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known Bottiger better than anybody else, and I had counted much upon meeting him again and profiting by his great learning.
I was even bringing him a book from Welcker, in Bonn, and was charged with messages for him from Schorn and Froriep, in Weimar; so sudden had been his death, though in advanced years, for he was seventy-six years old. In his particular department,—which was archaeology,—he has left no man in Germany who can fill his place.
November 29.—The last week I have given partly to making some necessary arrangements1 and partly to making a few acquaintance, such as I feel pretty sure we shall be glad to preserve.
In the way of acquaintance, it so chanced that I began with Tieck, who, since Goethe's death, is the acknowledged head of German literature.
He seems past sixty; stout and well-built, with a countenance still fine, and which must have been decidedly handsome, but a good deal broken in his person and bent with the gout.
He has an air of decision about him that is not to be mistaken, and is, I dare say, somewhat whimsical and peculiar in his opinions and notions, as some of his books intimate, particularly what he has published on the English drama.
But I think he is agreeable; and he has a great deal of knowledge, both in old English and old Spanish literature.
His collection of Spanish books surprised me. It is a great deal better than Lord Holland's, a great deal better than any one collection in England; but still, on most points, not so good as mine.
He has been forty years in gathering it, and he has a very minute, curious, and critical knowledge of its contents; but his knowledge of Spanish literature goes no further than his own books will carry him, and in some parts of it I remarked quite a striking ignorance, which surprised me very much until I found how it happened.
I have passed two evenings with him, and, as he keeps open house very simply and kindly, after the German fashion, I think I shall go there frequently.
The next acquaintance I made was that of the Minister of State, Von Lindenau.
He is a mathematician and astronomer by education
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1 Of the arrangements to which he alluded, Mr. Ticknor says further: ‘We have engaged in the Hotel de Rome a suite of six excellent rooms opening into each other, and another quite near them for my man-servant,. . . . and I have engaged a nicer carriage than I could get in London, with coachman and footman. Our rooms are on the Neue Markt, a very neat, lively square, the pleasantest in Dresden, near the palace and the theatre. . . . As to teachers, the number of those who are good is so great that I have been a little embarrassed in the choice.’
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