Green Henry
I remembered Goethe’s Italian Journey which I had read, and Römer told me a great deal about the people and customs, and the past of Italy. He hardly ever read a book except for the German translation of Homer and an Italian edition of Ariosto. He asked me to read the Homer and I did not wait to be asked twice. To begin with, I could not get on with it; of course I thought it was all very beautiful, but I was too little used to a work of such simplicity and on so grand a scale, and I could not persevere with it for long at a time. But Römer pointed out to me how Homer, in every action and situation, used just what was necessary and appropriate, how every vessel and every article of clothing which he described was also at the same time in the finest taste imaginable, and finally how, with him, every situation and every moral conflict, though of an almost childlike simplicity, was steeped in the choicest poetry. ‘Nowadays people are always longing after what is exquisite, interesting and...