Since that summer I read Goethe every day, when I read at all. He has killed Klopstock for me. You are surprised? Now you smile? Aha! You smile that I should have read Klopstock! I gave myself up to him many years,--when I took my walks and at other times. Ah well! I didn’t understand him always. He is so restless; and he always begins too far away, from on high down; always _Maestoso_, D-flat major! Isn’t it so? But he’s great, nevertheless, and uplifts the soul. When I did not understand I divined pretty nearly. But why should he always want to die? That will come soon enough. Well; at least he always sounds well, etc. But Goethe:--he lives and wants us all to live with him. That’s the reason he can be composed. Nobody else can be so easily composed as he. Rochlitz had sought Beethoven with a commission from Härtel:--that he compose music for Goethe’s “Faust” like that written for “Egmont.” The psychological moment for broaching the subject was arrived and Rochlitz made the communication on the tablet. He read. “Ha!” he cried, and threw his hands high in the air. “That would be a piece of work! Something might come out of that!” He continued for a while in this manner, elaborating his ideas at once and with bowed head staring at the ceiling. “But,” he continued, after a while, “I have been occupied for a considerable time with three other big works; much of them is already hatched out--i. e., in my head. I must rid myself of them first; two large symphonies differing from each other, and an oratorio. They will take a long time; for, you see, for some time I can’t bring myself to write easily. I sit and think, and think. The ideas are there, but they will not go down on the paper. I dread the beginning of great works; once begun, it’s all right.”