I asked him if he was engaged on any literary labour at present. He said he was thinking of writing a poem on the subject of Dr. Faustus, and that he had indeed already written fragments of it. I expressed my surprise that he should choose a subject which he had himself told me had already been used by a multitude of writers. He then smiled, and said: “Everything has been thought and everything has been said already. What we have to do is to think it and to say it again. The Greeks,” he went on, “never bothered themselves to search for new subjects. They wrote new plays on old themes. Likewise many generations of painters found sufficient subject-matter in the Madonna and Child. I mean,” he said, “to follow their example. Dr. Faustus shall be for me what the Madonna and Child were to them.” We separated at the gate, after a most pleasant conversation. Herr Müller expressed a wish to see me again, and he told me that he was staying with an artist called Tishbein. _January 6._ I received this morning your letter dated December 18. I shall stay here until the Carnival, and then to Naples, where, they say, Vesuvius is in eruption. The German artist whom I met the other day turns out to be a celebrity. His real name is _Goethe_, and he is the author of “The Sorrows of Werther,” a book which you have probably not read, but of which you must certainly have heard, for it created a considerable stir about (I think) twelve years ago. HEINE IN PARIS _Fragment of an unpublished letter from Lady G---- to Lord C----_ PARIS, 183--. My dear Uncle H----,