Johann Caspar Goethe, the poet's father, was the son of a prosperous
tailor, who was also a tailor's son. Having abundant means and being
of an ambitious turn, Johann Caspar prepared himself for the
profession of law, spent some time in Italy, and then settled in
Frankfurt in the hope of rising to distinction in the public service.
Disappointed in this hope, he procured the imperial title of
Councilor, which gave him a dignified social status but nothing in
particular to do. He thus became virtually a gentleman of leisure,
since his law practise was quite insignificant. In 1748 he married
Katharina Elisabeth Textor, whose father, Johann Wolfgang Textor, was
the town's chief magistrate and most eminent citizen. She was eighteen
years old at the time of her marriage--twenty years younger than her
husband--and well fitted to become a poet's mother. The gift on which
she especially prided herself was her story-telling. Wolfgang was the
first child of these parents.

The paternal strain in Goethe's blood made for level-headedness,
precise and methodical ways, a serious view of life, and a desire to
make the most of it. By his mother he was a poet who liked nothing
else so well as to invent dream-worlds and commune with the spirits of
his imagination. He also ascribes to his mother his _Frohnatur_, his
joyous nature. And certain it is that his temperament was on the whole
sunny. As he grew to manhood men and women alike were charmed by him.
He became a virtuoso in love and had a genius for friendship. But he
was not always cheerful. In his youth, particularly, he was often
moody and given to brooding over indefinable woes. He suffered acutely
at times from what is now called the melancholia of adolescence. This
was a phase of that emotional sensitiveness and nervous instability
which are nearly always a part of the poet's dower.