fallen day
about them. No pilgrim had wandered with a richer enthusiasm along those
highways and those great storied spaces. It is pleasing to watch in what
deep draughts Goethe drank Rome in. But--but--I fancy that now in his
second year of sojourn he tended to remain within the city walls, caring
less than of yore for the Campagna; and I suspect that if ever he did
stray out there he averted his eyes from anything in the nature of a
ruined temple. Of one thing I am sure. The huge canvas in the studio had
its face to the wall. There is never a reference to it by Goethe in
any letter after that of June 27th. But I surmise that its nearness
continually worked on him, and that sometimes, when no one was by, he
all unwillingly approached it, he moved it out into a good light and,
stepping back, gazed at it for a long time. And I wonder that Tischbein
was not shamed, telepathically, to return.

What was it that had made Tischbein--not once, but thrice--abandon
Goethe? We have no right to suppose he had plotted to avenge himself
for the poet's refusal to collaborate with him on the theme of primaeval
man. A likelier explanation is merely that Goethe, as I have suggested,
irked him. Forty years elapsed before Goethe collected his letters
from Italy and made a book of them; and in this book he included--how
magnanimous old men are!--several letters written to him from Naples by
his deserter. These are shallow but vivid documents--the effusions of
one for whom the visible world suffices. I take it that Tischbein was an
'historic' painter because no ambitious painter in those days wasn't.
In Goethe the historic sense was as innate as the aesthetic; so was
the ethical sense; so was the scientific sense; and the three of them,
forever cropping up in his discourse, may well be understood to have
been too much for the simple Tischbein. But, you ask, can mere boredom
make a man act so cruelly as this man acted? Well, there may have been
another cause, and a more interesting one. I have mentioned that Goethe
and Tischbein visited our Ambassador in Naples. His Excellency was at
that time a widower, but his establishment was already graced by his
future wife, Miss Emma Harte, whose beauty is so well known to us all.
'Tischbein,' wrote Goethe a few days afterwards, 'is engaged in painting
her.' Later in the year, Tischbein, soon after his return to Naples,
sent to Goethe a sketch for a painting he had now done of Miss Harte
as Iphigenia