dropped into the well!  The present must assert its rights, and so the poet will and should give out what presses on him.  But if one has a great work in his head, it expels everything else and deprives life for the time of all comfort.  If as to the whole you err, all time and trouble are lost.  But if the poet daily grasps the present, treating with fresh sentiment what it offers, he always makes sure of something good.  If sometimes he does not succeed, at any rate he has lost nothing.  The world is so great and rich, and life is so manifold, that occasions for poems are never lacking.  But they must all be poems for special occasions (Gelegenheitsgedichte).  All my poems are thus suggested by incidents in real life.  I attach no value to poems snatched out of the air.  You know Furnstein, the so-called poet of nature?  He has written the most fascinating poem possible on hop-culture.  I have suggested to him that he should write songs on handicrafts, especially a weaver’s song, for he has spent his life from youth amongst such folk, and he understands the subject through and through.”

February 24, 1824.  At one to-day I went to Goethe’s.  He showed me a short critique he had written on Byron’s “Cain,” which I read with much interest.  “We see,” said he, “how the defectiveness of ecclesiastical dogmas affects such a mind as Byron’s, and how by such a piece he seeks to emancipate himself from doctrine which has been thrust on him.  Truly the English clergy will not thank him, but I shall wonder whether he will not proceed to treat Bible subjects, not letting slip such topics as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

II.—­Philosophical Discussions

February 25, 1824.  Goethe was in high spirits at table.  He showed me Frau von Spiegel’s album, in which he had written some very beautiful verses.  For two years a place had been left open for him, and he was delighted that at length he had been able to fulfil an old promise.  Noticing on another page of the album a poem by Tiedge in the style of his “Urania,” Goethe observed that he had suffered considerably from Tiedge’s “Urania,” for at one time nothing else was sung and recited.  Said he, “Wherever you went, you found ‘Urania’ on the table, and that poem and immortality were the subjects of every conversation.  By no means would I lose the happiness of believing in a future existence, and indeed I would say with Lorenzo de Medici that all they are dead, even for this life, who believe in no other.

“But such incomprehensible matters lie too far off to be a theme of daily meditation and thought-distracting speculation.  And further, let him who believes in immortality be happy in silence; he has no reason to hold his head high because of his conviction.  Silly women, priding themselves on believing with Tiedge in immortality, have been offended at my declaring that in the future state I hoped I should meet none of those who had believed in it here.  For how I should be tormented!  The pious would crowd about me, saying, ’Were we not right?  Did we not predict it?  Has it not turned out exactly so?’ And thus even up yonder there would be everlasting ennui.”