THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES CENTENARY EDITION THE WORKS OF THOMAS CARLYLE IN THIRTY VOLUMES VOL. XXII GERMAN ROMANCE WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICES II /•////}////?/ THOMAS CARLYLE GERMAN ROMANCE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICES IN TWO VOLUMES II HOFFMANN RICHTER LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL LIMITED 1898 Originally published 1827 ( CONTENTS OF VOLUME II r.vcE HOFFMANN : E. T. W. Hoffmann 3 The Golden Pot 23 RICHTER : Jean Paul Friedrich Richter . . . . . 117 Army-Chaplain Schmelzle's Journey to Fl^etz . 131 Life of Quintus Fixlein 193 SUMMARY 333 LIST OF PLATES HOFFMANN frontispiece RICHTER . at page 131 5 E. T. W. HOFFMANN VOL. II. E. T. W. HOFFMANN Hoffmann's Life and Remains have been published, shortly after his decease, and with an amplitude of detail correspond- ing rather to the popularity than to the intrinsic merit of the subject ; for Hoffmann belongs to that too numerous class of vivid and gifted literary men, whose genius, never cultured or elaborated into purity, finds loud and sudden, rather than judicious or permanent admiration ; and whose history, full of error and perplexed vicissitude, excites sym- pathising regret in a few, and unwise wonder in many. From this Work, which is honestly and modestly enough written, and has, to all appearance, been extensively read and approved of, I borrow most of the following particulars. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born at Konigs- berg, in Prussia, on the 24th of January 1776. His father occupied a post of some dignity in the administration of Justice ; the mother's relatives were also engaged in the pro- fession of Law ; most of them respectably, some of them with considerable influence and reputation. The elder Hoffmann is said to have been a man of talent ; but his temper and habitudes were irregular ; his wife was sickly, sensitive and perhaps querulous and uncompliant : in our Ernst their second child's third year, the parents discovered that they could not live together ; and, apparently by mutual consent, dissolved their ill-assorted union. The father withdrew from Konigsberg, to prosecute his legal and judicial engagements elsewhere ; and seems to have troubled himself no farther about his offspring or old connexions : he died, several yeai*s after, at Insterburg, where lie had been stationed as a Judge 4 E. T. W. HOFFMANN in the Criminal Court of the Oberland. The other parent retired with young Ernst to her mother's house, also in Konigsberg ; and there, in painful inaction, wore out seven- teen sick and pitiable years, before death put a period to her sufferings. Prior to the separation, the elder child, also a boy, had gone astray into wicked courses, and at last set forth as an infant prodigal into the wide world. The two brothers never met, though the elder is said to be still in life. Cut off from his natural guardians and directors, young Hoffmann seems to have received no adequate compensation for the want of them, and his early culture was but ill conducted. The grandmother, like her daughter, was perpetually sick, neither of the two almost ever stirring from their rooms. An uncle, retired with the barren title of Justizrath from an abortive practice of Law, took charge of the boy's education : but little Otto had no insight into the endowments or perversities of his nephew, and spent much fruitless effort in endeavouring to train the frolicsome urchin to a clock-work life like his own ; for Otto lived by square and rule ; his history was a rigid, strenuous, methodical procedure ; of which, indeed, except the process of digestion, faithfully enough performed, the result, in Otto's case, was nothing. An unmarried aunt, the only other member of the family, the only member of it gifted with any share of sense, appears to have had a truer view of young Hoffmann ; but she loved the little rogue too well ; and her tenderness, though repaid by equal and continued tenderness on his part, perhaps hurt him more than the leaden constraint of his uncle. For the rest, the boy did not let the yoke lie too heavy on his shoulders : Otto, it is true, was his teacher, his chamber-mate and bed-mate ; but every Thursday the little Justizrath went out to pay visits, and the pupil could then celebrate a day of bedlam jubilee : in a little while too, by superiority of natural cunning, he had sounded the Justizrath ; and from his twelfth year, we are told, he scarcely ever spoke a word with him, except for purposes of mystification. In E. T. W. HOFFMANN 5 this prim circle, he grew up in almost complete isolation ; for, by reason of its fantastic strictness, the household was visited by few ; and except one boy, a nephew of the Author HippePs, with whom he accidentally became acquainted, Hoffmann had no companion but his foolish uncle and his too fond aunt. With young Hippel his intimacy more and more increased ; and it is pleasant to record of both, that this early connexion continued unbroken, often warm and helpful, through many changes of fortune ; Hoffmann's school- friend stood by his death-bed, and took his farewell of him with true heartfelt tears. For classical instruction, he was early sent to the public school of Konigsberg ; but till his thirteenth or fourteenth year, he acquired no taste for these pursuits ; and remained unnoticed by his teacher, and by all his schoolfellows, except Hippel, rather disrespected and disliked. Music and paint- ing, in which also he had masters, were more to his taste : in a short while, he could fantasy to admiration on the harpsi- chord ; and there was no comic visage in Konigsberg which he had not sketched in caricature. His tiny stature (for in youth, as in manhood, he was little, and ' incredibly brisk ') giving him an almost infantile appearance, added new wonder to these attainments ; and so young Ernst became a musical and pictorial prodigy ; to the no small comfort of Justizrath Otto, who delighted to observe that the little imp who had played him so many sorry tricks, and so often overset the steady machinery of his household economy, was turning out not a blackguard, but a genius. With more prudence and regularity than could have been expected, Hoffmann betook himself, in due time, to preparing for the legal profession ; to which, as if by hereditary destiny, he was appointed. In the Konigsberg University, indeed, he confessed that Kant's prelections were a dead letter to him, though it was at that time the fashion both for the wise and simple to be metaphysically transcendental : but he abstained from the riotous practices of his fellow -bursche, and 6 E. T. W. HOFFMANN pursued with strict fidelity the tasks by which he hoped ere long to gain an independent livelihood, and be delivered from the thraldom of his grandmother and Justizrath Otto. In this hope he laboured ; allowing himself no recreation, except once a-week an evening of literary talk with his fellow-student Hippel, and an occasional