"I have had a superlative, delightful day," Boie records, "a
whole day spent alone and uninterrupted with Goethe--Goethe whose
heart is as great and noble as his mind! The day passes my
description." The other visitor, F.A. Werthes, who comprehensively
worshipped both Klopstock and Wieland, leaves Boie behind in the
exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz
Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof
and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak
and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were,
transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling
and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well
explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the
way to Emmaus when they said: 'Did not our heart burn within us while
He talked with us by the way?' Let us make of him our Lord Christ for
evermore, and let me be the least of His disciples. He has spoken so
much and so excellently with me; words of eternal life which, so long
as I live, shall be my articles of faith."[194] Apart from its
relation to Goethe, it will be seen that Werthes' letter is a document
of the time, bringing before us, as it does, the strained and
distorted sentiment, sufficiently apparent in Goethe himself, but
which he, almost alone of the youths of his generation, was strong
enough to hold in check.
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