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,[1]
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.
- ↑ The German word is "Koth;" and the whole object of the
line is, to introduce a play on the words "Göthe," "Götter," "Gothen" and "Koth."—Trans.
