Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/28

14 did not stand high enough, either in knowledge or thought, to form a solid judgment upon it. I therefore gave the author my applause, adding only a few remarks which flowed from my way of viewing the subject. But one was received just like the other: there was scolding and blaming whether one agreed with him conditionally or unconditionally. The fat surgeon had less patience than I: he humourously declined the communication of this prize-essay, and affirmed that he was not prepared to meditate on such abstract topics. He urged us in preference to a game of ombre, which we commonly played together in the evening.

During so troublesome and painful a cure. Herder lost nothing of his vivacity; but it became less and less amiable. He could not write a note to ask for anything that would not be spiced with some scoff or other. Once, for instance, he wrote to me thus:

"If those letters of Brutus thou hast in thy Cicero's letters, Thou, whom consolers of schools, decked out in magnificent bindings, Soothe from their well-planned shelves,—yet more by the outside than inside,— Thou, who from gods art descended, or Goths, or from origin filthy, Göthe, send them to me."

It was not polite, indeed, that he should have permitted himself this jest on my name; for a man's name is not like a mantle, which merely hangs about him, and which, perchance, may be safely twitched and pulled, but is a perfectly fitting garment, which has grown over and over him like his very skin, at which one cannot scratch and scrape without wounding the man himself.