oundings. In Leipzig he
had been what we have seen him; now under the influence of Darmstadt
he appears in still another phase--to be by no means the last.

From Goethe's connection with the family of von la Roche was to come
the occasion which immediately prompted the production of _Werther_,
but more than a year was to elapse before the occasion came, and in
the interval his own mental experiences were to supply him with
further materials which were to find expression in that work. In his
correspondence of the period we have the fullest revelation of these
experiences, and they leave us with the impression that he spoke only
the literal truth when he tells us in his Autobiography that, on being
delivered of _Werther_, he felt as if he had made a general
confession. The same period, moreover, is signalised by a succession
of minor productions which, though they did not attain to the
celebrity of _Goetz_ and _Werther_, exhibit a range of intellectual
interests and a play of varied moods which materially enhance our
conceptions of his genius.

The circumstances in which Goethe had left Friederike had precluded
subsequent communications with her and her family; in the case of the
Wetzlar circle there was no such impediment to future epistolary
intercourse. He had left Lotte Buff, as he tells us, with a clearer
conscience than he had left Friederike, and on the part of Lotte and
Kestner there was apparently no feeling that prompted a breach of
their relations with him. For more than a year he kept up assiduous
communications with Wetzlar; then his letters became less frequent and
finally ceased when changes in the circumstances of both parties
effaced their mutual interests. While the correspondence was in full
flood, however, Goethe's letters leave us in no doubt as to the real
nature of his passion for Lotte; if words mean anything, his memories
of her were a cause of mental unrest to which other distractions of
the time gave a morbid direction, and which threatened to end in moral
collapse.

A few extracts from his letters to Wetzlar will reveal his state of
mind during the months that immediately followed his return to
Frankfort. Within a week after his return we have these hurried lines
addressed to Kestner: "God bless you, dear Kestner, and tell Lotte
that I sometimes imagine I could forget her; but then comes the
recitative, and I am worse than ever." In the same month (September)
he again addresses Kestner: "I