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Alexandrine rhymes , Die Laune des Verliebten % —<^ i . e ., freely rendered , *• In love and ill-humour -, in which he has done penance for the wrong he did to the innocent object of his capricious fondness , but by which he was the sufferer , as she was ultimately so wise as to discard him ; he delighting to indulge tyrannically in groundless jealousy , and imposing on her affections * by demanding all kinds of unreasonable sacrifices .
During his stay at Leipsic , he visited Dresden , where he first became acquainted with works of art of the highest rank . In 1768 j he returned to Frankfort , and soon after was seized with a dangerous illness . While suffering from its effects , he had to encounter a sort of trial in his intimate friendship for an interesting person , Fraulein Klettenberg , whose character he has ex * quiaitely pourtrayed in Wilhelm Meister , under the title of '
Confessions of a beautiful soul / Our readers must forgive the combination , which we know is unusual . We have always envied foreign languages their schone seele , beVame beWanima , &c , &c . This lady was a Moravian , a religious enthusiast , without being afanatic . She was not far from becoming a sort of Madame Guyon , or Saint Theresa ; but in fact , never exceeded the bounds of taste or propriet } 7 . She inoculated our young poet with a
passion for mystical theology and philosophy , including Van Helmont , Paracelsus , and other cabalistic and astrological - authors . This tendency was increased by his being suddenly restored to health by a physician , who made a profession of secret remedies . His disease lay in the organs of digestion , and it may be that the good doctor tried an experiment on the fancy of his enthusiastic and youthful patient . If so , it succeeded . Goethe , having begun a course of theological study , read Arnold ' s History of the Church and Heresies , and having heard that every man must form his own religion , he drew up his own scheme of Christianity , a compound of new Platonism , the Hermetic philosophy , and Protestant orthodoxy . We risk little in saying , that we do not suppose any other boy of nineteen ever produced a sounder creed . As in other cases , however , it seems to have cured his disease—a tendency to mysticism- —as we certainly trace little of it in the works of his later years .
In the following spring , being restored to health , he repaired to the University of Strasburg , where we find him , for the first time , in the society of men who were . his literary companions , if not his rivals , in after life . Here was Herder ^ a man who had already gained celebrity ; and who , if Goethe had not eclipsed him , might have shone among the first of poetical philosophers . According to Goethe ' s own representation of their acquaintance at Strasburg , it seems to have been , on his part , a sort of voluntary penance , or a course of severe discipline , willingly endured by Goethe , that he might be cured af whatever arrogance o * . self-willedaess might be still in him . The uncompromising
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294 Goethe .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 294, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/6/
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