child of the Renaissance. A graceful English song-writer of the
Elizabethan period, Thomas Campion, who was as fond as Bettina of the
figure of the flower and the sun, through which she symbolized her
relation to Goethe, has in his verses anticipated her pose and her tone
of agitated expectancy:

"Is [he] come? O how near is [he]?
How far yet from this friendly place?
How many steps from me?
When shall I [him] embrace?

These armes I'll spread, which only at (his) sight shall close,
Attending, as the starry flower that the sun's noone-tide knowes."

Campion termed his verses _Light Conceits of Lovers_. It is difficult to
weigh Bettina's fancies, for she has, as it were, taken the scales with
her when she closed the _Correspondence:_ but it is only just to say of
her Letters, that they realize, as a whole, Tasso's description of the
permanent state of the true lover: "Brama assai, poco spera e nulla
chiede" (Desire much, hope little and nothing demand).

GOETHE'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH A CHILD (1835)

BY BETTINA VON ARNIM TRANSLATED BY WALLACE SMITH MURRAY

LETTERS TO GOETHE'S MOTHER

May 11, 1807.

Dear Frau Rat:

I have been lying in bed for some time, but shall get up now to write
you all about our trip. I wrote you that we passed through the military
lines in male attire. Just before we reached the city gate my
brother-in-law made us get out, because he wanted to see how becoming
the clothes were. Lulu looked very well in them, for she has a splendid
figure and the fit was perfect, whereas all my clothes were too loose
and too long and looked as if I had bought them at a rag fair. My
brother-in-law laughed at me and said I looked like a Savoyard boy and
could be of great service to them. The coachman had driven us off the
road through a forest, and when we came to a cross-road he didn't know
which way to turn. Although it was only the beginning of the four weeks'
trip, I was afraid we might get lost and then arrive in Weimar too late.
I climbed up the highest pine and soon saw where the main road lay. I
made the whole trip on the driver's box, with a fox-skin cap on my head
and the brush hanging down my back. Whenever we arrived at a station, I
would unharness the horses and help hitch up the fresh ones, and would
speak broken German with the postilions as though I were a Frenchman. At
first we had beautiful weather, just as though spring were c