glance into WinJcelmami, or other works on Art, to which, as formerly, the better part of his nature was passionately devoted. In 1795, he passed his first professional trial, and was admitted Auscultator of the Court of Konigsberg : an estab- lishment administrative as well as judicial ; in which, however, owing to the pressure of applicants, it was impossible to give him full employment. This leisure, which, with so hot and impatient a spirit, hung heavy enough on his hands, he endeavoured to fill up with subsidiary pursuits : he gave private lessons in music ; he painted wild landscapes, or grotesque figures, to which ' a bold alternation of colour and shade , gave a specific character; he talked of men and things with the most sportful fancy, or the most biting sarcasm : in fine, he wrote two Novels. One of these, at least, he had hoped to see in print ; for a bookseller had received it with some expressions of encouragement : but after half a year, his fair manuscript was returned to him all soiled and creased, with an answer, that ' the anonymity of the work was likely to hurt its sale. - ' In the mean time, his situation had become still more perplexed by a private incident in the style of the Nouvelle Helo'ise. One of his fair music-pupils was too lovely and too soft-hearted : no marriage could be thought of between the parties, for she was far above him in rank ; and the contradictions and entanglements of this affair so pained and oppressed him, that he longed with double vehem- ence to be out of Konigsberg. At last, after much wavering and consulting, he snatched himself away, with a resolute, indeed almost heroic effort, from the unpropitious scene ; and proceeded, in the summer of 1796, to Great Glogau in Silesia, where another uncle, a brother of Otto's, occupied a E. T. W. HOFFMANN 7 post in the Administration, and had promised to procure him employment. In Great Glogau he did not find the composure which he was in search of; his uncle and his cousins treated him with great affection, and his labour was not irksome or unprofit- able ; but, in his letters, he complains incessantly of tedium, and other spiritual maladies; and, in 1798, he joyfully took leave of Silesia, following his uncle, who was now promoted to a higher legal post in Berlin. Here too the young jurist continued only for a short time. Having passed his third and last trial, the examen rigorosum^ and this with no common applause, he was soon afterwards appointed Assessor of the Court at Posen, in South Prussia (Poland) ; whither he pro- ceeded in March 1800. With Hoffmann's removal to Poland begins a new era of his life : he was now director of his own actions, and un- happily he did not direct them well. At Berlin, and even at Great Glogau, he had been accustomed to enliven the routine of legal duty by the study of Art ; for which the public collections of pictures, and the numerous professors of music, had in both cities afforded considerable opportunity. In Posen, these resources were abridged ; there was little music, little painting ; his official associates were dry weekday men, who worked hard at their desks, and lived hard when en- franchised from them ; without taste for literature, or art of any kind, except it were the art of cookery and brewing. The Poles also were a lively, jolly people, and much addicted to ' strong Hungary wine/ Hoffmann yielded too far to the custom of the land ; and here, it would seem, contracted habits of irregularity, from which he could never after get delivered. Another refuge against tedium, derived from his own peculiar resources, was even less to be excused. In private hours, he had condescended to become the scandalous chronicle of Posen, and to sketch a series of caricatures, exhibiting, under the most ludicrous yet recognisable aspects, 8 E. T. W. HOFFMANN a great number of individuals and transactions ; sparing no rank or relation, where he fancied himself to have been pro- voked, or thought his satire might be expected to tell. On occasion of a masquerade, a gay companion, his future brother-in-law, equipped himself like an Italian hawker ; and proceeding to the ball with this pestilent ware in his basket, distributed the pictures, each picture to some ill-wisher of the person whom it represented ; and then vanished from the room. For the first half hour there was a general triumph ; which, on comparing notes, passed into a general wail. The author was speedily detected : his talent, the only thing admirable in the transaction, betrayed him, and the punish- ment followed close on the offence. Intelligence was sent to Berlin ; and the patent, lying ready for signature, which should have made him Rath (Councillor) at Posen, was changed for a similar appointment at Plozk ; a change which, in all points, he regarded as an exile, but which his best friends could not help admitting that he had richly merited. From Plozk he failed not to emit his Tristia ; soliciting, with pressing earnestness, deliverance from this Polish Tomos. What was more to the purpose, he seems to have amended his conduct : he had married while at Posen ; his wife, a fair Poless, was possessed of many graces, and of contentment and submissiveness without limit ; and the husband was beginning to substitute the duties and enjoyments of domestic and studious life for the revelry and riot in which of late he had much too deeply mingled. In his official capacity, his assiduity and perseverance so far gained on his superiors, that at length, by the influence of Hippel and other friends, he was transferred from Plozk to Warsaw ; after having spent two regretful but diligent and not unprofitable years in this provincial seclusion. In the summer of 1804, he hastened to his new destination, which his fancy had decked for him in all the colours of hope. To Hoffmann, the Polish capital was like a vast perpetual E. T. W. HOFFMANN 9 masquerade ; and for a time he enjoyed his exotic many- coloured aspect, the more from its contrast with his late way of life. His public duty was not difficult, and he performed it punctually ; his salary sufficed him ; there were theatres and music on every hand ; and the streets were peopled with a motley tumult of the strangest forms : ' gay silken Polesses, talking and promenading over broad stately squares ; the ancient venerable Polish noble, with moustaches, caftan, sash, and red or yellow boots ; the new race equipped as Parisian Incroyables ; with foreigners of every nation ' ; not excluding long-bearded Jews, puppetshow-men, monks and dancing- bears. In a little while, Hoffmann had formed some acquaint- ances among the human part of the throng ; with one Hitzig, his colleague in office, he established a lasting intimacy. It began oddly enough : one day the two were walking home together from the Court, and engaged in laborious, stinted and formal conversation, when Hoffmann, asking the character of some individual, the other answered, in the words of Falstaff, that he was ' a fellow in buckram ' ; a phrase which