At first Goethe found some difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory relation with the young Duchess. For a time she also was disposed to think that he led her husband astray. She was, however, too frank and sincere not to see things in the end as they really were. She became Goethe’s true friend; and he often had opportunities of showing how worthy he was of her confidence by acting as a mediator for the removal of domestic misunderstandings. With the Duchess Dowager Amalia he never had the slightest trouble. Although the mother of a reigning prince, she was only thirty-six years of age at the time of Goethe’s arrival in Weimar. She was a woman of masculine intelligence, and during her son’s minority had discharged firmly and discreetly her duties as regent. Handsome, amiable, endowed with delicate tact, and taking a sincere interest in art and literature, she could not but attract Goethe; and he in his turn at once gained her good opinion. She saw clearly how wisely he was likely to guide the Duke, and was most eager that he should, if possible, be persuaded to settle in Weimar. Among the residents of the little capital a high place was by universal consent conceded to Wieland, who had accepted, in 1772, an invitation sent to him by the Duchess Amalia, to come to Weimar as the tutor of her sons. Wieland was now forty-two years of age, and one of the most prominent writers in Germany. He had been grievously offended by the “Farce” written at his expense, but Goethe had by letter made some amends for the injury done to him, which, after all, was not very serious; and Wieland had magnanimously let the matter slip from his mind. Now, when he met Goethe, he thought he had never seen any one who was more to his liking. He wrote to a friend that he was “as full of Goethe as a dewdrop of the morning sun.” And the two poets continued to be on pleasant terms with one another. When Wieland wrote “Oberon,” incomparably the finest of his poems, he was enchanted by Goethe’s warm appreciation of its merits. It was natural for Goethe to praise lavishly anything that pleased him. There was no room in his generous spirit for even a touch of petty jealousy.