1804, Frühjahr.
Mit Benjamin Constant de Rebecque
[Cogswell schreibt 1817 von Göttingen aus einem Freunde:]
When Benjamin Constant, the French littérateur, during his stay at the court of Weimar called upon Goethe, he began in the style of a true Frenchman... to load him with flattery, saying that the world was wondering at the stupendous productions of his genius, that he had secured to himself immortal fame &c. Then Goethe is reported to have turned his large, fiery eyes upon Constant, and to have replied: »I know it, I know all that, I know too that the world regards me as a carpenter, who has built a ship of war, of the first rate, upon a mountain, thousand of miles from the ocean – but the water will rise, my ship will float, ant bear her builder in triumph where human genius never reached before.«