enlightened the caustic visage of Hoffmann, at all times shy to strangers, and at once raised him into one of his brilliant communicative moods. This Hitzig, himself a man of talent and energy, was of great service in assisting Hoffmann's intellectual culture while at Warsaw, and stood by him after- wards in many difficult emergencies. An enthusiast dilettante prepared a new source of interest to Hoffmann, by a scheme which he proposed of erecting a Musical Institution. By dint of great effort, the dilettante succeeded in procuring subscribers ; first one deserted palace, then a larger one, was purchased for a hall of meeting : and Hoffmann, seeing that the scheme was really to take effect, now entered into it with heart and hand. He planned the arrangement of the rooms in the New Ressource : for their decorations, he sketched cartoons, part of which were painted by other artists, part he himself painted ; not forgetting to introduce caricature portraits of many honest subscribers, 10 E. T. W. HOFFMANN whom, by wings and tails, he disguised as sphinxes, gryphons and other mythological cattle. His time was henceforth divided between his Court and this Musical Ressource : here, perched on his scaffold, among his paint-pots, with the brush in his hand, and a bottle of Hungary by his side, he might, in free hours, be seen diligently working, and talking in the mean while to his friends assembled below. If called to any juridical function by any extraordinary mandate from the President, he would doff his painterVjaoket, clamber down from his scaffold, wash his hands, and, to the surprise of parties, transact their business as rapidly and correctly, as if he had known no other employment. The Musical Ressource prospered beyond expectation : brilliant concerts were given ; all that was fairest and grace- fulest in Warsaw attending, or even assisting : Hoffmann officiated as leader in their performance ; and, especially in Mozart's pieces, was allowed to have done his part with con- summate skill. Ere long, however, these melodious festivities were abruptly closed. News came of the battle of Jena ; Russian foreposts entered the city ; Tartars, Cossacks, Bashkirs increased the chaos of its population. In due time arrived French envoys to treat of a surrender ; the Prussians mounted guard with their knapsacks on ; and one morning tidings spread over the city, that the Praga bridge of boats was on fire, that the Russians and Prussians were retiring on the one side, and Murafs advanced-guard entering by the other. The rest is easy to conceive : the Prussian government was at an end in Warsaw ; Hoffmann's Collegium honestly divided the contents of their strongbox, then closed the partnership, and dispersed, each whither he listed, to seek safety and new employment. To most of them this was a grievous stroke : not to Hoffmann. For him Warsaw was still a fine variegated spectacle ; he had money enough for present wants ; of the future he took little heed, or thought loosely that he could live by Art, and that Art was far better than Law. Leaving his E. T. W. HOFFMANN 11 large house, where his purse seemed hardly safe from military violence, he took refuge in the garret of the Musical Res- source : here was his pianoforte and a library, here his wife and only child ; without, were Napoleon and his generals, reviews, restaurateurs, theatres, churches with musical monks ; and abundance of fellow-loungers to attend him in these amusements. It was not till after a severe attack of fever, and the most visible contraction of his purse, that he seriously bethought him what he was to do. A sad enough outlook ! For Art, which had seemed so benignant at a distance, was shy and inaccessible when actually applied to for bread. Hitzig had hastened off to Berlin, and there opened a book- shop in hope of better times : but his accounts of musical profits in that city were discouraging ; and for the journey to Vienna, which he advised and gave letters to forward, Hoff- mann had now no funds. His uncle in Berlin was dead ; from little Otto nothing could be drawn : the perplexity was thickening, and the means of unravelling it were daily dimin- ishing. For the present, he resolved to leave his wife and daughter at Posen with their relations, and to visit Berlin himself in quest of some employment. In Berlin he could find no employment whatever, either as a portrait-painter, a teacher or a composer of music ; mean- while the last remnant of his cash, his poor six Friedrichs- d'or, were one night filched from his trunk ; and news came from Posen, that his little Cecilia was dead, and his wife dangerously ill. In this extremity, his heart for a while had nigh failed him ; but he again gathered courage, and made a fresh attempt. He published in the newspapers an advertise- ment, offering himself as Music-director, on the most moderate terms, in any theatre ; and was happy enough, soon after- wards, to make an engagement of the kind he wished with the managers of the Bamberg stage, at that time under the patronage of the Count von Soden. To an ordinary temper, this very humble preferment would have offered but a mortifying contrast with former affluence 12 E. T. W. HOFFMANN and official respectability : Hoffmann, however, saw in it the means of realising his long-cherished wish, a life devoted to Art ; and hastened to his Bamberg musical appointment with gayer hopes than he had ever fixed on any other prospect. Had money or economical comfort been his chief object, he must have felt himself cruelly disappointed : mischance on mischance befell the Bamberg theatre ; contradiction on the back of contradiction awaited the new Music-director, whose life, for the next seven years, differs in no outward respect from that of the most unprosperous strolling player. Never- theless, he made no complaint ; perhaps he really felt little sorrow. * This must do, 1 writes he in his Diary, ' and it will do ; for now I shall never more have a Relatio ex Actis to write while I live, and so the Fountain of all Evil is dried up.' In a wealthier station, he might have composed more operas, and painted more caricatures ; but it is possible enough the world might never have heard of him as a writer. The fate of his first two Novels had perhaps disgusted him with authorship : his studies at least had long pointed to other objects ; nor was it choice, but necessity, which now led him back to literature. After many stagnations, the Bam- berg theatrical cash -box had at length become entirely insolvent ; portrait-painting and music-teaching were inade- quate to the support of even a frugal household : Hoffmann, who, in all his straits, appears to have disdained pecuniary assistance, now wrote to Rochlitz of Leipzig, Editor of the Muskalische Zeitung (Musical Chronicle), soliciting employ- ment in this Work ; and, by way of testimonial, transmitting some of his recent performances. The letter itself, written with the most fantastic drollery, was testimonial enough : Hoffmann was instantly and