Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/316

 298 rank and influence has procured me the enjoyment of many privileges. We had scarcely reached Naples, where he has been residing a long while, when he sent us an invitation to pay a visit with him to Puzzuoli and the neighbourhood. I was thinking already of Vesuvius for to-day; but Tischbein has forced me to take this journey, which, agreeable enough of itself, promises from the fine weather, and the society of a perfect gentleman and well-educated prince, very much both of pleasure and profit. We had also seen in Rome a beautiful lady, who, with her husband, is inseparable from the prince. She also is to be of the party, and we hope for a most delightful day.

Moreover, I was intimately known to this noble society, having met them previously. The prince, upon our first acquaintance, had asked me what I was then busy with; and the plan of my "Iphigenia" was so fresh in my recollection, that I was able one evening to relate it to them circumstantially. They entered into it: still, I fancied I could observe that something livelier and wilder was expected of me.

2em

It would be difficult to give an account of this day. How often has the cursory reading of a book which irresistibly carries one with it exercised the greatest influence on a man's whole life, and produced at once a decisive effect, which neither a second perusal nor earnest reflection can either strengthen or modify. This I experienced in the case of the "Sakuntala." And do not great men affect us somewhat in the same way ? A sail to Puzzuoli, little trips by land, cheerful walks through the most wonderful regions in the world! Beneath the purest sky, the most treacherous soil; ruins of inconceivable opulence, oppressive and saddening; boiling waters, clefts exhaling sulphur, rocks of slag defying vegetable life, bare, forbidding tracts; and then, at last, on all sides the most luxuriant vegetation,