/ LIFE OF JEAN PAUL F. RICHTER. COMPILED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. TOGETHEll WITH HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, from tlje German. "The history of great minds is a mirror, wherein each reader may behold the treasures and possibilities of his own nature." VOL. I. LONDON: JOHN CHAPMAN, 121, NEWGATE STREET. M.D.CCC.XLV. LS ADVERTISEMENT TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. THE republication of the following Work is in accord- ance with arrangements made with the Author, who has a pecuniary interest in its success. The numerous errors especially in the German words which appeared in the American edition, have been carefully corrected by Mr. WILLIAM HOWITT, who kindly undertook this task, in order to obviate the necessity of the delay which would have been oc- casioned if the Author had corrected them herself. The Publisher deems it needful to make this state- ment, because it is possible that the book may be reprinted and sold in competition with this edition, which is, and will be, the only one published with the Author's sanction, and for her advantage; and he believes, that although there may be many, who would disregard any rightful claim made for an Author beyond the Atlantic, yet that there are also many who would, when they knew the facts, fully VI ADVERTISEMENT. recognise it regardless of the accident of law, which sometimes supports, and sometimes thwarts, the esta- blishment of absolute justice and who would gladly compensate those from whom they derive moral and intellectual benefit in the only way they can. The Autobiography, which constitutes the early part of the First Volume, will probably be felt by many readers who are strangers to JEAN PAUL, to be less interesting than the remaining portion of the book, in which they would find abundant compen- sation; but those who already know him through his works, or who may hereafter become acquainted with his vast intellectual resources, his exuberant and exhaustless imagination, his glowing fancy, and heart overflowing with sympathy and love for hu- manity, will find the minute traits of his childhood, however full of detail in the description, doubly ac- ceptable because written by himself, and endeared to them by the knowledge of his nobleness as a man. London, March 21, 1845. PREFACE. THE following pages are presented to the reader, as containing an authentic life of Jean Paul, although they are not a literal translation of any one of the biographies of the great German Poet. It is well known, that he was the most frank and unreserved of authors, and that he has interwoven, in all his romances, much of his personal experience. When, in the latter part of his life, he began his great comic romance of " Nicholas Margraf, or Poetry from the Life of an Apothecary" he undertook at the same time, as parallel or companion-piece, his "Autobio- graphy, or Truth from my own Life" intending to interweave the two, as the romance and reality of one life. From hence results the comic tone, and the apparent affectation speaking in the third person, in his Autobiography, which was continued only to his thirteenth year. He found, perhaps, that it was only in childhood he could idealize his own life, and do PREFACE. that better, in his fictitious heroes, than when he was avowedly his own. Thejirst part of the following Life is as literal and accurate a translation of Bichter's own biography as I am able to make; the mystification already mentioned, has added obscurity to the " bewildering conceits" with which he usually illustrates his wit and his wis- dom. My desire to preserve, as much as possible, the peculiarity of the original, has perhaps, given to the English a German dress, which, I trust, is thrown off in the remaining parts of the work. The Life is continued from " Wahrheit aus Jean Paul's Leben" (Truth from the Life of Jean Paul). " Spazier's Biographical Commentary," and Paul's correspondence with his friends. The materials fur- nished from these sources I have drawn out, and woven together again with the same threads, although in a different form ; and my embarrassments, which have not been small, have arisen from the abundance of the materials, and the difficulty of selection, where I wished the reader should enjoy the whole. But as the whole is comprised in scarcely less than twenty volumes, I have selected only such parts of the letters as would throw light upon Jean Paul's personal con- cerns, and explain the peculiarities of his character. Are readers disappointed in this selected Life ? I must have the honesty to assure them the fault is in the setting ; should they search the original, they will find gems worthy of the purest gold, and the richest pattern. PREFACE. IX Should German scholars find any discrepancy in the extracts from the letters, the reason may be, that I have translated, as happened to be convenient, from three different versions; from Otto's and Spazier's selections, and from Jean Paul's correspondence with Otto. AUGUST 12, 1842. CONTENTS. VOLUME I. introduction. Page Sketch of the Fichtelgebirge, the birth-place of Bichter . 1 JftrSt. THE AUTOBIOGBAPHT. CHAPTER I. Wunsiedel Birth Grandparents 8 CHAPTER II. Which includes the time from August, 1775, to January, 1776 Joditz Village Idyls 21 CHAPTER m. Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale First Kiss Rector The Lord's Supper 62 CONTENTS. cr0nfc. FROM JEAN PAULS ENTRANCE INTO THE HOF GYMNASIUM, TILL AFTER HIS FIRST VISIT IN WEIMAR. CHAPTER I. Page Remarks upon the Autobiography Removal to Schwarzen- bach Self-Education Loss of Childish Faith . 79 CHAPTER II. Hof Gymnasium School Anecdotes Death of the Father Domestic Troubles 89 CHAPTER III. Youthful Friendships Werther Period First Book-making " On the Practice of Thinking" 95 CHAPTER IV. Richter enters the University of Leipsic Letters from Leipsic Change of Studies Letters to his Mother . . .103 CHAPTER V. Extracts from Journal First Literary Effort " Greenland Lawsuits" . . . 117 CHAPTER VI. Extreme Poverty First Success Costume Controversy . 128 CONTENTS. X1U CHAPTER VII. Page Love Passage Second Volume of " Greenland Lawsuits" Pressing Poverty Flight from Leipsic Domestic Cir- cumstances in Hof Book of Devotion . . . .134 CHAPTER VIII. Christian Otto Studies Herman His Death . . . 146 CHAPTER DC. Adam Von Oerthel Residence at Topen Death of his Friend Change of Views 154 CHAPTER X. Richter takes a School at Schwarzenbach Method of In- struction Female Pupils and Friends .... 162 CHAPTER XL Richter' s First Serious "Work " The Little Schoolmaster Wuz" "The Invisible Lodge" First Success Sabbath Weeks of Life "Hesperus" 175 CHAPTER XH. Richter visits Bayreuth The Jew Emanuel The Original of Clotilde " Siebenkas" Letter From " Septimus Fixlein" 190 CHAPTER XTTT. Letters from Weimar Letter from Madam von Kalb Rich- ter prepares to go to Weimar ...... 198 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. Page First Visit in Weimar Letters from Weimar Goethe Herder Schiller Wieland 203 CHAPTER XV. Madam von Kalb Letters Close of Richter's intimacy with Madam von Kalb 215 APPENDIX 223 INTRODUCTION. VOL. I. Page 28, line 6, for " upon the book- shelves to obtain one," read, to the book-shelves to obtain a book." Page 32, line 4, for "finger," read, " fingering." Pasre 33, line 10, for " Malphigean," read, " Malpighean ; " and i line 14, for " Idylline," read, " Idyllic." Page 33, note, for " Malphigi," read, " Malpighi." Page 63, line 9, for " conversation," read, " philology."^ Page 66, line 16, for " gymnastic," read, " academical." VOL. n. Page 76, third line from bottom, for " given," read, " grown." m known and unvisited part of Germany. To a great portion of the cultivated as well as the ignorant world its name is .scarcely known. The trains of travelling carriages, on the road from Munich and Nuremberg to Saxony, pass the foot of the mountain on the western side, and the travellers throw only a hasty glance at its dark-green crest as they go by. The troops of travelling German youth, with their staves and sketch-books, turn away from its threshold, frightened at its gloomy aspect." In the bosom of this mysterious mountain island Jean Paul Frederic Richter received his birth; and if country and cli- mate and early circumstances exert a powerful influence on VOL. i. B XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. Page First Visit in Weimar Letters from Weimar Goethe Herder Schiller Wieland 203 CHAPTER XV. Madam von Kalb Letters Close of Richter's intimacy with Madam von Kalb 215 INTRODUCTION. SKETCH OF THE FICHTELGEBffiGE, THE BIKTH-PLACE OF RICHTER. Ix the very centre of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, rises that mountain region called the " Fichtelgebirge," or Pine Mountain, which takes its name from the pine woods with which its summit is crowned. The author from whom I have taken the following account gives it the name of the "mountain island," derived from the isolation in which it remains, although surrounded by mountains, and only divided from them by mountain plains. He speaks of it thus: " The Fichtelgebirge, spite of its wonderful peculiarities, is an un- known and unvisited part of Germany. To a great portion of the cultivated as well as the ignorant world its name is scarcely known. The trains of travelling carriages, on the road from Munich and Nuremberg to Saxony, pass the foot of the mountain on the western side, and the travellers throw only a hasty glance at its dark -green crest as they go by. The troops of travelling German youth, with their staves and sketch-books, turn away from its threshold, frightened at its gloomy aspect." In the bosom of this mysterious mountain island Jean Paul Frederic Pachter received his birth; and if country and cli- mate and early circumstances exert a powerful influence on VOL. I. B 2 INTRODUCTION. the character of the Poet, it seems a proper introduction to his biography to give a slight sketch of the region where he re- ceived his earliest impressions, and of its inhabitants, among whom his early days were passed. The elevation of the Fichtelgebirge above the level of the sea subjects it to late springs and cold summers, and in winter it is covered with perpetual snow. The winter lingers late into the short summer, and the frosts begin so early that the potatoes are sometimes dug from the snow, and the harvest gathered when the hands must be covered with gloves. Cut off, as they are, from the surrounding country, and pressed together within a small compass, so that they can embrace each other with the eye as well as with the heart, the inhabit- ants are joined together in the closest bonds, and, like other mountaineers, are united by a romantic attachment to their country. The air has been said to belong to the Germans, as the sea does to the English; but many of the German traditions go far into the secret bosom of the earth, and among the mountain people who dig for treasures, there is a species of romance that belongs to no other country. In the Fichtelgebirge, gold, that object of intense desire in the Middle Ages, had been found, and the search for it led to many valuable mineral discoveries. Gold is no longer sought there, but the traveller hears continually, in the solitude, the hollow echo of the blows of the man of the mountains, and sees arise, behind a wall of verdure, the smoke of the smelting furnaces for iron, vitriol, and tin. The beautiful fountains and fresh streams, that burst out in every little hollow and green nook, are a constant source of delight; and the sweet and soothing sound of running water is heard, whenever the blows of the hammer and the roaring of the furnace are hushed. The inhabitants of these heights are a pious, true, and simple people. Their employment gives a certain pride and self-confidence to their character, and a grave and religious INTRODUCTION. 3 seriousness to their manners, although they are often excited and heated like the element in which they work. The most numerous and contented class are the wood-cutters. Many young men leave a mechanical employment, irresistibly drawn, by the singing of birds and the charms of the fresh air, to a life in the pine woods, where they have no wants but simple nourishment and necessary clothing. But the inhabit- ants of places where manufactures are carried on, like Hof, have lost somewhat of the simplicity of their manners. Many are engaged in manufactures, who live, indeed, like country people, uniting some handicraft or agricultural occupation with their manufacturing employment. Among them, at the first glance, may be discovered, by certain peculiarities, the land- lord, the butcher, the baker, and the miller, and these form the well-to-do and independent class of citizens. The higher class, who possess estates in the mountain, the nobles, also retain the peculiarities of the country. In their domestic arrangements a pure simplicity prevails, and the inhabitants of the whole region live in confidential intercourse with each other. In describing one of the dwellings of the inhabitants of the middling class, we shall give an idea of the house in which Richter passed his infancy. The richest people live in sub- stantial stone houses, with tiled roofs; but the poorer houses, and such as the father of Richter occupied, are built of beams of wood, filled up with mortar, and thatched with straw, enclosing under the same roof the stables, and shelter for all kinds of domestic animals. At the entrance of these humble dwellings, a small space is parted off for the implements of agriculture. On the wall hang the sithes, sickles, and cart and sled harness. A door on one side leads to the stalls for oxen and cows, and on the left to the dwelling apartment, and in the rear is the little dark kitchen. Near the entrance stands always, even in the poorest houses, a large stove, often of china, glazed or polished, that diffuses its genial warmth over the whole house; upon the top are two iron vessels, 4 INTRODUCTION. built in, for holding warm water; benches are around the walls, and a sort of moveable frame, to hang garments upon, is placed on one side. The walls are kept clean and white by constant washing, and as the apartment is lighted with pine knots, there is a little funnel, near the stove, to carry off the smoke. The floor is tiled, with a groove in the centre to convey away the water often shaken over from the iron stove - pots. Near the window, in a corner, stands a large wooden table, used for all purposes, and surrounded with wooden stools; shelves near the door contain the wooden, iron, and tin imple- ments for cooking, dining, &c., and above the door is a shelf on which the great, well-worn Bible, and the sermon and psalm-book are laid. Every Saturday, table, benches, and all other utensils are rubbed and polished with white, shining sand. All these conveniences and habits of cleanliness are doubly necessary, where a whole family live in one room. There is, however, a small apartment, divided off between the stove and the wall, where they can retire for purposes of rest or solitude ; and the bed of the married pair sometimes stands in a small adjoining room, together with a large chest, curiously carved and ornamented, that descends from father to son as an heir- loom in the family. This chest contains the family linen, the money, the silver shirt-buttons of the husband, and necklace of the wife, the registers of marriages and births, tax-bills, and other important documents. The back-ground of the premises is closed by a cart-house, swine-house, and large baking oven. In the centre stands a circular dove-house, elevated on a low pillar. This peculiar feature of a German homestead is familiar to those who have looked at Retzsh's beautiful sketches of German life in the " Song of the Bell." Around are great piles of fire-wood ready split for the stove, necessary both winter and summer, in a climate so severe as that of the Fichtelgebirge. An orchard near the house, with a little corner appropriated to the kitchen INTRODUCTION. 5 vegetables, and still another little corner with a few pinks, forget-me-nots, and lavender flowers, complete the domestic picture. These little orchards surrounding the houses, the flowering hedges bordering the streets, and connecting house with house in the villages at the foot of the mountains, and the rustic bridges crossing the frequent streams, give them an aspect of beauty, dear to the eye of a painter or lover of rural scenery. Other ornaments are the flowering maples and weeping birch trees, and the decorated May-pole, that stands in the midst of every village, and around which, on Sundays and festivals, the dance is led. Not all the mountain villages are thus orna- mented. In some, the presence of only clumps of mountain pine gives them a sombre and melancholy aspect. The dress of the people who are not engaged in manufac- tures is primitive and simple. The old women bind a three- cornered handkerchief upon the head, and the young weave a silken band through the hair. They wear a woollen petticoat with a leathern girdle around the waist, through which, in working hours, the petticoat is tucked. Their stockings reach only to the ankle, and the feet are bare, as the shoes are carried in the hand, and only put on when they reach the church door. The large straw hat is also carried in the hand, and is worn only on rare occasions. The dress of the men is finer and more ornamented. Indeed, the women are almost serfs, and do all the heavy and laborious out-of-door work of the family. The men, it is true, are occupied in the mines, and in cutting wood in the forests for smelting metals. This may be the reason why the agricultural labours and the care of the ani- mals devolve upon the women. But we cannot regret it; for this circumstance, no doubt, gave occasion to those passages of tenderness, respect, and compassion for women, in the writings of Jean Paul, that made the hearts of the German women his own. The festivals of marriage, baptism, Christmas, and the sea- son of the first communion, are enjoyed and celebrated in these B2 6 INTRODUCTION. mountain villages with the utmost heartiness and delight; and every reader of Jean Paul will recollect how large a space these festivals occupy in his novels. Plain and simple as are the inhabitants of this region, the charm of romance, and the poetry of the ancient superstitions, are thickly spread over it. The old people relate that good-natured dwarfs and fairies entered secretly certain families and brought them good for- tune. In the forests are woodmen and icoodicomen, who nourish and protect those who have lost their way, and for a piece of money give them good counsels. Everywhere around in the deep solitudes, the horn of the "wild hunter" and the anvil blows of the " man of the mountains" are heard. The atmospheric phenomena of these regions are still another source of excitement to the imagination of the poet. Some- times the whole mountain tops are covered with vapour, where the sun is reflected in infinitely beautiful hues long after it is below the horizon. Sometimes the mountain top presents the same peculiar rosy hue that is seen upon the Alps. The reader, who has been wearied by Richter's too frequent and diffuse descriptions of atmospheric changes will find their source in the rare and beautiful appearances this otherwise sombre sky often presents. His weather-prophesying, like that of all mountain people, was an occasion of continual sport and pleasantry, and also of serious attention and study. It would be impossible for a .poet with so keen a suscepti- bility 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 powerful, 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 that secret longing, with which he every moment, even in the most cheer- ful circumstances of his life, fell back upon his youth. When easier circumstances permitted him to travel, he would not INTRODUCTION. 7 enter the solitary valleys or ascend the roniaiitic 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 Bay- reuth, at the southern threshold of the mountain, 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. PAET FIRST. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. FIRST LECTURE. CHAPTER I. WITNSIEDEL 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 spoonwort and aspen hung out their tender 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 circumstance, that the Professor and the spring were born together, I have mentioned in con- versation at least a hundred times ; but I fire it off" here, as a * The peace, that put an end to the Seven Years' War, was signed at Hubertsburg, a Saxon hunting- seat, on the l-5th of February, in 1763. TK. 10 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. salute of honour, 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 round 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 of it. Thus, I knew a barber and a coach- man, who both, at the question, " What is your name ?" an- swered with simplicity, 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 con- ceit; and these small-shot of wit all went in one direction. Let m not hope, my honoured 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 brilliant; 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. Mullner made a more witty play upon words, with Schotten and Schatten, (Scotsman, shadow,) for no Scotsman ever con- sidered himself a shadow, and no shadow can be a Scotsman, 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 Richter, and was TertiusJ and organist in Wunsiedel. My mother, who * A beater. t A judge. J Tertius is master of the third class in a Gymnasium. A Ger- man Gymnasium has eight classes. The classes are arranged in an inverse order : thus, the first is taught by the rector ; the second, by the conrector ; the third, by the subrector ; the fourth, by the quintus, &c. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1 1 was the daughter of the cloth-weaver, John Paul Kuhn, in Hof, was named Sophia Rosina. The day after my birth, I was baptized by the Senior Apel. One godfather was the above-mentioned John Paul; the other, John Frederic Theime, a bookbinder, who did not know at that time to what quanti- ties of his own handicraft he lent his name. From these two sponsors was the name John Paul Frederic 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 lectures 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 and my pen yearn niy ancestors, my father, mother, and grandparents. My father was the son of the Rector of the Gymnasium in Xeustadt 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 Xeustadt, the inhabitants would receive him with grateful joy and love. The old would relate how conscientious and severe his life and instructions had been, and yet how cheerful. They yet show a bench, behind the organ, where every Sunday he kneeled to pray, and a hollow or grotto in the above-named little Culm, * that he formed for himself to pray in, (at this distance of tune it stands open,) and in which his more ardent son sported with the Muses and Penury. The evening twilight was a daily harvest for him, in which, for some dark hours, he walked up and * The Culmburg, near Xeustadt, is a solitary conical hill, on the south-eastern entrance to the Fichtelgebirgo. 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. TK. 12 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. down the poor school-room, weighing the produce of to-day and the seed that was to be sown to-morrow, under the influ- ence of earnest prayer. This school -house 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 cha- racter, which a rectorate could not give, although united with the offices of chanter * and organist. But notwithstanding the fellowship of united offices, it produced only one hundred and fifty florins | annually. At this common hunger-fountain for Bayreutish schoolmasters, the man who had been chanter in Rehau 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 nourish- ment; so that such a man, by increasing his labours, may so increase his salary, as to be inferior only to a statesman with expectancies or gratuities; or, in general, to some high func- tionary in retirement, whose staff of emoluments is carried through the whole score of the chamber, and that even during all the pauses of the instrument. In the meantime, 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 above- mentioned 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 connexion 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 had numbered seventy- six years, four months, and eight days, he was actually promoted * Director of the music. f A florin is forty cents. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13 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 lay his hand upon the child, that he may bless him." I was placed on 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 bless- ing, in this world, penetrated, governed, and animated by wonders and spirits. My father was born in Xeustadt, December 16, 1727; more, I should say, to the winter of life, than, like myself, 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 alumnus, 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 Regensburg, not only to hunger in a larger city, but to cultivate the peculiar flower 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 and general bass caused him, forty years later, to become a favourite composer of church-music in the principality of Bayreuth. On the evening 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, acknowledge, that when I was latdy in Regensburg, among the antiques and forgotten relics of that place, the oppressed life of my father was the most precious of all; and, when 1 was in the palace of Thurii c 14 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and Taxis, and in the 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 obtained from the city authorities the post of organist and Tertius 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 seventy 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 in his office he passed for a very severe pastor, and in the pulpit for a preacher of the Law. In his native 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 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 cloth-weaver above his cloth and his money, and talents and spiritual gifts must have ap- peared to him of more worth than the shining heaps of common wealth. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15 On the 13th of October, 1761, the beloved went as a bride, with all her treasures, into his little narrow school-house, that, for- tunately, 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' 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 Thummel's Travels, or tea-drinking hi Richardson'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 with much gold, the poor historical Professor would not have had much genial warmth 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 man from want! for hoary years have already bent him low, and he can no longer stand upright with the youth, and bear heavy burdens on his head. The old man needs rest hi 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 blooming present. Only two steps from the couch of his last and deepest repose, with no other curtain than the flowers about the grand- father'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, 16 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. in the morning, he should rejoice over his breakfast, and in the evening 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 per- haps to the account of his necessities, that instead of wooing with his whole heart the muse of sweet sounds, he gave him- self, 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, grow- ing with his growth, an inclination and declination of his mag- netic 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 lectures, be holding sacred discourses, casual preachings, and other ser- mons; and he might even have had a place in the " Universal Magazine for Preachers," only, alas ! he would have been puffed up more than duty demands. But my father was in fact neither iinfaithful 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 play-room in the pulpit of Joditz; for if, after an old saying, connoisseurs in music love wine, and if, according to Lavater, 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 neighbour to Poetry, dwelt in my father's heart; and the same sunbeam of genius, that in the morning of his days AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 17 waked sweet sounds in him, as in the statue of Memnou, kindled later in life, in the pulpit, the wanner 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 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 1 no longer feel praise, to speak in a less animated strain of the applause my works have gained? In general, my reverend hearers, I would ten times rather hold historical lectures over my ancestors than over myself. How altered would be the appearance of that distant and foreign time, if our relations did not pass through it, stamp it with then- presence, and make it fraternal to us ! That man i.