When in the middle of July, Lavater was preparing to depart, Basedow thought it advantageous to join him, while I had become so accustomed to this rare society that I could not bring myself to give it up. We had a delightful journey down the Lahn; it was refreshing alike to heart and senses. At the sight of an old ruined castle, I wrote the song "Hoch auf dem alten Thurme steht" (High on the ancient Turret stands), in Lips's Album, and as it was well received, I wrote, after my evil habit, all kinds of doggrel rhymes and comicalities on the succeeding pages, in order to destroy the impression. I rejoiced to see the magnificent Rhine once more, and was delighted with the astonishment of those who had never before enjoyed this splendid spectacle. We landed at Coblentz; wherever we went, the crowd was very great, and each of the three excited interest and curiosity. Basedow and I seemed to strive which could behave most outrageously. Lavater conducted himself rationally and with judgment, only he could not conceal his favorite opinions, and thus with the best designs he appeared very odd to all men of mediocrity.
I have preserved the memory of a strange dinner at a hotel in Coblentz, in some doggrel rhymes, which will, perhaps, stand with all their kindred in my New Edition. I sat between Lavater and Basedow; the first was instructing a country parson on the mysteries of the Revelation of St. John, and the other was in vain endeavouring to prove to an obstinate dancing master, that baptism was an obsolete usage not calculated for our times. As we were going on to Cologne, I wrote in an Album—
As though to Emmaus, on their ride
Storming they might be seen;
The prophets sat on either side.
The world-child sat between.
The Brothers Jacobi.
Luckily this world-child had also a side which was turned towards the heavenly, and which was now to be moved in a way wholly peculiar. While in Ems I had rejoiced to hear that in Cologne we should find the brothers Jacobi, who with other eminent men had set out to meet and show attention to our two remarkable travellers. On my part, I hoped for forgiveness from them for sundry little improprieties which had originated in the great love of mischief that Herder's keen humor had excited in us. The letters and poems in which Gleim and George Jacobi publicly rejoiced in each other, had given us opportunity for all sorts of sport, and we had not reflected that there is just as much self-conceit in giving pain to others when they are comfortable, as in showing an excess of kindness to oneself or to one's friends. By this means, a certain dissension had arisen between the Upper and Lower Rhine, of so slight importance, however, that mediation was easy. For this the ladies were particularly adapted. Sophia Laroche had already given us the best idea of the noble brothers. Mademoiselle Fahlmer, who had come to Frankfort from Düsseldorf, and who was intimate with their circle, by the great tenderness of her sympathies, and the uncommon cultivation of her mind, furnished an evidence of the worth of the society in which she had grown up. She gradually put us to shame by her patience with our harsh Upper Saxon manner, and taught us forbearance by letting us feel that we ourselves stood in need of it. The true-heartedness of the younger sister of the Jacobis, the gaiety of the wife of Fritz Jacobi, turned our minds and eyes more and more to these regions. The latter was qualified to captivate me entirely; possessed of a correct feeling without a trace of sentimentality, and with a lively way of speaking, she was a fine Netherlands' woman, who without any expression of sensuality, by her robust nature called to mind the women of Rubens. Both these ladies, in longer and shorter visits at Frankfort, had formed the closest alliance with my sister, and had expanded and enlivened the severe, stiff, and somewhat loveless nature of Cornelia. Thus Düsseldorf and Pempelfort had interested our minds and hearts, even in Frankfort.
Accordingly our first meeting in Cologne was at once frank and confidential, for the good opinion of the ladies had not been without its influence at home. I was not now treated, as hitherto on the journey, as the mere misty tail of the two great comets; all around paid me particular attention, and showed me abundant kindness, which they also seemed inclined to receive from me in return. I was weary of my previous follies and impertinences, behind which, in truth, I only hid my impatience, to find during the journey so little care taken to satisfy my heart and soul. Hence, what was within me, burst out like a torrent, and this is perhaps the reason why I recollect so little of individual events. The thoughts we have had, the pictures we have seen, can be again called up before the mind and the imagination; but the heart is not so complaisant; it will not repeat its agreeable emotions. And least of all are we able to recall moments of enthusiasm; they come upon us unprepared, and we yield to them unconsciously. For this reason, others, who observe us at such moments have a better and clearer insight into what passes within us, than we ourselves.
