少年维特的烦恼 英文版 The Sorrows of Young Werther
歌德 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
AUGUST 15.
There can be no doubt that in this world nothing is so indispensableas love. I observe that Charlotte could not lose me without apang, and the very children have but one wish; that is, that Ishould visit them again to-morrow. I went this afternoon to tuneCharlotte's piano. But I could not do it, for the little onesinsisted on my telling them a story; and Charlotte herself urgedme to satisfy them. I waited upon them at tea, and they are nowas fully contented with me as with Charlotte; and I told them myvery best tale of the princess who was waited upon by dwarfs.I improve myself by this exercise, and am quite surprised at theimpression my stories create. If I sometimes invent an incidentwhich I forget upon the next narration, they remind one directlythat the story was different before; so that I now endeavour torelate with exactness the same anecdote in the same monotonoustone, which never changes. I find by this, how much an authorinjures his works by altering them, even though they be improvedin a poetical point of view. The first impression is readilyreceived. We are so constituted that we believe the most incrediblethings; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to himwho would endeavour to efface them.