Wo die Stürme nicht ruhen,
Bis der Nachen sinkt.
Though my father was a great admirer of Goethe, he seems to have incurred his displeasure and to have been brought into personal collision with the grand old poet. Goethe had translated some modern Greek songs; it may be, as my father thought, without having fully mastered the difficulties of the spoken Greek language. My father published a complete translation of Fauriel’s collection of Greek popular poetry,[[3]] and Goethe did not like comparisons between his work and that of anybody else, least of all of quite a young poet. “Die schöne Müllerin” also may have seemed to Goethe an encroachment on a domain peculiarly his own. In fact, when my father, with my mother, went to Weimar to pay their respects to Goethe, his Excellency was somewhat stiff and cold. My mother, also, had evidently not been sufficiently careful and respectful. She was the granddaughter of the famous pedagogue Basedow, the reformer of national education all over Germany, who had been a friend of Goethe in his youth. Goethe speaks of him in his poem, “Prophete rechts (Basedow), Prophete links (Lavater), das Weltkind (Goethe) in der Mitten.” And he also complains bitterly of Basedow in his “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” as being never without a pipe in his mouth, and as lighting his pipe with most offensive tinder—Stinkschwamm, as Goethe calls it. My mother, when asked by Goethe, “Was für eine geborene” she was (What had been her maiden name?), could not resist the temptation, and replied, laughing: “Your Excellency ought to scent it; I am the granddaughter of Basedow.” Happily my mother was very beautiful, and was pardoned the liberty she had taken. Still, the relations between my father and Goethe always remained rather strained, and all that I find in his album is a medallion portrait of Goethe with the following lines, dated 7th November, 1825:—
Meinen feyerlich Bewegten
Mache Dank und Freude kund;
Das Gefühl das Sie erregten
Schliesst dem Dichter selbst den Mund.
He was on much warmer terms with the poets of the Swabian school, Uhland, Schwab, Justinus Kerner, etc. In the year before his death, 1827, he spent some time with them in Würtemberg, and in many respects he may be reckoned as belonging to their school. The verses which Uhland wrote in my father’s album have often been quoted as a curious prophecy of his early death. It seems that some conversations which he had with the Seherin of Prevorst[[4]] when staying in Justinus Kerner’s house near Weinsberg, had filled him and his friends with misgivings. Uhland’s lines were:—
Wohl blühet jedem Jahre
Sein Frühling, süss und licht,