one time, we found him in darkness, and now he is in light; he was once
an Unbeliever, and now he is a Believer; and he believes, moreover, not
by denying his unbelief, but by following it out; not by stopping short,
still less turning back, in his inquiries, but by resolutely prosecuting
them. This, it appears to us, is a case of singular interest, and rarely
exemplified, if at all elsewhere, in these our days. How has this man,
to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and
despair, attained to that better vision which now shows it to him, not
tolerable only, but full of solemnity and loveliness? How has the belief
of a Saint been united in this high and true mind with the clearness of
a Sceptic; the devout spirit of a Fenelon made to blend in soft harmony
with the gaiety, the sarcasm, the shrewdness of a Voltaire?

Goethe's two earliest works are /Goetz von Berlichingen/ and the
/Sorrows of Werter/. The boundless influence and popularity they
gained, both at home and abroad, is well known. It was they that
established almost at once his literary fame in his own country; and
even determined his subsequent private history, for they brought him
into contact with the Duke of Weimar; in connection with whom, the Poet,
engaged in manifold duties, political as well as literary, has lived for
fifty-four years. Their effects over Europe at large were not less
striking than in Germany.

'It would be difficult,' observes a writer on this subject, 'to name two
books which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent
literature of Europe, than these two performances of a young author; his
first-fruits, the produce of his twenty-fourth year. /Werter/
appeared to seize the hearts of men in all quarters of the world, and to
utter for them the word which they had long been waiting to hear. As
usually happens, too, this same word, once uttered, was soon abundantly