Opinion in Germany had been divided on _Goetz von Berlichingen_, but the conflicting judgments on that work had turned only on questions of dramatic propriety. The questions raised by _Werther_, on the other hand, appeared to many to concern the very foundations of morality and of human responsibility. Suicide, it was indignantly clamoured, was sophistically justified in the person of Werther, and was clothed in such specious hues as to present it in the light of a natural means of escape from the troubles of life. On the ground of these supposed sinister implications the sale of _Werther_ was prohibited in Leipzig under a penalty of ten thalers, a translation of it was forbidden in Denmark, and the Archbishop of Milan ordered it to be publicly burned in that town. There was, of course, no thought in Goethe's mind of recommending suicide by the example of Werther, but he felt the reproach keenly, and indignantly repudiated it. Yet, when a few years later, a young woman was found drowned in the Ilm at Weimar with a copy of _Werther_ in her pocket, he was painfully reminded that the book might be of dangerous consequence to a certain class of minds.[159] [Footnote 159: The judgment of Lessing, who had no sympathy with the effeminate sentimentality of the time, was severe. "We cannot," he said, "imagine a Greek or a Roman _Werther_; it was the Christian ideal that had made such a character possible." Goethe, he thought, should have added a cynical chapter (the more cynical the better) to put _Werther's_ character in its true light. As the friend of Jerusalem, Lessing naturally resented the liberty which Goethe had taken with him.]