JOSEPH LE CONTE L> '. 01- A i <^ lift of Srun -j&nul fi&m Jl . 4 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FREDERIC RICHTER. from Fariou* jbourcttf* TOGETHER WITH HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY. TRANSLATED BT ELIZA BUCKMINSTER LEE. TRANSLATOR OP WALT AND VULT. JEAN PAUL. 11 1 would *ladly. after my death, ha/e, tjjat, which hp*nevet yet happened to aiy author, all my thought* giv%a Co ll^e-worldnot >. who nourish and protect those who have lost their way, and, for a piece of money, give them good counsels. Every where around in the deep solitudes, the horn of the " wild hunter " and the Wvll blows of the " man of the mountains," are heard. The atmospheric phenomena of these regions are still an- other source of excitement to the imagination of the poet. Sometimes the whole mountain-tops are covered with vapor, where the sun is reflected in infinitely beautiful hues long after it is below the horizon. Sometimes the mounfain-top presents the same peculiar rosy hue that is seen upon the Alps. The reader who has been wearied by Richter's too t'iv.|iient and diffuse descriptions of atmospheric changes, will find their source in the rare and beautiful appearances this otherwise sombre sky often presents. His weather-pro- phesying, like that of all mountain people, was an occasion of continual sport and pleasantry, and also of serious at- tention and study. It would be impossible for a poet with so keen a suscep- tibility to all impressions as Richter, to be born under such influences and to pass his youth just within the threshold of a region so filled with romance, without its having a power- ful but perhaps secret influence upon the whole man, and upon the character of his genius and writings. It makes him the most personal of authors. The fact that he never could climb the heights of his birth-place, was the mother of 14 INTRODUCTION. that secret longing with which he every moment, even in the most cheerful circumstances of his life, fell back upon his youth. When easier circumstances permitted him to travel, he would not enter the solitary valleys or ascend the ro- mantic heights of the Fichtelgebirge, lest the reality should break the enchantment of memory, and the illusions of his youth, that embellished the evening of his life with romantic hues, should vanish. Late in life he returned, after a short separation, drawn by the mountain magnet, to the place of his birth. The visitor found him, in his last years, in the little city and plain of Bayreuth, at the southern threshold of the moun- tain, where his eye could always turn to the high cradle, of his infancy, and where the shadow of the pines could fall upon his grave. PA11T FIRST. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. FIRST* LECTURE. CHAPTER I. WUNSIEDEL. BIRTH. GRANDPARENTS. IT was in the year 1763, about the same time with the Peace of Hubertsburg,* that the present Professor of his own history came into the world ; in the same month that the golden and gray wagtail, the robin-redbreast, the crane, the red-hammer, appeared, and many snipes and woodcocks arrived also ; and, indeed, on the same day of the month, in case any one should wish to strew flowers upon the cradle of the new-born, the spoon wort and aspen hung out their ten- der blossoms, on the 21st of March; also at the earliest and freshest time of day, namely, at half past one in the morning. But what crowns all is, that his life and the life of the spring began at the same moment. This last circum- stance, that the Professor and the spring were born together, I have mentioned in conversation at least a hundred times ; but I fire it off here, as a salute of honor, the hundred and first time, that, by printing it, I may place it out of my power to offer again as a bon mot, what through the press has gone the rounds of the whole world. It is a misfortune in the history of a man, even the wittiest, that Fate herself has laid for him a pun as a nest egg ; for upon this egg he sits and broods his life long, and strives to bring something out * The peace that put an end to the Seven Years' War was signed at Hubertsburg, a Saxon hunting-seat, on the 15th of February, in 1763. TE. 16 LIFfc oi JLA.s PAUL, of it. Thus, I knew a barber and a coachman, who both, al the question, "What is your name?" answered with sim- plicity, and without any appearance of wit, " Your obedient servant," or "Your servant." The reason was, they had the misfortune to be named Diener, (servant,) and through this their heads were indelibly tonsured by a standing joke, they were both condemned to a perpetual conceit, and these small-shot of wit all went in one direction. Let us not hope, my honored friends, who bear at the same time a common and a proper name, such as Ochs or Rapinat, (both, indeed, Swiss,) Wolf, Schlegel,* Richter,f to surprise such a double- named man with any consequent play of wit, however bril- liant ; for he has lived too long with his own name to find any allusion to it, which may occur to the novice, either new. or surprising, or witty, but all to his ear is quite worn out. Milliner made a more witty play upon words, with ScJiottcn and Schatten, (Scotsman, shadow,) for no Scotsman ever con- sidered himself a shadow, and no shadow can be a Scots- man, for two vowels separate them eternally. But I return to our history, and place myself among the dead, for all are out of the world who saw me come into it. My father was called John Christian Christopher Richtrr. and was TertiusJ and organist in Wunsiedel. My mother, who was the daughter of the cloth-weaver, John Paul K ulm. in Hof, was named Sophia Rosina. The day after my birth I was baptized by the Senior Apel. One godfather was the abovementioned John Paul, the other, John Frederic Theime, a bookbinder, who did not know at that time to what quantities of his own handicraft he lent his name. From these two sponsors was the name John Paul Fred- eric shot together ; the grandfatherly half I have translated into Jean Paid, and have thereby gained a name, the reasons for which shall be fully made known in future lectures. But now let the hero and subject of these historical lec- tures lie and sleep securely in the cradle and on the mother's breast ; for in the long morning sleep of life there is nothing interesting for the universal history of the world, and he may sleep until I have spoken of those after whom my heart * A beater. t A judge. \ Tertius is master of the third class in a Gymnasium. A German Gymnasium has eight classes. The classes are arranged in an inverse order : thus, the first is taught by the rector ; the second, by the conrec- tor ; the third, by the subrector ; the fourth, by the quintus, &c. TR. I OBIOGRAPHV. 1 7 and my pen yearn, my ancestors, my father, mother, and grand par My father was the son of the Rector of the Gymnasium in Neustadt on the Culm. We know nothing of him. but that he was in the highest degree poor and pious ; and, should one of his two remaining grandsons come to Neu- stadt, the inhabitants would receive him with grateful joy and love. The old would relate how conscientious and . his life and instructions had been, and yet how cheer- ful. They yet show a bench, behind the organ, where every Sunday he kneeled to pray, and a hollow or grotto in the abovenained little Culm,* that he formed for himself to pray in, (at this distance of time it stands open,) and in which his more ardent son sported with the Muses and The evening twilight was a daily harvest for him, in which, for some dark hours, he walked up and down the poor schoolroom, weighing the produce of to-day and the seed that was to be sown to-morrow, under the influence of earnest prayer. This schoolhouse was a prison, not indeed of bread and water, but of bread and beer ; far more than these, of some little contentment of the most pious charac- ter, which a recto rate could not give, although united with the offices of chanterf and organist. But notwithstanding the fellowship of united offices, it produced only one hun- dred and fifty florins}: annually. At this common hunger fountain for J> h schoolmasters, the man who had been chanter in llehau thirty-five years long, stood and drank. Certainly he would have gained a couple of bites or pennies more, had he been promoted to the office of a country pastor. As often as scholars exchange their dress, that is, from the school mantle to the priest's mantle, they receive a little better food, as the silkworm at the casting of her skin receives richer nourishment ; so that such a man, by increasing his labors, may so increase his salary, as to be inferior only to a statesman with expectancies or gratuities ; or, in general, to some high functionary in retirement, whose * The Culmberg, near Neustadt, is a solitary conical hill, on the southeastern entrance to the Fichtelgebirge. It is surrounded by pines that give it a dark-blue appearance, easily distinguished from Bayreuth. We can easily believe that the poetic eye of Richter was often turned to this, his pious grandfather's altar, when near his cottage study he wrote in the open air. TR. t Director of the music. t A florin is 40 cents. 8 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. staff of emoluments is carried through the whole score of the chamber, and that even during all the pauses of the instrument. In the mean time, my grandfather visited the parents of his pupils in the afternoons, more on account of the latter than the former, taking a bit of bread in his pocket, from the abovementioned beer and bread by which he lived, and receiving, as a guest, only his little can of beer. But at last it happened, in the year 1763, exactly the year of my birth, on the 6th of August, probably through especial connection with higher powers, he was promoted to the most important station, one for which the rectorate, and the city, and all the Culmberg itself, could easily be given up ; and when he numbered seventy-six years, four months, and eight days, he was actually promoted to the station above mentioned in the Neustadt churchyard. His wife, twenty years before, had preceded him, occupying a rival station, and waited for him. My parents went with me, then a child of five months old, to visit his dying-bed. A clergyman who was present, as my father has often told me, said, " Let the old Jacob lav his hand upon the child, that he may bless him." I was placed in the bed, and he laid his hand upon my head. Pious grandfather ! often have I thought of thy cold, blessing hand, when fate has led me out of dark into brighter hours ; and I needed to hold fast my faith in thy blessing, in this world, penetrated, governed, and animated by wonders and spirits. My father was born in Neustadt, December 16th, 1727; more, I should say, to the winter of life, than, like my- self, to the spring, had not his excellent nature had the power to carve a good haven from an iceberg. But the Lyceum in Wunsiedel, could only be enjoyed or endured by him, as by Luther the school at Eisenach, as an alum- nus, or poor scholar ; for when my grandfather's salary, one hundred and fifty florins a year, was divided among many brothers and sisters, his part was exactly nothing, or at most alumnus-bread ; therefore he went to the Gymnasium at Eegensburg, not only to hunger in a larger city, but to cultivate the peculiar Jloivcr of his nature, as well as the leaves, and this was the science of music. In the chapel of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, the well-known connoisseur and patron of music, he could serve the saint for whose adoration he was born. Piano-playing AUTOBIOGRAPHY. m 19 liiui. forty years later, to be a favorite <>ser of church music in the principality of Bayreuth. On the evcn'mir of Good Friday, he often delighted himself and us, his children, with the exhibition of that holy power of music, the tones of which even to this day elevate and sanctify souls in the Catholic church. I must, alas, ac- knowledge, that, when I was lately in Regensburg, among the antiques and forgotten relics of that place, the op- pressed life of my father was the most precious of all ; and, when I was in the palace of Thurn and Taxis, and in tho narrow streets where two portly persons could scarcely pass .each other, I thought of his small means, and the narrow passages of his youthful life. Instead of the delightful science of music, he studied theology, both in Jena and Erlangen ; perhaps for no better reason than this : to suffer himself to be plagued for a long time, even till his thirty-second year, as a domestic teacher in Bayreuth, where his son collected these particulars; for, in 1760, he ob-^ I from the city authorities the post of organist and Tcrtius in Wunsiedel. In this case, he obtained under the Margrave of Bayreuth a better and earlier fortune than that candidate in Hanover, of whom I have read, who, at ty years old, had received no better place in the church than what the churchyard offered. Some of my hearers may fear, from what I have said, that I shall bring my father before them with a pitiful aspect, like some modern ultra-Christians, who cover their faces with a tear-steeped handkerchief. On the contrary, he lived, as it were, on wings, and was sought by the families of Brandenburg and Schopf as the most agreeable of companions, always full of wit and jests and amusing anecdotes. The faculty of social wit accompanied him through life ; even when in his office he passed for a very severe pastor, and as it was called, in the pulpit, for a preacher of the Law. In hi.V ii:itivc city, he won his relations by his exciting preaching, and in Hof, in Voigtland, something yet more important, a bride, and, what was far more difficult, the rich relations of his bride. If a citizen who, through cloth-weaving and veil-selling, had become wealthy, could not deny, of his two only daughters, the most beautiful, the most delicate and tenderly nurtured, and withal the most beloved, to a needy Tertius, who dwelt, with his creditors, a whole day's journey from them, so on the other side, this Tertius could only 20 LIFE OF JE-AN PAT L. with the reputation of great desert and shining pulpit gifts, and agreeable personal appearance, gain both daughter and parents ; and an elevated soul must have raised the x cloth-weaver above his cloth and his money, and talents and spiritual gifts must have appeared to him of more worth than the shining heaps of common wealth. The 13th of October, 1761. the beloved went as a bride, with all her treasures, into his little narrow school-house, that fortunately was not made narrower by furniture. His cheerful life, his indifference to money, united with his entire confidence in his housekeeper, left in the Tertius's shell room enough for all travellers from Hof, who wished to rest there. My mother, for such were married people at that time, and there are a few such now, troubled herself as little as my father on account of this emptiness. In my historical readings, hunger will accompany the steps of my hero, and will indeed be mentioned as often as feasting in Thiimmers Travels, or tea-drinking in Richard- son's " Clarissa." I cannot but choose to say to Poverty, " Be welcome ! so thou come not too late in life." Riches weigh more heavily upon talent than poverty. Under gold mountains and thrones, lie buried many spiritual giants. When, to the flame that the natural heat of youth kindles, the oil of riches is added, little more than the ashes of the phoenix remains ; and only a Goethe has had the forbearance not to singe his phoenix wings at the sun of Fortune. For much gold, the poor historical Professor would not have had much in his youth. Fate does with the poet as we with singing birds, and overhangs the cage with darkness until he sings the tune we would have him sing. But preserve, just Providence, the old m an from want! for hoary \ en- have already bent him low, and he can no longer stand up- right with the youth, and bear heavy burthens on his head. \Ihe old man needs rest in the earth even while he is upon it, for he can use only the present and a little of the future, for the future does not reflect for him as in a glass the bloom- ing present. Only two steps from the couch of his last and deepest repose, with no other curtain than the flowers about the grandfather's chair of old age, he would yet slumber and rest a little, and, half-asleep, open his eyes once more upon the ancient stars and fields of his youth ; and I have no objection, since he has already made his best preparation for the other world, if now in the evening, he should rejoice AUTOBIOGRAPHY. %\ over his breakfast, and in the morning take comfort in his bed, and now, when he is a second time a child, the world should appear again under the innocent form of delight in which it first came before him. Only one false resolution of my father's could we place perhaps to the account of his necessities, that, instead of wooing with his whole heart the muse of sweet sounds, he gave himself, like a monk, to the office of preaching, and suffered his genius for music to be buried in a village church. Indeed, the church, according to the opinion of my grand- parents, was then the provision-ship and air-balloon, and the needy son of the Muses sought to run into the quiet haven of the pulpit. But whoever is not forced by necessity, but feels within him, growing with his growth, an inclination and declination of his magnetic needle, let him follow its pointing, trusting to it, as to a compass in the desert. Had the present Professor of his own history imitated his father as he desired, he would now, instead of these lec- tures, be holding sacred discourses, casual preachings, and other sermons, and he might even have had a place in the " Universal Magazine for Preachers," only, alas ! he would li;ive been puffed up more than duty demands. But my father was in fact neither unfaithful to himself nor to the muse of sweet sounds. Did she not visit him as his first love in the vestal garments of the holy Virgin, and bring with her, every week, to the solitary, silent parsonage of Joditz, the sweetest church music? And on the other hand, another art dwelt with that of music, and sought its playroom in the pulpit of Joditz ; for if, after an old saying, connoisseurs in music love wine, and if, according to Lava- ter, they seek good living, why, the chapel-master must still be his own butler and his own caterer ; so, in my father the master of the chapel and the master of the altar were united. Eloquence, the prosaic, but near neighbor to Poetry, dwelt in my father's heart ; and the same sunbeam of genius that, in the morning of his days, waked sweet sounds in him, as in the statue of Memnon, kindled later in life, in the pulpit, the warmer light and the thunder of a preacher of the Law. My hearers will remark, that I dwell a long time on my relations, and praise them much ; but I will immediately begin to speak of myself, and then shall scarcely come to a 22 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. H pause. Indeed, the praise itself, that I here give my father, would not appear (if he yet lived) so important to him, as it is empty to me. If I placed myself before him in Eternity, there among the blessed, he would not be elated, that in the year 1818 I should inform the world, from my Professor's chair, that he was appointed by the Bayreuth government to be their composer of church-music. And with the same coldness to all praise, in some future time when I am among the blessed, should my own son speak of me, ought he, because I no longer feel praise, to speak in a less animated strain of the applause my works have gained ? In general, my reverend hearers, would I ten times rather hold historical lectures over my ancestors than over myself. How altered would be the appearance of that dis- tant and foreign time, if our relations did not pass through it, stamp it with our presence, and make it fraternal to us. tTh at man is to be envied, who can retrace his history from ancestor to ancestor, and cover hoary time with the green mantle of youth. For if we are able to paint the time in which our ancestors lived, and themselves also only in the splendor and freshness of youth, then we should connect our posterity with ourselves, and paint them not as youths, but more properly as old men. I return at last to the hero and subject of our historical lectures, and select especially the fact that he was born in Wunsiedel, a city of the Fichtelgebirge. That Fichtelge- birge, almost the highest region of Germany, gives to its inhabitants so much health, that they can dispense with the Alexander baths, and furnishes for them a tall, large wood growth, and the speaker invites his hearers to decide wli he appears as a confirmation of, or an exception to his asser- tion. It is particularly vexatious to a man whose d< hope is, to acquire a name in his native city, that the Wuu- siedlers swallow the r at the middle and end of every word, and it is well known that the name of Richter beginqfljmd ends with that letter. Besides, the forefathers of the Wunsiedlers stand there with the laurel crowns of warlike bravery that I must win for myself, for it has been constantly known from history how they withstood the Hussites and were victorious ; and, perhaps, if they will place Reviewers there instead of Huss- ites, I shall not be struck from the list of brave men, if they oBIUGRAPUY. 23 will number iny victories over mv enemies, from the Hussite Nikolai to the Hussit. Mn-keL* In t'nrn: lei was the sixth town in the so-called Six-Districts, at least for patriotism and united zeal in defence of our country and rights ; in short, it was a sixth day of creation, and German fidelity and love and strength long continued to hold out therein. I am willing to have been born in tltee, little city of the high mountain, whose summits look down upon us like the heads of eagles. Thy mountain throne is embellished by the steps that lead to it, and thy fountains of health give the sick man strength to ascend to the wide throne above him, and to send his glance over distant villages and moun- tain plains. I am glad to have been born in thee. little, but good city of my affections.! It is often observed that the first-born is usually of the female sex. To this observation the hero of this history is no exception, notwithstanding his right to be the first-born ; for In- were married in October, 1761, and he was born in March. 17G3. There went before him a being, that on tii is earth was only a shadow, and began perhaps its life in the light of another world, without having discovered the ' nf this. Men who have a firm hold on nothing else, delight in deep, far-reaching recollections of their days of childhood, and, in this billowy existence, they anchor on tliat, far more than on the thought of later difficulties. Perhaps for two reasons, that in this retrospection they press nearer to the gate of lite guarded by spiritual existences, and, secondly, that they hope, in the spiritual power of an earlier conscious- ness, to make themselves independent of the little, contemp- tihle annoyances, that surround humanity. To my great joy, I am able to bring, from my twelfth or at furthest my fourteenth month, one pale, little remembrance, like the earliest .and most frail of snow-drops, from the fresh soil of childhood. I recollect, namely, that a poor scholar loved me much, and that I returned his love, and that he carried me about in his arms, and, later, took me more agreeably * Nikolai and Merkel, editors and printers of Reviews that had severely criticised the works of Jean Paul. TR. t Wunsiedel is a pleasant little town of about three thousand inhabi- tants. It lies between Bayreuth and B'gar, the two extremities of the Fichtelgebirge, and higher on the mountain than either. 24 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. by the hand to the large, dark apartment of the older chil- dren^where he gave me milk to drink. This form, vanish- ing in distance, and his love, hover again over later years, but. alas, I no longer remember his name. If it were possi- ble that he lives yet. far in his sixtieth year, and that, as a learned and well-informed man, these lectures should meet his eye. and that he should then recollect the little Professor that he bore in his arms and often kissed ! Ah God, if this should be so, and he should write, or the older man should come to visit the old man ! This little morning star of earliest recollection stands yet tolerably clear in its low horizon, but growing paler as the daylight of life rises higher. And now I remember only this clearly, that in earlier life I remembered every thing clearly. As, in the year 1765, my father was called to be Pastor in Joditz, I can separate my Wunsiedler relics more easily from my childish recollections of Joditz. Under the par- sonage roof of Joditz is now the second act of our little his- torical mono-drama, where, highly honored gentlemen and ladies, the hero of the piece has entered iflto a wholly dif- ferent unfolding of character, for every division of my lec- tures is in a different dwelling-place. It is, especially in the history of these lectures, or the lecture on this history so skilfully and happily arranged, that, of the three unities of an historical piece, the first, that of plaoc, is no more vio- lated than that of time ; for, as the hero must go from one place of residence to another, so from the entrance into life to the entrance into his Professorship, he must pass from one period of time into another. But he hopes, in the re- presentation of the piece, that he shall scarcely of Vend tin- unity of time by growing older, although the great dilli will be to preserve throughout the unity of interest Our hero has already risen one step, and we have the satisfaction to meet him, whom we left in the first division only son of a Tertius, after two years as the son of a Pastor; for my father was preferred to Joditz by the Lady Von Plotho, whose maiden name was Bodenhausen, the wife of the same Plotho who, in the beginning of the Seven Years' War of Frederic the Only, was a delegate to the Imperial Diet at Regensburg. * * This was the most important event in the life of the Poet. In this little village of Joditz, too insignificant to be mentioned in any gazetteer >B10GRAPHY. 25 CHAPTER II. WHICH INCH DES THE TIME FROM AUGUST 1775, TO JANUARY 1776. JOD1TZ. VILLAGE IDYLS. * WE DOW find the Professor of his self-biography in the parsonage in Joditz, which, in a female's cap and a girl's oat, he entered with his parents. The Saale, spring- ing like myself from the Fichtelgebirge, ran with me or me there, as it did also when I removed afterward to Hof, pursuing its course and passing that city also. This river is the most beautiful, at least the longest in Joditz, and courses round it as if it were a little hill. The little place itself is traversed by a small brook that is crossed by a board for pedestrians. An ordinary castle and the pastor's house are the only distinguished buildings. The environs upon a level are not more than twice as large as the village itself. And yet is this village to the Professor of his own history far more important than the place of his birth ; for here lived the most important, the boy olympiad of his life. Never could I give my voice for the nineteen cities, that, ling to Suidas, quarrelled for the honor of giving birth to Homer ; as little tor the different Dutch cities, that (ac- cording to Bayle) would have produced Erasmus. What can the first day after nine months signify more than any day before ? And can the place of the grave con- fer dishonor or advantage on its inhabitant more than the place where his cradle stood ? Although so many princes, on the whole, have been born in their own cities, yet Lon- don, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, do not glory in them, else, on the contrary, cities and hamlets that have produced great vil- I have been able to consult, he went as a liitle child of two years old, and remained till his thirteenth year. There he received those impressions, and his genius that direction, which followed him through life and influ- enced all his works. Never is he so much at home in his works, as in the little village parsonage and church. The joys of humble, domestic life are the joys he delights to describe. The village festivals, the church consecrations, are all dear to his deeply religious spirit : the lowly Gods- acre (churchyard) is the place he delights in, as the source of devout con- templation ; and his grandfaiher's altar, the Culmburg, was the spot he had always before him. TK. 26 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL flj lains, must on that account take shame to themselves. At furthest, the land of one's birth might arrogate the honors of birth-place, if. through the predominance of good births, any thing could be decided as to the climate of the place, or the character of the inhabitants ; but a Pindar in Boeotia does not make there a swallow-summer.* But the proper birth-place, that is indeed the spiritual, is the first and longest place of education ; and if it is so for these great, world-renowned men who rarely need, and more rarely make use of education, how much more for hamlet and village celebrated mediocre men like my hero, who has gained so much through nurture and education, both in con- nection with reading, which is only a more important in- struction, that he has become what he is, a Hildburghausen Counsellor, a Heidelburg Doctor of Philosophy, a threefold member of different societies, and the present unworthy pos- sessor of the Professorship of this self-history. Let no poet suffer himself to be born or educated in a metropolis, but if possible, in a hamlet, at the highest in a village. The excesses and the fascinations of a great city are to the excitable, weak soul of a child, like supping at a midnight table a draught of burnt waters, or bathing in fiery wine. Life exhausts itself in boyhood, and, after enjoying the greatest, he has nothing more to wish but smaller joys and village pleasures. But one does not gain so much when he comes from a city to a village, as on the contrary, from Joditz to Hof, that is. from a village to a city. I am think- ing of that which is most important to the poet Love ! He must, in this city, draw about the warm zone of the fr and acquaintance of his parents, the greater and colder num- ber from the icy circle of unloved persons, who meet and pass him with the same indifference that a ship's company on the great ocean meet and pass another ship, freighted with those they do not love. But in a village they love all the inhabitants, and not a nursling is there buried, but every one knows its name, and illness, and the tears it has cost. The Joditzers have accustomed themselves to dwell in each other ; and this heartfelt sympathy for every one who bears the form of man, and which overflows upon strangers and * The meaning seems to be this : one Pindar does not make a Par- nassus of Bceotia, because born in the latter place, any more than one swallow makes a summer. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27 beggars, engenders a concentrated humanity, and rules all the pulsations of the heart. And then when a poet wanders, from such a villap*. lie brings to every one he meets a piece of his heart, and he must journey far before the whole heart is expended upon the streets and lanes. There is yet a greater misfortune than that of being edu- cated in a great city, namely, that of being educated like many aristocratic children, who journey whole years through strange cities and among strange men, and know no home but the coach-box. We approach nearer again to our hero, the pastor's son, whose life in Joditz I should best describe if I called it, as I look back upon it, a whole course of Idyllic years ; but, as wholesome cloudy weather often precedes a clear day, these clouds were rich in instruction, although gathered first at the end of ten years. My life consisted in learning every thing. Like a prince, I revelled in half a dozen teachers, but I had scarcely a good one. I yet remember the winter evening delight, when I received from the city a respectable ABC book, with a pointer to show the letters. Upon the cover, with true golden letters (and not without good reason were they of gold), the contents of the first page were writ- ten, which consisted in alternate red and black letters. A gambler wins with gold and rouge et noir less delight than 1 by that book, whose pointer I did not once apply. After I had at home gone privately through the lower school classes, I entered, in a green taffety cap, but already in breeches (for the school-mistress had in that established my weak claims), the high school, namely, the one whose school- house was opposite the parsonage. As usual, all in the school were dear to me, especially the lean, consumptive, but animated schoolmaster, with whom I shared all his patient anxiety, when he lay in am- bush behind his bird-cage, placed in the window, to allure some unwary passing goldfinch, or when he spread his net without in the snow, and caught a yellow-hammer from the host of birds. In the midst of the winter sultriness of the crowded school-room, I remember the delight with which I drew out the pegs that secured the canvas over air-holes bored in the wooden walls, and drew into my open mouth the exciting refreshment of the frosty air from without. Every new copy-book from the master delighted me as others are delighted with pictures. I envied every one who 28 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. said his lesson well, and I enjoyed reading together with my class, as singers enjoy the blessed harmony of their music. Was it 12 o'clock, and the dinner not ready, I and my deceased brother Adam (although a bird's nest was dearer to him than the whole seat of the Muses) desired nothing better, for we flew with our hunger back into the school-room, not to lose a moment when the apartment was empty and quiet. Much might be thought of this sacrifice to the love of learning, but I know well that a great part of it was owing to the common desire of children to depart from the every-day, established order. We willingly dined an hour later, just as on this account the late hour of fast-days de- lighted us. Was the whole house in confusion, either through whitewashing* the apartments, or moving into ano- ther house, or through the arrival of many guests, we little fools could think of nothing finer ! Alas ! I closed for ever upon myself the school door by an untimely complaint to my father, that a tall peasant's son (/ah is his name for posterity) had cut me a little on the knuckle with a clasp-knife. In his ambitious anger, my father resolved to instruct my brother and myself alone, and I must have the mortification to see every winter the children running into that haven that was shut to me. In the mean time, the rival joy remained for me to carry fre- quently to the schoolmaster the bulls and decrees of his village Pope, which, instead of the llomish Agnus Dei and consecrated Christmas-box, consisted of a butcher's joint, or a little dish with his dinner. Four hours in the forenoon, and three hours in the after- noon, our father gave to our instruction, which consisted of merely learning by heart sentences, catechisms, Latin words, and long grammatical lessons. We were obliged to learn the long rules of the genders, every declension, together with the exceptions, and the accompanying examples in Latin verses, without understanding one word of them. Did my father on a beautiful summer's day go into the country, such cursed examples as panis, pisds, were left to be learnt by heart for the next morning. As for my bro- ther Adam, to whom the long summer's day scarcely sufficed * The reader will recollect the Fichtelgebirge houses were white- washed every spring. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. '29 for his activity and childishness, not an eighth part remain- ed in his head, for rarely had he the good fortune to have such precious declensions as scamnum or cornu among the number, of which he certainly knew how every time to re- cite the Latin half. Besides, you will easily believe, gentle- men and ladies, that it was not an easy thing, in a clear, blue, June day, when the omnipotent father was not at home, to make oneself a fast prisoner in a corner of the apartment, and delve and engrave two or three pages of vo- cables in the head. In a blessed long summer's day it was not easy, but more so in a short, dark December's day, and we must not wonder if my brother always bore marks of such days. The Professor of his own history ventures to make this general statement, that he waa never in his scJiool life flogged in general, neither in part, not to say he was never completely flogged in his life. Let not this mere learning by heart throw a false fight upon my unwearied and amiable father, who sacrificed the whole day to writing out and committing to memory the weekly sermon for the country people, merely out of extreme pastoral conscientiousness, although he had many times proved the power of his extemporaneous eloquence. In his weekly visit to the school, and in doubling his public exer- cises with the children, yes, in every thing, he went beyond his duty by his voluntary and gratuitous services. And how he hung with a warm, tender, parental heart on me, and easily, with every little sign of talents or improvement, burst out into joyful tears ! This father committed no other fault in his whole plan of education, rarely as it happens, except faults of the head, none of the will. To scJiool teachers, especially, is this method to be re- commended, since so much toil and trouble is never saved as where the pupil relies on the book as a viearius or adjumt of the teacher, and his curator absentis, and, like a powerful clairvoyant, feels himself magnetized. This intellectual self- repose of the children admits of extension to such a degree, that I will venture, by means of the post-office alone, to pre- side over whole schools in North America, or over such as are fifty days' journey removed from me in the old world; for I will merely write for my school-boys what they have to learn by heart every day, and I will have an insignificant man, to whom they shall repeat what they have learned. And so I shall enjoy the consciousness of their fine spiritual fast's day reminisceres. 30 LIFE OF .IKAN PAUL. In &pwcius< I translated by command much of the beginning into Latin, with the joy with which I ascended and plucked from every new branch of learning. The last half I turned of myself into Latin without being able to find a corrector of its faults. In the dialogues in Langen's Grammar I guessed at the German from longing to under- stand their contents ; but my father would not allow me to translate while in Joditz. In a grammar of the Greek language, written in Latin, I studied, hungering and thirst- ing, the alphabet of that language, and at last wrote tolerable Greek, at least as far as belongs to the handwriting. How easily and willingly could I have learnt more ! The spirit, if not the substance, of a language entered easily into me, as the third lecture of -our winter term will best prove to the world. Once in a winter's afternoon, I might have been eight or nine years old, my father brought me a little Latin diction- ary that I was to learn by heart, but first I was to read him a page. I read lingua, notwithstanding his frequent cor- rection, not ling-wet) but always . lin-gua, and repeated the same fault in spite of his repeated corrections, so often, that, with angry impatience, he took the book from me, and deprived me for ever of learning it. I cannot, even now, discover the source of this obstinate stupidity ; but my heart tells me, that through my whole life I have never been self- willed even in play, and never to nay father, who at this very time had given me a schoolboy's pleasure through a new book. This historical feature is purposely exhibited in our lecture-room, that the impartiality of our historical investi- gator and Professor may appear through the shadows he throws upon his hero, whom he would, willingly, if truth only were stated, represent in the most brilliant light. Be- sides, how often in life, either with or without understanding, do poor, innocent men say lin-gua instead of the more cor- rect ling-wo,, and even with the tongue (lingua) that at the same time signifies language (lingua) \ Further, history, as well ancient as modern, natural history, the most interesting descriptions of the earth, arith- metic and astronomy, as well as orthography, all these sciences I became sufficiently acquainted with, but not in Joditz, where I was indeed twelve years old without know- ing a word of them, but many years later, at different inter- vals and by fragments, from the Universal Library. So AT'TOBIOGIIAPHY. 31 craving was my thirst for books in this intellectual Sahara Desert, that every book was to me a fresh, green oasis, particularly the Orbis Pictus* and the u Dialogues in the Kingdom of the Dead." Only my father's library, like many public ones, was rarely open, except when he was not in it. nor at home. I, at least, often lay upon the flat roof of a wooden lattice bedstead (like a great cage for animals),! and crept like the great jurist, Baldus, upon the book-shelves to obtain one for myself. They may well consider that in a thinly peopled village and a solitary parsonage, to such a thirsting soul, a man speaking in a book must be as precious as the richest foreign guest, a Maecenas, a travelling prince, a first American to a European. A novice, ignorant of tbe A B C of history, I did not in the least understand the quarto volume of the 4 * Conversations in the Kingdom of the Dead ;" but I read it, as well as the newspapers, as if it were a geographical work, and could relate much from both. As I related to my father out of the book, I told him that one evening during his absence I had read the history of the love of Roxclane for the Turkish Emperor. I was led to tli is by newspaper extracts from an ancient noble lady. He received, from his patroness Plotho in Zedwiz. a present of the Hayrouth newspaper; monthly or quarterly, as of- ten as he went to visit her, he brought home these for a month or a quarter of a year, and he and I read the great heap with profit, as it came to us more in volumes than in sheets. A political newspaper, read, not in sheets, but in volumes, communicates real instruction, as there is room enough in a whole volume of leaves to correct previous im- pressions, and get the true one, and like the air. whose true color is not to be seen in parts and portions, but in the whole circumference, as then only (in its whole mass) it obtains its heavenly blue. Every morning I bore my news atlas to the castle of the old Lady Von Reitzenstein, and prophe- sied, at the morning coffee, one event and another from the news I brought, and allowed them to praise me. I remem- ber yet the noun of multitude, at that time often repeated, dcracy, (it is highly probable it was the Poland confed- * Goethe mentions the " Orbis Pictus " of Amos Comenius as one of the books that delighted His childhood. TR. t In the houses of the Fichtelgebirge, as the bed often stood in the common room, it was inclosed in a sort of wooden wicker-work. TR. 32 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. eracy,) but I do not recollect the least interest taken in it. probably because I understood nothing of the whole matter. Thus impartially and calmly were Polish affairs considered in our village, as well by myself as by the old Lady Reit- zenstein, my hearer. The intellectual fibres of our hero, thirsting for learning, penetrated and wound themselves around every thing from which they could extract their aliment. He prepared clocks, whose dial-plates were good counsellors, with pendulums and wheel and weights, and stood well. He found a place for a sun-dial, and wrote upon a wooden plate the figures with ink, and drew the white line with the gnomons, and placed it firmly near the tower clock, so that he could frequently tell the exact time. He made dials, as many cities do, rather than clocks, as Lichtenbergh makes the titles of books be- fore the books themselves. The present writer shows in little a box in which he established a miniature ttui library of his own Joditz works, made from the ribbon cuttings of his fa- ther's octavo sermons, sewed together and neatly trimmed. The contents were theological and Protestant, and consist- ed of a little explanatory note, written under a verse in Luther's Bible, whence he copied it. The verses themselves were left out of the little books. Thus lay concealed in our Frederic Ilichter already a little Frederic Von Schlegel, who in the same manner in his selections, " Lessing's Geist," gives his opinion upon passages in certain writers, without the passages themselves. In the same manner our hero threw himself upon paint- ing. Many ruling potentates sat, or rather lay to him, when, with a fork, he pricked through their features upon a thick sooty sheet of paper, placed under the engraving, and after- wards pressed it upon a sheet of white paper. Whether he might not, under sunny influences, have attained the fame of Raphael Mengs, remains to be guessed, for, unlike this artist, they had to beat kirn from not to painting, and, when he afterwards received a box of colors, he colored the whole Orbits P id its after the life. I could not, at this time, be- lieve all that was in the box of colors, every thing is so paint- ed in memory the pale red leather ball, the four-cornered red tile, the rounded palette, the splendid colored shells, and the green and gold beetle yet shimmering in that box. It were yet something less judicious, from his art of making herrings in winter, to conclude that he could have been a AT'TOBIOGRAPHY. 33 great financial correspondent. His artifice for collecting herrings at such a distance from the coast consisted in this. He waded into the brook with his herring bread, and softly raising a stone under which was a gudgeon, or smaller fish, he immediately placed it in a hollow cabbage stalk, which he called a herring cask and salted it in, and when the little cask was full, he would have had herrings to eat, if they had not all been spoilt. Still worse would it be to consider the lit- tle financier the precursor of surrogate discoveries, because he placed the brown, dried halves of pears upon pieces of broken glass like doves' feet, and served them up as hams ready for eating, or that he drove snails to pasture.* In fact, every future investigator of the history of the present historian would appear extremely ridiculous to me, if, out of the broken and scattered fragments of any other childhood, he should collect and read something wonderful. The fool- ish man would appear to me like that Paris barber, who, with the help of a Jesuit, placed together many of the bones of an elephant, and sold them as the true skeleton of the Ger- man giant, Teutoback. The beard does not make a philo- sopher, although a sailor and a criminal may each come from his ship and prison with that appendage, because they have not been under the barber's razor. The boundless activity of our hero expended itself more in intellectual than in physical experiments, but he followed all with inexpressible delight. Thus he invented, instead of a new language, a new writing character. He took the ca- lendar signs from the Almanac, or geometrical out of an old book, or chemical, or original from his own invention, and I ut tiug all together, composed a wholly new alphabet. When it was ready, the first use he made of his solitaire alphabet, was to clothe therein a couple of pages of copied matter ; thus he was his own secret writer, and his concealed play was with himself Without peeping into Biittner's compar- ative tables of alphabetic characters, he could read his own as easily as the common, as he placed this literally under his own as a warrant, and had only to glance at it to read the secret. At this time little will be thought of said historical in- vestigator, if, out of this ciphering and decihpering, which * Richter means here to ridicule those biographers who infer an original genius for their heroes from the nature of their sports. 3 34 LIFE OF JEAN PAUI, even at this early time was less valuable for its contents than its form, he should have seen himself the incipient Counsellor of the Embassy, or even the ambassador himself; for I have, in fact, gained the character of kgationsrath, and could to-day decipher many things. To music was my soul, like my father's, every where open, and had for it a hundred Argus ears. When the shool- master sent the church worshippers home with the final ca- dences of the organ, my whole little elevated being laughed and leaped as in a spring morning ; or, when the morning after the night dance of the Kirchweithe* (at which my fa- ther the next Sunday sent loud, thundering anathemas,) when the foreign musicians with their hautboys and fiddles collected the contributions of the peasants before the wall of the parsonage court, I climbed upon the wall, and a clear jubilee echoed through my narrow breast, and the delightful airs of spring played within, with the spring-time of life, and I forgot every syllable of my father's sermon. I devot- ed whole hours upon an old untuned harpsichord, whose only tuning hammer and tuning master were the winds and the weather, to thundering out my phantasies, which certainly were as free and bold as any in Europe, as I knew neither note nor touch ; for my accomplished pianist father would teach me neither note nor finger. But if accidentally, like the tune-setter for a rope or fairy dance, I attained with my fingers on the piano a short melody or harmony of three or six strings, I was like a man in an ecstasy, and repeated this discovery of my fingers as incessantly as any new German poet repeats the idea or dis- covery of the brain by which he gained his first applause. He acts, at least, in a more friendly manner than He! balus, who condemned his cook to continue eating a bad soup until he had discovered a better; on the contrary, the Leip- zic fair has entertained the reading world with many an excellent soup that they have tasted as continually as the im- perial cook tasted the bad. In the future literary history of our hero, it will appear doubtful whether he were not perhaps born more for the philosophic than the poetic art. In the earliest time, the * A church consecration is one of the principal religious ceremonies in the German villages, at which, as Paul relates, foreign musicians and strollers of all sorts collected. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 word philosophy was but a second name for the Orient, and to me. like the open gate of heaven, through which I saw far extended gardens of joy. Never shall I forget, that which I have never yet related to human being. the inward experience of the birth of self-consciousness, of which I well remember the time and place. I stood one after- noon, a very young child, at the house door, and looked at the logs of wood piled on the left, when, at once, that in- ward consciousness I am a Me came like a flash of lightning from heaven, and has remained ever since. Then was my existence conscious of itself, and forever. Deceptions of memory are here scarcely imaginable, for no exterior occur- rence could mingle with a consciousness so concealed in the holy sanctuary of man, whose novelty alone has given per- manence to the every day circumstances that accompanied it. It appears to me best, in order to represent the Joditz life of our Hans Paul (for so we must continue to call him) in the truest manner, to lead him through the whole of an Idyllic year, and to divide the normal year of four seasons into four Idyllic quarters. Four Idyls will exhaust his hap- piness. Let no one wonder at an Idyllic reign, or Arcadian world in -a little village and humble parsonage. A tulip- tree, whose flower-branches shall overshadow the whole garden, may grow in the smallest bed, and the life-giving air of joy can be breathed from a window as well as in the wide wood under the broad heaven. Is not the human spirit, with all its infinite, heavenly expansion, enfolded in a body of six feet high, with a covering of Malphigian* nerves, and capillary tubes, with only five narrow world-windows of senses to open for the boundless round-eyed, round-sunned All I And yet it discerns and reproduces an All ! I scarcely know with which of the Idylline quarters to begin, for each is a little heavenly introduction to the next ; however, the climax of joys will be most apparent, if we start with winter, and January. In the cold, our father, like an Alpine herdsman, came down from the upper altitude of his study ; and to the great joy of the children, dwelt in the plain of the common e very-day room of the family. In * Malphigi was a celebrated physician who decomposed the skin. TR. 36 LIFE OE JEAN PAUL. the morning, he sat by the window and learned his Sunday's sermon by heart, and the three sons, Fritz, (who I myself am,) Adam and Gotlieb, for Henry came afterwards, carried by turns the full cup of coffee to him, and still more gladly the empty one back, as the bearer could pick out the un- melted remains of the sugar candy, which he took against a cough, from the bottom. Out of doors, the sky covered all things with silence the brook with ice, the village with snow ; but in our room there was truly life ; under the stove a pigeon-house, on the windows green and goldfinch cages ; on the floor the invincible bulldog, our Bonne, the night-guardian of the courtyard, and a poodle, the pretty Scharniantelle, a present from the Lady Von Plotho, and close by, the kitchen, with the two maids ; further off towards the other end of the house, our stable with all sorts of neat, swinish, and feathered animals, and all their possi- ble noises ;* the threshers also with their flails might be heard in the court of the parsonage. In this way, sur- rounded by society, the male portion of the household spent their forenoons in tasks of memory, while the female portion were as busily employed in cooking. No occupation whatever excludes holidays I also had my airing festivals, equivalent to a holiday upon the water, when I could travel out in the snow of the courtyard and to the threshing in the barn. Nay, was there a difficult em- bassy to be transacted in a village ; for example, a message to the schoolmaster or the tailor, I was sure to be dispatched in the middle of my lesson ; thus I could breathe the free, cold air, and measure myselt in the new snow At noon also, before our own dinner, we children could have the hungry satisfaction to see the threshers in the kitchen fall to and devour theirs. The afternoon was still more significant, and richer in joys. Winter shortened and sweetened our lessons. In the long twilight, the father walked to and fro, and the chil- dren trotted after him, creeping under his night-gown, and holding on, if they could reach his hands. At the sound of the vesper bell, we placed ourselves in a circle, and de- voutly chanted the hymn, Die finxhr NacJtt bricJit stark herein. (The gloomy night is gathering in.) In villages * The reader will recollect that in the Fichtelgebirge houses all the domestic animals were under the same roof with tl^ family. