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    which , according to Goethe ' s mother , there is in Werter . Those of the first part are in a melancholy mood ; he writes with bitterness of the Swiss . He is travelling through a country little seen , though very beautiful , in the neighbourhood of the Jura mountains . In the latter part he goes from Geneva , over the Gemnii and St . Gothard , towards Italy , where the letters abruptly terminate . We think that this latter journey may be fairly considered as belonging to his personal history , and ought to precede his journey to Italy in the works . Acquainted as we are with the scenes travelled over , we should think the tone exaggerated , but for two considerations : we have not had the good fortune to see this glorious country in winter ; and it is now no adventure to cross the Alps in summer ; in which season at least there are some four or five high roads as free from danger as the turnpikeroad between London and Newmarket . Vol . 17 consists of Die fVahlverwandtschaften } i e . Elective Affinities ; a romance written at a late period in Goethe ' s life , 1809 , after Wilhelrn MeLster . It has not the lofty pretensions of

    that work , nor contains its manifold bearings on human life . The incidents are few , like those of Werter , but it wants its popular qualities . It is a tragic tale . The catastrophe is produced by the woful excesses of that passion of which Lord Bacon says , that the stage is more beholden to it than life . But the book is not confined to the developements of a wild tumultuous passion . The passionate scenes are relieved by long digressions of a soothing kind , every part of which is richly stored with moral and

    psychological wisdom . Edward , a wealthy baron , the spoiled child of prosperity , is living on his estate , married rather late in life to Charlotte , whom he loved when young , but whom he did not obtain till after the death of her first husband , They have every object of earthly desire in abundance . The Baron hears that an old school-fellow and friend , a military man , is dismissed from service , and insists on his coming to reside with them . His wife in vain remonstrates , objecting that the presence of a third person might interrupt their domestic felicity , and remarks

    that , under a like apprehension , she had not proposed that her niece Ottilia should be removed from her convent to their house . But the forebodings of the wife have no effect on the self-willed husband . The Captain comes , who merits the attachment of his friend , by rare powers of mind , and high honour and integrity . Ottilia , too , comes , and she is a model of female virtue and

    excellence , uniting to the warmest sensibilities of her sex all the purity of which it is susceptible . And yet a fatal combination arises which , borrowing , in illustration of the passions of our nature , the language of chemical science , our author terms elective affinities , which , in fact , are found in life as in nature . This

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    116 Goethe's Works .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 116, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/48/