< to be envied, who can retrace his history from ancestor to an- cestor, 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, but in the splendour 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. The Fichtelgebirge, 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 whether he appears as a confirmation of, or an exception to, his assertion. It is c2 18 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. particularly vexatious to a man whose dearest hope is to acquire a name in his native city, that the "Wunsiedlers swallow the r at the middle and end of every word, and it is well known that the name of Richter begins and ends with that letter. Besides, the forefathers of the Wunsiedlers stand there with the laurel crowns of warlike bravery that I must win for my- self, 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 Hussites, I shall not be struck from the list of brave men, if they will number my victories over my enemies, from the Hussite Nikolai to the Hussite Merkel.* In former times, "Wunsiedel 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 thee, 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 mountain plains. I am glad to have been born in thee, little, but good city of my afi'ections.f It is often observed that the first-born is usually of the female sex. To this observation the hero of this history is no excep- tion, notwithstanding his right to be the first-born ; for his parents were married in October, 1761, and he was born in March, 1763. There went before him a being, that on this earth was only a shadow, and began perhaps its life in the light of another world, without having discovered the light of this. * 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 inhabitants. It lies between Bayxeuth and Egar, the two extremi- ties of the Fichtelgebirge, and higher on the mountain than either. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19 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 that, far more than on the thought of later difficulties. Perhaps for two reasons that in this retrospection they press nearer to the gate of life, guarded by spiritual existences; and secondly, that they hope, in the spiritual power of an earlier consciousness, to make themselves independent of the little, contemptible 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 frailest 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 by the hand to the large, dark apartment of the older children, where he gave me milk to drink. This form, vanishing in distance, and his love, hover again over later years, but alas! I no longer remember his name. If it were possible 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 everything 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 parsonage roof of Joditz is now the second act of our little historical mono- drama, where, highly honoured gentlemen and ladies, the hero of the piece has entered into a wholly different unfolding of character, for every division of my lectures is in a different dwelling-place. It is, especially in the history of these lectures, 20 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. or the lecture on this history, so skilfully and happily arranged, that of the three unities of an historical piece, the first, that of place, is no more violated 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 representation of the piece, that he shall scarcely offend the unity of time by growing older, although the great difficulty 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 in 1765 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 I have been able to consult, he went as a little 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 influenced 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 consecra- tions, are all dear to his deeply religious spirit ; the lowly Godsacre (churchyard) is the place he delights in, as the source of devout contemplation ; and his grandfather's altar, the Culmberg, was the spot he had always before him. TB. CHAPTEK II. WHICH INCLUDES THE TDffi FROM AUG. 1775, TO JAN. 1776. JODITZ VILLAGE IDYLS. WE now find the Professor of his self-biography in the par- sonage in Joditz, which, in a girl's cap and petticoat, he entered with his parents. The Saale, springing like myself from the Fichtelgebirge, ran with me or after me there, as it did also when I removed afterwards 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 build- ings. The environs upon a level are not more than twice as large as the village itself. And yet is this village to the Pro- fessor of his own history far more important than the place of his birth; for here he lived the most important, the boy Olym- piad of his life. Xever could I give my voice for the nineteen cities, that, according to Suidas, quarrelled for the honor of giving birth to Homer; as little for the different Dutch cities, that (according 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 confer dis- honour 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 London, Paris, Berlin, 22 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Vienna, do not glory in them, else, on the contrary, cities and hamlets that have produced great villains must on that account take shame to themselves. At furthest, the land of one's birth might arrogate the honours of birthplace, if through the pre- dominance of good births, anything 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 birthplace, 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, aud 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 connexion with reading, which is only a more important instruction, that he has become what he is, a Hildburghausen Counsellor, a Hei- delberg Doctor of Philosophy, a threefold member of different societies, and the present unworthy possessor of the Professor- ship of this self-history. Let no poet suffer himself to be born or educated in a me- tropolis, 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 thinking of that which is most im- portant to the poet Love! He must, in the city, draw about the warm zone of the friends and acquaintance of his parents, the greater and colder number from the icy circle of unloved persons, who meet and pass him with the same indifference * The meaning seems to be this : one Pindar does not make a Parnassus of Bocotia, because born in the latter place, any more than one swallow makes a summer. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23 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 heart-felt sympathy for every one who bears the form of man, and which overflows upon strangers and beggars, engenders a concentrated humanity, and rules all the pulsations of the heart. And then when a poet wanders from such a village, he 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 educated 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 everything. 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 written, which consisted in alternate red and black letters. A gambler wins with gold and rouge et noir less delight than I 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 24 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. school, namely, the one whose school-house was opposite the parsonage. As usual, all in the school wore dear to me, especially the lean, comsumptive, but animated schoolmaster, with whom I shared all his patient anxiety, when he lay in ambush behind his birdcage, 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 schoolroom, I remember the delight with which I drew out the pegs that secured the canvass 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 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 schoolroom, 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 com- mon desire of children to depart from the every-day, esta- blished order. We willingly dined an hour later, just as on this account the late hour of fast-days delighted us. Was the whole house in confusion, either through whitewashing* the apartments, or moving into another 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 sou * The reader will recollect the Fichtelgebirge houses were white- washed every spring. TK. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25 (Zah 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 frequently to the school- master the bulls and decrees of his village Pope, which, instead of the Romish Agnus Dei and consecrated Christmas-box, con- sisted of a butcher's joint, or a little dish with his dinner. Four hours in the forenoon, and three hours in the afternoon, 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 under- standing one word of them. Did my father on a beautiful summer's day go into the country, such cursed examples as panis, piscis, were left to be learnt by heart for the next morn- ing. As for my brother Adam, to whom the long summer's day scarcely sufficed for his activity and childishness, not an eighth part remained 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 recite the Latin half. Besides, you will easily believe, gen- tlemen 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 vocables 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 was never in his school 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 light upon VOL. I. D 26 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. my unwearied and amiable father, who sacrificed the whole day to writing out and committing to memory the weekly ser- mon 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 exercises with the children, yes, in everything, 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 into joyful tears! This father committed no other fault in his whole plan of edu- cation rarely as it happens except faults of the head, none of the will. To school teachers, especially, is this method to be recom- mended, since so much toil and trouble is never saved as where the pupil relies on the book as a vicarious or adjunct of the teacher, and his curator absentis, and, like a powerful clair- voyant, feels himself magnetised. 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 preside 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 schoolboys 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. In Speccius, I translated by command much of the begin- ning 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 cor- rector of its faults. In the dialogues in Langen's Grammar, I guessed at the German from longing to understand their con- tents; 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 thirsting, the alphabet of that language, and at last wrote tolerable Greek, at least as far as AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27 belongs to the handwriting. How easily and willingly could I have learnt more! The spirit, if not the substance, of a lan- guage entered easily into me, as the third lecture of our winter term will best prove to the world. Once hi 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 correction, not ling-iva, but always lin-gua, and repeated the same fault, in spite of his repeated corrections, so often, that with angry im- patience 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 my father, who at this very time had given me a schoolboy's pleasure through a new book. This historical fea- ture is purposely exhibited in our lecture-room, that the im- partiality of our historical investigator 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. Besides, how often hi life, either with or without understanding, do poor innocent men say lingua, in- stead of the more correct ling-wa and even with the tongue (lingua), that at the same time signifies language (lingua) \ Further, history as well ancient as modern natural his- tory, the most interesting descriptions of the earth, arithmetic 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 knowing a word of them, but many years later, at different intervals and by fragments, from the Universal Library. So 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 * Goethe mentions the " Orbis Pictus " of Amos Comenius as one of the books that delighted his childhood. TR. 28 LITE OF JEAN PAUL, the "Dialogues in the Kingdom of the Dead." Only ray 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 Majcenas, a travelling prince, a first American to a European. A novice, ignorant of the A B C of history, I did not in the least under- stand the quarto volume of the " Conversations in the King- dom 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 Roxelane for the Turkish Emperor. I was led to this by newspaper extracts from an ancient noble lady. He received, from his patroness Plotho in Zedwitz, a present of the Bayreuth newspaper, monthly or quarterly, as often 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, com- municates real instruction, as there is room enough in a whole volume of leaves to correct previous impressions, and get the true one; and like the air, whose true colour 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 prophesied, at the morning coffee, one event and another from the news I brought, and allowed them * In the houses of the Fichtelgebirge, as the bed often stood in the common room, it was enclosed in a sort of wooden wicker- work. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29 to praise me. I remember yet the noun of multitude, at that time often repeated, confederacy (it is highly probable it was the Polish confederacy), but I do not recollect the least in- terest taken in it, probably because I iinderstood nothing of the whole matter. Thus impartially and calmly were Polish afiairs considered in our village, as well by myself as by the old Lady Reitzenstein, my hearer. The intellectual fibres of our hero, thirsting for learning, penetrated and wound themselves around even-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 Lichtenberg makes the titles of books before the books themselves. The present writer shows hi little a box in which he established a miniature etui library of his own Joditz works, made from the riband cuttings of his father's octavo sermons, sewed together and neatly trimmed. The contents were theological and Protestant, and consisted of a little ex- planatory 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 Richter already a little Frederic Von Schlegel, who in the same manner in his selections, " Lessing's Geist," gives his opinion upon passages hi certain writers, without the passages themselves. In the same manner our hero threw himself upon painting. 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 afterwards 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 him from, not to, painting; and when he afterwards 30 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. received a box of colours, he coloured the whole Orbus Pictus after the life. I could not, at this time, believe all that was in the box of colours, everything is so painted in memory the pale red leather ball, the four-cornered red tile, the rounded palette, the splendid coloured shells, and the green and gold beetle yet shimmering in that box. It were yet something less jjudicious, from his art of making herrings in whiter, to con- clude that he could have been a 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 little 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 foolish 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 German giant, Teu- tobach. The beard does not make a philosopher, 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 * Richter means here to ridicule those biographers who infer an original genius for their heroes from the nature of their sports. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 31 new language, a new writing character. He took the calendar signs from the Almanac, or geometrical out of an old book, or chymical or original from his own invention, and putting 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 comparative 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 investi- gator if, out of this ciphering and deciphering, which 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 legations-rath, and could to-day deci- pher many things. To music was my soul, like my father's, everywhere open, and had for it a hundred Argus ears. When the schoolmaster sent the church worshippers home with the final cadences 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 kirckweihe* (at which my father the next Sun- day sent loud, thundering anathemas), 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 devoted whole hours upon an old untuned harpsi- chord, whose only tuning hammer and tuning master were the * A church consecration is one of the principal religious cere- monies in the German villages, at which, as Paul relates, foreign musicians and strollers of all sorts collected. TK. 32 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 discovery of the brain by which he gained his first applause. He acts, at least, in a more friendly manner than Heliogabalus, who condemned his cook to continue eating a bad soup until he had discovered a better; on the contrary, the Leipsic fair has entertained the reading world with many an excellent soup, that they have tasted as continually as the imperial 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 philo- sophic than the poetic art. In the earliest time, the word philosophy was but a second name for the Orient, and to me like the open gate of Heaven, through which I saw far-ex- tended 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 afternoon, a very young child, at the house door, and looked at the logs of wood piled on the left, when, at once, that inward consciousness / am a Me came like a flash of lightning from Heaven, and has remained ever since. Then was my existence conscious of itself, and for ever. Deceptions of memory are here scarcely imaginable, for no exterior occurrence could mingle with a consciousness so con- cealed in the holy sanctuary of man, whose novelty alone has given permanence to the every-day circumstances that accom- panied 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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33 year, and to divide the normal year of four seasons into four Idyllic quarters. Four Idyls will exhaust his happiness. 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! And yet it discerns and reproduces an AH! 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 every-day room of the family. In 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 fall cup of coffee to him, and still more gladly the empty one back, as the bearer could pick out the unmelted 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 gold-finch cages; on the floor the invincible bull-dog, our Bonne, the night-guardian of the court-yard, and a poodle, the pretty Scharmantelle, a present from the Lady Von Plotho; and close by, the kitchen, with the two maids; further off, * Malphigi was a celebrated physician, who decomposed the skin. TR. 84 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. towards the other end of the house, our stable, with all sorts of neat, swinish, and feathered animals, and all their possible noises;* the threshers also with their flails might be heard in the court of the parsonage. In this way, surrounded 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 holydays. I also had my airing festivals, equivalent to a holyday upon the water, when I could travel out hi the snow of the courtyard, and to the threshing in the barn. Nay, was there a difficult embassy to be transacted in a village for example, a message to the schoolmaster or the tailor I was sure to be despatched hi the middle of my lesson; thus I could breathe the free, cold ah-, and measure myself in the new snow. At noon also, before our own dinner, we children could have the hungry satisfaction to see the threshers hi 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 children 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 devoutly chanted the hymn, Die finstre Nacht bricht stark herein. (The gloomy night is gathering in.) In villages only, 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, the muffle of the overloud heart, and like a Ram des Vouches 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. * The reader will recollect, that in the Fichtelgebirge houses all the domestic animals were under the same roof with the family. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35 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 without.* 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 instru- ments, 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 moved 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 miniature before our eyes, nay, before our noses, for there were pastry cakes also. * Knecht Ruprecht is the hobgoblin or Raw-head-and-bloody- bones of German children. TK. t To understand this passage, the reader must recollect the one apartment of the houses of the Fichtelgebirge, the large porcelain stove, and the table used for all domestic purposes which, when moved to the bench that surrounded the stove, must have formed the coach-like domesticity that Richter loved. TR. 36 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. In onr first childish years, the father permitted, after the early supper on winter evenings, yet another joyful repast, when the housemaid brought her distaff into the common 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- fectionery and ices, and the popular tale of Aschenlrodel,* was also that pine-apple artificially raised by the maid her- self, namely, the history of the shepherd and his fight with wolves, with whom at one tune his own danger, and at another that of his provision, was the greatest. Yet I felt the in- creasing happiness of the shepherd as my own, and remark only from my own experience, that children in fictitious stories are far more interested in the gradual progression 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, * " Aschenbrodel" is probably the name of a popular German tale, with which the translator is unacquainted. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37 and saw in the darkness the lightning from the cloudy 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 next morning the ghostly torment was as completely forgotten 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 spiri- tual 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 courge 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 imminent 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 susceptible of fear only through the imagination, and not by the senses. A ghost, could I have survived the first shudder, 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 tragi- cal overmastery 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 unex- plained exceptions retains firm hold of our deepest con- victions; but sometimes partly through prosaic solutions, and familiarity with places and times, where formerly the imagina- tion kindled its enchanted vapour, and partly through means by VOL. I. E 38 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. which the imagination is armed against the imagination, 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 funeral, before the procession, headed by the pastor and schoolmaster, 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 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-rushing 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 opposition, the office of carrying the Bible to the sacristy, and concealed 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, especially in the country, into one Idyl. The spring dwells only essentially in the heart; out upon the earth, it is merely summer, that is everywhere established upon the present, upon fruition.* It 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 sons. Then were we poor children, who had been imprisoned by the winter in the narrow parsonage court, by that heaven-commissioned angel, the spring, freed and emancipated into the fields and meadows and gardens. * 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. AUTOBIOGRAPHT. 39 Then we ploughed, sowed, planted; mowed and made hay; cut the corn and harvested it. Everywhere, the father stood by and helped, and the children assisted him, I especially, as the oldest. Only imagine, dear hearer, what it was to be freed, not merely from city walls, which sometimes enclose whole fields, but from the walls of a court, and to flee away over a whole village, into the unenclosed 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 labourers as an over- seer or taskmaster (although they were feudal tenants), 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 fur- nished from head to foot with suckers, so that they draw every thing to themselves, I find hi my father 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 he held hi his hand nothing but those birth-forceps which merely 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 carried his coffee to my father, to the pastor's garden, lying outside the village, where, hi 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 country pleasures, that of being able to sup in the evenings without kindling a light. After 40 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 evening air as freely as the crossing swallows above us. We flew nimbly here and there, till, like them, we bore us orderly 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 thou- sand traits that, like the magic circles of the enchanter's wand, take the heart a prisoner. Auguste, or Augustina, dwelt with her brother RSmer, 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 appropriated to women, apparently near enough to look at each 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 monk within, to thrust his hand through the bars (more he durst not do, on account of the children without), in which there was some little dainty, sugared almonds, or something still more costly, that he had brought for her from the city. Alas! in many summers, he did not attain, 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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41 a whole hanging garden in his imagination, blooming, and full of fragrance, and he walked in it, whole weeks long. For pure love will only bestow, 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 des Vetches from the high, 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 ah 1 . There are tones from the wind-harp, that playing on the spot, are beautiful, but farther off more beautiful still, and in the distance I might, at their softened sound, weep for pleasure. 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 possesses and what he desires. In this focus of love, Paul remained opposite to Augustina, 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 together in that kiss ; but the mouth of a beloved, which, at a distance, shone warmly down, like the sun upon the most inward spiritual love, would have immersed him in the warmest heaven, 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 re- turned, our hero furnished him with many pretty Potentates, that he had sketched with wax and soot, and with his colour E 2 42 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. box had coloured 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-mentioned young 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 read- ings more will enter), the Professor considers it his duty to declare to all vaccinated fair readers, that he knows how to value their beauty as well and as highly as he did at that time a different fashion of face. And he pledges himself, in con- nexion with this discussion of beauty, that every female voice 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 a song composed of heart-words, no one shall be more beautiful 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 * Ladies sometimes sleep in medicated masks, in order to pro- cure a delicate complexion, or to defend a delicate one from the severe air of a northern climate. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43 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 en- joyment; 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 splendour. Sunday appears to have been created for pastors and pastors' children. Our Paul enjoyed 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, the true Trinitatis. Paul began, on splendid, shining Sunday mornings, his enjoyment in this way: Before 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 en- chanting 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, especially as the father cut the bread very large, 44 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. which was a joy to the peasants; and children, Paul particu- larly, love to carry joy into a house. He had also to carry to the peasant Ro'mer 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 perspective painting of love, ten steps more or less were something; 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 himself) of such unrealized blessedness. I assert that no magistrate, prince, teacher, or other official, can form to himself an idea how a Sunday's vesper hour is 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 labours of the church are finished, and he can exchange his priest's mantle for the light every-day frock, and enjoy the calm repose of the 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 dis- covered 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 pastores primarii, one behind the other, risea in the pulpit and spoken out, there would have been no more listening. The antici- pation of this Sabbath, this mountain of precious hopes, the breakfast a lafourchette in the middle of the day, must be enjoyed afar off in the church. But who, after the first joy- ful storm of parental and childish preparations are over, can AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45 describe the blessed zephyr-calm of the evening! At furthest, it may be possible to paint, that late in the evening the Joditz family accompanied the Koditz far beyond the village on their return, and that, consequently, this sublime and wide exten- sion of bliss by the parents and by the little Pfarrherrlein went far beyond the village, and into space, and left impres- sions in after-life, of which we shall hear more in future.