Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1888-03-29

40 perceive Dul poor, HcipicsS pouy,
reduced by blast OF wind to weakness
and misery?r How touching is this
request to Miss Porter, 81 shall take
it very kindly if you make it rule to
write to me once at least every week,
for am now very desolate, and am
10th to be universally forgotten"
Mr.. Lewes has thrown discredit up
on the correspondence of Bettina; he
treats il as romance of Bettina's, adj
ding that: "How much is true, how
much exaggeration, and how much
pure fiction. am in no position TO
explain" The book when it appeared
two years after the poets death
threw Germany into a ferment. 1t
was the story of the passionate feeling
with which Goethe, at sixty years OF
age, had inspired a young girl of
twenty, and of the half-tolerant, half
encouraging response he had made to
it. The poet seemed god to Bettina.
This orphan girl, half German, half
Italian, sentimental, mystic, ardent,
loved the poet with all the strength OF
her soul before she saw him, and when
she knew him she worshiped him like
a votary in an abandonment of devo-
ton. Il lie on the ground on the
spot where thy feet rested; l am well
there and nowhere else" she writes.
Goethe answered letters full of such
outbursts in manner that showed
that his vanity was fattered, his i'm
agination stimulated, his intellectual
curiosity (Which was ever on the alert
for manifestations of character)
aroused. "Thy letters" he writes,
"are like braid of thousand colors
which l unbind in order to classify its
beautiful wealth. He bids her go on
confiding her feelings to him so that
he may translate them, put them into
rhyme, use them. Another time he
writes: "Thy letters are read and re-
read with great deal of pleasure;
what my pen could answer fails to
convey the immediate impression they
produce, and to which one allows one
self so willingly to yield; feeling. not
withstanding, that those are all
illusions, for who could reasonably
believe in so much lover 1t is best to
accept it all as dream" Another
time he writes: "Thou art like a
lovely light, softly frightening the
evening of my life" Did the great
man tire of his votary? Did Goethe's
wife cause the sudden rupture that at
the end of four years rid the poet OF
Bettina's rapturous devotion? Long
afterward they met again, just once,
a short time before the poets death.
Of the love letters of illustrious men,
none are more exquisite or tragically
pathetic than those of Keats to his
"leopardess, as the boy-poet called
the woman he loved There is no play.
fulness in those letters. They are
written from the shadow Of the toni
with the despair of an all-absorbine
love, making life rapture.
|, Balzac's letters to the. Comtesst
Hanska, the lady whom he afterward
married, are marvels of expression Of
, the sway of love over a rich nature
/ 81 have in the treasure of your let
tiers, in the no less Incompatible ont
/ of my recollections of you, in my
grateful and constant thought of al
t good you have done my soul by you
| advice, your example, sovereign RENE
t dies against all misfortune; and l bles
, you often, my dear and beneficent star
/ in the silence of the night and in the
t stress of my torments." Balzac ha,
S written few years before to woman
+ friend: Friendship goes further thar
! love; for to me it appears to be tn
t last stage of love, quietness and Sc
t curity in happiness. When low
t touched his heart he wrote no NOR
v of the superiority of frie ndship. Lon
4 don Queen.