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 for in towns there is more night than day work, have the evening chimes a meaning and beauty, and are indeed the swan-song of the day : the evening bell is, as it were, muffle of the overloud heart, and like a Ranz des "S of the plain, calls men from toil and tumult into the land of silence and of dreams. After watching for the moonlight of the candle-lighting to appear under the kitchen door, we saw the wide room at once illuminated and secured ; namely, the window shutters were closed and bolted ; behind these window breastworks and bastions the children felt secure, and closely nested against Knecht Ruprecht, who could not enter, but only grumbled and growled from with- out* About this time also, we children might undress, and skip up and down in long trailing night-gowns. Idyllic joys of various kinds alternated. Our father either had his quarto Bible, interleaved with blank folio sheets before him, and was marking at each verse the book that had commented upon it ; or he had his ruled music paper, and, undisturbed by the noise of the children, was composing whole concerts of church music. In both cases, and especially in the last, I observed the writing, and was rejoiced when, through the pauses of various instruments, whole quarters of pages were at once filled up. He constructed his internal melody without help from external tones, (as Reichardt advises,) and in spite of the children's noise. The children sat playing on that long writing and eating table, and even under it. Among the joys that belonged to this sweet time of childhood was this; that during the severe winter's frosty weather, the long table, on account of the warmth, was shoved to the stove-bench; f and our gain con- sisted in this, that we could sit or run upon it Then how did the winter evening rise in value when, once a week, the old errand woman coated in snow, with her fruit and flesh, and general ware basket, entered the kitchen from the city Hof, and we all had the distant town in minia- * Knecht Rnprecht is the hobgoblin or Raw-head-and-bloody-bones of German children. TR. t To understand this passage, the reader must recollect the one apart- ment of the houses of the Fichtelgebirge, the large porcelain stove, and the table used for all domestic purposes, which, when shoved to the bench that surrounded the stove, must have formed the coach-like domesticity that Richter loved TR 38 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ture before our eyes, nay, before our noses, for there were pastry cakes also. In our first childish years, the father permitted, after the early supper on winter evenings, yet another joyful re- past, when the house Tnaid brought her distaff into the com- mon apartment, illuminated with all the light the pine torch could afford, kindled, as in Westphalia, from a pine branch. At this supper table, as I now remember it, beside con- fectionary, and ices, and the popular tale of Asc/ienbrodel '.f was also the pine-apple artificially raised by the maid herself, namely, the history of the shepherd and his wolf-fight with wolves, with whom at one time his own danger, and at another that of his provision, was the greatest. Yet I felt the increasing happiness of the shepherd as my own, and re- mark only from my own experience, that the children in fic- titious stories are far more interested in the gradual progres- sion of happiness than in that of misfortune, and that they wish the path of heaven should lead up eternally, but the path of hell should go down only as far as is necessary to glorify and exalt the throne of heaven. These childish wishes would also later be the wishes of men, and they would for their fulfilment, make stronger demands upon the poet, were only a new heaven as easy to create as a new hell. Every tyrant can invent unheard of pains, but to discover unknown joys, they must themselves know the value of them. The seat of torture is the skin ; upon which a hundred hells, from inch to inch, may pitch their tents, but the heaven of the five senses hovers, airy and uniform, above us. At the end of the winter evening, a horrible wasp-sting or vampire's tongue threatened our hero. The children at nine o'clock were sent to bed in the guest's chamber, in the second story; my brother in a bed in the common apartment, and I in a room that I shared with my father. There, until he had finished his two hours' long night-reading, I lay with my head under the bed clothes, in the cold agony of fear of ghosts, and saw in the darkness the lightning from the clou- dy heaven of spirits; and it seemed to me as if man himself was spun round by spirit-worms. I suffered thus helplessly two long hours, until, at last, my father came up, and. like a morning sun, chased away the spectres, like dreams, and the # " Aschenbrodel " is probably the name of a popular German tale, with which the translator is unacquainted. AUTOBIOGRAPHY 39 next morning the ghostly torment was as completely for- gotten, as if it had been a dream ; but only to appear again the next evening. Yet have I never mentioned this to any one. until to-day I tell it to the world. This fear of ghosts was not so much created as nourished by my father himself. He spared us not one of all the spi- ritual appearances of which he had heard, and even told us some which he believed himself to have experienced; but, like the old theologians, he united with a firm belief in them, a firm courage against them, and Christ upon the cross was to him a shield against all spirits. Many children, who are physically timid, appear courageous against spirits, but this is merely from a want of imagination. On the contrary, a child like myself trembles before the invisible world, which his fancy forms and peoples, but arms himself easily against the visible, as this never reaches the depth and greatness of the invisible. Thus an eminent physical danger, such as a furious horse, a clap of thunder, war, or an alarm of fire, made me tranquil and self-possessed, as I was sus' cdptible of fear, only through the imagination, and not by the senses. A ghost, could I have survived the first shud- der, would have restored me again to common life, if it did not again, through gesture or sound, precipitate me into the endless kingdom of Phantasie. But how are we now to be preserved by education from the tragical over mastery of the spirit-invoking imagination ? Not through contradiction, and the Wagnerish* solution of the monsters in the light of day, for the possibility of the unexplained exceptions, retains firm hold of our deepest convictions ; but sometimes, partly through prosaic solutions, and familiarity with places and times, where formerly the imagination kindled its enchanted vapor, and partly through means by which the imagination is armed against the imgination, and spirits are opposed to spirits ; to the Devil God ! It happened through peculiar circumstances that I was sometimes afraid of ghosts in the daytime. Thus at a fu- neral, before the procession, headed by the pastor and school- master, with the children, and the cross, moved from the parsonage by the church, over to the church-yard, passing through the village, where it was joined by the singers, I was obliged to carry my father's great Bible through the See Faust. 40 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. church into the sacristy. Carelessly and full of courage, I went at a gallop through the shadowy, silent, listening church into the narrow sacristy but who can represent to himself the pale, trembling rush of fear, before the after-rush- ing world of spirits at one's heels, with which I shot from the church door and if it could be described, who would not laugh? Nevertheless, I always undertook, without opposi- tion, the office of carrying the Bible to the sacristy, and con- cealed my terror in my own breast. We come now to the great Idyl time, the Joditz spring and summer. Both seasons fall from various causes, espe- cially in the country, into one Idyl. The spring dwells only essentially in the heart ; out upon the earth, it is absolute summer, which is every where established upon the present, upon fruition.* Is is merely necessary in villages, to draw away the curtain of snow from the stage or earth, for its joys to begin. The city has its pleasures only in the winter. Ploughing and sowing are a countryman's pleasure-harvest, and for a pastor who does his own farming, they open new scenes to his secluded eons. Then were we poor children, who had been imprisoned by the winter in the narrow parsonage court, by the heaven-commissioned angel, the spring, freed and emancipated into the fields and meadows and gardens. Then we ploughed, sowed, planted ; mowed and made hay, cut the corn and harvested it. Every where, the father stood by and helped, and the children assisted him, I espe- cially, as the oldest. Only imagine, dear hearer, what it was to be freed, not merely from city walls, which sometimes in- close whole fields, but from the walls of a court, and to flee away over a whole village, into the uninclosed circle, and to look down from above, into the village, and see what they could not see from beneath. My father did not stand by the field laborers as an overseer or taskmaster, (although they were feudal ten: but as a friendly shepherd of souls that would take part at the same time with nature, and with his spiritual children. While I see ecclesiastics and proprietors and avaricious men so richly furnished from head to foot with suckers, so that they draw every thing to themselves, I find in my father * Jean Paul means here to indicate the rapid changes of season in a northern climate. He means to say, that while the heart is anticipating spring, it is already summer out upon the earth. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY 41 rather the diffusing system, and that he thought ten times a day of giving, although he had little for the purpose, but scarcely once of taking, by which he might have had something to give. And then, later in life, I have seen so many human insects furnished only with pincers good to wound, while lie held in his hand nothing but those birth- forceps which merejy bring the new life to its birth, and preserve it. Heavens ! what a difference, and why is it not more considered ! Are they just merchants, pastors and noblemen, who, knowing also what belongs to them, open their hands only as bird-climbers, to clutch at what is above them, or open merely to shut them again ! Now, in fact, life began with us under a pure heaven. The morning sparkled with the undried dew, when I car- ried his coffee to my father, to the pastor's garden, lying outside the village, where, in a small pleasure-house open on every side, he committed his sermon to memory. In the evening, our mother brought us, for our second meal, the salad prepared by herself, and currants and raspberries from the garden. It belongs to the unacknowledged coun- try pleasures, that of being able to sup in the evenings without kindling a light. After we had enjoyed this, the father seated himself with his pipe in the open air, that is, in the walled court of the parsonage, and I and my brother sprang about in our night-gowns in the fresh eve- ning air, as freely as the crossing swallows above us. We flew nimbly here and there, till, like them, we bore us or- derly to our nests. The most beautiful of all summer-birds, meanwhile, was a tender, blue butterfly, which, in this beautiful season fluttered about our hero, and was his first love. This was a blue-eyed peasant-girl of his own age, with a slender form and an oval face somewhat marked with the small-pox, but with the thousand traits that, like the magic circles of the enchanter's wand, take the heart a prisoner. Auguste or Augustina dwelt with her brother Homer, a delicate youth, who was known as a good accountant, and as a good singer in the choir. It did not, indeed, come to a declaration of love on the side of Paul, or it would appear in this division of the readings already printed, but he played his little romance in a lively manner, from a distance, as he sat in the pastor's pew in the church, and she in the seat appro- priated to women, apparently near enough to look at each 3* 42 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. other without being satisfied. And yet this was only the beginning ; for when, at evening, she drove her cow home from the meadow pasture, he instantly knew the well- remembered sound of the cow-bell, and flew to the court wall to see her pass, and give her a nod as she went by ; then ran again down to the gateway to the speaking-grate, she, the nun without, and he the moqk within, to thrust his hand through the bars, (more he durst not do on account of the children without.) in which there were some little dainty, sugared almonds, or something still more costly, that he had brought for her from the city. Alas ! he did not arrive in many summers three times to such happiness as this. But he was obliged to devour all the pleasures, and almost all the sorrows within himself. His almonds, indeed, did not all fall upon stony ground, but in the Eden of his own eyes, for there grew out of them a whole hanging gar- den in his imagination, blooming, and full of fragrance, and he walked in it whole weeks long. For pure love will only bestoiv, and through making the beloved happy, is happy ! And, could it give an eternity of ever-increasing happiness, what were more blessed than love ? The sound of this cow-bell remained for him a long time the Ranz de Vach from the hiirh distant Alps of childhood, and yet will his old heart's blood roll in billows through his veins, when this sound again hovers in the air. There are tones from the wind harp that, playing on the spot are beautiful, but farther off more beautiful still, and in ti,- distance, I might, at their softened sound, weep for plea- sure. We associate love with even the slightest sound ; be it only a cow-bell, its Orphic enchantment is doubled, and the distant, invisible waves of harmony lead the heart into the eternal, and we know not whether it is near or distant, and man weeps joyfully at the same time over what he pos- sesses and what he desires. In this focus of love, Paul remained opposite to Augus- tina, and lived whole years, without so much as touching her hand. Of a kiss indeed, he could never dream. If sometimes a homely servant-maid of his parents, whom he did not love, rashly and bashfully laid one upon his lips, soul and body rushed unconsciously and innocently toget her in that kiss but the mouth of a beloved which, at a distance, shone warmly down like the sun upon the most inward spi- ritual love, would have immersed him in the warmest heaven, AlTOBlorrllAPHY. 43 and left him entranced, and evaporating in a glowing ether and yet it must be confessed, that once or twice in Joditz he was thus entranced. In his thirteenth year, when his father received a much richer parsonage, he, or rather his eyes, were driven two miles distant from his beloved. His father, out of love for his old residence, had taken with him to his richer parish a young tailor, whom he entertained for many weeks. When he returned, our hero furnished him with many pretty Potentates, that he had sketched with wax and soot, and with his color-box had colored after life, to carry to Augustina, with the commission that the knights and princes were made by himself, and he presented them to her as an eternal souvenir. Another love passage from the same period, and that endured no longer than dinner-time, belongs entirely to him. for the young lady knew nothing of it. As he sat wholly sunk in deep silence at a respectable table in Koditz, surrounded with grown up young people, the above-men- tioned yound lady sat opposite, and, in appearance, was one of them. There swelled in his heart, as he looked at her, a love inexpressible in sweetness, seemingly inexhaustible, a gushing of the heart, a heavenly annihilation and dissolving of the whole being into her eyes. She said not a word to the enchanted boy, nor he to her. Had she only bowed, or wafted a kiss to the poor parsonage boy, he had passed from heaven to heaven. Nevertheless, there remains the memory of the feeling of the moment, more than of her face, of which he retains nothing but the scars. As this beauty is already the second that has been thus marked, (in later readings more will enter,) the Professor considers it his duty to declare to all vaccinated fair readers, that he knows how to value tJieir beauty as well and as highly as he did at that time a different fashion of face. And he pledges himself, in connection with this discussion of beauty, that every female face whose so-called ugliness has no moral cause, he can without cosmetic artifice, without paint or pomatum-box, without snow or soap-water, and without night-masks,* make in the highest degree charming and enchanting ; if she will only sing to him some evening * Ladies sometimes sleep in medicated masks in order to procure a delicate complexion, or to defend a delicate one from the severe air of a northern climate. 44 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL a song composed of heart-words, no one shall be more beau- tiful than the singer, but naturally only in his eyes for who can speak for another ? This was confirmed by the very person in question ; for when, twenty years afterwards, he found himself opposite to her in Hof, the scars only, the pit-marks remained. She was faded and bent, and I name her not ! Pure love has as illimitable power to create and elevate, as the common has to depress and destroy. It would obtain a more powerful hold of us in representation, had it not been so often described ; but for this reason only are so many thousand books endured, that only paint it. Take from a man, who, in the enchanting time of love, looks upon the landscape, the stars, flowers and mountains, sounds and songs, pictures and poems, yes, even the living and the dead with poetic enjoyment ; take from him love, and he has lost the tenth Muse, or rather the mother of all the Muses ; and every one feels in later years, when he prohibits himself this sacred inspiration, that of all the Muses, the tenth has failed him. We come now to the Sunday of our Paul, in which his Idyl gains in splendor. Sunday appears to have been created for pastors, and pastors' children. Our Paul en- joyed especially a great many trinity Sundays, although, through all the twenty-seven, not one more summer Sunday came into the world and the church than in other years. In cities, there are birthdays of princes and great men, and fair-time, tfie true Trinitatis. Paul began, on splendid, shining Sunday mornings, his enjoyment in this way : Be- fore church, he went through the village with a bunch of keys, jingling them by the way, to show himself, and opened the pastor's garden with one of them, to bring roses from thence to adorn the reading-desk. In the church itself it was already cheerful, as the long windows admitted the sun, and the cold ground and the women's seats were already penetrated with broad beams of light that circled about the seat of the enchanting Augustina. The joy also is not to be despised, which he, together with his brothers in office, felt, when, after church, and before dinner, they carried to the feudal peasants of the week the lawful half-pound of bread and the money collected esjfccially as the father cut the bread very large, which was a joy to the peasants ; and hildren, Paul particularly, love to carry joy into a house. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45 He had also to carry to the peasant Romer his portion of the bread, and found himself thus nearer to the saint of his church and heart, -but always in vain. For in his per- spective painting of love ten steps more or less were some- thing; and only imagine him, by some singular good fortune, to have stood but half a step from her ! But I will not hint (for in that case he would have spoken out audibly for him- self) of such unrealized blessedness. I assert that no magistrate, prince, teacher, or other of- ficial, can form to himself an idea how a Sunday's vesper hour IB enjoyed, by the children of a pastor, especially of one who has himself preached, when both church services are over. How they, together with their father, rejoice, when the labors of the church arc finished, and he can exchange the priest's mantle for the light every-day frock, and enjoy the calm repose of Sabbath evening, while, at the same time, the whole village visit, and enjoy the sight of one another. I should be reproached with incompleteness, if I should forget to relate another Trinitatis joy, merely because it was less frequent. It was therefore so much the greater, that the pastor's family from Koditz, in order to hear the father preach and to see him, appeared in the midst of the sermon, and Paul's playmate, the pastor's little son, suffered himself to be seen before the church door. If Paul and his brother discovered him from their not very distant grated seat in the choir, there began on both sides fluttering and dancing, heart- beating and sign-greeting and as to hearing the sermon, had the Propaganda, the ten first court preachers and pas- tores />/////////'/, one behind the other, risen in the pulpit and spoken out, there would have been no more listening. The anticipation of this Sabbath, this mountain of precious hopes, the breakfast a la faurcJiette in the middle of the day, must be enjoyed afar off in the church. But who, after the first joyful storm of parental and childish preparations are over, can describe the blessed zephyr-calm of the evening ! At furthest, it may be possible to paint, that, late in the even- ing, the Joditz family accompanied the Koditz far beyond the village on their return, and that, consequently, this sub- lime and wide extension of bliss, by the parents and by the little Pfarrherrlein, went far beyond the village, and into space, and left impressions in after-life, of which we shall hear more in future.* It must be remembered that Paul at this time was under ten years of age. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. We coine now, iny dear hearers, to those Joditz Idyls that were enjoyed by Paul without doors in the village, and may conveniently be divided into those when he wan not at home himself, and those when his father was absent. I begin with the last, as among the acknowledged pleasures of child- hood, when the father journeys from home, when the power of academical censure and freedom of direction for the chil- dren is conferred on the mother. Paul and his brothers were able, even under the eyes of the business-entangled mother, to leap over the door of the court-yard, to hunt the wild game of the village, such as butterflies and gudgeons, to draw sap from the birch-trees, or make pipes from the mea- dow reeds, to bring home a new playmate in the schoolmas- ter's Fritz, or help ring at noon, merely to be lifted from the ground by the turning of the bell-rope. One particular pleasure could be enjoyed inside the court- yard, except that Paul might easily have broken his neck, and thus put an end beforehand to his whole Professorship. It consisted in climbing by a ladder to a sort of balcony that hung in the stable, and from thence jumping upon the hay, that lay heaped upon the lower floor, merely to enjoy in the transit the pl< ;ixmt sensation of flying. Sometimes he placed the old piano at the open window of the upper story and played beyond all measure down into the village, and sought to attract hearers from the passers by. He increased the descent of the sounds by means of a quill, which he passed over the chords with his right hand, while he struck the keys with his left. Sometimes he struck with his quill upon the strings extended over the bridge, but he could not get much harmony there. The Joditz summer Idyls were naturally much richer, when we left our village wholly, and went to another, or to the city. Was there a beautiful summer day, after the les- son had been recited from Lang's Grammar, a more blessed order could not be heard than, i% Dress yourself, for after din- ner you shall go with me to Koditz." Dinner never tasted worse. Paul was obliged to run after the long strides of the father ; but at the end of an hour he had his little Pfarrherr- lein to play with in the open air, and his splendid mother, the sound of whose voice yet echoes in his heart like the string of a lute, or the harmonica-bells through the distance ; and at the same time one or two tiny laurel crowns, large enough for his little head. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47 The father's paternal heart rejoiced, when he found his Sunday's sermon understood and remembered, of which, in- deed, on Sunday evening, he repeated the principal heads, and the polished passages, and he ordered him to repeat the same again before the pastors family and the little one, I may safely say, went on without fear or faltering In a boy who, during his whole' life, had seen nothing great, neither count, nor general, not even a superintendent, and rarely a nobleman, perhaps twice in a year the Herr Von Reitzen- stein, (as he was long under arrest, and consequently, in flight.)- in such a boy it shows courage to speak publicly in the apartment of the pastor's family. But, timid as he was when he stood there in silence, as soon as he began to Bpeak, courage and animation appeared. Yes, he ventured upon something yet more bold one afternoon when his father was absent. He took the psalm-book and went to visit an p'imely aged woman, old as the hills, who had been bed- ridden for many yearn, and placing himself at the bedside, lik >r visiting the sick, he began to read the psalms for the dying But he was soon interrupted by tears and sobs, nut f the old woman, at any thing she heard from the psalm-book, for she remained cold and unmoved, but by his The father took our hero once with him to the court of ulles, as they might indeed without exaggeration call ice it was the residence of the patroness of the Joditz pastor. Kvcrv time he went to court, and in summer it was twice a month, he excited, in the evening, the utmost rustic astonishment, both in his wife and children, by telling about the exalted personages, and their court ceremonial, the court entertainments, the icehouses, and Swiss cows, and how he was very soon invited from the domestics 7 apart- ment to the Herr Von Plotho, or even to the Froulein, to whom he gave exercises and imitation upon the piano, and at last was introduced to the Baroness Von Plotho, (born a Bodenhausen.) and always on account of his liveliness and wit \\-as taken to the same table even, for it made no dif- ference if the most distinguished nobleman of Voigtland sat there and dined, but, like an old Lutheran court preacher, he knew how to look at the illimitable greatness of rank, as at the appearance of spectres, without trembling at eit And yet I would say, how much happier are the children 48 LIFE OF JEAtf PAUL. of the present day, who are justly educated to no prostration before exalted rank, and are strengthened from within against outward splendor ! While the Joditz pastor's sons were waiting, expecting in one short hour to prostrate themselves before the Zedtwitz throne, the interest of the occasion was heightened by the ornamented coach, which was sent the Thursday preceding Good-Friday, to carry the father as Confessor to the whole household, before the eve- ning solemnity. The sons can speak of the coach, for, be- fore the evening, they were carried round a little, with infinite delight, in the village. Picture to yourself our hero going to Zedtwitz, to be presented to the reigning family, along with the Court-Con- fessor, who had spoken of him there with too much praise and love. The Baroness Von Plotho received him, after he had been waiting a long time before the pictures of her ances- tors in the castle below, upon the steps above, as if it had been the presence-chamber. Paul, in true court style, rushed up and caught at her dress, and gave it the usual kiss of ceremony. And thus the whole audience, without court-sword and upper court-marshal, was finished, and the boy was permitted to run down again ; and this he did into an ornamental garden. It would have been difficult for any other ambassador than our at that time little Hildburghausen Legations-rath, immediately after such formal etiquette in his reception, to breathe through the romantic hours that the shaded walks, the fountains, the perfumed hot-beds, and leafy balconies must have offered to a village child, rich in fancy, who wan- dered for the first time, with widely-expanded breast, in the midst of all these splendors. But the elevated Paul was drawn again into reality by a wooden bird, suspended by a cord, whose iron bill he was permitted to shoot into the black centre of a shield ; while a rich fruit-cake, sent down from the castle, held him between flight and perch. Its sweet after-taste remains uneffaced in the rdiquiarium of our hero. Oh ! splendid solitary hours and walks for the indigent village child, whose heart so delighted to be filled, were it only with longing, in the outward world ! Among the summer Idyls of little court splendor, were the frequent errands that Paul, with a sack across hU.back, must make to the grandparents in the city of Hof, to bring meat and coffee, and all that was not to be had in the vil- AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49 lage, at least not for the extremely small prices of the city. His mother, that all might not appear as gifts, furnished him with a few small pieces of money. The grandmother, liberal to her daughter and grandson, and avaricious to all the rest of the world, filled the sack with every thing that could at that time be placed in a bill of fare. The two hours' walk led over places with few charms ; through a wood, where babbled a brook full of stones, till at last, upon an elevated field, the city with its two united church towers, and the Saale in its level plain, overpowered the little traveller with excessive satisfaction. Before an excavated chasm, near the suburbs, through which, according to report, the Hofers fled in the Thirty Years' War. he passed with that shudder at all war and martyr times that belongs to childhood ; and the adjoining cloth-fulling mill, with its perpetually thundering strokes, and apparently un- manageable machinery, expanded his village soul wide enough to take in the whole city. YVhen he had kissed the hand of the tall, serious grand- father, seated behind his loom, and given his mother's letter (for his father was too proud to beg) to his delighted grand- mother, the little money was publicly delivered, and what had been the secret article of the petition, privately, behind the door of the passage. Then came the afternoon ; and with his full knapsack, and his sugared almonds for Augus- tina, in the highest spirits on account of the parental pro- vision-ship upon his back, he trotted home again. He yet remembers a summer's day, when he was returning about two o'clock, watching the splendid sunny mountain side, with its waving corn-fields, traversed by the coursing shad- ows of the clouds ; and when a till now unexperienced, undefined longing came over him, of mingled pain and plea- sure, and un remembered wishes. Ah, it was the whole nafflfe awaking and thirsting after the heavenly gifts of life, that lay as yet concealed, undefined, and colorless in the deep folds of the heart ; but an accidental sunbeam partially reveals them. There is a time of longing, which knows not the name of its own object, which at best can only name itself It is not the hour of moonlight, whose silvery sea so softly melts the heart and makes it feel the Infinite, so much as it is the light of the afternoon sun, spreading itself over a wide prospect, which exercises this power of awakening a painful, boundless longing. In the works of Paul we find this several times described. 50 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. In the winter's snow, Paul was often obliged to travel, like a court or Dutch runner, when they wanted money, to negotiate a loan at his grandfather's ; so too in the coldest weather he would follow his father to the neighboring par- sonage. He may thank these weekly excursions for many later cherished powers, and especially for the best antidote to his opposing physical education ; for at that time fur caps, medicines, and exclusion from the air, united with warmth and carefulness, did not arm one against, but pre- pared the way for. an unhealthy future. But this is the blessed fortune of poor and village children, that the sum- mer, with its spring and autumn on the right and left, happily roots out the noxious weeds of winter. The pale winter hot-house plants spring at once into showers and healthy air, and, bareheaded and barefoot, grow and strengthen upon uncooked nourishment. It is only the dear little delicate princesses who flourish in no season. The good people, meanwhile, will not believe that the summer repairs the ravages of winter ; but on the contrary, that this domestic winter season is the physician of those spent in the open air. I come now to the last and greatest, and never to be for- gotten summer Idyl, that always happened the Monday after St. James's day, when the grandparents sent to bring Paul's tender mother in a coach to the Hof annual fair, and Paul was permitted to ride with her. And here, not to wrong the cold historian, I would merely say, calmly and simply, that if to a villager a common city is more than a market- town, it follows that a city in time of the fair must be a two- fold city, and consequently excel in splendor all that a village youth could imagine. Thus it was with Paul, whose imagination was ever active. As emperors were formerly presented with draughts of honor, the mother was received by her parents with sweet wine, and the son went with a little of it in his head to Sil- berer, the hair-curler. He cooled the head from without by means of heated irons and sharp screwing of the curled locks ; but Paul came so much fresher, newer, and whiter with his curls and tonsure from the powder-pun back to dinner, which could not indeed be very considerable, as the grandfather must hasten back to the Rathhouse, to watch over the selling of his bales of cloth. At the evening meal, as with the ancient Romans, there was more time and less AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5 1 frugality. The afternoon was splendid ; when, free from all '''/in tee, and deafened and dazzled by the variegated and loud tumult of men and goods, Paul, rich with his groschen* of fair-money from his grandmother in his pocket, could purchase every thing ; he could secretly purchase something to carry to the solitary house, but as all were absent and it was gloomily lonely, he mingled again with the thronging multitude. The most respectable and beautiful ladies sat at the windows in the second stories of the houses. As he passed, Paul fell in love with them, and as they were ignorant of his existence, from the street below he fell in imagination upon their necks. Yet none was so distinguished, through the elevation of the apartment, or the ornaments upon her head, as his favorite sultana, the little country girl, Augus- tina, in Joditz, for whom he bought almonds and raisins. Towards seven o'clock, under the beams of the evening sun thai embellished and gilded every object, the noise and pleasure was continually augmenting ; but he must now re- turn to the house, for the grandfather, having completed his supped at this hour, and all the family must be toge- ther. I would fain present every one at this evening meal, for Paul, having eaten enough before, tasted little of it ; but so much more willingly shall I follow him, after the second grace, to the street again, where he was as blest as a young soul could be that had just escaped from a country par- sonage. In the deepening twilight, and as the night approached, the youth was wholly enchanted and inspired. During the fair. Turkish music was heard in the principal streets; deafened and silent, the people and children followed the sounds, and the village boy heard for the first time drums and fifes, and the Turkish cymbals. " In me," these are his own words, " who never ceased to thirst after musical sounds, they produced a music-intoxication, and I heard, as the drunken see, the world double and in flight. The fife carried me away most powerfully through the high notes of the musical scale. How often did I seek before falling to sleep, when fancy was the finger-board that came easiest to hand, to hear again those echoing sounds ; and how am I blessed when I hear them again, as deeply blest as if my * A groschen is about two and a half cents. 52 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. childhood, like a Tithonus, had become immortal, merely through the power of sound, and with it spake to me again ! Ah ! faint, thin, invisible sounds bear and harbor whole worlds for the heart, and are in themselves souls for the soul." Perhaps the tones of the higher octave penetrate deepest into the soul. Engel asserts, indeed, that the peculiar har- mony is sustained between the low and the high tones, but one may say that poetic music extends over both. In the dark, deep "bass, the lowest bass sounds move slowly among the past, and in the passing time. On the contrary, the sharp heights of the extreme alto shriek and sink deep into the future, or summon it to us, while these sharp, acute tones speak out. Thus the high sharp fifing of the little fifes in the Russian field music is fearful to me, and sounds like a herald calling to battle, like a melancholy early Te Deum for future bloodshed. I fear they will say in Germany and elsewhere, that I have reserved the autumn as the highest Joditz Idyl, when it can lead to nothing but a snow-path. But in the autumn a fanciful spirit, like Paul's, enjoys not only the autumn itself, but the winter beforehand, with its domestic joys, and the spring also, with its poetic prospect-sketching. In the meantime, the approaching spring has melted into sum- mer, and the summer which is the tranquil and usual state of his fancy the summer is allied to autumn, and yet more distinctly to spring. But now, in the late summer, through the half-denuded trees, far off in other years, he sees snow- mountains all covered with flowers, and goes to them, in fancy, like a bee intoxicated with honey ; but when he ap- proaches them they melt away. The widely-extended plans of summer journeys and summer harvests are anticipated and enjoyed, and when the spring itself arrives, the chief business is already over. As the landscape-painter prefers the autumn, so does the spiritual-painter, the poet, espe- cially in old age. But in the autumn our hero turned with wonderful facility to the reverse of the picture, and nurtured within himself the strong inclination to quiet domestic life, and to spiritual nest-making : he became a domestic snail, who withdraws contentedly, and loves to live in the narrowest recesses of his house. Only he will sometimes open his snail-shell sufficiently to thrust out his four feelers, not wide AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53 enough to spread them like butterflies' wings in the air, but to stretch them ten times higher towards heaven, at least reaching with every filament one of the four satellites of Jupiter. Of this foolish union of desires for near and dis- tant objects which, like the telescope, by mere reversion, doubles either the distant or the near more will appear in our readings, than I desire, or than autumn alone has room for. This domestic disposition showed itself in the reveries of the boy. He deemed the young swallows happy, because they could sit so secretly and safe through the night in their walled nests. If he climbed upon the roof of the great pigeon- house, he was immediately at home in this apartment full of little chambers, or pigeon-holes, and the front was to him like the Louvre or the Escurial in little. I fear only that I shall injure myself, if I take up in my lectures such childish trivialities as that he made a complete fly-house out of fine clay, and built a castle as long and as broad, and somewhat higher than a man's hand. The whole house was red, striped with ink, and divided into square tiles. Within, it was of two stories, with stairs, galleries, chambers, and a spacious garret ; on the outside it had balconies and projections. A chimney was provided, covered with glass, that the flies might not pass out instead of the smoke. In no part were win- dows spared, and I dare assert that the palace consisted far more of windows than of walls. When Paul saw innumer- able flies in this wide palace, up stairs and down stairs, and running into all the great apartments, and from them into the balconies and projections, he represented to himself their domestic happiness, and wished to enter with them, and put himself in the place of the landlord, who could withdraw from the spacious apartments to the lower and smaller : then how insignificant and little the parsonage appeared to him ! He has later, as an author, described this domestic, cor- ner-loving disposition, in Wuz. in Fixlein, and in Fibil ; and yet the man remains full of longing for every little neat, humble shepherd's cottage of two stories, with flowers before the windows, and a little garden which he could water from the window ; and the good domestic fool can sit contentedly in a coach, and looking out at the side-windows, say, "What a pretty, quiet, convenient, fire-proof apartment ! while out there, the great villages and gardens sweep along by us." This is certain, that he could not live, still less write, in a 54 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, knigbt's-hall. or St. Peter's church it would be to him a market-place covered by a roof. At the same time he would be able to write, or to live upon Mont Blanc or JEtna, where all is adapted and fitting environment ; for the works of men only are not small enough for him, but great nature cannot be too much expanded. The littleness of the 'works of man is yet diminished through the vastness of nature. The Joditz autumn Idyl is painted by what I have al- ready said. Autumn leads people to their homes, and the harvest fills the home with plenty for the winter nest ; pre- pared for winter, like the crossbill, who in icy months builds her nest and has her young. From this time, after the first threshing, Paul must follow the traces of the crows in the woods, and theories of birds of passage, whose long processions he followed with infinite delight, because they were the prelude to that intimate domestic winter in-nesting and it pains me now, on his account, to think how he could enjoy the shrieks of the geese, flying over in flocks in the autumn, as forerunners of winter time. From this cell and winter disposition of my hero, I understand why he read with such singular delight all travellers' descriptions of win- ter climates, like Spitzbergen, and Greenland ; for the re- presentation of simple distress upon paper hardly explains his delight thereat, for then he would have felt the same de- light in reading of glowing distress in hot countries. On the contrary, the well known joy of the man over every quar- ter of an hour that is taken from the length of the day in au- tumn. I would ascribe to his love for superlatives, even of opposite kinds ; in short, for every thing infinitely great or infinitely small, for the maxima and minima of every thing. He rejoiced just as much over the increase of the length of the day, and wished for nothing so much as a Swedish summer day. We observe in all things, with what innumerable sat- isfactions and conveniences God arms and furnishes man upon his path of life while little is to be found on the right or left of it so that, be it never so dark about him, he can always discern black from white ; and gives him a double in- stinct both for land and water, that he may neither drown nor thirst. These are merely autobiographical touches, which a fu- ture biographer may conveniently work into a portrait, and for which he will perhaps thank me. I must refer to this contented winter predilection, to understand why Paul re- AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55 called another dry autumn pleasure with so much satisfaction. In the autumn evenings the father went with Paul and Adam to a potato field lying at the other side of the Saale. One boy carried a hoe upon his shoulder, the other a hand-basket ; and while the father dug as many new potatoes as were ne- cessary for supper, and Paul gathered them from the ground and threw them into the basket, Adam gathered the best nuts from the hazel-bushes. It was not long before Adam fell back into the potato beds, and Paul in his turn climbed the nut tree. Then they returned home, satisfied with their nuts and potatoes, and enlivened by running for an hour in the free, invigorating air ; every one may imagine the delight of returning home by the light of the harvest festival. Wonderfully fresh and green are two other harvest flowers, preserved in the chambers of his memory, and both are indeed trees. One was a full-branched muscatel pear- tree in the pastor's courtyard, the fall of whose splendid hanging fruit the children sought through the whole autumn to hasten ; but at last, upon one of the most important days of the season, the father himself reached the forbidden fruit by means of a ladder, and brought the sweet paradise down, as well for the palates of the whole family, as for the cooking stove. The other always green, and yet more splendidly bloom- ing, was a smaller tree, cut on Saint Andrew's evening from the old wood, and brought into the house, where it was planted in water and soil in a large pot, that on Christmas night, when it was hung with golden fruit, it might retain its verdant leaves. This birch, not a weeping, but a festive tree, is the only one which, in the dark month of December, even till Christmas, is strewed with the blossoms of joy, namely, its own ornamented leaves ; every one of which in- dicates a cherished pleasure, and shows that every child under this May-tree of winter may celebrate his tabernacle feast of hope.* My hearers will suffer me to describe Paul's Christmas festival, for in his works we meet with pictures of the same that far exceed mine, and merely two circumstances may be added as features of the picture. When Paul on Christmas morning stood before the lighted tree and the lighted table, * We have become so familiar through descriptions with the beautiful German custom of the Christkind tree, that it is unnecessary to add any explanation to the text. TR. T>f> LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and saw this new world of gold and splendor and gifts lying around, and discovered and took possession of one rich gift after another ; the first emotion that arose in him was not a tear, not even a tear of joy, but a deep sigh over life, in one word, the transition, the leap, or the flight (call it as you will,) from the wild-swelling, sporting sea of Fancy, to the firm land, limited and limiting, this transition the boy expressed with a sigh for a greater and more beautiful land. But before the sigh was breathed out, Paul felt that the highest degree of gratitude was due to his mother ; this thought exerted its power in a short time, and the daybreak of reality soon scattered and extinguished the moonlight of fancy. Here may be mentioned a peculiarity of Paul's father that occurred at the same moment. The father, so joyfully sympathizing with every joy, so willingly consenting to every gift, came on Christmas morning, as with a mourning veil on his face, from his own room into the splendidly- lighted dwelling and common apartment. The mother her- self assured them of her unconsciousness of the cause of this yearly melancholy, and no one else had the courage to question him. He left to the mother the whole trouble and joy of being table-decker for the holy Christkind night. In this he was not like Paul, who always at the Christmas festival helped his wife to prepare for the children, if he did not himself do the whole. In fact, he had earlier when they were simpletons, months before the representation of this enchanting opera, lying upon the sofa, played the part of pretended ticket-bearer (Lvgeti-Zettel- / Prdger) J of theatre poet, and scene-painter, and when the evening came he was perfect, as opera director and master of machinery. For every one of the three children he had divided the sections of the table with, lights, and placed the presents for the maid aside, upon a near table. In short, all upon the tabjes and the tree were so advantageously arranged, and so perfectly ordered, that the whole shone with splendor, and his eyes with delight. Nevertheless, the father and the father's mourning may be explained by the son, and indeed by this, that the latter has had for many years, notwithstanding his outward joy- fulness and activity, the same thing to conceal. It is with both only that weary, sad feeling of comparison between the manly harvest of reality, and the childish spring before AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 57 them, where luxuriantly from the very trunk of reality the blossoms of the ideal flourish without waiting for leaves or branches. The childish honey and wine of joy still required the ideal ether of faith in a Christkiudlein who brought them ; for as soon as he had accidentally observed, by the witness of his senses, that only human and not spiritual hands had broken off and laid upon the table the flowers and fruits of joy, the Eden splendor and Eden perfume went out, and were extinguished, and there remained only the common earth of the garden-bed. But it is incredible how he, like all children, armed hi self against the heaven- disturbers of this divine faith, and how long he held fast his supernatural revelations against all the discoveries of his growing years, against all the hints of accident, until he at last saw and conquered, rather than was conquered. So difficult is it for man, in all religions, to descend to the men, who up in the air of heaven act the benevolent gods. Thus far extend the Joditz Idyls, that endured for parents and children as long as the Trojan war. The ex- penses for four sons were always increasing, and for these sons the prospect of better schools was necessary. Upon the father, also, the discouragement weighed heavily, that his best years and finest powers should be wearied and consumed in so narrow a village church. At last the pastor Barnikel died, in Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, a little city or a great market-town.* Death is the only theatre- director and machinery master on the earth. He takes a man as a cipher from a row of numbers, from the left, the middle, or the right, and behold, the whole collection changes its value and order. The right of presentation, which the Baron von Schonburg-Waldenburg and the Frau von Plotho possessed alternately, came at this time into the hands of Richter's patroness, who rejoiced long and undisguisedly at the opportunity of serving and rewarding the good, disin- terested, and indigent pastor. But on this account he did not go oftener, but more rarely to Zedtwitz. In fact, a peti- tion for a pastorship, or merely a verbal request, would have been to him, who, from his old faith, believed that the Holy * Markt-flecken, a borough town that has the privilege of holding one or more annual fairs, and is the medium between a city and a vil- lage. TR. 4 58 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Spirit alone could call to the sacred office, an act of impure simony ; thus the pride of birth in the patroness must fall, without a petition and without a visit, before the pride of office in the poor indigent black coat. I will impart to you here a secret of the Zedtwitz court, which he has himself long since forgotten, although I relate it from the mouth of the old pastor as it happened on the day of his calling. As he was usually admitted first by the old Herr von Plotho, he could not withhold from my father the news of his good fortune, but gave it to him himself, or rather gave him the pre- sentation while his wife was, in fact, the patroness, and was entitled to inform the pastor formally of his appointment. It naturally happened, as the newly-created pastor entered her apartment, that he presented his thanks, and her ex- treme displeasure was excited against her husband, that he did not leave the discovery to herself. For the rest, they were both disposed, while they presented the vocation with their own hand, to spare the penniless friend the mortifica- tion of all the graces and douceurs of the donor. As I so well know your benevolent dispositions to both father and son, I can easily guess that you are calling out with delight, " This is indeed precious news, that at last the moon has changed in the parsonage, and promises more beautiful weather. We see the jovial amateur in music, coming earlier than usual from the barOny, (he would gladly have entertained them longer -from gratitude,) and running with his bull-dog to his home, to impart as early as possible his own delight to his family, especially to the poor wife, who had hitherto suffered enough in gleaning the tithes from the parental fields." Serious and melancholy, he arrived with the joy-post ; but not merely because upon the flower and harvest crown of happiness, as upon the bridal crown, there is commonly hanging a dew-drop that looks like a tear, but because he could not take leave of the beloved flock, which had been to him for many years his second family, in that great family praying-hall, the church, without weeping ; and then the quiet, calm, unrestrained, simple, still life of the village, would in future hang as a distant picture in his memory. Indeed, the country life is like life at sea, of a uniform color, without the interchange of little and great events ; but it affords a species of uniform tranquillity, which works healthily, as the equal and uniform sea favorably, upon the AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 59 consumptive, while no clouds of dust are breathed, and no insects torment. I believe I have now fulfilled my obligations as Profess- or of my own history, in reference to the village of Joditz, the place of my education, in such a manner, that in the next reading I may accompany the hero and his family to Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, where indeed the curtain of his life may rise a few turns higher, and we may see something more of the principal actors than, as hitherto, the mere in- fancy. For in fact we send him out of the present reading into the next as a twelve-yeared man, with ten times less knowledge than the five-yeared Christian Henrich Heineke von Lubeck, (who after his examination returned again to the bosom of his nurse,)* without knowledge of nature, coun- try, or world-history, except the little part which was him- self ; without French or music ; in Latin, only a little bit of Langeand Sjxccius ; in short, such an empty transparent skeleton without learned nourishment or muscle, that I can scarcely wait for the time and place, Schwarzenbach-on-the- Saale, where he mtfet begin to know something, and to nou- rish his skeleton. \\ o leave now with him that unknown village ; and although it has not gained a laurel crown through a battle, as many other villages, yet he dares, I believe, hold it high in his heart, and say even to-day, as if he had left it only to-day, " Dear village, thou art to me dear and precious. Two little sisters lie in thy bosom. My contented father found in thee his fairest Sundays. Under the morning glow of life, I saw thy waves shining. Thy well-known inha- bitants, whom I would thank, have, like my father, long since left thee but to their unknown children and grand- children my heart wishes happiness, and that every battle may pass far from them." * The biographer of this miraculous child, in his " Leben, TJiaten, Reisen und Tod" tells us, that at five years old he understood the Latin and French languages, had read history, geography, and the Institutions of the Roman Laws, had a good knowledge of anatomy and theology, was witty and penetrating in conversation, but lived altogether upon the milk of his nurse. 