Religious conversations I had hitherto gently declined; to plain questions, I had not unfrequently replied with harshness, because they seemed to me too narrow in comparison with what I sought. When any one wished to force upon me his sentiments and opinions of my compositions, but especially when I was afflicted with the demands of common sense, and people told me decidedly what I ought to have done or left undone, I got out of all patience, and the conversation broke off, or crumbled to pieces, so that no one went away with a particularly good opinion of me. It would have been much more natural to make myself gentle and friendly, but my feelings would not be schooled. They needed to be expanded by free good will and to be moved to a surrender by sincere sympathy. One feeling which prevailed greatly with me, and could never find an expression odd enough for itself, was a sense of the past and present together in one; a phenomenon which brought something spectral into the present. It is expressed in many of my smaller and larger works, and always has a beneficial influence in a poem, though, whenever it began to mix itself up with actual life, it must have appeared to every one strange, inexplicable, perhaps gloomy.
Cologne was the place where antiquity had such an incalculable effect upon me. The ruins of the Cathedral (for an unfinished work is like one destroyed) called up the emotions to which I had been accustomed at Strasburg. Artistic considerations were out of the question; too much and too little was given me; and there was no one who could help me out of the labyrinth of what was performed and what was proposed, of the fact and the plan, of what was built and what was only designed, as our industrious, persevering friends nowadays are ready to do. In company with others I did indeed admire its wonderful chapels and columns, but when alone I always gloomily lost myself in this world-edifice, thus checked in its creation while far from complete. Here, too, was a great idea never realized! It would seem, indeed, as if the architecture were there only to convince us that by many men, in a series of years, nothing can be accomplished, and that in art and in deeds only that is achieved which, like Minerva, springs full-grown and armed from the head of its inventor.
At these moments which, oppressed more than they cheered my heart, I little thought that the tenderest and fairest emotion was in store for me near at hand. I was persuaded to visit Jabach's Dwelling, and here all that I had been wont to form for myself in my mind came actually and sensibly before my eyes. This family had probably long ago become extinct, but on the ground floor which opened upon a garden, we found everything unchanged. A pavement of brownish red tiles, of a rhomboidal form regularly laid, carved chairs with embroidered seats and high backs, flap-tables, metal chandeliers curiously inlaid, on heavy feet, an immense fire-place with its appropriate utensils, everything in harmony with those early times, and in the whole room nothing new, nothing belonging to the present but ourselves. But what more than all heightened and completed the emotions thus strangely excited, was a large family picture over the fire-place. There sat the former wealthy inhabitant of this abode surrounded by his wife and children,—there were they in all the freshness of life, and as if of yesterday, or rather of to-day, and yet all of them had passed away. These young, round-cheeked children had grown old, and but for this clever likeness, not a trace of them would have remained. How I acted, how I demeaned myself, when overcome by these impressions I cannot say. The lowest depths of my human affections and poetic sensibilities were laid bare in the boundless stirring of my heart; all that was good and loving in my soul seemed to open and break forth. In that moment without further probation or debate, I gained for life the affection and confidence of those eminent men.
As a result of this union of soul and intellect, in which all that was living in each came forth upon his lips, I offered to recite my newest and most favorite ballads. "Der König von Thule" (The king of Thule,) and "Es war ein Bube frech genug," (There was a rascal bold enough[2],) had a good effect, and I brought them forth with more feeling as my poems were still bound to my heart, and as they seldom passed my lips. For in the presence of persons, who I feared could not sympathize with my tender sensibility, I felt restrained; and frequently, in the midst of a recitation, I have become confused and could not get right again. How often for that reason have I been accused of wilfulness, and of a strange, whimsical disposition!