markable
characteristics came into play. With a face and expression which
suggested the Apostle John, he exhibited in society a tact and address
which, at this period at least, did not compromise his religious
professions. Next to his interest in the Founder of Christianity was
his interest in human character, and his divination of the working of
men's minds was such that, according to Goethe, it produced an uneasy
feeling to be in his presence. Be it added that Lavater was in full
sympathy with the leaders of the _Sturm und Drang_ as emancipators
from dead formalism, and the champions of natural feeling as opposed
to cold intelligence. Such was the remarkable person with whom Goethe
was thrown into contact during a few notable weeks, and who has
recorded his impressions of him with the insight of a discerner of
spirits. As time was to show, they were divided in their essential
modes of thought and feeling by as wide a gulf as can separate man
from man, and in later years Lavater's compromises with the world in
the prosecution of his mission drew from Goethe more stinging comments
than he has used in the case of almost any other person.[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. Yet in Lavater's eyes Goethe