To this period belong two short plays with songs--“Erwin and Elmire,” and “Claudine von Villa Bella.” Both are brightly written, but--except in the charm of their songs--they have no qualities that mark them off sharply from work of a like kind done by other dramatists of the time. The idea of the first of these two plays is the idea of Goldsmith’s ballad, “Edwin and Angelina.” At this time Goethe sometimes amused himself by writing humorous and satirical sketches, in all of which there is a free and lively play of fancy. The most famous of them is “Götter, Helden, und Wieland” (“Gods, Heroes, and Wieland”), which Goethe (with a bottle of Burgundy on the table) dashed off one Sunday afternoon. Lenz, to whom it was sent, printed it without having received Goethe’s permission. In this prose “farce” Goethe very wittily makes fun of Wieland’s misrepresentations of Greek mythology. So many ideas crowded into Goethe’s mind that it was impossible for him to realize all his plans. For some time he thought of taking the career of Mahomet as the subject of a poetical drama, and if we may judge from the beginning he actually made, the theme as he conceived it would have given full scope to his highest creative faculties. He also intended to write a poem on the Wandering Jew, bringing out the contrast between the loftiest idealism, as represented in Christ, and vulgar worldly intelligence, as represented in Ahasuerus, who was to have expostulated with Christ for uselessly exposing Himself to danger by the proclamation of unpopular truths. Of this poem he completed only a few passages, written in couplets like those of Hans Sachs--a poet whom Goethe warmly admired. Another of his poetical fragments is “Prometheus,” one of the finest of his early writings. The Moravian Brethren, with whom he still occasionally associated, impressed upon him that man, of himself, can do nothing well, and that his aim should be to wait passively for supernatural influences. This doctrine was ill fitted for a young poet who by a law of his nature was impelled to ceaseless effort; and in “Prometheus” he proposed to develop an exalted conception of the power of the free individual mind. The defiant address of Prometheus to Zeus, with which the fragment closes, ranks among the most splendid of his shorter poems. CHAPTER IV.