60 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER III. SCHWARZENBACH-ON-THE-SAALE. FIRST KISS. RECTOR. THE LORD'S SUPPER. WILL my hearers believe that Paul, through the whole pack- ing and moving, going forth and going in, thought of nothing, took no leave of parents or children, observed nothing on the way of two miles long, except the already mentioned tailor's son, in whose pocket he had tucked the soot- sketched kings for his beloved ? But so it is in childhood and boyhood they retain the little they forget the great, and they know no reason for either. The child that is every where, and above every thing wishing for the open air, retains less the departure than the arrival ; for the child severs ten times more easily long-accustomed relations, than transient ones ; and first in manhood, exactly the contrary disposition appears. For children therc^is no leave-taking, for they acknowledge no past, only the present, that to them is full of the future. Sch^arzenbach-on-the-Saale* contained indeed much a ].arMi and a chaplain i* rector and a chanter a parson- age, full <>!' little apartments, and two large ones. These were opposite the two great Bridges, with the thereto belong- ing Saa If. and immediately beside it a school-house, that was as large, if not larger, than the whole Joditz parsonage. Amongst the houses there was a council-house, not to reckon the tall empty castle ! At the same time with the father, a new rector entered upon his duties. Werner, from Merseburg ; a handsome man, with a high brow and nose ; full of fire and feeling, with overpowering natural eloquence as full of questions and comparisons and speeches as father Abraham, but with- out any depth either in conversation or in other sciences. Meanwhile he helped his poverty on this reverse side by a head full of liberty-speeches and zeal. His tongue was the lever to childish minds. His principle was, to let us learn in the grammar only the most necessary forms of language, * Schwarzenbach-sur-la-Saale, is a town of about sixteen hundred inhabitants, six miles from Hof. Paul tells us its capabilities. It had be- tides, large quarries of marble. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61 by which he understood the declensions and conjugations, and then skip at once to the reading of an author. Paul must immediately make the leap, high over Langen's Col- . into Cornelius and he went. The school-room, or rather the school-ark, contained A, B, C-shooters, alpha- betiers, latiners, great and little maidens (who, like a scaf- folding of steps in a greenhouse or an old Roman theatre, led from the ground to the ceiling), rector, and chanter, and all the crying, humming, reading, and whipping. The Latin pupils formed a school within a school. Very soon the Greek grammar, with the declensions and the necessary verbs, was begun, and without further, delay with the gram- mar, we were passed on to translating the New Testament. ner,l who often in the excitement of speaking praised himself so much, that he was astonished at his own great- ness, looked upon his faulty method of teaching as wholly original, although it was that of Basedow ; and Paul's flying progress was to him a new proof of its excellence. About a year afterwards some few declensions and verbs from Danzen's Hebrew grammar, written in Latin, were put together, so as to form a bridge of boats to the first book of Moses, the begin- ning of which, the threshold of exegesis to young Hebricians, was not allowed to be read by the uncultivated Jews. I shall immediately proceed chronologically with the life of my hero, as soon as I have thrown an eye cursorily over the present time, that you may see how much he had at once to do and to know. The Greek and Hebrew Testaments he must translate verbally ijito the Latin, like a Vulgate-maker. While Paul was translating, (he was the only Hebrew scholar in the school.) the rector had a printed translation at his elbow. The present romance writer loved the Hebrew grammar and analyzing trumpery and trifles, especially as it was a secret feature of his predilection for domestic life; he collected from all the Schwarzenbach corners all the Hebrew gram- mars he could find, so that he might possess upon critical points, vowels, accents, and the like, all that had been brought upon the table, at the analyzing of any particular word. For this purpose he stitched together a quarto book, and began at the first word, of the first verse, in the first book of Moses, and gave upon that first word, upon its six letters and vowels, its Dagesh and Sheva such rich instruction, so many pages from all the most learned grammarians, that this very 62 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. first word anfangs " In the Beginning" (as he would have gone on, from chapter to chapter,) would have made an end of him, if he had not proceeded to the second. What is said of Quintus Fixleins's self-impelled hunting in the He- brew folio Bible after great and small and reversed letters, described in the u first letter-box," may be compared exactly with the circumstance in Paul's own life."* Immediately after the arrival in Schwarzenbach, (I yet go on cursorily,) he received instruction upon the piano from chanter Gressel, and here also, after some dancing pieces, he learned only the common choral accords, and general bass. I wish God would give the poor boy only once a thorough teacher, little prospect as there is at present of it. Soon, in this absence of all instruction, he began to play all the pieces that could be collected in the place, and to improvise (phan- tasieren) upon the piano. He learned the grammar of music, and general bass, through perpetual improvising and note- playing, as we learn German through speaking. At the same time he began to read the belle-lettre liter- ature of Germany. But in Schwarzenbach there was only the romantic to be found, and of this, the worst romances from the first half of the last century ; but of these materials he formed a little Babylonian Tower, although he could only draw out one at a time for reading. Among all the histo- ries upon the book-shelves, none (for Schiller's Arme/t/"t< at that time only exercised half its powers over him) poured such oil of joy and oil of nectar through all the veins of his being, till it amounted to physical ecstasy, as the reading of old Robinson Crusoe. He knows yet the hour and place (it was evening, and at the window opposite the bridge) when this delight occurred. A second romance, " Veit Rosenstock von Otto? (the father read and forbid it,) repeated only half of the former excitement ; but only as a plagiary and book- thief could he enjoy it, while the father was absent from his study. Once he read it while his father was giving a week- day's sermon, lying upon his breast in an empty loft I envy little the present children, from whom the first impression of the chikft, and the child-like Robinson is withdrawn in favor of the improved versions by later workmen, who change the quiet, solitary island into an audience hall, or into a * There is an admirable translation of this work of Jean Paul, by Carlyle, which has been reprinted in this country TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 63 valley for woodcocks, and send the shipwrecked Eobinson round, with a book in his hand, and a dictatis in his mouth, to turn every corner of the island into a corner school, al- though the poor, solitary man has employment enough to provide the absolute necessaries of life. About the same time, or shortly after, the young chap- lain, Volkel, prayed the father to let the youth come to him two hours after dinner daily, that he might teach him geo- graphy and philosophy. What excited him, who had no particular talent for education, to think my village helpless- ness so worthy assistance as to sacrifice to it his hour of rest, is incomprehensible to me. In philosophy, he read, or rather I read to him " T/ie Philosophy of GottscJied," which, with all its dryness and emptiness, refreshed me by its novelty, like fresh water. Afterwards he pointed out upon a map, I believe of Germany, many cities and boundaries. What I saw upon the map I know not, and have sought in vain for it to-day in my memory. I trust I shall prove, that among all living authors, (which sounds indeed very strong,) I, perhaps, understand the least of the maps of countries. An atlas of maps, if I endeavor to carry them in my head, becomes, in- stead of a mythological heaven, a hell to me. If any de- scription of city or country remains in my head, it is the little I have acquired in geographical courses, of which part is the statistics of the post-wagon, part what the post-jockey has cursorily told me in good gymnastic German. But I thank the good chaplain so much more for his guidance to a German style, which consisted in nothing but an introduction to the so-called theology. He gave me, namely, the task of carrying out the evidence of a God or Provi- dence, without the assistance of the Bible. For this pur- pose, I received an octavo sheet upon which the propositions were barely hinted, and the proofs and indications from Nosselt and Jerusalem in the same manner. These ciphered indications were explained to me, and from this leaf, like Goethe's botany,* my leaves were developed. I began every essay with warmth, and the glow continued, for I always * See that exquisite poem of Goethe's, the Metamorphosis of Plants, where he expresses his idea, that all parts of the plant are only a modifi- cation of the leaf, and are evolved in succession till the circle is com- plete, and a new leaf springs again from the ripened germ. Mr. J. S. Dwight has given an accurate and very poetical translation of this poem. TB. 64 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. came finally to the end of the world and of life, to the joys of heaven, and to all that exuberance in which the young vine, in the warmth of its spring, gushes out, although in harvest only it shows its spiritual power. To whom be- longs the praise and the merit, that these writing-hours were not hours of toil, but of joy and liberty, save to him who gave the flower and fruit-bearing theme ? For one might think and maintain, that the filling up of these ex- citing propositions may be too difficult ; but only on account of the custom of school-teachers to give such diffuse and undefined themes, so uncongenial to the heart of youth, or extending so far beyond the limits of their circle of ideas, such as in the note,* of which I could mention a thousand, so that I earnestly wish a man, who understands youth well, would set himself to write (notwithstanding the good thoughts and investigations that he may have formerly de- livered) for the present nothing, but, after the measure of innumerable dissertations upon the Sunday's text, a volume of prize-questions for teachers, that they might among them choose themes for their pupils. Yet better than all subjects for themes are perhaps none. The youth will choose for himself, as he would a beloved mistress, the matter of which he is full, and with it alone he can create that which is vital. Leave the young mind in freedom with its time and its themes, as older wri- ters require, and he will speak out, undisturbed by your touch; otherwise he is like a bell that rests upon the ground ; it can emit no sound until it hangs untouched in the free air. But thus are men through all offices, up to the highest. They find higher renown in forming from free spirits merely servile machines, and proving thereby their creative mastery and business powers. They believe they shall prove in this manner, that they can make of a spirit a higher machine, * From such common, cold, empty, all and nothing-demanding themes, as " the praise of industry," " the importance of youth," &c., could scarcely the ripest and richest mind draw any thing lively or origi- nal. Other themes, such as " comparison of heroes and poets/' weigh- ing of " forms of government," &c., are ostrich eggs, upon which the poor pupil sits and broods with his two short wings, and makes nothing warm but himself. Between both, historical themes are the best, such as the description of a fire, a plague, a flood, and proofs that they are not common, &c., &c. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65 and from this produce an intermediate, and upon this inter- mediate another may appear to be hooked, so that at last a mother marionette appears, who leads a marionette daughter, who on her side is able to raise a little dog on high. All accomplished by one hooking-together of the same machine- master. God, the purely free, educates only the free ; the devil, purely servile, educates only his like. My weekly exercises I would not exchange for any modern ones. These may do much to educate the world ; but the old way was best for me, as it expanded the limits of my philosophical impulse, and suffered it to outrun it- self an impulse that found its way out from my own head into a small octavo book, in which I sought logically to establish the philosophy of seeing and hearing. I related some of it to my father, who blamed and misunderstood me, as little as I did myself. Can we too often say to the teachers of youth, very often indeed have I already said it that all hearing and reading does not half as much strengthen or delight the mind as writing and speaking. Do not life-long translators of the most spiritual and sententious authors (such as Ebert of Young) write their prefaces, notes, and poems with their original wateriness ? And yet some improvement might be expected to result from the repeated readings of a work, by which its delicacy and peculiarities are better understood ; and every transla- tor of a genial work understands and enjoys it better than a mere reader. Heading may be called gathering into the school-money chest, or poor's purse ; writing is to found a mint ; and the die that stamps a dollar makes richer than the jingle of the poor's purse.* Writing is like the Socratic art of midwifery, which they exercise upon themselves to learn to read, as they do speak- ing to learn to hear. In England, language is formed by the court and by people of the world, and is rarely helped by reading. These hours at the chaplain's were to end with chess- playing. That is to say, sometimes the chaplain proposed to unite a lesson in geography with one in chess ; but in this, as in every thing else, I remained only a beginner ; for * Klingelbeutel, a purse or bag with a long handle and ball attached to it, used in the church to collect alms during divine service, or the mans. TR. 4* 66 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. although I went at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the head-ache, as a game of chess was promised me, it was for- gotten by the chaplain, and I never went again. One cir- cumstance I can hardly understand, that my father never by a single word induced me to stay away, but suffered it in silence ; but I can understand this : I was a fool to run away from the chaplain, while I still continued to love him. Indeed, I joyfully remained the little foot-post messenger be- tween him and my father ; and looked at him with love- glances and pulses of joy after every child's baptism (the baptism-bell rung a joy-mass in my ears), when he came in to see my father, while I read or worked not far from the table where they gossiped away the half or the whole evening ; but I had, as I have said, the chess-board in my head, and remained at a distance.* Heavens ! how can men gather into the best honey-cells of mine and of so many poetic and female natures such sum- mer honey, or honey-vinegar of love and jealousy, such a con- tradictory mixture, by which too often the fairest days, yes, perhaps the tenderest hearts, are poisoned and fretted with wounds ? Truly the warmest hearts have often only half a grain of brain or understanding : I knew of nothing but the warmest love ; and so the sweet soon settled down to acid lees and sediment. MY FIRST KISS. As earlier in life, on the opposite church bench, so I could but fall in love with Catharine Barin. as she sat always above me on the school bench, her pretty, round, red, small-pox- marked face, her lightning eyes the pretty hastiness with which she spoke and ran. In the school carnival, that took in the whole forenoon succeeding fast Dights, and consisted in dancing and playing, I had the joy to perform the irregular hop dance, that preceded the regular, with her in the play. " How does your neiglibor please you ? " where, upon an af- firmative answer, they are ordered to kiss, and upon a con- trary, there is a calling out, and in the midst of accollades all change places, I ran always near her. The blows were * Richter means to say, that, on account of the chess, he made no more advances to the chaplain, yet his affection remained the same as before. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 67 like goldbeaters', by which the pure gold of nay love was beaten out, and a continual change of places, as she always forbid me the court, and I always called her to the court, was managed.* All these malicious occurrences (desertiones malitiosce) could not deprive me of the blessedness of meeting her daily, when with her snow-white apron and her snow-white cap she ran over the long bridge opposite the parsonage window, out of which I was looking. To catch her, not to say, but to give her something sweet, a mouthful of fruit, to run quickly through the parsonage court down the little steps, and arrest her in her flight, my conscience would ne- ver permit ; but I enjoyed enough to see her from the win- dow upon the bridge, and I think it was near enough for me to stand, as I usually did, with my heart behind a long seeing and hearing trumpet. Distance injures love less than nearness. Could I upon the planet Yenus discover the god- dess Venus, while in the distance its charms were so enchant- ing, I should have warmly loved it, and without hesitation chosen to revere it as my morning and evening star. In the mean time I have the satisfaction to draw all those, who expect in Schwarzenbach a repetition of the Joditz love, from their error, and inform them that it came to some- thing. On a winter evening, when my Princess's collection of sweet gifts was prepared, that needed only a receiver, the Pastor's son, who, among all my school companions was the worst, persuaded me, when a visit from the chaplain occupied my father, to leare the parsonage while it was dark, to pass the bridge and venture, which I had never done, into the house where the beloved dwelt with her poor grandmother up in a little corner chamber. We entered a little alehouse un- derneath. Whether Catharine happened to be there, or whether the rascal, under the pretence of a message, allured her down upon the middle of the steps, or, in short, how it happened that I found her there, has become only a dreamy recollection ; for the sudden lightning of the present dark- ened all that went behind. As violently as if I had been a robber, I first pressed upon her my present of sweetmeats, and then I, who in Joditz never could reach the heaven of a kiss, and never even dared to touch the beloved hand, I, for the first time, held a beloved being upon my heart and lips. * This game is unknown, I believe, to American children. TR. 68 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. I have nothing further to say, but that it was the one pearl of a minute, that was never repeated ; a whole longing past and a dreaming future were united in one moment, and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the fireworks of a whole life were enveloped in a glance. Ah, I have never forgotten it the ineffaceable moment ! I returned like a clairvoyant from heaven again to earth, and remarked only that in this second Christmas festival Ruprecht* did not precede, but followed it, for on my way home I met a messenger coming for me, and was severely scolded for running away. Usually after such warm silver beams of a blessed sun, there falls a closing, stormy gust. What was its effect on me ? The stream of words could not drain my paradise, for does it not bloom even to-day around and forth from my pen ? It was, as I have said, the first kiss, and, as I believe, will be the last; for I shall not, probably, although she lives yet, journey to Schwarzenbach to give a second. As usual, during my whole Schwarzenbach life, I was perfectly contented with my telegraphic love, which yet sustained and kept itself alive without any answering telegraph. But truly, no one could blame her less than I, that she was silent at that time, or that she continues so now, after the death of her husband ; for later, in stranger loves and hearts, I have always been slow to speak. It did not help me, that I stood with ready face and attractive outward appearance ; all corporeal charms must be placed over the foil of the spi- ritual, before they can sufficiently shine and dazzle and kin- dle. But this was the cause of failure in my innocent love- time, that without any intercourse with the beloved, without conversation or introduction, I displayed my whole love bursting from the dry exterior, and stood before her like the Judas-tree, in full blossom, but without branch or leaf. JOKE WITH THE RECTOR. As the joking companions] knew that the rector read the newspapers in his school, and that in his school-room * Ruprecht may be called the Father Nicholas, who comes on.Christ- mas eve, and plays all sorts of tricks. TR. t " Schraubgenossenschaft " may be translated mystifying society, hat consisted of the acquaintance of the rector, who permitted among each other such practical jokes as the one related. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 69 sermons he made use of every passing occurrence, they sent him, from the Erlangen commercial newspaper, which he took, an old sheet of the seventieth year, describing, in the most terrible manner, the frightful famine that prevailed in Italy, especially in Naples. The date of the newspaper was concealed with some well-stamped ink spots. The school- boys listened attentively in their places as the rector, kindled by the veracious sheet, could scarcely wait for the retreat of the chanter, to break out into explanations ; and as with glowing colors (the Erlangen newspaper-writer had used only water-colors) he brought so near before the Schwarzenbach school-boys the hungry beggars, the shrieks, the fainting and sobbing in the streets of Naples, it is doubtful which was hottest, their tears or their hunger, as they went home. And, in fact, in such cases of description men scarcely believe that there is any thing more to eat upon the earth. Through what triumphal arch, or upon what bed of honor, in the evening, the good herald of hunger was conducted by the jest-shooting society, for his exciting and stirring news, as the said shooting society saw and questioned the school children, every one may imagine ; but I cannot inform you, as it was dark and late when I first learnt the contra- diction of the newspaper story. Old, well-meaning rector, be not unduly ashamed or angry, that birds of jest or of prey descend upon thy dove chancel the sacred dove has already with warm outspread wings hovered and brooded upon our hearts ; and it is the same thing for a heart already warmed, whether it be for an old or a near famine, that it trembles with the pulses of compassion. THE LORD'S SUPPER. The Lord's Supper, as it is observed in the country, or among true Christians, is not merely a Christian moral toga virilis ; not, as in cities, is it assuming less the garment of nuns than of virgins ; but it is the first and highest spirit- ual action, it is becoming a citizen of the holy city of God. Now first is the earlier water-baptism a true baptism of fire, and that first sacrament becomes through the second full of life and meaning. Being the children of a clergyman, and frequently eye and ear witnesses of the preparation of others for this sabbath of the heart, we approached it ourselves with the greater reverence. It arose yet higher in me 70 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. through the delay of a year, as my father thought the legal age of twelve years was not completely attained until the 21st of March. As the rector held glowingly before our souls the peculiar conditions of this religious act, that the impenitent, par- taking of the holy supper, like a perjured soul, instead of enjoying heaven was swallowing hell, and that if a Re- deemer and Holy One drew near to an impure sinner, the power of his presence to bless would be changed to poison, streams of hot tears, which he himself helped to swell, were the least that his heart-eloquent address produced from me and others. Glowing repentance for our former lives, and warm resolutions of a blameless future, filled the breast and wrought strongly in it when he closed. How often I went, before the Sunday evening of confession, into the garret, and kneeled that I might repent and confess ! And how sweet was it on the day of confession, to pray all the people that we loved, parents and teachers, with stammering tongue and overflowing heart, to forgive all our faults, and thereby to purify equally themselves and us. But, after the evening of confession, there came a gentler, lighter, purer heaven of peace into the soul ; an inexpress- ible and never again to be repeated bliss, namely, that of feeling one's self wholly pure and free from all sin, and a cheerful, far-extending peace established both with God and man. And yet I looked from these evening hours of mild, warm peace of soul, with ecstasy to the morning hours of ex- citement around the altar. Blessed time, when men have thrown off the foul past, and stand, pure and white, free and fresh, in the present, and enter so courageously upon the future ! Who would not become again a child ? For in the happy time of childhood the full peace of the soul is so easy to win, as the circle of sacrifices it demands is so much less, and the sacrifices more trifling. The weighty, intricate and extended relations of older men, through breaks and delays, leave the heavenly rainbow of peace imperfect ; and not as in the spring-time of life, when it bends into a complete arch. In the twelfth year, but not in age, enthusiasm can create one wholly pure. The youth, like the virgin, finds, through all his warm impulses, less in their circle to conquer, and may gain the highest purity of manners by a nearer and easier path, than AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 7 1 the man and the woman by their cold and selfish exertions through cares, and plagues, and toils. The pure and upright man is always, once, in the earliest time, a diamond of the first water, transparent and colorless ; then is he one of the second water, and many and various colors play in its beams, until finally he becomes as dark as the stone which grinds the colors. Sunday morning the boys and girls, already adorned for the altar, collected in the court of the parsonage to form the festival procession to the church, amid the sound of ringing bells, and hymns sung by themselves. All these festive appearances, the wreaths of flowers, and the dark, perfumed birches that ornamented the house and the temple, com- pleted the powerful emotion in those young souls, whose wings were already stretched on high. During the long ser- mon the fire kindled and increased in the heart, and tile only contest was against thoughts that were too worldly, or not holy enough for the occasion. As I at last received the sacrament bread from my father, and the cup from the now entirely beloved teacher, the festival of my heart increased, not through the thought of what they were to me, but my heart and soul and warmth were for heaven. It was the bliss of receiving the Most Holy, that would unite itself with and purify my whole being, and the bliss arose even to the physical sense of an electrical touch at the miracle of the union.* I left the altar with the purity and the infinity of heaven in my heart. But this heaven manifested itself in me through an unlimited, gentle love, which no fault could im- pair, which I felt for every human being. The recollection of the happiness I felt, as I looked upon all the church-goers with love and took them all into iny heart, have I preserved till this hour, living and fresh in my memory. The female partakers with me at the holy table were to me, with their bridal crowns, like the brides of Christ, not only beloved, but holy, and I inclosed them all in a love so pure and wide, that Catharine, as I recollect, was not at that moment dearer to me than all the others. The whole earth remained, through the whole day, an * Every reader of Jean Paul's works will recollect how often, and with what affecting recollections of childhood, he dwells upon these sim- ple ceremonies of the Lutheran church. TR. 72 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. open, unlimited festival of love, and the whole woof and web of life seemed to move before me like a softly gentle ^olian or wind harp, through which the breath of love was breath- ed. If misanthropy can find an artificial satisfaction in an antipathy limited by no exceptions, of what inexpressibly sweet satisfaction is a universally loving heart susceptible, in that beautiful period of life, when, unfettered by circum- stances and uninjured by age, although the field of vision is narrower and the arm shorter, the glow is so much deeper ! And shall we not give ourselves the joy of dreaming our dream of that overflowing heaven which must at last be ours, when, in the higher and warmer focus of a second world of youth, loving with higher powers, embracing a larger spir- itual kingdom, the heart from life to life will open wider to receive the All? In susceptible and impulsive men, every thing remains more easily at the top than the purest and best qualities, as in quicksilver all metals remain on the surface except gold, which sinks to the bottom. Life will allow of no pure white, as Goethe says of the sun. After a few days this precious consciousness of a state of innocence stole away, and I be- lieved that I had sinned, because I threw a stone and wres- tled with one of my school companions, and in neither case from enmity, but from a blameless love of play. Every festival is followed by a working day ; but we go from the one fresh clad to the other, and the past leads us again to new ones. These spring festivals of the heart be- came, later, in the years of youth, only calm, cheerful sab- baths, when for the first time the ancient great stoical spirits, from Plutarch and Epictetus and Antoninus, appeared be- fore me, and took from me all the pains of earth, and puri- fied my heart from all anger. From these sabbaths I hoped, perhaps, to have brought together a whole sabbath year, or to have borne on with me what belonged to them.* * The Autobiography here abruptly terminates. PAET SECOND. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER I. REMARKS UPON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. REMOVAL TO SCHWARZ- ENBACH. SELF-EDUCATION. LOSS OF CHILDISH FAITH. A PECULIAR characteristic of Jean Paul was the transparent light in which his childhood and boyhood were reflected in memory, even to his latest age. The peculiarities of his birth-place had less influence upon his character and writings, than the remembrance of them, which in after life he wove into a wide romantic picture. He left Wonsiedel before the time when spiritual consciousness is usually unfolded ; but his fancy created later, from remembrance, pictures that he refused to disturb through the reality, and therefore he never again would visit his birth-place. The beginning of his self-biography furnishes the means for understanding how in this he is distinguished from so many other geniuses ; and before we proceed in his Life, we would recall those peculiarities which caused him to be regarded by the Germans as " Jean Paul der Einzige." He is in this remarkably distinguished from Goethe, to whom the memory of his childhood presented only outward circumstances. In his " Dichtung und Wahrheit " Goethe recalls only the outward events of his boyish years ; the workings of the spirit were forgotten, or had never been observed. Jean Paul, on the contrary, traced to his boyhood all his poetic feelings, and those acquainted with his works will find, that in his first novels they have only repetitions of his early life under the humble roof of his parents. He goes back even further, and poor as he was, Providence gave him a rich source of poetic enjoyment in the time of his 74 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. birth. He came into the world on the twenty-first of March. He was born with the Spring. He was the child of this white-robed season ; and all who are familiar with his works will remember that they are an apotheosis of this delightful season, and that he remained the poet of the Spring, the chosen priest in her temple, to his latest age. But this circumstance not merely excited and nourished his poetic fancy ; many of his aphorisms, whether uttered in jest or earnest, show that he really believed in the physical influence that such a circumstance as the equal division of day and night, and other equinoctial phenomena would have upon his birth. It led him to observe all astronomical and meteorological signs and prognostics that could have any influence on the coming seasons. Sun, moon, and stars, arid all the appearances in nature touched him nearly, and were all dear to him. The ever-changing clouds upon the Fichtelgebirge were not watched merely with the eye of a poet or painter ; he was the listener and interpreter of Nature in all her relations with man, and his acute and deep observa- tion and knowledge are expressed in many humorous and many serious aphorisms. Another circumstance of his infancy, as he says, breathed an ever-increasing breath of poetry through his life. It was the dying blessing of his old grandfather. The bystanders said, " Let the old Jacob lay his hand upon the child, and bless him," and he was placed in the bed beside the dying man. The wondering and innocent babe remembered the cold blessing hand, and in after life the man recalled it, " when Destiny led him from dark into brighter hours." An incident also in his fourteenth month resembles the pale blossom of the snow-drop out of the dark wintry earth. A poor pupil of the school carried him in his arms, and gave him milk to drink, and cherished in him the fondest affection. This poor pupil remained ever afterwards a type of one of the characters in his novels. Of not less consequence was the memory of his poor and pious grandfather, and the bench where he kneeled to pray, and the poor apartment, still known in Neustadt, where he contended with sharp poverty, and where the harvest of the day and the spiritual seed that were to be sown on the morrow were carefully collected. The elevated spiritual position of the father, who, in the consciousness of his own worth, bowed down with servile LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 75 reverence before no one, had a still more significant poetical influence upon the son. The passionate love of music, that consoled the father under poverty and solitude, and filled him with a holy religious peace, excited also the imagination of the son. But I will mention only one of the peculiarities of the father. u He came," says the son, " on Christmas morning into our light and festive apartment from his own, as it were with a mourning veil. No one had courage to question him ; our mother even was silent over this annual mourning. But he entered into all the joys of the children, and distri- buted the Christkind gifts with more delight than any one with tears of joy for us, but with sorrow over the life which most of the sons and daughters of men had to endure." This inward mourning of the father is repeated every year by the son, and holds a prominent place in his romances, although concealed by outward joyfulness and activity. It was, in both, the melancholy comparison of the autumn of m ////// with the childlike spring and bloom of the ideal' The solitude in which Jean Paul was educated, deprived of the village school, and cut off from so many childish joys, was the fountain of that deep, continued, unappeased longing for fellowship, that runs through his life and all his works ; the reason that he embraced every man with equal love, for every man seemed to him worthy of equal love, and no de- ception in his boyish years had laid the foundation for the conflicting emotions of love and hatred. His exclusion from the village school and the society of his equals was his se- verest boyish affliction ; therefore this village school remained through his whole life in the rose-light of memory. The thin, consumptive schoolmaster, whom he helped to hang out the cage to tal^ the rising goldfinch, and spread the net over the cherry-trees, has held his place, with the halo of memory around his pale forehead, in all his works. His domestic education had the same influence upon his predisposition to domestic still life, to " spiritual nest- making," as upon the direction of his genius. As a boy. he considered the young swallows happy because they could sit so secretly in their walled nests ; and he preserved the same taste to his old age. A few years before his death he said, " The good domestic simpleton can sit completely contented in a coach, and looking out of the side windows at the vil- lages and gardens, Say, ' a pretty, quiet, fire-proof apart- ment.' " 76 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The enlightened spirit of his father remained always a rich legacy to the son, and his disinterested human love fell as a mantle upon him. " When I think," he says, " that I never saw in my father a trace of selfishness, I thank God ! He stripped off his own garments to clothe the poor; the bread for the bond peasants was cut larger than he could afford ; and he sent the schoolmaster, spite of his own poverty, a part of every thing he had." When he went from the little village of Joditz to Schwarzenbach, he was followed by the tears of the whole parish, who had become for many years as his own family. Yet one other circumstance I would mention before we follow the poet to Schwarzenbach ; what he calls his " first love." A mere fancy, awakened by the blue-eyed peasant girl, who led the cows to the meadows. He lived long upon only one pressure of the hand ; but it served to add the charm of memory to the sound of the cow-bell, which, he says, was to -him through life "the kuhreigen from the high, distant Alps of childhood, and like the sounds from the wind-harp that came from afar off and melted into more lovely distances, till he wept from pleasure and regret." A. D. me, In January, 1776, Paul's father removed to aged 13. gchwarzenbach-on-the-Saale, to a larger and more respectable parsonage, and a not less agreeable parish. For some time, Paul's life was without shadows. He says in his journal, " no season had trouble for me, I remember only the bright side of every thing." Yet there was hanging on his youth's horizon a dark cloud, which soon he was obliged to observe, for already in Schwarzenbach the day began to darken. The improvement in his father's situation did not continue long. Paul allows us a glance into the domestic affairs of his parents. He says, " my father had already incurred debts in Joditz, which were afterwards increased in consequence of the ima- gined, rather than the real, improvement in his fortune, and the time for cancelling them was always too short." Then came, to torment his old age, continued bodily pain, and inseparable despondency of mind. This despond- ency spread over the whole family, and Paul himself did not escape. Although with the same filial piety he touches lightly on the faults of his parents, he yet expresses the painful apprehension that he shall at last be obliged to love LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 77 his father less ; and, on this account, he somewhere exhorts parents always to preserve the esteem of their children, that they may never lose their affection. In his journal he says, " Our father now sat alone in his study, and could think only of himself, or he rode alone to the neighboring parishes ; all our joyful pedestrian jour- neys to visit his brother pastors were over ; we were without teachers and without spiritual food." Paukwas now permitted to attend the common school ; and while the poetic charm attached to the friendship of numbers was thus destroyed, that heartfelt thirst for one with whom he could sympathize awoke, that followed him through life. " In the school," he says, " there was not one industrious, or noble, or talented. Wolfmann was the only boy with whom I could associate, and he was distinguished only for beautiful penmanship." From him Paul learned that exquisite handwriting, like print, in which he wrote his immense extract and manuscript books, that gave him the soubriquet of the Dr. Faust us of tlte parish. The want of that highest happiness of a sensitive youth, the sympathy of a friend, which thrusts all expansion of feeling back upon his own heart, was of deep significance to the unfolding of his genius. In each of his elevated characters Victor, Albano, Gustavus he paints the long- ing for friendship, in colors as true as he afterwards de- scribes the thirst for love ; he is the poet of the one senti- ment, as he is the high priest of the other. From this time Paul dates the loss of many childish feel- ings, and also of his faith in that, the most beautiful illusion to German children, the real and actual Chfistkind gift at Christmas. He regrets also the decay of that religious enthusiasm that opened to him the gate of heaven at his first communion, and laments that, after his thirteenth birth-day, he became too indifferent to the* return of such seasons. But from this time he also dates the beginning of his self-instruction. He began to understand the inefficiency of his old master, Werner, and took his education into his own hands. It is a fatal period for the influence of the master, when the boy discovers that he can be no longer his guide to the temple of Science ; and Werner lost his influ- ence from the moment Paul discovered that he used a Ger- man printed translation, when hearing his lessons from the Hebrew Bible 78 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The chaplain Volkel,* whose instructions have already been mentioned in his self-biography, and whom Paul loved, notwithstanding his angry and splenetic temper, introduced him to the study of philosophy, and led him to the belief that, even without the Bible, a God and a Providence could be proved. Another young man, Vogel. a friend of Volkel, had per- haps more influence upon the formation of his character than any other person, for he encouraged him in being his own self-teacher, and the industrious pupil of his own exertions. Both wondered at the boy, and admired, not only his unli- mited zeal for knowledge and science, but acknowledged his extraordinary talent and the ripeness of his mind. By ad- mitting him to an equality of intellectual rank with persons so much his seniors in years, they strengthened his belief in his own powers. In youth, great humility is almost invari- ably the attendant of superior genius. The future prophet knows not that his face is radiant as that of Moses when he descended from the mount, until it is reflected from another. It is necessary to make a young mind believe in itself, before it will trust to its own success. Paul was happy in the en- couraging esteem of these friends, and lie wrote afterwards to Vogel in these terms : " The praise that you add I will not contradict, nor mistrust, except that I may hear it again. Be you my guide in the path to truth and happiness. Lead the youth who is so willing to follow. Your applause will be impulse enough to make me industrious, and your censure will spur me on to improvement. I am much indebted to you ; yes, truly, I am much indebted to you. It is my good fortune to have known you. Gratitude and love will never be extinguished in my heart." This friend possessed, and increased daily, an extensive library, that was equally valuable for the number and the importance of tke books on many sciences. This was a rare thing in a country parish, and an extraordinary happiness for Jean Paul, or rather a work of Providence that, through these dead teachers, he should enjoy the means of self-edu- cation. His thirst for knowledge constrained him to read books of every species, and of the most heterogeneous contents ; * The reader will recollect, Volkel was the friend who proposed leaching Paul chess and philosophy. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 70 hence the origin of that wonderful universality in knowledge, as the Germans call it, which indeed all richly gifted minds seek, and of that power of illustration, which, to the readers of Jean Paul, is a perpetual subject of wonder and aston- ishment. To the boy of fifteen years these books opened a mine of knowledge and of new ideas ; he could not make them all his own, and they must be returned ; therefore he adopted his plan of extract-books, that afterwards became a rich li- brary by itself. Before his seventeenth year he had made many thick volumes, each of more than three hundred quarto pages. In the beginning, his extracts were from philosophical theology ; then from books of natural history, medicine, poetry, jurisprudence. In his fifteenth year, one of his extracts is entitled " On the eternity of hell punishments."* We may form an idea of the penetrating judgment and discrimination with which he read, from the following ex- tract of a letter, in his sixteenth year, to his friend Vogel. . . . u Adding so much benevolence to the old, makes it difficult to find words to express sufficient gratitude, and yet more difficult to be bold enough to ask for more. Shall I venture to ask for more books ? Your goodness gives me courage, and I pray for the third part of Semler's Investiga- tion of the Canon, GoetJuts works, the second part of Lava- ter's Journal, Helvetim, and Lessings Pragments. I do not distrust your willingness to serve me, when I humbly pray a second time for a book, from which I promise myself the most valuable views. " The following proposition appears to me at all times safe : either this book contains truth or error if the first, nothing should prevent me from reading it ; if the last, it will not convince me if the errors are too obvious, and then it cannot injure ; or it does convince. But in the last cir- cumstance, what danger have I to fear, if I exchange a truth, of which I am not convinced from reason, but which is merely an opinion with me, if I exchange this, I say, for an error that enlightens me. Dare I once more ask for it? Yet I would rather want a hundred books, than in the small- * That Jean Paul was intended by his father for the study of theol- ogy, may account for his earlier extracts being upon subjects of theology and controversial divinity. 80 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. est degree make myself unworthy of your benevolence and love." The sophistry of the youth of sixteen, and the reluctance of his friend Vogel to lend him " Lessing's Fragments," will not permit us to pass over the change that had taken place in the poet since the celebration of that first communion which in his autobiography he describes with such elevation of religious enthusiasm. At this time he had exchanged the tenderness of a devout heart for " the most zealous heterodoxy." Such experiences as these have often been observable in minds of the highest order ; with the intense fervor with which the mysteries of religion take hold of these young hearts, do they pursue the painful doubts that afterwards arise, till they are led back, through faith and love, to the clear atmosphere of truth. Jean Paul's Schwarzenbach life had at this time a power- ful influence upon the direction of his mind and studies. He found no time and no object to satisfy the wants of the heart, and no food for the imagination. The little, round, red, pock-marked face of the little girl could scarcely have filled his fancy, and all his efforts were directed to the culti- vation of the reason and intellect. A perfect cultivation consists in the equal unfolding of the affections, the imagina- tion, and the reason ; but he was entering that cold epoch of the understanding, when his only desire was to heap up knowledge, and the warm lava-world of glowing feeling was for many years built over with a heavy crust of earth. A powerful genius will sooner or later recover the complete harmony of its nature ; but that Richter injured the faculty of poetic creation, by filling his mind with the sciences, is certain, from the wonderful self-deception with which he ex- presses the doubt, whether he had not been created for a philosopher rather than a poet. In Goethe only, the com- plete harmony of all his powers seems from earliest life never to have been disturbed. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 81 CHAPTER II. HOF GYMNASIUM. SCHOOL ANECDOTES. DEATH OF THE FATHER. DOMESTIC TROUBLES. A. D. 1779, AT Easter, in 1779, the father of our poet took an aged 16> important step, and placed him at the Gymnasium, or town school, in the little city of Hof.* The examining rector would have placed him in the first division of the Prirtianer, or first class ; but his father, to protect him from the ill will of his companions, chose to have him placed in the middle division of the first class, f It depended on the talents and industry of the pupil to bring his place to honor, and his companions were a silent jury, who decided upon his merits. Paul was placed under peculiar disadvantages ; for to preserve his rank he had only two years to stay in the school, while the others remained three years without excep- tion. So great a difference brought Paul into a false posi- tion, and he soon remarked that he stood alone among his companions. He has left a humorous description of his ap- pearance when he -entered the school, and the ridicule it ex- cited in the city pupils. The stuff and the form of his clothes were of village manufacture, probably woven by his grandfather, made by his mother, and negligently put on. With a self-possessed inward look, which seemed wholly unconcerned at outward circumstances ; yet with penetrating glance, and true-hearted, unconstrained confidence, he met those who gave him only ridicule in return. Two instances are mentioned, which, although trifling in themselves, must not be omitted, as they threw a pure light on the boyhood of the poet. There was one among the boys, that took a malicious pleasure in tormenting him ; one, too, from whom Paul, in his warm-hearted and generous confidence, looked for sym- pathy, as he had been a previous acquaintance, and belonged * Hof is a little city of about five thousand inhabitants, and, beside its Gymnasium, is distinguished for woollen manufactures. t To understand many particulars that occur in the Life, it will be necessary to bear in mind that a gymnasium consists of eight classes, and that the Primaner, or first class, is instructed by the rector. 