say, with Lorenzo de’ Medici, that those are dead even for this life who hope for no other.  But such incomprehensible matters lie too far off to be a theme of daily meditation and thought-distracting speculation.  Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence, he has no reason to give himself airs about it.  The occasion of Tiedge’s Urania led me to observe that piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.  I met stupid women, who plumed themselves on believing, with Tiedge, in immortality, and I was forced to bear much dark examination on this point.  They were vexed by my saying I should be well pleased if, after the close of this life, we were blessed with another, only I hoped I should hereafter meet none of those who had believed in it here.  For how should I be tormented!  The pious would throng around me, and say, ’Were we not right?  Did we not predict it?  Has not it happened just as we said?’ And so there would be ennui without end, even in the other world.

“This occupation with the ideas of immortality,” he continued, “is for people of rank, and especially ladies, who have nothing to do.  But an able man, who has some thing regular to do here, and must toil and struggle and produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this.  Thoughts about immortality are also good for those who have not been very successful here; and I would wager that, if the good Tiedge had enjoyed a better lot, he would also have had better thoughts.”

* * * * *

Tuesday, November 9.—­I passed this evening with Goethe.  We talked of Klopstock and Herder; and I liked to listen to him, as he explained to me the merits of those men.

“Without those powerful precursors,” said Goethe, “our literature could not have become what it now is.  When they appeared, they were before their age, and were obliged, as it were, to drag it after them; but now the age has far outrun them, and they who were once so necessary and important have now ceased to be means to an end.  A young man who would take Klopstock and Herder for his teachers nowadays would be far behindhand.”

We talked over Klopstock’s Messiah and his Odes, touching on their merits and their defects.  We agreed that he had no faculty for observing and apprehending the visible world, or for drawing characters; and that he therefore wanted the qualities most essential to the epic and dramatic poet, or, perhaps it might be said, to the poet generally.

“An ode occurs to me,” said Goethe, “where he makes the German Muse run a race with the British; and, indeed, when one thinks what a picture it is, where the two girls run one against the other, throwing about their legs and kicking up the dust, one must assume that the good Klopstock did not really have before his eyes such pictures as he wrote, else he could not possibly have made such mistakes.”