It is claimed by Goebel[53] that Goethe's "Homunculus," suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne's mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne's creation. In a meeting of the "Gesellschaft für deutsche Litteratur," November, 1896, Brandl expressed the opinion that Maria of Moulines was a prototype of Mignon in "Wilhelm Meister."[54]
The references to Sterne in Goethe's works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge.[55] Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for illustrations in Yorick's description of Paris,[56] and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refers to Yorick's (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief.[57] That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne's masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830;[58] he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne's gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer,[59] he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne's influence on German letters. A few other minor allusions to Sterne may be of interest. In an article in the _Horen_ (1795, V. Stück,) entitled "Literarischer Sansculottismus," Goethe mentions Smelfungus as a type of growler.[60] In the "Wanderjahre"[61] there is a reference to Yorick's classification of travelers. Düntzer, in Schnorr's _Archiv_,[62] explains a passage in a letter of Goethe's to Johanna Fahlmer (August, 1775), "die Verworrenheiten des Diego und Juliens" as an allusion to the "Intricacies of Diego and Julia" in Slawkenbergius's tale,[63] and to the traveler's conversation with his beast. In a letter to Frau von Stein[64] five years later (September 18, 1780) Goethe used this same expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Düntzer's explanation. Düntzer further explains the word +theodokos+, used in Goethe's Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the term +theodidaktos+ applied to Walter Shandy. The word is, however, somewhat illegible in the manuscript. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Düntzer himself, nine years after the article in the _Archiv_, published an edition of the Tagebücher he accepted a reading +theotatos+,[65] meaning, as he says, "ein voller Gott," thereby tacitly retracting his former theory of connection with Sterne.