learned German--what is it? What may have been
really good in my case cannot be communicated, and what can be
communicated is not worth the trouble. Besides, where are the hearers
whom one could entertain with any satisfaction?

"When I look back to the earlier and middle periods of my life, and now
in my old age think how few are left of those who were young with me, I
always think of a summer residence at a bathing-place. When you arrive,
you make acquaintance and friends of those who have already been there
some time, and who leave in a few weeks. The loss is painful. Then you
turn to the second generation, with which you live a good while, and
become most intimate. But this goes also, and leaves us alone with the
third, which comes just as we are going away, and with which we have,
properly, nothing to do.

"I have ever been esteemed one of Fortune's chiefest favorites; nor will
I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet, truly,
there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that, in all my
seventy-five years, I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has
been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise
anew. My annals will render clear what I now say. The claims upon my
activity, both from within and without, were too numerous.

"My real happiness was my poetic meditation and production. But how was
this disturbed, limited, and hindered by my external position! Had I
been able to abstain more from public business, and to live more in
solitude, I should have been happier, and should have accomplished much
more as a poet. But, soon after my _Goetz and Werther_, that saying of a
sage was verified for me--'If you do anything for the sake of the world,
it will take good care that you shall not do it a second time.'

"A wide-spread celebrity, an elevated position in life, are good
things. But, for all my rank and celebrity, I am still obliged to be
silent as to the opinion of others, that I may not give offense. This
would be but poor sport, if by this means I had not the advantage of
learning the thoughts of others without their being able to learn mine."

* * * * *

Wednesday, February 25.--Today, Goethe showed me two very remarkable
poems, both highly moral in their tendency, but in their several motives
so unreservedly natural and true, that they are of the kind which the
world styles immoral. On this account he keeps them