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So long as Schiller lived the two were closely connected in all such enterprises, and Goethe's practical connection with the theatre led him, perhaps, to attempt the dramatic form of composition more often than he would otherwise have done. In 1799 Walter Scott, then only twenty-five years of age, published in Edinburgh his translation of "Goetz von Berlichingen."
The only blissful tears among many bitter ones that I have wept, were shed over the 'Sorrows of Werther. 'Gotz von Berlichingen' so inspired me that he appeared to me in my dreams, and left me no peace until I rose in the night to draw Gotz, as he sat talking with brother Martin on the bench in the forest. Wait, I will show you the drawing; you must see it."
The boldness of my grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my uncle Adolph's alarm and astonishment. He was unable to understand how I could have selected and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely the most extravagant forms of speech to be found in Lear and Gotz von Berlichingen.
"Certainly; I may say with Friar Martin, in Goetz of Berlichingen, 'The sight of him touched my heart. It is a pleasure to have seen a great man." "Hobhouse was a faithful friend to him?" "His conduct has been beautiful; and Byron had a thorough affection for him, in spite of a few squibs and a few drunken speeches, which damned good-natured friends have always been careful to repeat."
But he did nothing important till after the beginning of the present century, when the starting of the Edinburgh Review and some other things brought him forward; though he showed what he could do by contributing two ballads, "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of St. John," to a collection of terror-pieces started by Monk Lewis, and added Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen to his translations.
'Goetz von Berlichingen' had won its way into favor as a book for the reader. The dramatic works of Klinger, Lenz, Wagner and the like, were for the most part too extravagant and amorphous for representation, and Shakspere's day had not yet come.
Neipperg sent fresh Horse from his right wing, with Berlichingen, a new famed General of Horse; Neipperg is furiously bent to improve his advantage, to break those Prussians, who are mere musketeers left bare, and thinks that will settle the account: but it could in no wise be done.
In those days, the "indemnity" paid and the "military occupation" withdrawn, everything French pre-figured hatred of the German, and be sure "Les Brigands" made the most of this; each "brigand" a beer-guzzling Teuton; each hero a dare-devil Gaul; and, when Joan the Maid, heroine, sent Goetz von Berlichingen, the Vandal Chieftain, sprawling in the saw-dust, there was no end to the enthusiasm.
Since he remained the same throughout, and might be regarded as a true model of a good and steady disposition, the conception of him stamped itself as deeply as amiably upon me; and, when I wrote "Goetz von Berlichingen," I felt myself induced to set up a memorial of our friendship, and to give the gallant fellow, who knew how to subordinate himself in so dignified a manner, the name of Franz Lerse.
He had begun a playful and pleasurable authorship some time before with some translations from the German, Bürger's Lenore and Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen the first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little premeditated, was this beginning.
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