[176] In the
passages of his Autobiography, where he records his first intercourse
with Lavater, though his tone is distinctly critical, of bitterness
there is no trace, and there is the frankest testimony to Lavater's
personal fascination and the stimulating interest of his mind and
character.
[Footnote 176: In one of his _Xenien_ Goethe speaks thus of Lavater:--
"Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf,
Denn zum wuerdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff."]
Relations between the two had begun a year before their actual
meeting. Lavater had read Goethe's _Letter of the Pastor_, and his
interest in its general line of thought led him to open a
correspondence with its author. The reading of _Goetz_, a copy of which
Goethe sent to him, convinced him that a portent had appeared in the
literary world. "I rejoice with trembling," he wrote to Herder; "among
all writers I know no greater genius." Before they met, indeed,
Lavater was already dominated by a force that brought home to him a
sense of his own weakness to which he gave artless expression. In some
lines he addressed to Goethe he takes the tone of a humble disciple,
and prays that out of his fulness he would communicate ardour to his
feelings and light to his intelligence.
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