Leipzig, November 5th, 1838.

I have felt unequal to resume the train of my musical compositions since the measles. You cannot conceive the chaos that accumulates round me, when I am obliged neither to write, nor to go out, for three weeks. At last, here I am, correcting the parts of my three violin quartetts, which are to appear this winter, but I never can contrive to complete them, owing to so many letters, and affairs, and other odiosa. The Shaws are here, who don’t know one word of German, and not many words of French, and yet they live with thorough, downright Leipzigers, who only speak their Leipzig vernacular; and Bennett, with two young English musicians, and six new symphonies, and letters, and passing strangers, and rehearsals, and Heaven knows what all the other things are, which swallow up the day, leaving no more trace than if it had never existed. Truly the most delightful of all things is to be enabled to store up precious and enduring memorials of past days, to tell that these days were; and the most hateful of all things is, when time passes on, and we pass with it, and yet grasp nothing.

I am reading Lessing just now frequently, with true enjoyment and gratitude. At the end of the most fatiguing day, this famous fellow makes me feel quite fresh again; though Germany fares rather badly when you read his letters to his grandfather, or to Nicolai, Gleim, and Eckert; and yet Lessing wrote in German, and in such German, too, that it cannot be well translated!