" Yet, perhaps, it is not fanciful to regret that
his proposed [197] meeting with Goethe never took place.
Goethe, then in all the pregnancy of his wonderful youth, still
unruffled by the "press and storm" of his earlier manhood, was
awaiting Winckelmann with a curiosity of the worthiest kind. As
it was, Winckelmann became to him something like what Virgil
was to Dante. And Winckelmann, with his fiery friendships, had
reached that age and that period of culture at which emotions
hitherto fitful, sometimes concentrate themselves in a vital,
unchangeable relationship. German literary history seems to
have lost the chance of one of those famous friendships, the very
tradition of which becomes a stimulus to culture, and exercises an
imperishable influence.
In one of the frescoes of the Vatican, Raphael has commemorated
the tradition of the Catholic religion. Against a space of tranquil
sky, broken in upon by the beatific vision, are ranged the great
personages of Christian history, with the Sacrament in the midst.
Another fresco of Raphael in the same apartment presents a very
different company, Dante alone appearing in both. Surrounded
by the muses of Greek mythology, under a thicket of laurel, sits
Apollo, with the sources of Castalia at his feet. On either side are
grouped those on whom the spirit of Apollo descended, the
classical and Renaissance poets, to whom the waters of Castalia
[198] come down, a river making glad this other "city of God.
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