In his twenty-third year appeared _Goetz von Berlichingen_, the firstling of a pen, which, in the following sixty years, filled as many volumes with works of almost every form wherein literature embodies itself, a series of boundless wealth and unequalled excellence, to gain access to which, a year were well spent in daily labor to master the fine language it enriches. Two years later, appeared _Werter_, an agonizing picture of passion, which, like the first crude outburst of Schiller's genius, shot a thrill through the then agitated mind of Germany, and which Goethe afterwards, in the tranquillity of his purified faculties, looked back upon as a curious literary phenomenon. This work has never been directly translated into English (and a good translation of it were no easy achievement,) the book called "The Sorrows of Werter" being a translation of a French version, that does not give even the title of the original, which is, "The Sufferings of the Young Werther." And yet, by this doubly distorted image of a youthful ebullition, was the Protean giant for a long while measured in England, and through England, in America. Soon after the publication of Werter, Goethe was invited to Weimar, where, honored and conferring honor, he lived the rest of his long and fruitful life. Appointed at once a member, he in a few years became president of the Council of State; and finally, after his return from Italy, at about the age of forty he was made one of the Grand Duke's Ministers, a post he for many years held. Directing the establishment and arrangement of museums, libraries, art-exhibitions, and theatrical representations, he contributed directly by practical labors, as well as by the brilliancy which the products of his pen shed upon his place of abode, to the fame and prosperity of Weimar.