"Old woman that lives under the hill,
And if she's not gone she lives there still."
It will not take a very great-granddaughter of hers to be in at
the death of Time.
We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives.
Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance.
To write a true work of fiction even, is only to take leisure and
liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are. A true
account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense
always takes a hasty and superficial view. Though I am not much
acquainted with the works of Goethe, I should say that it was one
of his chief excellences as a writer, that he was satisfied with
giving an exact description of things as they appeared to him,
and their effect upon him. Most travellers have not self-respect
enough to do this simply, and make objects and events stand
around them as the centre, but still imagine more favorable
positions and relations than the actual ones, and so we get no
valuable report from them at all. In his Italian Travels Goethe
jogs along at a snail's pace, but always mindful that the earth
is beneath and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not
merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of
splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by
the sun, and nightly by the moon.
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