gladly accepted; and in ten days, two essays were prepared and despatched ; the first of a long series, afterwards collected, enlarged, and given to the world under the title of Fantasiestucke in Callofs Manier (Fantasy- pieces in the style of Callot *), with a preface by Jean Paul 1 Some of my readers may require to be informed that Jacques Callot was a E. T. W. HOFFMANN 13 Friedrich Richter, to whom Hoffmann had paid a visit while at Bamberg. The incipient author was delighted with his new task ; and Rochlitz and his readers no less so with its execution. These Fantasiestilclce turning chiefly on Music, exclusively on Art, were afterwards to make him known to the world as a brilliant and peculiar writer ; and they served for the present to augment his scanty funds, to bring him into favour and employment as a musical composer, and at last to deliver him from Bamberg. In 1813, by the management of Rochlitz, he formed an engagement at Dresden, again as Music- director, in the theatre of one Seconda. This appointment he hailed as a most propitious change ; but his theatrical career was not destined anywhere to be smooth. Mis- fortunes, almost destruction, overtook him even on his journey : Seconda he soon found to be a driveller ; the opera shifted from Dresden to Leipzig, and from Leipzig to Dresden ; the country was full of Cossacks and Gendarmes, and Hoffmann's operatic melodies were drowned in the loud clang of Napoleon's battles. Till the end of 1814, he led a life more chequered by hard vicissitudes than ever : now quarrelling with Seconda, now sketching caricatures of the French ; now writing Fantasies, now looking at Battles ; sometimes sick, often in danger, generally light of heart, and always short of money. The Golden Pot, one of the Fantasiestiicke, which follows this Introduction, was begun in Dresden, shortly before the Battle of Leipzig, while the cannon of the Allies was bombarding the city ; with grenadoes bursting at the writer's very hand, nay, at last driving him from his garret into some safer shelter. The revolution of Europe, which restored so main sovereigns to their thrones, restored Hoffmann to his chair of office. He arrived at Berlin in September 1814 ; was provided with employment ; reinstated in his former rights of Lorraine painter of the seventeenth century ; a wild genius, whose Temptation of St. Antony is said to exceed in chaotic incoherence that of Teniers himself. 14 E. T. W. HOFFMANN seniority ; and two years afterwards promoted, in consequence, to be Rath in the Kammergerkht, or Exchequer Court of the capital. Hoffmann's situation, after all his buffetings, might now be considered enviable : the income of his post was amply sufficient, and its labour not excessive ; his best friends were in his neighbourhood, Hitzig was working with him at the same table ; his public conduct was irreprehensible, and his literacy fame was rapidly spreading. The Fantasiestucke were already universally popular ; the Elixiere des Teufels (Devil's Elixir, a Novel in two volumes, since translated into English) had just been given to the circulating libraries ; and his Opera of Undine, which Fouque had versified for Hoff- mann's music, was brought out on the Berlin stage with loud plaudits, and reviewed with praises by Weber himself. Hoffmann was happy ; and had he been wise, might still have continued happy : but he was not wise, and in this cup of joy there lurked for him a deadly poison. Berlin, like most other cities, prides itself in being some- what of a modern Athens ; and Hoffmann, the wonder of the dav, was invited with the warmest blandishments to partici- pate in its musical and literary tea. But in these polished circles Hoffmann prospered ill : he was sharp-tempered ; vain, indeed, but transcend en tly vain ; he required the wittiest talk or the most entire audience ; and had a heart-hatred to in- anity, however gentle and refined. When his company grew tiresome, he ' made the most terrific faces ' ; would answer the languishing raptures of some perfumed critic by an observa- tion on the weather ; would transfix half a dozen harmless dilettanti through the vitals, each on his several bolt ; nay, in the end, give vent to his spleen by talking like a sheer maniac; in short, never cease till, one way or other, the hapless circle was reduced to utter desolation. To this intellectual beverage he was seldom twice invited ; and ere long, the musical and literary Tea-urn was for him a closed fountain. E. T. W. HOFFMANN 15 Yet Hoffmann could not do without society, without excitement, and now not well without exclusive admiration. His old friends he had not forsaken, for he seldom, and with difficulty, got intimate with a stranger ; but their quiet life- could not content him : it was clear that the enjoyment he sought was only to be found among gay laughter-loving topers, as a guest at their table, or still better, as their sovereign in the wine-house. ' The order of his life, from 1816, downwards, 1 says his Biographer, 'was this: on Mondays and Thursdays he passed his forenoons at his post in the Kammergericht ; on other days at home, in working ; the afternoons he regularly spent in sleep, to which, in summer, perhaps he added walking : the evenings and nights were devoted to the tavern. Even when out in company, while the other guests went home, he retired to the tavern to await the morning, before which time it was next to impossible to bring him home.'' Strangers who came to Berlin went to see him in the tavern ; the tavern was his study, and his pulpit, and his throne : here his wit flashed and flamed like an Aurora Borealis, and the table was forever in a roar ; and thus, amid tobacco-smoke, and over coarse earthly liquor, was Hoffmann wasting faculties which might have seasoned the nectar of the gods. Poor Hoffmann was on the highway to ruin ; and the only wonder is, that with such fatal speed, he did not reach the goal even more balefully and sooner. His official duties were, to the last, punctually and irreproachably performed. He wrote more abundantly than ever ; no Magazine Editor was contented without his contributions ; the Nachtstiicke (Night- pieces) were published in 1817; two years afterwards Klein ZacJws, regarded (it would seem falsely) as a local satire ; and at last, between 1819 and 1821, appeared in four successive volumes, the Serapionsbriider, containing most of his smal lei- Tales, collected from various fugitive publications, and com- bined together by dialogues of the Serapion-brethren, a little club of friends, which for some time met weekly in Hoff- 16 E. T. W. HOFFMANN manns house. The Prinzessin Brambilla (1821) is properly another Fantasy-piece. The Lebensaussichten des Kater Murr (Tom-cat Mutt's Philosophy of Life), published in 1820 and 1821, was meant by the author as his masterwork ; but the third volume is wanting ; and the wild anarchy, musical and moral, said to reign in the first two, may forever remain unreconciled. Meanwhile, Hoffmann's tavern orgies continued