He is a mental phenomenon, and, truly, such apparitions are rare in Germany."[61] That Goethe, at this period, should have had such an unbounded admiration for Wieland is an interesting commentary on his pietistic leanings; for Wieland was now in his full pagan phase, so distasteful to moral Germany, as Goethe himself indicates.
"I have already been annoyed on Wieland's account," he writes--"I think with justice.

Wieland has often the misfortune to be misunderstood; frequently, perhaps, the fault is his own, but as frequently it is not." At a later day Goethe clearly saw and marked in Wieland that lack of "high seriousness" on which he himself came to lay such stress as all-important in literature and life, but in the meantime he freely acknowledged what Wieland had been to him.[62] "After him (Oeser) and Shakespeare," he wrote in the letter just quoted, "Wieland is still the only one whom I can hold as my true master; others had shown me where I had gone astray; they showed me how to do better." [Footnote 60: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i.

205.] [Footnote 61: _Ib._ p.

230.] [Footnote 62: Goethe has this entry in his _Tagebuch_ (April 2nd, 1780): "Wieland sieht ganz unglaublich alles, was man machen will, macht, und was hangt und langt in einer Schrift."] What is noteworthy in the serious passages of Goethe's Frankfort letters is the advance in maturity and self-knowledge which they reveal when compared with those written from Leipzig.

Penetrative remarks on men and things, such as give its value to his later correspondence, now begin to fall from his pen by the way.