* We come now, my 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 was not at home himself, and those when his father was absent. I begin with the last, as among the unacknowledged pleasures of childhood, when the father journeys from home, when the power of academical censure and freedom of direction for the children 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 meadow reeds, to bring home a new playmate in the school- master's Fritz, or help to 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 pleasant sensation of flyiug. 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 * It must be remembered, that Paul at this time was under ten years of age. 46 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 oui' village wholly, and went to another, or to the city. Was there a beautiful summer day, after the lesson had been recited from Lang's Grammar, a more blessed order could not be heard than " Dress yourself, for after dinner 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 Pfarrherrlein 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. 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 pastor's 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 Eeitzen- 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 speak, 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 extremely aged woman, old as the hills, who had been bedridden for many years, and placing himself at the bedside, like the pastor visiting the sick, he began to read the psalms for the dying. But he was soon interrupted by tears and sobs, not of the old AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47 woman, at anything she heard from the psalm-book, for she remained cold and unmoved, but by his own. The father took our hero once with him to the Court of Versailles, as they might indeed without exaggeration call Zedtwitz, since it was the residence of the patroness of the Joditz pastor. Every 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' apartment to the Herr von Plotho, or even to the Fraulein, to whom he gave exercises and imitations 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 was taken to the same table even, for it made no difference if the most dis- tinguished noblemen 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 spec- tres, without trembling at either. And yet I would say, how much happier are the children of the present day, who are justly educated to no prostration before exalted rank, and are strengthened from within against outward splendour! TThile 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 Con- fessor to the whole household, before the evening solemnity. The sons can speak of the coach, for before the evening, they were carried round a little, with infinite delight, in the village. Picture to yourself our hero going to Zedtwitz, to be pre- sented to the reigning family, along with the Court-Confessor, who had spoken of him there with too much praise and love. The Baroness von Plotho received him, after he had been 48 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. waiting a long time before the pictures of her ancestors 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 Legationsrath, imme- diately 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 wandered for the first time, with widely-expanded breast, in the midst of all these splendours. 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 SAveet after taste remains un- effkced in the reliquiarium 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 splendour, were the frequent errands that Paul, with a sack across his 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 village, 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 everything 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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 49 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 unmanageable machinery, expanded his village soul wide enough to take in the whole city. When 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 Augustina, in the highest spirits on account of the parental provision-ship upon his back, he trotted home again. He yet remembers a sum- mer'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 shadows of the clouds; and when an (untill now unexperienced) undefined longing came over him, of mingled pain and pleasure, and unremembered wishes. Ah, it was the whole nature awaking and thirsting after the hea- venly gifts of life, that lay as yet concealed, undefined, and colourless 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. In the winter's snow, Paul was often obliged to travel, like a Court or Dutch runner, when they wanted money, to negotiate VOL. i. F 50 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. a loan at his grandfather's; so too, in the coldest weather, he would follow his father to the neighbouring parsonage. 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 prepared the way for, an un- healthy future. But this is the blessed fortune of poor and village children, that the summer, 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 bare-headed and bare-foot, 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 grand-parents 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 twofold city, and consequently excel in splendour 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 honour, the mother was received by her parents with sweet wine, and the son went with a little of it in his head to Silberer, the hair-curler. He cooled the head from without by means of heated irons and sharp screwing of the cnrled locks; but Paul came so much fresher, newer, and whiter with his curls and tonpurc from the powder-puff back to dinner, AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 51 which could not indeed be very considerable, as the grand- father 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 frugality. The afternoon was splendid; when, free from all surveillance, 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 everything; 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 favourite sultana, the little country girl, Augustina, in Joditz, for whom he bought almonds and raisins. Towards seven o'clock, under the beams of the evening sun that embellished and gilded every object, the noise and pleasure were continually augmenting; but he must now return to the house, for the grandfather, having completed his sales, supped at this hour, and all the family must be together. 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 parsonage. 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 pro- 52 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. duced a music-intoxication, and I heard, as the drunken see, the world doubled 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 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 harbour 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 mean time, the approaching spring has melted into summer, 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 approaches them, they melt away. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53 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, especially 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 con- tentedly, 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 enough to spread them like butterflies' wings in the air, but to streteh 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 distant 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 safely 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 windows spared, and I dare assert that the palace consisted far more of windows F 2 54 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. than of walls. When Paul saw innumerable flies in this wide palace, up stairs and down stairs, and running into all the great apartments, and from them into the balconies and pro- jections, 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 apart- ments to the lower and smaller: then hoAv insignificant and little the parsonage appeared to him! He has later, as an author, described this domestic, corner- loving disposition, in Wuz, in Fixlein, and in Fibel; 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 knight'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 live upon Mont Blanc or ^Etna, where all is adapted and fitting environment; for the works of man only are not small enough for him, but great nature cannot be too much expanded. The littleness of the works of man is yet dimi- nished through the vastness of nature. The Joditz autumn Idyl is painted by what I have already said. Autumn leads people to their homes, and the harvest fills the home with plenty for the winter nest; prepared 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 the cries 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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55 winter time. From this cell and winter disposition of my hero, I understand why he read with such singular delight all travellers' descriptions of winter climates, like Spitsbergen and Greenland; for the representation of simple distress upon paper hardly explains his delight thereat, for then he would have felt the same delight in reading of glowing distress in hot countries. On the contrary, the well-known joy of the man over every quarter of an hour that is taken from the length of the day in autumn, I would ascribe to his love for superlatives, even of opposite kinds; in short, for everything 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 clay. We observe in all things, with what innumer- able satisfactions 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- tinct both for land and water, that he may neither drown nor thirst. These are merely autobiographical touches, which a future biographer may conveniently work into a portrait, and for which he will perhaps thank me. I must refer to this con- tented winter predilection, to understand why Paul recalled another dry autumn pleasure with so much satisfaction. In the autumn evenings the father went with Paul and Adam to a potato field lying on 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 potatos as were necessary 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 potatos, 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 festivals. 5G LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 court-yard, 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 clown, as well for the palates of the whole family as for the cooking stove. The other always green, and yet more splendidly blooming, 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 indicates 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 fes- tival, 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, and saw this new world of gold and splendour and gifts lying around, and discovered and took possesion of one- rich gift after an- other; 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 * 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. TH. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 57 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 day -break of reality soon scat- tered 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 sympa- thizing 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 herself 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 Christinas festival helped his wife to pre- pare 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, (Lugen-Zettel-Trayer), 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 tables and the tree were so advantageously arranged, and so perfectly ordered, that the whole shoue with splendour, 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 joyfulness and activity, the same thing to conceal. It is with both only that weary, sad feeling of comparison between the manly har- vest of reality, and the childish spring before them, where luxuriantly from the very trunk of reality the blossoms of the ideal flourish, without waiting for leaves or branches. 58 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The childish honey and wine of joy still required the ideal ether of faith in a Christkindlein who brought them; for as soon as he had accidently 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 splendour and Eden perfume went out, and were extin- guished, and there remained only the common earth of the garden-bed. But it is incredible how he, like all children, armed himself 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 expenses for four sons were always increasing, and for these sons the pros- pect 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 Schwar- zenbach-on-the-Saal, 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 num- bers, 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 Eichter's patroness, who rejoiced long and undisguisedly at the opportunity of serving and rewarding the good, disinterested, and indigent pastor. But on this account * Markt-flccken, a borough town that has the privilege of holding one or more annual fairs, and is the medium between a city and a village. TR. AUTOBIOGKATHY. 59 he did not go oftener, but more rarely to Zedwitz. In fact, a petition for a pastorship, or merely a verbal request, would have been to him, who, from his old faith, believed that the Holy 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 Zedwitz 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 presentation, 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 extreme 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 pen- niless friend the mortification 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 hap- piness, as upon the bridal crown, there is commonly hanging a dew-drop that looks like a tear, but because he could not take 60 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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, unre- strained, 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 colour, without the interchange of little and great events; but it affords a species of uniform tranquillity, which works healthily, as the equal and tiniform sea favourably, upon the consumptive, while no clouds of dust are breathed, and no insects torment. I believe I have now fulfilled my obligations as Professor 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 Schwar- zenbach-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 infancy. 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 Heinrich Heineke von Liibeck (who after his examination returned again to the bosom of his nurse),* without knowledge of nature, country, or world- history, except the little part which was himself; without French or music; in Latin, only a little bit of Langue and Specdus; 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 must begin to know something, and to nourish his skeleton. We leave now with him that unknown village; and, * The biographer of this miraculous child, in his "Leben, Thaten, Reisen und Tod, " tells us, that at five years old he under- stood the Latin and French languages, had read history, geo- graphy, 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. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61 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 inhabitants, whom I would thank, have, like my father, long since left thee but to their unknown children and grandchildren my heart wishes happiness, and that every battle may pass far from them. " 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 no- thing, 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 everywhere, and above everything wishing for the open air, retains less the de- parture 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 there is no leave-taking, for they acknowledge no past, only the present, that to them is full of the future. Schwarzenbach-on-the-Saale * contained indeed much a parish and a chaplain a rector and a chanter a parsonage, full of little apartments, and two large ones. These were opposite the two great bridges, with the thereto belonging Saale, and immediately beside it a schoolhouse, that was as * SchAvarzeiibach-sur-la-Saale is a town of about sixteen hun- dred inhabitants, six miles from Hof. Paul tells us its capabili- ties. It had besides large quarries of marble. TK. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 63 large, if not larger, than the whole Joditz parsonage. Among 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 without 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, by which he un- derstood 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 Colloquia, into Cornelius and he went. The school-room, or rather the school-ark, contained A, B, C-shooters, alphabetiers, Latiners, great and little maidens (who, like a scaffolding 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 grammar we were passed on to translating the New Testa- ment. Werner, who often in the excitement of speaking praised himself so much, that he was astonished at his own greatness, 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 be- ginning of which, the threshold of exegesis to young Hebri- cians, was not allowed to be read by the uncultivated Jews. I shall immediately proceed chronologically with the life of 64 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 into 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 grammars 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 first word anfangs " In the Begin- ning" (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 Qumtus Fixleins's self-impelled hunting in the Hebrew folio Bible after great and small and reversed letters, described in the " 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 * There is an admirable translation of this ^vork of Jean Paul, by Carlyle. TR. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65 that could be collected in the place, and to improvise (plianta- sierenj upon the piano. He learnt 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 literature 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 histories upon the book-shelves, none (for Schiller's Armenian at that time only exercised half its power 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 forbade 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 child's and the child-like Robinson is withdrawn in favour of the improved versions by later workmen, who change the quiet, solitary island into an audience-hall, or into a valley for wood- cocks, and send the shipwrecked Robinson round, with a book in his hand and a dictatis in his mouth, to turn every corner of the island into a corner school, although the poor, solitary man has employment enough to provide the absolute necessaries of life. About the same time, or shortly after, the young chaplain, Volkel, prayed the father to let the youth come to him two hours after dinner daily, that he might teach him geography and philosophy. What excited him, who had no particular talent for education, to think my village helplessness so worthy G2 66 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. assistance as to sacrifice to it his hour of rest, is incompre- hensible to me. In philosophy, he read, or rather I read to him, " The Philosophy of Gottsched" which, with all its dry- ness 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 en- deavour to carry them in my head, becomes, instead of a mythological heaven, a hell to me. If any description 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 intro- duction to the so-called theology. He gave me, namely, the task of carrying out the evidence of a God or Providence, without the assistance of the Bible. For this purpose, I received an octavo sheet upon which the propositions were barely hinted, and the proofs and indications from Xosselt and Jerusalem in the same manner. These ciphered indica- tions 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 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 * 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 modification of the leaf, and are evolved in sviccession till the circle is complete, 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. Tn. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 67 of its spring, gushes out, although in harvest only, 'it shows its spiritual power. To whom belongs 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 exciting 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 delivered) 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 winters 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 * 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 anything lively or original. Other themes, such as "comparison of heroes and poets," weighing of " forms of government," &c., are ostrich eggs, upon which the poor pupil sits and broods with his too 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. 68 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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, and from this produce an intermediate, and upon this intermediate 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 philoso- phical impulse, and suffered it to outrun itself 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 sen- tentious 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 translator of a genial work nnderstands and enjoys it better than a mere reader. Reading 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.* * " Klingclbeutel," a purse or bag, with, a long handle and bell attached to it, used in the church to collect alms diuing divine service, or the mass. TK. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 69 "Writing is like the Socratic art of midwifery, which they exercise upon themselves to learn to read, as they do speaking 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 hi geography with one in chess; but hi this, as hi everything else, I remained only a beginner; for although I went at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the head-ache, as a game of chess was promised me, it was forgotten by the chaplain, and I never went again. One circumstance I can hardly understand, that my father never by a single word in- duced me to stay away, but suffered it in silence; but I can understand this: I was a fool to run away from the chap- laiu, while I still continued to love him. Indeed, I joyfully remained the little foot-post messenger between 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 were 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 summer honey, or honey -vinegar of love and jealousy, such a contra- dictory 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. * 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. 70 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 succeding fast-nights, 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 neighbour please you? " where, upon an affir- mative answer, they are ordered to kiss, and upon a contrary, there is a calling out, and in the midst of accollades all change places, I ran always near her. The blows were like gold- beaters', by which the pure gold of my love was beaten out, and a continual change of places, as she always forbade me the court, and I always called her to the court, was ma- naged. All these malicious occurrences (desertiones malitioscB) could not deprive me of the blessedness of meeting her daily, when, with her enow-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 never permit; but I enjoyed enough to see her from the window 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 true love less than nearness. Could I, upon the planet Venus, discover the Goddess Venus, while in the distance its charms were so enchanting, 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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 71 who expect in Schwarzenbach a repetition of the Jodidtz love, from their error, and inform them that it came to something. 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, per- suaded me, when a visit from the chaplain occupied my father, to leave 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 underneath. 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 darkened 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 first kiss, and never even dared to touch the beloved hand, I for the first time held a beloved being upon my heart and lips. 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 fire- works of a whole life were evolved 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 * Ruprecht may be called the Father Nicholas, who comes on Christmas eve, and plays all sorts of tricks. TK. 72 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 spiritual, before they can sufficiently shine and dazzle and kindle. But this was the cause of failure in my innocent love-time, that without any intercourse with the be- loved, 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. AB the joking companions* knew that the Rector read the newspapers in his school, and that in his school-room 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 atten- tively in their places as the rector, kindled by the veracious * " Schraubgenossenschaft " may be translated " mystifying society," that consisted of the acquaintance of the rector, who permitted among each other such practical jokes as the one re- lated. Ta. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 73 sheet, could scarcely wait for the retreat of the chanter, to break out into explanations ; and as with glowing colours (the Erlangen newspaper-writer had used only water-colours) 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 anything more to eat upon the earth. Through what triumphal arch, or upon what bed of honour, 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 contradiction of the news- paper story. Old, well-meaning rector, be not unduly ashamed or angry, that birds of jest or of prey descend upon the 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 spiritual 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 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. 74 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. As the rector held glowingly before our souls the peculiar conditions of this religious act that the impenitent, partaking of the holy supper, like a perjured soul, instead of enjoying heaven was swallowing hell, and that if a Ecdeemer 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 inexpressible and never again to be repeated bliss namely, that of feeling oneself 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 excitement 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 completed arch. In the twelfth year, but not in age, enthusiasm can create one wholly pure. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 75 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 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 colourless ; then is he one of the second water, and many and various colours play hi its beams, until finally he becomes as dark as the stone which grinds the colours. 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, completed the powerful emotion in those young souls, whose wings were already stretched on high. During the long sermon the fire kindled and increased in the heart, and the 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 impair, which I felt for every human being. The recollection of the happiness * Every reader of Jean Paul's works will recollect how often, and with what affecting recollections of childhood, he dwells upon these simple ceremonies of the Lutheran church. TR. 76 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. I felt, as I looked upon all the church-goers with love, and took them all into my 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 enclosed 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 open, unlimited festival of love, and the whole woof and web of life seemed to move before me like a softly gentle ^Eolian or wind harp, through which the breath of love was breathed. If misanthropy can find an artificial satisfaction in an antipathy limited by no exceptions, of what inexpressibly sweet satisfac- tion is a universally loving heart susceptible, in that beautiful period of life, when, unfettered by circumstances 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 spiritual kingdom, the heart from life to life will open wider to receive the All? In susceptible and impulsive men, everything remains more easily at the top than the purest and best qualities, as in quick- silver 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 con- sciousness of a state of innocence stole away, and I believed that I had sinned, because I threw a stone and wrestled 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 became, later, in the years of youth, only calm, cheerful Sabbaths, when for the AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 77 first time the ancient great stoical spirits, from Plutarch and Epictetus and Antoninus, appeared before me, and took from me all the pains of earth, and purified 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. 