Names of the Great.[230]--When I see, as I do, how they scatter their
productions for the Fair, occasional writings and fugitive pieces
(children born out of wedlock) as anonymously as if they were reviews,
then I say: "Herein I recognize genuine modesty; for natural children
are precisely their best and their own, and can, besides, be
acknowledged by the Prince _as_ genuine; whereas their supernatural [or
extra-natural] ones born in wedlock have to do without the
certification; and yet they will not let the world know the name of the
benefactor, but quite as often (nay, oftener) get people _into it_ as
_out of it_ secretly. What the child in other cases first learns to
pronounce, such parents speak to him last,--their name. Methinks they
follow herein Goethe's fine ear; for they hide themselves, while they
fill the orchestra of the world with children's voices and with
_vingt-quatre_,[231] and with alarm-works and repeating-works, (what a
juxtaposition of unlike things!) just as Goethe demands of the playing
musical artist that he shall work for the ears, but hide himself for
the sake of sparing the eyes. Quite as beautifully do they do the thing
when they finally adopt as children, and show to the world, their
children by the thirtieth marriage (often after the five or twenty
years' limitation), and thus imitate the greenfinches, which, it is
said, make their nest and its inmates invisible by means of the
so-called greenfinch-stone, till the latter are fledged."