5 82 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. to a family connected with his own. The French master was an indifferent, and poorly-paid instructor, who had been a tapestry-worker. He had but one book, which he carried in his pocket ; and when he laid this book upon the long table, at the head of which he sat, only one, of twenty or thirty pupils, could look over to translate a passage. The mischievous boy, already mentioned, told Paul that it was an established custom for the pupil, when he first entered the French school, to kiss the hand of the master. This seemed to Paul but a suitable custom, and by no means extraordinary, as in his own family it was an established expression of reverence from the young to the old, and Paul, whenever he went to his grandfather's, kissed his hand behind his loom. When he entered the French school, therefore, he approached bashfully to the master, and, with honest faith, carried the brawny hand to his lips. The poor Frenchman, suspecting some mystification or insult, broke out into the most violent anger, and Paul barely escaped a blow from the hand on which he was im- printing his loyal homage. The mirth of the class broke out into loud jubilee ; and, between them both, Paul stood confused, ashamed, and in the highest degree mortified. In this instance, he was taken by surprise, and betrayed by his loyal nature ; but in another attempt to impose upon him, he asserted his rank as a scholar with firmness, nay, with a dignity that compelled them ever after to respect him. Every week, two of the pupils among the under Prima- ners were called out in succcesion to bring in the bread with which they were regaled between the lessons when the teach- ers were exchanged. As before mentioned, his companions were determined not to acknowledge the rank of Jean Paul as a first Primaner, and therefore called on the village boy to be their purchaser of bread. But the village boy, who would have sacrificed every thing to them in honest love, stood firm in his rank as Primaner. When they pressed the creutzers upon him for the purchase of the bread, he let his arms sink down with his closed hands, and stood firmly in that position. Thus, without complaint to the teacher, or a word of contest with his companions, he gained forever that ascendency which a firm will asserts over the wavering mul- titude. But if Paul was always victorious, he had many dark LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 83 hours to conquer, that left a life-long impression upon his mind. Although his companions unwillingly acknowledged his first rank in almost all branches of knowledge, it is im- possible they could have appreciated the splendid gifts of his mind, or the extent of his already acquired knowledge. He overcame with his mighty power the difficulties of his school life, though he felt keenly the want, of what he says in his notes, Heaven had denied to his youth, " teachers and love" Between the conrector and Paul no good understanding could exist. However judicious may be the arrangements of a school and the prescribed method for teaching, every thing depends on the talent of the instructor for teaching. This talent, like every other, must be native or original, and united with a cheerful, unsuspicious and hopeful disposition, that strives for nothing so much as to be always young, that it may enter into the sympathies of youth, anticipate and help its efforts to rise into the higher regions of knowledge and wisdom. This talent is alone able to excite pure scientific zeal, and to awake a grateful disposition in youth. Sometimes this honorable aim is found in men who have devoted the whole life from free choice to the art of teaching ; but it can scarcely be expected of those scantily-paid teachers who have stepped into the office as a passing resting-place, while they are waiting upon Providence for something better, and their compelled and reluctant instruction can hardly fail to disgust an ingenuous youth. Neither of the instructors of Paul in the Hof school pos- sessed the great and generous art of teaching, and, from the conrector's method alone, the elevating science of history be- came absolutely disagreeable to Paul. As, through the accident of his birth, theology occupied much of his attention, and his mind had been so early turned to philosophy, he followed the critical judgments of the age, and looked upon the heterodoxy of the time as the com- panion of philosophy. History, in as far as it is a collection of names and dates and places, without claiming the exertion of any particular talent, or of any faculty except that of memory, had no charm for him ; but as his theology or his skepticism led him to study the history of the church, which introduced him to the general history with which it is insep- arably connected, his aversion yielded, and some years after, he wrote thus to a friend. " History has the highest value. 84 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. in so far as we, by means of it, as by the aid of nature, can discover and read the infinite Spirit, who in nature, and in history, as with letters, legibly writes to us. He who finds a God in the physical world, will also find one in the moral, which is history. Nature reveals to our heart a Creator ; history a Providence." When Paul entered the Hof gymnasium, he was taken under the roof of the honest cloth-weaver, where a little " chamber in the wall " was prepared for him, and where he was soon furnished with a complete suit of clothes woven by his grandfather. The situation of the house, and the compar- ative abundance of his grandfather's means of living, had for Paul's mind a peculiar charm ; for we cannot forget how the old errand woman, in his childhood, coming from Hof to Joditz, laden with his grandmother's presents, was anxiously looked for, and when after any delay she arrived, all the joy- ful family were collected in the common apartment to receive her. His romantic walks also from Hof, when he returned secretly laden with presents, and the reflection of the setting sun upon the Saale, awoke those vague longings in the boy, that were never appeased, but that could not be forgotten. Soon after Paul entered the Hof school his father, who had long been an invalid, died, leaving to Paul, the eldest of his children, the care of his mother and the payment of his debts ; and he had not been many weeks under the roof of his grandparents, when both, within a short period of each other, paid the debt of nature. The favorite daughter, Paul's mother, had the misfortune to be invidiously distinguished in their will, and that which might have been a blessing, be- came, through her character and the envy of the other re- latives, a perpetually increasing evil. His mother, however tenderly loved by Paul, appears to have been a weak-minded and obstinate woman. She was, however, no less the favorite of the grandmother, and the presents she used to send to her under the pretence of payments, gave offence to another daughter, who was less favored by the grandmother. This injudicious partiality was continued after death, as already mentioned, by leaving to Paul's mother the house and estate at Hof. Envy and displeasure were now no longer silent, and a lawsuit was instituted by the other relations to break the will. Mean- time, as the produce of the small family estate was contested, the ground was left uncultivated, and became every day LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 85 less and less valuable ; so that Paul, when he was scarcely eighteen, was called upon to be the adviser and guardian angel of his mother, and, as far as it was in his power, the protector of his family. His mother, notwithstanding the earnest dissuasion of Paul, and the advice of friends whose countenance and sup- port she enjoyed there, determined to leave Schwarzenbach, and remove to Hof, where she was drawn by the possession of two small houses, and her love for the grave of the buried parents. In Hof, she was wholly isolated, without friends or advisers, as Paul had already gone to Leipzig. The suc- cessor of the pains-taking cloth-weaver, whose whole life had been spent in gaining and saving, could hardly escape the charge of extravagance, if she only spent, in the most frugal manner, what had been so industriously gained and so thriftily hoarded. The proverb was soon applied to the poor widow : " The sparer will have a spender." With debts which she could not pay without incurring new ones, and in contest with her nearest relations, while the house that she inherited was fast going to decay for the want of repairs, which her wasted funds prevented her from making, the situation of Paul's mother was far from enviable. Added to all this were the reproaches of her neighbors, who did not fail to ascribe to her own unthriftiness and incapacity the decay of such a long-honored family, so that she soon learnt the truth of the adage, "the unfortunate stand alone." But not alone stood the mother of Jean Paul. Her widowed, deserted and humiliating position seemed only to excite the generous and self-sacrificing affections of Paul, and to stimulate his filial piety. From this glance into his domestic circumstances we see how much Paul's youthful years were darkened and op- pressed by the cares and sorrows of his mother, as well as by his own sharp contests with actual want. 86 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER III. YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIPS. WERTHER PERIOD. FIRST BOOK- MAKING. " ON THE PRACTICE OF THINKING." A, D. 1780, I HAVE anticipated the time of our narrative, to aged 17. gj ve ^ rea( j er a glimpse into the domestic circum- stances of Paul's family. We return to the gymnasium at Hof, to mention the youthful friendships of one, of whom it has been said, "his writings would have created friendship, if it had had no existence before." We find that although his friendships ripened slowly, they were life-long, living in his memory even after the death of his friends, and cherished as the memorials of buried love to the day of his own death. His acquaintance with John Bernard Herman began at the gymnasium in Hof. He was the son of a poor tool- maker ; and his late appearance every morning at the school was reluctantly consented to by the teachers, because he was a mechanic's apprentice, and had daily a prescribed quantity of sheep's wool yarn to reel off and prepare for his younger sister's knitting, before he could think of the neces- sary preparations for the hour of school. The generous nature of Paul led him to be the friend and helper of one more indigent than himself, and to offer him not only his personal assistance, but the use of all his extract books and manuscripts. But Paul must have been irresistibly drawn to a character like Herman, who had the power of rising above the discou- raging circumstances of his life, and of devoting himself to elevating pursuits ; and Herman's influence upon the moral and spiritual being of Paul was so much greater, as his present devotion to philosophy and the natural sciences coincided with the bent of Herman's genius. It is to be regretted that scarcely any thing remains, by which we can know the influence which so remarkable an individuality of character, as that of Herman's, must have had upon Jean Paul. We know only that his was the germ of a character often introduced in Paul's later works. The next in time, but perhaps the first friend in confi- dential intercourse, was Adam Lorenzo von Oerthel, the eldest son of a rich merchant, who possessed many estates LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 87 in the neighborhood of Hof. Topen was his place of resi- dence, after he left off business ; but for his son he had built a small garden-house in Hof, and devoted it to the use of the young man while he was at the gymnasium. This retreat, situated in the bend of an arm of the Saale, and surrounded with lofty trees, looked upon rich meadow- grounds, which were terminated by a beautiful lake. De- lightful must it have been to the youthful friends, after their school duties were over, to wander here in the moon- light, and with harpsichord or singing, or listening to the music in the neighborhood, (for all Germany is musical,) to have passed their confidential hours. Had Paul continued his autobiography to this time, how would he have delighted to describe this place, and to recall the friendship here knit so closely with Oerthel. This was the remarkable Werther period, when every youth was infected with sentimentality. Paul also passed through this period, and was only slightly, and for a very short time, touched with the disease. His slight symptoms were more from sympathy with his friend, than from a real infection. One fragment only of a remarkably sentimental letter remains, which should be literally translated. " Ah ! thy few lines have caused me tears me, who have so few joys ! and these also I shall soon miss, for I perhaps shall be absent. I shall imagine thy walks in the garden at night, when the full moon shines, and think how we formerly looked together over the flashing water ! how we raised our eyes, filled with warm tears, to the universal Father ! Ah, the days of childhood are passed ; soon, with both of us, will these of the pupil be completed ! soon the whole of life ! ..." At this moment you came in and interrupted me. I read the paper you gave me ; and now I can write no longer. My tears flow ! Yet something more distinct thoughts of death occupy me now perhaps you also. Now shimmers the moon calmly. Peace sinks into the troubled soul ! Hov awful, under the pale shimmering of the moon, to imagin* all the neighboring hillocks turned to graves, and there to wander, to watch ! " How awful the death-stillness that surrounds me, and the immeasurable feeling that seizes upon me ! How elevating is it nightly to visit the graves of sweetly slumbering friends, and ah ! the trusted heart that now the worm feeds upon ) 88 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. " Read, in Yorick's journey, where he was by the grave of the monk ! But of this description speak not a word ! You can write at any rate !" From this fragment we see how, at this time, Jean Paul was ashamed, even before his most intimate friend, of his own emotions, and could only trust himself to speak of what interested him on paper. He who at a later period had the courage to give to the world the tenderest, most touching, and most enthusiastic emotions, without even the veil of rhyme or verse, and without seeking to conceal himself behind the mask of a fictitious character. ^ These emotions, that at the same age in Goethe took the form of poetry and were embodied in the romance of Wer- ther, were guarded with the strong armor of science in Jean Paul. But the deep fountain was in his breast, gathering fulness from every little rill, and from every summer shower, till the time was ripe for it to be unsealed, and to pour its streams around. The reason that Werther, and the sensation which the publication of so remarkable a work produced, made so little impression on Jean Paul, appears to have been that his mind at this time, together with his friend Herman's, whose enthusiasm for the natural sciences was boundless, was turned to subjects of natural history and philosophy, as the titles of his Essays in his manuscript book show : " Is the world in perpetual motion ?" " What is universal in Phy- siognomy ?" " How are men, animals, plants, and still smaller beings, made perfect ?" Although Jean Paul had not at this time found the true direction of his genius, yet that spiritual activity was thoroughly awakened, that never permitted him afterwards to be idle, but continued unwearied till his death, when the pen dropped from his hand, and an unfinished work was borne on his coffin to his grave. As a child, he played at book-making ; he now, as a school-boy, made a book for his own benefit, " on the practice of thinking." It is remarkable, that in this book there are none of those peculiarities of expression which have been called affectations, which make his books the despair of English students. On the contrary the style is clear, concise, and remarkably sim- ple. The limits of this work will allow but a few short extracts. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 89 After the title-page he writes : " These essays are merely for myself. They are not made to teach others any thing new. They are not ends, but means ; not new truths themselves, but means to find them. I shall often contradict myself ; declare many things truths tiere, and errors there. But man is man, and not always the same." The passage, in which Paul speaks of florid and ornament- ed writing, is remarkable, as he condemns a style that was afterwards so singularly his own. " The writer who produces many comparisons, who com- poses in an ornamental style, appears to me to have little depth ; at least, comparisons and figures cannot occur when he thinks severely. Whoever reflects, places the subject upon which he thinks alone before him ; all his views are turned to that alone ; there is room for no ideas but such as immediately concern it. On the contrary, when he revises his work, he can bring comparisons and figures to illustrate the subject. But is that useful with heavy materials ?" . . . t; Many think themselves to be truly God-fearing, when they call this world a valley of tears. But I believe they would be more so, if they called it a happy valley. God is more pleased with those who think every thing right in the world, than with those who think nothing right. With so many thousand joys, is it not black ingratitude, to call the world a place of sorrow and torment?" In the next extract, Paul differs widely from the practice of the present day. ' ; Many theological propositions that the enlightened con- sider false, may have their use, their manifold use, with smaller and less enlightened people. They are spurs to certain actions, that would not be done without them. To people who believe them, because they have not power to investigate them, they have their use ; but to the wise the benefit ceases, for he believes them not, and cannot, because he is too enlightened. In the world, truth and error are as wisely distributed as storm and sunshine. Thou re- jectest certain dogmas that are false : but canst thou sub- stitute truths in their place, that will be as useful as the errors? Perhaps an error has more useful results than a truth in its place. ... In God's best world is there no ft* 90 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. error without useful consequences ? Wherever an error is, it is not in vain. It is, in its place, better than a truth !" " Leave the ignorant an error of which he is himself con- vinced, and bring no truth befere him whose proofs he is in- capable of understanding. Observe, especially, what pro- motes the piety of thy brother, and do not mix with the be- nefit of his faith the proofs of its truth, but observe its good or evil influences. The wise love truth, for truth itself, as they delight in reason ; the unwise, as it is of use to them. Take away the usefulness of truth, and, as they are no phi- losophers, they have nothing left." . . . " We do not discover our weaknesses to those whom we believe to have none themselves. For this cause geniuses appear to form friendships most readily with those who are in understanding far beneath them. " Weak people live more in confidential friendship with each other, than geniuses." .... " Words never can express the whole that we feel ; they give but an outline. When violent affections press, the word is never found that can paint the circumstances of the soul. We say only that something is there, but not what, and how it is. Only he whose soul is equally tuned, feels the same ; but he feels not merely what the other expresses, but what he cannot express. He paints out the picture that the other has only faintly sketched in outline. Two words are often enough to place a soul in a situation that no added words can paint. But the better the sketch is that the full soul makes, so much easier is it for the reader to complete the picture. Goethe is such a sketcher. He touches the sympathizing heart at every point. Has not all Germany wept with him ?" " Writings, where the author has thought, please us ; but those please us more, that excite thought in us. We appro- priate to ourselves what the author has found, and flatter ourselves that we have already known what he has done for us." .... " Every one is pleased when a writer is humble, when a genius says he is none. We praise this apparent blindness to one's own merit ; but, I believe, with injustice. Where- fore should a man that feels his own greatness, not acknow- * The reader must bear in mind that this was written by a youth of sixteen years. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 91 ledge it ? Wherefore should a wise and enlightened man ap- pear before the public making a leg,* like a dunce ? Perhaps this is the cause : We allow such a one to be a great man, but we will not learn it from himself; our self-love is too much offended. If a man says of himself, that he is great, it is as much as if he said, we are little. But geniuses, in seeking to recommend themselves, show too much humili- ation. They can be just, but they need not on that account lower themselves. Man is just, when he does not appropriate to himself more merit than belongs to him, or rob another of what is his due. I have given these extracts, not so much for their intrin- sic value, but as private memoranda of a youth of sixteen, at the time he was contending with poverty at home, and with enemies at school. The pastor Vogel, to whom he had lent the manuscript, sent him the day before his departure for the university of Leipzig, a letter, that would be injured without a literal translation. " Excellent young German ! from whom I promise the world much in future : My dear friend : You go, then, in the morning to Leipzig ? Go, then, in God's name, and come not again until you are THE that you must and shall be. My good wishes follow you. I know your mind, I know your heart. Upon mine you have, with your goodness, im- pressed the most grateful emotions ; and you may yet ac- quire more desert with me, than I at present possess with you. Fulfil only my prophecy ! and, yet once more, fare wellj" The university of Leipzig was chosen for Jean Paul, in- stead of Erlangen in his native principality, in a mistaken idea that a youth needed nothing in Leipzig but a certificate of his poverty, and free tables and free lectures would be open to him. The fame of the professors, especially in theology, to which Paul had been destined by his parents, offered ano- ther inducement ; and the great mercantile activity of the place presented a theatre where a young man could, with most facility, by the exertion of almost any species of ta- lent, gain the means of support for himself and his indigent family. 9 * The German word is Bucklingen, which means literally to make a leg. 92 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER IV. RICHTER ENTERS THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG. - LETTERS FROM LEIPZIG. - CHANGE OF STUDIES - LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER. A. D. i78i, 9 N tte 19tt f Ma J> Richter entered the Univer- aged is. ' gity of Leipzig, and was on the same day matricu- lated. He soon found himself deceived in almost all his hopes. At this time, without any especial choice of his own, he was designed to the study of theology, as it was un- derstood by others as well as himself, that the preacher's son must follow in his father's footsteps ; but before he entered the university, the philosophical theology and the heterodox critical direction of the age had had much influence upon his mind, and the lectures he heard there were only aids and ac- cessories to his own self-instruction. Yet he perseveringly at- tended the philosophical lectures of Platner, the exegetical and dogmatical instructions of Morus, and the lectures upon morals by Wieland. He listened with attention, and when the proposition of the teacher excited an idea, or awakened an objection, made a minute of it in his common-place book. At this time, also, he began to learn English ; but his only instruction in that language was a two hours' public lecture, once a week ; the rest he gained by private reading. But his life at Leipzig may best be learnt by extracts ^oni his letters ; premising that the enthusiastic youth found himself alone, ~ithc!it friends, in a noisy and expen- sive city, where he had gone with the mistaken idea that he could live without money. In his first letter to the rector Werner he had not been wholly undeceived.* ' ' Leipzig. " The city is beautiful, if a city can be called so, that has only great houses and long streets. The splendid places that you promised I find not ! Every where an eternal uni- formity, no valleys, no hills ; it is completely without the * In these letters, as in all that I have translated, I have selected merely such pnssages as will throw light on the biography, as they are too long for entire insertion. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 93 charm that makes our native region so agreeable. In many things it is as you promised, in others not. I can dine for eighteen pfennige* Further, I have been presented by the rector Clodius to all the colleges. " For my beautiful room at the Three Roses, Peterstrass, No. 2, in the third story, precisely where Oerthel lived, I have to pay only sixteen rix dollars ;f but I must leave it in the time of the fair. The students also are as courteous and polite as you led me to expect. In the following particulars alone your information appears to me incorrect. The infor- mazions\ are rare, or the number of those who inform is im- mensely great. In the great houses they take only those who have a recommendation, and a good one is rare. From every one I have heard that not very consoling proverb, Lipsia vult expectari ; and that expectari is so undecided, that if one has lived fifty years in Leipzig, and all this time has received no office, they yet preach to him " to wait, they will give it to him." a Herr M. Kirsch is with me from Hof ; his presence has helped me much, and he has written me a right good testimo- nium paupertatis. I need only produce this to receive pre- sents from the colleges. This testimony has helped me also with Professor Platner, who loves philosophy so much." Paul wrote again soon after, " My conjecture of the ex- pectari is not contradicted, it is rather strengthened. I have yet no Information, no free table, no acquaintance with stu- dents, in truth, nothing ! It is not easy to obtain an intro- duction to the professors. The most renowned, whose esteem would be most useful to me, are oppressed with business, surrounded by a multitude of respectable people, and by a swarm of envious flatterers ; so that those who are not dis- tinguished by dress or rank, approach them with difficulty. If one would speak to a professor without an especial invi- tation, he incurs the suspicion of vanity. When I think of the multitude of students who are particularly recommended to them, of the numbers of bad students who get the ear of the professor, and prejudice him against the better, the whole phenomenon is explained. But do not give up your hopes. I will overcome all these difficulties. I shall receive some * About two pence English. t A fix-dollar is sixty-seven cents. t Tnformaxion appears 10 be giving private lessons. 94 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. help, and at length I shall not need it. Here I touch upon a riddle, whose solution you must wait for. To my mother I have only darkly hinted it, for at present it has no solu- tion ; only this will I say to you : it is neither stipendium, nor table, nor informazion, nor any thing of the kind. It relates to something that I cannot speak of until my expec- tations are answered. " But know you what especially impels me to industry ? Precisely what you have said in your letter my mother. I owe it to her to endeavor to sweeten a part of her life, that otherwise has been so unfortunate, and to lessen, by my help and sympathy, the great sorrow she has suffered through the loss of my father. It is also my duty to do something for the happiness of my brothers. Were it not for this, my studies would be wholly different. I would only work at what pleased me ; for what I felt strength, power, inclination. Were it not for my mother, I would never during my whole life take a public office. This asser- tion, which perhaps surprises you, did you know the whole circumstances of my situation, the disposition of my mind, and the strange direction my destiny has taken, would ap- pear to you reasonable.* . . . " Dr. Ernesti was buried on the 15th of September. He will allow himself many hours in heaven with Cicero. His noble Roman head now moulders in dust. His fame flut- ters over his grave, but he hears it not.* Truly, Pope is right: Fame is an imagined life in the breath of others. Thus the blow of death scatters all the frippery of our follies. The wish falls often warm upon my heart, that I may learn nothing here, that I cannot continue in the other world ! that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven ! Enough." " And you ! a thousand thanks for your excellent letter ; a thousand thanks for the love you express to me. But I wish more than merely to say my thanks to you for all that I owe you ; for the foundation of my mind and heart. In that for which a pupil can never repay his teacher, I can only shed a tear of gratitude, and offer up a wish to the All Good !" " I write to you very differently from what I write to * Paul no doubt hints at the skepticism under which his mind was now struggling. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 95 others. Every where else I may put on a little mask, or paint, at least a little ; but with you I do it not ; I show myself to you as I am. You know my faults, and I give myself no trouble to conceal them ; therefore will you let no one see my letter, for every body will laugh at one who is honest enough to let his heart be seen at the expense of his understanding. There are people who take every one for a fool, who is not as frivolous as themselves." . " Fashion is here a tyrant under whom all bow. Beaux cover the streets, and in fine days they nutter about like butterflies. One like the other, they are all pup- pets, and none has the heart to be himself. These gentle- men flutter from toilette to toilette, from assembly to as- sembly, till they sleep from weariness." In another letter to the same friend, we find Paul's views upon the present direction of his reading, and that he had already thought of relinquishing the study of theology as a profession. " In permitting me to answer with frankness and candor the questions that your kindness has led you to ask respect- ing my present employments, my only fear is that I shall appear like an egotist. ... I have heard, and still hear, many exegetical lectures upon John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Many on Paul's letters, and the history of the apostles by Morus. Lectures on logic and metaphysics by Platner ; aesthetics by the same ; morals by Wieland ; upon geometry and trigonometry by G-ehlar, and the English lan- guage by Hempel. When I tell you what I study, you will understand the reason why I have first heard these college lectures. The languages are now my favorite employment, merely because I have acquired a love for certain sciences. " It is difficult for me to say certain things to you, that I can scarcely say to myself, without the appearance of self- pride and ostentation ; but it becomes easier to say them when I recollect that you know me too well to suspect pride where it cannot be, or to find it where it is not. " I have made it a rule in rny studies, not to force upon myself that which is decidedly disagreeable to me. That for which I am unsuited I find already useless. I have sometimes deceived myself when I have followed this rule ; but I have never repented falling into an error that * * There is something left unfinished. 96 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. . . . " To study what one does not love ; that is, to con- tend with ennui, weariness, and disgust, for a good that we do not desire ; to lavish the talent, that we feel is created for something else, in vain, on a subject where we fear that we cannot succeed, is to withdraw so much power from one where we could make progress. " But in this way can you earn your bread ? This is the miserable objection that is made against it, I know nothing in the world by which bread cannot be earned ; I will not therefore say that he can never succeed, who has for the end of his studies merely the relief of his pressing necessities. " In the one case there will be more, in the other less success. " Granted and I know not whether I shall gain my bread by that for which I feel no power, in which I find no pleasure, and make no progress ; or in that in which enjoy- ment stimulates, and my talents help me. " One must live wholly for a science, sacrifice to it every power, every enjoyment, every moment, and busy one's self with the other sciences, only as they are accessories to the favorite. If, through adverse outward circumstances, the insignificant reward of common inferior talent should be lost, it will be repaid tenfold by the exquisite enjoyment that springs from the pursuit of truth, the charm that is found in the exercise of a favorite talent, and perhaps the honor that sooner or later may be acquired. This is my defence. " Formerly I read only philosophical writings ; now I read in preference the witty, elegant, imaginative authors. Once I did not love the French language, now I read French books rather than German. The wit of Voltaire, the elo- quence of Rousseau, the ornamented style of Helvetius, and the ingenious remarks of Toussainfc, all these impel me to the study of the French language. I do not believe that I learn much from them, but they please me. With the im- pression of the finest passages, and the witty, the remem- brance of the art with which they were composed remains also. " I read Pope he delights me ; so does Young. There is undoubtedly nothing more splendid in the English lan- guage ! I learn it now chiefly to read that excellent weekly paper, the Spectator, of which we have in German but a miserable translation * LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 97 " The eloquence of Rousseau enchants me. I find elo- quence also in Cicero and Seneca. I love both these now, above all things, and prefer reading them to the best Ger- man authors. I love the ancients, and have given up many of those foolish judgments by which I was misled, through the poor instruction of my Latin master. " Will you allow me a little digression, upon reading the ancient authors in school ? What I say may be false, but with me it was true. To imitate an ancient author, to find him beautiful, to love him and occupy one's self with him, a boy must have taste." Here Paul breaks off his digression about the ancients, and his account of his own studies. We find no more letters upon the subject at this time. Paul's correspondent objected to this estimation of fame in the case of Ernesti, and answered him thus : " If you believe that Ernesti has taken nothing with him but his reputation, and that this is only an imaginary pos- session, it appears to me you err, and would, like Pope, depreciate this imaginary life in the breath of others. Is it, then, not desirable that our memory should be honored, that other minds, eren after the lapse of centuries, should enter into union with our own ? If man looks upon Fame with indifference, he will not wish to be great himself, and the world will become poor in splendid deeds." Paul, in his next letter, sought to explain, rather than to excuse, his assertions upon Ernesti's reputation. " What you say of fame is just ; what I have asserted thereon is not just. I have never looked upon reputation with indifference, never considered it an imaginary good ; for what is more probable, than that in eternity we shall enjoy its richest and most enduring fruit ? At the time I I wrote my letters to you, I was, through the recent death of Ernesti, through the idle pomp of his funeral, and the comparison of his former and present circumstances, exactly in the temper to assert an erroneous opinion. " But perhaps they valued the departed Ernesti more than he deserved.* He spake Cicero's Latin, but he had not his eloquence. He had good Latin words, but not splendid thoughts ; he was astonishingly learned, with mode- rate powers of understanding. He was more indebted * Emesti was called the German Cicero. 98 LIFE OE JEAN PAUL. for his reputation to his industry than to his genius, more to reflection than to penetration. He was a great philologist, but not a great philosopher. Even this made him perhaps not half as great as a Lessing, or even as a Platner. But wholly to paint the last, Platner, I must be himself, or more. One must hear, or read him, to know how to admire him. And this man, who unites so much sound philosophy with so much grace, so much knowledge of mankind with such extensive learning, so much knowledge of the ancient Grecian with the modern literature ; who is equally great as a philosopher, physician, aesthetic, and learned man ; and who possesses as much virtue as wisdom, is as much endowed with sensibility as penetration even this man is not only the envy of every inferior mind, but the object of the perse- cution and secret slander of every blockhead. " He was once called before the consistory at Dresden to defend himself against the charge of Materialism. There is nothing of which he is less guilty. No one can have read his Aphorisms without perceiving that he is the most en- lightened enemy of Materialism.* " I have often made the remark, that a great man, to preserve his reputation, must not live long. New monuments of his greatness are constantly expected of him. By making his past actions the heralds of his future, they raise him to an unattainable point. They turn always their eyes forwards, and seek what he is going to be, and forget what he has been, ceasing to admire when they have nothing new to admire he has overlived himself. After his death, they go back with the great man over the whole course of his path ; but before, they refuse to give him unlimited praise, because they would allure him to greater actions, and not, through too great appreciation of the present, prevent him from striving for perfection. Thus it was with the great Young, in Eng- gland ; and thus it has been with Ernesti in Leipzig. A great spirit may only first attain that existence which unites him with the whole of humanity, when he has laid down the present." From the above extract relating to Platner, we cannot * 1 have not been able to find any account of Platner. Menzel says " his Aphorisms do not contain so ingenious a selection of thoughts, as Rochefoucault's, but very much that is striking, and worthy to be taken to heart even now." TR. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 99 avoid the inference, that he exerted a powerful and long enduring influence upon Richter. He says, many years afterwards, that " Platner's manner in reading the lines from Shakspeare, ' We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep/ created whole volumes within him." Platner thought and wrote in aphorisms ; and, as this became Jean Paul's own manner, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the pupil imitated the master, especially as it cannot have escaped the most careless reader, that Richter's letters and journals are at this time entirely free from his later acquired peculiarities. He appears to have approached no nearer to Platner than the lecture-room. Paul's poverty and modesty held him in obscurity ; the warmest wish of his heart, the deep thirst of his soul to become personally acquainted with in- tellectual men, was wholly disappointed in Leipzig. But that he might not fail in every thing, he then turned with renewed ardor, with more intense industry, upon books. His studies had taken a new direction ; foreign literature, the French as well as the English, particularly Rousseau, held captive the youth of eighteen years. Richter must have found in many of the characteristics of Rousseau a reflection of his own nature. It is remarkable, that, in the copious extracts he made from Rousseau, he copied not the sentimental and impas- sioned passages, but rather rules of practical wisdom and directions for good manners ; from the New Heloise, a long description of social life in Paris ; the reason is obvious at this time he longed to become acquainted with the more refined forms of social life in G-ermany.* He could see little of life in Leipzig, except what he observed in the streets, at the theatres, and in the public gardens. So strong was his desire, that he says "he stood hours at the door of the hotel of Bavaria, to see an ambassador enter, that he might be able to describe one." At this period, his intellectual activity alone was cherished, * The inmost poetic impulses of his nature were kept in subjection by his social desires, and the impassioned eloquence of Rousseau sank deep, but left no outward trace in his mind. 100 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. to the exclusion of the emotions of the heart, and this too united with the coldness of a heterodox theology ; added to all this was his admiration of Pope and Boileau, and the study of the French philosophers. But his heart was still full of the tenderest sympathy for his mother, as his letters A. D. i78i, to her at this time will show. Speaking of her law- aged is. gu ^ h e wr ites to her in November, " a day will perhaps come, when your enemies will not be as happy as they now are, and when you will enjoy more rest, more satis- faction, more joy. If you are a Christian, (and this you must be !) truly then I cannot understand how things that concern only this short life can make you so uneasy. Do you suffer from the little vexations that now afflict you, re- member Him also by whom the smallest good deed will not be left unrewarded, who looks upon every one of his creatures with love, who has formed for all a heaven, and will give one to all. Pray ! If you have no friend to whom you can complain, complain to Him who is the friend of all men ! Wait from him the help, that, however long delayed, never fails. Remember that our greatest troubles can rob us of nothing but life, and that death will give us that sweet rest that life has denied ; that hereafter our sorrows will sleep calmly, till we awake from slumber to that blessed day when an open heaven will receive the pious ; when friend shall meet friend ; the wife the husband ; the child shall find the father that he has so long lost, and eternal happiness shall stream through the heart of the blessed." Paul writes again, on the first of December : " I daily hope and expect to receive news of what passes with you, and the help I have so long prayed for; but I learn nothing from you. You leave me between hope and fear. I have lately written to inform you that I have already been trusted ; and as I have no longer any funds, I must continue to be trusted. But what can I at last expect ? Be so good as to give me some counsel. I must eat and I cannot continue to be trusted by the traiteur. I cannot freeze but where shall I get wood without money ? I can no longer take care of my health, for I have warm food neither morning nor evening. It is now a long time since I asked you for twenty rix dollars ; when they come I shall scarcely be able to pay what I already owe. Do you believe that I would ask you unnecessarily for money to spend extravagantly ? Ah ! I know how indispensable it is to you ! If you can LIFE pi? 101 help me ra?w, I trust you will not, with God's help, be called upon to assist me again. Perhaps the project I hare in my head will enable me to earn for you and for myself. But at present I know not truly what I shall do if you suffer me to wait longer." He writes again : " Now tell me of yourself. Are you already in Hof, and how are you pleased ? and how stands it- with your lawsuit ? Do you win or lose ? I expect bright news from you. I pray only that you be not melancholy. Take care of your health. Be steadfast, and bear the sor- rows that you may yet expect in greater number, with in- creased resignation. Keep my brother industrious !" After Paul had received the money, wrung with so much difficulty from his mother, he writes : " I thank you so much the more, as it cost you so much trouble to collect it. Oh, how gladly would I refund this, and never receive more of that which you need so much yourself." At this time also, his mother wrote to him, in great dis- tress, that his idle brother had enlisted as a soldier. Paul answered, " I am much less troubled that my brother is a soldier, than that you are so anxious about it. Indeed, it would have been better had he remained at his craft. But when you think how unsteady he was, and that no master could keep him long, the evil is not so great. You err, when you think of the soldier's situation as any thing contemptible. Are not noblemen's, counts', and even princes' sons sol- diers ? Is not the son of the old Frau Pharrarinn in Koditz also one ? " Adam may be promoted, and, in any event, a soldier is better than a barber. Write to my brother, to conduct him- self well for the rest God will care. Do not trouble your- self so much about it, and, above all, dismiss that contemptu- ous notion you have of a soldier's life. The state could not exist without him." " I would gladly send you some coffee, but my want of funds is as great as yours. If only my expedient succeeds as I hope, in four weeks it will be decided,* and I shall cer- tainly know whether I shall be able to earn money by it or not. Gluten Mutter ', trouble yourself not so much ; for with * This was his intention of becoming an author. 102 ; . -Lfe 1 pjs ^AN VAUL. all your anxiety you cannot alter any thing, and your cares will injure your health." Paul writes thus to her on the death of the relation who had contested the will and the inheritance of the cloth- maker : " Leave R to rest in peace. He is in his grave hate him then no longer ! Death ends all ! even our en- mities. Has he been unjust to you ? he has now failed like other men." His poor mother was much dissatisfied that Paul should think of writing books, instead of preparing himself to tread in his father's footsteps, and occupy the pulpit in Joditz or Hof. She had flattered her imagination with the thought of sitting a devout hearer under his pulpit, and listening to the pious eloquence of her gifted son. Paul wrote to her: " You ask what kind of books I write ? They are nei- ther theological nor juridical, and if I should tell you the titles it would signify nothing. They are satirical or droll books. Indeed, I cannot but smile when you make me the edifying offer to listen to my preaching in the Spital Kirche in Hof. Think you then it is so much honor to preach ? This honor, however, can any poor student receive, and it is easy to make a sermon in one's dreams ; but to make a book is ten times more difficult ; besides, you do not know that a poor student like myself dare not preach in Hof without gain- ing a permission from Baireuth, which costs fourteen gulden.* . . . " You think that I lay up my clothes. How can I do this when I have no new ones ? I have indeed worn-out garments, but no new ones. Now, dear, good mother, I must speak of myself. If you only knew how un- willingly I do it ! But can I do otherwise ? Yet I will not ask you for money to pay my victualler, to whom I owe twenty-four dollars, nor my landlord, to whom I am in- debted ten dollars, or even for other debts that amount to six dollars. I can let these rest till Michaelmas, when I shall undoubtedly be able to pay these, and other future ones. For these great sums I will ask no help from you, but for the following you must not deny me your assistance. I must every week pay the washerwoman, who does not trust. I must drink some milk every morning. I must have my boots soled by the cobbler, who does not trust ; my torn cap must be repaired by the tailor, who does not trust ; and I * A gulden is forty cents. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 103 must give something to the maid-servant, who of course does not trust. I know not indeed what I shall do, if you do not lend me a helping hand for these things. Can you believe that I would plague you thus if I could help it ? I need not, indeed, much; eight of dollars Saxon money will satisfy all, and then I shall need your help no longer. Grood mother, you must not believe my project for gaining money is good for nothing, because nothing is yet decided. Ah no ! I trust even to maintain us both, but all depends upon the be- ginning." The project which Paul, with so much mysterious confi- dence, imparts to his mother, were his hopes of emolument from the books he was writing, and so sanguine was he of success, that he not only hoped to pay all his debts, but to have the means of making a journey to Hof. . . . " When I come to Hof at Whitsuntide, I shall not only bring myself, but all my old linen, and you may send my stockings and shirts after your recruit. I have indeed no whole stockings, only some few that are patched. But what is that? Do not be angry that I am so merry, for I write the whole day nothing but amusing books. Yet more ; I am not in my old chambers, but in the summer- house of a beautiful garden. The garden belongs to the same gentleman to whom my former lodgings belonged." His poor mother, whose character bore a strong resem- blance to that of Lenette, in his novel of " Siebenkas" was not at all pleased with her son's writing all day nothing but amusing books, for Paul answers : " You have sent me a reprimand, in order that I should preach a penitential sermon in Hof. Do you think then that it is so very easy to write a satirical book ? Do you be- lieve that the ministers in Hof understanding one line of my book, would wish to silence it, and that the pastor in Rehau does not understand the thing that he praises so much ? If I had studied theology only, by what should I support myself? Yet once more, the permission to preach costs fourteen gulden. I do not despise ministers. I have no contempt, and shall never have, for linen-weavers. Good mother, I trust yet to write books, little as I have received for this, by which I shall gain three hundred Saxon dollars. Besides, is it not right that I should write facetious books, when you write facetious letters ? Over the conclusion of your last I could only laugh." 104 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER V. Bf EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. FIRST LITERARY EFFORT. GREEN- LAND LAWSUITS. A. D. i78i, I HAVE rather anticipated the course of events, in aged is. order to place the extracts from Paul's letters, written while at the university, together, to enable the reader to understand the difficulties he had to encounter, and the constant demands made upon his patience and sen- sibility by his mother. I give a few extracts from his jour- nal to show how he brought his philosophy to act upon his daily life. "August 11, 1781. " Thou wouldst learn thy faults from thy friends ! Thou errest much. Their sincerity goes not so far as to discover to thee the undeniable spots upon thy character. Their sincerity goes not so far as to tell you of faults that you cannot excuse in yourself. The best means to learn our faults is to tell others of theirs. They will be too proud to be alone in their defects, and will seek them in us, and reveal them to us. A friend cannot be easily seen in his true form. We see him as in a glass, that our warm breath renders opaque. An enemy is often the truest discoverer of our faults. Our bosom friend, who loves us, tells us of our virtues ; our enemy, who hates us, of our faults. Both often say too much, but it is easy between these extremes to discover the truth. I believe the faults of many lively men have more merit than the virtues of the cold and unexcita- ble, that cost them no trouble. . . . Our century is tolerant to opinions and intolerant to actions. We dare ex- press every opinion freely, but practise no virtue without the fear of ridicule. We dare judge without knowing the opinions of others to guide us, but we dare not act without seeing what others do. We tolerate all sorts of free-thinkers, but not all sorts of saints." Every extract from this journal would show how much Paul's thoughts dwelt upon the manner of thinking and be- ing, and the outward relations and appearance of gifted and i LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 105 * ' : great men. It anticipates that longing after sympathy and fellowship with the beautiful and good, that he afterwards describes so beautifully in the life of his Walt. " We have had great spirits," he says, " but not great men. All our geniuses raise themselves by their under- standing too far above this earth. We look sorrowfully after their flight, and regret that we are only men. We reverence, but we do not love them. Rousseau alone is an exception. His talents made him great as an individual ; his heart al- lied him to all humanity.