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frame a tragedy oil the life of Mahomet , whom he could neVer bring himself to consider &s an impostor * This , like many other projects > remains unexecuted . While Goethe ' s mind was thus wandering in all directions ,, and he had still to make choice of a profession , he was relieved from all anxiety , by one of those happy incidents which ought to be
classed among national blessings . It was about the period wheri Goethe appeared as a literary meteor on the German horizon , that the Duke of Saxe Weimar attained his majority . His admirable mother , the Duchess Dowager Amelia ^ had in the administration of her very scanty revenues , already rendered her little court an object of distinction . Wielahd was already established therei She had selected for the governor of her second son Prince
Constantine , an accomplished Franconian gentleman , Herr von . Knebel , who had abandoned a military life , under the Duchess ' s brother , the king of Prussia , for a life of literary leisure at her court . Knebel being the companion of the hereditary prince atid prince Constahtine on a journey , passing through Frankfort , visited the young poet , and had no difficulty in inducing him to visit the princes who were at Mayence . This , indeed , was not agreeable to the old Frankfort citizen , who held all princes id
scorn as became a republican . He warned his son against the danger of putting himself in the power of princes , who might take bloody revenge on him for the satire he had already published against the protege of the ducal house of Weimar , Wieland * . Undeterred by the warning , Goethe visited the Duke , and the consequence of the visit was , that in 1825 there was celebrated at Weimar , with more than ordinary splendour , with works of imagination and genius , the fiftieth anniversary of the day on which Goethe entered the town in the service of his master and friendf .
* Goiter ^ Heldeny iind PFie / and , i . e . Gods , Heroes , and Wieland—one of the few of the wild and gay productions of Goethe ' s earliest days ( 1774 ) which still survive . It was laughed at and forgiven by Wieland , never interfered with the most friendly intercourse between them , and Goethe made the amplest compensation . On Wieland'a death in 1813 he delivered , at the Weimar free-mason ' s lodge * an oration , in which affectionate eulogy is blended with wise and indulgent criticism . The satire is to this effect : Wieland who , as the editor of the ' Germari
Mercury / had permitted articles to appear concerning Goethe , which he thought amounted to a declaration of war , exposed himself to his attack by the composition of an opera called * Admetus in Hell' —allowed generally to be the very worst of his numerous writings . To punish him for this impiety , Wieland's soul is brought to the shades , where he undergoes a scolding from Mercury for the abuse of his name , from Euripides for the impertinence of pretending to rival him , and from Adtnetus and Aleeste for misrepresentation . At length Hercules himself comes $ and , accord '
ing to the new edition , is content with preaching to him : but nearly thirty years ago , we recollect reading a pirated edition , in which Hercules horsewhips the poet soundly , and which contains strokes of satire not now to be met with ; the boldest and most characteristic part of the lecture now preached by the hero is this — ' Had you not sighed under the yoke of your morality , you might have been something . Shallow notions stick by you arid fo \ k cannot digest it—that a demigod may get tipsy and be a blackguard Without any injury to his divinity . ' t We cannot resist the temptation to translate , though in prose , one of the epigrams from Venice , 1790 , which expretoe * affectionately the author ' s obligations
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 299, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/11/
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