Note 9 — DR. DAVID STRAUSS IN WEIMAR.
Reading edition
To explain this joke to the un-Germanized reader, it will be necessary to inform him that the title of Goethe's poem is "The Shepherd's Lament," wherein a shepherd, leaving his native hills, gives a lingering look up at the familiar mountain, and sings regretfully
"I have to the valley descended, And how I cannot tell."
Herunter kommen, means also to decline, to fail, and upon this turns the joke.