er Cornelia was made the confidant of his secret
intention, and apparently no attempt was made to effect even a
compromise between the aims of the father and those of the son. Plain
and direct dealing was a marked characteristic of Goethe at every
period of his life; that he should thus have deceived his father in a
matter that lay nearest his heart is therefore the final proof that
father and son were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged. As
it was, in the course of life which Goethe was to follow in Leipzig we
may detect a certain defiant heedlessness which points to an uneasy
consciousness of duty ignored.

We have it on Goethe's own word that with his departure for Leipzig
begins that self-directed development which he was to pursue with the
undeviating purpose and the wonderful result which make him the unique
figure he is in the history of the human spirit. What, we may inquire,
as he is now at the commencement of this career unparalleled, so far
as our knowledge goes, in the case of any other of the world's
greatest spirits--what were the specific characteristics, visible in
him from the first, which gave the pledge and promise of this
astonishing career? In his case, we can say with certainty, was fully
verified the adage, that the boy is father of the man. Alike in
internal and external traits we note in him as a boy characteristics
which were equally marked in the mature man. In his demeanour, he
himself tells us, there was a certain stiff dignity which excited the
ridicule of his companions. It was in his nature even as a boy, he
also tells us, to assume airs of command: one of his own acquaintance
and of his own years said of him, "We were all his lacqueys." Here we
have in anticipation the aged Goethe whose Jove-like presence put
Heine out of countenance; the god "cold, monosyllabic," of Jean Paul.
But behind the stiff demeanour, in youth as in age, there was the
mercurial temperament, the _etwas unendlich Ruehrendes_, which made him
a problem at all periods of his life even to those who knew him most
intimately. He has himself noted his youthful reputation for
eccentricity, "his lively, impetuous, and excitable temper"; and this
was the side of him that most impressed his associates till he was
past middle age. In boyhood, also, as even in his latest years, he was
subject to bursts of violence in which he lost all self-control. When
attacked by three of his schoolmates, he fell upon them with the