irthday
occurred on October 14th,[102] and it was resolved that, at once as a
tribute to their divinity and a challenge to all his gainsayers, the
auspicious day should be celebrated with due rites. At Cornelia's
instance, Herder, as high-priest of the object of their worship, was
invited to honour the occasion. If he could not be present in body, he
was at least to be present in spirit, and he was to send his essay on
Shakespeare that it might form part of the day's liturgy. So under the
roof of the precise Imperial Rath, to whom Klopstock's use of unrhymed
verse in his _Messias_ was an unpardonable innovation in German
literature, the memory of the "drunken barbarian," as with Voltaire he
must have regarded him, was celebrated--whether in his presence or
not, his son does not record.[103]

[Footnote 102: So it was then thought, but the exact date is
uncertain.]

[Footnote 103: The toast of the evening--"The Will of all Wills"--was
given by Goethe, who thereupon delivered the panegyric on Shakespeare
which he had composed in Strassburg. This toast was followed by one to
the health of Herder.]

But Goethe was about to pay more serious homage to the Master, as he
then understood him. On November 28th, he informed Salzmann that he
was engaged on a work which was absorbing him to the forgetfulness of
Homer, Shakespeare, and everything else. He was dramatising the
history of "one of the noblest of Germans," rescuing from oblivion the
memory of "an honest man." The "noblest of Germans" was Gottfried von
Berlichingen (1482-1562), one of those "knights of the cows," whose
predatory propensities were the terror of Germany throughout the
Middle Ages, and who appears to have been neither better nor worse
than the rest of his class. While still in Strassburg, Goethe had
noted Gottfried as an appropriate subject for dramatic treatment, but,
as he records in his Autobiography, it was immediately after his
return to Frankfort that he first put his hand to the work. Stimulated
to his task by his sister Cornelia, in the course of six weeks he had
completed the play which, on its publication two years later, was to
make him the most famous author in Germany.

Goethe's choice of Goetz as a theme on which to try his powers is a
revelation of the motives that were now compelling him. Of the nature
of these motives he has himself given somewhat conflicting accounts.
He tells his contemporary correspondents that the play was written to