11 2 PAET SECOND, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. CHAPTER I. REMARKS UPON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY REMOVAL TO SCHWAR- ZENBACH 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 "Wnnsiedel 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 and Wahrheit " Goethe recalls only the outward events of his boyish years; the work- ings of the spirit were forgotten, or had never been observed. 80 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 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 meteoro- logical signs and prognostics that could have any influence on the coming seasons. Sun, moon, and stars, and all the ap- pearances 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 observation 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 on 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 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 81 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 reverence before no one, had a still more significant poetical influence upon the son. The passionate love of music, that con- soled 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. " 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 distributed the ChristJdnd 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 mourn- ing 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 melan- choly comparison of the autumn of reality, with the childlike spring and bloom of the ideal. The solitude hi 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 deception in 82 LIFE OF JEA^ T PAUL. 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 severest 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 take 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 then- walled nests; and he preserved the same taste to his old age. A few years before his death he said, " The good do- mestic simpleton can sit completely contented hi a coach, and looking out of the side windows at the villages and gardens, say, ' a pretty, quiet, fire-proof apartment.' " 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 kulireigen from the high, distant Alps of childhood, and like the sounds from the wind-harp that LIFE OF JEAX PAUL. 83 came from afar off and melted into more lovely distances, till he wept from pleasure and regret." In January, 1776,* Paul's father removed to Schwarzen- bach-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 everything." Yet there was hanging on his youth's horizon a dark cloud, which soon he was obliged to observe, for already in Schwar- zenbach 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 imagined, 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 despondency 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 his father less; and on this account, he somewhere exhorts parents always to preserve the esteeem 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 neighbouring parishes; all our joyful pedestrian journeys to visit his brother pastors were over; we were without teachers and without spiritual food." Paul was now permitted to attend the common school; and while the poetic charm attached to the friendship of numbers * A.D. 1776, aged 13. 84 LIFE OF JEAN PAtJL. 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 ex- tract and manuscript books, that gave him the soubriquet of the Dr. Faustus of the parish. The want of that highest happiness of a sensitive youth, the sympathy of a friend, which thrust 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 longing for friendship, in colours as true as he afterwards describes the thirst for love; he is the poet of the one sentiment, as he is the high-priest of the other. From this time Paul dates the loss of many childish feelings, and also of his faith in that, the most beautiful illusion to German children, the real and actual Chrisikind gift at Christmas. He regrets also the decay of that religious en- thusiasm 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 influence, from the moment Paul discovered that he used a German printed trans- lation, when hearing his lessons from the Hebrew Bible. The chaplain, Volkel, * whose instructions have already been * The reader will recollect, Volkel was the friend who proposed teaching Paul chess and philosophy. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 85 mentioned in his self-biography, and whom Paid 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 perhaps 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 unlimited zeal for knowledge and science, but acknowledged his extraordinary talent and the ripeness of his mind. By admitting 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 invariably 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 encouraging esteem of these friends, and he 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 the 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. VOL. I. I 86 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. His thirst for knowledge constrained him to read books of every species, and of the most heterogeneous contents; 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 astonish- ment. 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 library 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 theo- logy; 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 extract of a letter, in his sixteenth year, to his friend Vogel : " 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 Investigation of the Canon, Goethe's works, the second part of Lavater's Journal, Helvetius, and Lessing's Fragments. I do not dis- trust 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: * That Jean Paul was intended by his father for the study of theology, may account for his earlier extracts being upon subjects of theology and controversial divinity. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 87 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 circumstance, 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 1 exchange this, I say, for an error that enlight- ens me? Dare I once more ask for it? Yet I would rather want a hundred books than in the smallest 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 fervour with which the mys- teries 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 powerful 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 cultivation of the reason and intellect. A perfect cultivation consists in the equal unfolding of the affections, the imagination, and the reason; but he was entering that cold epoch of the under- standing, 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 88 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. nature; but that Richter injured the faculty of poetic crea- tion, by filling his mind with the sciences, is certain, from the wonderful self-deception with which he expresses the doubt, whether he had not been created for a philosopher rather than a poet. In Goethe only, the complete harmony of all his powers seems from earliest life never to have been disturbed. CHAPTER II. HOF GYMNASIUM SCHOOL ANECDOTES DEATH OF THE FATHER DOMESTIC TROUBLES. AT Easter, in 1779, the father of our Poet took AD 1779 an important step, and placed him at the Gymnasium, ret - 16 - or town school, in the little city of Hof.* The examining rector would have placed him in the first division of the Primaner, 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 honour, 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 position, and he soon remarked that he stood alone among his com- panions. He has left a humorous description of his appearance when he entered the school, and the ridicule it excited in the city pupils. * Hof is a little city of about five thousand inhabitants, and beside its Gymnasium, is distinguished for woollen manufactures. f 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. i2 90 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The stuff and the form of his clothes were of village ma- nufacture, 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 circum- stances, yet with penetrating glance, and true-hearted, uncon- strained confidence, he met those who gave him only ridicule in return. Two instances are mentioned, which, although trifling hi themselves, must not be omitted, as they throw a pure light on the boyhood of the poet. There was one among the boys that took a malicious plea- sure in tormenting him; one, too, from whom Paul, in his warm- hearted and generous confidence, looked for sympathy, as he had been a previous acquaintance, and belonged 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 auger, and Paul barely escaped a blow from the hand on which he was imprinting his loyal homage. The mirth of the class broke out into a 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, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 91 he asserted his rank as a scholar with firmness, nay, with a dignity that compelled them ever after to respect him. ISvery week, two of the pupils among the under Primaners were called out in succession to bring in the bread Avith which they were regaled between the lessons, when the teachers were exchanged. As before mentioned, his companions were deter- mined not to acknowledge the rank of Jean Paul as a first Primaner, and therefore called upon the village boy to be their purchaser of bread. But the village boy, who would have sacrificed everything to them in honest love, stood firm in his rank as Primaner. When they pressed the kreutzers 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 for ever that ascendency which a firm will asserts over the wavering multitude. But if Paul was always victorious, he had many dark 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 impossible 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 of teaching, everything 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 sym- pathies 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. 92 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Sometimes this honourable aim is found in men who have devoted the whole of 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 philo- sophy, he followed the critical judgments of the age, and looked upon the heterodoxy of the time as the companion 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 scepticism led him to study the his- tory of the church, which introduced him to the general history with which it is inseparably connected, his aversion yielded, and some years after, he wrote thus to a friend: " History has the highest value, 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 fur- nished with a complete suit of clothes woven by his grandfather. The situation of the house, and the comparative abundance of his grandfather's means of living, had for Paul's mind a pecu- liar charm; for we cannot forget how the old errand-woman, in his childhood, coming from Hof to Joditz, laden with his LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 93 grandmother's presents, was anxiously looked for, and when after any delay she arrived, all the joyful 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 favourite daughter, Paul's mother, had the misfortune to be invidiously distinguished in then- will, and that which might have been a blessing, became, through her character and the envy of the other relatives, a perpetually increasing evil. His mother, although tenderly loved by Paul, appears to have been a weak-minded and obstinate woman. She was however, no less the favourite of the grandmother, and the pre- sents she used to send to her under the pretence of payments gave offence to another daughter, who was less favoured 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. Meantime, as the produce of the small family estate was contested, the ground was left uncultivated, and became every day 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 support she enjoyed there, determined to leave Schwarzenbach and remove to Hof, where she was drawn by the possession of two small 94 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 Leipsic. The successor 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 indus- triously 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 incur- ring new ones, and in contest with her nearest relations, while the house that she inherited was fast going into 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 neighbours, who did not fail to ascribe to her own unthriftiness and incapacity, the decay of such a long-honoured 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 affection 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 oppressed by the cares and sorrows of his mother, as well as by his own sharp contests with actual want. CHAPTER III. YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIPS WERTHER PERIOD FIRST BOOK-MAKING " ON THE PRACTICE OF THINKING." I HAVE anticipated the time of our narrative, to A D 1780 give the reader a glimpse into the domestic circum- xt - ll - 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 che- rished 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 re- luctantly 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 necessary prepa- rations 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 dis- couraging circumstances of his life, and of devoting himself 96 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. to elevating pursuits; and Herman's influence upon the moral and spiritual being of Paul was so much greater, as his pre- sent devotion to philosophy and the natural sciences coincided with the bent of Herman's genius. It is to be regretted that scarcely anything 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 confidential intercourse, was Adam Lorenzo von Oerthel, the eldest son of a rich merchant, who possessed many estates in the neighbour- hood of Hof. Topen was his place of residence, 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 beau- tiful lake. Delightful must it have been to the youthful friends, after their school duties were over, to wander here in the moonlight, and with harpsichord or singing, or listening to the music in the neighbourhood, (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 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 97 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 pupilage 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 ! How awful, under the pale shimmering of the moon, to imagine all the neighbouring hillocks turned to graves, and there to wander, to watch! " How awful the death-stillness that surrounds me, and the immeasurable feeling that siezes 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! " 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 inter- ested 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 Werther, were guarded with the strong armour of science in Jean Paul. But the deep fountain was in his breast, gathering fullness 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. VOL. I. K 98 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 enthu- siasm for the natural sciences was boundless, was turned to subjects'of natural history and philosophy, as the titles of his Essays in his manuscript books show: " Is the world in per- petual motion?" "What is universal in physiognomy?" " 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 tho- roughly 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 simple. The limits of this work will allow but a few short extracts. After the title-page, he writes : " These essays are merely for myself. They are not made to teach others anything 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 here, and errors there. But man is man, and not always the same." The passage, in which Paul speaks of florid and ornamented writing, is remarkable, as he condemns a style that was after- wards so singularly his own. " The writer who produces many comparisons, who com- poses in an ornamented 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 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 99 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?" " 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 everything 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 rejectest certain dogmas that are false ; but canst thou substitute 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 there is no 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 before him whose proofs he is in- capable of understanding. Observe especially what promotes * The reader must bear in mind that this was written by a youth of sixteen years. 100 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the piety of thy brother, and do not mix with the benefit 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 philosophers, 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. Wherefore should a man that feels his own greatness not acknowledge it ? Wherefore should a wise and enlightened man appear before LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 101 the public making a leg,* like a dunce? Perhaps this is the cause : We allow such an 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, ice are little. But geniuses, in seeking to re- commend themselves, show too much humiliation. 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 intrinsic 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 Leip:-ic, 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 Leipsic ? 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, impressed the most grateful emotions; and you may yet acquire more desert with me than I at present possess with you. Fulfil only my prophecy! and, yet once more, farewell!" The university of Leipsic was chosen for Jean Paul, instead of Erlangen, hi his native principality, hi the mistaken idea that a youth needed nothing in Leipsic but a certificate of his poverty, and free tables and free lectures would be open to him. * The German word is Bucklingen, which means literally to make a leg. K2 102 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The fame of the Professors, especially in theology, to which Paul had been destined by his parents, offered another induce- ment; 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 talent, gam the means of support for himself and his indigent family. CHAPTER IV. RICHTER ENTERS THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPSIC LETTERS FROM LE1PSIC CHANGE OF STUDIES LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER. ON the 19th of May, Richter entered the University A D 1781 of Leipsic, and was on the same day matriculated. "* 18 - He soon found himself deceived in almost all his hopes. At this time, without any especial choice of his own, he was destined to the study of theology, as it was understood 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 philoso- phical 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 accessories to his own self- instruction. Yet he perseveringly attended 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 Leipsic may best be learnt by extracts from his letters, premising that the enthusiastic youth found himself alone, without friends, in a noisy and expensive city, where 104 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. he had gone Avith the mistaken idea that he could live without money. In his first letter to the rector Werner, he had not been wholly undeceived.* " LEIPSIC. The city is beautitul, if a city can be called so, that has only great houses and long streets. The splendid places that you promised, I find not ! Everywhere an eternal uniformity no valleys, no hills ; it is completely without the charm that makes our native region so agreeable. In many things it is as you promised, in others not. I can dine for eighteeen 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 ; 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 immensely 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 Leipsic, and all this time has received no office, they yet preach to him ' to wait, they will give it to him.' " 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 presents * In these letters, as in all that I have translated, I have selected merely such passages as will throw light on the biography, as they are too long for entire insertion. t About two-pence English. Informazion appears to be giving private lessons. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 105 from the colleges. This testimony has helped me also with Professor Plainer, who loves philosophy so much." Paul wrote again, soon after, " My conjecture of the expec- tari is not contradicted, it is rather strengthened. I have yet no iiiformazion, no free table, no acquaintance with students ; in truth, nothing! It is not easy to obtain an introduction 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 distinguished by dress or rank approach them with difficulty. If one would speak to a professor without an especial invitation, 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. 1 will overcome all these diffi- culties. I shall receive some little 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 solution; only this will I say to you: it is neither stipendium, nor table, nor informazion, nor anything of the kind. It relates to something that I cannot speak of until my expectations 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 endeavour 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 pub- lic office. This assertion, which perhaps surprises you, did you know the whole circumstances of my situation, the disposition 106 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. of my mind, and the strange direction my destiny has taken, would appear 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 flutters 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 0! a thousand thanks for your excellent letter; a thousand thanks [for the love yon 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, 1 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 others. Everywhere 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 niy faults, and I give myself no trouble to conceal them; therefore will you let no one see my letter, for everybody 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 flutter about like butterflies. One like the other, they are all puppets, and none has the heart to be himself. These gen- * Paul no doubt hints at the scepticism under which his mind was now struggling. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 107 tlemen 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 candour the questions that your kindness has led you to ask respecting my present employments, my only fear is that I shall appear like an egotist. " I have heard, and still hear, many exege- tical lectures upon John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Many on Paul's letters, and the history of the apostles, by Moms. Lectures on logic and metaphysics, by Plainer; aesthetics, by the same; morals, by Wieland; upon geometry and trigonometry, by Gehlar; and the English language, 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 favourite 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 my 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 * " To study what one does not love ; that is, to contend with ennui, weariness, and disgust, for a good that we do not desire; to lavish the talent, that we feel is * There is something left unfinished. 108 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 there- fore 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 enjoyment stimu- lates, and my talents help me. " One must live wholly for a science, sacrifice to it every power, every enjoyment, every moment, and busy oneself with the other sciences, only as they are accessories to the favourite. 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 favourite talent, and perhaps the honour that sooner or later may be acquired. This is my defence. " Formerly I read only philosophical writings, now I read hi 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 eloquence of Rousseau, the ornamented style of Helvetius, and the ingenious remarks of Toussaint, 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 impression of the finest passages, and the witty, the remembrance 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 language! I learn it now chiefly to read that excellent weekly paper, the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 109 Spectator, of which we have in German but a miserable trans- lation. " The eloquence of Rousseau enchants me. I find eloquence also in Cicero and Seneca. I love both these now, above all things, and prefer reading them to the best German 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 oneself 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 his 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 honoured, that other minds, even 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 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 VOL. I. L 110 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. present circumstances, exactly in the temper to assert an erro- neous 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 moderate powers of understanding. He was more indebted 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 ob- ject of the persecution 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 enlightened enemy of Materialism, f . " I have often made the remark, that a great man, to pre- serve 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 * Ernesti was called the German Cicero. f I have not been able to find any account of Platner. Menzel s-ays, "his Aphorisms do not contain so ingenious a selection of thoughts as Kochefoucault's, but very much that is striking, and worthy to be taken to heart even now." TK. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ill 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 England; and thus it has been with Ernesti, in Leipsic. 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 avoid the inference, that he exerted a powerful and long-enduring influence upon Eichter. 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 care- less 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 intellectual men, was wholly disappointed in Leipsic. But that he might not fail in everything, he then turned with renewed ardour, 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. 112 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. It is remarkable, that, in the copious extracts he made from Rousseau, he copied not the sentimental and impassioned pas- sages, 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 Germany.* He could see little life in Leipsic, 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 am- bassador enter, that he might be able to describe one." At this period, his intellectual activity alone was cherished, 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 to her at this time will show. Speaking of her lawsuit, he writes to her, in A D. 1781 November, " A day will perhaps come, when your set. is. enemies will not be as happy as they now are, and when you will enjoy more rest, more satisfaction, 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, remember 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 * The inmost poetic impulses of his nature were kept in subjec- tion by his social desires, and the impassioned eloquence of Rous- seau sank deep, but left no outward trace in. his mind. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 113 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 re- ceive 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 extra- vagantly? Ah! I know how indispensable it is to you! If you can help me now, I trust you will not, with God's help, be called upon to assist me again. Perhaps the project I have in my head will enable me to earn for you and, myself. But at present 1 know not truly what I shall do if you suffer me to wait longer." He writes again : " Xow 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 sorrows that you may yet expect in greater number, with increased re- signation. 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 L2 114 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 distress, 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 sol- dier's situation as anything contemptible. Are not noblemen's, counts', and even princes' sons soldiers? Is not the son of the old Fran Pfarrarin 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 himself well for the rest, God will care. Do not trouble yourself so much about it, and above all, dismiss that contemptuous 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 certainly know whether I shall be able to earn money by it or not. Good mother, trouble yourself not so much; for with all your anxiety you cannot alter anything, 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 enmities. 