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For my own part, I may as well honestly confess that I am more partial to the memory of Petrarch as a philosopher, a patriot, and reviver of ancient learning, than as the Werter of Troubadours, though in the latter capacity he has stood unrivalled for five hundred years.
If Byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a British heart, now that the whole matter is no longer new, is indeed old and trite, we may judge with what vehement acceptance this /Werter/ must have been welcomed, coming as it did like a voice from unknown regions; the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge, which, in country after country, men's ears have listened to, till they were deaf to all else.
He would make his exit like Werter, but finally took Raven's advice to dine first, and be miserable afterwards. He was sipping his Madeira, immersed in melancholy musing, when his father entered and requested a rational solution of all this absurdity. "I will leave it in writing for your satisfaction. The crisis of my fate is come. The world is a stage, and my direction is exit."
Of this early harsh and crude, yet fervid and genial period, /Werter/ may stand here as the representative; and, viewed in its external and internal relation, will help to illustrate both the writer and the public he was writing for.
What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them. "The volume of Plutarch's Lives which I possessed contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had a far different effect upon me from the Sorrows of Werter.
It was a gasp. "Dr. Von Werter says you will recover!" His eyes turned from her to that radiant brightness in the September sky. "It is aneurism of the heart. Dr. Von Werter says I won't live three weeks." They were down in Cheshire. They had taken him home while there was yet time, by slow and easy stages.
"Why, Damon," said he, turning over on his elbow, and pushing up his hat to the level of his eyes, "what's the matter with you?" "Oh, nothing at least, nothing new." "Well, new or old, what is it? A man must be either in debt, or in love, when he sighs in that way. You look as melancholy as Werter redivivus!" "I I ought not to be melancholy, I suppose; for I was thinking of home."
John was turning his back on the shepherd's cabin for ever: he was to go to Vienna, to finish his studies there. For the little man had put into his hand three purses full of gold, and had said, "I am Counsellor Werter, favorite of his Majesty the Emperor. Your assiduity in study has become known to me. Work on for aught you know, you may be on the high road."
Priam came out of the house with the bag in one hand and the valise in the other, a pipe in his mouth, a stick under his arm, and an overcoat on his shoulder. Alice ran up the steps, gazed within the house, pulled the door to silently, and locked it. Then beneath the summer stars she and Priam hastened furtively, as though the luggage had contained swag, up Werter Road towards Oxford Road.
That fine young lord was John Durer, first Minister to his Majesty the Emperor of Germany. It had chanced that heavy losses had befallen Counsellor Werter, which brought him within an inch of ruin. Had it not been for a sister left him who took care of him, the poor old gentleman would have been, indeed, in a miserable plight.
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