During the month of January Goethe became a frequent visitor at the Schoenemanns, and there began those relations with Lili which, according to his own later testimony, were to give a new direction to his life, as being the immediate cause of his leaving Frankfort and settling in Weimar. If we are to accept his own averment two years before his death, Lili was the first whom he had really loved, all his other affairs of the heart being "inclinations of no importance."[198] So he spoke in the retrospect under the influence of an immediate emotion, but his own contemporary testimony proves that his love for Lili was at least not unmingled bliss. Make what reserves we may for the artificial working up of sentiment which was the fashion of the time, that testimony presents us with the picture of a lover who has not only to contend with obstacles which circumstances put in his way, but with the haunting conviction that his passion was leading him astray and that its gratification involved the surrender of his deepest self. As in the case of others of his love passages, his relations with Lili evoked a series of literary productions of which they are the inspiration and the commentary, and which exhibit new developments of his genius. We have lyrics addressed to her which, though differently inspired from those addressed to Friederike, take their place with the choicest he has written; we have plays more or less directly bearing on the situation in which he found himself; and, finally, we have his letters to various correspondents in which every phase of his passion is recorded at the moment. [Footnote 198: Eckermann, March 5th, 1830. What has been said of Chateaubriand, who made use of a similar expression, may probably be said with greater truth of Goethe, "Il ment a ses propres souvenirs et a son coeur." In a letter to Frau von Stein (May 24th, 1776) Goethe describes his relation to Friederike Brion as "das reinste, schoenste, wahrste, das ich ausser meiner Schwester je zu einem Weibe gehabt."] In Lili Schoenemann Goethe had a different object from any of his previous loves. Kaethchen Schoenkopf, Friederike, Lotte Buff had all been socially his inferiors, and he could play "the conquering lord" with them. Lili, on the other hand, was his superior socially--a fact of which her relatives and friends seem to have made him fully conscious. Moreover, though he was in his twenty-sixth year, and she only in her sixteenth, her personal character and her upbringing had given her a maturity beyond that of any of his previous loves. She was clever and accomplished, and already, as a desirable _partie_, she had a considerable experience of masculine arts. As she is represented in her portraits, the firm poise of her head and her clear-cut features suggest the dignity, decision, and self-control of which her subsequent life was to give proof.[199]