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XXIV

rofessor Erlin gave Philip a lesson every day. He made
Pout a list of books which Philip was to read till he was
ready for the final achievement of Faust, and meanwhile,
ingeniously enough, started him on a German translation
of one of the plays by Shakespeare which Philip had stud-
ied at school. It was the period in Germany of Goethe’s
highest fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending
attitude towards patriotism he had been adopted as the
national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy to be
one of the most significant glories of national unity. The
enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht
to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark
of a writer’s greatness is that different minds can find in
him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated
the Prussians, gave his enthusiastic admiration to Goethe
because his works, Olympian and sedate, offered the only
refuge for a sane mind against the onslaughts of the present
generation. There was a dramatist whose name of late had
been much heard at Heidelberg, and the winter before one
of his plays had been given at the theatre amid the cheers
of adherents and the hisses of decent people. Philip heard
discussions about it at the Frau Professor’s long table, and at
these Professor Erlin lost his wonted calm: he beat the table
with his fist, and drowned all opposition with the roar of

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