1832.] [ 57 -] 



GOETHE'S VISIT TO BEIREIS. 



(FROM GOETHE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.) 



* * * DR. GALL had left us, and gone to Gottingen. We now became 

 attracted by a new adventure. The strange in many senses, long-known 

 and problematical personage, Hofrath Beireis, in Helmstadt, had been 

 often named to me. His environment, his remarkable possessions, his 

 singular conduct, and, still more, the mystery that brooded over all this, 

 had for a great while worked with disquieting influence on my friends, 

 as well as on me. We could not but reproach ourselves that so peculiar 

 an individual, pointing as he did to earlier, almost bygone times, had 

 never been actually seen by us that we had never, by personal inter- 

 course, investigated him a little. Professor Wolf was in the same pre- 

 dicament : we two, therefore, knowing the man to be at home, deter- 

 mined on a drive to this Beireis, who, like some mysterious gryphon, 

 sat watching over treasures, extraordinary and scarce imaginable. My 

 banter-loving friend willingly permitted August, my son, now of some 

 fourteen years, to go along with us an arrangement which yielded 

 mirth enough ; for while the sound-hearted man and scholar made it his 

 business incessantly to tease the boy, this latter felt entitled to use the 

 right of self-defence, which, if it is to prosper, must act offensively also ; 

 and thus often, as the assailant, to overstep the limits ; whereby their 

 verbal rallyings rose at times into ticklings and rompings, favourable to 

 the general cheerfulness, though in the carriage somewhat inconvenient. 

 We halted in Bernburg, where my worthy friend manifested some spe- 

 cialties he had in buying and bargaining : these the young rogue, lurk- 

 ing in wait to catch his adversary, failed not to bring to light, and in all 

 ways make merry with. 



The no less excellent than eccentric man had, for one thing, cast a 

 most decisive hatred on all manner of custom-house officers ; even when 

 they acted quietly and with indulgence : nay, on that very account, he 

 could not let them go unscoffed; out of which habit disagreeable adven- 

 tures were sometimes like to rise. 



As such aversions and peculiarities of his kept us, while in Magde- 

 burg, from waiting upon certain meritorious men, I busied myself 

 chiefly with the antiquities of the cathedral; surveyed the statuary 

 monuments, especially the tombstones. I mention only three bronze 

 ones, erected for three archbishops of Magdeburg : Adelbert II., pos- 

 terior to 1403, stiff and cold, vet careful, in some degree natural, under 

 the living size ; Frederick, 1464, above the living size, more natural, 

 more artist-like ; Ernst, of the year 1499, an invaluable memorial of 

 Peter Vischer, to which few are comparable. With these I could not 

 enough delight myself; for whoso has once been busied with the pro- 

 gress of art, its decline, deviation to a side, return into the right way, with 

 the domination of a main epoch, the influence of individualities ; whoso 

 has cultivated eye and sense on these things, will find no dialogue more 

 instructive than the mute one in a series of such monuments. I wrote 

 down my remarks, as well for practice as for remembrance ; and still, 

 with satisfaction, find these notes among my papers : yet, at that time, 

 I wished nothing so much as that some accurate copy, especially of that 

 glorious Vischer monument, could be procured ; which service has since 

 then been laudably performed. 



Town, fortress, and, from the walls outward, the environs were atten- 

 tively and pleasurably viewed ; especially my eye dwelt long on the large 



