vessel at nineteen.
Indeed, modern literature in our tongue abounds in this element, from "Childe
Harold" to the second and third long chapters in Mrs. Ward's "David Grieve,"
ending with his engagement to Lucy Purcell; Thackeray's Arthur Pendennis and
his characteristic love of the far older and scheming Fanny Fotheringay; David
in James Lane Allen's "Reign of Law," who read Darwin, was expelled from the
Bible College and the church, and finally was engaged to Gabriella; and scores
more might be enumerated. There is even Sonny,[47] who, rude as he was and
poorly as he did in all his studies, at the same age when he began to keep
company, "tallered" his hair, tied a bow of ribbon to the buggy whip, and grew
interested in manners, passing things, putting on his coat and taking off his hat at
table, began to study his menagerie of pet snakes, toads, lizards, wrote John
Burroughs, helped him and got help in return, took to observing, and finally
wrote a book about the forest and its occupants, all of which is very bien trouvé
if not historic truth.
Two singular reflections always rearise in reading Goethe's autobiographical
writings: first, that both the age and the place, with its ceremonies, festivals,
great pomp and stirring events in close quarters in the little province where he
lived, were especially adapted to educate children and absorb them in externals;
and, second, that this wonderful boy had an extreme propensity for moralizing
and drawing lessons of practical service from all about him. This is no less
manifest in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels, which supplements
the autobiography. Both together present a very unique type of adolescence, the
elaborate story of which defies epitome. From the puppet craze well on into his
precocious university life it was his passion to explore the widest ranges of
experience and then to reflect, moralize, or poetize upon them. Perhaps no one
ever studied the nascent stages of his own life and elaborated their every incident
with such careful observation and analysis. His peculiar diathesis enabled him to
conserve their freshness on to full maturity, when he gave them literary form.
Most lack power to fully utilize their own experience even for practical self-
knowledge and guidance, but with Goethe nothing was wasted from which self-
culture could be extracted.
Goethe's first impression of female loveliness was of a girl named Gretchen,
who served wine one evening, and whose face and form followed him for a long