Nature! eternal engenderer, Thou bring'st forth thy children for the joy of living, With care all maternal thou providest Each with his portion, with his cottage. In reading this poem we feel the force of the words of the younger Schlosser in which he records his impression of Goethe at the moment when both first made the acquaintance of the Darmstadt society. "I shall be accompanied (to Darmstadt)," he wrote, "by a young friend of the highest promise who, through his strenuous endeavours to purify his soul, without unnerving it, is to me worthy of special honour."[115] The purification had indeed begun, but Goethe had to pass through many fires before the purification was complete. One such fire was immediately awaiting him. [Footnote 115: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 19-20.] CHAPTER VII WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF MAY--SEPTEMBER, 1772 During the summer and autumn of 1772 Goethe found himself in a society and surroundings which were in curious contrast to those of Darmstadt; and the next four months were to supply him with an experience which, wrought into one book of transcendent literary effect, was to make his name known, literally, to the ends of the earth,[116] and which may be regarded as the most remarkable episode in his long life. It was as "the author of _Werther_" that he was known to the reading world, until after his death the publication of the completed _Faust_ gradually effaced the conception of Goethe as the master-sentimentalist of European literature. [Footnote 116: Werther, as Goethe reminds us in one of his Venetian epigrams, was known in China:-- Doch was foerdert es mich, dass auch sogar der Chinese Malet mit aengstlicher Hand Werthern und Lotten auf Glas?]