st question was about
_Wallenstein_. I gave him an account of the impression the piece had
made upon me as represented on the stage, and he heard me with visible
satisfaction.

M. Soret came in, led in by Frau von Goethe, and remained about an hour.
He brought from the duke some gold medals, and by showing and talking
about these seemed to entertain Goethe very pleasantly.

Frau von Goethe and M. Soret went to court, and I was left alone with
Goethe.

Remembering his promise to show me again his Marienbad Elegy at a
fitting opportunity, Goethe arose, put a light on the table, and gave
me the poem. I was delighted to have it once more before me. He quietly
seated himself again, and left me to an undisturbed perusal of the
piece.

After I had been reading a while, I turned to say something to him, but
he seemed to be asleep. I therefore used the favorable moment, and read
the poem again and again with a rare delight. The most youthful glow of
love, tempered by the moral elevation of the mind, seemed to me its
pervading characteristic. Then I thought that the feelings were more
strongly expressed than we are accustomed to find in Goethe's other
poems, and imputed this to the influence of Byron--which Goethe did not
deny.

"You see the product of a highly impassioned mood," said he. "While I
was in it I would not for the world have been without it, and now I
would not for any consideration fall into it again.

"I wrote that poem immediately after leaving Marienbad, while the
feeling of all I had experienced there was fresh. At eight in the
morning, when we stopped at the first stage, I wrote down the first
strophe; and thus I went on composing in the carriage, and writing down
at every stage what I had just composed in my head, so that by the
evening the whole was on paper. Thence it has a certain directness, and
is, as I may say, poured out at once, which may be an advantage to it as
a whole."

"It is," said I, "quite peculiar in its kind, and recalls no other poem
of yours."

"That," said he, I "may be, because I staked upon the present moment as
a man stakes a considerable sum upon a card, and sought to enhance its
value as much as I could without exaggeration."

These words struck me as very important, inasmuch as they threw a light
on Goethe's method so as to explain that many-sidedness which has
excited so much admiration.

1824

_Friday, January 2._--Dined at Goethe's, and enjoyed some cheerful
conve