So under the roof of the precise Imperial Rath, to whom Klopstock's use of unrhymed verse in his _Messias_ was an unpardonable innovation in German literature, the memory of the "drunken barbarian," as with Voltaire he must have regarded him, was celebrated--whether in his presence or not, his son does not record.[103] [Footnote 102: So it was then thought, but the exact date is uncertain.] [Footnote 103: The toast of the evening--"The Will of all Wills"-- was given by Goethe, who thereupon delivered the panegyric on Shakespeare which he had composed in Strassburg.

This toast was followed by one to the health of Herder.] But Goethe was about to pay more serious homage to the Master, as he then understood him.

On November 28th, he informed Salzmann that he was engaged on a work which was absorbing him to the forgetfulness of Homer, Shakespeare, and everything else.

He was dramatising the history of "one of the noblest of Germans," rescuing from oblivion the memory of "an honest man." The "noblest of Germans" was Gottfried von Berlichingen (1482-1562), one of those "knights of the cows," whose predatory propensities were the terror of Germany throughout the Middle Ages, and who appears to have been neither better nor worse than the rest of his class.

While still in Strassburg, Goethe had noted Gottfried as an appropriate subject for dramatic treatment, but, as he records in his Autobiography, it was immediately after his return to Frankfort that he first put his hand to the work.