ng forward eagerly to seeing your work
and to our discussions upon it.

If you carry out your idea respecting the choruses, we shall be making
an important experiment on the stage. My piece, too, will, I hope, be
so far advanced by the time you return that I may lay the finished
sketch of it before you, in order to assure myself that you approve of
it before I set about working it out. During the last few days I have
likewise been engaged with the conclusion of my collection of poems.
The stanzas on _Mahomet I_ have also had printed in it. If you are
curious to see them, Goepferdt could send you sheets R and S as soon
as they have been printed off.

Kirms sent me a very welcome today, for which I send you my best
thanks.

My wife sends kindest greetings. May you farewell and enjoy the gay
variety of entertainments by which you are surrounded in Jena. Mellish
passed through here yesterday, and has again taken up his abode in
Doernburg. I hear a great deal about the merry life they are leading
in Wilhelmsthal, where the proceedings are evidently very Utopian. My
sister-in-law met with a serious accident in the carriage, which broke
in two; however, she herself was not hurt. Farewell.

* * * * *

GOETHE _to_ SCHILLER

Jena, August I, 1800.

_Tancred_ I laid aside yesterday morning. I have translated--and here
and there a little more than this--the close of the second act and the
third and fourth acts, with the exception of the close of the two
latter. By this means, as I think, I have secured the worthier parts
of the piece, to which I shall now have to add something of my own
that is life-giving, so that the beginning and the end may become
somewhat fuller than the original. The choruses will be very
appropriate; however, I shall nevertheless have to act very cautiously
so as not to injure the whole. Still, once being upon the path we have
entered, I shall never regret working out and accomplishing this task.

Yesterday I attended to some business matters, and today solved a
small difficulty in _Faust_; if I could remain here another fortnight
it should assume quite a different appearance. However, I have
unfortunately taken it into my head that my presence is required in
Weimar, and I am going to sacrifice my dearest wish to this fancy.

In other ways, also, these last few days have not been unfruitful in
many good things. We have long pondered over a _Bride in Sorrow_.
Tieck,