unabated, and his health at last sunk under them. In 1819, he had suffered a renewed attack of gout ; from which, however, he had recovered by a journey to the Silesian baths. On his forty-fifth birthday, the 24th of January 1822, he saw his best and oldest friends, including Hitzig and Hippel, assembled round his table ; but he himself was sick ; no longer hurrying to and fro in hospitable assiduity, as was his custom, but confined to his chair, and drinking bath-water, while his guests were enjoying wine. It was his death that lay upon him, and a mournful lingering death. The disease was a tabes dorsalis ; limb by limb, from his feet upwards, for five months, his body stiffened and died. Hoffmann bore his sufferings with inconceivable gaiety ; so long as his hands had power, he kept writing ; afterwards, he dictated to an amanuensis ; and four of his Tales, the last, Der Feind (The Enemy), discontinued only some few days before his death, were composed in this melancholy season. He would not believe that he was dying, and he longed for life with inexpressible desire. On the evening of the 24th of June, his whole body to the neck had become stiff and powerless ; no longer feeling pain, he said to his Doctor : " I shall soon be through it now."" — "Yes," said the Doctor, "you will soon be through it." Next morning he was evidently dying : yet about eleven o'clock he awoke from his stupor ; cried that he was well, and would go on with dictating the Feind that night ; at the same time calling on his wife to read him the passage where he had stopt. She spoke to him in kind dissuasion : he was silent ; he motioned to be turned towards E. T. W. HOFFMANN 17 the wall ; and scarcely had this been done when the fatal sound was heard in his throat, and in a few minutes Hoff- mann was no more. Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture might have done great things : there lay in it the elements of much moral worth, and talents of almost the highest order. Nor was it weakness of Will that so far frustrated these fine endowments ; for in many trying emergencies he proved that decision and perseverance of resolve were by no means denied him. Unhappily, however, he had found no sure principle of action ; no Truth adequate to the guidance of such a mind. What in common minds is called Prudence, was not wanting, could this have sufficed ; for it is to be observed, that so long- as he was poor, so long as the fetters of everyday duty lay round him, Hoffmann was diligent, unblamable and even praiseworthy : but these wants once supplied, these fetters once cast off, his wayward spirit was without fit direction or restraint, and its fine faculties rioted in wild disorder. In the practical concerns of life he felt no interest : in religion he seems not to have believed, or even disbelieved ; he never talked of it, or would hear it talked of: to politics he was equally hostile, and equally a stranger. Yet the wages of daily labour, the solace of his five senses, and the intercourse of social or gregarious life, were far from completing his ideal of enjoyment : his better soul languished in these barren scenes, and longed for some worthier home. This home, unhappily, he was not destined to find. He sought for it in the Poetry of Art ; and the aim of his writings, so far as they have any aim, as they are not mere interjections, express- ing the casual moods of his mind, was constantly the cele- bration and unfolding of this the best and truest doctrine which he had to preach. But here too his common failing seems to have beset him : he loved Art with a deep but scarcely with a pure love ; not as the fountain of Beauty, but as the fountain of refined Enjoyment ; he demanded from it not heavenly peace, but earthly excitement ; as indeed through vol. ii. n 18 E. T. W. HOFFMANN his whole life, he had never learned the truth that for human souls a continuance of passive pleasure is inconceivable, has not onlv been denied us bv Nature, but cannot, and could not, be granted. From all this there grew up in Hoffmann's character some- thing player-like, something false, brawling and tawdry, which we trace both in his writings and his conduct. His philosophy degenerates into levity, his magnanimity into bombast : the light of his fine mind is not sunshine, but the glitter of an artificial firework. As in Art, so in Life he had failed to discover that ' agreeable sensations 1 are not the highest good. His pursuit of these led him into many devious courses, and the close of his mistaken pilgrimage was — the tavern. Yet if, in judging Hoffmann, we are forced to condemn him, let it be with mildness, with justice. Let us not forget, that for a mind like his the path of propriety was difficult to find, still more difficult to keep. Moody, sensitive and fantastic, he wandered through the world like a foreign presence, subject to influences of which common natures have happily no glimpse. A whole scale of the most wayward and unearthly humours stands recorded in his Diary : his head was forever swarming with beautiful or horrible chimeras ; a common incident could throw his whole being into tumult, a distorted face or figure would abide with him for days, and rule over him like a spell. It was not things, but ' the shows of things, 1 that he saw ; and the world and its business, in which he had to live and move, often hovered before him like a perplexed and spectral vision. Withal it should be remembered, that, though never delivered from Self, he was not cruel or unjust, nor incapable of generous actions and the deepest attachment. His harshness was often misinterpreted ; for heat of temper deformed the movements of kindness ; mockery also was the dialect in which he spoke and even thought, and often, under a calm or bitter smile, he could veil the wounds of a bleeding heart. A good or a E. T. W. HOFFMANN 19 wise man we must not call him : but to others his presence was beneficent, his injuries were to himself; and among the ordinary population of this world, to note him with the mark of reprobation were ungrateful and unjust. His genius formed the most important element of his character, and of course participated in its faults. There are the materials of a glorious poet, but no poet has been fashioned out of them. His mind was not cultivated or brought under his own dominion ; we admire the rich in- gredients of it, and regret that they were never purified, and fused into a whole. His life was disjointed : he had to labour for his bread, and he followed three different arts ; what wonder that in none of them he should attain perfec- tion ? Accordingly, except perhaps as a musician, the critics of his country deny him the name of an Artist : as a poet, he aimed but at popularity, and has attained little more. His intellect is seldom strong, and that only in glimpses ; his abundant humour is too often false and local ; his rich and gorgeous fancy is continually distorted into crotchets and caprices. In fact, he elaborated nothing ; above all, not himself. His