ppears to him as if the task were hopeless of establishing any
harmony between his own nature and the nature of things. Now he is
filled with an exhilarating confidence in his own gifts and in his
destiny to bring them to full fruition; now he seems to be paralysed
with a sense of impotence in which we see all the perils attending his
peculiar temperament. In his letters to his Strassburg friend Salzmann
we have the frankest communications regarding his alternating moods of
depression and hopefulness. "What I am doing," he writes immediately
after his settlement in Frankfort, "is of no account. So much the
worse. As usual, more planned than done, and for that very reason
nothing much will come of me."[99] To a different purport are his
words in a later note (November 28th) to the same correspondent: "In
searching for your letter of October 5th, I came upon a multitude of
others requiring answers. Dear man, my friends must pardon me, my
_nisus_ forwards is so strong that I can seldom force myself to take
breath, and cast a look backwards."[100] In the opening of the year,
1772 (February 3rd), he is in the same sanguine temper: "Prospects
daily widen out before me, and obstacles give way, so that I may
confidently lay the blame on my own feet if I do not move on."[101]

[Footnote 99: _Ib._ p. 6.]

[Footnote 100: _Ib._ p. 8.]

[Footnote 101: _Ib._ p. 14.]

The "_nisus_ forwards," of which he speaks, had no connection with the
worldly ambition for success in his profession. What was consuming him
was the double desire of mastering himself and at the same time of
giving expression to the seething ideas and emotions which rendered
that self-mastery so hard of attainment. From the moment of his return
to Frankfort we see all the seeds fructifying which had taken root in
him during his residence in Strassburg. He sends to Herder the ballads
he had collected in Alsace, and sends him, also, translations from
what he considered the original of the adored Ossian. But the
overmastering influence in him at this time was the genius of
Shakespeare, as it had been interpreted for him by Herder. Goethe's
unbounded admiration for Shakespeare had already found expression in
the rhapsody composed in Strassburg to which reference has been made,
and to the circle of men and women who had gathered round his sister,
he communicated his enthusiasm. Their enthusiasm took a form perfectly
in keeping with the spirit of the time. Shakespeare's b