]
With the _Urfaust_, marking as it does the highest development which
Goethe attained in the years of his youth, this record of these years
may fitly close. His characteristics as they present themselves during
that period are certainly in strange contrast to the conception of
the matured Goethe which holds general possession of the public mind,
at least in this country. In that conception the world was for the
later Goethe "a palace of art," in which he moved--
"as God holding no form of creed
But contemplating all."[243]
[Footnote 243: Tennyson disclaimed having Goethe in his mind when he
wrote _The Palace of Art_.]
But such transformations of human character are not in the order of
nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the
youthful Goethe remained essentially the same Goethe to the end.
Behind the mask of impassivity which chilled the casually curious who
sought him in his last years there was ever that _etwas weibliches_
which Schiller noted in him in his middle age. In the critical moments
of life he was in his maturity as in his youth subject to emotions
which for the time seemed to be beyond his control.
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