* We love him the more because he discovered his faults to us, and was not ashamed to be our fellow-creature We know more of the heads of celebrated men than of their hearts ; they have sketched the former in their works: their heart is found in their secret actions, and they would more certainly please if they repre- sented their thoughts, opinions and feelings, with less dis- guise There are certain men that we do not willingly thank those from whom we expect even receive good with reluctance. We feel deeply humbled when another makes use of our misery as a staff to raise himself to higher honor. It is insupportable to be obliged to acknow- ledge good in wickedness, and through our ingratitude en- courage the vice of pride and vainglory." . . . u The learned man is only useful to the learned ; the wise man alone is equally useful to the wise and the simple. The merely learned man has not elevated his mind above that of others ; his judgments are not more penetrating, his remarks not more delicate, nor his actions more beautiful than those of others. He merely uses other instruments than his own ; his hands are employed in business of which the head some- times takes little note. It is wholly different with the wise man. He moves far above the common level. He observes every thing from a different point of view. In his employ- ments there is always an aim, in his views always freedom, and all with him is above the common level." .... " The great man is proud, for he would not have attained the perfections he possesses, if he had not seen their worth and felt their value. But as he has acquired true advanta- ges ; as his excellencies compel his own applause, sometimes even his own admiration, he feels it unnecessary to beg the miserable praise of fools, and to attain greatness through * Literally, His talents made him a great man ; his heart great men. 6 106 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. humiliation. He is indifferent to the applause of others ; his own is sufficient for him ; for this reason he appears humble when he is entirely the opposite ; he is only mo- dest. He seeks his own deserts, not in hearing it said that he is great, but in proving it. He does not boast of his views in the preface ; in the book, alone, he sketches his image, and if he often speaks of his weakness and imperfec- tion, it is not to place those above him who have the perfec- tions that he wants ; but in proportion as he is great, he knows how much he needs to attain the greatness that he -has held before him in his ideal of perfection}'' It is obvious from Paul's letter to the rector Werner, that he was only withheld from giving up theology as a pro- fession, from a sense of duty to his mother, and the fear that his project of becoming an author would involve her in deeper distress. A passage in his journal shows the dread he had of being indebted to a patron, and no doubt he felt as his father did, that the Spirit only, should call the la- borers into the vineyard of the church. He says. " at length, oh God ! if I must suffer, grant only this, that I have not to thank foolish' and wicked men, that through our misfortunes make demands upon our gratitude." At length, after long struggles. Paul decided to give his thoughts to the public through the press, rather than the pulpit, to write, rather than to speak ; and, his resolution once taken, he never wavered. The history of the first creation of every genius is very interesting. He hears the whisperings of the Muse, that assure him of his future power, but he conceals them as a precious secret, till from his own consciousness he has ac- cumulated the materials of his future fame ; but Richter's first works were not written to lighten the laboring mind of the riches that weighed upon it, as the Werther of Goethe is said to have been. The pressure came from without ; the necessities of his mother prompted his invention, and sharp hunger impelled the industry of his pen. This pressure from without, solves also another enigma. It has appeared incomprehensible, that an author of so much tenderness, and afterwards so full of sentiment, should have begun with works of satire ; but Paul enhanced the splendid gifts of his genius by a distrustful humility. Speaking of himself, he says, " I am richer in a receiving than in a creative imagina- tion, in what may be nailed a negative poetic talent, in LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 107 opposition to the positive, which is the power of creation. I possess only a lower order of imagination, that of being penetrated and excited by the creations of others. In youth it is dangerous, but very easy, to mistake the one for the other, and imagine that a day of pentecost has given us the power to speak with inspired tongues." Paul was a philosopher before .he was a poet, and his French and English studies determined the character of his first book. He judged humbly and wisely, that his mind was not sufficiently furnished with materials, and his ima- gination not ripe enough for great creations in the regions of poetry. In his French and English reading he had found a multitude of Essays, that without characters or action, en- joyed the highest celebrity. They demanded only wit, satire, irony, and poetic illustration, and he felt himself capable of producing a book of this species. His studies of late had been almost wholly confined to works of this kind ; and although Rousseau was his favorite, yet with the wit of Voltaire, the satire of Pope and Young in his memory, he could play with the poverty of his materials, and reproduce the same thought almost without end. The pressure of reality, the chill and wet cold of outward life, had closed, and sequestered in the bud all that rich bloom of imagination, that afterwards, when opened by the sunbeams, became so beautiful and luxuriant. In a letter to his friend the pastor of Rehau, to whom he sent the manuscript of his first book, Die Lob der DummJieit, (Eulogy of Stupidity.) he says : " You know, perhaps, that I am poor, but perhaps you do not know that no one has lightened my poverty. If you would gain a patron, you must not let it be understood that you need one that is, if you would be rich, you must not be poor. Yet more, God has denied me four feet, to enable me to look up for the favorable glance of a patron, and creep for a few crumbs from his superfluity. I can neither be a false flatterer, nor a fashionable fool, nor win friends by the motion of my tongue and the bending of my back Think of all these things, and you will know my situation, but you will not know how I am going to improve it. It came into my head at one time, I will write books, to be able to purchase books ; I will teach the public, (pardon the false expression for the sake of the antithesis), to be able to learn at the university ; I will put the horse behind the wagon, to 108 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. get out of this wicked hollow way. I altered only the species of my studies. I read witty authors, Seneca, Ovid, Pope, Young, Swift, Voltaire, and I know not what. Erasmus's ' Encomium moria"* gave me the notion of eulogizing prosing stupidity. I began I improved I found difficulties where I did not expect them, and none where I expected them most ; and I ended my book the very day I received your letter. You will exclaim, ' wonderful !' if you do not exclaim ' foolish !' " Here you have my experiment the experiment of a man of nineteen years. A professor, whom the manuscript reached through a third person, did not wholly deny me his applause. Dare I hope for yours? Perhaps you will review it in the following manner : 4 The author can easily substitute himself for the book certainly the Divinity that he praises, inspired him.' " I will owe you the utmost gratitude, if, before I hand the manuscript to the publisher, you will give me some informa- tion with regard to its value, and yet more, if you will point out its frequent faults. But enough ; or I shall write a bad letter over a bad book." Vogel answered with all the delight and pride of one who had discovered and prophesied Paul's future distinction. " I praise not your folly but your splendid, wonderful wisdom ! Confess ! did not Wisdom herself appear to you in person, and with her veil thrown back, reveal to you her divine beauty ? Nevertheless, I fear, if it is published, half the world will quarrel with you, if not the whole." After waiting a year, and being unable to find a publisher for his Lob der Dummlieit, Paul wrote to the same friend : " I left Hof last year (at the end of the vacation) full of hope followed by the beautiful and variegated dreams with which a too-easily trusting phantasy brightened my future plans. No one, thought I, is happier than myself; my Essay will bring me a hundred dollars. With that I can live one summer, although the book will scarcely live so long. But I can write another for the next fair, with fewer faults, that will bring me more money. Herr Professor Seidlitz will have already disposed of this satirical abortion, and at my next visit will undoubtely hand me the author's reward. " But Herr Professor Seidlitz had not disposed of my satire, and of course could not hand me the author's reward. Yet had the gentleman so long and so kindly patronized LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 109 the book, by letting it lie on his desk, that the time when it should have been published, at Michaelmas fair, was half over. Now, I had the book, but no publisher. 1 read it through to quiet my ill-humor, and thanked God that I had found no publisher. ' Lie there in the corner,' I said, with paternal expression to the little Richter, l together with school exercises, for thou art thyself no better. / will for- get, for the world would certainly have forgotten thee. Thou art too young ever to have been old, and the milk-beard upon thy chin would never suffer me to believe that thou wouldst have gray hair.' " From this fit of angry enthusiasm my right hand awoke me, that had accidentally come in contact with my empty purse in my breeches pocket. The hand afterwards struck my stomach, that through its murmuring veto gave a wholly dif- ferent direction to my resolutions. In short, I undertook again a wearisome work, and created in six months, observe, net in six days, a bran new satire, such as I now send you. Perhaps you will think I have said nothing to excuse myself; permit me to think I have said all. Think only of the anxiety with which one strives after a good, for the want of which the future is armed with greater terrors, than even embitter the present. Think only of the melancholy dis- cord between laughter at strange follies and discourage- ment over one's own future." . . . While Paul was so occupied in preparing for the press his second book, " The Greenland Lawsuits" he neglected to write to his friend Vogel. After answering his reproaches, he says : " I thank God this steep mountain is passed now ; I can write again to my friend with my former freedom. Now I believe myself to be, by a sweet deception, not in my own, but in your apartment. Again I believe that I press your hand, and that you read in my moist eyes the remem- brance of your past benevolence, and I read in yours the forgetfulness of my past faults. But enough of letter- writing, and something of book-writing. " My book has a thousand faults. It is overladen with comparisons, as the Eulogy of Stupidity was with antithesis. I could collect out of it a regiment of six hundred comparisons. My satire commands, with its scourge nothing but thoughts, from which every one may furnish himself with a comparison, as in the Persian camp every 110 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. soldier had a mistress, and the king as many mistresses as soldiers. " You think, perhaps, I am wise to blame myself, lest I should be blamed by others, as prisoners, for fear of being hanged, hang themselves in prison, and instead of the gal- lows, use a nail, and for a rope, a garter ; or through previous criticism defend myself from every other, as the peasant, to secure himself from the thunderbolt, carries one that he has picked up, about with him in his pocket. ..." I acknowledge that an excess of comparisons is really a fault ; but can cold criticism subdue the charm of rich intemperance ? Does ' the wine-bibber, with the red nose, know the poisonous effect of excess? He knows it well ; but he cannot fly from it. Even so consists the cold disapprobation of lavish ornament with the warm love of the same. There was a time when truth charmed me less than its ornament, the thought less than the form in which it was expressed. I was like the young painter who sketches a picture on the canvas from Nature, and then gives it the features of his beloved. " But how I radotire ! I cannot even lay aside my faults while I condemn them. A book without beauties is certainly a bad thing, but one without faults is not therefore good. Toussaint asserts that such, even if it could exist, would possess only moderate merit. Besides, it is of little consequence whether my kindlein dies, and is gathered to its brothers, with a quick apoplexy or a slow consumption ; that is, whether the book is forgotten, with its ten or its twenty faults. To prevent literary death, no herb has yet grown, perhaps not even the laurel. " There are always many objections to the value of self- criticism. Who can protect his ears from the grating of his file 1 ^ The file shapes, but begets no beauties. Not the poet merely, but his poem is born, not made. Jupiter begets the gods, but those who are not immortal, he makes ; these are the work of his hands, but Minerva sprung ready-formed from his head. Besides, G-enius, like Love, is winged, but blind ; it feels, like the polypus, the critical light, but sees it not. The self-critic lessens indeed the number of faults, but also of beauties ; for the time that would improve Genius, shortens that in which it would create ; as the one child nursed too long, robs the embryo of nourishment. Ohe jam satis est, will you exclaim ! LIFE OF JEAN PAUt. 1 1 1 ' I send you my book, not merely to remind you of your kindness, but to invite your criticism ; that is, perhaps, I am so selfish as not to requite your kindness, but to hope for more. In your criticisms, or, which is -the same thing, in your censure, I shall rejoice, because they are not more painful than instructive, as Herr Cantor Grossel in Schwar- zenbach used to teach his pupils their letters with the same stick with which he whipped them. " Decide farther if the satire is not too bitter, though I believe satire, like beer, derives its value from its bitterness; but the bitterness should not be heightened, like that of the Bohemian beer, by the mixture with the hops of soot and gall. Decide finally, whether shimmering modish bombast does not too joften take the place of genuine strength of imagination ; and whether the whole thing is not too much like certain birds, the penguin, with shining feathers but little naked wings. This is certain, that if the book is a bad satire upon others, it is the best upon myself. But I shall I write a book upon a book, as Martendli emptied ever an ancient inkstand I know not how many inkstands, for he wrote two great quarto volumes upon it." The Greenland Lawsuits were a collection of moral, sa- tirical sketches upon life, under the titles of " Literature," " Theologv," " Family Pride," " Women and Fops ;" of these last, at this time, the author could know little. Paul had at this time gained sufficient courage to pre- sent himself personally, manuscript in hand, to the Leipzig booksellers. It was refused by all, and he sent it to the bookseller Voss, in Berlin. While he was waiting the an- swer from Voss, he learnt well the severest experience in physical existence, that of a cold stove and an empty stomach. But a sunbeam soon entered his cold and deso- late apartment. - On the last day of December, as he sat shivering in his chamber, a knock at the door brought him the joyful intelligence, that Voss would receive and furnish out, this his first birth of love, so that it could appear with the other e?ifans perdus at the Easter fair in Leipzig. Through his whole life Jean Paul looked back to this mo- ment with the deepest emotions of gratitude the moment when he received fifteen louis d'ors,* the first fruits of his industry and genius. * A louis d'or is four dollars and fifty-seven cents. 112 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Vogel, to whom he sent it, expressed the utmost delight and approbation of the book, and Paul answered : " Truth commands me to admire your letter, but I must not listen to it alone, as you praise my book too much. Did you forget that the same perfume that stimulates the nose so agreeably, brings clouds and tears into the eyes ? Your judgment of my book needs the other half, the blame. You send the silver only earlier than the pill, and the vapor of vinegar that perfumes, comes only a little earlier than the vinegar that bites. " You ask after the plan of my life. Fate must first project it. My prospects furnish none. I swim upon occa- sion without rudder, but not without sails. I am no longer a theologian, and I follow no science ex professo, and all only so far as they promote my authorship. Philosophy itself is indifferent to me, as I doubt of all. But my heart is here so full so full that I am silent. In future letters, and when I have more time, I will write to you of my skep- ticism, and of my disgust at this foolish masquerade and harlequinade that they call life. " My Sketches have brought me fifteen louis d'ors. The second part will be stronger and better than the first, and will sell dearer. Farewell ! I know not why, I am so melancholy that I could weep ! Oh ! we never weep more sweetly than when we know not why we weep. Love your friend. j. P. F. R." This last extract allows us a glimpse into the real feel- ings and difficulties of Paul. He was writing facetious books, comic and satirical essays, while before him, in the future, stood the grim spectre of Want. He was trying to make others laugh, when he was so melancholy that he could himself weep ; like that poor comedian who was dying with melancholy, while he was exhausting his brain to amuse the world. We see also the origin of his peculiar manner of writing. It was not the spontaneous pouring out of an over-full mind ; but his antitheses, and comparisons, and illustrations were sought to embellish his ungrateful themes ; his sparkling crystals were distilled with much care and pains, and the poverty of his canvas thickly overlaid with jewels and orna- ments. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 113 CHAPTER VI. EXTREME POVERTY. FIRST SUCCESS. COSTUME CONTROVERSY. IN the last extract I gave from R-ichter's letters, A D 1787 the reader is made acquainted with the real state of * 19 - his finances, and his painful struggle with actual want. His giving up all thoughts of a profession, was as much a matter of necessity as choice. The question was not now, how he should live, but if he should exist at all. As Carlyle ex- presses it, "he was at hand-grips with actual want." But at nineteen years of age, when he wrestled with poverty single- handed, there were added to these outward difficulties also moral pains, partly over the melancholy fate, partly over the sad and reckless incapacity of his brothers to take care of themselves. The most hopeful threw himself, from despair, into the Saale, and was drowned. Adam, the barber, left his mother, as we have seen, and listed for a soldier, and Richter had to reconcile her to a profession, that at that time was looked on with fear and aversion. But there lay within him a giant's force, and stern unbending resolution. " He shook off the little evils of poverty, and contempt, and pain, as the lion shakes the dew-drops from his mane." With the fifteen louis d'ors, after paying his debts, he was enabled to change his lodgings to a summer-house in the garden of his landlord, consisting, indeed, of only one small room, but where Paul could indulge the passion he carried through life, of studying in the open air. This little circumstance led to a curious episode, which his biographer calls his " costume martyrdom." Although it continued through many years, it began about this time. Partly from necessity, partly from fancy, Paul had adopted a peculiar style of dress, entirely at variance with the fashion of the day. He writes to his mother " As I can make my vests last no longer, I have deter- mined to do without ; and if you send me some over-shirts, I can dispense with these vests. They must be made with open collars d la Hamlet ; but this nobody will under- stand ; in short the breast must be open, so that the bare throat may be seen. My hair also I have had cut. (It was the day of cues and powder.) It is pronounced by my 114 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. friends more becoming, and it spares me the expense of the hairdresser. I have still some locks a little curled " As already mentioned, he had hired a small room that opened into the Kornerchen garden, with the privilege also of walking in the garden at all times, night or day. The magister Grafenheim had also hired the principal building in this garden, which brought him into near neighborhood with Paul. Paul, with good reason, supposed that he had an equal right to enjoy all the walks in the garden, and felt no disposition to imprison himself in his little apartment. But the magister was not of this opinion ; he chose to have the garden wholly to himself, and complained to the propri- etor , requesting him to restrain Paul's walks, and, moreover, complaining of the offence against fashion and propriety in the bare throat of his plebeian neighbor. Paul defended himself with much condescension in a letter to the magister, in which he tells him, " that he will no longer approach so near to his dwelling as he did yester- day ; that he will visit the garden only at morning and evening, so that he shall rarely be offended with a dress, that his convenience, health, and poverty oblige him to wear. Moreover, he would, when walking in the garden, cover his throat, and that he should not be annoyed by other students, as he had only one friend who visited him, and not the garden." The magister was not satisfied with these four conditions, and soon complained that they had been infringed, and that Paul had actually passed a certain statue, that stood without his limits. At this, Paul's patience vanished. He wrote again, "that he revoked what he had said before ; that the statue had nothing to do with his promises ; that he had hired the privilege of walking in the garden and had paid for it ; and that he would walk ivlienever and wlierever he pleased, with- out fear of Herr Korner, or the magister." And he closed with these remarkable words : " You despise my mean name ; nevertheless, take note of it, for you will not have done the latter long, before the former will not be in your power to do." But, at the same time, with a generous spirit of accommodation, Paul made this proposal : ' : I will freely consent to leave the garden, where the satisfaction of one disturbs the enjoyment of another, on condition, that I pay for an apartment that I had hoped to enjoy for half a LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 115 year, the rent of three months only. It depends on you, therefore, whether you will constrain Herr Korner to accept these conditions/' They were accepted ; and Paul evacuated the garden, and returned to his old room at the Three Roses, Peterstrass. Paul's martyrdom, was not at an end. He went down to Hof, to visit his mother, where his family were not in great favor, and his appearance made the most astonishing im- pression, not only upon the inhabitants of the little city, but upon his own family. So important, indeed, was the matter considered, that his firm friend, the pastor Vogel, remon- strated most earnestly in letters, that are yet preserved, against this singularity. Paul seems to have been partly sensible that it was affectation, and, mild-tempered as he was, he would not yield in this particular, but went about a la Hamlet for seven years. Some extracts from letters of this period will show the course of this costume controversy. Yogel wrote to him : " You value only the inward, not the outward the kernel, not the husk. But, with your permission, is not the whole composed of the form and the matter ? Is one disfigured, so is the other. You condemn probably the philosophy of Diogenes, that separated the hero so much from other men, that it placed him in a tub ? How can you justify yourself, if your philosophy serves you in the same way ? No, my friend, you must open your eyes and see that you are not the only son of earth, but like the ants in thejr ant-hills, you live in the tumult of life. . . . " Would you not hold that painter unwise, who should offend in costume paint his Romans in sleeves and curled hair ; the person of a man with petticoat and open bosom ? Oh ! that is not to be endured ! Yet, a couple of proverbs i Swim no't against the tide.' ' Among wolves, learn to howl.' ' Yulgar proverbs ! will you say. Yes, but elevated wisdom. The true philosophy is, not for others to adapt themselves to us, but for us to adapt ourselves to others. Whoever forgets this great axiom, advances few steps with- out stumbling. But what do you seek ? In the midst of Germany to become a Briton? Do you not in this way say, ' Put on your spectacles, ye little people, and behold ! see that ye cannot be what I am.' Ah, to speak thus your modesty forbids ! Avoid every thing that in the smallest degree lessens your value among your contemporaries." 1 I G LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. To this gentle remonstrance Paul answered, " 1 answer your letter willingly, for the sake of its argument, which your good heart, rather than your good head, has dictated. Your proverbs are not reasons, or if they are, they prove too much for if I would swim with the stream, this stream would often make shipwreck of my virtue ; the kingdom of vice is as great and extensive as the kingdom of fashion ; and if I must howl with the wolves, why should I not rob with them ? If the shell is injured the kernel suffers also,' you say. But wherefore ? Let us decide what does injure the shell. You consider that an evil to Diogenes that others hold an advantage. Did the so-called injury rob this great man of his philosophy, his good heart, his wit, his virtue ? It robbed him not but it gave him peace, independence of outward judgments, freedom from tormenting wants, and the incapacity of being wounded ; and with this conscious- ness he could venture upon the punishment of every vice. Great man ! Thank God that thou wert born in a country where they wondered at thy wisdom, instead of, as at pre- sent, punishing it. Fools would commit the only wise man to a madhouse ; but, like Socrates, he would ennoble his prison. " ' The painter would be ridiculous in offending against costume.' This is true, but more witty than applicable to me. I need only say, that the painter of costume is not the greatest in his art ; he is great whose pencil creates, not after the tailor, but after God ; paints bodies, not dresses. The painter's creations can only please through form, which is the shell ; and am I designed for that ? Is it my desti- nation, with my organized ugliness, to please ? Scarcely if I would. " But enough. I hold the constant regard that we pay in all our actions to the judgment of others, as the poison of our peace, our reason, and our virtue. Upon this slave's chain have I long filed, but I scarcely hope ever to break it." This humorous controversy was kept up for some months on paper, as games of chess are played in Holland, without either party saying check to the king. At last Paul con- sented, as he called it, to inhull his person, and put an end to this tragi-comical affair, by the following circular, ad- dressed to his friends. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 117 " ADVERTISEMENT. " The undersigned begs to give notice, that whereas cropt hair has as many enemies as red hair, and said enemies of the hair are likewise enemies of the person it grows upon ; whereas, further, such a fashion, is, in no respect Christian, since otherwise, Christian persons would adopt it ; and whereas especially, the undersigned has suffered no less from his hair than Absalom did from his, though on contrary grounds ; and whereas it has been notified to him, that the public proposed to send him into his grave, since the hair grows there without scissors : he hereby gives notice, that he will not willingly consent to such extremities. He would, therefore, inform the noble, learned, and discerning public in general, that the undersigned proposes on Sunday next to appear in the various important streets of Hof, with a false, short cue ; and with this cue, as with a magnet, and cord of love, and magic rod. to possess himself forcibly of the affec- tion of all, and sundry, be they who they may. j. P. F. R." CHAPTER VII. LOVE PASSAGE. SECOND VOLUME OF GREENLAND LAWSUITS. PRESSING POVERTY. FLIGHT FROM LEIPZIG. DOMESTIC CIRCUMSTANCES IN HOF. BOOK OF DEVOTION. IN the summer of 1783, after the publication of the A D 1783 first part of the " Greenland Lawsuits," Paul went *&'* 20. ' to Hof, to pass the vacation with his mother, and there occurred there a little love adventure, which must not be omitted in a full account of his life. Instead of a universal acknowledgment of the value of his book, it received only partial admiration, and from om especially, who appears under the name of Sophia. This she expressed with so much enthusiasm, that Paul's suscep- tible heart was instantly warmed, although, instead of propi- tiating his beloved, as formerly, with sugared almonds and drawings of kings, he sent her volumes of rare extracts, AS LIFE OP JEAN PAUL. which he had made out of the latest literature. Some love billets were exchanged, and it went even so far that the young lady presented Paul with a ring ; but he was too poor to offer her any thing in return but his empty silluwette. Upon his return to Leipzig, he waited nearly a month, and when he wrote, the letter was filled with trivial excuses for not writing sooner. The young lady remonstrated, and demanded back her ring. Paul answered : " Every sort of dissimulation is hateful to me, therefore it shall be wholly removed from the answer to your late letter. The letter that punishes my negligence, pleases me better than the one that pardons it, and you appear to love me better when you are angry with me, ^than when you are reconciled. The letter contains the silhouette of your head, but not that of your heart. The light of the one has taken the place of the warmth of the other, and I hear your reason speak in it, but not your love. Shall the warmth of your love depart with the warmth of summer ? This suspicion your next letter will destroy or confirm. The ring that I sent back yester- day, and the want of which you so sadly regret, you need not send me again. Not the ring, but the form it gilded, was valuable to me, and such an image, yes, a better like- ness, you can always present me." This letter remained unanswered ; and Paul, whose fancy represented the good ne was losing in more charming colors, or who perhaps felt, that he had not met the young lady's love with the warmth it deserved, wrote again : " The curtain is torn upon which so many hopes were painted, and our love will fade with the flowers that put forth their short bloom at the same period. This, and nothing else, can I understand from your neglect to answer my last letter. . . . " We will not part from each other with reproaches. I will leave you as we leave the grave, that we love, and must ever love ! You can take your love from me, but not your image, that will endure longer in my heart than mine in yours. You cannot deprive me of the happiness I have enjoyed, for the recollection of it will daily be repeated. May he who has taken my place, or who will take it, reward you for the happiness that you have given me, and may you reward him by loving him better than you have him who now is nothing more to you, than. Yours, &c, j. p. F. R." LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 119 Thus philosophically, after asking for the return of his letters, and telling her she could use his silhouette for pa- pillottes, ended the love passage between Richter and the maiden of Hof, called Sophia. How different from his later loves ! His letters to her are stiff, cold, and poor in thought compared with letters to his male friends ; and when we re- call that childish love for that little peasant girl, whose first sto- len kiss seemed ever to glow in his memory, and when we think of the glowing, but pure light in which he could paint a higher and more spiritual love, so that he kindled the hearts of the German youth, and made himself the idol of the wo- men of Germany, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that the attachment was chiefly on the side of the lady, and that Jean Paul suffered very little from the disappointment of his hopes. We can easily understand why the mother of Sophia for she was so fortunate as to have a mother should cut short the course of a love that promised only starvation to both parties. But that the young lady still cherished a lingering attachment for Paul, appears, from her refusal to give up the book of extracts, that he had only intended to lend her. In December, he writes to his mother : " In Hof is a blue bound writing-book of mine, with ex- tracts from the latest authors. I gave it to Sophia to read. Pray forget not to demand it " back." His mother did not succeed. The book was retained, and Paul wrote again. " My book in Hof, is only one copied out of other authors. I will ask no more for it. I present it to Mademoiselle with all my heart, and she knows well, I would also present myself." Paul returned to Leipzig after the summer vacation, with the most extraordinary hopes as to his literary success, and consequently his introduction into the elevated circles of Leipzig society. The absence of a court, and of an arro- gant aristocracy, together with the independence of the com- mercial class, and the great number of young literary aspirants, produced more equality of condition in this, than in many of the German cities. Successful talent, or distinction in any art, was then in Leipzig, as it is with us at present, a passport to the most distinguished society ; and music, the passion of the Germans, was the medium of union in all classes. The circumstance, also, that the public offices were generally held by learned men, created a rare esteem for literature in a mercantile city like Leipzig. 120 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Paul had seen only the outside of concerts, balls, the theatre ; he had marked the charming exterior of the beau- tiful women of the upper class, and his fancy painted all these objects in ever-changing and ever-glowing colors. The touching naivete with which he had described the longing for the enjoyment of these scenes, in one of his novels, does not exceed the vividness of his own desires to be admitted to them.* He had sold the second volume of his Greenland Law- suits to Voss, at the Michaelmas fair, for one hundred and twenty-six dollars, and he was at this time zealously employ- ed upon the third. The singular infatuation of Richter, in imagining his genius adapted to satire, was not yet enlightened, although this second volume suffered more than the first, from pover- ty of materials. Strange, that Richter should believe, that with the limited knowledge of mankind that a secluded village at the foot of the Fichtelgebirge, and a student's gar- ret could yield him ; without characters, without action of any kind, he could write satires that would interest the read- ing public. Even Montaigne could not carry out his satires without living examples, and dramatic conversations with himself ; and Carlyle, in our own day, has introduced a sha- dowy dramatis persona, in order to give a local habitation in the memory, to his beautiful satire of the Tailor. Paul, as usual, sent his second volume to his friend Vogel, assuring him " that, as it was smaller and dearer than the other, it must be better." Not so, thought Vogel, and he had the honesty and candor to answer : " Your second part will be read only by critics, and will not be relished or understood by the rest of the world. Whatever gives us trouble, that we are obliged to see through a telescope, or to dig out of the depths of the earth, fails to please. It may be heavy gold ; but the tinkling money that gives us our inheritance in the easiest way, is more de- sirable." And it must be confessed, that the dearest lovers of Jean Paul, of the present day, who read these satires as the first spiritual embryo of their favorite, find them heavy and uninteresting. For his third volume, which was now finished, Paul could find neither editor nor publisher. He presented it to book- * In the character of Walt, in the Flegeljahre. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 121 sellers' fairs, and literary collectors, in vain. Necessity at length suggested the only alternative, to send it, with letters stating his necessities, to distinguished and learned men. But he had not the good fortune that Crabbe has so well de- scribed, when he presented his poems at the door of the magnanimous Burke, and walked the whole night in anxious uncertainty as to their reception. Paul received no answers to his letters, or was repulsed, unheard, from every door. He wrote short essays for periodicals and magazines ; but there was a singular virtue in the readers of that day in Germany, and Jean Paul could create no taste for satire. While his fond expectations, and unripe hopes, were fast falling to the ground, the money he had received for the se- cond volume was consuming also, and the poverty of the youth was again as pressing as ever. In this necessity he had no other alternative but to return to Hof. Under the same roof with his mother, their united housekeeping would be less burthensome to Paul than their separate expenditure. He had long since given up his evening meal ; and his sup- per of dried prunes, he ate walking in the Kuchen garden. For about half a year, Paul had been in debt to his vic- tualler for his mid-day frugal meal, and she gave him not a moment's peace, but seasoned his small pittance with the daily demand, "Now, Herr Richter, has not your golden ship arrived ?" At last, in despair, he resolved to fly. His friend Oerthel bore his packed trunk to the spot where the post-wagon would pass ; and Paul, who imagined that, on account of his peculiar dress, and especially the manner of wearing his hair, he was known to the whole city, purchased, with his last grotchen, a false cue, which he attached care- fully under his hat behind, and withdrew himself from the city, where he had been nearly lost, as Munchausen drew himself from the swamp. In the manner in which Paul left Leipzig, he created the only real adventure of his youth, and the simplicity of his proceedings, shows the remarkable naivete of his cha- racter. He thought it necessary to disguise himself in a city where scarcely ten persons knew him, and in the twilight, to follow his friend, who carried his portman- teau. Even to his last days Richter loved to relate his flight, as he called it, out of Leipzig. As soon as Paul found himself under his mother's roof, he wrote to his friend Oerthel, who remained at the univer- 122 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. sity: " I send thy mantle back; and,- merely on account of the cold wind, of which in Leipzig I had formed no idea, do I owe thee more gratitude for this, and for the over-hose, than I could have believed possible. Speaking without hy- perbole, to them I owe it that I was not wholly congealed, instead of having only my right hand frozen, on my arrival. I can scarcely write, and should this inflexibility, like that of all frozen limbs, return every winter, I shall be constrained to put off writing satires until the summer, and be like those porcupine men in London, who can only embrace their friends in moulting time. I journeyed under Herman's name, and first gave my own at my own door. I heard, on the way, one peasant say to another, who was under the strict govern- ment of his wife, * You have found your Mann in her.'* I took it merely for a bon mot. "Nothing can embellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band, that indicates a small wound, drawn crosswise over the brow. I saw this on a beautiful girl on the way. One should try, from time to time, to give his wife a little wound on the forehead, that she might be obliged to bind her brow with this pretty ornament." A. D. 1784, The darkest period of our hero's life was when aged 21. ' h e fl cc i f rom Leipzig and went down in disguise to Hof. The lawsuit had stripped his mother of the little pro- perty she inherited from the cloth-weaver, and she had been obliged to part with the respectable homestead where the honest man had carried on his labors. She was now living with one or more of Paul's brothers, in a small tenement, containing but one apartment, where cooking, washing, cleaning, spinning, and all the beehive labors of domestic life must go on together. To this small and overcrowded apartment, which hence- forth must be Paul's only study, he brought his twelve vol- umes of extracts, a head that in itself contained a library, a tender and sympathizing heart, a true, high-minded, self-sus- taining spirit. His exact situation was this : The success of the first and second volumes of his Greenland Lawsuits, had encouraged him to write a third a volume of satires, under the singular name of " Selections from the papers of tJie Devil ;" but for this we have seen he had strained every * Mann is German for husband. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 123 nerve in vain to find a publisher. This manuscript, there- fore, formed part of the little luggage, which his friend Oer- thel had smuggled out of Leipzig. It was winter, and from his window he looked out upon the cold, empty, frozen street of the little city of Hof, or he was obliged to be a prisoner, without, as he says, ''the prisoner's fare of bread and water, for he had only the latter; and if a gulden found its way into the house, the jubilee was such that the windows were nearly broken with joy." At the same time, he was under the ban of his costume martyrdom ; this he could have laughed at, and reformed ; but hunger and thirst were actual evils, and when of prisoner's food he had only the thinner part, he could well exclaim, as Carlyle has said, " Night it must be ere Friedland's star will beam." " Without was no help, no counsel, but there lay a giant force within ; and so from the depths of that sorrow and abasement his better soul rose purified and invincible, like Hercules from his long labors." " What is poverty," he said, at this time, " that a man should whine under it ? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears of a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound." The very day of Paul's arrival at home, the sixteenth of November, he made known to his friend Vogel, the pastor of Rehau, his return. He seems to have felt some timidity about presenting himself at his house, as he had been a neg- ligent correspondent. But there was no reason. Yogel answered immediately : " I am so rejoiced at your arrival in Hof, that for joy I cannot contain myself, much less write a letter. Hof is only two hours distant from Rehau, and in the morning I shall see my best friend there, unless in the morning, at right early daylight, you step into the old apartment." The intercourse of the two friends was immediately estab- lished on the most familiar footing. Vogel was himself an author, and his manuscripts were sent to Paul for his criti- cism and correction. In one of them Paul accuses his friend of stealing five comparisons from him fifty would scarcely have been missed from Richter's, at this time, exu- berantly ornamented style. As Yogel's library had been the place where Paul had become his own instructor, he immediately resumed his 124 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. rights there, and there was a continual sending backwards and forwards of books, manuscripts, and letters, and Paul's younger brother was the Mercury. Paul was also a favorite with the Frau Anna, the wife of Vogel. and as the philo- sophy of hunger was studied so thoroughly at home, we may easily imagine that she took a womanly interest in providing for Elchter, when he visited them, something more than the intellectual food of the library. That he had more pressing wants, the note of the 25th of December will show. " You are the Pope from whom the destitute souls in Hof receive a dispensation from fasting. You go further than the Pope. You give yourself the food that you permit. This time I pray for the Haereticorum Catalogus. Belisaire obreauch Lightfooti horce -Hebraicce, &c. Solomon asked for wisdom, rather than riches, and received both. I imitate him in this letter may I also receive his answer ! " My mother is in the greatest perplexity. This festi- val's gifts and the tax falling at the same time, have wholly exhausted her. Ah, dear friend, if I could only help her ! I mean if you could do me and her so great a favor ! If from your church income you could lend us about twenty- five gulden, secured upon a safe mortgage ! Dear friend, if you can Do not desert me !" The request must have been granted, for, soon after, Paul wrote in this sportive manner : " I have no news, except that the destruction of Hof by an earthquake has been prophesied, and appears to be confi- dently expected. It is to be hoped, in this short room for repentance, we may be all truly converted. I shall be well satisfied, if I do not arrive in heaven so soon, for I would willingly, before, enjoy one more visit at Rehau, where I live in such freedom, that I am not obliged from politeness to speak, if I would rather be silent. If we are neither swal- lowed nor shaken, I will visit you next week, and frizzle the heads of your spiritual children. . . . " Locke ! if thy spirit should overlook this letter while the Herr Yogel is reading it, influence him for the best, and induce him to send me thy work upon the Human Under- standing, to improve my own ; for I know well thy spirit powerfully inspires his. (If I were in your place, I would not turn the leaf, for, dear heaven ! what can come now but something that will not please you.) " Having done with Locke, I must turn to some one else, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 125 and it is happy for me that the Saint Anna* comes to my help, who, according to the Catholic faith, can enrich. Truly, Saint Anna, tell me thyself, is it suitable for me to pray again to the Herr Pastor Vogel, (who has already done so much for the nourishment of the two elementary parts of my existence,) to promise me again in the name of my mo- ther, eight or ten gulden from the revenue of God's house ? At least it is more suitable for the Saint Anna, that she should present such a prayer in the name of benevolence. Thou art far holier than I, a poor satire writer, and he can hardly deny thee. It is enough that thou art a woman ! " If now the ill-humored church fathers should step into the room, use all thy power, whatever may be the reliques, to work a miracle. Give to my mother, in the eyes of the old fathers of the church, the form of the Herr Pastor ; this is very easy you will only have to draw upon her a pair of hosen and a morning gown, and furnish her with a good stock of heterodoxy, reason, and gayety. " P. S. Should the Saint Anna forget to say to you, that the whole thing is on account of an extremely pressing circumstance, that will last only as long as the the moon, I do it herewith." I have quoted these letters, that the reader may see in what friendly relations Richter lived with the family at Rehau ; and although there was an attempt to poison this mutually confidential intercourse by the slanders of some evil-minded persons in Hof, Paul's noble character was too well appreciated by the pastor and his wife for them to succeed. The distance from Hof to Vogel's house was only a two hours' walk, and the protecting Saint Anna would not fail on a Sunday or holiday, when she expected the welcome Hofer friend, to offer those graceful and kind attentions, that only a woman, let alone a saint, knows how to bestow. Thus Paul continued almost without a momentary interrup- tion of his cheerfulness, to study and write, never giving up the hope, the trusting confidence, that what he so painfully wrought out in concealment and poverty, would one day appear in the full light of fame. Two books of this period, equally curious for the strange circumstances under which they were produced, remain. * The sportive title of the Frau Vogel. 126 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The mother's record of her gains from spinning cotton, which she carried far into the night, and no doubt often* wetted with her tears ;"* and Paul's " Little Book of Devo- tion,"! composed also in the solitary night, when he strength- ened his high-hearted resolution by self-communion and humble resignation to the will of Grod. A few extracts will show the spirit of this book. OF PAIN. Every evil is an occasion and a teacher of resolution. Every disagreeable emotion is a proof that I have been faithless to my resolutions. An evil vanishes, if I do not ask after it. Think of a worse situation than that in which thou art. Not to tke evil, but to myself, do I owe my pain. Epic- tetus was not unhappy ! Yanity, insensibility, and custom, make one steadfast. Wherefore not virtue still more ? Never say, if you had not tJwse sorrows, that you would bear others better. What is sixty years' pain to eternity? Necessity, if it cannot be altered, becomes resignation. OF GLORY. Most men judge so miserably; why would you be praised by a child ? No one would praise you in a beggar's frock ; be not proud of the esteem that is given to your coat. Do not expect more esteem from others because you de- serve more, but reflect, that they will expect still more merit in yourself. Do not seek to justify all thy actions. Value nothing merely because it is thy own, and look not always upon thyself. Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good ac- tions, but make use of common situations. A long con- tinued walk is better than a short flight. Never act in the heat of emotion ; let reason answer first. * Of this hard-earned money, twelve shillings, nearly half, went to pay for Samuel's new boots, t Andachtsbuchlein. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 12V Look upon every day as the whole of life ; not merely as a section, and enjoy the present without wishing through Laste, to spring on to another lying-before-thee section. Seek to acquire that virtue in a month, to which thou feelest the least inclined. It betrays a greater soul to answer a satire with patience rather than with wit. We never think of the sorrow of our dreams ; wherefore should we in the dream of life ? If thou wouldst be free, joyful and calm, take the omy means that cannot be affected by accident Virtue. This little book, which should be called a manual of practical philosophy rather than a book of devotion, strength- ened Paul's cheerful stoicism, to which he added devout prayer and strenuous exertion. " Evil," said he, " is like .the nightmare ; the instant you bestir yourself it has al- ready ended." His strength and energy, and at last his trust increased, and was established on the immovable foundations of faith and truth. CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTIAN OTTO. STUDIES. HERMAN. HIS DEATH. IMMEDIATELY after Richter's return to Hof, as A D 1783 mentioned in the last chapter, he formed that re- aged 22.' markable friendship with Otto, which continued without a moment's interruption through the life of the poet, and on the part of Otto, it did not then cease. Grief for the loss of Richter hastened his own death, and put an end to his efforts to perpetuate the memory of his friend in the memoir, that has till this time, furnished the materials for our biography. In the midst of the hard necessities that had driven Richter from Leipzig, his victualler followed him to Hof, and presented his demand for the frugal repasts he had fur- nished. Paul was in the greatest perplexity. It was im- possible to send the man who had come this distance on foot, empty away, and so large a demand was beyond the 128 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. help of his friend, the Pastor Vogel, of E-ehau. In his distress he turned to the only men in Hof, who would not have repulsed him from their doors ; these were the two brothers Otto, who from this time united themselves to him with intimate sympathy. They became surety for the whole demand, and sent the man back with a considerable sum. This tormenting spirit, however, did not inform Paul that the brothers had become surety for the debt, and they had top much delicacy to mention it ; so that every fine day, ms inexperienced debtor was alarmed with the dread of the appearance of his inexorable creditor. Christian Otto was the son of the Vesper preacher* in Hof, who, from his ascetic character, and the severe earn- estness of his preaching, was called the Strafprediger. Christian had been sent to the university at Leipzig ; he returned after the death of his father, and occupied the same house with his mother and sisters in Hof. He had been destined to the ministry, as "the theological books were all ready for him in his father's study ;" but his taste led him to devote himself to general science, and as the cir- cumstances of the family were easy, he was able to follow his inclination. In all other respects the circumstances of the two friends were alike, and served to knit them in the bonds of the closest friendship. The elements of Otto's character were warm sympathy, unequalled tenderness, and self-sacrificing love, together with severe integrity and steadfastness of purpose. The penetration and discrimination of his mind, with his sym- pathy in all that was highest and noblest in literature and in life, singularly fitted him for the office of a critic, and in after years, when Richter had found publishers for his works, he never printed a line that had not passed twice through the ordeal of Otto's perusal and criticism. As these years, spent with his mother in Hof, were the most uninterruptedly studious of Richter's life, it seems the place to give some account of the manner in which he pursued his studies. That plan must be a good one, and of use to others, of which he could say, " Of one thing I am certain ; I have made as much out of myself, as could be made of the stuff ^ and no man should require more." * The afternoon preacher in Protestant churches is called the Vesper prediger. Strafprediger repentance preacher. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 129 First in importance, he aimed, in the rules he formed for himself, at a just division of time and power ; and he never permitted himself, from the first, to spend his strength upon any thing useless. He so managed his capital, that the future should pay him an ever-increasing interest on the present. The nourishment of his mind was drawn from three great sources living Nature, in connection with hu- man life ; the world of books ; and the inner world of thought ; these he considered the raw material given him to work up. We have already mentioned his manuscript library. In his fifteenth year, before he entered the Hof gymnasium, he had made many quarto volumes, containing hundreds of pages of closely written extracts from all the celebrated works he could borrow, and from the periodicals of the day. In this way he had formed a repertory of all the sciences. For if, in the beginning, when he thought himself destined to the study of theology, his extracts were from philosophi- cal theology, the second volume contained natural history, poetry, and, in succession, medicine, jurisprudence, and uni- versal science. He had also anticipated one of the results of modern book-making. He wrote a collection of what are now called hand-books, of geography, natural history, follies, good and bad names, interesting facts, comical occurrences, touching incidents, &c. He observed Nature as a great book from which he was to make extracts, and carefully collected all the facts that bore the stamp of a contriving mind, whose adaptation he could see, or only anticipate, and formed a book which bore the simple title " Nature. 