he scenery awoke in him
the artist's desire to transfer it worthily to canvas. The whim then
occurred to him to let fate decide whether this was the work for which
he was appointed. He would throw his knife into the river, and, if he
saw it reach the surface, he would take it as a sign that art was his
vocation. Unfortunately the oracle proved dubious. Owing to the
intervening bushes he did not see the knife enter the river, but only
the splash occasioned by its fall. As the result of the uncertainty
of the oracle, he adds, he gave himself less assiduously than hitherto
to the study of art. If this were indeed the case, it was only for a
time, since the contemporary testimony, both of himself and his
friends, shows that during the period that immediately followed his
leaving Wetzlar, art received more of his attention than literature.
Goethe, wrote Caroline Flachsland to Herder, "still thinks of becoming
a painter, and we strongly advise him to pursue that end."[133] "I am
now quite a draughtsman," he himself wrote to Herder in December of
the same year; and he tells another correspondent in the autumn of
1773 that "the plastic arts occupy him almost entirely."

[Footnote 133: November 27th, 1772.]

Yet, since his return from Strassburg to Frankfort in August, 1771,
his literary activity was never wholly intermitted. During the
remainder of that year he wrote the first draft of _Goetz von
Berlichingen_, and in 1772, mainly under the inspiration of the
Darmstadt circle, he produced the poems to which attention has already
been drawn. In that year, also, he shared in an undertaking the main
object of which was to proclaim those revolutionary ideas in
literature, religion, and life that inspired the movement of the
_Sturm und Drang_. In cooperation with Herder, Merck, and Schlosser,
his future brother-in-law, and others, he conducted a journal which,
under the title of the _Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen_, expounded
these views to all who chose to read it. Merck, and afterwards
Schlosser, acted as editors during the year that it existed, but
Goethe was its principal contributor. In the preliminary announcement
to the first issue (January 1st, 1772) it is stated that the reviews
of books will range over science, philosophy, history, _belles-lettres_,
and the fine arts, and particularly that no English book worthy of
notice will escape attention. Of the successive reviews that appeared,
only three are certainly known to be