“Shakespeare gives us golden apples in silver dishes.  We get, indeed, the silver dishes by studying his works; but, unfortunately, we have only potatoes to put into them.”

I laughed, and was delighted with this admirable simile.

Goethe then read me a letter from Zelter, describing a representation of Macbeth at Berlin, where the music could not keep pace with the grand spirit and character of the piece, as Zelter set forth by various intimations.  By Goethe’s reading, the letter gained its full effect, and he often paused to admire with me the point of some single passage.

“Macbeth,” said Goethe, “is Shakespeare’s best acting play, the one in which he shows most understanding with respect to the stage.  But would you see his mind unfettered, read Troilus and Cressida, where he treats the materials of the Iliad in his own fashion.”

The conversation turned upon Byron—­the disadvantage in which he appears when placed beside the innocent cheerfulness of Shakespeare, and the frequent and generally not unjust blame which he drew upon himself by his manifold works of negation.

“If Lord Byron,” said Goethe, “had had an opportunity of working off all the opposition in his character, by a number of strong parliamentary speeches, he would have been much more pure as a poet.  But, as he scarcely ever spoke in parliament, he kept within himself all his feelings against his nation, and to free himself from them, he had no other means than to express them in poetical form.  I could, therefore, call a great part of Byron’s works of negation ’suppressed parliamentary speeches,’ and think this would be no bad name for them.”

We then mentioned one of our most modern German poets, Platen, who had lately gained a great name, and whose negative tendency was likewise disapproved.  “We cannot deny,” said Goethe, “that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in—­love.  He loves his readers and his fellow-poets as little as he loves himself, and thus we may apply to him the maxim of the apostle—­’Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love (charity), I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.’  I have lately read the poems of Platen, and cannot deny his great talent.  But, as I said, he is deficient in love, and thus he will never produce the effect which he ought.  He will be feared, and will be the idol of those who would like to be as negative as himself, but have not his talent.”

* * * * *

1827

Thursday evening, January 18.—­The conversation now turned wholly on Schiller, and Goethe proceeded thus:  “Schiller’s proper productive talent lay in the ideal; and it may be said he has not his equal in German or any other literature.  He has almost everything that Lord Byron has; but Lord Byron is his superior in knowledge of the world.  I wish Schiller had lived to know Lord Byron’s works, and wonder what he would have said to so congenial a mind.  Did Byron publish anything during Schiller’s life?”