From an account of a visit to Goethe quoted by Longfellow in “Poets and Poetry of Europe” 1849.

AN OPINION concerning Herder, Wieland, or Goethe, is as much contested as any other. Who would believe that the three watchtowers of our literature avoid and dislike each other? I will never again bend myself anxiously before any great man, but only before the virtuous. Under this impression, I went timidly to meet Goethe. Every one had described him as cold to everything upon the earth. Madame von Kalb said, “He no longer admires anything, not even himself. Every word is ice. Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart.” Therefore I asked Knebel to petrify or incrust me by some mineral spring, that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil. Madame von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from curiosity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only one in Weimar in the Italian style,—with such steps! a Pantheon full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast. At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. “The French are drawing towards Paris,” said Knebel. “Hm!” said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But, at last, the conversation led from the campaign to art, publications, etc., and Goethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned, penetrating, and calm. At last he read, that is, played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice; for I said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft, whispering raindrops. There is nothing like it.