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. * Tliis was liis intention of becoming an author. LIFE OF JEAN PAl'L. 115 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 neither theological nor juridical, and if I should tell you the titles it would >ignify nothing. They are satirical or droll books. In- deed, 1 cannot Imt smile when you make me the edifying offer to li-ten to my preaching in the Spital Kirche in Hof. Think you then it is M> much honour to preach? This honour, however, can any ]>oor >tndeiit receive, and it is easy to make a sermon in one's dn-am.-; hut to make a book is ten times more dilHcult. a do not know that a poor student like myself dare not preach in Hot' without gaining a permission from Bayreuth, which COM- fourteen gulden. " You think that Hay up my clothes. I low can I do this when I have no new ones? I have indeed worn-out garment.-, but no new ones. ,-Now, dear, good mother, 1 inu.-t speak of niy-elf. If you only knew how unwillingly 1 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 indebted ten dollars, or even for other debts that amount to six dollars. I can let the.-e IVM till Michaelmas, when I ?hall undoubtedly be able to pay the>e and other future ones. For these great .-urns I will ask no help from you, but for the following you must not deny me your assistance. I must every week pay the washer- woman, 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 mu-t be repaired by the tailor, who does not trust; and 1 muM give something to the maid-servant, who of course does not trn.-t. I know not indeed what I shall do if you do not lend me a helping hand for these things. Can you believe that 1 would plague you thus if I could help it? I need not, indeed, much; eight dollars of Saxon money will satisfy all. and then I s-hall need your help no longer. Good mother, yon must not believe my project for gaming money is 116 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 confidence, imparts to his mother, was 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 in- deed 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 chamber, 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 resemblance to that of Lenette, in his novel of " SiebenJcas" 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 believe 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 stu- died theology only, by what should I support myself? Yet once more, the permissson 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." CHAPTER V. EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL FIRST LITERARY EFFORT GREEN- LAND LAWSUITS. I HAVE rather anticipated the course of events, in A D 1781> order to place the extracts from Paul's letters, written Rt - 18 - while at the University, together, to enable the reader to under- stand the difficulties he had to encounter, and the constant de- mands made upon his patience and sensibility by his mother. I give a few extracts from his journal to show how he brought his philosophy to act upon his daily life. " August, 11, 1781. " Thou would'st 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 unexcitable, that cost them no trouble. Our century is tolerant tu opinions, and intolerant to actions. 118 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. We dare express 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 being, and the outward relations and appearance of gifted and great men. It anticipates that longing after sympathy and fellow- ship with the beautiful and good, that he afterwards describes so faithfully in the life of his Walt. " We have had great spirits," he says, " but not great men. All our geniuses raise themselves by their understanding 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 allied 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; then* heart is found in their secret actions, and they would more certainly please if they represented their thoughts, opinions, and feelings with less disguise. . . . 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 honour. It is insupportable to be obliged to acknowledge good in wickedness, and through our gratitude encourage the vice of pride and vain-glory." " The learned man is only useful to the learned ; the wise man alone is equally useful to the wise and the simple. The * Literally, his talents made him a great man; his heart, great men. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 119 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 sometimes 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 employments 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 advantages ; as his excellences 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 previous humi- liation. 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 modest. 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 imperfection, it is not to place those above him who have the perfections 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 cf perfection." It is obvious from Paul's letter to the rector Werner, that he was only withheld from giving up theology as a profession, 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 labourers 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 120 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 accumu- lated the materials of his future fame ; but Richter's first works were not written to lighten the labouring mind of the riches that weighed upon it, as the Werther of Goethe is said to have been. The pressure came from without; the neces- sities 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 re- ceiving than in a creative imagination, in what may be called a negative poetic talent, in opposition to the positive, which is the power of creation. I possess only a lower order of imagi- nation, 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 pentccost 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 suffi- ciently furnished with materials, and his imagination 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, enjoyed the highest celebrity. They demanded only wit, satire, irony, and poetic LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 121 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 favourite, 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 out- ward 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, Das Lob der Dummheit, (Eulo Richter's other school and college set. 23. ' frien,^ Adam von Oerthel, returned from Leipsic to his father's residence in Topen, and his friendship soon sug- gested 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 in- structor, principally in French. Paul consented, as he said in his answer to Adam's letter, " to become the crutch, or the wooden leg, to help the boy's halting and stumbling through the language." His letter is so characteristic, that it seems wrong to withhold it from the reader. " Lieber Oerthel, Fy ai refleche. Enfin, j'ai dit a moi meme: En verite, mon cher moi, je vois, que tu n'a pas encore les ailes, qui te doivent porter de Hof. Pendant quelles crois- sent, tu te peux bien 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 mourir pas de faim. Ne crains point de perdre ta liberte; tu changes seulement des bornes 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 mother's residence. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 155 In leaving his mother's narrow apartment, the pressure of po- verty was lightened, and he was relieved from the eternal din of female labours, 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 learnt 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 innocent and hopeful soul of a child, new treasures for psychological obser- vation, in the unfolding of the spiritual and moral germs im- planted there. Although Topen lay deeper than Hof, the place was colder, rougher, and more mountainous. Paul was also further 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, who 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 mo- therly 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 con- veyed to his apartment, and the liberal hand that was only re- strained by the avarice of her husband. The painful and dispiriting circumstances in which Paul found himself in the Oerthelschen house, seem at last to have broken down his almost superhuman cheerfulness and elasticity of spirits, and to have attacked and injured his robust health. He became subject to hypochondria. His gaiety deserted him. 156 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Herr Oerthel's law library did not furnish him with 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 pos- sessed none of the endearing qualities of his brother, and with the father, his relations were not more agreeable, especially 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, Richter returned, with wounded and sorrowing heart, to his mother and his old apart- ment 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 principal, 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 influences 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 ife, 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 in- wardly 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. Insecded, they are condensed, and do not eva- porate in the air of the market and the world." * * Preface to Satires. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 157 The fact was, that his genius had as yet found no adequate expression; but a succession of emotions on a mind like Rich- ter's had the serious and deep effect of great epochs in life. The iinago 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, he looked deeper into his own soul, and there found, not satire for the imperfections of humanity, but a true understanding 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, hi 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-destroying hypochondria, beloved by nature, hated by fortune ! Then I read Klopstock's Ode to Death, and changed my question, ' 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 einheim- iscJi" (a native, or at home). These were the experiences that awoke in his bleeding and softened heart a deeply sympa- thizing imagination; his spiritual nature made giant strides, and his feelings of despondency gave place to a self-conscious- ness of power. His book of devotion may be considered as the VOL. i. p 158 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 the anticipa- tions of his own soul, and to Herder alone he unveiled 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 pub- lication. 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 Avas deeply touched and interested by his essay, Was der tod est? Wliat is death ? and this was an introduction to a friendship with that charming woman, that lasted to the end of life. Richter had written " These two essays I venture not to send immediately to Herr Wieland; they might be lost in the cara- van of paper that closes around him. Perhaps they will gain by being presented by you, as disagreeable news is mitigated when brought to a king by a favourite, 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 request, that if he did not insert them in the Mercury, to return them LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 159 immediately; but, alas! they were mislaid in his caravan of papers. They were afterwards sent back, and Madam Herder wrote to Kichter, "As my husband is more in connexion with the editor of the German Museum, I have to-day sent your essays to him; and as soon as I receive an answer, or money, I will immediately forward it to you. Your second piece, Was tier 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 smallest 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 a pro- phetic assurance that from the German women he should receive through life the richest 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 moment that for which he had been striving in vain through so many years, in volumes of witty and satirical essays. As soon as Richter had returned from Topen, to A D 178!> his mother's residence in Hof, he showed, by very ffit - 26 - 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 queue; but, as he could do nothing as other people did, he demonstrated his in- tentions by the humorous advertisement already mentioned.* These changes were necessary, perhaps, to ensure his reception in the polite circles of Hof; but he entered with avidity also * See page 132. 160 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 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 sudden change of his 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 favour he depended so constantly in after life. This was not difficult, for one with such gifts as he possessed, and with such hearty sympathy iu the joys and sorrows of others; especially, endowed as he was with that which the French so beautifully call politesse du coeur, 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 growing-up daughters, who discovered for his higher nature a surprising sympathy, and by then* more susceptible imaginations attached themselves closely to him. Among his best friends was the Postmistress* TVirth. And to show the friendliness of the intercourse, 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 harpsichord- playing fingers must be frozen unless you send me counsel or wood. It would be well for us Hofers, if we could get some * Women, in Germany, take the titles of their husbands, as Mrs. Postmistress, Mrs. Doctoress, Mrs. Pastorinn. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 161 of the fire which we shall have too warm hereafter, in our stores during our lifetime." The mention of the harpsichord-playing fingers, reminds us of one of the accomplishments with which Paul made himself a welcome guest in every society. It was his first recommendation to princely circles, and has taken a deep hold upon the heart and memory of all who heard him. He played never from written, or printed notes, but phantasied, 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 express- ing 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 oft' suddenly, and begin the most humorous stories of his future life; of his journeys, his wife, his children (which were always three); then he would prophecy, 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 improbable, but how well fulfilled ! p2 CHAPTER X. RICHTER TAKES A SCHOOL AT SCHWARZENBACH METHOD OF INSTRUCTION FEMALE PUPILS AND FRIENDS. A.D. 1790, WHILE Richter was thus happy in the circle of youth- t. 26. f u j k e i n g s he had drawn about him, whom he was endeavouring to instruct and elevate, he was invited by many persons of high rank to enter their families as private instruc- tor. His experience at Topen forbade him again to encounter such humiliation; but, urged by his friends Volkel, Vogel, and the magistrate* Cloter, to take charge of their children, he consented to go to Schwarzenbach, and become, as he says, a pedagogue where he liad 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 ex- cited at the thought of beginning his school on the day of his birth, the 21st of March. Richter wrote to the Ami, " That on the following Monday, his allodial and feudal estate might be transported to Schwarzenbach in a child's go-cart. Inform both friends, that about the pedagogue's wages there need be no new negotiation. They should both pay less, in proportion, than yonrself. Truly, it is much easier to receive presents than wages, from friends." Cloter answered: " I must remind you of one of the Sybilline rules, that when the moon is waning all fortunate things go backwards, and that Monday also is Kindlein-day, (Innocents), * Amtverwalter, the magistrate of a certain district. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 163 when nothing new should be begun. Forget not, when you enter your dwelling, to make three crosses, and place the right foot first.* 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 honourable in word and deed. Where he gave his hand, he gave his heart, and the bond lasted as long as life. There was need of neither horse nor oxen to transport the property of our hero. He wrote to Otto upon his removal: " On my entrance into my Schwarzenbach 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 suc- cesses, but friendship is perhaps best known to yon under the form of favours, 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. Fare- well." 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.f 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 fortune. At this time his * This raillery was no doubt occasioned by Jean Paul wishing to enter upon bis new duties on his birth-day, t See FIEST PAHT, page 62. 164 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. biographer says, " Whoever had seen him, with his small por- tion 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, aud 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 decided that he should live successively with each of his patrons, changing his residence every quarter. It is pleasant to see, that this New England custom has had a precedent in Ger- many. 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 for- mation 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 ele- vated 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 commit- ting 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-knowledge. 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 LIFE OF JEA^t PAUL. 165 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 instruction, in which he led them through the various departments of human knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by comparison and association. From the king- dom of plants and animals he ascended to the starred firma- ment, 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 mar- tyrs 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 heart of children, for the whole 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 unfolding 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.* * One hour in the day was appropriated to conversation, when the children were invited and encouraged to ask questions, and 166 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. These four years at Schwarzeubach were among the happiest of Richter's life. The parents of the children were his warmest friends, and his whole heart was engaged in forming the cha- racters of his pupils. He wrote to Otto, " that his school-room was his Paradise, his Peru, his Tempo, 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 col- lected to meet him, who was the soul and life of their inter- course. A heart like Richter'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 apt to do, as mere play- things for the flattery of an idle hour; or solely as idols of the imagination 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- dential friendship, appear under the names of Caroline, He- lena, Fredcrica 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 religion, that they found difficulty in solving themselves; and he fortified the re- solution, 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 make remarks. 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 chil- dren and Boston children, making an allowance for difference of age, make very much the same observations. See Appendix, No. I. LITE OF JEAX PAUL. 167 was obliged to soften the bitterness of his satire, or to clothe it iii the form of the graces. It may seem surprising, that placed in such intimate rela- tions 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 pro- bablv 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 excel- lence, the object for which his heart beat in secret, those ex- quisite creations of profound feeling, meekness, and love which he has 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-coloured 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, hi 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 that I can overlook blemishes, but in this none." Even when his spirit was filled with universal benevolence, and he spread out his arms to embrace 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, ' "NVe have chosen each other from the whole world. Thy heart is mine, mine is thine, thou, deeply, deeply loved!' But beyond 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 168 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. there will be but one supremely loved, that is God, and mil- lions loving all mankind. "And yet, thou! that in this dark, cold night of life re- mained 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 thec, ah, I should fall weeping upon thy heart, and say, ' This is he who loved me upon earth; I must do something here to distinguish 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 suggestions, 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 immortality of the soul, he sent an " Essay upon the Continuance of the Soul, and its Consciousness," which contains the foundation and outline of the " Kampaner Thai" To another, he wrote, on her birth-day " The soul cele- brates at every good deed a birth-day. In your letter I rejoice at your joy over a quiet day. Men are made to be eternally shaken about, but women are flowers that lose their beautiful * Richter refers here to his friend Herman. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 169 colours in the noise and tumult of life. Since a year and a half it has been my principle (for your sex are judged by the suspicion of men or the hatred of women) to think better of every woman than any would think of her except her lover. Let the reward of virtue be the continuance of virtue." It should be remembered, in reading the next extract, that Richter was writing for the young women who lived in the reigion of the Fichtelgebirge, where, we have learnt from the Introduction, the females bore the burden of life; and before Paul had diffused more liberal ideas upon the education of the daughters of families, they received little intellectual instruc- tion, and were scarcely regarded as the equals of man. He is speaking of a young bride he had met in one of his rambles, returning to her husband's home, and was invited to take a seat in the vis-a-vis: " I and the sun were opposite Pauline, and looked into her face with equal warmth; and at last I was touched by the sight of her patient, quiet figure. Why was it? Xot that I re- flected upon the common Moravian (HernhuttishJ marriage, or lot-drawing of women; for, at a certain age, they have more feeling than knowledge, and in their empty hearts there is a fire for the sacrifice, but no God; as in the virgin temple of Vesta there was no image, but only fire ; and at the first appear- ance of any divinity the altar was consecrated to him. My emotion did not come from the thought that she, like most of her sisters, as tender berries, were plucked from the stem and crushed in the rough hand of man; or that her female spring had so many clouds and so few flowery days ; or that I compared her, as many other brides, to the sleeping child that Carafola has painted, with an angel holding over it a crown of thorns, that marriage, like the angel, would awake by press- ing the thorns upon her brow. But it made my soul tender, when I looked in this sweet contented face, blooming with red and white roses, and thought within myself, " 0, be not so joyful, poor sacrifice ! Thou knowest not that thy gentle heart VOL. I. Q 170 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. needs something warmer than blood, and thy head better dreams than the pillow can bring it; that the perfumed flower- leaves of thy youth must soon be drawn together to form the scentless calyx-leaves to protect the honey Jcup for thy husband, who will soon demand of thee neither tenderness nor a light heart, but only rough working fingers, feet never weary, la- bouring arms, and a quiet, paralytic tongue. This far, wide- s peaking vault of the eternal, the blue rotunda of the universe, will shrink up to be thy housewifery apartment, thy fuel cham- ber and spinning-house, and in thy happiest days only a visit- ing apartment. The sun will be for thee only a hanging balloon stove, a room -heater of the universe; the moon but a cobbler's rushlight upon the candlestick of a cloud. The Rhine will shrink into a pool and rinsing kettle, to whiten thy house- hold linen, and the ocean be only a herring pond Thou wert created for something better, but that thou wilt not be; and so, thy leaves stripped away by years, and all thy sweet buds dried up and faded, death will first transplant tht-c to a more congenial climate. " Wherefore should not this trouble me? Do I not aee every week how souls are sacrificed as soon as they inhabit a female body? If, then, the richest and most gifted souls, in the morning glow of life, with unrequited hearts, wishes denied, in a single position are disdained by society, what wonder if they sink into the sheltered citizenship of marriage? They think themselves happy, if by this they escape a thousand signs of forgetfulness ; and if the husband is a gentle gaoler, who could tame the Bastile prisoners, the poor soul feels her lot supremely happy. The golden mornings and enchanted castles of her earlier years fade, and fall unremarked. Her sun de- scends, unseen, by slow degrees, over her clouded and earthly day, and amid pain and duty the twilight of evening shrouds her humble existence; she has never experienced all that she was worthy of, and in age she has forgotten all that the morn- ing glow of life promised. Sometimes, when a long-buried idol of her once devout heart, or melancholy music, or a book LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 171 throws upon the winter sleep of her heart a warm sunbeam, she starts and looks around, and says, ' formerly was it differ- ent with me, but it is long since, and I believe at that time I might have erred;' and she sleeps again. " Truly, parents and husbands, I draw this picture, not to press from the wounded hearts who recognise their own like- ness, another tear ; but I represent these pictured wounds, that you may heal the real, and throw away for ever your instru- ments of torture." A letter to Helena follows, from which I give a short ex- tract: " 1 would in this foolish letter repeat our late conversation. 