Rough dissonant words in great poets were a trial to him; he declared that those horrid words, Eingeweide and Beschützer, are the ruin of Goethe’s otherwise perfect lyrics.
T. “At Weimar the Grand Duchess sent an apology for not receiving me in person. After visiting Goethe’s study, bedroom and sitting-room, I was shocked by the meanness of the streets, and the horrid smells in the town itself. I felt as tetchy and vexed as Macbeth with his ‘out, out, brief candle,’ a passage so utterly misunderstood by Macready, who dropped his voice and gave the words a pathos that I am quite sure was never intended.”
T. “The Tempest has been dreadfully damaged by scenes intercalated by some common stage-adapter. At one time of my life I thought the Sonnets greater than the Plays. Some of the noblest things are in Troilus and Cressida.”
Perseverance, dear my Lord, keeps honour bright, etc.
T. “Have you observed a solecism in Milton’s Penseroso?
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowed roof
With antique pillars massy proof, etc.”
T. “I do not remember getting from your cousin Hartley Coleridge the Sonnet you speak of, still less can I account for its being in the Library in the South Kensington Museum.”