Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 14.djvu/36

20 20 LIFE AND WORKS OF GOETHE

day the ground of the Eternal City, every breath from

the Seven Hills must have carried to him some thought of history. " Even Eoman antiquities," he writes, " be- gin to interest me. History, inscriptions, coins, which hitherto I never cared to hear about, now press upon me. Here one reads history in quite another spirit than elsewhere; not only Eoman history, but world history." Yet I do not find that he read much his- tory, even here. Art was enough to occupy him ; and for Painting he had a passion which renders his want of talent still more noticeable. He visited churches and galleries with steady earnestness ; studied Winck- elmann, and discussed critical points with the German artists. Unhappily he also wasted precious time in fruitless efforts to attain facility in drawing. These occupations, however, did not prevent his completing the versification of " Iphigenia," which he read to the German circle, but found only Angehca who appre- ciated it ; the others having expected something genia- lisch, something in the style of " Gotz with the Iron Hand." Nor was he much more fortunate with the Weimar circle, who, as we have already seen, preferred the prose version.

Art thus with many-sided influence allures him, but does not completely fill up his many-sided activity. Philosophic speculations give new and wondrous mean- ings to Nature ; and the ever-pressing desire to discover the secret of vegetable forms sends him meditative through the gardens about Rome. He feels he is on the track of a law which, if discovered, will reduce to unity the manifold variety of forms. Men who have never felt the passion of discovery may rail at him for thus, in Rome, forgetting, among plants, the quarrels of the Senate and the eloquence of Cicero ; but aU who have been haunted by a great idea will sympathise with him, and understand how insignificant is the existence of .a thousand Ciceros in comparison with a law of Natura