cki, with a radiant face. "I have to thank you for the most
beautiful and best hours of my life, and I am proud and delighted to
have been able in the least to return the pleasure. The only blissful
tears among many bitter ones that I have wept, were shed over the
'Sorrows of Werther.' 'Gotz von Berlichingen' so inspired me that he
appeared to me in my dreams, and left me no peace until I rose in the
night to draw Gotz, as he sat talking with brother Martin on the bench
in the forest. Wait, I will show you the drawing; you must see it."

Goethe examined it attentively, and expressed his pleasure at the
correctness and dramatical conception of the design, and did not remark,
or perhaps would not, that the artist was busily occupied with crayon
and paper. "How wonderfully you have reproduced my 'German Knight,'"
cried Goethe, after a long observation of it. "The middle ages entire,
proud and full of strength, are mirrored in this figure, and if I had
not written 'Gotz von Berlichingen,' I would have been inspired to it,
perhaps, from this drawing. Oh! you artists are to be envied. We need
many thousand words to express what a few lines represent, and a stroke
suffices to change a smiling face into a weeping one. How feeble is
language, and how mighty the pencil! I wish I had the talent to be a
painter!"

"And I," cried Chodowiecki, "would throw all my pencils, brushes, and
chisels to the devil, or sell him my soul, if I could cope with the
genius and intellect of the poet, Wolfgang Goethe. What a man! What a
profile the gods have given him! There! look--have you ever seen a man
with such a face?" He handed Goethe the drawing, which proved to be a
speaking profile-portrait of himself, dashed off with a few strokes full
of genius.

Goethe looked at it with the air of a critic. "It is true," said he,
perfectly serious, "there are not many such profiles, but I am not of
your opinion that the gods fashioned it. Those sharp features look as
if the joiner had cut them out of oak, and they lead me to infer a
very disagreeable character. I naturally do not know who the picture
represents, but I must tell you, master, that this man could never
please me, although I could swear it is a speaking likeness. This sharp,
bowed nose has something impudent, self-sufficient in it. The brow is
indeed high, which betokens thought, but the retreating lines prove
that the thoughts only commence, and then lose themselves in a maze. The
mouth,