1 will take the liberty to call you the Democrat, as you would be the protecting goddess of the freedom of women ; and I will take the title with which I was once baptized at your house, that of Chaplain. We will make believe that we were follow- ing the Democrat and the Chaplain, and listening to their con- versation as they walked to Krotenhof. " The dear good Democrat says ' Can a maiden, who has preserved this name till old age, deserve every satirical arrow that is aimed at her from mouths and bookshelves, because she does not wish for fetters, or suffer them to be drawn on?' " The Chaplain answered ' In fact, we all, or none, de- serve satire, for we have all more follies than hairs. But how will your good nun defend herself?' " 'With everything' (and the Democrat shaded herself with her parasol, as the sun with an evening cloud). ' Ah, in the female heart envious eyes too often look, and too rarely the indulgent! Pitying eyes would there find wounds that are every day cut deeper, and a world of stifled sighs. But upon the female soul, as well as the female body, is bound an eternal corset. We go from chain to chain ' " ' Suffer me to finish the picture, for so far it is true. Yes, you are right prejudices, that arc flowers for us, are thistles for you. Your teachers, your companions, and often even your parents, trample upon and crush the little flowers that you 172 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. have sheltered and cherished. Your hands are more employed than your heads. You are only allowed to play with your fans and nothing is pardoned you; at the least a heart !' " ' Who, then, would be severe and satirical, if a being so op- pressed, so entangled in chains, has not the courage to deliver all she possesses, that best and tenderest treasure, her heart, into manly hands of which she knows nothing knows not whether he will warm or oppress ; cherish or torture the gift ! What upon this earth can be more dangerous than to make an election that can never be changed, and whose good or evil goes on increasing continually to the last day of life? May she not justify herself in avoiding this election, if she sees stretch- ing out before her a charming unfettered life, among female friends, with light duties, and the pleasures of youth ever renewed ? ' " ' Complete your picture,' said the Chaplain ; ' and do not forget, that perhaps there may havo been one, upon whose arm you could, nevertheless, have passed through the thorns of life, but that he is eternally parted from you, and perhaps buried beneath these thorns. In certain years, it is difficult to forget what we have loved, and more difficult to replace it. The lacerated heart retreats into its solitary cell, and seeks, at most, only female friends.' " ' You are, then, of my opinion?' said the Democrat. " 'God forbid!' " Both now stood upon a height where they could look to- wards Krotenhof. The Chaplain opened his arms, and cried out, ' Is there in the wide world one who would be Chaplainin? Here stands the Chaplain! But, seriously, I have a hundred reasons to give you. In your opinion, the best maidens crook the finger, when asked to put on the marriage ring. But we will follow these best maidens into their sixtieth year, and see how it is with them then, without the marriage ring. We find them solitary, unknown, without friends, except those who would live in their testaments, but not in their hearts; without friends, for those who were their friends in the summer years LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 173 of youth, have taken back their hearts, and given them to their husbands and children. She has now 110 one that she can love ; instead of a husband, only a favourite cat to torment, that is not half as faithful as a husband; and instead of children, she educates canary birds. Instead of the inexpressibly sweet duty of a mother, who, like God, educates little Adams and Eves, and the sweet employment of a good housewife, who takes from her husband all his cares and wrinkles, she has merely the duty to love or hate herself; to cherish her ennui, and her great prayer-book, and on festivals to eat alone. In the long winter evenings she has no one but her maid to whom she can recount the joys of her youth The good maiden thought, forsooth, she should remain her whole life- long only seventeen years old; her young friends are now all scattered far from her, upon different heights, and for thirty years she has had nothing youthful near her and she will die alone perhaps not missed.' " ' She will be regretted by the poor, to whom she gave bread; and missed by the children, to whom she gave edu- cation.' " ' Educating poor children is like a bright-coloured May- dream. It is as though I should see my children confessing to another, and seek complete strangers to absolve. If a man, that has all the world upon his shoulders, books to write, jour- neys about the world, protocols, sermons, conquests to make, and no time to woo, can scarcely be excused from marrying how can a woman, who has more time to betroth herself, and first at the altar receives her crown and sceptre, her power to rule, and confer happiness? But here we are at the end of our walk, and I will send you a written contradiction and con- futation.' " I have dwelt thus long upon this part of Paul's life, because it was the season when he passed through those moral conflicts that resulted in a deep spiritual faith, and in love and devo- tion. His whole nature acquired an earnest direction, and his works were henceforth created to elevate in happiness, to Q2 174 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. soothe and cheer in sorrow. Satire remained among his lighter weapons, but he took from it the bitterness of scorn, and henceforth his vinegar was made of honey. These assertions are established by a remarkable passage in his journal of this year (November 15, 1790). He calls it " the weightiest evening of my life, for I received the thought of death. I looked through thirty years, and saw myself on my death-be'd. That last dream-night will come ! And be- cause thirty years are as certain to terminate as one day, I will now take leave of the earth and its heaven! My plans and wishes shall now fold their wings. My heart, as it does not yet rest under the feet of strangers, may beat on a friendly bosom; my senses may yet, ere six boards enclose them, seize a few fluttering joys on their short passage to the grave but I value them no more. And you, my brothers! I will love you more; I will create for you more joys! Giving up my great plans, I will limit my exertions to making you cheerful, and direct my comic power no longer, as hitherto, to torment you." CHAPTER XL RICHTER'S FIRST SERIOUS WORK " THE LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER WUZ" " THE INVISIBLE LODGE" FIRST SUCCESS SABBATH WEEKS OF LIFE " HESPERUS." IT must not be supposed, that by Richter's devotion A D 1791i to his young female friends, all other friendships were 8t< 28- excluded. His intimacy with Christian Otto, as already men- tioned, began soon after his return from Leipsic; but in 1790, they began a daily correspondence, that lasted uninterruptedly for fourteen years, after which they were both established in the same city. Beside this, they met every week between Schwarzenbach and Hof, when Otto accompanied his friend back. Richter said to him, " I pray thee to be my public, my reading world, my critic, my reviewer;" and henceforth Otto filled these offices. Richter wanted such a friend, and chose Otto to fill the place. He seems to have exercised upon him a magnetic power, such as in his sixtieth year he was able to exercise upon young and powerful natures, merely through the force of his will. When Richter looked at Otto with lightening eyes, but at the same time filled with love, Otto's fate was decided for life;' there was nothing more in the world for him he lived in and through his friend. He was the person that Paul needed to listen to his literary plans, to receive and answer his letters, to be the depository of his inward and outward life. Otto was the first who whispered that applause which was afterwards echoed by the literary public. He was also a severe and faithful critic, and Richter for some years adopted his suggestions, and made, with admirable docility, the changes in his works that Otto advised. 176 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The relation between Richter and Otto was one of the most remarkable that the history of literary men has made known. Only a less-gifted nature could have given himself up to another, and have submitted to the sacrifices that Otto made to Richter. But he was no Boswell; he possessed the noblest qualities, and was inferior to Richter only in genius. He seems to have loved and reverenced his friend with the disin- terested devotion of a woman; and he had to suffer many ut' the mortifications that attend a female nature in connexion with a man of genius. For if Richter was blinded for a mo- ment by the splendour of higher acquaintances, Otto felt him- self forgotten, and suffered all the bitterness of jealousy. Even the blessedness of calling such a man his own was pur- chased with the sacrifice of much that a woman gives up to a beloved object, and with the misery that a woman feels after she has learnt to know her spiritual wants, and is thrust back into common life. Otto's humility was as remarkable as his elevation. He never even drew a reflected light upon himself, but was content to enjoy in secret the consciousness of influ- encing a man like Richter, and was great enough to owe nothing in the sight of the world to him. It was only after the death of both that the publication of their correspondence revealed their relations to each other; and the outbreaking pain and jealousy of Otto, over what he imagined the occasional coldness of Richter. Almost the first production upon which Otto was called to exercise his new office of critic was the " History of the Con- tented little Schoolmaster, Maria Wuz." Richter had the modesty to call it an Idyl, the lowest species of poetic creation. Wuz is remarkable, as being the first of his compositions to which he lent his own life. The childhood of Wuz is but a poetical representation of his own. Its exquisite humour con- sists in the delightful vanity and self-satisfaction of a limited being, in limited circumstances. It is also remarkable, as the transition from the satirical works to those of an earnest and sentimental nature, or, as Paul calls it, " The bridge over LITE OF JEAN PAUL. 177 which he passed from the vinegar fabric, where he had worked nineteen years, when he closed the door to satire, and opened it to all that loved, and rejoiced and wept with human nature." In 1819, Richter wrote thus of this transition. Speaking in the third person, he says, " In his nineteenth year he made satirical sketches, and then nine years longer he worked in his vinegar manufactory; but at last, in December, 1790, through the somewhat honey-sour ' Life of the little Schoolmaster Wuz,' he took the blessed step over into the Invisible Lodge* A long oppressed, over-full heart, preserves more of moderate and just equality in its flood than one always left open, for the ebb of the last must make a spring fountain requisite for the next book fair. " The blossoms of large trees that have long been growing are small, and have usually only two simple colours, white and red, innocence and shame; on the contrary, flowers on quick- growing slender stems are broader and fuller, and ornamented with many glaring colours." Otto's approbation of the Contented Schoolmaster encouraged Richter to go on to the production of a serious romance. Wuz was finished March 2nd, and the Invisible Lodge begun March 15th. Paul called it his Pedagogical Romance, and it is based on his own experience in teaching. The plan of education in * I have since learned, that the Little Schoolmaster Wuz was not the first effort of Jean Paul in the form of narrative. He had written, before this, the diverting description of a pedantic School Rector, on a journey of pleasure with his Primaner, continuing their lessons all through the beautiful June days, dosing them with Latin when they rested at the inns, studying the maps of other countries, instead of observing the places they passed through, and turning back before they had reached the object of their journey. This, together with Freudels Klaglibell uber seinen verfluchten Damon, were omitted in the first collected edition of his works. I was ignorant of them, till I learned their existence from Spazier's Biographical Commentary, a book to which I have been much indebted in the latter part of this work. 178 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the Invisible Lodge is the same pursued by Richter with his own pupils. It consists in not exciting too early the warmth of emotion, but through mathematics and philosophy forming the understanding to self-activity, and leading the fancy to wit ; thus protecting the pupil from those moral errors, which are the fruit of a too early excited imagination. Ghistamts, in consequence of his Moravian and buried youth, was brought too late into the hands of such a teacher to escape a moral fall. While Richter asserts that a too early excited imagination leads a man into moral errors, he also asserts that it preserves the higher female nature, raises it above temptation, and gives it a strength to contend with difficulties, before which the weaker physical nature of woman is vanquished. Thus, while Gustavus yields to, Beate is victorious over temptation. Beate is but a passing shadow of those women, made up of light and delicately-touched lines, that Jean Paul, with all the glow of fancy, delighted, as in his Liane, to paint, with high, pure souls, frail, almost dissolving, and transparent bodies; beautiful materials for poetry, but too ethereal for "human nature's daily food." The other characters in this romance are made up from the limited number of the author's acquaintance, and he has worked them in with wonderful skill. Roper and his wife represent the Oerthelshen married pair; Amandus, his sick and dying friend, Adam von Oerthel; and Dr. Fenk is a modification of Herman, destitute, however, of the singular personal beauty of his friend. In the principal characters, Richter has not only expressed his own thoughts and sentiments, but his individual experiences, his recollections, and the different epochs of the history of his soul are embodied in them. To Ottoman he has given his dreams and aspirations; to Fenk his satire and comic humour; and in Gustavus the events of his autobiography are clothed in a poetic garment. We feel that these three charac- ters, though with different forms of expression, compose one and the same being. The poverty of characters in Jean Paul's novels is the reason LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 179 of his breaking the narrative with what he calls extra leaves. The richness of his ideas, and his poetic illustration, were in such disproportion to his invention of fable and character, that the canvass was not broad enough to take up all of which his mind was full. It was not affectation, therefore, that induced the insertion of these extra leaves, but a superabundance of thought. When Richter sent his manuscript to Otto, he wrote with fear and trembling: " The birth-pangs of my romance are over. Think of my disadvantageous situation as a romance writer, that I can avail myself of so few living characters, as models that I have never seen the higher ranks of life and be le- nient." But how should he obtain a printer? Providence seemed to lead him to send his manuscript to the Hofrath* Moritz, who had great influence with a bookseller in Berlin, whose daughter he was on the eve of marrying. Happy was it indeed for Richter that the man, to whom he turned was in ripe age, for the first time loving deeply, and exactly in a situation to be touched by the earnest and sentimental gifts of Paul's imagina- tion. Richter wrote thus! "I would that you had already finished this page, that I might not blush at your astonishment at the sight of these volumes. The dark canvass enfolds, like the life of man, joys, sorrows, and a half-executed plan; in short, a romance. If you find, after reading, that it is worthy to be read by the few like you, I pray you to reach it a mer- cantile helping hand, that it may be raised from the written to the printed world." Moritz, who was in the habit of receiving such presents, frowned, and threw it aside with an "ah!" but as he read the first lines of Richter's letter, his brow cleared; and when he reached the end, there was no longer a fold to be seen on his face. As he read some pages of the manuscript, he cried out, " This is no unknown writer. It is Goethe, Herder, or Wieland !" * Counsellor. 180 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. but as he went on, he repeatedly exclaimed, " That he could not understand it it was above Goethe it was something wholly new!" We can imagine Richter's delight, on returning from a little pedestrian journey, to find such a letter as this: " Suffer me to tell you what has delighted me in your work; and were you at the end of the earth, I would encounter a hundred storms to fly to tell you! Where do you dwell? How are you called? Who are you?* Your work is a jewel!" &c. Moritz wrote again immediately after the book was printed, and sent thirty of the hundred ducats, the printer gave for the work. The heart of Richter opened immediately to such a friend, and went forth to meet him in all the confidence of love; but the whole fullness of his joy and success was poured out fur his mother, who needed indeed this balsam of filial love. The moment he received the thirty ducats, he set out to walk from Schwarzenbach to Hof. On the way, by the light of the stars, he thought of his mother's astonishment, her joy, and her pious gratitude to heaven; and entering late at night the low apart- ment, where she sat spinning by the light of the fire, he poured the whole golden treasure into her lap! Whoever has read the numerous passages in Richter's works, where he describes the joy of soothing the dark years of aged sorrow, and lightening the debt which every child con- tracts at birth to its mother, will follow him in sympathizing joy on this evening, never to be forgotten, when he transferred the first reward of persevering industry to the hands of his mother. The unexpected success of his romance, lifting him as it were at once into fame, made no difference in the simple and unos- tentatious life of Richter. He immediately began his second romance, The Hesperus, working unweariedly before and after school. * Richter did not publish yet under his own name. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 181 In the spring of 1794, his two eldest pupils entered the Gymnasium at Bayreuth, and he returned to his mother in Hof. His first care had been, as soon as a better prospect opened before him, to take his mother from the miserable little apart- ment she had occupied, behind the parish church in Hof, and place her in a more cheerful, but still humble and modest dwelling, near his friend, Christian Otto. His next care was to fulfil a duty of gratitude, by repaying to his old instructor, Werner, a sum he had lent to his mother. I insert the answer of the aged man: " Wholly unexpected was your letter tome; and yet, if pos- sible, the enclosure was more so. Be assured I was touched by it, even to shedding tears, and that it will remain for ever unforgotten ! It is to me a new proof of divine Providence, a new expression of your noble way of thinking and acting. " I sat in the window, deeply sunk, in consequence of the sad times, in anxiety for the support of my family, when your letter, heavy with money, of which I was wholly destitute, was brought in. Certainly it was wonderful! and that, in the midst of so much employment, you should remember me, a poor old schoolmaster ; should be my friend, and wish me so much good ; and that the little I once afforded your poor mother, that I had long since forgotten, should be again restored to me by the heavy sweat of your brow ! Truly, it was something strange ! touching ! " Thanks, above all, to the good Providence that, just at the right time, and wholly unexpectedly, led you to do this for the support of my family (for I have never found it so difficult to help them as now, when my old body will not acquiesce in it). Thanks also to you, through whom Providence has chosen the means to help me. Be assured, till my apparently near disso- lution, I shall be yours, " W." The weeks that followed the successful reception of the In- visible Lodge were the "Sabbath weeks" of Paul's life. He had had the courage to speak out in the fullness of his nature, VOL. i. n 182 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and had found a response in many hearts. In the paradise that opened before him, he determined to give full course to the flood of his genius; but he well knew, that the richest full- ness of poetic thought could only exist in connexion with peace of soul, cheerfulness of disposition, and firmness of purpose, and that the truth of his representations must arise from corre- sponding inward truth and integrity; in short, if he would be a poet in his works, he must be a poet in his life. He carefully continued his book of devotion, his rules and purposes of life. He never awoke without reviewing the past day; and where he had been assaulted by the force of any pas- sion, there he placed a double bulwark, and with quiet satisfac- tion celebrated the victory gained. His quick and warm fancy led him often to outbreaking anger, and his ready wit to satire that was sometimes wounding, especially when his good nature was misused; but the gentlest call led him back to tenderness the accidental sight of a boy's face with tears in his eyes was sufficient to disarm him; he thought of his future life, of the sorrows that would draw from him still bitterer tears, and he said, " I will not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall ;" and he kept his word. Where he was obliged to assert his rights, he did it so calmly and gently, that the holy treasures of his life love, and truth remained for ever undis- turbed. Everything living touched his heart from the humblest floAver that opened its leaves in the grass, up to the shining worlds on high; children and old men, the beggar and the rich, he would have embraced them all in the sacred glow of his emotions, or given all he possessed to make them happy. No one went from him unconsoled; and when he could give nothing but good counsel, he gave that. Were it only a poor mountaineer or a travelling apprentice to whom he could im- part the smallest present, he would dwell the whole day with delight on the circumstance. Often he would say to himself, " Now he will draw the dollar from his pocket, and reckon which of his long-cherished wishes he can first satisfy. How LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 183 often will he think of this day, and of the unexpected gift, and jierhaps once more than usual upon the Giver of all good.' Love was the ever-living principle of his character and of his writings, and before the thought of the Infinite, all differ- ences in rank vanished away; all were equally great, or equally little. He gained nourishment for this principle from every circum- stance in life. Where others would have been untouched and cold, there he heard whispered to his spirit the voice of hu- manity. Let him speak for himself. He says in his jour- nal: " I picked up in the choir a faded rose-leaf, that lay under the feet of the boys. Great God! what had I in my hand but a small leaf, with a little dust upon it; and upon this small fugitive thing my fancy built a whole paradise of joy a whole summer dwelt upon this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the boy held this flower in his hand, and when through the church window he saw the blue heaven and the clouds wandering over it; when every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and reminded him of the shadows on the grass from the over-flying clouds. Good God! thou scatterest sat i-- faction everywhere, and givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost thou invite us to great and excit- ing pleasures, but thou givest to the smallest a lingering per- fume." Above all things, his eye hung upon Nature. He lived and wrote whole days in the open air, on the mountain, or in the woods; and in the midst of winter he sought from the window the evening rose-colour, his beloved stars, and that magic enchanter, the moon. Every walk in the open air was to him the entrance into a church. He said in his journal "Dust thou enter pure into this vast, guiltless temple? Dost thou bring no poisonous passion into this place, where flowers bloom and birds sing? Dost thou bear no hatred where Nature loves? Art thou calm as the stream where Nature reflects herself as in a mirror? Ah, would that my heart were as true and as 184 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. unruffled as Nature, when she came from the hands of her great Creator !" Every new excursion in this great temple gave him new strength, and he returned laden with spiritual treasures. He loved to make short journeys on foot; where the motion of the body kept the mind in a state of activity, and the insig- nificant gained value by its unexpectedness. A sunny day made him happy, and the perfumes of a spring morning, or dewy evening, seemed almost to intoxicate him with their in- cense; but the hours of night were those of his highest eleva- tion, when he would lie long hours on the dewy grass, looking into the opening clouds. He says in his journal " I take my ink-flask in the morning, and write as I walk in the fragrant air. Then comes my joy, that I have conquered two of my faults my disposition to be angry in conversation, and to lose my cheerfulness through a long day of dust and musquitors. Nothing makes one so indifferent to the pin and musquitoe thrusts of life, as the consciousness of growing better." Immediately after the publication of The Invisible Lodge, the friend who had exerted himself so much in its favour, and whose admiration had been so warmly expressed, Moritz of Berlin, died. The book did not attain the universal fame he had predicted for it; Paul himself was sensible of its faults, and proposed a few years afterwards wholly to re-write, and give it a more satisfactory conclusion. It remains, however, unfinished, and appears to me the least interesting of all Ilichter's serious romances; and he, before his death, called it a Born Ruin. Whatever the cause, for his Hespei-us, which was finished and sent to Otto to read on the longest day of the year 1794, Richter could obtain only two hundred Prussian dollars. This is the work by which the author has been best known, out of Germany. In Germany, Titan is THE work, the GREAT WOKK. of Jean Paul; but the first volume is so peculiarly Jean Paulish, that I presume many persons have been deterred from going beyond that. It is, perhaps, desirable to the English reader, to learn some- thing of the work by which the author is best known: LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 185 HESPERUS. It was a singularly happy illustration, to compare Hesperus to Strasburgh Cathedral; although it is full of beauty, of lovely pictures, and of exquisite passages, it is deficient in symmetry, and unfinished in its details. The story is so confused, that probably many persons have read and admired the book, without even getting a clear idea of its story. The Prince Januar, in his various travels, has left five sons in the different countries where he has rested. Lord Horion, an Englishman, after the death of a beloved wife, ardently de- sires some employment that will lessen the void in his heart; meeting this Prince Januar, he becomes his friend, and, re- turning with him to Germany, makes himself necessary to him as a wise and powerful minister. Of the five sons, one only enters into the scenes of the romance Flamin, the youngest, whose mother was a niece of Lord Horion. After the desertion of the prince, this niece marries Le Baut, his chamberlain. Lord Horion, fearing that his own influence will be overruled by that of his niece and her son, if permitted to return with the prince to Germany, persuades her to separate herself from Le Baut (whose bad character is indeed a sufficient reason), and remain with her son in England. Eyman, the chaplain of the prince, had also followed him to England, having before mar- ried a young lady of the Court, who gave birth to a son just at the time Flamin was born. Lord Horion, the master-spirit and juggler of the history, and who wishes to try the experi- ment of educating a prince as if he were only a citizen, effects the exchange of the infants; gives Flamin, the son of the prince, to Eyman, the chaplain; and Victor, the chaplain's - (as his own son Julius, by his beloved wife, is born blind), he determines to educate as his own, and gives him his own name. The three children, Flamin, Victor, and Julius, together with Julia, the daughter also of Lord Horion, are educated by Emanuel, or Dehore, a Moravian, or Bramin, or mystical phi- losopher, and remain in England until their tenth or twelfth R2 186 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. year, under the maternal care of the divorced wife of Le Baut, the niece of Lord Horion. To the surprise of every one, Fla- min,' the reputed son of the chaplain, but the real son of the prince, is educated for an advocate; Victor, the reputed son of the Lord, but the real son of the chaplain, for a physical! ; and the story opens when they have all returned to Germany, and are just entering upon their respective employments, Flamin as a counsellor, Victor as Court physician. Clotilde, a daughter of Lord Horion's niece, born while she was the wife of Le Baut, has also returned to her father, who has been disgraced at the Court of the prince, and withdrawn to his country seat, St. Lune, where Eyman is also pastor, after having been Court chaplain. Lord Horion is himself absent, for the purpose of seeking the fifth son of the prince, and thinks to hold in his hand the wires that shall direct all their motions in his ab- sence. The scene opens under the following circumstances: Flamin and Victor, intimate friends, and brothers in affection, come to St. Lune to pass the holydays, previous to entering upon their duties at Court; Lord Horion having become blind through grief for the loss of his wife, Victor operates upon his eyes, and gives him back the light. Flamin, thinking himself the son of Eyman, had become passionately attached to his half- sister, Clotilde. She had herself become acquainted with their consanguinity, by having been the reader to Lord Horion during his blindness, but she was bound by him to keep the secret. Victor, at the first sight of Clotilde, falls passionately in love with her, but stifles his passion from principles of honour, and from affection to his friend Flamin, whose relationship to Clotilde he does not yet know. Through the eccentricities and improbabilities of this plan, Jean Paul contrives to involve the fate of his lovers, and to excite the deepest interest for their destiny. There is another character, the evil spirit of the history, Matthew, the son of the minister Schleunes, an eccentric and wicked youth, whose rich powers of intellect are impaired LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 187 through his bad heart. He possesses the art of the ventrilo- quist, and the power of imitating all voices and sounds. As- suming the voice of Clotilde, he is permitted, by the blind Lord Horion, to read his letters; and thus discovering the secret relationship of Flamin to Clotilde, and his real parent- age, is able to infuse suspicion and jealousy into all hearts. The limited experience of the Poet permitted him only a limited range of characters; but he represents the moral and intellectual errors in these characters, not only in their influence upon others, but as they secretly return upon themselves. Thus, mystical enthusiasm is carried to such madness in Ema- uuel, that he imagines he has the power, by the force of the spiritual nature, to cease to live at a certain time, and to leave the body. He is cured and punished by the accidental dis- charge of a powder reservoir, that occasions his death. Lord Horion imagined that he held in his hand the secret springs, and could direct the motions of sentient beings, as if they were puppets obedient only to mechanical impulses. He left out of his calculations the will and the passions of each individual, and failing in his objects, the wurld, to his cold infidelity, seems empty of everything worth striving for. He retires to a solitary island, and there, by his own hand, falls into the grave of his wife. But the great idea of Hesperus, as it was of the Invisible Lodge, is to unite in a powerful character all outward and in- ward greatness. Victor, the hero of the novel, fails to repre- sent this idea to the reader. He rather unites the characte- ristics of Jean Paul himself; the serious poetic nature with that of the humorist. To evolve his higher nature, he is educated as the son of a nobleman; but to make him a humorist, as according to the Poet's definition of humour, strong contrasts are necessary, he was therefore the son of a country pastor, and destined to be a physician, " to whom the hut and the palace are equally open." Richter himself was conscious of an irretrievable failure in the character of Victor. Although full of all lovely and engaging qualities, he fails to interest the 188 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. sympathies of the reader. He is the representative of a certain period of life, rather than a complete human being. It is the period of preparation for action; but the action which succeeds the period of high ideal love in truly great minds is wanting. For what does he strive ? For tender and generous emotions, and for an opportunity to jest. He never acts. He waits, while all around him, impelled by different passions, involve him in the consequences. Even his virtues appear like weak- nesses. He is saved from seduction by a being infinitely inter- esting to his fancy, merely through an accident, and the reader feels that in a life of action or of trial he must inevitably fail. The heroine, Clotilde, is the first in the gallery of female portraits, in which Jean Paul sought to embody his ideal of female excellence and loveliness. She also disappoints the reader, as she hovers, an undefined being, half angel, half woman, over the pages of the romance, and we seem never to catch a full view of the Madonna loveliness of her features. but they are immediately shrouded in clouds. Richtcr had not yet seen all the elements he wished to unite in woman in any of his female friends. His own ideal, like the rainbow in his fancy, hovered constantly before, and led him on till it became a luminous point, the highest aim of his poetic ex- ertion. The public, and even the friends of Richter, mistook his design in the character of Dehore, or Emanuel. As he de- scribed him with all the glow of fancy, and his death with true and deep emotion, they imagined he was intended for a model, rather than a warning. Richter was wounded by the imputa- tion, and justly complained that his critics would not take the trouble to investigate the character of Dehore, and place the public in a right understanding of his design. Goethe painted, in poetically beautiful and seducing colours, the weakness and the confusion of moral good and evil, in the character of Wcrter ; and others took the trouble to vindicate the moral design of the author, or to present a sufficient antidote. