The so-called _Werther_
"period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture,
but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete
traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled
desires. "A sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life
every one did not pass through an epoch when _Werther_ appeared to
have been specially written for him."[163] The long series of
imitations of Werther--_Rene_, _Obermann_, _Childe Harold_, _Adolphe_
(to mention only the best-known)--bears out Goethe's remark that
Wertherism belongs to no particular age of the world, though it may
assume various forms and be expressed in different tones.[164] But in
Goethe's little book the name and the thing Wertherism has received
its "immortal _cachet_." To the intrinsic power of _Werther_ it is the
supreme tribute that Napoleon, the first European man in the world of
action, as Goethe was the first in the world of thought, read it seven
times in the course of his life, that he carried it with him as his
companion in his Egyptian campaign, and that in his interview with
Goethe he made it the principal theme of their conversation.
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