and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly
love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly
has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it
better ... Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little
letter--how dear to me I don't tell you--can't tell you.

C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what he
says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which
is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in which, as
a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint and paint
Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is why he loves
her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and weeps. This is
why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes
run over with tears. All creation fills him with yearning and
delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream. When
he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb
it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea! A
rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A hawk
hovers over him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the
stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws
himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers.
He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death,
immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his meditations. He
sees everything in relation to something else. Every visible object
has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does
he feel it all.'

This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes;
it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac.