I think I shall tell
you all I know about it, some quiet time after your return,
but if not, will certainly keep a Novalis-journal for you some
favorable season, when I live regularly for a fort night.'
* * * * *
'_June_, 1833.--I return Lessing. I could hardly get through
Miss Sampson. E. Galeotti is good in the same way as
Minna. Well-conceived and sustained characters, interesting
situations, but never that profound knowledge of human nature,
those minute beauties, and delicate vivifying traits, which
lead on so in the writings of some authors, who may be
nameless. I think him easily followed; strong, but not deep.'
* * * * *
'_May_, 1833.--_Groton_.--I think you are wrong in applying
your artistical ideas to occasional poetry. An epic, a drama,
must have a fixed form in the mind of the poet from the first;
and copious draughts of ambrosia quaffed in the heaven of
thought, soft fanning gales and bright light from the outward
world, give muscle and bloom,--that is, give life,--to this
skeleton. But all occasional poems must be moods, and can a
mood have a form fixed and perfect, more than a wave of the
sea?'
* * * * *
'Three or four afternoons I have passed very happily at my
beloved haunt in the wood, reading Goethe's "Second Residence
in Rome.
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