214 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



than twelve hours after death decomposition had set in. At 

 the close of his letter he remarks : 



6 Groethe is almost always here ; he has just completed his 

 grand epic poem " Hermann und Dorothea." It is one of 

 the most beautiful poems he has written, and proves him to 

 be still in the freshness of youth. The entire composition of 

 this masterpiece occupied only six weeks. He is already en- 

 gaged upon another work. You will be surprised to see in 

 " Hermann " how a simple story of common life may be succes- 

 fully treated in a truly Homeric spirit. Schiller is still busily 

 occupied on his tragedy " Wallenstein." My brother William 

 has finished several of the choruses from the tragic poets, 

 besides the whole of the " Agamemnon " of ^Eschylus : the 

 latter will soon be published. Thus, my dear friend, you see 

 that everything here is prospering. I shall leave Jena with 

 regret: where shall I again meet with such a circle of friends?' 



Humboldt's next plan was to accompany the whole family 

 and Haften to Italy, travelling by way of Dresden and 

 Vienna. Alexander von Humboldt was exceedingly anxious 

 to study while in Italy the phenomena of volcanoes, and he 

 intended after a sojourn there to proceed alone through Egypt 

 to Asia. Probably the travellers would already have left Jena 

 but for the protracted illness of the wife of William von Hum- 

 boldt, whose health had never been quite re-established since 

 the birth of her second son, Theodore, in January, added to 

 which, William von Humboldt and the children were also 

 prostrated by an attack of ague, so that almost the entire 

 household were laid aside. ' And yet,' writes Schiller to Groethe 

 on April 14, ' they are still always talking of the approaching 

 great journey.' 



In concluding the history of this period we may again allude 

 to Humboldt's epistolary treatise ' Sur le Procede chimique de 

 la Vitalite,' addressed to Van Mons, which, as previously stated 

 in p. 197, called forth from the physicist Fourcroy a severe 

 criticism, though of an entirely opposite character to the one 

 expressed by Schiller a criticism however which, after a long 

 correspondence not entirely free from asperity, was considerably 

 softened by the following explanation offered by Fourcroy : 



6 Your discoveries in galvanism are the result of researches 



