GOETHE AND SCHILLER
Brocket Hall, 15th May 1842.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He is very sorry indeed, and entreats your Majesty's pardon for his great omission on Monday evening. He was never told that he was to pass before your Majesty at the beginning; at the same time he admits that it was a blundering piece of stupidity not to find this out of himself. After this he never saw the glimmer of a chance of being able to get near to your Majesty.
Lord Melbourne wonders much who could have whispered to your Majesty that he felt or expressed anything but the most unqualified admiration of the ball, which was the most magnificent and beautiful spectacle that he ever beheld. Lord Melbourne also believes it to be very popular, for the reasons which your Majesty mentions.
Your Majesty having generally chosen handsome and attractive girls for the Maids of Honour, which is very right, must expect to lose them in this way. Lord Melbourne is very glad of the marriage. Lord Emlyn30 always seemed to him a very pleasing young man, and well calculated to make a woman happy.
Lord Melbourne felt quite sure that there had been a mistake about Ben Stanley, which was the reason that he mentioned his name. He is sorry that he has made a fool of himself by writing. Having had so much to do with invitations during the two last years, he was not altogether unnaturally mortified to find himself not invited there.31 Stanley is not a man to whom Lord Melbourne is very partial, but we must give every one his due. Lord Melbourne always discourages to the utmost of his power the notion of any one's having a right or claim to be asked, which notion, however, has a strong possession of the minds of people in general.
Lord Melbourne is come down here again, being determined to see this spring thoroughly and completely. His feelings are like those, so beautifully described by Schiller, of Max Piccolomini,32 when, after a youth passed entirely in war, he for the first time sees a country which has enjoyed the blessings of peace. The Germans seem to Lord Melbourne generally to prefer Goethe to Schiller, a decision which surprises him, although he feels that he has no right to dictate to a people, of whose language he does not understand a word, their judgment upon their own authors. But the one, Schiller, seems to him to be all truth, clearness, nature and beauty; the other, principally mysticism, obscurity, and unintelligibility.
Lord Melbourne intends to return on Wednesday, and will have the honour and pleasure of waiting upon your Majesty on Thursday.
Footnote 30: The second Earl Cawdor, who married Miss Sarah Mary Cavendish.
Footnote 31: Edward John, afterwards second Lord Stanley of Alderley, was nicknamed Ben, after "Sir Benjamin Backbite." He had mentioned to Lord Melbourne that he was disappointed at not receiving an invitation to the Royal Ball.