SMALL | MEDIUM
What most interested our travellers in the an- cient 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 be- held 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, -177- 
SMALL | MEDIUM which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers- Doomsday, representing a kind of middle person- age between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Ge- nius! 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 re-
turning 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, stor-
my, impetuous, headlong; -- his romantic man-
hood, 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 indiffer-
entism? 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 dig-
nified 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 Poet-
ry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of
Germany! His enemies rush into the other ex-
treme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old
Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pis-
tol-bullets."
"I confess, he was no saint."
"No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philoso-
phy. You will find it all in a convenient and
"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 bronze
"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 por-
trait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works
very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Ju-
piter, as the Catholics did at Rome."
"Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Hea-
"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 ten-
dency of his mind was the same; his love of sci-
ence was the same; his benignant, philosophic spir-
it 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 imperial
"Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see,
that you can find something to admire in my fa-
vorite 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!" exclaim-
ed Flemming.
"Where!" cried the Baron, as if for the mo-
ment 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 cra-
vat crossed in front. What a magnificent head!
and what a posture! He stands like a tower of
"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 stand-
ing 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,
"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 in
"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."