Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/283

 “What can be expected,” said I to him, “from a five-act play, finished in four weeks?”

“I mean to dedicate Werner,” said he, “to Goëthe. I look upon him as the greatest genius that the age has produced. I desired Murray to inscribe his name to a former work; but he pretends my letter containing the order came too late.—It would have been more worthy of him than this.”



“I have a great curiosity about every thing relating to Goëthe, and please myself with thinking there is some analogy between our characters and writings. So much interest do I take in him, that I offered to give 100l. to any person who would translate his ‘Memoirs,’ for my own reading. Shelley has sometimes explained part of them to me. He seems to be very superstitious, and is a believer in astrology,—or rather was, for he was very young when he wrote the first part of his Life. I would give the world to read ‘Faust’ in the original.