t friends we shall assemble as we wish. If
in the interval you should have some message for me, I beg you to send
it to my address here, for then it will reach me most quickly.

And now I again send the very best of all kind greetings to your dear
wife; may good fortune bring me once more to her side. Pardon a somewhat
distracted way of writing, indicative of packing.

* * * * *

GOETHE TO WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT

October 22, 1826.

Your letter and package, most honored friend, gave me a very welcome
token of your continuous remembrance and friendly sympathy. I wish,
however, that I might have received an equal assurance of your good
health. For my own part, I cannot complain; a ship that is no longer a
deep-sea sailer may perhaps still be useful as a coaster.

I have passed the entire summer at home, laboring undisturbed at editing
my works. Possibly you still remember, my dearest friend, a dramatic
_Helena_, which was to appear in the second part of _Faust_. From
Schiller's letters at the beginning of the century I see that I showed
him the commencement of it, and also that he, with true friendship,
counseled me to continue it. It is one of my oldest conceptions, resting
on the marionette tradition that Faust compelled Mephistopheles to
produce Helen of Troy for his nuptials. From time to time I have
continued to work on it, but the piece could not be completed except in
the fulness of time, for its action has now covered three thousand
years, from the fall of Troy to the capture of Missolonghi. This can,
therefore, also be regarded as a unity of time in the higher sense of
the term; the unities of place and action are, however, likewise most
carefully regarded in the usual acceptation of the word. It appears
under the title:

Helena

Classico-Romantic Phantasmagoria.

Interlude to Faust.

This says little indeed, and yet enough, I hope, to direct your
attention more vividly to the first instalment of my works which I hope
to present at Easter.

I next ask, with more confidence, whether perchance you still remember
an epic poem which I had in mind immediately after the completion of
_Hermann and Dorothea_--in a modern hunt a tiger and a lion were
concerned. At the time you dissuaded me from elaborating the idea, and I
abandoned it; now, in searching through old papers, I find the plot
again, and cannot refrain from executing it in prose; for it may then
pass a