11 When he meditated a new work, the first thing was to stitch together a blank book, in which he sketched the outlines of his characters, the principal scenes, thoughts to be worked in, &c., and called it " Quarry for Hesperus" " Quarry for Titan" &c. One of his biographers has given us such a book, containing his studies for Titan, which occu- pies seventy closely-printed duodecimo pages. Richter began also in his earliest youth to form a dic- tionary, and continued it through the whole of his literary life. In this he wrote down synonyms, and all the shades of meaning of which a word was susceptible. For one word he had found more than two hundred. Add to this mass of writing, that he copied all his letters, and it is surprising 7 130 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. how any time remained. He made it a rule to give but one half of the day to writing, the other remained for the in- vention of his various works, which he accomplished while walking in the open air. These long walks through valley and over mountain, steeled his body to bear all vicissitudes of weather, and added to his science in atmospheric changes, so that he was called by his townsmen the weather prophet. He is describ- ed by one who met him on the hills, with open breast and flying hair, singing as he went, while he held a book in his hand. Richter at this time was slender, with a thin pale face, a high nobly formed brow, around which curled fine blond hair. His eyes were a clear soft blue, but capable of an intense fire, like sudden lightning. He had a well formed nose, and, as his biographer expresses it, " a lovely lip-kissing mouth." He wore a loose green coat and straw hat, and was always accompanied by his dog. As Richter from every walk returned to the little house- hold apartment where his mother carried on her never- ceasing female labors, where half of every day he sat at his desk, he became acquainted with all the thoughts, all the conversation, the whole circle of the relations of the humble society in Hof. He saw the value and significance of the smallest things. The joys, the sorrows, the loves and aver- sions, the whole of life, in this Tenier's picture passed before him. He himself was a principal figure in this limited circle. He sat with Plato in his hand, while his mother scattered fresh sand on the floor for Sunday, or added some small luxury to the table on days of festival. His hardly earned grotchen went to purchase the goose for Martinmas, while he dreamed of his future glory among distinguished men. Long years he was one of this humble society. He did not approach it as other poets have done, from time to time, to study for purposes of art the humbler classes ; he felt him- self one of them, and in this school he learnt that sympathy with humanity, which has made him emphatically in Germany the " poet of the poor." Paul's solitude was suddenly enlivened by the return of Herman from Leipzig. Herman is described as singularly interesting. To the noble qualities of his mind, was added a high degree of personal beauty. His tragical contest with an ever-increasing poverty, his eminent attainments, vainly opposed to an adverse destiny, seem to have given him a LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 131 touching interest in Richter's heart. His friendship for Herman was softened by something like the tenderness of love for a feminine nature, and he says, in a sportive letter, that if Herman had a sister he should certainly wish to marry her, provided that her face was like Herman's. The reader will pardon it, if I anticipate events a little, and place together all I have been able to collect of the history of this favorite friend of Richter's. I have already mentioned, that the son of the poor tool-maker was always sheltered from blame by Paul's con- sidera kindness, when obliged by pressing work to come late to the gymnasium. He followed him to Leipzig, and there his struggles with poverty must have been as severe as Paul's. Prepossessing as he was in appearance and manner, he might have possessed the key to all hearts ;* but with a glowing love of freedom, he was timid and desponding about himself. Beneath a cynical and rough expression, he concealed in the sanctuary of his mind, a tender, even a virgin purity, and an exalted sense of honor. By his talents and information he was prepared to take a high place among scientific men, but through the want of means and patronage, the bloom and fruit of his mind was doomed to wither and fall. Herman could not, like Richter, withdraw into his hermitage, and there oppose to his dis- couragements a waiting and persevering industry ; he was obliged to wage a daily contest with the saddening realities of life. Providence seemed not to permit that Herman's spirit should find the resting-place it sought, he was there- fore not master of his dejection ; and Richter, at the same time he was contending with his own hypochondria, saw with bleeding heart, this friend hastening to the abyss of despair. He now first learned that deepest pain of the inward soul, the tragical contest of a noble nature, like that of Herman's, with the difficulties that social and political institutions place in the way of success ; the dark riddle of the discrepancy between the mighty impulses of the soul, and the trivial and low circumstances that follow its action, and weary out its efforts in its struggles after a better existence. Herman having gained the object of his ardent wishes, a * Herman's person was so charming, that when Paul gave him a letter to the Pastor Vogel, he wrote on the margin " that he must take rare of his wife nnrl daughters." 132 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. a doctor's degree, came to settle as a physician in the place of his birth. But the proverb was true in this, as in Richter's case, " a prophet is without honor in his own country," and he removed to Erlangen ; bait there he found little alleviation of his limitless poverty, and was obliged to sell his movables and go to Gottengen, invited to give instructions there to a youg Duke de Broglio, from Paris. This employment, although it had few charms for Herman, who thirsted for occupation in his beloved science, yet saved him from actual want, and his letter to Paul, informing him of his plans, is written with much cheerfulness. Paul wrote to him about this time. " I say to others, 1 Be what you appear ;' to you I say, i Appear what thou art !' Suffer like a man the Alp pressure of fate. Does one call thee by name, thou wilt open thy eyes, and instead of a crushing spectre the sun will appear You are refreshed and charmed by the most pitiful fables as well as by the weightiest truths ; like the lark, now singing above the cloud, anon nesting in the damp ground. I am the devil if I do not, some time or other, evolve your whole character in a romance. But make me understand how I can persuade my readers of the probability of your cynical mania; they will say I misunderstood the character, and compelled the inconsistencies to meet. " From excessive love for your doctor's hat, I send you Haller's Physiology. The part relating to the breath I read so hastily that I lost my own. Write to me not only all that you experience, but also what you think and what others think, either new or^evil Trust yourself upon the broad shining wings of your understanding, and make them bear you over the Dead Sea, so as not to fall spiritually dead 'within. Do not, as a city physician, cure others, and suffer yourself to die. Do not allow your necessities to steal away the elasticity of your soul; for if you are Herman, you will be angry that you have ever been an anti or pseudo Herman, although never to " Your friend, R." Richter's letters were always full of encouragement and hope, and to assist his removal, he s^nt him a louis d'or, which we may well suppose he could ill spare. A letter from Herman follows. " Dear Richter, Saturday evening, the 6th September, I departed, like a Don Quixote, in the brown vest and hose LIFE OF JEAJN PAUL. 133 in which I took leave of the Hof gymnasium and its plagues, which the fashion has hitherto forbidden me to appear in, and my white coat, which I was ashamed to wear in Hof. as it had already served me a year as a night frock. In -the right pocket, paper, of which this letter is part, the sketch of the necessary information about Gottingen, a pocket handkerchief, and a pair of red gloves that Oerthel gave me when he read me the most touching passages out of 4 Moritz's Soul Experiences.' In the left, a pair of slippers, a box with sealing wax, penknife and razor. Under my left arm an umbrella, carried more to conceal a handker- chief, in which were tied up two shirts, a neckcloth, a pair of stockings and a nightcap, than to protect me from the rain. Omnia mea mecum. " As in the afternoon B., who had followed me to Bam- berg, parted from me, I first took a concentrated view of my destiny, present and past. Who woflld have believed that on that height, where the in supportably oppressive heat of the sun made every step difficult, the Catholic images planted on the way could have consoled me ? There I saw that exalted man, who sacrificed himself for the love of truth and mankind, represented under suffering and bitter injuries, wounded with thorns, with stripes and blows, and bowed down under the cross Found I not in this an echoing, and an appeasing voice ?" In Gottingen Herman found sympathizing friends ; but the ardor with which he pursued his favorite sciences, (he had begun a universal encyclopaedia of science.) soon under- mined his health. The letters of the friends are so filled with local and personal references, that even if the limits of this Life would permit the insertion of them, they would be hardly intelligible. In January, 1796, Herman wrote to his friend: "This year must decide whether I remain a physician or a patient. Should you receive no more letters before Easter, think that I am already beyond all the mountains ! In spring one flies more freely ! Oh, dear, good Richter, when I re- member the time, those school years when I wandered with thee at midnight upon the Schlossplatz at Hof, what should I have suffered, if in the presage that assured me we should always be the sincerest of friends. I could have read and felt what I am now ; a mere human form, that through hypochondria and opposing fate the soul threatens, some- 134 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. times under one, sometimes under another appearance, to leave. Had I foreseen this, it had been no wonder if. through madness, I had anticipated by a voluntary stroke the last con- sequences of so cruel a destiny. Only the hope of still for a few years pursuing my ' Elements '* yet retains me. I must now cease, but will continue the letter in a freer moment." The freer moment that came to poor Herman, released him from the burthen of life, and permits us to return to the little apartment in Hof, and to our hero. CHAPTER IX. ADAM VON OERTHEL. - RESIDENCE AT TOPEN. - DEATH OF HIS FRIEND. - CHANGE OF VIEWS. A. D. 1786, AT this time, Richter's other school and college aged as. 1 friend, Adam von Oerthel, returned from Leipzig to his father's residence in Topen, and his friendship soon suggested a plan to make his friend Richter's situation, as he hoped, more comfortable. He had a younger brother, and he proposed that Paul should remove into their family as his instructor, principally in French. Paul consented, as he said in his answer to Adam's letter, " to become tl crutch or the wooden leg, to help the boy's halting anr stumbling through the language." His letter is so charac- teristic that it seems wrong to withhold it from the reader. " Leiber Oerthel, J'y ai refleche. Enfin, j'ai dit a inoi meme : En verit6, mon cher moi, je vois, que tu n'a pas encore les ailes", qui te doivent porter de Hof. Pendant quelles eroissent, tu te peux bein faire une beau nid a Topen, ou ton ami a le sein. Tu me feras un grand plaisir, si tu y ensiegnes, ecris, et lis. c'est a dire, si tu y veux etre le maitre de ton eleve, du monde entier, et de toi-meme. Aussi dois- tu comptu pour quelque chose que tu y es assure de ne mourier pas de faim. Ne crains point de perdre ta * A book he was writing. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 135 liberte ; tu changes seulement des borues qui t'environnent deja." It was on new year's day, 1787, that our Richter, with the hope of a better year than the last, entered upon his office of teacher in the house of the Herr Kammerrath von Oerthel, in Topen, not many hours distance from his mo- ther's residence. In leaving his mother's narrow apartment, the pressure of poverty was lightened, and he was relieved from the eternal din of female labors, but he did not find a paradise of rest in Topen. Herr von Oerthel was a man of limited mind, rough man- ners, and cold heart. His manner of granting a request was so ungracious that no one, with proper self-respect, could make one ; and in becoming rich he had learned to love and to hoard his money. But Paul's pleasure in being with his friend Adam was great ; and there was also presented to him the opportunity of opening in the depths of the inno- cent and hopeful soul of a child, new treasures for psycholo- gical observation, in the unfolding of the spiritual and moral germs implanted there. Although Topen lay deeper than Hof, the place was colder, rougher, and more mountainous. Paul was also fur- ther removed from the Pastor Vogel, and his library. It required all the affection of his friend Adam to make his situation in Topen bearable, as he soon found himself wholly disappointed in the character and disposition of his pupil. He never learnt to know the worth of the instructor who opened his whole heart to him. Richter was unable to gain the love or confidence of the boy, wjio soon joined himself with his inferiors to injure his instructor. A man of Paul's sensibility would have suffered still more in such a family, had not the Frau von Oerthel regarded him with motherly care. He had the good fortune in this, as in every other instance, to gain the affection of the mistress of the family. Even in his latest years, Paul never forgot the goodness of this excellent woman, nor the cup of coffee which she secretly conveyed to his apartment, and the liberal hand that was only restrained by the avarice of her husband. The painful % and dispiriting circumstances in which Paul found himself in the Oerthelshen house, seem at last to have broken down his almost superhuman cheerfulness and elas ticity of spirits, and to have attacked and injured his robust health. He became subject to hypochondria. His gayety 136 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. deserted him. Herr Oerthel's law library did not furnish him with the books that he loved, and the increasing illness of his friend Adam deprived the house of all cheerfulness. At length, after much suffering, his friend expired in his arms. Paul's situation became less tolerable. His pupil possessed none of the endearing qualities of his brother, and with the father his relations were not more agreeable, espe- cially as his manner of fulfilling the contract with Richter was harsh and miserly. He was absolutely in debt to Paul when he left his house. With this bitter experience, Rich- ter returned with wounded and sorrowing heart, to his mo- ther and his old apartment at Hof. I have passed over, with great rapidity, the two years and nine months that Richter was private instructor in the family at Topen. They were, perhaps, the most unhappy of his life, rendered so by the stupidity and ingratitude of his pupil, his dependence on a harsh and avaricious princi- pal, the death of one of his most intimate friends, and the absence and despair of another. But these years of outward mortification and sorrow were rich in their spiritual influ- ences upon the genius of the poet. The question must have constantly recurred to the readers of Hesperus and Titan, how could Jean Paul for so many years have written nothing but bitter satires ? How could talents, so consecrated in after years to all that is true and beautiful in life, have found any other expression than that of love ? Perhaps one answer may be, that every healthy and eminent faculty is augmented in power through self-denial. He has himself said, " The young poet, should devoutly and inwardly love, wonder, pray, and weep ; but he should pass slowly from thought to expression. The emotions should shut them- selves in their sanctuary ten long years from that corkscrew, the poet's pen. Insealed, they are condensed, and do not evaporate in the air of the market and the world."* The fact was, that his genius had as yet found no adequate expression ; but a succession of emotions on a mind like Richter's, had the serious and deep effect of great epochs in life. The image of his suffering friend, contending with the bitterest poverty and the deepest despair, turned his inward eye to the whole of suffering humanity ; and at the same time that he sought grounds of consolation for his friend, * Preface to Satires. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 137 he looked deeper into his own soul, and there found not satire for the imperfections of humanity, but a true under- standing of the end of all suffering, and poetical illustrations of the same. How could he avoid forming the resolution, which he soon ventured upon, instead of wounding with satire or enlivening with caricature, to use such weapons only occasionally, against the oppressor and the wicked ? How could he refrain from the effort to alleviate the great sum of human- sorrow, which, in the image of his friend, he found beating at his heart, by elevating views of human destiny, and the use of the rich treasures of love, and hope, and trust, his genius had placed at his command ? At this time he wrote to his friend Otto, "When my brother died, I believed a day could not come when my heart would be more crushed. But the day came ! My friend Herman died of a quickly destroy- ing hypochondria, beloved by nature, hated by fortune! Then I read Klopstock's ode to Death, and changed my question, c Of three friends wherefore hast thou lost two ?' into ' Why. in this sad waste of humanity, hast thou found three friends'.*' and I could make no other than a grateful answer." We have frequent indications through all Richter's works, how deeply he was shaken by the death of these friends ; and, after representing the dying scene of one of them, he says, " I felt, for the first time, that upon the earth I was not einJwimisck" (a native, or at home). These were the ex- periences that awoke in his bleeding and softened heart, a deeply sympathizing imagination ; his spiritual nature made giant strides, and his feelings of despondency gave place to a self-consciousness of power. His book of devotion may be considered as the precursor of his serious writings. In this he first poured out, without reserve or shame, the earnest and love-needing soul of the poet. Here he first expressed those worthy and exalted aims to which he ever afterwards aspired. He analyzed his own soul, and entered upon the noble effort to acquire for himself and others, the exalted hopes, and the sure trust in God, and in human virtue, that is not shut out from the poorest and most limited relations of human life. Among all the authors of the time, Herder was the one to whom Richter turned with the strongest sympathies. Herder's great views of the world, were as if written from 138 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the anticipations of his own soul, and to Herder alone he unyeiled the deeper and more earnest impulses of his mind, which to others were concealed beneath the light garment of wit and satire. He sent through Herder to Wieland, who was at this time the editor of the German Mercury, two serious essays for that publication. In this instance, as all through life, his success was decided by a woman. Herder was travelling in Italy ; but the peculiar union, not only of heart, but of literary pursuits that existed between Herder and his accomplished wife, permitted her to open and read all his literary communications. She was deeply touched and interested by his essay, Was der Tod est, What is Death ? and this was an introduction to a friendship with that charming woman, that lasted to the end of life. Bichter had written " these two essays I venture not to send imme- diately to Herr Wieland ; they might be lost in the caravan of paper that closes around him. Perhaps they will gain by being presented by you, as disagreeable news are mitigated when brought to a king by a favorite, or a beloved. As I have absolutely nothing, and hope by these productions, born in the midst of hypochondria, heart-sinking and vanishing health, to gain something. Might you only find them worthy to be read by you ! Might you through their merits find me worthy to have read yours." Madam Herder sent the essays to Wieland, with the re- quest, that if he did not insert them in the Mercury, to re- turn them immediately ; but, alas ! they were mislaid in his caravan of papers. They were afterwards sent back, and Madam Herder wrote to Richter, " as my husband is more in connection with the editor of the German Museum, I have to-day sent your essays to him ; and as soon as I re- ceive an answer, or money, I will immediately forward it to you. Your second piece, Was der Tod est, has deeply pleased me. I had nearly placed your true name at the bottom." The editor of the Museum consented to print the small- est piece, on Death, but sent him no money. Thus Richter's ship, freighted with hopes, came back without the expected treasure, but with one more valuable, the friendship of the Herders, to whom he was never afterwards a stranger. Caroline Herder was the first of the German female world whose heart Jean Paul gained through a poetic work ; and that, a little serious essay. This was the first acknowledgment he received of warm sympathy in his writings, and it was LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 139 a prophetic assurance that from the German women he should receive through life, the highest reward of Fame. It could not fail to make a deep impression upon his mind, that through a little serious and earnest work, he had reached in a mo- ment, that for which he had been striving in vain through so many years, in volumes of witty satirical essays. As soon at Richter had returned from Topen, A D 1789 to his mother's residence in Hof, he showed, by very wd & ' decided steps, the change that had taken place in his opinions and feelings. He made those changes in his costume, which his friends had demanded in vain for seven years, covering his throat and drawing out his curls behind into a cue ; but, as he could do nothing as other people did, he demonstrated his intentions by the humorous advertisement already men- tioned.* These changes were necessary, perhaps, to insure his reception in the polite circles of Hof ; but he entered with avidity, also, into all those families who had ever been friendly to his mother, and showed a desire to please in every way those, to whom for seven years he would not make the sacrifice of confining the natural flow of his hair. This sud- den change of life proves that the plan of his literary works had changed, and that he held it necessary, at any price, to study men and character, and to gain a deeper knowledge of the human heart ; especially a more intimate knowledge of the thoughts, impulses, aspirations and sorrows of that sex, who occupy so important a place in his romances, and upon whose favor he depended so constantly in after life. This was not difficult, for one with such gifts as he possess- ed, and with such -hearty sympathy in the joys and sorrows of others; especially, endowed as he was, with that which the French so beautifully call politesse du c&ur, which, we have seen by his book of Devotion, was nourished and cultivated as sedulously as if it had not been the natural growth, and rooted deeply in his own virgin soul. It was easy, therefore, for him to gain admittance to a number of cheerful family circles, and the intercourse was for him so much the more charming, as he soon found in each family, one or more grow- ing-up daughters, who discovered for his higher nature a sur- prising sympathy, and by their more susceptible imaginations attached themselves closely to him. * See page 117. 140 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, Among his best friends was the Postmistress * Wirth. And to show the friendliness of the intercouse, we extract a note to her. " I am reduced to the choice to freeze, or to write to you ; and I do the last. We put off the purchase of wood until to-day, and to-day I am compelled, for want of money, to put it off a week longer. But in that time, I and my harp- sichord-playing fingers must be frozen unless you send me counsel or wood. It would be well for us Hofers, if we could get some of the fire which we shall have too warm hereafter, in our stores in our lifetime." The mention of the harpsichord-playing fingers, reminds tfs of one of the accomplishments with which Paul made him- self a welcome guest in every society. It was his first re- commendation to princely circles, and has taken deep hold upon the heart and memory of all who heard him. He play- ed never from written, or printed notes, but ptiantasied, as the inspiration of the moment and the mood of his feelings dictated. In this manner he poured out all the emotions, images, and dreams of his soul, without the timidity that he had always, felt at expressing them in words, and excited or melted his hearers with his own emotions. " Often," said one of his charmed circle, " when we had collected ourselves about him in the twilight, and he had phantasied on the piano till the tears ran over all our faces, and from emotion Paul could play no longer, he would break off suddenly, and begin the most humorous stories of his future life ; of his journeys, his wife, and children (which were always three) ; then he would prophesy, but always with whimsical effect, what a great man he would be how people would come from all places to see him, and princes and princesses would envy us the pleasure of his society." A prophecy, how improba- ble, but how well fulfilled ! * Women, in Germany, take the titles of their husbands, as Mrs Postmistress, Mrs. Doctoress, Mrs. Pastorinnen. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 141 CHAPTER X. R1CHTER TAKES A SCHOOL AT SCHWARZENBACH. METHOD OF INSTRUCTION. FEMALE PUPILS AND FRIENDS. WHILE Richter was thus happy in the circle of A D 1786 youthful beings he had drawn about him, whom he ageiise. ' was endeavoring to instruct and elevate, he was invited by many persons of high rank to enter their families as pri- vate instructor. His experience at Topen forbade him again to encounter such humiliation ; but urged hy his friends Yolkel, Vogel, and the magistrate* Cloter, to take charge of their children, he consented to go to Schwarzen- bach, and become, as he says, a pedagogue where he had first been a school-boy. He had at first a small school of six boys and one girl, between the ages of fourteen and seven ; and his poetical associations were excited at the thought of beginning his school on the day of his birth, the 21st of March. Richter wrote to the Amt, " That on the following Monday, his allodial and feudal estate might be transported to Schwarzenbach in a child's go-cart. In- form both friends, that about the pedagogue's wages there need be no new negotiation. They should both pay less, in proportion, than yourself. Truly, it is much easier to receive presents than wages, from friends." Cloter answered : " I must remind you of one of the Si- bylline rules, that when the moon is waning all fortunate things go backwards, and that Monday also is Kindlien day (Innocents), when nothing new should be begun. Forget not, when you enter your dwelling, to make three crosses, and place the right foot first, f Besides, on Monday I shall have no horses ; and to bring the reverend theologian with oxen in a chaise, God forbid ! that will I not." I have given this little extract, that the reader may have a glimpse of the man who was to be Richter's future patron. We are already acquainted with Volkel and Vogel. Cloter was a man open and honorable in word and deed. * Amtverwalter, the magistrate of a certain district, t This raillery was no doubt occasioned by Jean Paul wishing to en- ter upon his new duties on his birth-day. 142 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Where he gave his hand he gave his heart, aud the bond lasted as long as life. There was need neither of horse nor oxen to trans- port the personal property of our hero. He wrote to Otto upon his removal : " On my entrance into my Schwarzen- bach school office, I, as usual, made an inventory of boots, stockings, handkerchiefs, and a couple of kreutzers. Out of this list, failed only Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. I have nothing, but I hope this will be the very last request. I have been the occasion of some accidental successes, but friendship is perhaps best known to you under the form of favors, and with Herman died, as little what you did for him, as your goodness to me will die with either of us. Besides, thou knowest me, and thyself, and I hope neither the doing, nor the forbearing to do, the refusing or consenting to my prayer, can ever alter our relations or our opinions. Lebe- The reader will now follow Richter to Schwarzenbach, the place where, in childhood, he hungered and thirsted for in- struction, and where-first the dreams of future fame hovered over the friendless boy.* This last winter in Hof had blown its icy breath of cold and poverty into the poor apartment of his mother ; but now, in the spring, it was cheered with the warmer breeze of approaching good for- tune. At this time his biographer says, " Whoever had seen him, with his small portion of worldly possessions in his hand, his gray green woollen coat, and that noble, tender countenance, in which fate, with all its blows, had left no scars ; had looked into his beaming eyes, and said, Steer on, courageous Columbus ! What thou, with prophetic eye, hast looked upon, must be! Only a few more heavy years, and thou shalt hear and see the land. Above the blooming hills of the New World the sun shall rise for thee, and a beam will penetrate the narrow, dark chamber of thy poor mother, and will be to her the light-beam of an eternal blessedness !" After a friendly contest with Cloter, who insisted that the new teacher should be exclusively his guest, it was de- cided that he should live successively with each of his patrons, changing his residence every quarter. It is plea- sant to see, that this New England custom has had a prece- * See First Part, page 60. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 143 dent in Germany. After a few weeks, Richter found his most sanguine hopes of contentment and happiness fulfilled. The deep and marked peculiarities of a poetic nature were never brought into fuller exercise than by Richter, in the formation and government of his little school. That, which is usually to men of rich endowments a vexing and wearisome employment, the daily routine of instruction for little children in the elements of knowledge, became to him a source of elevated and ennobling thought. His mode of instruction was the opposite of that, from which he thought he had himself suffered. In his little school there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the thoughts of others, but every child was expected to use its own powers. His exertions seem mainly directed to awaken in the children a reproducing and self-creating power ; all knowledge, was therefore the material, out of which they were to form new combinations. In a word, the whole of his instruction was directed to create a desire for self-study, and thus lead his pupils to self-knmvledge. He aimed to bring out, as much as possible, the talents that God had given his pupils ; and, after exciting a love of knowledge, he left them to a free choice as to what they would study ; but their zeal and emulation were kept alive by a (so called) " red book" in which an exact account of the work of each individual was recorded ; this was shown to parents and friends at the end of the quarter, and so great was their zeal, that they needed a rein rather than a spur. While he accustomed the children to the spontaneous activity of all their faculties, he gave them five hours a day of direct in- struction, in which he led them through the various depart- ments of human knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by comparison and association. From the kingdom of plants and animals he ascended to the starred firmament, made them acquainted with the course of the planets, and led their imaginations to these worlds and their inhabitants. Then he conducted them through the picture gallery of the past history of nations, and placed the heroes, and saints, and martyrs of antiquity before them, or he turned their attention to the mystery of their own souls and the destiny of man. Above all, and with all, he directed their tender, childish hearts to a Father in heaven. He said, " there can be no such companion to the 144 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. heart of children, for the whole of life, as the ever-present thought of God and immortality." In " Levana" his work upon education, Richter has given a detailed account of his method of instruction in this little school. It cannot be denied that it was more adapted to cultivate a poetic nature, to form authors and literary men, than active and practical men of business. His instructions were directed almost wholly to the unfold- ing of the spiritual and intellectual nature, and to forming a creative imagination. He seems to have been in danger of forgetting, that the same sun that opens the tender bud, may close it for ever. A wise gardener will take care that a too powerful heat do not draw up from the root an excess of the vital fluid, and injure the delicate plant for ever."* These four years at Schwarzenbach were among the happiest of Kichter's life. The parents of the children were his warmest friends, and his whole heart was engaged in forming the characters of his pupils. He wrote to Otto, " that his schoolroom was his Paradise, his Peru, his Tempe, and his Prater." Every Sunday he walked to Hof, and spent the day with his mother. There he always found a party of young female friends collected to meet him, who was the soul and life of their intercourse. A heart like Bichter's could not remain at any time insensible to female influence. The tenderness and reverence with which he always speaks of the sorrows and sensibility of women, has made him dear to every woman's heart. He did not regard them, as men of genius are too apt to do, as mere playthings for the flattery of an idle hour ; or solely as idols of the imagi- nation for poets to study, in order to heighten the* effect of their own creations : he strove to elevate them in their own estimation, and place them in a moral and intellectual equality with man, and, added to this, was all the tenderness" which led him to say, " To the man who has had a mother, all women are sacred for her sake.' The four young ladies with whom Richter lived in confi- * One hour in the day was appropriated to conversation, when the children were invited and encouraged to ask questions, and make re- marks. Jean Paul kept a record of this hour, which he called his " Bon mot Anthology." He anticipated an experiment, since made in Boston ; and it is curious to see that German children and Boston children, mak- ing an allowance for difference of age, make very much the same observa- tions. See Appendix, No. T. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 145 dential friendship, appear uiider the names of Caroline, Helena, Frederica the sister, and Amone, who afterwards married his friend Otto. He encouraged them to write to him upon all questions of taste and literature, ethics or reli- gion, that they found difficult in solving themselves ; and he fortified the resolution, or soothed the uneasiness of those who met with difficulties of any kind. He, indeed, seems to have held the double office of instructor and confessor. His intercourse with young women was also a benefit to himself; for with them he was obliged to soften the bitterness of his satire, or to clothe it in the form of the graces. It may seem surprising, that placed in such intimate re- lations with women only a few years younger than himself, and susceptible as he had always been, Richter should have felt no serious passion. At this time he wrote a prize essay that probably defined the limits of his friendship towards his young disciples : " How far friendship towards the other sex may proceed without love, and what is the difference between that and love." His biographer seems to wish to persuade himself that the change which took place in Jean Paul at this time was the result of an individual passion. But it is plain, I think, from his journals, that his ideal of female beauty and excellence, the object for which his heart beat in secret, those exquisite creations of profound feeling, meekness and love which he ha,s left in his writings, existed not yet to him. In all his strong emotions, in the torrent of his deepest feelings, when he bathed in the delight of a summer day, or when the setting sun spread over him rose- colored and golden clouds, and he asked for a second heart in which to pour the overflowing emotions of his own, it was always a female heart. In his journal are many passages, in which he dwells upon his hopes of one day meeting this idol of his dreams. He writes : " I ask not the most beautiful person, but for the most beautiful heart ; in iJiat I can overlook blemishes, but in this, none." Even when his spirit was filled with universal benevolence, and he spread out his arms to em- brace all the world, a small voice from his heart whispered, that among a thousand, none had yet been found for him. He writes again : " There can be but one beloved, that can forget all for thee, and give thee every minute, every glance, every joy, every beating of the pulse, and say to thee, i We have chosen each other from the whole world. Thy heart is 146 LIFE OE JEAN PAUL. mine, mine is thine, thou deeply, deeply loved !' But be- yond the clouds of earth and the grave, a time will come when we shall not seek avariciously among the best, a better for ourselves; but when there will be but one, supremely loved, that is Grod, and millions loving all mankind. " And yet, thou ! that in this dark, cold night of life remained longest with me, and pressed my arm upon thy heart ; yet, if I should meet thine eye that I have so loved ; if I should see again all that here so drew me to thee, ah, I should fall weeping upon thy heart, and say, ' This is he who loved me upon earth, I must do something here to dis- tinguish thee from others.' " * There was said to be a certain Caroline, who carried Richter beyond the limits between friendship and love. It was not her extraordinary beauty that fascinated him, but the great liveliness of all her sentiments and emotions. However, this dream lasted but a short time ; with the spring it melted away ; and, that the lady herself dissolved it, appears from an entry in his journal. " / alone must repeat in solitude with flowing eyes, Thou lovest her yet, eternally, eternally ! " His letters to Caroline differed very little from his letters to his other young friends. To all they were full of wise counsel, playful and humorous sug- gestions, delicate and penetrating sympathy with sorrows only betrayed in hints and whispers. He wrote for them fables ; imaginary journeys all over the world, to teach them the customs of foreign countries ; a fanciful history of the inhabitants of the moon dreams, in which he veiled the most delicate hints and instructions : and to one of his young friends, who wished for some assurance of the im- mortality of the soul, he sent an " Essay upon the continu- ance of the Soul, and its consciousness," which contains the foundation and outline of the " Kampaner Thai. To another he wrote, on her-birth-day : 1796> account of Richter's intimate friendship with Ma- aged 33 - dam von Kalb, two events that took place in the autumn, immediately after his return from Weimar. His wide-spread reputation brought him many proposals to become the in- structor of young persons ; among others the Princess of HoJienloJte came to Hof, and entreated him to take charge of her two sons. The eldest of these princes was after- wards the celebrated Jesuit priest and worker of miracles. The delusion lasted a long time, but ceased before the death of the prince. His fine exterior, gentle manners, and insinu- ating voice, no doubt made part of the miracle. This was an alluring offer, as it promised Richter independence, and a beautiful residence on the Rhine. He answered, " that he was henceforth determined to educate no children but his own (his books), and that he had so much to say, that if death should surprise him at his writing-table, in his eightieth year, it would be yet too early." The other event, that made a deeper impression upon the imaginative mind of Richter, was a visit from the celebrated enthusiast. Julia von Krudener, the wife of the Russian am- bassador in Denmark. This singular woman had been to VOL II. 2 6 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Leipzig, to visit her son, and came in the full blooni of her remarkable beauty, to his solitary residence, as she said, to seek a comet on its path. Upon Rich ter,. whose soul was always thirsting for the spiritual and ideal in woman, she made an indelible impression, and excited an interest that led to a correspondence of many years' duration. They were only an hour together, but the interest was mutual. There must have been something in Richter's person and manners extremely fascinating to women ; for the impression his works had made on the imagination, was always deepened by an interview ; and there was some reason why Madam von Kalb should tell him Ci not to smile, and that the tone that his mind gave without words was sweeter than the sounds of the harmonica." Paul said, in a letter to Otto, " that, unlike as Madam Krudener was to all other women, so was the impression she had made upon him different from that of all other wo- men." He wrote to her, " The hour in which 1 saw you .floats like the evening glow still lower beneath the horizon. Your letter iqgst again color my atmosphere. You came like a dream, and fled like a dream, and I still live in a dream. . . . " A legend says, that the angels had created men like gods, but that they could not stand upright until God, by a spark, gave them souls, and raised them to the upright pos- ture. Most of us are still such prostrate men ; but in your soul glows this sun-spark, and you stand among the cold re- clining forms, with your glance still turned to heaven " Madam von Krudener answered: "Ineffaceable is the hour when your eye, the sound of your voice, the indescri- bable whole of your emotion in expression and accent, estab- lished the sweetest harmony of knowledge and feeling. I know not whether I make myself intelligible, as you know not how imperfectly I possess your language. You will imagine what I think, for I feel with indescribable joy that you wholly understand me, and the little that you said to me was penetrating like your glance, and led directly to my in- most heart. Oh, how few men can understand me. and how sweet is the hope to see you here, and to open this heart to you, to show you, without pride and without fear, the virtues as well as the faults of my nature. This need of learning the truth, this living necessity in me to grow better, this thirst after knowledge, and this warm desire to promote the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 7 happiness of men ; this expanding love that glows in my heart and breathes in your works, are what makes them so dear to me, and convince me. that through your friendship I shall be better and happier ; and that to you also, the obser- vation of a noble soul, that would fain impart blessings to mankind, will not be indifferent. " I say to you, that I am never deceived in men in whom I can kindle a spark of emotion ; by men of low disposi- tions I am often offended ; yet who remembers the sting when a gnat falls upon him ? Such stings take away the in- jurious blood, that inflames so easily at the smallest wound, and from which ill-humor and misanthropy are formed. I have climbed that mountain that little minds have not the power to ascend, and the echo of their voices brings no dis- harmony to my ears. "Without pride, I may say this to you. Ah! I cannot be proud too much remains yet to be improved before I can be satisfied. Gratefully I acknowledge the happiness, that God has given me a heart, in which only the memory of the good and beautiful can live ; and that has so lived in the higher regions of virtue and friendship, that the possibility of breathing in a lower world cannot exist. The hand of fenius seized my thoughts even in their cradle, and thus I now you can understand me even in my imperfect lan- guage.* . . . " I thank Providence that I have learnt to know you. He gives me, in you, a new and powerful assurance of my future happiness, and in your tears is a world for me. May you be as happy as I wish you, and may the precious emotions you have given me conduce to your own happiness. Remem- ber, meanwhile, I can never forget you. " JULIA VON KRUDENER," Richter entreated the lady to visit him again in Hof, " that the little blessed island she had thrown into the hum- ble stream of his life might not float away ;" but she did not return, and he met her not again until after his marriage, many vears afterwards, in Berlin. MMam von Krudener did not make a favorable impres- sion upon Richter's friends. They accused her of vanity and ostentation. From the course of her life it could scarcely be otherwise ; Jean Paul was not blind to the faults of any one * French was the native tongue of Madam von Krudener. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. but his true sympathy with all the weaknesses of humanity led him always to place the good and bad qualities in opposite scales ; and he said of her. what might be said of many ostentatious women, " that it was not vanity that made her an artist, but the enjoyment of the representation." From the subsequent life of Madam von Krudener, it will appear that Hichter was not so penetrating as his friends in the estimation of her chararter.* Richter's spirits, after denying himself a return to the Weimer Eden, and further intimacy with Madam von Kalb, were too much depressed to allow him to proceed with his Titan. He occupied himself this winter with two of his mi- nor works, Jubehenior and the Kampaner Tlial. During the progress of his great work, upon which he rested his hopes of immortality, he kept himself constantly before the public, and procured the means of subsistence, by a series of smaller works. Like a celebrated painter, he worked up the super- abundance of colors upon his palette into the smaller pic- tures, while his immortal work was yet on the easel. These works differ from his earlier in this, that they ne- ver contain a complete picture of character, neither is any elevated philosophical, nor poetical idea in life or character completely carried out. They are merely segments of life, and make no pretension to a full delineation of passion or event. In his earlier romances, almost all the characters had been left incomplete ; the reader is therefore rejoiced to find the author taking them up again, and introducing them anew to his acquaintance in these segments. Balzac, who in every thing else differs- more widely than the antipodes from Jean Paul, has in this respect, the same peculiarity. The Jvbslsenior is the beautiful and simple representation of an aged minister, and his equally aged wife, celebrating the anniversary of their marriage festival, at the same time with the consecration of the church,f and the introduction of a new young pastor, who is in love with the adopted child of the old people. " The aged pair, bowing under the gate of death that leads them to another world, will not withdra^ their hands from each other, but keep them cons tan tl^^lasped over the cold grave stone." They celebrate the sixtieth an- * See note at the end of the chapter. t A church consecration is one of the principal country celebrations in Germany. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 9 niversary of their marriage festival, with the rewarmed frag- ments of their own young bride-cake." Jean Paul partook deeply of the religious nature of the Germans; he delighted in all these humble, simple religious ceremonies; and he awoke the gratitude of many an old man and many an aged matron, with his intimate sympathy with their well remembered feelings, and the high esteem he ever paid to the silent men, that the loud young century had forgotten. The love of the young people is also mingled in the history, and makes a low, under, but sweet tone in the piece. The Kampaner Tlial, or proofs of the immortality of the soul, is one of the most purely serious, and poetically beauti- ful of all the author's minor works. It was suggested by his friend Charlotte von Kalb's saying, that she sometimes felt doubts overshadowing her mind when she thought of annihi- lation ; and as he had written the former letter on immorta- lity for Helena's, he wrote this for her consolation. In his intercourse with educated women, Richter had found that in proportion as they were refined and thought- ful, they were pained with doubt upon this great consolation of 'humanity a future existence of the soul. He somewhere says, " that he never heard a cultivated woman speak of meet- ing again with her lost friends, without detecting at the same time an almost imperceptible sigh of doubts."* He did not write to convert the infidel, but to establish the wavering faith of the doubtful : " As the plants that grow upon the margin of a stream are as much refreshed by a summer shower, as those whose roots are planted in the dusty highway of life." I feel that no justice could be done to this beautiful work by such an analysis as I could give, and that even my highest praise would be inadequate to express its merits, f This chapter cannot be more appropriately closed than with a letter from Caroline Herder, in which she has singu- larly anticipated the definition of the Romantic, which was afterwards given in the Foreign Quarterly Revieiv. It is written after receiving the Kampaner Thai from the author. * I quote from memory, not having the book at hand, t See Appendix No. I. 10 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. " I require indeed the pen of an angel to relate the thou- sandfold obstacles that have prevented me, dear, unforgotten friend, from writing to you. I dare not give you circum- stantially the Litany of my own little miseries, that united make the great cause of my silence. My eyes suffer, and since some years my health also, so that I have to prescribe for myself a severe diet in writing. I rely so securely upon our union in the world of spirits, I am so certain that you think of us, and speak to us, as we to you, without visible signs ; yet visible signs of the sacrament of love are beauti- ful, as I felt deeply when I received your dear letter with the Kampamr TJial. " Ah, we owe you thanks for Hesperus also. If my hus- band were not so slavishly chained, you had heard from him before this, upon Hesperus. The whole building is, as it were, filled with choice sacred pictures, and we linger to strengthen, elevate and delight the spirit. We might seize the whole at once, but we are unwilling under a thousand emotions not to dwell upon each, and the richness of ornament distracts our attention. " If you have ever seen the Minster at Strasburg,* you will understand me, and not misinterpret this comparison. Perhaps the soul of that great architect has returned, with you, to earth ; and, as at this time pictures in stone' are not so essential to us as spiritual representations, he builds with other materials than stone and marble, but in the taste of that time. " We look for Titan with the utmost impatience." NOTE. The Baroness Krudener was educated in Paris, where her father's house was the resort of men of talents, and her beauty and wit were much admired. In her fourteenth year she was mar- ried to Baron Krudener, who was more than double her age, and accompanied him to Russia, where he was sent as ambassador. Madam Krudener, placed in the first circles, and remarkable for wit and beauty, was surrounded by admirers ; but she was not happy. Her liveliness of temperament led her into levities, which caused a divorce from her husband, and she returned to her father's house, in Riga. Riga did not satisfy her. She removed to Paris, and lived * " He who casts one eye in thought on the Strasburg Minster, and another on the Temples at P&stum, will understand the difference be- tween the romantic and classical." Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1837. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 11 alternately at Paris and Petersburg. She was afterwards attached to the court of the beautiful Queen of Prussia ; and, sharing her misfortunes, her mind turned from the pleasures of the world to the subject of religion. She was now attracted by the principles of the Moravians, and again went, to Paris, where she found many disciples a fact easily explained. The higher circles in Paris contain many persons accustomed, from early youth, to live on excitement ; who, when age, or any other cause, sickens them of those of fashionable life, fly to devotion, and kindle again for God the burnt-out coal of other passions. She was afterwards connected with the mystical Jnux Stilling. In 1814, she was in Paris, much connected with the allied sovereigns, and is said to have had great influence upon the Emperor Alexander. At this time she had prayer-meetings at- tended by all the distinguished persons in Paris ; where she was seen in the background, in the dress of a priestess, kneeling in prayer. She afterwards went to Geneva and B&le, every where followed by women, poor people, and vagabonds ; sometimes preach- ing in the open air to three thousand persons. She distributed libe- rally to the poor ; but excited so much sedition, that she was placed under the surveillance of the police, and at length sent to Russia, with orders not to pass the frontier. She was forbidden also to go to Moscow or Petersburg. She retired to the Crimea, and died there in 1824. Conversations Lexicon. CHAPTER II. R1CHTER VISITS THE FRAUZENBATH IN EGER. DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. EMILIE VON BERLESPSH. REMOVAL FROM HOF TO LEIPZIG. IN the month of June, 1797, Richter found his A. D. 1797, health, from uninterrupted labor, so much im- agcd * paired, that, to avoid a fit of hypochondria, he fled to the baths of Eger, in Saxony, where were collected some of the most distinguished and brilliant persons of the country. Here he was destined to meet another of those enchan- tresses, who drew him more powerfully than either of the others from the quiet and regular flow of his studious hours. This was Ernilie von Berlespsh, a young, beautiful, and rih widow, of Switzerland. Paul's fancy was immediately kin- dled, and he was soon so much the more captivated, as the 12 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, beautiful and spiritual woman professed to love him more with infancy than the heart, and thus seemed to avoid the rock upon which poor Madam von Kalb had struck. The health of Richter's mother had been gradually de- clining, but he felt no immediate alarm, although her bless- ing, when he parted, was more fervent and tender than usual; but the fascination he was under, detained him at the Baths, until he was shocked with the sudden intelligence that she was no more. With bleeding heart, in which remorse for his absence was mingled, he returned to Hof. It was to Paul a painfully sweet recollection, that he had not gone from her without her blessing, and that when he saw her again, she was resting peacefully. The hand of Death, unlike that of Providence, had effaced from her pale Countenance all the lines of sorrow and of years, and in death she looked again young, and calm, and happy. His mother had been so bowed down by her life-long sorrows, that even after Paul had become the child of fame, and she heard his praises on every side, she wrote the same sub- dued and humble expression, and denied herself all de- monstration of joy at the success of her darling child. She fulfilled literally the injunction of the apostle, " to rejoice with trembling."