The subsequent influence of _Werther_ was at once more powerful and more enduring than the influence of _Goetz von Berlichingen_, and Goethe himself has suggested the reason. The so-called _Werther_ "period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture, but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled desires. "A sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life every one did not pass through an epoch when _Werther_ appeared to have been specially written for him."[163] The long series of imitations of Werther--_Rene_, _Obermann_, _Childe Harold_, _Adolphe_ (to mention only the best-known)--bears out Goethe's remark that Wertherism belongs to no particular age of the world, though it may assume various forms and be expressed in different tones.[164] But in Goethe's little book the name and the thing Wertherism has received its "immortal _cachet_." To the intrinsic power of _Werther_ it is the supreme tribute that Napoleon, the first European man in the world of action, as Goethe was the first in the world of thought, read it seven times in the course of his life, that he carried it with him as his companion in his Egyptian campaign, and that in his interview with Goethe he made it the principal theme of their conversation. To the literary youth of Germany, we are told, _Werther_ no longer appeals; but such statements can be based only on conjecture, and we may be certain that in all countries there are still to be found readers to whom the record of Werther's woes seems to have been written for themselves.[165] [Footnote 163: Eckermann, _op. cit._, January 2nd, 1824.] [Footnote 164: The _accidie_ of the Middle Ages was a form of Wertherism. _Cf._ Chaucer's _Parson's Tale_.] [Footnote 165: It may be recalled that _Werther_ was throughout his life one of R.L. Stevenson's favourite books. See his Letter to Mrs. Sitwell, September 6th, 1873, [Transcriber's Note: corrected error "1773"] and ch. xix. of _The Wrecker_.]