"I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They
produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that
sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into
the lowest dejection. In the Sorrows of Werter, besides
the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions
are canvassed, and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto
been to me obscure subjects, that I found in it a never-ending
source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle and domestic
manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and
feelings, which had for their object something out of self,
accorded well with my experience among my protectors, and with
the wants which were for ever alive in my own bosom. But I
thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever
beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but
it sunk deep. The disquisitions upon death and suicide were
calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to enter
into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions
of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely
understanding it.
"As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own
feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same
time strangely unlike the beings concerning whom I read, and to
whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with, and
partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was
dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure
was free;' and there was none to lament my annihilation. My
person was hideous and my stature gigantic: what did this mean?
Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was
unable to solve them.