It would be very hard to persuade the young people of to-day to read "The Sorrows of Werther." It would be hard to make them understand that for a generation of men, from 1774, when it was published, until this century was well advanced, people of sense and real feeling regarded it as a central and important book, which they valued because it had awakened them and given them strength. The English critics, when at last they found there was such a book, were content to laugh at its exaggerated sentiment. In truth, as Carlyle has well said, "'Werther' expressed the dim-rooted pain under which thoughtful men were languishing." Europe responded to "Werther," because, even in its sentimental languishing, it expressed this pain. America was finding another method of expressing her dissatisfaction in 1774. And it may be doubted whether from that day to the end of the century, a copy of the "Sorrows of Werther" was heard of in the United States, unless indeed the Baroness Riedesel soothed with it the more physical sorrows of the bivouacs of Saratoga, or the barracks of her captivity.
"Goetz von Berlichingen" and "Werther" made the young Goethe one of the foremost men in German literature. That theory of his boyhood, that he was to be a lawyer or jurisconsult, could be maintained no longer even by his father. The distinguished men of letters of Germany made his acquaintance, and it may be said that their company lifted him, very fortunately, from the petty society of persons inferior to him, among whom he was a dictator. As early as 1774 Goethe had conceived the idea of "Faust," and when Klopstock visited him at Frankfort, in that year, Goethe read to him some fragments of that poem.
The popularity of "Werther" was such that it was read by people of all ranks. Among the rest, the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, then only nineteen years old, conceived a great admiration for Goethe, and in 1774, on a visit to Frankfort, with his bride, he invited the young author to his little court at Weimar. Johann Goethe, the father, had the pride of a magistrate of a free city, and had no fancy for a part so poor as that which Voltaire had played, within his memory, at the court of King Frederick. But the office was tempting to the young author, and he accepted the invitation. This ended in his receiving from the duke a home at Weimar and recognized position. To those who study the inducements and encouragements of authorship, it is interesting to know that through all the success, before the public and with the booksellers, of "Goetz von Berlichingen" and "Werther," neither book had paid back to Goethe the money he had spent for their publication. Fame, and fame only, had been, thus far, his reward.