* To add to his sorrow, Paul now first discovered the book, already mentioned, in which his poor mother had kept a record of her little gains in her midnight spinning. He wrote to Otto, as he placed the faded paper next his heart, " If all other manuscripts are destroyed, yet will I keep this, good mother ! where the misery of thy nights is re- corded, and where in weakness and pain thy thread of life is drawn out."f For many weeks Paul was not able to write to his friend Otto, or to mention his loss to any one ; but at length he fled back to Eger, to find in the sympathy of his new female friend, consolation for this his deepest sorrow. Notwith- standing the fascinating beauty and charming qualities of the young widow, Richter would not have been BO completely * The character of Lenette, in Sielenkas, has some of the traits of Paul's mother, and she is said to have furnished him with the original. t In a letter from the Duke of Mechlenburg, this circumstance is men- tioned as a touching feature in the character of Richter. It shows the strong affections of his heart, that he should have been so tenderly at- tached to a character like that of Lenette. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 13 enthralled, had she uot also excited his sympathy. She had lost her young husband after a very short period of happy married life, and was left childless. He wrote to Otto, " I have found the first female soul that I can completely unite with, without weariness, without contrariety ; that can im- prove me while I improve her. She is too noble and too perfect to be eulogized with a drop of ink. She belongs to that class of women, who with firm steps go straight forward on their path, and do not turn, or observe the gazers on the right or left. She has more love in her heart than in her eyes, and therefore she is not understood, nor happy ; and her clear reason and brilliant fancy surpass the glow of her imagination." But although the lady began with the most Platonic af- fection for Richter, it soon appeared that she demanded a more exclusive devotion, a warmer expression than Paul, with all the claims of his imaginary heroines, could give to o?te, and those violent passions, and stormy scenes began, that tormented the next twelve months of his life. After Paul had left the Frauzcnbath, and returned to Hof, she wrote to him. . . . " Follow your heart when it speaks for me, for notwithstanding all your goodness, all your sympathy with me, there is something in me that will always doubt. Do not look upon little hindrances and outward relations. What we lose at the present no eternity can give us back. There is for me only one real, pure joy, and in no future life can there be a higher than the intimate sympathy of soul with you. Ah, we have as yet said nothing to each other. " To-morrow I shall go to Weimar, and there I shall find a letter from you ! This tells me why I have such an inex- pressible longing to be there, where no joy except this and meeting with Herder, awaits me. Ah, I pray you not to love me ; that were silly ; but I pray you to view justly the heaven that you create in me ! and if you can estimate it, then you will never destroy it. Would that I could write to you something more of thought than feeling ! I know not how it happens that I, who am always nine parts un- derstanding, and one miserable tenth part heart, forget, pen in hand with you, all logic and penetration, and like the most susceptible girl, could discourse of my feelings VOL. II. 2* 14 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. through whole pages, if the thought of your severe under- standing did not stand in warning opposition before me." A week later : " I have received your letter. The manner in which I received it is a circumstance in the history of the letter. But of that another time. Breathless with joy I seized the letter from the hand of the bearer. My nerves trembled ; for some moments I could not read it. At last it was read. But now I would I could use any other image but now the high-swelling waves of feeling were instantly checked, as if by a sudden frost. But wherefore ? That, never ask me ! The heaven from which I wrote the first part of this letter is destroyed. " I have been some hours with Herder. We talked of the works of art in Dresden, and of you. Herder said, with the most generous expression, that there was not in Germany, (that is in the world,) your equal in affluence of mind, and with all, so rich, so pure a heart. Could one say more 1 And yet, when I talked of you, they called me an enthusiast ! Further, social life in Weimar is as if a wicked enchantment had dissolved every thing. Love, friendship, veneration, the enjoyment of art, even society is here only a sound, a shadow. A leaden night settles on all heads, all hearts, in apparently equal unifor- mity. " Farewell ! When you are a little good to me, if you would not make it utterly impossible for me to write to you with unreserve, write, but never again in such a man- ner to your " EMILIE " Richter answered : " How could I take from your view even the smallest blue spot in the cloud-heaven of life? Nothing is so painful as an epistolary misunderstanding, when it must be effaced through the slow post, rather than with a glance of the eye. u I stand already at the door of my literary cabin, and look at the opening in the distant prospect. How few men have a life plan although many a week, year, youth, or bu- siness plan. Men in their movements are without aim ; accident, necessity, desire, press one upon them that they take for their own. Gold pieces and medals of honor draw them down in life, and the outward dies without the inward being thought of. The folly of human wishes, indifference to the integrity of the soul, the half fragmentary, half acci- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 15 dentally formed inward, ideal man, where one half is a giant, the other a dwarf, makes one not only melancholy, but desponding. Upon the churchyard of the whole earth should this universal epitaph be placed : ' Here lie the beings who in life knew not what they would have/ " My leave-taking with all dear associates here, gives me many wounds to take with me to Leipzig. May I there in your precious heart find none. R." Richter had at length decided upon the removal from Hof that is indicated at the conclusion of this letter. By the death of his mother the last thread was broken, that held him there, and beside, the whole care of the education and maintenance of his youngest brother, Samuel, devolved also upon him. He was a youth full of talent ; Paul re- solved that he should not suffer, as he had himself, for the want of a helping hand, and this determined him to remove to Leipzig, where his brother could at the same time enjoy the advantages of the university, and of his own guardian care. Richter's residence in Hof had never been favorable to his genius. He felt that he needed a wider and more bril- liant birthplace for his Titan, to which, if it had not been for the demands of Emilie Berlespsh, he would now have been exclusively devoted. His wide-spread celebrity, and the homage he had received from all ranks, widened the dis- tance between Paul and his Hofer friends, and even Otto's jealousy could not be concealed at the marks of distinction which he did not share with his friend. Only a heart like Paul's could have resisted the flattery on one side and the reproaches on the other, and nothing places him in a more amiable light than his tenderness and forbearance under Otto's jealousy. He says, in answer to a letter filled with fond reproaches : " I have within me a humility that no one has ever guessed ; it is not a victory over pride, but a neces- sity of my nature. The judgments of others deceive me more through immoderate censure than through immoderate praise." As soon as it was known that Richter was going to leave Hof, a voice of regret and lamentation broke out on all sides. lw young women to whom he had been . an in- structor and friend, now almost all of them married, wo ild fain have kept him among them, to be the monitor to t ieir children that he had been to them. Vogel, and the- So-mt 16 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Anna, Volkel, and his old instructor, Werner, now infirm and aged, all poured in their letters expressing tneir warm love, their reverence for his noble qualities, and their deep grief at losing one who seems to have been regarded by those who enjoyed his intimacy with sentiments bordering upon idolatry. Richter visited all his near friends, and took leave of others by letter. To Vogel (when he returned his books) he wrote : " Dearest friend, I go as an inhabitant, my bro- ther as a student to Leipzig, and leave for ever the place of my youth. Exactly as at the first time, when I went a stu- dent myself to Leipzig, I write to you this second time ; and with the same anxiety with which we see the successive pieces of the machinery of life's stage shoved and pressed through each other. To your printed treasures, dearest friend, I am indebted for the greater part of my Library of Extracts, and my gratitude for your love can never be less- ened. May Heaven lead in enchanting dreams the innocent world of your life before your eyes, and shelter you from the night air and the night frosts. May you and yours be hap- py, happy, happy !" Vogel answered : " Infinitely, inexpressibly, beloved friend, you give me my books again, and take from us that personal image in which you have come to us from heaven. I weep at it like a child. But why should I suffer you to see my emotions reflected, as it were, in a glass, when you can read in the human heart as in a book ; and yet the less need I color them, for you are holy Nature's first and dear- est painter. Let your spirit still hover about us, and let now and then a drop of the old friendship fall into our cup. Thanks, thanks ! nothing but thanks for every enjoyment that from the sea of your love you have created for me. Eternal devotion, eternal reverence, eternal tenderness will be consecrated by my heart to yours. Fare you well, well, well ! thus calls with me my wife ; thus call all my children after their friend. " P. S. If I should see the Kampamr Thai, the ninth or tenth commandment will not stand in my way. You have spoilt my whole reading for me, especial^ the so-called beautiful ! I would that you had not spoilea it, or that I had more money and fewer books. Send me often from Leipzig only the written words, Jean Paul Frederic Richter, and I will practise magic with them. Denuovale carissime ! Carissime vale /" LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 17 We hear of the phlegmatic Germans ! This letter was from a country pastor, advanced in years. Let us recall the words of the former letter, written just sixteen years before, when Paul, as a poor student, was setting out on foot for Leipzig : " Excellent young German ! from whom in the future I promise the world so much. Fulfil this prophecy !" If they both remembered the letter, how well seemed the prophecy fulfilled ! Richter and Otto, although living in the same city, had written to each other every day. They would not trust themselves with a parting interview, and Richter's last letter to his friend is most touchingly tender. It closes thus : " My last word to you is, be courageous ! Strive with manly power against sickly phantasies, and enter, as I do, always more courageously into active life, that your talents may be more useful to others, and thus to yourself. With this wish, with these hopes, my infinitely dear friend, I close my youth's time, and we part silently from each other. If man can bear an eternity in his heart, you will remain eternally in mine. Say this also to your dear brother and sister. I will not seek such a trio in the world, for I shall not find you." After many other farewell messages, Paul closes by re- commending to Otto's peculiar kindness a poor girl, who had sometimes, in her illness, served his mother. CHAPTER III. RESIDENCE AT LEIPZIG. LETTERS. EMILIE VON BERLESPSH.. VISITS DRESDEN. THE residence in Leipzig was a great and decided A D 1798 change in the life of our Richter. In the tumult **** 35 - ' and whirlpool of the collected literature of the great book fair of Germany, so distinguished and so original a writer must have become one of the central points. How different from his humble apartment in Hof, where the only sounds that broke upon the quiet of still life, were the drowsy whirring of his mother's spinning wheel, and the unwearied scratching of his own pen. 18 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. * On his arrival in Leipzig, the bookseller Bey gang re- ceived him into his house. Richter found there treasures of new books, periodicals, and conveniences, that held him fast with the enchantment of novelty. But he soon went to his old lodgings in the Peterstrass, where he found higher cham- bers, wider windows, a more ornamented stove ; in short, elegant furniture, where the " commode was better than any thing he could put in it." Many families admitted him to their most intimate domestic circles, and the young attached themselves to him with irresistible impulse. Weisse, now an old man, who had closed his literary career by writing hymns and ABC books for children, and to whom every German child is indebted for his delightful " Child's Friend," took Richter into his family ; and his table, his library, and country-house were as open to him as if he had been his first-born son. Paul said of him, " In his seventy-second year \\isface is a thanks- giving for his former life, and a love-letter to all mankind. A Leipziger supper is always a guest repast. Weisse's daugh- ter, a beautiful and accomplished young lady, presides at his ; but for some years I have been dead to external beauty, and only alive to what is living beneath it." But, as in Weimar, Richter must speak for himself. Leipzig was the residence of his friend Christian Oertel, who had lately been married, and Richter had not yet seen his young wife. He says, " Oertel had already deposited a let- ter inviting me to a private interview. After half an hour he opened the door of the next room, and his wife, as tall and slender as Renata, neither beautiful, nor unpleasing, but with love-gushing* mild eyes, that steal the heart away as by enchantment, fell, although her mother and two sisters were present, upon my neck. I was not less confused than pleased. Her voice is like her eyes. When- she sang the forget-me- not, and some Italian pieces, you may easily think where my ears led my heart, and that the tones, floating between the present and the past, affected me too deeply. Wednes- day I was at the concert hall ; there were over a hundred performers. Beating the kettle-drum to a parchment thun- der, organ, female singers ; in short, I heard music for the first time in my life. As the animals to Adam, were the peo- ple presented to me, of whom I could name only Ernhardt * It is impossible to translate liebequellenden otherwise. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 19 and Dr. Michaelis and their sons. About eight o'clock, a man came to me without a hat, with tangled hair, and aphoristical voice, and Conversation free and bold. It was Thieriot. a violinist and philologist, and apparently an oddity, as he took me for one. He begged me to leave my lodgings, and come and live with him. " Kotzebue has visited, and invited me to dine with his wife. She appears to be a good mother. Contrary to my expectation his conversation is sleepy, spiritless, and like his eye, without brilliancy. On the other hand, he appears to be less wicked, than timidly weak. Conscience finds in his panada heart no ground firm enough in which to fix her hook. " I have been with Platner in his family, where I found a completely accomplished wife, and two extremely beautiful daughters, and many distinguished young people. It ex- ceeds the* power of my pen to give you a reasonable sketch of my acquaintances. Rather would I describe for you the refined, not too full, but costly and delicious supper parties. Yet I save nothing by them, for I must give the servants drink money, and the maid who lights you dowa, or up, even in clear daylight, demands the offering penny. - What I promised to tell you of Goethe is insignificant. It was merely that he judged favorably of the Hesperus. Further, he sees now, that it is good earnest with me ; but it gives him cramps of the brain when I throw myself from one science into another. ' I show my knowledge too much.' He knows a little also ! but he delivers only the result. 'When I am elevated above the earthly, even to heaven, then comes suddenly a poor jest,' &c. In short, he rues this side of my works.* " 1 met a noble Scot, Macdonald, (celebrated in history and in Ossian,) at a stranger's table, and at his own, and found in him the twin mind of Blair, whose sermons so delighted me, and whose personal friend he is. No, there is not in the three kingdoms a nobler or more manly breast, under which beats a tenderer, purer, more piously poetic and melancholy spirit. Thus thought a youth long since of the English, from books, and thus he finds it now. He reads and speaks as many languages as the freed American * It must be confessed there is much justice in this criticism of Goethe's. 20 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. cantons, thirteen. ... " c I must tell you of your faults !' I have already once, but completely wrong, namely, hinted a little vanity. T/iat cannot exist in a mind that so readily performs anonymous work, and withdraws itself from praise. Every son of earth may dare to be somewhat vain, it is only unpermitted when he conceals it, or displays it too much/ Ah, dear Otto, I remark from your letter that you are going back into your old errors, and that, merely, because I write to you chronologically. Written complaints and explana- tions are, on account of their longer and stronger false impressions, more difficult to efface than verbal. Ah, if we could be only one day together in Hof, not merely a full amnesty, but a deep Lethe would hide the little precipices where we have fallen."* ... " Fate is spinning for me, for I hear the whizzing of her wheel, a net-work that will over- spread my whole life. The Berlespsh is here. I find in her a soul that has not once fallen beneath my ideal, and I should be wholly happy in her friendship, if she would not be too hapjry with me." The last extract bids us return to Emilie von Berlespsh. A remark has been made by one of his biographers, " that whoever writes the life of Jean Paul must not forget how much influence women exercised upon his destiny." The reader must have already remarked, that although this lady began with the purest Platonism, she soon complained of the coldness of Richter's letters ; and that lie never appears to have felt other sentiments for her than those of admira- tion and esteem. Immediately after Richter's removal to Leipzig she pur- chased a country house at Gholis, a short distance from that city. When Paul visited her he found a quiet, retired apart- ment in the lower story, fitted up expressly for him as a study, where he could retire if he wished to be alone, or seek society with her and her friends in her apartments. Upon all occasions he met a glowing heart, and a warm, disin- terested friendship. As a female author Richter placed this lady above most of her sex ; but female authorship was more rare in Ger- many at this time, than even in England, and this lady was distinguished for a lucidity of arrangement, and strength of * Otto ha,d again expressed his distrust of Richter's affections. See Appendix, No. II. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 21 expression at all times rare among female authors. About this time she had published remarks upon the revolution in Switzerland, together with Mallet du Pans's history of the same. Richter himself must unfold her history in connec- tion with himself. He writes to Otto : " Harpocrates. lay thy finger upon thy lips, for the theme is of her, the purest, most spiritual female soul that I have ever known, but the firmest and most ideal, and possessed with an egotistical coldness of philanthropy that demands and loves nothing but perfection. She fulfils all the duties of benevolence, but without warmth of feeling. At the baths of Eger I treated her with extreme reserve, and took rarely her hand, and only a sympathizing part in her hard fate. She introduced to me a beautiful, rich, highly moral young lady, her friend from Zurich, for whom no wooer had hitherto been pure and good enough, and wished that I should marry her. Her proposal, when she came now from Wehnar, was that my little winnings, and the young lady's property should be thrown together, to purchase a country- house, and that she should live constantly with us. She yielded, when I represented the folly and impossibility of such an arrangement, but her soul hung on mine with more warmth than mine on hers ; and I have lived through fearful scenes, blood-spitting, and swoonings, such as no pen can de- scribe. At length, as I sat one evening reflecting upon her severe destiny, my heart melted within me, and I went in the morning and told her I consented to the marriage with herself. She will do whatever I wish ; will purchase a country-house, wherever I like best ; on the Necker, the Rhine, in Switzerland, or Boigtland. None perhaps will ever love or esteem me more, and yet I am not satisfied ; my fate was not decided by myself. In so far as greatness and purity of soul and worldly riches can make me happy. I shall be so^perJiaps. " Ah, Otto, I weary to write, when thou art so long silent. What have I done to thee ? What mist has again drawn around thee ? Farewell, my brother ! I long, more bitterly, every day, for you. Ah, you have no excuse, if, in an unaltered situation, you alter; while I, in an altered, re- main the same to you." Although Otto was at a distance from the fascinations of the lady, his mind was so completely the echo of his friend's, that he had not the power to represent to him, that by such 22 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. a marriage, even if he gained all the fortunes of Germany, it would be no atonement to a heart like Richter's. for the want oT mutual confidence and love. He closes a letter which is only a reflection of the sentiments of Paul's, thus : " But were your wishes not fulfilled, were the longing after love only charmed, not stilled, we know that our, that is, the poet's kingdom, is not of this world." Paul had therefore to achieve his freedom alone, and it is another proof of his ex- traordinary power, and the elevating influence of his moral nature, that he not only reconciled the lady to the refusal of her passionate demands, but continued with her upon the most friendly and confidential terms, without further ques- tion of love or marriage. Richter's next letter informs his friend, that even before he had received his last, his fate was decided. " I told Emilie that I felt no passion for her, and that it would be impossible for us to live happy together. I passed two incon- ceivably wretched days ; but now her wounded heart closes again gently, and bleeds less. I am free, free, free and blest ! In Hof you will hear of it most extensively, but my justification will precede the censure. It depended on my- self, after my confessions, to form with her a social and friendly bond. At the end of May we shall go together to Dresden, Seifersdorf, and on the Elbe. ... I should be much happier in marriage than you imagine. If there were only the spring of love, I would ask little from the summer of marriage. But do not believe that mine is like your sacrificing heart. Ah, in your situation I should be, through youth and beauty, and through great tenderness of soul, completely happy.* " Let me say no more of you, but only soon, to you I believe I should for joy and love, among you, die ! Ah, the good Pauline, tell Renata she must ask me what I think of her silence." " We have room but for one more extract from the Leipzig letters ; one that shows the childlike simplicity and openness with which the two friends wrote to each other. " I celebrated my birth-day on the 20th, on account of the birth of the spring; and on the 21st, on account of my own birth. From an unknown hand, I received brown cloth, that * Otto had long been attached to Araone Herold, but through family opposition their marriage was delayed. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Xo I already doubly wear, as a coat, and as an overcoat for the winter. Madam Feind gave me a cup, with hers and my initial letters interlaced ; Madam Bruningt a neckcloth : and the Berlespsh made me a little festival, with rose-trees, crowns, etc. ; to which Weisse and some other friends were invited." Richter was now preparing the second volume of the Titan for the press, and was also employed upon the Palin- But, in the midst of the business and pleasures of that whirlpool, the Leipzig Fair, he was seized with in- expressible longing for his late home, He fancied that this keiimveh would be cured by the sight of the green spot near the Lorenzo Church, where his mother reposed, and his me- lancholy dissipated by a few days residence with Otto, and quiet and confidential intercourse with his friend, and his friend's Vorlobt Amone. After fourteen days with Otto, and his family, who resembled him in tenderness, and in attach- ment to Richter, he returned, strenghtened as much by their love as by the repose and freedom from excitement he had found in the little city of Hof. Shortly after his return, he journeyed with Emilie to Dresden, partly to escape from the tumult of the fair, and partly to feel the full enjoyment of Nature, under the dou- ble charm of the opening spring, and the society of a female friend. It was Richter's first visit to Dresden, and he was disappointed in the social tone of the accomplished Dresde- ners. But in Dresden a new, and hitherto unimagined world, was opened to him. He became acquainted with the Grecian plastic art. A new sun arose over his own, and throw its living beams upon his mind. He wrote to Otto : " As yet, I can impart nothing to you but the hall of Sculpture, that yesterday like a new, huge world pressed into my mind, and nearly crowded the other out. We entered a long, light, vaulted hall, through which extended two rows of pillars. Between these pillars repose the old gods, who have thrown off the world of the grave, or the clouds of heaven, and reveal to us a holy, calm, and blessed world in their forms, and in our own breasts. Here we find the dif- ference between the beauty of a man and that of a god. Tluit excites, though gently, wishes and timidity ; but this exists firm and simple, like the blue of ether before the world and time were created. The repose of perfection, not of weariness, looks from their eyes and rests upon their lips. 24 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Whenever in future I write of great or beautiful objects, these gods will appear before me. and reveal to me the laws of beauty. Now I know the Grecians, and can never forget them. He did not forget them ; but the feeling they awoke in him was a reverend timidity towards them, and desponding reflections upon himself; as the sight of a large library al- ways made him melancholy, he felt the impossibility of tak- ing in its treasures. He did not enter the hall again. Bich- ter was now thirty-five years old, and the feeling may be easily understood of all that he had lost, while his mind was forming, which he was now too old to repair. The sight of perfection in any form excites in susceptible minds the longing after perfection. After his visit to the hall of Sculp- ture, Richter wrote in a secret pocket-book: "Unknown, unseen ! here in the stillness of my empty chamber comes thy image ! Ah, once, only once, thou All-loving, send to my thirsting heart that being that, as an eternal pole-star rises above me, and that, alas, I never reach." This visit to the gallery of Sculpture in Dresden inspired him with a desire to renew his acquaintance with the an- cients. He says, in a letter to Thieriot afterwards, " During this northern winter, my spirit was refreshed in Attica and Ionia. I read with a joy of which Herder can tell you, the Odyssey and Iliad, Sophocles, part of Euripides and .ZEschy- lus. After the last hymns of the Iliad, and the (Edipus in Co- lonna, one can read nothing but Shakspeare or Goethe. They already affect my Titan, but as the teacher rather than the father. Richter had already found reason to rejoice that he had not formed a more permament union with Emelie. He says to Otto, "In future I shall journey alone, and on foot. With Emilie I found upon our journey too much egotism, and too much aristocracy towards those beneath her in rank. I have again made peace with her, although she, not I, has often opened the old wounds. In the spring of \ 799, (sub-rosa,) she will go to England." The lady went to England, and resided in the Highlands of Scotland, but soon returned with Jieimweh to her native land. Her troubled life at length reposed happily in ano- ther union.* * Emilie von Berlespsh was a distinguished female German author. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 25 Upon Richter's return to Leipzig, from his Dresden journey, a deep sorrow awaited him. His brother Samuel, upon whose account, and to promote whose education he had come to Leipzig, a youth of good talents, and originally of a noble disposition, had fallen into dissipated company, and become involved in a deep passion for gaming. He had taken advantage of Richter's absence to break open his desk, and abstract from it one hundred and fifty Rix dollars. With this sum he departed from his brother's lodgings, without leaving any clue by which he could be discovered. Paul suffered inexpressibly when he entered his deserted room, and discovered the rose-bush, that had been his bro- ther's care, faded and dried as if it had been long neglected ; but he suffered infinitely more, when he found that guilt, also, was connected with his flight. He wrote to Otto r : " That lost and deserted one, who knows me so little, and who will never guess that I should be more softened by his return than he would be himself, comes before me every night in my dreams. Ah, if he knew how easily his hard fate might be mitigated !" He did not return, and his sub- sequent fortunes occupy a large part of Paul's future corre- spondence with Otto. Richter was more lenient towards his poor unhappy brother, because he reproached himself with too much indulgence, and too little scrutiny of his con- duct while at the university. He never saw him again, but he settled on him a yearly sum, to be paid through Otto, who was the medium of communication between them. The boy led a wandering life, probably filled with suffering, and died at a military hospital in Silesia. A strong character should never have the complete control of a weak one. The weak cannot sympathize with the strong, and to conceal his weakness enters into a series of deceptions that often end fatally for the weak. *, In the course of his journey to discover his brother, I learn from Schindel's biography, that at the time of her acquaintance with Jean Paul she was divorced from her first husband, although in his life she is called a widow. She visited Scotland in company with Sir James McDonald, and on her return published a work, called " Summer hours in Caledonia." In. 1801, she married a second time the Rath Harms, and went with him to Berne, in Switzerland, where she owned estates. 26 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Richter visited Halberstadt, the residence of G-leim.* now an old man ; but the snow that had gathered upon his long locks, had not extinguished the youthful fire of his eye, or shadowed the lines of his noble brow, Gleim stood at the door to receive him, and he was equally enchanted by the old man, and by the neighborhood of the Hartz mountains. Paul wrote to Otto : " Gleim has the fire and the blindness of a youth. To spare the old man I made only some slight remark, when he compared the sorrows of Louis XYI. to those of Christ ! He returned to Leipzig at the end of July, regretting " that he had found no man for his heart ; that he had in- deed found men whose pupil he could be, but none that he could take to his heart." CHAPTER IV. RICHTER RETURNS TO WEIMAR. WIELAND. GOETHE. HERDER. HIS ATTACHMENT TO JEAN PAUL. PHILOSOPHY. MADAM VON KALB. A. D. 1798, AFTER the loss of his brother, Leipzig with all its aged 35. no i se an d tumult appeared to Richter an empty and deserted city. Leipzig had indeed never fulfilled the expectations of his youth. All that he had so long dwelt upon in solitude, and that would have made him so infinitely happy as a youth in Leipzig, came too late. The theatre, concerts, the society of people of rank, to one who had been the intimate friend of Herder, appeared empty and idle pleasures, and his longing for the conversation of his friend returned, when there was no longer a reason for his remaining in Leipzig. An invisible hand drew him again to Weimar ; an inward voice whispered to him that it was only by the side of Herder that the sun would rise that was to ripen his Titan. On a visit that he made there about this time, when all his former friends received him with the same delight as at first, Groethe with more flattering demon- * The reader may recollect that it was Gleim, who sent Jean Paul the fifty dollars, under the name of Septimus Fixlein. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 27 strations of friendship than before, the circle that gathered about him was so choice and so delightful that he determined no longer to resist his secret wishes. Accordingly, at the end of October, just a year from the time he entered it, he left Leipzig, and on the 26th, at eve- ning, entered the gate of Weimar, to him that of a New Jerusalem. The same evening he wrote the following note to Herder : " At length I have passed the Arabian Desert of two years, and have arrived with the same pilgrim's gar- ment, like an Israelite to the promised land, where I wish to conquer nothing but yourself." Madam von Kalb was at her country-house, where she suffered with cheerful resignation the long night that the almost total loss of her sight had drawn around her. In as far as the comfort of a poet depends on outward circumstances, a humble personage claims a page in his biography. This is the Frau Kuhnholter, the wife of a sad- dler, at whose house Jean Paul hired his apartments. He writes as usual to his friend Otto : " My greatest refresh- ment here, except Herder, is my house Frau. Never -was I so happily lodged. No step-genius provides for my com- fort and waits upon me, but the lady of the house herself, who takes care of me as a mother would take care of her child. In my absence she had a second door cut in my apartment, and cares for all, and places all in order. At six o'clock she comes in, warms and lights my room, and then brings the hot coffee. I give her a crown, with which she pays all, and keeps an exact account till she needs a new one, and I often have a glass of wine over. She provides my wood, my comforts takes care of the washing, and when I go a little foot journey, like my mother, she puts up every thing, even the ink glass. And when I return all is ready, as in an expecting family. The duchess mother told me that my house Frau was a great reader. I inquired, and found that she had once taken the (Economical Lexicon from the library. They wondered at it, and it was purchased for her by the duchess." These outward cares, for which the good house Frau so well provided, bore upon the whole tenor of Richter's life in Weimar, which was indeed most happy. His reception was even more flattering than at first, as personal knowledge had confirmed the former admiration. All doors, and all hearts, even the ducal, were opened to him. The noble - 28 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and intellectual Duchess Amelia received him as a friend of the house, and he was indebted to her descriptions for his knowledge of Isola Bella, Naples, Ischia, and other parts of Italy, that he has painted with such living colors in his Titan. Richter's genius also was never more crea- tive and sportful, and the little work that he produced at this time, Bevorstehenden Lebenslauf* in fulness of thought, charm of expression, and a gentle play of wit and humor, between the serious and sportive, is not surpassed by any of his longer works. But the reader must not be defrauded of Paul's own naive and simple account. He writes to Otto : " Yesterday I visited Schiller. He was indisposed, and I went, foolishly, to walk with his wife. She belongs to those agreeable coquettes in conversation, who do not throw the ball straight back, but keep it up through playful per- siflage. She led the author of Hesperus, at twilight, to a beautiful eminence, to see another ; but he could only look at her beautiful face, and her still more charming Cleopatra eyes. I always tell her I cannot believe a word she says, unless she looks in my face. ... At a learned supper I met Hufeland and Fichte, and others, that I did not know. Fichte is small, (I thought he had been tall,) modest, and precise, but not particularly genial. I was lovingly treated by all, especially by Schiller. Ah, I speak too openly with people, and shield myself too little. My table talk at Dresden to Schlegel, obliged his brother, when it was repeated to him, to the expression of his judgment about me.f . . > " I write to you, wrapped in Wieland's wide mantle, that, on account of the cold, his wife lent me. I travelled here on foot, with only my summer coat, and a pocket full of shoes and clean shirts.J Wieland is slender, erect, with a red scarf and a red handkerchief bound round his head talking much of himself, but not with pride a little aristippish, and indulgent towards himself, as towards others full of pa- rental and conjugal love, but so intoxicated by the muses, that his wife once concealed from him for ten whole days, the death of one of his children. He does not penetrate * Approaching life's course, t In a severe review of Jean Paul's works. t This was on Paul's first visit from Leipzig, before he had perma- nently established himself in Weimar. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 29 the relations of things so deeply as Herder, and his judg- ment is better up^p. external social aiFairs, than upon inti- mate human relations. He gave me the palm many inches higher than his own, particularly about my dreams and pages upon nature, and increased my outward pride (my inward, never) about many things. He depreciates himself too much, and was too anxious about my praise of his works.' 7 " On my second visit to Wieland, with my wide flutter- ing summer ornaments, the good patriarch, on account of the hateful cold weather, brought me his coat himself. To- day I carried it back. God send every poet such an active, firm, prudent, candid, tender and kind wife. She had read in the newspapers of the danger of resting after being cold, and she brought and insisted upon my drawing on warm stockings. Wieland could not survive her, if she were to die, neither she, him. He has told me her heart's history, and also his own.* Ah ! how much I have to relate to your ear and heart In his single, and widowed daughter, beneath plain persons, are good and beautiful hearts ; but with such faces they will not be drawn out. And yet otherwise his wife proposed, and he mentioned it to me the next morning, that I should take the opposite house, and eat always with them. He said I gave him new life, and that they all loved me ! Naturally, as I always make them laugh, and as / cannot help loving so good a family. But that would never do. Two poets can never live together. And I will wear no chain, even were it form- ed of perfume, and welded by moonbeams and I should be certain that in the solitude of only their society, I should end by marrying one of their daughters which is not my plan." " I have just (Sbie from Herder. We sat many hours alone in his arbor. Oh, dear Otto, how shall I show you this noble spirit at its right elevation, before which my lit- tle soul bends with Spanish, even Turkish veneration this man, penetrated with the Divinity, whose foot is upon this world, his head and breast in the other. How shall I paint his" in spired eye, when poetry or music softens him? How shall I represent him embracing all the branches of the tree of knowledge, although he seizes masses, not parts, and in- * See Appendix, No. III. VOL, TI. 3 .J - 30 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. stead of the tree, shakes the ground upon which it stands. I have often, after spending the evenly with him, taken leave with tears. " Apropos, I have also been with Goethe, who received me with more obliging friendship than the first time. I was, in consequence, freer, bolder, less susceptible, and therefore more independent. He inquired after my manner of working, as it completely surpasses his method, and asked how I liked Fichte. Upon the last, Gloethe said, 4 He is the great new scholastic. Men are born poets, but they can make themselves philosophers, if they can any where fix a transcendental idea. The new (philosophers) make light an object, when it should only show objects.' He will complete the Faust at the end of six months. He said he could al- ways promise himself his work six months beforehand, and he prepares himself by prudent diet. Schiller drinks coffee immoderately, and Malaga also. No one is as moderate in coffee as I am. u G-oethe told us, he had not read a syllable of his Werter until ten years after it was written. ' Who would willingly surrender themselves to a past sensation, and re- call anger or love,' etc. So also said Herder of his works. What can be said of the self-idolatry of the small literary men of the day, when such men are so humble. I was ashamed not to be so before them, but I said, c that my things, immediately after they were printed, pleased me ex- tremely, and that I knew no better reading but when I had forgotten my own ideal, I knew none worse.' " Dear Otto, why do you write me so little of yourself? With what right or justice should I give you all my person- alities, if I did not expect yours in return. Write me soon, what makes you so calm namely ' your newly discovered unsealed fountain.' Has no one guesse^that it is a gift for distant, thirsting friends, when they are told how often you sneeze, gape, smile, or weep ? You imagine me more altered in my views of human life and benevolence than I am, I am the same man as formerly, and have lost nothing but certain hopes and dreams." Otto, in his next letter, discovers the source of his newly acquired contentment, and as it condenses the philosophy of many tedious volumes, I give an extract from it. " The conviction lies deep and indelible in every human breast, that only those have a right to be happy more, only LIFE OP JEAN' PAUL. 31 those can reproach Destiny, who possess the purest virtue ; that every one should be satisfied with his fate, if he has ever, in the course of his life, acted unjustly or unwisely. I reflected upon my whole life. I have found nowhere what is in the world called happiness, but every where gifts that I had not deserved. The more narrowly I looked at these, they shivered, and, like ignoble metals, evaporated in the melting. How small then was the result ? But I did not spare nor deceive myself, and hypocritically say, that rny desert appeared much smaller, and the more this diminished the more the gifts increased. I felt with deep mortification, that there I should have been better, here wiser, or at least more reasonable. Then I was silent within myself, and said, ' Thou hast received more than thou hast deserved, and if Destiny had given thee nothing but this living faith, and the still, cool air, and the. solitude that thou lovest, still it is more, a thousand times more, than thou hast de- served.' " I celebrated Amone's birth-day, this year, with emotions wholly different from former ones. In future years, I thought, she will live by me, care for me. and as I have always known her sacrificing love, so I am certain that in every relation with me. be it ever so limited, she will be contented. I have lived. 'in rny long connection with her, days of sweet and intimate enjoyment for the mind and heart. How often do I admire in her, her sacrificing and forbearing spirit her tenderness of heart, together with the manly ambition of a philosophical spirit ; her silence and patience under the severity of her father, and the narrowness of her family ; all this makes the prospect of life with her, and only with her, when we have passed the hard circumstances that now divide us. dear to my heart. To whom could I say all this, with the prospect- of sympathy, but to you, my Richter ?" To this letter Richter answered : " Your excellent judgment, upon happiness and desert, was always mine. I have always myself laid the egg out of which the basilisks have crept. On account of my poor brother, I have also some guilt, but less of the heart than of the head. I con- tended with Goethe upon your assertion ' concerning the Pro- gress of the World. 5 ' Revolving, we must say,' he answered ; ' a priori progress follows from the belief of a Providence, but not a posteriori is the progress always apparent, at least not in the French revolution. The hardly-found truth we 32 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. must also earn for ourselves. The chambers of the brain are full of seed, for which the feelings and passions are the flower soil and the forcing glasses.' " A young Haydn is music director here ; and a female singer, that I visit sometimes, though without beauty, is a perfect gymnastic for wit. She laughs and sings, and, with justice, more than she speaks. She told me that she asked G-oethe how she should receive me, whether she should come trilling to meet me ? < Child,' said he, < do as with me, and be natural.' " Herder has one Alphabet of his Metakritic ready. He asked me to look through it, and make corrections. I told him I would, but only to read and restore what he had scratched out. ..." In the great world I despise the men and their joyless joys ; but I esteem the women ; in them alone can one investigate the spirit of the times. Besides, I am freer and better known than in a small place. But, as I said to Herder yesterday, 4 Once married, I shall creep into the smallest nest in the world, and stick nothing but my writing fingers out.' " Caroline Herder, in her reminiscences of his life, gives a beautiful account of Richter's relations at this time with her gifted husband. " In the last month of the year 1798, Jean Paul Eichter came to Weimar, and with warm, full heart to Herder. Her- der immediately won his love, and his esteem for Richter's great and rich genius increased from day to day. The high moral power breathing in his works, fitting him fo be a physician of the times, united both men in a friendship of the closest sympathy. He came, as though sent by a good Providence, exactly at the time when Herder, on account of his political and philosophical principles, was deserted and nearly forgotten. The happy evening hours that Richter passed with us, his perpetually cheerful, youthful soul, his fire, his humor, the animation with which he talked over with Herder every thing that happened, always gave him new life. Much as they differed in their views upon one subject, yet were their principles and their emotions always the same. (Herder differed fromJRichter in his judgment of women; he thought Paul made them too melancholy, too desponding, and perhaps too inactive.) Moreover, he valued Richter's genius, his rich, overflowing, poetic spirit, far above the soul- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 33 less productions of the time, that contended for the poetic form only. Herder named them brooks without water, and often said " that Richter stood, as opposed to them, upon a high elevation, and that he would exchange all artistical forms for his living virtue, his feeling heart, his perennial creative genius ; he brings new, fresh life, truth, virtue, reality, into the declining and misunderstood vocation of the poet." " Most intimately united the two friends lived together. Our little evening table, with him> our children, and some- times Frederic Mayer, was a true sanctuary. Oh, how often has the good Richter there, or walking, or in his little jour- neys to the Ettersburg, by his genial humor, robbed Herder of the bitterness of his emotions. He often said to me in the last year of his life, ' Before I close the Adrastea, I will place there a memento of our Richter, I will show to the whole of Germany how we prize him.'" It was thus that our Richter was valued by those who best knew him, and perhaps he now stood upon a higher elevation in the estimation of society, and in his own, than he had before attained. He had added independence and strength of soul to the consciousness of the value, and to the infinite reverence he felt for the holy aim of his life. His views were more extensive and richer ; while his heart beat with a more glowing philanthropy. He felt that the calling of an author, at this time, when a spiritual revolution was beating in the hearts of men, more important even than the political that was raging without, demanded all the highest qualities of the soul, as well as the devotion of the time and heart of him, " Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful, with a singleness of aim." The friendship which about this time he formed with Jacobi, threw him again on the path of philosophy, which in his nineteenth year he had abandoned for poetry. From the idealism of Fichte, which made egotism transcendental, he turned to what he thought the interests of humanity de- manded. A personal G-od, the maker, preserver, and gov- ernor of the universe ; the immortality of mft, as a self- conscious and accountable being and to love, as the spring, incitement, and impelling principle of the universe. In these opinions he found in Jacobi an immovable rock, and 34 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. for these Herder incessantly contended. They had united to publish a periodical under the title of u Aurora" but the advanced age of Herder, (he was in his sixty-sixth year,) and Jacobi's failing health, prevented the accomplishment of their project. I cannot be guilty of the presumption and temerity of un- dertaking to define the different systems of the philosophical writers of the time, so as to be able to determine to which of them Eichter adhered ; but I may venture to assert that he dreaded the influence of the Kantish philosophy upon religion and morals, and that he made the idealism of Fichte, (who as- serts that all external things are the production of the imagina- tion,) the subject of severe ridicule in his Clavis Fichtiana and has shown the practical consequences of his system in Schoppe, or Leibgeber, a character introduced into more than one of his books, who is crazed by the Ideal philosophy, and maddened by the fixed idea, that he has lost his individu- ality. Richter's biographer asserts, that after the publica- tion of Fichte's book upon the destiny of man, he seized every opportunity to express his reverence for the author, and that in his Lavana he inserted a eulogy of Fichte. Jean Paul adhered closely to Herder, and was a fellow believer with Jacobi, the "faith philosopher" Those who are acquainted with the elevated and religious sentiments " that echoed to the mighty heart of Herder," will under- stand the position he took in G-erman philosophy. Richter possessed in an eminent degree what have been called the highest capacities of man, reverence for the holy, and love for the beautiful. Superstition, bigotry, and fanaticism, seem to have been equally abhorred . by him in early life, although he said, after the French revolution, " I bless the concordat. The deepest superstition is better than Atheism and Theism." In this happy manner the autumn passed in Weimar. In January, Madam von Kalb returned from her country residence, and immediately a storm arose in Richter's Indian summer. She had brought her husband and her own family to consent to her divorce, and, as a consequence, insisted upon marrying our hero. But he must give his own account of the affair ,^n a letter to Otto : "After a supper at Herder's, with Madam von Kalb, Herder was sitting by her, for he esteems her highly, and immediately, in the presence of his wife, kissed her heartily; LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 35 and as the reflection of this ancient flame fell upon me, she said, ' In the spring, in the spring.' I said afterwards to her, decidedly, no ! and after a glow of eloquence from her, it stands thus that she shall take no step for, and I no step against the divorce. I have at last acquired firmness of heart. In this affair I am wholly guiltless. I can feel that holy, genial love, that I cannot, indeed, paint with this dark water but it passes not beyond my dreams." These stormy passages in the life of Richter were of singular advantage in enabling him to complete his Titan, but they were unfavorable to his own happiness ; and, as he said, " the Berlespsh relation bound his hands, and shut his eyes, while some gentler heart that might have been his was lost to him. Shall I always thus play and hope ; fail and end thus ? Such women as both these blind one to every quiet female Luna. Ah, what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me." Richter remained firm through the winter against the se- ductions of Madam von Kalb. He happily knew that such stormy heroines as Madam Berlespsh and Yon Kalb were never formed for wives for him. He needed a mild and gentle spirit, not to dazzle and to be admired, but in whose unselfish love he could find a sanctuary for his heart. Noble and excellent as Richter was, he was yet a poet, and there- fore a spiritual egotist, and his wife must minister to the domestic altar the sweet and pure incense of reverence and love. With a Berlespsh he could have found no repose, with Madam von Kalb there could have been no security. No genius of either sex should marry a genius. The re- sult of the poetic nature seems to be an intense personality. I do not mean selfishness or even egotism but the poet lives in his own creations ; they are his domain, his kingdom, and he cannot go out of them, to enter into the heart or in- terests of an individual, although he understands better than another the great heart of humanity, and lives in the soul of the universe. His wife should be willing to be only a ray, to be absorbed, and have no individual existence, except in him. How could this be, were both poets, both demand- ing supremacy, and the acknowledgment of individual supe- riority ? For happier, far more graceful is it for the woman to remain in the attitude of a priestess at the domestic altar, not of man, because he is a man, but because he is a poet ? 