ramatic supplies.
It was to meet this demand that he wrote _Brother and Sister (Die
Geschwister), The Triumph of Sentimentalism, The Fisher-maid, The
Birds_, and other pieces. Much more important than any of these
bagatelles, which were often hastily composed for a birthday
celebration or some other festive occasion, are the two fine poetic
dramas, _Iphigenie_ and _Tasso_. The former was first written rather
rapidly in stately rhythmic prose and played by the amateurs, with
Goethe himself in the role of Orestes, in the spring of 1779. Eight
years later, the author being then in Italy, it was recast with great
care in mellifluous blank verse. _Iphigenie_ is essentially a drama of
the soul, there being little in it of what is commonly called action.
A youth who is the prey of morbid illusions, so that his life has
become a burden, is cured by finding a noble-minded sister, whose
whole being radiates peace and self-possession. The entire power of
Goethe's chastened art is here lavished on the figure of his heroine
who, by her goodness, her candor, her sweet reasonableness, not only
heals her soul-sick brother, but so works on the barbarian king Thoas,
who would fain have her for his wife, that he wins a notable victory
over himself.

By the end of his first decade in Weimar Goethe began to feel that he
needed and had earned a vacation. His conduct of the public business
had been highly successful, but he had starved his esthetic nature;
for after all Weimar was only a good-sized village that could offer
little to the lover of art. Overwork had so told upon him that he was
unable to hold himself long to any literary project. He had begun half
a dozen important works, but had completed none of them, and the
public was beginning to suspect that the author of _Goetz_ and
_Werther_ was lost to literature. The effect of the whole
situation--that inner conflict between the poetic dreamer and the man
of affairs which is the theme of _Tasso_--was to produce a feeling of
depression, as of a bird caught in a net. So acute did the trouble
become that he afterwards spoke of it as a terrible disease. In the
summer of 1786 he contracted with the Leipzig publisher Goeschen for a
new edition of his works in eight volumes; and to gain time for this
enterprise he resolved to take a trip to the land upon which he had
already twice looked down with longing--once in 1775 and again in
1779--from the summit of the Gotthard.

[Illustration: GOE