to which reference has just been made. "If, my dear one, you can
picture to yourself a Goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad
from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare
of sconces and lustres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a
prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in
alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from
concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court
to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-Goethe.... But there
is another Goethe--one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and
boots--who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing
February breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly
opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working,
according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the
innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of
life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his
neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey
paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will
endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher,
because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous
effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into
capacities."[202]

[Footnote 202: _Ib._ pp. 233-4.]

The plays to which Goethe refers in this letter form part of his
intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations
to Lili. In themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they
come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have
passed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some
notice. The first of them, _Erwin und Elmire_, is a sufficiently
trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of
1773.[203] He must have retouched it in January--February (1775),
however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with
the Schoenemann family. As he himself tells us in his Autobiography,
the piece was suggested by Goldsmith's ballad, _Edwin and Angelina_,
and both the choice and handling of the subject illustrate his remark
in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various
things which he threw off at this time.[204] There are four
characters,--Olimpia and her daughter Elmire, Bernardo, a friend of
the family, and Erwin, Elmire's lover. Elmire plays the part of
c