Hyperion

r the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which Goethe was born

e with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leathe

e; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;--his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his s

of what the world cal

seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and pressure period' of his in

him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Ger

s, he was

a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful Ode to

than the Iphigenia; it is as cold

of some of the Roman Elegies and of that

s objects of art merely. Why should he not be allowed to copy in

ver sculptured an Apollo, nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinfu

copies

n artist and copies nature is not enough. There are two great schools of art; the imitative and the imaginative. The latte

abian hews into him lustily. I

r not being a politician. He might as well blame him

you think o

wing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works very hard to

you please; I maintain, that, with all his errors an

ctical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and

now every German jackass must

that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree. Men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest. The adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other ha

in my favorite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old German say

entleman himself!"

e moment he expected to see the living

ellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front. What a magnificent head! and what a posture!

o you

y the date on

ks as if he were standing before the fire. I feel tempted to put a live coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly ha

I do

. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. `That is either

y go

d to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers. `Open the shutters, and let

his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted. But