childhood is simply that of Wolfgang Goethe. For reasons intimately
connected with his own development Goethe finally decided to change
his plan and his title, and to present Wilhelm's variegated
experiences as an apprenticeship in the school of life. In the final
version Wilhelm comes to the conclusion that the theatre is _not_ his
mission--all that was a mistaken ambition. Just what use he _will_
make of his well-disciplined energy does not clearly appear at the end
of the story, since Goethe bundles him off to Italy. He was already
planning a continuation of the story under the title of _Wilhelm
Meister's Journeymanship_. In this second part the hero becomes
interested in questions of social uplift and thinks of becoming a
surgeon. Taken as a whole _Wilhelm Meister_ moves with a slowness
which is quite out of tune with later ideals of prose fiction. It also
lacks concentration and artistic finality. But it is replete with
Goethe's ripe and mellow wisdom, and it contains more of his intimate
self than any other work of his except _Faust_.

During this high noon of his life Goethe again took up his long
neglected _Faust_, decided to make two parts of it, completed the
First Part, and thought out much that was to go into the Second Part.
By this time he had become somewhat alienated from the spirit of his
youth, when he had envisaged life in a mist of vague and stormy
emotionalism. His present passion was for clearness. So he boldly
decided to convert the old tragedy of sin and suffering into a drama
of mental clearing-up. The early Faust--the pessimist, murderer,
seducer--was to be presented as temporarily wandering in the dark; as
a man who had gone grievously wrong in passionate error, but was
essentially "good" by virtue of his aspiring nature, and hence, in the
Lord's fulness of time, was to be led out into the light and saved.
The First Part, ending with the heart-rending death of Margaret in her