knowledge, except in the sphere of Art, is not extensive; for an author, he had read but little; criticisms, even of his own works, he never looked into ; and except Richter, whom he saw only once, he seems never to have met with any individual whose conversation could instruct or direct him. Human nature he had studied only as a caricature- painter : men, it is said, in fact interested him chiefly as mimetic objects ; their common doings and destiny were without beauty for him, and he observed and copied them only in their extravagances and ludicrous distortions. His works were written with incredible speed, and they bear many marks of haste : it is seldom that any piece is perfected, that its brilliant and often genuine elements are blended in harmonious union. On the largest of his completed Novels, the Eli.vkrc dcs Teufds, he himself set no value ; and the Kater Mitrr, which he meant for a higher object, he did not 20 E. T. W. HOFFMANN live to finish, nor is it thought he could have finished it. His smaller pieces were mostly written for transitory publica- tions, and too often with only a transitory excellence. We do not read them without interest, without high amusement; but the second reading pleases worst than the first : for there is too little meaning in that bright extravagance ; it is but the hurried copy of the phantasms which forever masque- raded through the author's mind ; it less resembles the creation of a poet, than the dream of an opium-eater. With these faults a rigorous criticism may charge Hoff- mann ; and this the more strictly, the greater his talent, the more undoubted his capability and obligation to avoid them. At the same time, to reject his claim, as has been done, to what the poets call their immortality, seems hard measure. If Callot and Teniers, his models, still figure in picture- galleries ; if Rabelais continues, after centuries, to be read, and even the Caliph Vathek, after decades, still finds admirers, the products of a mind so brilliant, wild and singular as that of Hoffmann may long hover in the remembrance of the world ; as objects of curiosity, of censure, and, on the whole, compared with absolute Nonentity, of entertainment and partial approval. For the present at least, as a child of his time and his country, he is not to be overlooked in any survey of German Literature, and least of all by the foreign student of it. Among Hoffmann's shorter performances, I find Meister Martin noted by his critics as the most perfect : it is a story of ancient Nurnberg, and worked up in a style which even reminds us of the Author of Waverley. Nevertheless, I have selected this Goldne Toj)f, as likelier to interest the English reader : it has more of the faults, but also more of the excellences peculiar to its author, and exhibits a much truer picture of his individuality. To recommend it, criticisms would be unavailing : there is no deep art involved in its composition ; to minds alive to the graces of Fancy, and disposed to pardon even its aberrations when splendid and E. T. W. HOFFMANN 21 kindly, this Mahrchen will speak its whole meaning for itself; and to others it has little or nothing to say. The most tolerant will see in it much to pardon ; but even under its present disadvantages they may perhaps recognise in it the erratic footsteps of a poet, and lament with me that his course has ended so far short of the goal. THE GOLDEN POT FIRST VIGIL The Mishaps of the Student Anselmus. Conrector Paulmann's Tobacco-box, and the Gold-green Snakes On Ascension-day, about three o'clock in the afternoon, there came a young man running through the Schwarzthor, or Black Gate, out of Dresden, and right into a basket of apples and cakes, which an old and very ugly woman was there exposing to sale. The crash was prodigious ; all that escaped being- squelched to pieces was scattered away, and the street-urchins joyfully divided the booty which this quick gentleman had thrown them. At the murder-shriek which the crone set up, her gossips, leaving their cake and brandy tables, encircled the young man, and with plebeian violence stormfully scolded him : so that, for shame and vexation, he uttered no word, but merely held out his small, and by no means particularly well-filled purse, which the crone eagerly clutched, and stuck into her pocket. The firm ring now opened ; but as the young man started off, the crone called after him : " Av, run, run thy ways, thou Devil's bird ! To the Crystal run ! to the Crystal ! " The squealing, creaking voice of the woman had something unearthly in it : so that the promenaders paused in amazement, and the laugh, which at first had been universal, instantly died away. The Student Anselmus, for the young man was no other, felt himself, though he did not in the least understand these singular phrases, nevertheless seized with a certain involuntary horror ; and he quickened his steps still more, to escape the curious looks of the multi- is 24 E. T. W. HOFFMANN tude, which were all turned towards him. As he worked his way through the crowd of well-dressed people, he heard them murmuring on all sides : " Poor young fellow ! Ha ! what a cursed beldam it is ! " The mysterious' words of the crone had oddly enough given this ludicrous adventure a sort of tragic turn ; and the youth, before unobserved, was now looked after with a certain sympathy. The ladies, for his fine shape and handsome face, which the glow of inward anger was rendering still more expressive, forgave him this awkward step, as well as the dress he wore, though it was utterly at variance with all mode. His pike-grey frock was shaped as if the tailor had known the modern form only by hearsay ; and his well-kept black satin lower habiliments gave the whole a certain pedagogic air, to which the gait and gesture of the wearer did not at all correspond. The Student had almost reached the end of the alley which leads out to the Linke Bath ; but his breath could stand such a rate no longer. From running, he took to walking ; but scarcely did he yet dare to lift an eye from the ground ; for he still saw apples and cakes dancing round him ; and every kind look from this or that fair damsel was to him but the reflex of the mocking laughter at the Schwarzthor." In this mood, he had got to the entrance of the Bath : one group of holiday people after the other were moving in. Music of wind-instruments resounded from the place, and the din of merry guests was growing louder and louder. The poor Student Anselmus was almost on the point of weeping ; for he too had expected, Ascension-day having always been a family-festival with him, to participate in the felicities of the Linkean paradise ; nay, he had purposed even to go the length of a half portio?i of coffee with rum, and a whole bottle of double beer ; and that he might carouse at his ease, had put more money in his purse than was entirely convenient or advisable. And now, by this fatal step into the apple- basket, all that he had about him had been swept away. Of coffee, of double or