disapproved. "We cannot deny," said Goethe, "that he has many brilliant
qualities, but he is wanting in--love. He loves his readers and his
fellow-poets as little as he loves himself, and thus we may apply to him
the maxim of the apostle--'Though I speak with the tongues of men and
angels, and have not love (charity), I am become as sounding brass and a
tinkling cymbal.' I have lately read the poems of Platen, and cannot
deny his great talent. But, as I said, he is deficient in _love_, and
thus he will never produce the effect which he ought. He will be feared,
and will be the idol of those who would like to be as negative as
himself, but have not his talent."

* * * * *

1827

_Thursday evening, January_ 18.--The conversation now turned wholly on
Schiller, and Goethe proceeded thus: "Schiller's proper productive
talent lay in the ideal; and it may be said he has not his equal in
German or any other literature. He has almost everything that Lord Byron
has; but Lord Byron is his superior in knowledge of the world. I wish
Schiller had lived to know Lord Byron's works, and wonder what he would
have said to so congenial a mind. Did Byron publish anything during
Schiller's life?"

I could not say with certainty. Goethe took down the Conversations
Lexicon, and read the article on Byron, making many hasty remarks as he
proceeded. It appeared that Byron had published nothing before 1807, and
that therefore Schiller could have seen nothing of his.

"Through all Schiller's works," continued Goethe, "goes the idea of
freedom; though this idea assumed a new shape as Schiller advanced in
his culture and became another man. In his youth it was physical freedom
which occupied him, and influenced his poems; in his later life it was
ideal freedom.

"Freedom is an odd thing, and every man has enough of it, if he can
only satisfy himself. What avails a superfluity of freedom which we
cannot use? Look at this chamber and the next, in which, through the
open door, you see my bed. Neither of them is large; and they are
rendered still narrower by necessary furniture, books, manuscripts, and
works of art; but they are enough for me. I have lived in them all the
winter, scarcely entering my front rooms. What have I done with my
spacious house, and the liberty of going from one room to another, when
I have not found it requisite to make use of them?

"If a man has freedom enough to live healthy, and work at