36 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and to keep the flame pure by no slavish offering, but by the holy incense of admiration and reverence. The work that appeared this year from the pen of Richter. "Selections from the Papers of the Devil," recast and rewritten, was entitled " Palingenesien," born again. Ten years before, Richter had met with great difficulty in finding an editor for these satires. Disputes were held upon the title the printer wishing them to appear as " Philosophical and cosmopolitan Remains of Faust" or " Selections from the writings of Sir Lucifer" Jean Paul adhered to his own title, but the book attracted little attention at the time. It was now wholly rewritten, and only about ten of the original satires retained ; these being the only pages that could have a direct reference to the present time, and be combined with a dramatic action. A critic, speaking of this book, says, " It is one of the works of the. author that gives the most lucid explanation of the being and nature of the poet, and places poetical influences in the clearest light " CHAPTER V. RICHTER VISITS THE COURT OF HILDBURGHAUSEN. MADEMOI- SELLE VON F. THE FOUR SISTER PRINCESSES. DEDICATION OF TITAN. VISITS BERLIN. A. D. 1799, I N * ne spring of 1 799, Madam von Kalb, having aged 36. ' invited Amone, the betrothed of Otto, to accompany her, retired to one of her country-houses, and all question of the divorce was thenceforth dropped. Richter could not pass the genial season of spring with- out a longing desire to wander ; he therefore accepted an invitation to visit the court of Hildburghausen, from whose duke he had received the diploma of Legations Rath. He was also drawn thither by the powerful attraction of a young lady, Caroline von R, whom he had met in Weimar the pre- vious winter, and who was an attendant on the duchess of Hildburghausen. This new attachment was so far happier for Richter, that the lady did not belong to the class of ec- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 37 centric beings who had before entangled him, but the storm that nipped and destroyed its fruit in the bud, came from the opposition of her noble relations. His letters describe the delightful residence of a few weeks at this court, and the flattering kindness of the duchess. She was one of the four beautiful sisters to whom he afterwards dedicated his Titan. He must first describe his situation at the court, and then the lady of his love. His letter is to Otto. " Paint to yourself the heavenly duchess, with her childlike eyes, her whole face full of love and the charm of youth, her voice like the nightingale's, and her mother's heart then the not less beautiful sister, the princess von Solms, and the third, the princess of Thun and Taxis, and their lovely, healthy children, who all arrived on the same day that I did. We will pass the men, but with the princess von Solms I could be happy in a mountain coal mine. All these women read me, and love me truly, and urge me to stay yet eight days longer, when the fourth, yet the more charming sister, the queen of Prussia, is expectecl. I am invited to dinner every evening. The duke is extremely good-natured, but could not at first be much au fait with me. He remarked that I took too little asparagus, and helped me, not only to this, but to the first young venison, which is not indeed wonderfully good. Yesterday Ifantasied upon the flute before the court. You are shocked and frightened. But for more than half a year I have done it passably, before Gleim, Weisse. Herder, and the duchess mother. I have also here an established bro- ther and sisterhood, and could be a Zinzendorf. No, it would be ungrateful if I did not receive the love of the G-ermans as the richest reward of my authorship. "My Caroline lives with her mother, sisters and brother, and the time I am not at court is passed with her. I know her now more intimately, and in no female soul have I found such serene, sedulous, religious morality ; immovable and incorruptible in its smallest branches. One feels 7 alas, by her moral tenderness, that he has been long in Weimar. If I were united with her, my whole being, even the smallest stain, would be purified. She does not read, as young ladies usually do, merely to dissolve a sentimental manna upon her tongue, but to learn ; that is, she reads history and natural history. She has formed a complete herbarium, and a suc- cession of ingenious flower paintings. She makes verses, as VOL. II. 3* 38 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. you will learn by the accompanying inclosure, and therefore she cannot forget the satire upon female poetry in J. P.'s letters.* It was true, she said, but too bitter. She drinks no wine at dinner, and passes great part of her time in the open air, in the garden. i Now that I am healthy,' she says, ' I will make myself hardy.' . . . Her delicate mother cer- tainly guesses all, and by her silence gives consent. I dare tell you all. With three kind words you can give this dear being three heavens. . . . Her complexion is fair, and pale red, her brow poetical and feminine, her eyebrows strong, indeed too much so, and her eyes dark. The nose is the reverse of little and short ; the lips naturally cut, and the chin a little too prominent. Of the beauty of her hair I inclose a proof. Pray return it immediately. I derive from her, God knows why, unless it is my five-and-thirty years, a sense of firmness and security that enables me to enjoy the present hour, without anxiety for future years ; and thus my life completes its circle, its enchanted circle." Richter was now more genuinely attached than he had ever been, and the lady app'eareH to have reciprocated his emotions ; but the course of their love was turbid and ruffled. Paul was tortured all through the summer by the ca- prices of Caroline's noble relatives. At one time she gained their consent to the betrothment, and Richter wrote, full of joy to Otto, to postpone his marriage with Amone, that they might have the happiness of solemnizing both on the same day, and both retiring to the little city of Bayreuth, there to realize the plans of their youth. All these changes are related most; faithfully to his friend, and he closes one of his letters with these words : " How can I tell you, Otto, how entirely I esteem her not merely love, for that is always so easy." The winter passed in frequent correspondence, and in May his friends, the Herders, went with him to Ilmaneau, where Caroline then was, to celebrate the festival of be- trothment.f Certainly Richter had never loved apparently * See Jean Paul's " Conjectural Biography." t The " Verlobujig" is often, but not always, a solemn ceremony in German society. It means that the lover is formally accepted by the lady and her family. If there be no reason for keeping the affair secret, the relations and friends, on both sides, are assembled, a little festival takes place, and the young people are presented as " Verlobt," affianced, or, as we say in this country, " engaged." The marriage ceremony, which LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 39 so naturally and prudently, and the encouragement of the Herders was to him a guarantee of his future happiness. They found that his Caroline surpassed even the description of her lover. There was something about her fascinating to people not exactly of the world, and that took the Herders by surprise. What took place at this time is not exactly known, the opposition of the relatives does not appear to have prevented the betrothment, but some little moral dif- ferences, that would have destroyed the whole happiness of the marriage. Eichter returned to Weimar with a crushed heart he had no words to describe the agitation his dis- appointment occasioned ; for a moment the health of this strong and firm being sank under the blow, and the thought of returning again to the desert world. He thus closed a letter to Otto : * ; The blow is given that has cut me to the inmost heart. I also am superstitious misfortunes and happiness come twice, not three times. I long infinitely for the little corner of my birth, and the innocent and touching scenes about you.* You know not how my heart, even to sadness, dwells upon your day of ceremony, f We can never lose each other, therefore every thing, even the weather, will be important to me, as it concerns you, and our Amone." Otto, who appears to have felt a singularly warm interest in the Fraulein von R, insisted upon knowing more dis- tinctly the causes of the rupture. Richter says, in reply, " Merely little moral differences, but such as would have de- stroyed the whole happiness of marriage." But there was also the opposition of the lady's noble family, who probably takes place afterwards, is more private, and attended by fewer witnesses. In this country we have the custom of " Verlobung," without the cere- mony ; and here, as Mrs. Jameson, in her pleasant notes to the princess Amelia's Dramas, observes, " the engaged youth is expected, to devote every leisure minute to the society of his betrothed ; he attends her to all public places, and to every private party, (as it is not considered good manners to invite them separately,") and less restraint is placed on the intercourse of the lovers here, than even in Germany. In England, it may be presumed, from Mrs. Jameson, the lovers do not appear much to- gether before marriage ; and in France it is offending against bien-seance, ever to leave them alone together. In this, as in other habits of social* life, we have been permitted, in this country, to select what is good and agreeable from all others. * Otto and his sister Frederica were both married at this time ; and Otto immediately removed to Bayreuth. t Otto's Verlobung day. 40 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. looked with the eyes of worldly prudence, not merely upon their sister's violation of all German conventionalism, in uniting herself with an author, but trembled for the strait- ened circumstances into which her disinterested inexperi- ence would lead her. In a letter, written to her at the breaking off the be- trothment, Paul says : " Only one fault have I, and only I, committed throughout, that after so many earlier lessons from experience, I did not immediately, as soon as we had once conversed with each other, write this letter to you, and impress it upon my own heart." Otto, to whom the correspondence was transmitted, draws, as he was accustomed to do, these wise, but alas, too tardy reflections, for the use of his friend : " It is a weak perverseness of our nature, and yet an an- tidote against egotism, that when we see a being worthy of our esteem, we turn from what we discover in them that is disagreeable, and believe that if we shut our eyes so as not to see them, the little spots are not there ; as if we could avert the divine and human sentence which decrees, that in- equalities and blemishes, shall, in the course of time, become more, instead of less apparent, and that because we blind ourselves, they should vanish and be obliterated. That your separation is right, that it is the work of destiny, and that you have completed the decree of a higher Power, that you should not be happy together, is true, and that the good and unfortunate Caroline will be the most unhappy, is also true ; because she will never be in a situation to understand the disparity and inequality between you. Because the advan- tages of the separation are more apparent to you than the advantages of the union, you can justify the separation to yourself ; but it is the reverse with Caroline ; she can never understand the ^advantages of the union, because her disinterested generosity and affection would obliterate them all ; while she feels the unhappiness of the separa- tion." We see from these extracts that Bichter was not alto- ther blameless with regard to the Fraulein von F., be- use his deeper penetration and experience of life, had enabled him from the beginning, to understand the dispari- ties, whether of a moral or conventional nature, which would have rendered their union unhappy ; and yet he permitted himself to win the love of th(? lady. She seems to have been LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 41 greatly attached to him, and for his sake would have sacri- ficed the privileges of rank, and accepted the inconveniences of poverty ; and it was no balm to a wounded heart, or to wounded pride, that he had had the sagacity to foresee the issue. As women, we may be permitted to protest against Rich- ter, in connection with our sex. It is true, that he has writ- ten beautifully and eloquently of women ; and has perhaps, done much to elevate and spiritualize their views and affec- tions ; but in actual life he was not wholly sincere with the beings he professed to reverence. After the fancy for the little blue-eyed peasant girl, till his marriage, he does not appear to have felt the truth and tenderness of an equal love. He was dreaming of an ideal, spiritual love, like a far-off lumi- nous star, while he permitted himself to write letters to his four or five Hofer friends, that from any but a poet, would have been thought genuine declarations of love. In his connection wiah Madam von Kalb and Emilie Berlespsh, he was more sinned against than sinning ; in the one case he retreated before dishonor, in the other before a marriage in which there could be no genuine and mutual affection ; but even here he appropriated their unselfish affections, their disinterested devotion, to purposes of artis- tic creation ; he made them the models for the female cha- racters in his works, and they lived to see the warm pulses of their hearts registered, and made a standard by which to count the feverish or healthful pulsation of other hearts. In the usual acceptation of the word, Richter was not an enemy to women, but his devotion to them was not a genu- ine devotion to them, as women ; he did not love them for themselves ; he loved them artistically ; and as the artist drapes his model in every graceful form to produce effect, Jean Paul made use of the power his genius gave him over the minds of women, to draw out the sweet affections, the hidden depths of the heart, revealed only to love, to increase his psychological knowledge for the public. In spite of all the various causes 'of interruption, Eichter was never more completely absorbed in work than through this winter. The first volume, and the comic appendix to Titan, was ready for the press, and he had printed his his- tory of " Charlotte Cvrday" and Clavis Fichtiana. Nei- ther of these were works of the first importance, but they 42 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. served to keep him before the public while his great work was in preparation. The Clavis Fichtiana was, at the time, one of his most celebrated works, and attracted much attention upon its pub- lication. Fichte's popularity was so great, or the interest in metaphysical speculations so intense, that the booksellers paid him six louis d'ors a sheet, for his lectures, while Goethe received only five, at the same time, for his most admired works. It would not, perhaps, be interesting to inquire at this distance of time, and in another country, why Jean Paul threw himself so entirely into the philosophical and meta- physical contests of the day. From all that can be gathered from his letters, it would seem to be his friendship for Herder and Jacobi; but he gained nothing, even from them, and he widened the distance between himself and Goethe and Schiller. His letters at this time to his friend Otto, to whom he confided every intimate, and every passing emotion, betray discontent and restlessness; a deep longing for quiet and re- tirement, yet an unwillingness to retire until he had formed a union that would satisfy his heart, if not his ideal al- though, at present, he certainly did not place his demands too high. He says ; " I would fain find a gentle girl who could cook something for me ; and who would sometimes smile, and sometimes weep with me." During the whole of this winter, Richter was flattered and courted by the four beautiful princesses already mentioned : and he obtained permission to dedicate his Titan to them. The dedication of Titan to the four distinguished sisters, the daughters of the duke of Mecklenburg, is not to the sisters upon the throne^ for he mentions only their baptismal names, and commends his Titan to their favor as exalted human, not princely beings ; and when his friends represented that his Titan contained bitter satires against princes, he answered, " that his dedication was to them as women, not princesses, and that his satire touched princes only, not their wives." This pretty piece of flattery is thus presented : The queen of Love and her three attendant graces look from their cold Olympus, through the atmosphere, and long to descend to our earth, where the soul loves more because it suffers more ; and although it is darker, it is warmer than on Olympus. They hear the sacred hymns of Polyhymnia, as she wanders invisible through the earth, to elevate and console man, and they mourn that they are so distant from LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 43 the sighs of the helpless. Then they resolved to clothe them- selves in the veil of humanity, and descend to earth. As they touched the flowers of earth, and threw no shadow, the queen of heaven raised her sceptre and decreed, that these immortals should be mortal, and take the form of the four sisters, Louisa, Charlotte, Theresa and Frederica, and the loves were changed into their children, and flew into the arms of the mothers. Then their hearts beat with new love, and Polyhymnia, as she hovered invisibly near, gave them the voice and the heart to charm, and to console humanity. The rupture of his ties with the Fraulein von F. made Richter very desirous to remove for a short time from Wei- mar, where he was constantly meeting her family ; fortunate- ly, a singular circumstance drew him at this time to Berlin. The previous March he had received an anonymous letter from Belgard, Upper Pomerania, together with his Hespe- rus, translated into French. The writer promised to make herself known as soon as an answer to her letter gave her courage. Richter answered immediately, which was not his custom to anonymous letters ; and the lady made herself known as the lady Josephine von Sydon ; French by birth, but who had so far become mistress of the German language, as to read it with ease, and to translate it into her mother tongue. Her love of Richter's works had excited the highest admira- tion for their author, and an ardent desire to become personal- ly acquainted with him. Richter now went to Berlin to meet her, with whom he had formed a friendship by means of a correspondence in different languages, and with the partition wall of mountains also between them. It rarely happens, that a friendship formed without a personal interview, through the charm of correspondence, will not disappoint one of the parties when they meet. We have none of the letters of Josephine, but Richter's expec- tations were more than satisfied. He wrote to Otto : " My Josephine has increased my esteem and admiration. What southern naivete, simplicity and openness, carried to almost childish excess ; southern animation, firmness and tender- ness, with a true German eye and heart." This year also, in the midst of his intimacy with the four princesses, he wrote his Eulogy of Charlotte Corday, the female Brutus of the French revolution, in every line of which breathes the holiest love of freedom. Paul represents 44 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Corday as sacrificing, not the opposer of legitimacy, but the tyrant of a republic ; and has the boldness to make a govern- ing German count a fellow admirer of the heroine. He de- fended the deed, not from feeling, but from principle. She destroyed Marat, not as a citizen, but as an enemy of the state, in a civil war ; consequently, he regarded her act not as the offence of an individual against an individual, but as the act of a party, against a corrupt and apostate member. CHAPTER VI. RICHTER REMOVES TO BERLIN. INTRODUCTION TO CAROLINE MEYER. THE MEYER FAMILY. THE " VERLOBUNG." A. D. i8oo, BERLIN was at this time to our Richter a newly aged 37. discovered part of the world. The society was dis- tinguished by a higher culture, a more refined tone, through the accomplishments of the women, to which the beautiful Queen Louisa, one of the four sisters, lent a splendor and a charm at that time unequalled elsewhere. But Richter must speak for himself. " I have been here two-thirds of a week, and must re- main the following, as Offland, on my account, will perform the Wallenstein. I have never been received in any city with such idolatry. After such an elevation, I can hence- forth only sit on the steps of the throne, never again upon its summit. I avoid the merely learned, and therefore I meet with no envy ; but only a too warm enthusiasm, that does not make me proud of myself, but of humanity. How it refreshes the heart to find the same sighs for the spiritual in a thousand hearts that arise in mine, and prove, that we have within us a common heaven. " The splendid queen invited me immediately to Sans Smici. Heavens ! what simplicity, frankness, accomplish- ment, and beauty ! I dined with her, and she showed me the kindest attention. The learned Zollner invited eighty persons to meet me at the York Lodge ; gentlemen, their wives and daughters, of the learned circles. I have a watcli chain of the hair of three sisters, and so much hair has been LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 45 begged of me, that if I were to make it a traffic, I could live as well from the outside of my cranium, as from what is under it. " I have been often with the highly accomplished minis- ter, Yon Alvensleben. The tone at the court table was easy and good; with Alvensleben one may speak as freely as upon this sheet. Only in Berlin is freedom and law /" The reader will recollect that when Jean Paul was name- less, and struggling with the waves of poverty, that nearly made shipwreck of his hopes, from Berlin was the first plank thrown that brought him to land.* Now he says, " they threw a couple of worlds upon his head." The impression that he made upon the Berlinians, we learn from the journal of a lady at this time published. She says, " Among the wonderful peculiarities of our time, and from which our country will receive a distinguished radiance, is the appearance of Jean Paul. As yet, few among us know him, but those who have seen him look upon him as an appa- rition from another world, as a prophet who has come thence to perform miracles incomprehensible to the senses. No one had scented his approach ; of so rare a man, no one had received an idea. Like a beam of light he flashed among us, but cheering as the star of day is his lingering here. He cannot be more than forty, though he has a bald head. All the riches of language appear to have been created for him. Nature is his dwelling, customs his playthings, and men his machines. Like the sun, he shines through the curtains of art, and the labyrinth of the heart," etc. It was not only in the journals of ladies that Richter was favored ; the beautiful queen, whose fate has thrown a touch- ing interest over every thing relating to her, continued firm and steady in her friendship. She never spoke of him but with a deep feeling of his worth as a man and an author ; and with the brother of the queen, Prince George of Meck- lenburg, he formed a friendship that was uninterrupted till his death. In Schliermaker he found a congenial spirit, and formed many friendships with distinguished women. Taking into view all these circumstances, it is not sur- prising that Eichter should form the resolution to remove to Berlin, and fix there his permanent residence. A secret * Moritz, in Berlin, from whom he received a hundred ducats for the manuscript of the Invisible Lodge. 46 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and unacknowledged inclination, as well as an unseen and Providential hand, guided him to the happiness he had so long been seeking. The separation from his friends the Herders, cost him some painful and lingering hours, but a more powerful wish drew him onward, and before the end of the year he had accomplished his removal. It was in October, 1800, that Richter finally made in Berlin his permanent residence. On his first visit at the festival that Zollner made for him at the York Lodge, he met the secret tribunal counsellor, Meyer, and his two un- married daughters. A little accident, his being too late to take the place assigned him at the right hand of the presi- dent, brought him to an unoccupied seat at the side of Caro- line, the second daughter of the counsellor. It was the only vacant place at the table, and the young lady's heart began to beat when she saw the wonderful man, the observed of all observers, approach it, and with timid humility she shrank from supporting a conversation with him ; but as Richter had come from dining at Sans Souci, the conversation about the queen and the court immediately became interesting. The mildness and friendliness of Paul's manner, wrought a sudden change from timidity to the most ingenuous confi- dence in the soul of Caroline Meyer. Richter, in his per- sonal appearance and manner, exerted a magical influ- ence over all minds, and nothing interested him so deeply as the unveiling of an innocent female heart. He was touched ; and at rising from the table gave Caroline the flower from his breast, and asked her to present him to her father. It happened that her sister Ernestine, who sat opposite at the table, and, like a true woman, had observed the impression that had been made on Caroline, now met them with her father. They had seen in his eyes an expression of high esteem for Jean Paul, and secretly happy, about midnight they left the party. Richter led the sisters through the long avenues of the garden to the carriage, without either express- ing a wish to meet again, and bade them silently good night. One day only was permitted to pass before he called at the house of the Rath, with the excuse, that he could not leave Berlin without expressing his gratitude for the agreeable evening he had passed at the York Lodge. But before we proceed with the wooing, we must learn something of the family of the Greheimer-Rath Meyer. He was himself one of the most accomplished and distinguished LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 47 officers of the Prussian government, and had married early in life a daughter of the family of Grermershause, who had been educated in country simplicity, but in all the seve- rity of the orthodox faith ; and even after her marriage hung with passionate love on the parental house. Herr Meyer was a man who cherished a high ideal of life. and its duties ; and uniting the most agreeable accom- plishments with the most enlightened views, he moved in the distinguished circles of Berlin, one of the most interest- ing men of the period. By the intolerance of his mother-in- law, and the blind subjection in which she held the will of her daughter, he was either deprived of the enjoyment of his refined tastes, or obliged to live in continual discord with his relations. The numerous sacrifices that he made to his mother-in-law only increased her asperity, and his wife al- ways taking the side of her mother, at last a coldness and estrangement arose, that after seven years of married life resulted in a mutual agreement of separation. But as Providence had denied him a son, and Herr Meyer desired for his daughters the most liberal culture, and the modern accomplishments, which he could not depend on the mother to sanction, they formed the singular agree- ment, that the weeks should be passed alternately with either parent ; and actually, every eight days the children were sent backwards and forwards between father and mother. This strange arrangement, which remained a mystery to their young hearts, was a perpetual occasion of self-denial and self-government. They dared not speak of either pa- rent in the presence of the other ; and the constant exchange, now from severe religious simplicity to all that was refined and intellectual in social life, and now from the latter to an almost Moravian solitude, must have promoted in the minds of the daughters an early development, and given them a strong and entire dependence on each other, as well as on themselves. In their earliest years the children hung fondly on the mother, whose tears they vainly tried to wipe away when they left her, and whose sacrificing mother's love knew no limits ; but as they grew older they found opening to them under the father's roof, a rich school for the cultivation of their higher faculties, to the value of which they soon be- came sensible. The most zealous desire for a refined cul- ture, especially in philosophy, poetry, and the arts, filled the 48 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. soul of their father. Every moment that he could win from his duties as a servant of the state, he devoted to the culti- vation of his own, and his daughters' taste, in the beautiful arts of poetry, music, and painting. Above all in import- ance, was the cultivation of the moral purity of his children, whom he anxiously protected from the influence of every thing low and trivial. He provided them with the best teachers, and filled his house with paintings and other of the choicest works of art. Thus was linked in their opening minds, in company with artists, learned men and poets, a susceptibility to every thing great and good, which in this family was innate and true, but which an unsympafchizing world calls transcendentalism, when affected for purposes of vanity or display. Upon minds so prepared by education, the acquaintance of Jean Paul must have made a deep impression ; it had al- ready, in that evening at the York Lodge, woven a sweet enchantment about the heart of Caroline, and when after the interval of a day, in which her imagination had dwelt exclu- sively upon him, he made the unhoped-for visit, he stood near her as a being that she must regard with almost reli- gious veneration. A report had been spread in Berlin, that Caroline was about being betrothed to her cousin; and Jean Paul, to leave her entirely free, returned to Weimar without any ex- press manifestation of his wishes. His image, however, was interwoven in all the social enjoyments of the family ; but Caroline's father, with a quick and nice sense of the honor of his daughter, had cold- ly and severely commanded that there should be no refer- ence to him. The gossips of Berlin spread a report, that Caroline had kissed the hand of Jean Paul in public, and the father, jealous of the slightest shade on the delicacy of his daughter, forbade her to speak of him, until he should him- self make some more decided demonstration of his wishes This command was the occasion of the following letter from Caroline to her father : " It is a great pity that we cannot receive the noblest and best among men with interest and warmth. I feel in- deed, dear father, that I have thereby lost your esteem. It pains me much, but the consciousness alone that I am free from all enthusiasm and all extravagance in esteeming and admir- ing such excellence, raises me in a certain degree above all LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 49 mortification. Your dissatisfaction with me arises from the suspicion that something different from reverence has taken possession of my heart. Did you know how pure, how inex- pressibly pure my interest in Jean Paul is, a man like you could not on that account esteem me less. With Leonora in Tasso, I can say, ' I love in him only what is most excel- lent and most exalted.' Ask your own judgment, whether this is extravagance. Truly, a more exalted man we can never meet. " Perhaps you still misunderstand me. I must bear it, and I'should be too proud to justify what I think and feel, to any other than my father. Of his writings permit me to say, that the influence they exert upon me, is exactly that which you demand from a good book, namely, to be made wiser and better. Is what he gives me unsound ? Its effect then must be as wonderful as if poison in a medicine were changed into a healing blessing. I have indeed become bet- ter, and feel within myself the power to improve. This meeting has been the most momentous circumstance of my life, and I know nothing except this emotion in my heart, that ever can make me happy or unhappy. Nothing out- ward, by my Grod, nothing that men reckon fortune or hap- piness, can charm or interest me again ; and if Providence should prepare trials for me, I shall not be unhappy. " Onc. } a sore trial, I feel it deeply, dear father, is the doubt of your love. It may bo that I have deserved to lose it ; and on this point my tears of regret, but not of repent- ance, must flow ! " Never was I less excited or extravagant than now. Yes, I will cherish this sentiment. It does not injure me ; I will conceal, but not part with it. I see indeed that it will be my first struggle, to suffer silently, if the sanctuary of my emotions is violated. The warmth with which I have writ- ten will be with you, dear father, my apology for writing." In reading this letter, in which Caroline avows such faith in Richter, and such confidence in the truth of her own feel- ings, we must recollect that they had never spoken of love, their eyes had met, and her destiny was decided ; and if Providence had so decreed, that they had never met again, Caroline would have mourned him in widowhood of heart. In the same happy confidence she wrote to her married sister : " I believed I should have been unhappy when we were 50 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. separated ; but the painful reality of parting would drive me from the ideal height to which his presence had elevated me. But I feel a courage and power to bear life, such as I never felt before. I could be happy without ever again seeing him in this life" The elevation of a pure and ideal love is here truly ex- pressed. Caroline felt herself raised above the accidents of life, and happy in the ideal presence of the being she rev- erenced above all others. But Richter had not left her without some slight intima- tion of his wishes. When he returned to Berlin, in* Octo- ber, Caroline was the first person informed, by a few lines, in which he asked permission to visit her family that even- ing. Their hearts had spoken too truly, for them to be longer silent ; and that very evening, as he conducted Car- oline to visit her mother, his tongue was loosed, and their destiny for ever united. Early the next morning, kneeling at the bedside of her father, and whispering in his ear that Richter had spoken, Caroline asked his blessing on their love, and received this consoling assurance : " My child, if the satisfaction of your father can add any thing to your happiness, believe me, no union could give me so much joy. I feel it a reward for all my care of your education." Truly, the father must have been as unworldly and as unselfish as the daughter, for Richter had not the prospect of a dollar, except those he could coin, as Sir Walter Scott said in another case, " from the rich mine of his intellect, and stamp with the mark of his genius." It must be acknowledged, in a worldly point of view, this connection appears romantic, if not imprudent. Caroline had been educated in all the luxury of refinement, at least in her father's house, and his fortune depending on his office, he could give his daughters no dowry.* * Caroline, although educated in the luxury of refinement, was proba- bly accustomed to great frugality of expense, as the salary of a Berlin Gehiemer-Rath,is, in &ome instances, only two thousand florins. Richter says, in one of his letters, " She is cold towards all ornament in dress, but not to the necessity of maiden neatness, and on my account she puts on her splendid new blue dress, to which I have added a white satin, at four louis d'ors, together with a hat for one louis d'or. I wish I could hang my heart, as a golden ornament, over hers. I would draw it out of my breast." Richter seems to have had a passionate admiration for a white hat and a black veil, for a lady. Clotilda's hat occupies a large space in Hesperus. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 51 Although Jean Paul had dedicated his Titan to prin- cesses, they had given him nothing but empty praise in return. In the correspondence with the Rath Meyer, not a word is said of property. Richter says, when he asks the father for his daughter ; ..." In this moment of my great request, all other things appear too little to be touched upon by either of us. I approach the man, for whom my esteem and love, even without the relation I desire, would be almost filial ; as his feminine tenderness and manly philosophy have together nourished the root of this beautiful flower of the sun, and made it so firm, yet so tender. To this good father of this good daughter, I present my short, but weighty prayer. Let her be mine ! she Will be happy, as I shall be !" Herr Meyer answered, " That it had been the aim of all his plans, in the education of his daughters, to prepare them to unite themselves to such men as himself and that he gave his unconditional consent." The mother, also, in German phrase, sent herja-wort, and the betrothing of two noble hearts took place immediately. Paul had, at last, in his thirty-eighth year, found the ideal of female perfection and loveliness that had always haunted his imagination. He says : " Caroline has exactly that inexpressible love for all beings, that I have till now, failed to find even in those who in every thing else possess the splendor and purity of the diamond. She preserves in the full harmony of her love to me, the middle and lower tones of sympathy for every joy and sorrow of others." In describing her to Otto, he says, " She has the beauty, rare among Germans, o a dark soft eye and Madonna brow " " self sacrificing love, without equal; modesty, openness ; and in the midst of the purest love for me, her heart trem- bles at every sound of sorrow. She has the warmest friends among women and young girls, and the innumerable visits of congratulation that she received at the news of our Verlobung, shows how much she is beloved by the Berliners." We have no means of forming a judgment of Caroline Meyer, except from her letters to Richter, which have all the simplicity and tenderness of Klopstock's Meta. But they are only the beautiful expression of a submissive ten- derness, and boundless reverence. The letter to her son, which will appear hereafter, discloses independent thought, and is altogether of a higher order. Mrs. Austin says, " It is the habit of Paul's countrymen to require from women 52 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the virtues of attached and industrious servants, rather than of equal, intelligent, and sympathizing friends ;" and although Jean Paul in so many places in his works protests against this tendency of his countrymen, and pleads most eloquently for the emancipation of women from their state of servitude, his minute directions to Caroline about house- hold affairs, whenever he leaves home, look as if he had readily assumed the manly superiority of his countrymen. Paul, while he describes in Seibenkas, with exquisite penetration, the miseries of an ill-assorted union, asserts that he shall be " happy if one falls to his lot. upon whose opened eyes and heart the flowery earth and beaming heavens strike, not in infinitesimals, but in large and towering masses ; for whom the great whole is something more than a nursery or ball-room ; one who, with a feeling at once tender and dis- criminating, with a heart at once pious and large, for ever improves the man whom she has wedded."* The coldest of Kichter's biographers speaks thus of Caro- line : "Purity of mind, unlimited love to her parents and sisters, and benevolence to all mankind, were native to her. She added inexpressible reverence for Richter, and uncondi- tional submission to his wishes. With a love for all that was beautiful in art, she had very moderate views of the value of the outward in life ; great enthusiasm of feeling, and through trial and experience a penetrating knowledge of the world ; but with an accomplished education, and almost unlimited re- sources within herself, her outward life and appearance was modest, and without pretension. With their peculiar educa- tion, Caroline and her sisters posseted qualities singularly adapted to form the happiness of domestic life, but to Caro- line only, Providence granted this satisfaction."! * I fear Paul's Caroline will be despised by the fashion of our age, if I should translate a letter, where he tells Otto, that she ripped a dress apart, dyed it herself, put it together again, and wore it the next evening in a large party. And yet her father's house was filled with the most valuable works of art, and Caroline could herself read Plato in Greek. t The eldest sister of Caroline had been already three years married to Carl Spazier, who was at this time the editor of a belles-lettres news- paper, (Eleganten Zeitung,} in Leipzig. After a marriage of many out- ward difficulties, he left her a destitute widow, with four young children. She entered upon a thorny path of female authorship, and continued their literary journal. Jean Paul contributed many of his ephemeral pieces to its pages, and Caroline also assisted her with her elegant and graceful LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 53 : She was marked out indeed for distinguished happiness, and the biographer goes on to say, " that no female nature could have resisted Paul. The enchantment of his smile, and the power, the magnetic influence of his eye the in- spiration and elevation that was throned upon his brow ; the musical, but touchingly tender intonations of his voice, together with the mystery that involved the author of Hesperus^ who was thought to have lived upon a solitary island ; all this would have given every woman, without exception, to his hand, and Caroline had the felicity to be chosen from all." She had beside the happiness of being chosen by him, the guarantee^of that happiness, from the fact that, in spite of the seductions that had surrounded him at a time when the bonds of domestic society were every where falling loose, he had passed through all, with a singular purity of life ; among all the women, who, as his biographer says, " would have left at his call, lover or husband," not one had suffered in reputation^ on his account.* CHAPTER VII. RICHTER'S PETITION TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA. MARRIAGE. CAROLINE'S LETTERS FROM WEIMAR. OUR Richter had never been so. happy as the few A D 1801> months after his betrothment to Caroline. The ' learned and social circles of Berlin had many charms for pen. The author, to whom I have been indebted in this biography, F. Otto Spazier, is her son. The youngest sister, Ernestine, married about the same time with Caroline, to August Mahlman, died, after a few years of married life, of a broken heart ; occasioned, as her nephew says, by an unfaithful husband and a childless marriage. * Such enthusiasm for an author would be incredible, had we not re- cently seen in our own circle, in the visit of Mr. Dickens, the enthusiasm that genius alone excites, without the accessories of fortune or rank, or any claim except that which appeals directly to the heart : the de- lineation of human affections, and human relations, the touches of nature that make the whole world kindred. VOL. II. 4 54 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, him. They were composed, as he says, of. Jews, ministers, officers, learned men and women. Tieck, Fichte, and the Schlegels showed themselves so friendly that he believed, in his simplicity, he should win that school to himself. The merely learned only, displeased him. To use his own figu- rative language : " The roots of their dry deism were planted in sand, and bore only withered leaves and no flowers ; and DO breath of perfume came from them." But he conceived the warmest esteem for Schliermacher, whose " Reden uber Religion " he calls " an inspired and inspiring work, a simple and beautiful temple, whose contents are a true God's service." At this time, spite of their philosophical differences, the exalted character of Fichte attached Jean Paul inti- mately to him. He also renewed his acquaintance with Madam von Krudener. From the exciting tumult of the society of the great, where he was courted and admired, he turned with a sense of domestic tranquillity to the quiet circle in which his be- trothed moved. This, from the circumstance of the separa- tion of her parents, was necessarily limited, although they were not excluded from any. The queen had presented them, through the medium of her brother George, upon hearing of the betrothment of Richter and Caroline Meyer, a costly service of silver but nothing more useful or enduring appeared in prospect. In the mean time, the spring returned ; but without some pecuniary provision Richter could not afford to remain in Berlin. " Is there none," said oW Gleim, " is there hone who can say to the king, we must keep J. P. F. R. in Berlin ? He does you honor, and will bring money into the city. Is there none who will be a Colbert ? no Scholenburg ? no Har- denburg ? no Yoss ? not even the queen ?" Richter at last, though reluctantly, addressed the follow- ing letter to the king : " May your royal majesty be graciously moved to listen to the prayer of a man, that not only from dwelling under your government, but from birth and disposition rejoices in the happiness of your reign. The loss of my father was never to me^ but through me, supplied to my family. I was already a writer at the age when men begin to read. Through years of poverty and labor, I at last won jp, hearing LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 55 from the public, and lately a more extensive audience. My aim has been to elevate the sinking faith in God, virtue, and immortality, and in an age of egotism and revolutions, to warm again the cold humanity of men's hearts. As this object has been dearer to me than any other reward, I have sacrificed every other ; time, health, and the richer winnings of other pursuits. " But now, when I am entering upon the cares of mar- riage, where my own sacrifices should not extend to another, I feel excused by my conscience if I petition the throne (that has so many to listen to, and to make happy) that I also may be excused, if respectfully I submit my prayer. My gratitude, and joyful sympathy in the happiness of my country will be the same, however justice and goodness may decide." The king, in answer, gave Richter to ^understand, through one of his courtiers, " how much it had rejoiced him to observe, that by his talent and industry alone, exercised in the face of such unfavorable outward circum- stances, he had placed himself at the head of the literature of his country. He was not indifferent to literary merit, and would be glad to have Richter remain his subject; and if any vacant prebend should offer, he would remember him." It seems to us almost a degradation of genius like Richter's, that he should have petitioned in vain for a small ecclesiastical benefice, for (although some humorous letters passed between him and Otto on the subject Richter saying ; ' that he should place watchmen on the church towers to strike the last hours of the old prebends," and Otto answering, "that they were always long-lived, few dying under a hundred years,") he received no prebend. He would have been fettered also under the obligation to remain in Prussia. Accordingly, on the 27th of May, after a private solemnization of their marriage, Richter and his young bride left the dust and noise of the city to enjoy, in quiet and without witnesses, their long dreamed-of happi- ness. They travelled in the month of bloom and flowers over the beautiful parts of Dessau, visited the Herders in Weimar, and then went to Meiningen. where Jean Paul anticipated for a time to establish his u Portative Parnassus" Here is the letter of Caroline to her father, a week after her marriage : 56 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. "Weimar, June 8, 1801. " I write to you, my beloved father, for the first time, from the most charming resting place. We arrived last evening, about 8 o'clock, after the most delightful journey that was ever taken, except the pain of the separation from you, that often made me insensible to many lovely spots. But the care that my good Richter took of me, and of every thing that could touch my heart, softened my emotions gently and happily ! Indeed, there are few such men so sympa- thizing and attentive to the smallest little things, and to all the actual of life. " As we approached Weimar, my heart began to beat. The place, beautifully surrounded with hills, lies low, and we look from above all over the city. It is larger and gayer than I expected, and there is much life and joy everywhere. In the morning'the market was held before our door, where there was more tumult than in the Berlin market, and the music at the Stadthouse imparts a cheerful gayety that is read on all faces. " But now, the most delightful thing that could have happened. As soon as we arrived on Wednesday evening, we went to Herder's It was already dark. With a beating heart I stepped into the sacred house. The aged mother sat in the parlor alone, knitting. Richter opened the door quietly, and we stood before her. Her surprise is not to be described. She looked at me with astonishment ran to call all the house together turned back and knew not what to do for joy. Now while we debated whether Richter alone, or whether we should both go up to the Herders at once, the venerable man stood in the door. I discovered him first. 4 There he is,' I said with emotion. He stepped calmly near,, and turned me with penetrating eyes towards the light, and as he looked fixedly at me, { G-od be praised,' he said, c I am now satisfied.' He was surprised ; he had formed no image of me, and he doubted whether Richter would be happy. He loves me now equally with him, and he was as much moved as a father who has found his lost children. He went in great emotion up and down the apartment then he came again to me, and said with touching tenderness. * yes, you are what tie must have you need not speak, we see already all !' I was so much affected, that I could say nothing, and the evening passed like a quiet festival. " I tell you all, my dear father, for Richter wishes it, just LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 57 as it happened, for it will make you happy to know your daughter so beloved ; and principally, that we both know from this sympathy how much Richter deserves to be loved. " This is infinite here is his home. Father and mother dwell with the deepest warmth upon what he mutually feels for them, and he appears more splendid to me than ever. Indeed, I might from this moment date a new era in my love. " I cannot describe Herder to you ; through Richter you know enough of him. He goes quietly in and out, so reflective, so serious, so harmonious, so gentle and musical his voice, his dress so patriarchal. He does not affect me as other poetical men, as notwithstanding he has an iron firmness and decision that makes weakness blush before him, he manifests the refined politeness of a man of the world, without being insincere. He has so much dignity as not to pardon the slightest insult, because he esteems the dignity of human nature, not on ac- count of his individual worth, for he is so modest that he veils his eyes like a young girl who is praised for the first time, if his own merit is spoken of. " His wife has far exceeded my expectations. She has not the masculine form, but only the manly soul that I anti- cipated. She has risen with her husband, but she stands firm by herself. She is equally acquainted with ancient and modern literature, speaks decidedly upon all the sciences, but inclines herself in a loving, motherly manner to me. In her house she is very active and busy, but without littleness. A certain well-to-do-ness rules, without luxury. The apart- ments are simply, but cheerfully furnished. At the table every thing goes on quietly, without anxiety in the hostess ; the old servants are well trained, moving reverently about, observing attentively the master's wishes. They will hardly let me part from them, but we are so inexpressibly happy in the little quiet apartment with Richter's old hostess, that we would always rather remain alone. So happy as I am, dearest father, I never believed I should be. Every minute binds our souls closer to each other. It will sound extrava- gant to you if I say, the high enthusiasm which Richter ex- cited in me, has continually risen as we JJiave entered into real life together. Never can a misunderstanding arise be- tween us. My mind, through love and the highest goodness, is so tenderly tuned, and my sense of obligation so elevated, that I never as formerly despond. How could I place my 58 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, will in opposition to this splendid humanity that works only through love and humility ? Thank God, I have a husband with whom love in married life can only take the path of honor and morality ; one that I must obey, as we obey vir- tue itself. And this man so loves me ! that I have nothing to wish but that we may die together. I press myself to your heart." It is but just, although at the risk of satiety, that the reader should also learn, from Ricfater himself, the perfect happiness that he imparts to Otto, thus unreservedly : " That the brightest and purest fountain of love to mankind takes nothing from love to the individual, I learn from my Caroline. Every day it becomes more expansive. Rare as beautiful is her adoration of the spiritual, of poetry and nature ; wonderful her disinterestedness and complete abnegation of self. There is nothing that she would not do for me, or others. World-long cares are to her nothing, as her industry and love of duty are infinite. As she loves me, she loves all my clothes, and would make them all herself. "As yet we have had nothing, or only very little to irri- tate. I cannot say that I am satisfied, but I am certainly blest. Ah, see her ! What are words ! Marriage has made me love her more romantically, deeper, infinitely more than before ! CHAPTER VIII. RESIDENCE IN MEININGEN. LETTERS. BIRTH OF FIRST CHILD. DOG'S PETITION. A.D. 1802, As soon as our Richter and his bride had ac- aged 39. complished what, in modern phrase, is called the bridal tour, they hastened to the enjoyment of what had always been his ideal dream, complete social independence, in immediate uni