single beer, of music, of looking at the THE GOLDEN POT 25 bright damsels ; in a word, of all his fancied enjoyments, there was now nothing more to be said. He glided slowly past; and at last 'turned down the Elbe road, which at that time happened to be quite solitary. Beneath an elder-tree, which had grown out through the wall, he found a kind green resting-place : here he sat down, and filled a pipe from the Sanitiitsknaster, or Health-tobacco- box, of which his friend the Conrector Paulmann had lately made him a present. Close before him, rolled and chafed the gold-dyed waves of the fair Elbe-stream : behind this rose lordly Dresden, stretching, bold and proud, its light towers into the airy sky ; which again, farther off", bent itself down towards flowery meads and fresh springing woods ; and in the dim distance, a range of azure peaks gave notice of remote Bohemia. But, heedless of this, the Student Ansel- mus, looking gloomily before him, blew forth his smoky clouds into the air, His chagrin at length became audible, and he said : " Of a truth, I am born to losses and crosses for my life long ! That in boyhood, at Odds or Evens, I could never once guess the right way ; that my bread and butter always fell on the buttered side; of all these sorrows I will not speak : but is it not a frightful destiny, that now, when, in spite of Satan, I have become a student, I must still be a jolthead as before ? Do I ever put a new coat on, without the first day smearing it with tallow, or on some ill-fastened nail or other, tearing a cursed hole in it ? Do I ever bow to any Councillor or any lady, without pitching the hat out of my hands, or even sliding away on the smooth pavement, and shamefully oversetting ? Had I not, every market-day, while in Halle, a regular sum of from three to four groschen to pay for broken pottery, the Devil putting it into my head to walk straight forward, like a leming-rat ? Have I ever once got to my college, or any place I was appointed to, at the right time ? What availed it that I set out half an hour before, and planted myself at the door, with the knocker in mv hand ? Just as the clock is going to strike, souse ! some 26 E. T. W. HOFFMANN Devil pours a wash-basin down on me, or I bolt against some fellow coming out, and get myself engaged in endless quarrels till the time is clean gone. " Ah ! well-a-day ! whither are ye fled, ye blissful dreams of coming fortune, when I proudly thought that here I might even reach the height of Privy Secretary ? And has not my evil star estranged from me my best patrons ? I learn, for instance, that the Councillor, to whom I have a letter, cannot suffer cropt hair ; with immensity of trouble, the barber fastens me a little cue to my hindhead ; but at the first bow, his unblessed knot gives way, and a little shock, running snuffing about me, frisks off to the Privy Councillor with the cue in its mouth. I spring after it in terror ; and stumble against the table, where he has been working while at break- fast ; and cups, plates, ink-glass, sand-box, rush jingling to the floor, and a flood of chocolate and ink overflows the Relation he has just been writing. ' Is the Devil in the man ? ' bellows the furious Privy Councillor, and shoves me out of the room. " What avails it that Conrector Paulmann gave me hopes of a writership : will my malignant fate allow it, which everywhere pursues me ? Today even ! Do but think of it ! I was purposing to hold my good old Ascension-day with right cheerfulness of soul : I would stretch a point for once ; I might have gone, as well as any other guest, into Linke's Bath, and called out proudly : ' Marqueur ! a bottle of double-beer; best sort, if you please! 1 I might have sat till far in the evening ; and, moreover, close by this or that fine party of well-dressed ladies. I know it, I feel it ! heart would have come into me, I should have been quite another man ; nay, I might have carried it so far, that when one or other of them asked : ' What o'clock may it be ? ' or ' What is it they are playing ? , I should have started up with light grace, and without overturning my glass, or stumbling over the bench, but in a curved posture, moving one step and a half forward, I should have answered : ' Give me leave, THE GOLDEN POT 27 mademoiselle ! it is the overture of the Donanweibchen^ ; or, ' It is just going to strike six. 1 Could any mortal in the world have taken it ill of me? No ! I say; the girls would have looked over, smiling so roguishly ; as they always do when I pluck up heart to show them that I too understand the light tone of society, and know how ladies should be spoken to. And now the Devil himself leads me into that cursed apple-basket, and now must I sit moping in solitude, with nothing but a poor pipe of " Here the Student Anselmus was interrupted in his soliloquy by a strange rust- ling and whisking, which rose close by him in the grass, but soon glided up into the twigs and leaves of the elder-tree that stretched out over his head. It was as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves ; as if little birds were twittering among the branches, moving their little wings in capricious flutter to and fro. Then he heard a whispering and lisping ; and it seemed as if the blossoms were sounding; like little crystal bells. Anselmus listened and listened. Ere long, the whispering, and lisping, and tinkling, he himself knew not how, grew to faint and half-scattered words : " Twist this way, 'twixt that ; "twixt branches, 'twixt blossoms, come shoot, come twist and twirl we ! Sisterkin, sisterkin ! up to the shine ; up, down, through and through, quick! Sun-rays yellow; evening-wind whispering; dew-drops pattering ; blossoms all singing : sing we with branches and blossoms ! Stars soon glitter ; must down : 'twixt this way, 'twixt that, come shoot, come twist, come twirl we, sisterkin!" And so it went along, in confused and confusing speech. The Student Anselmus thought : " Well, it is but the even- ing-wind, which to-night truly is whispering distinctly enough. 