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 189 Jean Paul intended to paint, in his Emanuel, that enervating excess of feeling, that longing after a world of love and beauty, where the perfume of flowers and the luxury of tears unfit one for common every-day duties a malady, that is apt to infect the most elevated and spiritual natures; and, as he had healed himself, he wished to heal others of that mystical dis- ease, carried to luxuriant excess in Emanuel, but of which the seeds are in every human breast. Hesperus, although failing, as a work of art, of the aim which the author intended, is yet a temple where humanity, love, and nature are reverenced. It is full of passages and whole scenes of exquisite beauty, and rich to excess in the peculiarities of our author. The pages dazzle us with wit and condensed sentences of wisdom, and the reader is fatigued by a prolonged perusal, as he is by a book of aphorisms. The whole is enclosed in a comic or humorous frame. The author mixes his own personal history with the romance, by imagining it brought to him on a solitary island, by a dog, who swims across with the chapters suspended from his neck in a basket. The chapters are therefore called Hundpostagen (Dog- post days). The days that the dog-post fails, the author fills with essays and satires of his own. These interlocutory days are full of wit and wisdom, although, as interrupting the nar- rative, the reader is inclined to skip them. The description in Hesperus of the transfer of the Princess Agnola is that of a real occurrence the transfer of the Princess of Tuscany, as the bride of the Saxon Prince Maximilian, which took place in Hof, in 1793. And the portrait of the bridegroom, carried in a sedan chair, and stopping whenever the princess stopped, was an actual part of the ceremony. Richter here shows what tributes he could draw from real life, and what treasures, a youth, richer in incidents and experience, would have accumulated for his after years. CHAPTER XII. IUCHTER VISITS BAYREUTH THE JEW EMANUEL THE ORIGI- NAL OF CLOTILDE " SIEBENKAS " LETTER FROM SEPTIMUS FIXLEIN. A.D. 1794, ALTHOUGH, as already mentioned, the great hopes Kt - 31 - that Moritz had excited, of an immediate splendid fortune for oar Poet, were already disappointed, and he obtained only two hundred dollars for the four volumes of Hesperus, he had given up his school and returned to his mother's still humble dwelling ; but he found himself obliged to resort again to teaching, and received the young sisters of his friends as daily pupils in his own house. He says " Very little remained after dividing the two hundred dollars with my mother and brother; and I am yet compelled, like the bird, to learn to sing in a darkened cage." His next work seems to have grown out of the circum- stances of his present life, in which he sought to solve the Xerxes riddle, not to create new joys, but from the enchant- ment of fancy to bring out the infinite riches of the old. Quintus Fixlein is only an enlarged and more elaborate Wuz, in which the poet represents the small and contented joys of the Schoolmaster, increased beyond measure by rising a step higher in the scale of social life, and becoming a Pastor. The poet knew no situation more depressed than that of school teachers, in so far as a higher education made them more sen- sitive to the poverty and limitations of their actual life. In no situation in Germany, are the discouragements and deceptions LIFE OF JEAN PAl'L. 191 of life more apparent. At the same time he could attain the other aim of all his writings, to contend for the oppressed against the original causes of oppression, the institutions of the state and the privileges of birth, and so, in a double sense, be the advocate of the poor.* The pecuniary reward that Paul received for the Hespet*us was far the least of his compensations. After the publication of that work, letters poured in upon him from every side. Vogel, who had been estranged from him, renewed his friend- ship and his correspondence. Even those who had known him long, were inspired with new admiration. Otto, who had judged his former works with calm severity, which was indeed the foundation of his own character, was excited by this to the most glowing expression of deep and inward joy. The joyful sense of the approbation of his friends, and the consciousness that, in striving to embody his own high ideal, he had reached a higher point, though far below his aim, made the summer of the year 1794 the most precious he had yet enjoyed. The happiness of Richter was increased during the summer by a visit to Bayreuth. He was drawn there by his acquaint- ance with Emanuel, a Jewish merchant, whose genial and benevolent character attracted Richter's esteem. Emanuel had been, like Wordsworth's Matthew, in early life a travelling merchant to the different villages in the Fichtelgebirge, until, through his activity and extreme honesty, he had gained the confidence of every one, and became a wealthy banker, or what we call an estate broker. The knowledge of the world gained by such a life, the union of integrity and feeling, originality, and truth, acquired for him unlimited confidence, which was increased by a singularly noble and interesting exterior. His peculiar business opened to him an extensive correspondence, especially with accomplished women, in which all the bloom * As Quintus Fixlein is known to the public through Carlyle's admirable translation, it is unnecessary to enter into any analysis of one of the most simple of Jean Paul's works. 192 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. of his mind and heart was expressed. A sight of this corre- spondence had attracted Jean Paul to the writer. Emanuel met him with that reserve and self-respect which the higher natures among that oppressed people, the Jews, as- sume, from the notion that benevolence alone excited his in- terest. This, for some time, kept up a reserve between them, that ceased after the publication of Hesperus. Emanuel was delighted with the Oriental glow and richness of illustration in that work, and Bichter found in his new friend treasures of observation and experience, which he seized to enrich his future works.* For the first time in his life, Paul found himself in a study. furnished with articles of luxury and taste, in an elegant strc< t in the little city of Bayreuth, where ducal residences alter- nated with two-story houses of red sandstone, and the orna- mental fountains of princely castles were intermixed with the green blinds of village houses. What was his joyful astonish- ment to find, twelve whole hours\ from Hof, his own writings known and read! The friendly reception he met among the accomplished men of the city, contrasted as it was with the small value that was expressed for his poor family in Hof, gave him no doubt a pre- disposition for this city, and led to the resolution he afterwards adopted, after many changes, to make this the place of his future home. Jn Bayreuth, he had the double joy of finding himself appreciated, and, for the first time, becoming ac- quainted with an accomplished woman of high rank, the original from which he drew his Clotilde in Jletperns. Slu- * Emanuel's mind was richly furnished with the knowledge and images derived from Oriental poetry and philosophy ; and to Rich- ter, who from childhood had been fascinated with these subjects, he afforded, in addition, a treasure of observation and experience. t Slunde is used in Germany for distances : thus, " Es ist eine Slunde bis dahin," It is an /tour's walk, ir.eaiis about two English miles. Bayreuth was twenty-four miles from Hof. LIFE OF JFJ^N PAUL. . 193 had been described to him by the pen of a friend, that might have been " cut by the god of love himself," and she had also written to him, asking for his friendship and correspondence in return; and at the same time had warned him, that he must not rely on the description that had been given of her: for her portrait, both physical and moral, had been heightened by the colouring of love. Now, when he had seen the original, he wrote thus to Otto: "Touching the beautiful Clotilde. Sa- turday evening, as soon as I arrived, I seized a pen to invite myself to visit her at five o'clock. She sent a billet by the return of the servant, in which she turned the hands of my watch two hours back. ' We will both,' she said, ' go about three o'clock through the Hermitage.' (This was a princely garden in Bayreuth.) I crept then into the lower story of the Rutzensteenish house, and through beautiful rooms into a third, where she sat, half-concealed by a curtained and flowery win- dow, listening to two nightingales. Could I describe her, you would have a wholly new female character in your head, or rather in your heart. She is of a majestic height, is twenty- seven years old, and has a very slightly arched, but well- formed nose. A hal-shadowy reflection of rose-colour was drawn over her face, which departs a little from the female oval; with the most beautifully ennobled Berlin expression. In the beginning merely, she made with the head eight or nine and a half (I may err in the number) motions too many, but her window conversation with me was full of benevolence, decision, and generosity. When she sings, her two nightin- gales strike in, and altogether is as if one's heart must escape by the enchantment from the breast." Paul had also the satisfaction in Bayreuth of having his Hesperus read by the bedside of the old Lady Plotho, the patroness of his father, who was now on her death-bed, and who recalled the time when he used to stand at her breakfast table, and read the newspapers to her. After Paul's return from Bayreuth, he wrote to Ema- nuel: VOL. i. s 194 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. " July, 1795. " The day that I left Bayreuth, the longest day of the year, was my shortest and happiest. Since then, I hear no- thing of my friends. Are you then nightingales, that after St. John's-day are silent ? In Bayreuth, my moments were roses, and my hours polished brilliants; so much the more readily do these images arise, like buried pictures, and the intoxication of memory renews my thirst for the present joy- cup, and joy begets heimweh. " It is wonderful that men, in seasons of happiness, in youth, in beautiful places, in the fairest season of the year, incline more surely to the enthusiasm of longing; they think oftener of a future world, and more readily form pictures of death; while the opposite takes place in want, in ago, in Greenland, and in winter. Thus the best men are humble through happiness; pious, tender, thirsting for a higher happi- ness : misfortune makes them proud, severe, and full of earthly plans. With bad men it is often exactly the reverse. After praise, a man is modest and humble; when blamed, he asserts an opposing pride. Thus the tear of joy is a pearl of the first water, the mourning tear only of the second. I begin a ball with gaiety, and conclude it with melancholy. Prolonged sounds of music, long-continued dancing, the midnight starry heavens, soften, as it were, the heart, as melon-seeds are made to swell in sweet wine, and the first shoot from this seed is a weeping willow."* In the mean time, Richter's industry was unremitting. Be- fore the close of this year, 1796, the Blumen-Fmcht-und- Dornenstucke appeared.f This is a collection of pieces, one of which is the singular dream of the dead Christ, translated by Madame de Stael, that made Richter first known out of < ier- * I am too ignorant of horticulture to know whether this is truth or poetry TR. t Flower Fruit and Thorn pieces. LIKE OF JEAN PAUL. 195 many. The longest of the fruit-pieces is the history of the poors advocate Siebenkas, one of the most remarkable, and, at his time, the most personal, of all Jean Paul's works. Under the veil of fictitious characters, he describes his own transition from the everyday life of reality, to the higher ideal of life of poetry and imagination. This romance is remarkable also for a description of a Poppenshaw, or bird-shooting, so like that of Scott's, in Old Mortality, that if the German novel had been known at that time, we might almost imagine Scott had taken a hint from it. The actors in Richter's are a poor's advocate, a shoemaker, and a hairdresser; with these he has contrived to keep up an unflagging interest through more than a hundred pages. The character of Lenette in this work is said to have been drawn from Paul's mother. It represents a noble, but limited and uninstructed nature, in contention with all the little down- pressing circumstances of real life, and menaced with the grim spectre of actual Want. Nothing can be more true, and of more universal application, than Paul's view in this novel of the sufferings of an ill-assorted union, when there is neither vice nor crime, only an unequal standard of mind, and a defi- ciency of culture in one of the parties. The unhappy Lenette is incapable of understanding her gifted husband. Siebenkas, full of tenderness and all noble qualities, who has married her for her innocence and simplicity, is at length worn out - by her narrowness, obtuseness, and want of sympathy; and their mutual sufferings are rich in instruction for all married persons. It is impossible to present an analysis, or even an abstract, of this remarkable work. The Germans give it a philosophi- cal and poetical interpretation. They say that Jean Paul intended to represent Siebenkas as dying to the actual, to the everyday life of man; and in the reluctant and bleeding heart with which he tears himself from Lenette, is meant to be represented the great struggle of the soul to rise to a higher, an ideal life. 196 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. As the half visible author of Hesperus,* Paul had drawn upon himself the attention of all Germany; but now, in Sie- benkas, he represents his own and his mother's struggles with poverty in the poor apartment in Hof, and first appears with his whole and real name. The truth of his representations having their foundation in the actual experience of the writer, led irresistibly, in a new and surprising manner, to faith in himself; only he who had felt the want of outward blessings could describe them so faithfully, and only one, who, was pos- sessed of the temperament of joy, could rise so easily above the pressure of calamity. The breathing form of love that he u r avc to everything that came from his hands, was felt in every heart; and gratitude, as well as admiration, induced many readers to crave a personal acquaintance with him. From every side he received expressions of gratitude, which were as touching from their simplicity in some instances, as they were flattering from the distinction they conferred, in others. He received letters from poor country schoolmasters and pastors, the class of persons that he has described with such simplicity and naivete, begging him to lend or give a copy of some one of his works; and perhaps more welcome yet, one morning in May of this year, the postboy brought him a packet, containing fifty Prussian dollars and the following letter: " You should be poor, Herr Richter, you ! the millionaire in understanding as such are usually poor; and this is right, for the others write no books; and as your books give me sa- tisfaction, very great satisfaction, and nothing but satisfaction, I hold myself indebted to Herr Richter, and would give him a little proof that his readers are grateful. Many readers can- not show their gratitude, and that also is well, or Herr Richter would become rich, and write no more books " Your grateful and devoted, SEPTIMUS FIXLEIN." * In Hesperus he first signed his literary name, Jean Paul, with- out the Richter. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 197 The writer remained unknown until many years after, when a happy accident revealed him to Richter.* The next is a letter from Sophia La Roche, the grandmother, that Bettine has so beautifully made known to us in her cor- respondence with Gunderode : "It is impossible that the man whose susceptible soul. and richly thoughtful mind hovers over all the leaves of Hesperus, can take it ill if a good Frau thanks him for the agreeable hours she has enjoyed through that wonderful book; if she bless him, that with so wonderful a genius he is so good a son, so good a brother. Let a mother, who has educated three sons, and has lost, in his three-and-twentieth year, the noblest, the most beautifully blooming, congratulate his mother, that Jean Paul is her son and lives! " He will not take it ill, and my heart would yet say some- thing more that Hesperus, and the little that I have heard of its author, makes me think. * I tell you frankly that I wish to know more of you, for to me your appearance is full of truth and reverence. Heaven make you as happy as it has made you precious to others; and when you read or hear my name, remember to say, ' That lady is my friend.' " SOPHIA LA ROCHE." * It was the venerable Gleim, of whom see Appendix, No. II. CHAPTER XIII. LETTERS FROM WEIMAR LETTER FROM MADAM VON KALB RICHTER PREPARES TO GO TO WEIMAR. A D. 1796 ^ E come now to tnat period in tne life of Richter set. 33. wnen the silk and golden threads of love began to be woven thickly in his web of life; when, borne in triumph by eccentric and distinguished women, although with chains of flowers, he often felt the concealed thorns pierce his heart. The publication of his last works, Hesperus, Quintv^ Fi.rlein, and the Flower Fruit and Thorn pieces, drew upon him the attention of women in the higher ranks of life, who were not only penetrated with his peculiarities as a writer, but began to manifest for him a deep personal, and more than friendly interest. The reader must recollect Paul's easily-kindled ima- gination, the sentiment, amounting almost to reverence, with which he regarded women, his separation from the more elevated circles of social life, and the disappointment of his former hopes, to understand the excitement, the fullness of joy with which he met this new manifestation of the interest his writings had produced. Upon the first of March of this year, he received from Weimar the following letter, which bore the signature of a noble lady : " During the last months your works have been made known to us in Weimar. They excited attention, and to many have they been most welcome. To me they gave the LIFE OF JEAN' PAUL. 199 most agreeable entertainment, and I have to thank you for some of the sweetest hours of the past, whieh I willingly wooed to linger, while the images of your fancy, like lovely phantoms from the realms of spirits, wandered before my mind. Often was I so deeply moved by the charm and riches of your thoughts, that overpowered my gratitude, I would seize the pen to express it to you! But how insignificant would be such a token from one unknown to you! In a happy hour I heard your praises from men that you have long known and revered, and the wish to write was again ex- cited. Now, it is not the solitary flower of my own admi- ration that I send yon, but an unfading wreath, which the applause of Wieland and Herder have woven for you. Wie- land has extracted much from Hesperus and Fixlein for his Museum. He calls you 'our Yorick, our Rabelais the purest spirit.' He discovers in you the highest flights of fancy, the richest humour, that often displays itself in the most surprising, the most agreeable turns. " All this he recognises with joy in your writings. . . . You will find here yet many more friends, whose names I must mention to you. Herr Yon Knebel, the translator of Propertius, Herr Von Einsiedel, Herr Yon Kalb; your writings belong to their most agreeable reading, and long have orna- mented their desks. Yes, we hope, through your susceptibi- lity for knowledge of the world and of men, and this rare talent for delicate individuality, to receive many works from your pen. Farewell! Be happy through the enjoyment of nature, and inspired through the creations of art, and continue to make us acquainted with ideals, that honour the poet and elevate the reader." Richter is represented like one struck by an electrical shock upon the reception of this letter. To be known and read where Goethe, Schiller, Wieland where Herder's ele- vated spirit shed an immediate influence upon all surrounding minds! This spot, that had lain in distant shadow, like an enchanted world before his longing fancy ! 200 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. He immediately hastened to Bayreuth, where a sister of the noble letter - writer, a young, amiable, and spiritual woman, lived with her husband. I have hesitated whether to give to the English reader the correspondence of Jean Paul with this lady, Charlotte Vou Kalb, who entered so deeply and powerfully into his life and poetry, and is said to be the original from which he drew his Linda, in the Titan. Sentiment, either in love or friendship, is like those deli- cate perfumes, so delicious when breathed from the plant as it grows in the sun and air of its native home; translated, it resembles the same perfume distilled and mixed with foreign substances, which, transported from its native sun and ah-, be- becomes faint or nauseous. We must remember also, that the German language is full of expressions of tenderness that are wholly untranslatable; their domestic terms of endearment are like caresses, and their du and their Ja-tvort, to use an expression of Paul's. " are as if they laid a rose in your hand." Although much relating to this lady is, to us, involved in mys- tery, no one among his correspondents excites a deeper interest. She appears to have belonged to the Court of the Duchess Amelia, as she went with the Court to the country. She says in one of her letters, that she is older than Richter, and that she had wept the loss of two children. Her letters diseluse the most zealous and disinterested friendship, and their beauty and tenderness must have kindled the warmest attachment in a heart like Richter's, had there not been to him a fatal objection she was married, and unhappily married. Otto looked from the first upon this correspondence with coldness and alarm, and would have prevented his friend from going to Weimar. But at the same time Paul received other flattering letters; one from Frederick Von Oerthel,* expressing * Oerthel was a literary character in Weimar, bearing the same name, but not related to the friend of his youth. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 201 a glowing reverence for him, which his youth and inexperience would not allow him to conceal. The demand that Herder had made for a new poet, to be heard first, and before all, as a word from the heart, to the heart of man a sound of the universal voice of humanity, an echo of the mighty spirit of the age seemed to be answered in Richter. Still he was held back by his own timidity, or by Otto's anxiety, and answered the letter of his noble correspondent : of which I give an extract: . . . " Now that 1 know women so well, and that their masks are only veils that heighten their intellectual beauty as much as they guard it now that I see better than a hundred others, that the female heart is as poetic and ideal as the head, and that it has little more to give to the earth than sighs and wishes; that their May of life, instead of being, like ours, as beautiful as that of France, is like a German May, cold and frosty; that, like the nightingale, they must collect the wool from thorns, from which, in a thorny hedge, they must pre- pare their nest what should a poet do more with the pen, than offer them, not pitiful German flattery, but morning dreams and gentler sighs than they can extract from life? If I spread, for one only, a rainbow over the cloudy morning of life if for one heart only I have drawn the angel of love from his cloudy Parnassus to bear away the angel of death ! I have lived and written enough." Another pressing letter came from his correspondent. " Two- thirds of the spring is gone, as I see by the almanac. The trees are yet unleaved in the beautiful park, the nightingales have not yet sung you are not yet here! All signs of spring- are absent which waits for the other? They may come with all their charms; the beautiful foliage, the perfume of the flowers, the love-songs of the birds, the gentle fanning of the spring breezes but for your friends they will be nothing, if you do not appear also. You are the soul and spirit of our union; we are rich only in the esteem, admiration, and hope 202 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. that your writings excite; we know who are our friends by their admiration of you, and it is the first word of our greet- ing when we meet, Has not Richter yet come?" He hesitated no longer. Like a travelling apprentice, he took his pack and staff, and turned his face towards the Mecca of his hopes, not as a merely modest, but as a hum- ble pilgrim. For twelve years he had looked, longingly, Irom his solitary Fichtelgebirge, to this Paradise of exalted men, tender and accomplished women, love and glory, and all that in a poet's golden dream awaited him. CHAPTER XIV. FIRST VISIT IN WEIMAR LETTERS FROM WEIMAR GOETHE HERDER SCHILLER WIELAXD. IT i.