no other, the two were combined. A wondrous presence!--on this point the voices are one and the witnesses many. "Goethe was with us," so writes Heinse to one of his friends; "a beautiful youth of twenty-five, full of genius and force from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; a heart full of feeling, a spirit full of fire, who with eagle wings ruit immensus ore profundo." Jacobi writes: "The more I think of it, the more impossible it seems to me to communicate to any one who has not seen Goethe any conception of this extraordinary creature of God." Lavater says: "Unspeakably sweet, an indescribable appearance, the most terrible and lovable of men." Hufeland, the chief medical celebrity of Germany, describes his appearance in early manhood: "Never shall I forget the impression which he made as 'Orestes' in Greek costume. You thought you beheld an Apollo. Never was seen in any man such union of physical and spiritual perfection and beauty as at that time in Goethe." More remarkable still is the testimony of Wieland, who had reason to be offended, having been before their acquaintance the subject of Goethe's sharp satire. But immediately at their first meeting, sitting at table "by the side," he says, "of this glorious youth, I was radically cured of all my vexation.... Since this morning," he wrote to Jacobi, "my soul is as full of Goethe as a dewdrop is of the morning sun." And to Zimmermann: "He is in every respect the greatest, best, most splendid human being that ever God created." Goethe was then twenty-six. Henry Crabbe Robinson, who saw him at the age of fifty-two, reports him one of the most "oppressively handsome" men he had ever seen, and speaks particularly as all who have described him speak, of his wonderfully brilliant eyes. Those eyes, we are told, had lost nothing of their lustre, nor his head its natural covering, at the age of eighty.
Among the heroic qualities notable in Goethe, I reckon his faithful and unflagging industry. Here was a man who took pains with himself,--liess sich's sauer werden,--and made the most of himself. He speaks of wasting, while a student in Leipsic, "the beautiful time;" and certainly neither at Leipsic nor afterward at Strasburg did he toil as his Wagner in "Faust" would have done. But he was always learning. In the lecture-room or out of it, with pen and books or gay companions, he was taking in, to give forth again in dramatic or philosophic form the world of his experience.
A frolicsome youth may leave something to regret in the way of time misspent; but Goethe the man was no dawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On the whole, he made the most of himself, and stands before the world a notable instance of a complete life. He would do the work which was given him to do. He would not die till the second part of "Faust" was brought to its predetermined close. By sheer force of will he lived till that work was done. Smitten at fourscore by the death of his son, and by deaths all around, he kept to his task. "The idea of duty alone sustains me; the spirit is willing, the flesh must." When "Faust" was finished, the strain relaxed. "My remaining days," he said, "I may consider a free gift; it matters little what I do now, or whether I do anything." And six months later he died.