They fret, and fume, and rage, and pant, and die; "but I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am alone with the stars.

He is akin, of course, to Obermann, to Rene, even to Werther, and, on our first introduction to him, we might think that we had to do only with one more of the vague "renunciants," who in real life followed those creations of fiction, and who, however delicate, interesting as a study, and as it were picturesque on the stage of life, are themselves, after all, essentially passive, uncreative, and therefore necessarily not of first-rate importance in literature.