Goethe, we may be sure, was restrained by pride from any show of wrath. Pride compelled him to make light of the matter in his epistles to the Weimarians. Even Kniep he accepted with a good grace, though not without misgivings. He needed a man who would execute for him sketches and paintings of all that in the districts passed through was worthy of record. He had already ‘heard Kniep highly spoken of as a clever draughtsman--only his industry was not much commended.’ Our hearts sink. ‘I have tolerably studied his character, and think the ground of this censure arises rather from a want of decision, which may certainly be overcome, if we are long together.’ Our hearts sink lower. Kniep will never do. Kniep will play the deuce, we are sure of it. And yet (such is life) Kniep turns out very well. Throughout the Sicilian tour Goethe gives the rosiest reports of the young man’s cheerful ways and strict attention to the business of sketching. It may be that these reports were coloured partly by a desire to set Tischbein down. But there seems to be no doubt that Goethe liked Kniep greatly and rejoiced in the quantity and quality of his work. At Palermo, one evening, Goethe sat reading Homer and ‘making an impromptu translation for the benefit of Kniep, who had well deserved by his diligent exertions this day some agreeable refreshment over a glass of wine.’ This is a pleasing little scene, and is typical of the whole tour. In the middle of May, Goethe returned Naples. And lo!--Tischbein was not there to receive him. Tischbein, if you please, had skipped back to Rome, bidding his Neapolitan friends look to his great compatriot. Pride again forbade Goethe to show displeasure, and again our reading has to be done between the lines. In the first week of June he was once more in Rome. I can imagine with what high courtesy, as though there were nothing to rebuke, he treated Tischbein. But it is possible that his manner would have been less perfect had the portrait not been unfinished. His sittings were resumed. It seems that Signora Zucchi, better known to the world as Angelica Kauffmann, had also begun to paint him. But, great as was Goethe’s esteem for the mind of that nice woman, he set no store on this fluttering attempt of hers: ‘her picture is a pretty fellow, to be sure, but not a trace of me.’ It was by the large and firm ‘historic’ mode of Tischbein that he, not exactly in his habit as he lived, but in the white mantle that so well became him, and on the worthy throne of that fallen obelisk, was to be handed down to the gaze of future ages. Was to be, yes. On June 27th he reports that Tischbein’s work ‘is succeeding happily; the likeness is striking, and the conception pleases everybody.’ Three days later: ‘Tischbein goes to Naples.’