er, and suggest to him. Cultivating different kinds of
excellence, they could joyfully admit each other's merit; connected by
mutual services, and now by community of literary interests, few
unkindly feelings could have place between them. For a man of high
equalities, it is rare to find a meet companion; painful and injurious
to want one. Solitude exasperates or deadens the heart, perverts or
enervates the faculties; association with inferiors leads to dogmatism
in thought, and self-will even in affections. Rousseau never should
have lived in the Val de Montmorenci; it had been good for Warburton
that Hurd had not existed; for Johnson never to have known Boswell or
Davies. From such evils Schiller and Goethe were delivered; their
intimacy seems to have been equal, frank and cordial; from the
contrasts and the endowments of their minds, it must have had peculiar
charms. In his critical theories, Schiller had derived much profit
from communicating with an intellect as excursive as his own, but far
cooler and more sceptical: as he lopped off from his creed the
excrescences of Kantism, Goethe and he, on comparing their ideas,
often found in them a striking similarity; more striking and more
gratifying, when it was considered from what diverse premises these
harmonious conclusions had been drawn. On such subjects they often
corresponded when absent, and conversed when together. They were in
the habit of paying long visits to each other's houses; frequently
they used to travel in company between Jena and Weimar. 'At Triesnitz,
a couple of English miles from Jena, Goethe and he,' we are told,
'might sometimes be observed sitting at table, beneath the shade of a
spreading tree; talking, and looking at the current of passengers.'--There
are some who would have 'travelled fifty miles on foot' to join the
party!

Besides this intercourse with Goethe, he was happy in a kindly
connexion with many other estimable men, both in literary and in
active life. Dalberg, at a distance, was to the last his friend and
warmest admirer. At Jena, he had Schuetz, Paul, Hufland, Reinhold.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, also, brother of the celebrated traveller, had
come thither about this time, and was now among his closest
associates. At Weimar, excluding less important persons, there were
still Herder and Wieland, to divide his attention with Goethe. And
what to his affectionate heart must have been the most grateful
circumstance of all, his aged parent