“Let us leave that point alone, my good friend,” returned Goethe.  “It is an absurd world, which does not know what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way.  How could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without youth?  If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who had already passed the first sixties.

“Besides, we cannot all serve our country in the same way, but each does his best, according as God has endowed him.  I have toiled hard enough during half a century.  I can say, that in those things which nature has appointed for my daily work, I have permitted myself no repose or relaxation night or day, but have always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as I could.  If every one can say the same of himself, it will prove well with all.”

“The fact is,” said I, by way of conciliation, “that you should not be vexed at that reproach, but should rather feel flattered at it.  For what does it show but that the opinion of the world concerning you is so great that it desires that he who has done more for the culture of his nation than any other should at last do everything!”

“I will not say what I think,” returned Goethe.  “There is more ill-will towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of.  I feel therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have persecuted me, and endeavored quietly to wound me for years.  I know very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim at my character.  Now, it is said, I am proud; now, egotistical; now, full of envy towards young men of genius; now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now, without love for my native country, and my own dear Germans.  You have now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk is worth.  But if you would learn what I have suffered, read my ‘Xenien’, and it will be clear to you, from my retorts, how people have from time to time sought to embitter my life.

“A German author is a German martyr!  Yes, my friend, you will not find it otherwise!  And I myself can scarcely complain; none of the others has fared better—­most have fared worse; and in England and France it is quite the same as with us.  What did not Moliere suffer?  What Rousseau and Voltaire?  Byron was driven from England by evil tongues, and would have fled to the end of the world, if an early death had not delivered him from the Philistines and their hatred.

“And if it were only the narrow-minded masses that persecuted noble men!  But no! one gifted man and one genius persecutes another; Platen scandalizes Heine, and Heine Platen, and each seeks to make the other hateful; while the world is wide enough for all to live and to let live; and every one has an enemy in his own talent, who gives him quite enough to do.