When he was young, his temper was violent and he fell into fits of passionate rage. His contemporaries have related that when he was in such a condition he would destroy the illustrations and tear up the books on his work-table. These experiences have been vividly described in his famous romance, _The Sorrows of Werther_. I shall give a few extracts to show the exact state of mind of the young pessimist. “It is the fate of some men not to be understood.” “Human life is a dream; I am not the first to say that, but the idea haunts me. When I reflect on the narrow limits which circumscribe the powers of man, his activities and intelligence; when I see how we exhaust our forces in satisfying our wants and that these wants are for no more than the prolongation of a miserable existence; that our acquiescence in so much is merely resignation engendered by dreams, like that of a prisoner who has covered the walls of his cell with pictures and new landscapes; such things, my friend, plunge me into silence.” “Our learned teachers all agree that children do not know why they have desires; but that grown men should move on the earth like children, and, like these, be ignorant whence they have come and whither they go, like these strive little for real things, but be ruled by cakes and sweets and rods; no one will believe such things, though their truth is patent. I admit readily (for I know what you will say) that they are the happiest men who live from day to day like children, who play with their dolls, dress them and undress them, who reverence the cupboard where mamma keeps the gingerbread, and who, when they have got what they wish, cry, with their mouths full, ‘How happy we are!’” Werther proclaimed his pessimism before his romance with Charlotte, and it was his view of life that made his love-affair turn out unhappily. But the fame of Goethe’s _Werther_ was due, not to the tragic fate of the young lover, but to the general views which were in harmony with the conception of the world held by the best minds of the time. Byronism was born before Byron.