[209] After he had broken with her, and was settled in Weimar.
[210] During his residence in Rome in 1787. He recast Erwin und Elmire at the same time.
[211] To this period probably belongs Lilis Park, the most playfully humorous of Goethe's poems, in which he banters Lili on her capricious treatment of himself (represented as a bear) as one of her menagerie—the motley crowd of her suitors.
[212] Certain pranks played by Goethe during his stay in Offenbach show that he was not wholly given up to "lover's melancholy." On a moonlight night, robed in a white sheet, and mounted on stilts (a form of exercise to which he was addicted), he went through the town and created a panic among the inhabitants by looking into their windows. On another occasion, at a baptism, he secretly deposited the baby in a dish, and covering it with a towel, placed the dish on a table where the company were assembled. It was only after some time that the contents of the dish were revealed.
[213] Werke, Briefe, ii. 246.
[214] Werke, Briefe, ii. 249.
[215] Ib. p. 255.
[216] Frau Schönemann is recorded to have said that the different religion of the two families was the cause of the match being broken off.
[217] Werke, Briefe, ii. 261-2.
[218] The third was Count Haugnitz, of more subdued temper than his companions.