Sunday, October 19.—­Today, I dined for the first time with Goethe.  No one was present except Frau von Goethe, Fraeulein Ulrica, and little Walter, and thus we were all very comfortable.  Goethe appeared now solely as father of a family, helping to all the dishes, carving the roast fowls with great dexterity, and not forgetting between whiles to fill the glasses.  We had much lively chat about the theatre, young English people, and other topics of the day; Fraeulein Ulrica was especially lively and entertaining.  Goethe was generally silent, coming out only now and then with some pertinent remark.  From time to time he glanced at the newspaper, now and then reading us some passages, especially about the progress of the Greeks.

They then talked about the necessity of my learning English, and Goethe earnestly advised me to do so, particularly on account of Lord Byron; saying, that a character of such eminence had never existed before, and probably would never come again.  They discussed the merits of the different teachers here, but found none with a thoroughly good pronunciation; on which account they deemed it better to go to some young Englishman.

After dinner, Goethe showed me some experiments relating to his theory of colors.  The subject was, however, new to me; I neither understood the phenomena, nor what he said about them.  Nevertheless, I hoped that the future would afford me leisure and opportunity to initiate myself a little into this science.

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Thursday, November 13.—­Some days ago, as I was walking one fine afternoon towards Erfurt, I was joined by an elderly man, whom I supposed, from his appearance, to be an opulent citizen.  We had not talked together long, before the conversation turned upon Goethe.  I asked him whether he knew Goethe.  “Know him?” said he, with some delight; “I was his valet almost twenty years!” He then launched into the praises of his former master.  I begged to hear something of Goethe’s youth, and he gladly consented to gratify me.

“When I first lived with him,” said he, “he might have been about twenty-seven years old; he was thin, nimble, and elegant in his person.  I could easily have carried him in my arms.”

I asked whether Goethe, in that early part of his life here, had not been very gay.  “Certainly,” replied he; “he was always gay with the gay, but never when they passed a certain limit; in that case he usually became grave.  Always working and seeking; his mind always bent on art and science; that was generally the way with my master.  The duke often visited him in the evening, and then they often talked on learned topics till late at night, so that I got extremely tired, and wondered when the duke would go.  Even then he was interested in natural science.