have passed on, wondering not reproaching. But I will tell you
in a word why I like Goethe: his is the only _healthy_ mind,
of any extent, that I have discovered in Europe for long
generations; it was he that first convincingly proclaimed to me
(convincingly, for I saw it _done_): Behold, even in this
scandalous Sceptico-Epicurean generation, when all is gone but
hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For
which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all
other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the
whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic);
but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that
one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth
boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the
fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling
say whether that was a Parasite or a Prophet.--And then as to
"misery" and the other dark ground on which you love to see
genius paint itself,--alas! consider whether misery is not _ill
health_ too; also whether good fortune is not worse to bear than
bad; and on the whole whether the glorious serene summer is not
greater than the wildest hurricane,--as Light, the Naturalists
say, is stronger a thousand times than Lightning. And so I
appeal to Philip sober;--and indeed have hardly said as much
about Goethe since I saw you, for nothing reigns here but
twilight delusion (falser for the time than midnight darkness) on
that subject, and I feel that the most suffer nothing thereby,
having properly nothing or little to do with such a matter but
with you, who are not "seeking recipes for happiness," but
something far higher, it is not so, and _therefore_ I have spoken
and appealed; and hope the new curiosity, if I have awakened
any, will do you no mischief.