such functions as accorded with his proper calling as a man of
letters and of science. He renounced his daily intercourse with Frau von
Stein, though still retaining and manifesting his unabated friendship
for the woman to whom in former years he had devoted so large a portion
of his time, and employed himself in giving forth those immortal words
which have settled forever his place among the stars of first magnitude
in the intellectual world.

Noticeable and often noted was the charm and (when arrived to maturity)
the grand effect of his personal presence. Physical beauty is not the
stated accompaniment, nor even the presumable adjunct, of intellectual
greatness. In Goethe, as perhaps in no other, the two were combined. A
wondrous presence!--on this point the voices are one and the witnesses
many. "Goethe was with us," so writes Heinse to one of his friends; "a
beautiful youth of twenty-five, full of genius and force from the crown
of his head to the sole of his foot; a heart full of feeling, a spirit
full of fire, who with eagle wings _ruit immensus ore profundo_." Jacobi
writes: "The more I think of it, the more impossible it seems to me to
communicate to any one who has not seen Goethe any conception of this
extraordinary creature of God." Lavater says: "Unspeakably sweet, an
indescribable appearance, the most terrible and lovable of men."
Hufeland, the chief medical celebrity of Germany, describes his
appearance in early manhood: "Never shall I forget the impression which
he made as 'Orestes' in Greek costume. You thought you beheld an Apollo.
Never was seen in any man such union of physical and spiritual
perfection and beauty as at that time in Goethe." More remarkable still
is the testimony of Wieland, who had reason to be offended, having been
before their acquaintance the subject of Goethe's sharp satire. But
immediately at their first meeting, sitting at table "by the side," he
says, "of this glorious youth, I was radically cured of all my
vexation.... Since this morning," he wrote to Jacobi, "my soul is as
full of Goethe as a dewdrop is of the morning sun." And to Zimmermann:
"He is in every respect the greatest, best, most splendid human being
that ever God created." Goethe was then twenty-six. Henry Crabbe
Robinson, who saw him at the age of fifty-two, reports him one of the
most "oppressively handsome" men he had ever seen, and speaks
particularly as all who have described him speak, of his wonderfully
bri