“How pretty that is!  And never did poet have his talent so completely at command every moment as Voltaire.  I remember an anecdote, when he had been for some time on a visit to Madame du Chatelet.  Just as he was going away, and the carriage was standing at the door, he received a letter from a great number of young girls in a neighboring convent, who wished to play the ‘Death of Julius Caesar’ on the birthday of their abbess, and begged him to write them a prologue.  The case was too delicate for a refusal; so Voltaire at once called for pen and paper, and wrote the desired prologue, standing, upon the mantlepiece.  It is a poem of perhaps twenty lines, thoroughly digested, finished, perfectly suited to the occasion, and, in short, of the very best class.”

“I am very desirous to read it,” said I.

“I doubt,” said Goethe, “whether you will find it in your collection.  It has only lately come to light, and, indeed, he wrote hundreds of such poems, of which many may still be scattered about among private persons.”

“I found of late a passage in Lord Byron,” said I, “from which I perceived with delight that even Byron had an extraordinary esteem for Voltaire.  We may see in his works how much he liked to read, study, and make use of Voltaire.

“Byron,” said Goethe, “knew too well where anything was to be got, and was too clever not to draw from this universal source of light.”

The conversation then turned entirely upon Byron and several of his works, and Goethe found occasion to repeat many of his former expressions of admiration for that great genius.

“To all that your excellency says of Byron,” said I, “I agree from the bottom of my heart; but, however great and remarkable that poet may be as a genius, I very much doubt whether a decided gain for pure human culture is to be derived from his writings.”

“There I must contradict you,” said Goethe; “the audacity and grandeur of Byron must certainly tend towards culture.  We should take care not to be always looking for it in the decidedly pure and moral.  Everything that is great promotes cultivation as soon as we are aware of it.”

* * * * *

Thursday, February 12.—­Goethe read me the thoroughly noble poem, “Kein Wesen kann zu nichts zerfallen” (No being can dissolve to nothing), which he had lately written.

“I wrote this poem,” said he, “in contradiction to my lines—­

    ’Denn alles muss zu nichts zerfallen
    Wenn es im Seyn beharren will,’ etc.

   (’For all must melt away to nothing
    Would it continue still to be’)—­

which are stupid, and which my Berlin friends, on the occasion of the late assembly of natural philosophers, set up in golden letters, to my annoyance.”

The conversation turned on the great mathematician, Lagrange, whose excellent character Goethe highly extolled.