...Hartmann into German in the year 1807. There was in Vienna at that time a great orientalist who busied himself with digging out and searching after "the treasures of the East" and presenting them to the Europeans in the German language. This orientalist was Joseph von Hammer, who gave Persian poetry the fullest share of his activity. Goethe said in the first Faust: "Let the rightful gaze turn toward the East" — but by this East he meant the rising-place of the sun, not the lands of the East. And yet the spirit of the East penetrated to Goethe's depths and united itself with every element of his being, working upon him so powerfully that it brought forth

that splendid work of art, "The Eastern Divan of the Western Author." This Divan is not purely Eastern, nor purely Western; it is rather a curious blend that unites the two.

Goethe passed from the arms of one beloved to another, like the butterfly that flits among the flowers — it wearies of one and makes for the next, and so on... In every place he had a sweetheart, and more than one. He left Frankfurt for the first time when he was sixteen years old and entered the university at Leipzig, and he quickly grew at home with its atmosphere and its ways. In that city Goethe came to know the delights of life. Among his sayings

in later years: "We only truly live well when we forget that we are living." In his letters he speaks of this life of his — of his friends, of the concerts and the stage plays, of the banquets, the invitations, and the excursions. He courted all the women and recited his poetry in the salons. Goethe lived to the age of eighty-four, and even during his illness he could not do without a love to occupy him; but his love in that period was a chaste love — from the company of the drawing master's daughter he sought to take gaiety and hope, and the habit of taking from life what pleases and leaving what does not.