“Mind, above all, you stick to words,
  Thus through the safe gate you will go
  Into the fane of certainty;
  For when ideas begin to fail
  A word will aptly serve your turn,” etc.

Goethe recited this passage laughing, and seemed altogether in the best humor.  “It is a good thing,” said he, “that all is already in print, and I shall go on printing as long as I have anything to say against false doctrine, and those who disseminate it.

“We have now excellent men rising up in natural science,” he continued, after a pause, “and I am glad to see them.  Others begin well, but afterwards fall off; their predominating subjectivity leads them astray.  Others, again, set too much value on facts, and collect an infinite number, by which nothing is proved.  On the whole, there is a want of originating mind to penetrate back to the original phenomena, and master the particulars that make their appearance.”

A short visit interrupted our discourse, but when we were again alone the conversation returned to poetry, and I told Goethe that I had of late been once more studying his little poems, and had dwelt especially upon two of them, viz., the ballad[20] about the children and the old man, and the “Happy Couple” (die gluecklichen Gatten).

“I myself set some value on these two poems,” said Goethe, “although the German public have hitherto not been able to make much out of them.”

“In the ballad,” I said, “a very copious subject is brought into a very limited compass, by means of all sorts of poetical forms and artifices, among which I especially praise the expedient of making the old man tell the children’s past history down to the point where the present moment comes in, and the rest is developed before our eyes.”

“I carried the ballad a long time about in my head,” said Goethe, “before I wrote it down.  Whole years of reflection are comprised in it, and I made three or four trials before I could reduce it to its present shape.”

“The poem of the ‘Happy Couple,’” continued Goethe, “is likewise rich in motives; whole landscapes and passages of human life appear in it, warmed by the sunlight of a charming spring sky, which is diffused over the whole.”

“I have always liked that poem,” said Goethe, “and I am glad that you have regarded it with particular interest.  The ending of the whole pleasantry with a double christening is, I think, pretty enough.”

We then came to the Buergergeneral (Citizengeneral); with respect to which I said that I had been lately reading this piece with an Englishman, and that we had both felt the strongest desire to see it represented on the stage.  “As far as the spirit of the work is concerned,” said I, “there is nothing antiquated about it; and with respect to the details of dramatic development, there is not a touch that does not seem designed for the stage.”

“It was a very good piece in its time,” said Goethe, “and caused us many a pleasant evening.  It was, indeed, excellently cast, and had been so admirably studied that the dialogue moved along as glibly as possible.  Malcolmi played Maerten, and nothing could be more perfect.