EARLY YOUTH 45 



fetters ! How many fell away from him when he 

 published the Roman Elegies, and again when 

 he brought out the Elective Affinities. In 

 Haeckel's youth people remembered Borne's narrow 

 and hostile strictures. Goethe began to penetrate 

 into the German family as a classic in spite of the 

 general feeling. But the German family was still 

 far below him. He had gradually to lift it up 

 from its Philistine level. At times it rebelled 

 against him, as every stubborn level does against 

 a peak. It was his aunt Bertha that first put 

 Goethe's works into the boy's hands. He received 

 them as a delightful piece of moral contraband. 



Gottfried Keller has finely described, about the 

 same period, in his Green Henry, the effect of such 

 a revelation on a sensitive young man. A book- 

 seller brings to the house the whole of Goethe's 

 works, fifty small volumes with red covers and 

 gilded titles. The young Swiss Heinrich, Keller's 

 picture of himself, reads the volumes unceasingly 

 for thirty days, when they are taken away because 

 his mother cannot pay for them. But the thirty 

 days have been a dream to the boy. He seems to 

 see new and more brilliant stars in the heavens as 

 he looks up. When the books are removed, it is 

 as if a choir of bright angels have left the room. 

 "I went out into the open air. The old town on 

 the hill, the rocks and woods and river and sea 

 and the lines of the mountains lay in the gentle 

 light of the March sun, and as my eye fell on 

 them I felt a pure and lasting joy that I had never 

 known before. It was a generous love of all that 



