Clear it is, though, that he scented fine opportunities in Goethe’s relation to him. Suppose he could rope his illustrious friend in as a collaborator! He had begun a series of paintings on the theme of primaeval man. Goethe was much impressed by these. Tischbein suggested a great poem on the theme of primaeval man--a volume of engravings after Tischbein, with running poetic commentary by Goethe. ‘Indeed, the frontispiece for such a joint work,’ writes Goethe in one of his letters, ‘is already designed.’ Pushful Tischbein! But Goethe, though he was the most courteous of men, was not of the stuff of which collaborators are made. ‘During our walks together’--and can you not see those two together, pacing up and down the groves of the Villa Pamphili, or around the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter?--little Tischbein gesticulating and peering up into Goethe’s face, and Goethe with his hands clasped behind him, ever nodding in a non-committal manner--‘he has talked with me in the hope of gaining me over to his views, and getting me to enter upon the plan.’ Goethe admits in another letter that ‘the idea is beautiful; only,’ he adds, ‘the artist and the poet must be many years together, in order to carry out and execute such a work’; and one conceives that he felt a certain lack of beauty in the idea of being with Tischbein for many years. ‘Did I not fear to enter upon any new tasks at present, I might perhaps be tempted.’ This I take to be but the repetition of a formula often used in the course of those walks. In no letter later than November is the scheme mentioned. Tischbein had evidently ceased to press it. Anon he fell back on a scheme less glorious but likelier to bear fruit.