1 '' But at that moment there sounded over his head, as it were, a triple harmony of clear crystal bells : he looked up, and perceived three little Snakes, glittering with green and gold, twisted round the branches, and stretching out their heads to the evening sun. Then, again, began a whis- pering and twittering in the same words as before, and the 28 E. T. W. HOFFMANN little Snakes went gliding and caressing up and down through the twigs ; and while they moved so rapidly, it was as if the elder-bush were scattering a thousand glittering emeralds through the dark leaves. " It is the evening sun which sports so in the elder-bush, r> thought the Student Anselmus ; but the bells sounded again ; and Anselmus observed that one Snake held out its little head to him. Through all his limbs there went a shock like electricity ; he quivered in his inmost heart : he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable longing ; and an unknown feeling of highest blessedness and deepest sorrow was like to rend his heart asunder. And as he looked, and still looked, full of warm desire, into these kind eyes, the crystal bells sounded louder in harmonious accord, and the glittering emeralds fell down and encircled him, flickering round him in thousand sparkles, and sporting in resplendent threads of gold. The Elder-bush moved and spoke : " Thou layest in my shadow ; my perfume flowed round thee, but thou understood'st it not. The perfume is my speech, when Love kindles it.' 1 The Evening Wind came gliding past, and said : " I played round thy temples, but thou understood'st me not. Tnat breath is my speech, when Love kindles it. 11 The Sun-beam broke through the clouds, and the sheen of it burnt, as in words : I overflowed thee with glowing gold, but thou understood'st me not : That glow is my speech, when Love kindles it." And, still deeper and deeper sunk in the view of these glorious eyes, his longing grew keener, his desire more warm. And all rose and moved around him, as if awakening to glad life. Flowers and blossoms shed their odours round him ; and their odour was like the lordly singing of a thousand softest voices ; and what they sung was borne, like an echo, on the golden evening clouds, as they flitted away, into far-off lands. But as the last sun-beam abruptly sank behind the hills, and the twilight threw its veil over the scene, there came a hoarse deep voice, as from a great distance : THE GOLDEN POT 29 " Hey ! hey ! what chattering and jingling is that up there ? Hey ! hey ! who catches me the ray behind the hills ? Sunned enough, sung enough. Hey ! hey ! through bush and grass, through grass and stream. Hey ! hey ! Come dow-w-n, dow-w-w-n ! " So faded the voice away, as in murmurs of a distant thunder ; but the crystal bells broke off in sharp discords. All became mute ; and the Student Anselmus observed how the three Snakes, glittering and sparkling, glided through the grass towards the river ; rustling and hustling, they rushed into the Elbe ; and over the waves where they vanished, there crackled up a green flame, which, gleaming forward obliquely, vanished in the direction of the city. SECOND VIGIL How the Student Anselmus was looked upon as drunk and mad. The cross- ing of the Elbe. Bandmaster Graun's Bravura. Conradi's Stomachic Liqueur, and the bronzed Apple-woman " The gentleman is ailing some way! 11 said a decent burgher's wife, who, returning from a walk with her family, had paused here, and, with crossed arms, was looking at the mad pranks of the Student Anselmus. Anselmus had clasped the trunk of the elder-tree, and was calling incessantly up to the branches and leaves : " O glitter and shine once more, ye dear gold Snakes : let me hear your little bell-voices once more ! Look on me once more, ye kind eyes ; O once, or I must die in pain and warm longing ! " And with this, he was sighing and sobbing from the bottom of his heart most pitifully ; and in his eagerness and impatience, shaking the elder-tree to and fro ; which, however, instead of any reply, rustled quite stupidly and unintelligibly with its leaves ; and so rather seemed, as it were, to make sport of the Student Anselmus and his sorrows. " The gentleman is ailing some way ! " said the burgher's 30 E. T. W. HOFFMANN wife ; and Anselmus felt as if you had shaken him out of a deep dream, or poured ice-cold water on him, that he might awaken without loss of time. He now first saw clearly where he was ; and recollected what a strange apparition had assaulted him, nay, so beguiled his senses, as to make him break forth into loud talk with himself. In astonishment, he gazed at the woman ; and at last snatching up his hat, which had fallen to the ground in his transport, was for making off in all speed. The burgher himself had come forward in the meanwhile ; and, setting down the child from his arm on the grass, had been leaning on his staff, and with amazement listening and looking at the Student. He now picked up the pipe and tobacco-box which the Student had let fall, and, holding them out to him, said : " Don't take on so dreadfully, my worthy sir, or alarm people in the dark, when nothing is the matter, after all, but a drop or two of christian liquor : go home, like a pretty man, and take a nap of sleep on it." The Student Anselmus felt exceedingly ashamed ; he uttered nothing but a most lamentable Ah ! " Pooh ! Pooh ! " said the burgher, " never mind it a jot ; such a thing will happen to the best ; on good old Ascension- day a man may readily enough forget himself in his joy, and gulp down a thought too much. A clergyman himself is no worse for it : I presume, my worthy sir, you are a Candidatus. — But, with your leave, sir, I shall fill my pipe with your tobacco ; mine went done a little while ago." This last sentence the burgher uttered while the Student Anselmus was about putting up his pipe and box ; and now the burgher slowly and deliberately cleaned his pipe, and began as slowly to fill it. Several burgher girls had come up : these were speaking secretly with the woman and each other, and tittering as they looked at Anselmus. The Student felt as if he were standing on prickly thorns, and burning needles. No sooner had he got back his pipe and tobacco-box, than he darted off at the height of his speed. THE GOLDEN POT 31 All the strange things he had seen were clean gone from his memory; he simply recollected having babbled all manner of foolish stuff beneath the elder-tree. This was the more frightful to him, as he entertained from of old an inward horror against all soliloquists. It is Satan that chatters out of them, said his Rector ; and Anselmus had honestly be- lieved him. But to be regarded as a Candidutu.s Theologies, overtaken with drink on Ascension-day ! The thought was intolerable. Running on with these mad vexations, he was just about turning up the Poplar Alley, by the Kosel garden, when a voice behind him called out: " Herr Anselmus! Herr Anselmus ! for the love of Heaven, whither are you running in such haste ? " The Student paused, as if rooted to the ground ; for he was convinced that now some new mischance would befall him. The voice rose again : " Herr Anselmus, come back, then : we are waiting for you here at the water ! " And now the Student perceived that it was his friend Conrector Paulmann's voice : he went back to the Elbe ; and found the Conrector, with his two daughters, as well as Registrator Heerbrand, all on the point of stepping into their gondola. Conrector Paulmann invited the Student to go with them across the Elbe, and then to pass the evening at his house in the Pirna suburb. The Student Anselmus very gladly accepted this proposal ; thinking thereby to escape the malig- nant destiny which had ruled over him all day. Now, as they were crossing the river, it chanced that, on the farther bank, in the Anton garden, a fire- work was just going off. Sputtering and hissing, the rockets went aloft, and their blazing stars flew to pieces in the air, scattering a thousand va