ular to do here, and must toil and
struggle and produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and
is active and useful in this. Thoughts about immortality are also good
for those who have not been very successful here; and I would wager
that, if the good Tiedge had enjoyed a better lot, he would also have
had better thoughts."

* * * * *

_Tuesday, November 9_.--I passed this evening with Goethe. We talked of
Klopstock and Herder; and I liked to listen to him, as he explained to
me the merits of those men.

"Without those powerful precursors," said Goethe, "our literature could
not have become what it now is. When they appeared, they were before
their age, and were obliged, as it were, to drag it after them; but now
the age has far outrun them, and they who were once so necessary and
important have now ceased to be _means to an end_. A young man who would
take Klopstock and Herder for his teachers nowadays would be far
behindhand."

We talked over Klopstock's _Messiah_ and his Odes, touching on their
merits and their defects. We agreed that he had no faculty for observing
and apprehending the visible world, or for drawing characters; and that
he therefore wanted the qualities most essential to the epic and
dramatic poet, or, perhaps it might be said, to the poet generally.

"An ode occurs to me," said Goethe, "where he makes the German Muse run
a race with the British; and, indeed, when one thinks what a picture it
is, where the two girls run one against the other, throwing about their
legs and kicking up the dust, one must assume that the good Klopstock
did not really have before his eyes such pictures as he wrote, else he
could not possibly have made such mistakes."

I asked how he had felt towards Klopstock in his youth. "I venerated
him," said Goethe, "with the devotion which was peculiar to me; I looked
upon him as my uncle. I revered whatever he had done, and never thought
of reflecting upon it, or finding fault with it. I let his fine
qualities work upon me; for the rest, I went my own way."

We came back to Herder, and I asked Goethe which of his works he
thought the best. "_His Idea for the History of Mankind" (Ideen zur
Geschichte der Menschheit)_, replied Goethe, "are undoubtedly the best.
In after days, he took the negative side, and was not so agreeable."

"Considering the great weight of Herder," said I, "I cannot understand
how he had so little judgment on