In the spring of 1770 Goethe entered the University of Strassburg,
which was at that time in French territory. It was a part of his
general purpose to better his French, but the actual effect of his
sojourn in Alsatia was to put him out of humor with all French
standards, especially with the classic French drama, and to excite in
him a fervid enthusiasm for the things of the fatherland. This was due
partly to the influence of Herder, with whom he now came into close
personal relations. From Herder, who was six years his senior and
already known by his _Fragments_ and _Critical Forests_ as a trenchant
and original critic, he heard the gospel of a literary revolution.
Rules and conventions were to be thrown overboard; the new watchwords
were nature, power, originality, genius, fulness of expression. He
conceived a boundless admiration for Homer, Ossian, and Shakespeare,
in each of whom he saw the mirror of an epoch and a national life. He
became an enthusiastic collector of Alsatian folksongs and was
fascinated by the Strassburg minster--at a time when "Gothic" was
generally regarded as a synonym of barbarous. Withal his gift for
song-making came to a new stage of perfection under the inspiration of
his love for the village maid Friederike Brion. From this time forth
he was the prince of German lyrists.

In the summer of 1771 he returned to Frankfurt once more, this time
with the title of licentiate in law, and began to practise in a
perfunctory way, with his heart in his literary projects. By the end
of the year he had written out the first draft of a play which he
afterwards revised and published anonymously (in 1773) under the title
of _Götz von Berlichingen_. By its exuberant fulness of life, its
bluff German heartiness, and the freshness and variety of its scenes,
it took the public by storm, notwithstanding its disregard of the