what most interested our travellers in the ancient city of frankfort, was neither the opera nor the ariadne of dannecker, but the house in which goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the barefooted friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old rector albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves, which he annually received as mayor on pipers-doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between alcinous and laertes. thus, o genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star shines forever over the place of thy nativity.
"your english critics may rail as they list," said the baron, while he and flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, goethe was a magnificent old fellow. only think of his life; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;--his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age,--the age of serene and classic repose, where he stands like atlas, as claudian has painted him in the battle of the giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary locks."
"a good illustration of what the world calls his indifferentism."
"and do you know i rather like this indifferentism? did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? if you have, i think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude which the old philosopher assumes."
"it is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. it amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; the dear, dear man! the life-enjoying man! the all-sided one! the representative of poetry upon earth! the many-sided master-mind of germany! his enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of old humbug! and old heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."
"i confess, he was no saint."
"no; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy. you will find it all in a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in horace's beautiful ode to thaliarcus. what i most object to in the old gentleman is his sensuality."
"o nonsense. nothing can be purer than the iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble statue."
"very true; but you cannot say the same of some of the roman elegies and of that monstrous book the elective affinities."
"ah, my friend, goethe is an artist; and looks upon all things as objects of art merely. why should he not be allowed to copy in words what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in marble?"
"the artist shows his character in the choice of his subject. goethe never sculptured an apollo, nor painted a madonna. he gives us only sinful magdalens and rampant fauns. he does not so much idealize as realize."
"he only copies nature."
"so did the artists, who made the bronzelamps of pompeii. would you hang one of those in your hall? to say that a man is an artist and copies nature is not enough. there are two great schools of art; the imitative and the imaginative. the latter is the most noble, and most enduring; and goethe belonged rather to the former. have you read menzel's attack upon him?"
"it is truly ferocious. the suabian hews into him lustily. i hope you do not side with him."
"by no means. he goes too far. he blames the poet for not being a politician. he might as well blame him for not being a missionary to the sandwich islands."
"and what do you think of eckermann?"
"i think he is a toady; a kind of german boswell. goethe knew he was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. he works very hard to make a saint peter out of an old jupiter, as the catholics did at rome."
"well; call him old humbug, or old heathen, or what you please; i maintain, that, with all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious specimen of a man."
"he certainly was. did it ever occur to you that he was in some points like ben franklin? a kind of rhymed ben franklin? the practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing more than the worldly wisdom of poor richard, versified."
"what most offends me is, that now every german jackass must have a kick at the dead lion."
"and every one who passes through weimar must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of manfredi, at benevento. but, of all that has been said or sung, what most pleases me is heine's apologetic, if i may so call it; in which he says, that the minor poets, who flourished under the imperialreign of goethe `resemble a young forest, where the trees first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years, whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen. there was not wanting an opposition, that strove against goethe, this majestic tree. men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest. the adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. the followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not serve as the tree of liberty, or, at any rate, as a barricade. in fact the tree was too high; no one could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the carmagnole beneath its branches. the multitude, however, venerated this tree for the veryreason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.' don't you think that beautiful?"
"yes, very beautiful. and i am glad to see, that you can find something to admire in my favorite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old german saying, that you can drive the hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds."
"here is the old gentleman himself!" exclaimed flemming.
"where!" cried the baron, as if for the moment he expected to see the living figure of the poet walking before them.
"here at the window,--that full-length cast. excellent, is it not! he is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front. what a magnificent head! and what a posture! he stands like a tower ofstrength. and, by heavens! he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made."
"how do you know?"
"you can see by the date on the pedestal."
"you are right. and yet how erect he stands, with his square shoulders braced back, and his hands behind him. he looks as if he were standing before the fire. i feel tempted to put a live coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open. gleim's description of him, soon after he went to weimar, is very different from this. do you recollect it?"
"no, i do not."
"it is a story, which good old father gleim used to tell with great delight. he was one evening reading the göttingen musen-almanach in a select society at weimar, when a young man came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, italian eyes. he in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the musen-almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. `that is either goethe or the devil,' said good old father gleim to wieland, who sat near him. to which the `great i of osmannstadt' replied; `it is both, for he has the devil in him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton colt, that flings out before and behind, and you will do well not to go too near him!' "
"very good!"
"and now that noble figure is but mould. only a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring morning. calm, like a god, the old man sat; and with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years. books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers. `open the shutters, and let in more light!' were the last words that came from those lips. slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write inthe air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man departed."
"and yet the world goes on. it is strange how soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted. but let us step in here. i wish to buy that cast; and send it home to a friend."
