"Hermann and Dorothea" appeared in 1797, and was one of the most serious of the efforts by which Goethe and Schiller both gave themselves to create a German drama worthy of the German people. In 1790 a new theatre had been built at Weimar, and Goethe became in fact the manager. He was not satisfied with writing plays to be performed there; he actually supervised the performances, and gave to the detail of such management much of his time for many years. So long as Schiller lived the two were closely connected in all such enterprises, and Goethe's practical connection with the theatre led him, perhaps, to attempt the dramatic form of composition more often than he would otherwise have done.
In 1799 Walter Scott, then only twenty-five years of age, published in Edinburgh his translation of "Goetz von Berlichingen."
It must be remembered that all this time Goethe is pursuing his studies of Physical Science. His little book called "Morphologie," published in 1788, immediately after his return from Italy, is a simple, unaffected, practical, statement of the law of growth of plants, which, though suggested before, had quite escaped the attention of the botanists of repute. When it was published, it seems to have been pushed aside as the fanciful dream of a poet. In truth, it is a book which might be given to-day to a learner, as one of the most elegant and simple illustrations of what is now meant by evolution in nature. From the humble resources of a common garden Goethe finds material to show how whorls of leaves appear as blossoms; how calyx passes into corolla; how leaves of the corolla become stamens and pistils. After a generation the botanists were willing enough to accept the statement, and Goethe lived long enough to see it accepted as the foundation of the Botanical Science of his time.
The critics are apt to call "Faust" his greatest work. The first part was published in 1805, the second in 1831. Quite too much finesse has been wasted on endeavors to discover his purpose in the poem. It will live, not from any discovery of his purpose, but because of the intensity with which it presents the different characters. It will command and control men all the more, because they do not find in it the skeleton of what is called an artistic or scientific literary plan. It is impossible, in the limited range of this article, even to name the several works, many of them of great importance, of the last half of his life. With his assiduous industry, so assiduous that he was never satisfied, perhaps, unless he was at work, he edited an art journal, Kunst und Alterthum, from 1816 to 1828. In a thousand methods of publication he sent out poems, dramas, novels, and pamphlets. He had the satisfaction of knowing that Europe and America regarded him as the first author of his time.
Goethe married, in 1806, Christiana Vulpius, who had been employed as a servant in his family. She died in the year 1816. He seems to have really lamented her death.
His old age was serene. The jubilee of his arrival in Weimar was celebrated with great enthusiasm, on November 7, 1825. All through the last years of his life he was receiving tokens of admiration from all parts of the world. They gratified his vanity, and satisfied his pride.
He died on March 22, 1832. His last words have been well remembered; "More light!"[Back to Contents]