-j well known, that at the time Jean Paul entered A D 1796 the literary circles of Weimar and its filial dependent *>* 3a - Jena, the utmost harmony did not prevail among the great spirits of the age. Goethe and Schiller were at the head of what might be called the Conservative party in literature, at least, until after the publication of William Tell. Herder, although he was fettered by holding an office at Court,* was opposed to them, both as a patriot and a philosopher. When Richter and his works appeared, he was received with joy and outstretched arms, both by Herder and Wieland; but from different points of view by Wieland as a poet, by Herder as a man. The first was charmed by his glowing descriptions of nature, and his Sterne-like humour; the last by his purity of heart, and the deep religious feelings of the Poet's soul; and both, through the manly independence and love of freedom that breathed through every line from his pen. The absence in his works of all established rules of art, which had so offended Goethe, was forgiven by men, one of whom had read Tristram Shandy eighty times ; and the other carried his indif- ference to forms of art so far, as to condemn all rhyme. In relation to Jean Paul, Goethe and Schiller stood opposed to both Herder and Wieland. Goethe, who was present in * Herder was Court Chaplain to the Duchess Amelia. 204 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Weimar, could not be ignorant of the influence which both these authors exerted upon the cultivated men and accomplished women there. He knew also, for he had experienced it in his own case, how important a help the enthusiasm of women is in reaching the higher and more dazzling elevations of fame; but his whole correspondence with Schiller, who was at this time living at Jena, betrays his contempt for Richtor and his writings. But with what feelings of reverence was Richter now ap- proaching these men, who, from his earliest age, he had looked to as shining worlds in the heaven of literature! He would see Herder face to face perhaps receive from him a word of sympathy! He would approach still nearer to the unknown writer of those flattering letters, to whom his imagination had lent every enchantment; but his unaffected and genuine humi- lity prevented him from forming even a faint idea of the enthu- siasm with which he was received iu Weimar. Immediately upon his arrival, he visited his unknown cor- respondent, Madam von Kalb, and through her was his pre- sence made known to the distinguished literary characters of the day. All wanted to see the wonderful man. The men received him with outstretched hands the women with beating hearts. They vied with each other in attentions to him; even the Duchess Amelia, who had given orders that they should immediately inform her of his arrival, flattered him by many expressions of sympathy and admiration. Herr von Oerthel. brother of his friend and correspondent in Leipsic, took him as a guest to his house, and supplied all those little domestic attentions so grateful to a stranger. Whoever had read his books wished to be introduced to him, and whoever saw and heard him was compelled to love him. Contrary to the fashion of the time, he had persevered in the custom of wearing his throat open ; and his hair preserved its natural curl around his head, and fell in thin locks upon his neck; in short, he dr when powder and perriwigs were worn, as gentlemen dress at the present day. Although strongly and well built, he was LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 205 thin, and his pale complexion had a tinge of yellow; his eye only revealed all the enchantment of a higher world, and kindled at every thought. His conversation, like his writings, was fresh and original; his voice musical and well-toned, but tender, and its Voightlandish accent had peculiar charms for iltivated inhabitants of Weimar. Added to this, the simplicity of his nature, the truth and warmth of his emotions, hi.s deep-grounded faith in humanity, which was to him a sacred religious belief, in a place where so many complaints were uttered over a concealed egotism, and an unconcealed infidelity, and his appearance must have been like a day of sunshine in a dark and rainy season. Madam von Kalb did not disappoint the expectations of Richter. Her imposing exterior, the glance from her large dark eyes, the strength and elegance of her language, the ex- alted sentiments by which she made herself known as the pupil of Herder, the fire of her emotions, that might consume as well as warm, marked the first impression as very powerful, and gave her the uame by which he was accustomed afterwards to distinguish her, the Titanade, as the original of his Linda, in the Titan. To her, Richter was more even than with all her enthusia>m she had dared to imagine him; and from her previously kindled mind resulted the purest warmth of friendship and good-will. HL- was furnished with every gift that the most excited imagi- nation could desire, and filled the ideal that had hovered before her enchanted fancy. Generally, fancy is employed to heighten the real impression on the heart; but in this case, on the con- trary, the heart followed the fancy, and loved where that had idolized. She was daily with him, sent him books and news- papers, and procured for him the smallest conveniences with the same solicitude that she provided the highest enjoyments of life. The day of his arrival she introduced him to Knebel. On their way, they met Einsiedel, and they were no sooner seated in Knebel's apartment than Herder, his wife, and their two boys entered. The reader will recollect the correspon- VOL. I. T 206 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. dence Jean Paul had already had with Caroline Herder; as her husband and Richter met, they could neither of them speak for joy, and Knebel's eyes were also moist. They passed the evening together, and were quickly the most confidential friends. Herder soon after, in writing to Jacobi, said " Heaven has sent me a treasure in Richter that I neither deserved nor ex- pected. Every time that we are together he opens anew the treasures that the three wise men brought, and the star goes always before him. I can only say, that he is all heart, all soul; an harmonious tone in the great golden harp of huma- nity, in which there are so many cracked, so many discordant strings." This little circle passed every evening together, and the con- fidential supper-table, at which Caroline Herder, rich in heart and intellect, presided, was the central point of their union. To Jean Paul every intellectual and accomplished woman was the sun that ripened the fruit of his intellect, and imparted the beautiful colours to the flowers of his fancy; and the presence of Madam von Kalb, who had completely captivated him by the powerful enchantment of her -character, heightened the charm of these reunions. Wieland was not in Weimar at this first visit; but from his distant Alp home, where he now was, he sent him the most cordial greeting. Jean Paul looked forward with much delight to his introduction to Gcethe and Schiller. Goethe now dwelt iu his own house in Weimar, and Schiller in Jena. They had expressed different, but depreciating opinions, about Richter's works.* Richter's unbounded reverence for Goethe had al- ready been expressed by sending him his Quintus Fixlein and Hesperus, and there was not a single work of Goethe's that he had not read and copied with infinite zeal. With this dispo- * I cannot pretend to understand the literary or political dissen- sions of the time. But no one can read the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller without observing the disparaging remarks of Goethe upon Jean Paul and his works. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 207 sition he came to Weimar. The peculiar reserve of Goethe, which perhaps arose from his disposition to hold all subjects at an impartial distance, and to observe them from an artistical point of view, drew upon him, among his acquaintance, the reproach of coldness, and this judgment had some influence upon the disposition with which Richter approached him. Illness and domestic trouble prevented Schiller from welcoming Jean Paul with much cordiality, when he visited him at Jena. Far different was it with Herder. Striving in different paths for the highest point to which humanity can reach, there is, in minds like his and Richter's, a predestined friendship, " a clasping of souls before the hand is reached or met, and it endures from the first moment to the last." The reception that the Duchess Amelia gave to Richter was of peculiar value to him. When she withdrew to the country retirement of Tieffurth, where she collected around her a circle of distinguished men and accomplished women, among whom were his friend Madam von Kalb and the Herders, Richter was invited in the most cordial manner to join them; and here they formed a mutual high esteem for each other, to which the Princess herself gave the name of friendship. This senti- ment she extended afterwards to his family, when she became godmother to his first child.* * This was the Dowager Duchess Amelia, daughter and sister of the Dukes of Brunswick. This remarkable woman was the presiding spirit of the Court of Weimar for half a century. Mar- ried in her seventeenth year, she Avas left a widow in her nine- teenth. She appointed Wieland governor to her son, and drew around her a circle of learned and accomplished men. Her palace at Weimar, her country houses at Tieffurth and Ettersburg, never ceased to be the rendezvous of literary men and travellers of merit. A tour in Italy, which she made in company with Goethe, height- ened her taste for the arts. From her glowing descriptions of Italy, Jean Paul derived the knowledge of that country, so ex- quisitely employed in Titan. The invasion of her country by Buonaparte broke her heart. She died in 1806, a few months after. 208 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. It has been said, that Jean Paul had no knowledge of Courts, and that his princesses were drawn from imagination ; but here and afterwards he was collecting materials for his great work, the Titan, and the Court of the Duchess Amelia imparted a deeper and richer colouring to the beings of his imagination. But Richter must speak for himself; the reader must not be deprived of that mixture of gratified self-complacency, child- like simplicity, and warm-hearted confidence, with which he pours into the ear and heart of Otto the delightful incidents of his three happy weeks in Weimar. " Weimar, June 12, 1796. " God saw yesterday upon his earth a happy mortal, and that was I. Ah, I was so happy, that I thought of Nemo.- is, and Herder consoled me with the Deus averruncus. I cannot put off writing till I can send a letter. I must say something. Yesterday I went at about eleven o'clock, as I had missed two of her billets, to Caroline (she is sister to the Bayreuther, and, I believe also, mine). I had in my note asked for a soli- tary minute, a tte-a-tete. She has two great things great eyes, such as I never saw before, and a great soul. She speaks exactly as Herder writes in his letters upon humanity. She is strong, full, and her face I would I could describe it. Three quarters of the time she smiles, but half only from nervous irri- tability, and one quarter she is serious, when she raises her heavenly eyelids, as clouds when they alternately conceal and reveal the moon (I do not trouble myself about the accuracy of my expressions). ' You are a wonderful man,' she said to me, thirty times. Ah, here are women ! and I have hern all for my friends; the whole Court, even to the Duke, reads me! I dine for reasons, not with Madam von Kalb. She informed Knebel of my arrival (he is chamberlain to the Duchess); at three o'clock I went again, and Knebel was thore.* lie is a * Knebel was tutor to the second prince, Constantine. After the early death of his pupil, lie received a pension for life. He LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 209 courtier, as to the exterior, bat so much warmth and knowledge, and so simple! All my male acquaintance here (I would it were not these alone) meet with a cordial embrace. There is none of the pitiful affectation of Hof ; none of the fear of being out of fashion. I wish I had brought my green gown, or even the blue short coat would be allowed. Towards five o'clock, we all three went to Knebel's garden; on the way, Einsiedel* met us, who took me immediately by the hand, but he could say only three words, as he must follow the Duchess to the comedy. After some moments, Knebel said, ' How gloriously it all happens; here comes Herder, his wife, and the two chil- dren.' We went to meet him, and under the free heaven I threw myself into his arms. I could scarcely speak for joy, and he could not embrace me enough. As I looked around, Knebel's eyes were also moist. With Herder I am now as familiar as with you. He will write to me when I return, and when he journeys through Hof with his wife, who loves me heartily (she is a modification of von Kalb), they will visit me. I wish it were possible to tell you all without blushing. He praises all my works, even the Greenland Lawsuits. He looks as noble, but yet not exactly as I thought, but speaks as he writes. He says, ' Whenever he reads the Hesperus, he is for two days unfit for business.' " As we all sat together, I said, ' If only my Otto were here, and heard us !' Herder loves satire infinitely, and has twice as remained in Weimar, an ornament of the circle which made that little Court the resort of the intellect and genius of Europe ; a friend of Wieland, and Herder, and Jean Paul ; living in philosophical serenity in his little garden, a stranger to artificial -wants, a con- tented Sage of the school of Aristippus. He died in 1834, at the age of 90. Mas. AUSTIX. * Herr von Einsiedel united the most amiable and agreeable character with engaging exterior and manners ; qualities that were surpassed by the integrity and kindness of his heart. He was chamberlain to the Duchess Dowager Amelia. He wrote several pretty tales. MRS. AUSTIN. T 2 210 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. much irony as seriousness in his conversation. He asked me the occasion of many places in my books, and gave me oppres- sive praise. Your Paul ventured sometimes to speak, although at intervals, in the five hours the evening lasted. " They all said that I received scandalous payment; that for the Meister and Horen the booksellers gave five louis-d'ors a sheet; that I was read everywhere in Germany, and that in Leipsic all the booksellers received commissions for me. Wie- land had read me three times, and Herder said Gleim continued to read all day and all night. He spoke of Kant's system with the highest degree of displeasure. Of his own works Herder spoke so slightingly, that it cut me to the heart to hear him, so that I had scarcely the courage to praise him. ' What I erase,' said he, ' is the best, as I dare not write with freedom.' " In the evening we supped with the Kalb. They have the most liberal manner of thinking. I made as many satires as at Hof in short, I was as unrestrained and as lively as I am with you. By heaven! I have become courageous, and could trust myself to talk with twenty gentlemen, and yet more, with the Burgomaster and all his kindred. I have not told you one third part, but the bitterest drop, Otto, swims in my Heidelberg cup of joy. What Jean Paul wins, humanity loses in his eyes. Ah! my ideal of great men! All my acquaintance with them only increases the value of my beloved brother Otto." " June 17. " The late date will inform you of my joy-intoxicated life. I have lived twenty years in Weimar in a few days. I have wholly incomprehensible, unheard of, but not disagreeable things to tell you but to you alone. I see no possibility of sending you more than a duodecimo of my universal history. I shall need as many days as I now should employ pages, to tell you only this division of my life. I am happy, Otto, wholly happy! not merely beyond all expectation, but beyond all description, and I want nothing in the whole world but you! only you! " I went yesterday with Caroline to visit the Duchess- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 211 mother at Tieffiirth, and I shall dine with her next time. The Dachess is worthy of her Wieland and her beautiful Tieffurth. Of our conversation I will tell you verbally; Madam von Kalb is in correspondence with all the magnates in Germany, and in connexion with all in Weimar, and I could see everybody that I wished at her house, but we both remain every evening alone together. She is a woman like none; with an all-powerful heart, incomparable firmness in short, a Waldemarin.* " On the second day I threw away my foolish prejudices in favour of great authors. They are like other people. Here, every one knows that they are like the earth, that looks from a distance, from heaven, like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it, it is found to be made of boue cle Paris (Paris mud). An opinion concerning Herder, Wieland, or Goethe, is as much contested as any other. Who would believe that the three watch-towers of our literature avoid and dislike each other! 1 will never again bend myself anxiously before any great man, only before the vtrtu&us. Under this impression, I went timidly to meet Goethe. Every one had described him as cold to every- thing upon the earth. Madam von Kalb said, he no longer admires anything, not even himself. Every word is ice ! Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart. Therefore I asked Knebel to petrify or encrust me by some mineral spring, that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil. Madam von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from curio- sity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only one in Wiemar in the Italian style with such steps! A Pantheon full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast! At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ' The French are drawing towards Paris,' said Knebel. 'Hm!' said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But at last, the conversation led from the * See the novel of Waldemar, by Jacobi. 212 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. campaign, to art, publications, etc., and Goethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder's, but sharp-toned, penetrating, and calm. At last, he read, that is, he played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice, for I said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft whispering rain-drops. There is nothing like it. " They contend here, whether Flachsenfingen,* on account of its location, is a sketch of Vienna or Manheim. Widaad, who takes it all for sport, said, 'Flachsenjingen lies very much scat- tered about Germany.' I send you, without shame, these signs of canonization that they draw around my bald pate, that you may relate what you please to our friends in Hof. I tell you all, for you have esteemed me too much, but do not disgust with the long story in Hof, where they have so often done me injustice, that if you were not there, brother, I would remain here. " My good Caroline has taken care for all my needs. Ah, you do not yet know that I lodge with Oerthel in a more ele- gant apartment than I ever had in my life. On Wednesday I came to his house, near the trees of the heavenly park. I have two chambers, better furnished than any in the fashionable journal; ready prepared letter covers; the newspaper, of which I enclose one as a proof; lights in both chambers. In short, every, even the smallest, thing is cared for, and I and he live like brothers. We laugh ourselves dead at each other's pecu- liarities. I sat yesterday with his mother and sister, who created two heavens for my two ears, with their singing and * The location of Hesperus. LIFE OF JEAX PAUL. 213 playing; and in the afternoon I was introduced for the first time to a circle of beautiful girls. There is not in Paris so much freedom from gene as here. You introduce no one ; there is no kissing of hands; you merely make a silent bow; you say nothing before or after dinner. This is the fashion of the world, that country people think as stiff and starched as their neckbands. What one might complain of here, is painted egotism, and nnpainted scepticism; for this reason, a soul that has neither, is like a summer's day. " Unite the Fantasie and Hermitage * in one park, and it will give you no idea of the simple majesty of this. It is a IfundeVs Alexander's Feast, and Tieffurth is an adagio. The devil is in me, but I cannot get away. I count the days no longer. Ah, I ain so happy, so happy ! as you alone deserve to be! . . . " I went yesterday to see the stony Schiller, from whom, as from a precipice, all strangers spring back. His form is worn, severely powerful, but angular. He is full of sharp-cutting power, but without love. His conversation is nearly as excel- lent a.s his writings. As I brought a letter from Goethe, he was unusually pleasant; he would make me a fellow-contri- butor to the Horen (a periodical), and would give me a natu- ralization act in Jena." Notwithstanding this courtesy, Richter did not repeat his visit to Schiller, and his intimate union with Herder excluded all hope of his being drawn to the party of Goethe. The latter wrote to Schiller, " I am glad you have seen Richter. His love of truth and his wish for self-improvement have prepossessed me in his favour; but the social man is a sort of theoretical man, and I doubt if Richter will ever approach us in a practi- cal way, although in theory he seems to have some pretensions to belong to us." They were never friends. Richter could * The Fantasie and Hermitage were public walks and gardens inHof. 214 LIFE OF JEAN PAVL. not conceal his disappointment at the character of Goethe's latter poetical works, and soon after his return to Hof he wrote to Knebel in relation to one of them, " that in such stormy times we needed a Tyrtaeus rather than a Propertius." The remark reached Goethe's ears; and Goethe, usually so indif- ferent to censure or criticism, showed himself deeply suscepti- ble and offended at this so-called " manifestation of arrogance in Herr Richter." CHAPTER XV. MADAM VON KALB LETTERS CLOSE OF RICHTER's INTIMACY WITH MADAM VON KALB. IT would, perhaps, have been excusable, if the humble author, who left his home with his pack, on foot, and found himself in less than a week a courted guest at the table of princes, invited and caressed by the most accomplished men, and the most beautiful women, had been seized with a little giddiness. But his principal danger arose from his intimacy with Madam von Kalb. She was somewhat older than himself, and at that age when an accomplished woman can exercise the utmost power over the mind of an imaginative man. She was living in an unhappy union or rather disunion, for they were rarely together with a husband much her inferior, and at a time when revolutionary ideas in domestic manners had infected Germany, almost as much as Paris itself. A daily exchange of notes took place between Madam von Kalb and Richter. The morning after his arrival in Weimar, she wrote " Have you slept well ? Friendship has prepared a home for you, and I am indeed glad that you are no longer in a gasthof (inn). Ah! are we not always in inns and pay- houses, where everything is done for us from interested motives, that kills all heart? You have told me that you could not live where they did not sympathize with you as a human being. I understand you, among the good we are good, among the loving happy. Write me the very moment that you will come to me, that I may not wait. All waiting destroys me; 216 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. I would rather suffer pain of body than of soul that of waiting. I have much to tell you of the Duchess; 2d, that I must read your last letter to Otto; 3d, that I am jealous, &c. ; 4th, that Herr von Ocrthel shall be my guest to-day if it is agreeable to him; and pray him to say to his sister that she must come in the afternoon. I believe they will not allow you to leave them to-day; but /will let you, and all is with me like the laws of nature life and death. Life, and your CHARLOTTE." Paul answered, with his longing desire to meet again. The next morning Madam von Kalb sent the following note : " I awoke this morning; I awoke about dawn; as soon as I could distinguish the colours around, I longed for your answer. But I could write before it came. Ah! my God, there was your billet! But for God's sake do not show yourself to others as you do to me, or all who understand you, will die for you. . . . You are as if in an apartment of glass, from which you can overlook all with the power of your intel- lect; but we we are no glass, so smooth and cold. None! none! The soul loves an ideal representation; the heart an ideal man, and would appropriate him. "To-morrow you will go with Bottiger to the theatre, to Herder, to Einsiedel. All the world will have him all the world? No! all shall not have him' or I shall die! I shall be destroyed. Then can they have him! How often I have been wounded ! how often ! Ah, only the most refined refresh- ment for the soul, the purest, the warmest enjoyment, can again renew and freshen niy existence ! " * Richter and his devoted friend continued to write to each other every day during the three weeks he remained at Weimar. The notes that are preserved are upon the passing events of the time, and could only be interesting to one * I give only extracts from these billets. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 217 intimately acquainted with the spirit of the age, and the emi- nent characters in Weimar. The influence of Madam von Kalb upon Richter was happier for his works than for himself. He was indebted to her for that knowledge of more powerful female characters, which he has displayed in his Titan; and he seems to have been impa- tient to hasten back to his solitude, that he might treasure his impressions in his book. The first letter, after he left Weimar, was from Madam von Kalb. " To-day are four weeks since you [came to Weimar, and what I so long expected is finished. Finished? Ah, no! If I never see you again, yet I shall know where to find the being to whom I can impart my most secret thoughts and sentiments. That which, like the ephemera, existed only with the sun, and in the evening was gone, holds now a second and longer life; and I can say to those who misunderstand and correct me, to me also the treasure of his mind is confidentially imparted. " On Monday evening we were, as I have already written to you, at Herr von Knebel's. I spoke little, and yet too much. There are very few men that, when I talk with them, elevate and improve my spiritual nature; and with these it is better that I should not speak; and by others I cannot make myself understood. Knebcl talked much of annihilation. " I came to Jena in the middle of the week, to visit Schiller, who gave me his poem for you. I believe it has wounded him that you did not visit him again. I have yet received no letter from you, and to-day is Monday, the llth. Say many beau- tiful things from me to Otto. Farewell! How often have I thought of you how often ! for to you I can say all that I think, and even my anticipations will be like certainty. Farewell ! how will be the first letter I shall receive from you?" Paul had waited eight days. How was his answer to this letter: " Time has crept over the last eight days with cold, wet wings, without one swift feather. I cannot forget my VOL. i. u 218 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. friend, I cannot do without her; I cannot bear that a heart I would hold as my own should be melted without individual form, into the whole transparent mass of the public heart. . . " Nothing makes me so indulgent and mild as a fault. I am not accustomed to have my inmost soul wounded, therefore its bleeding imparts a new and more tender life. Distance consecrates the soul, and warms the heart anew. If my eye should again sink into thine, if I should again dare to shed tears in your presence, yet our hearts and souls shall remain unveiled to each other. " Upon your birth-day I will ascend a high mountain, and looking upon the sun that sinks down in the direction of your plain, I will think of your life. Look you at the same moment upon this glowing, sinking orb, and be certain that 1 am think- ing of you, that I count the clouds of your shadowed life, and weep anew for all your deep sorrows. I will pray when I think of your heart, so crushed as if it had been thrown from rock to rock in the past. 0, good Destiny! will I pray, give this weary soul a tender, green repose ; rend not asunder again the hardly yet united parts of her wounded heart. Give her calm- ness of soul, and a gentle life's course, accompanied by conge- nial beings, and rest rest! Oh, I shall be eloquent on your birth-day, and my tongue shall stream as my eyes, and overflow with wishes; and when I am silent, and sink down with pant- ing heart upon your beloved hand, my heart will be fuller, not lighter. " R." It appears from this letter, that Richter felt for this lady the most profound pity, as well as the more enthusiastic sentiment of admiration; but he had the strength of mind to leave her and to resist what has been so often fatal to genius of the highest order the seducing fascinations of rank and wealth, in the midst of intellectual refinement and luxury. He re- turned to his poor home, and to his narrow-minded mother, but rich in new ideas and materials for his great work. He was followed by so many letters of admiration and in- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 219 terest, that the wish, expressed earlier, that all the world would correspond with him, seemed to be almost literally fulfilling. The individuality of character is so strong in the works of Jean Paul, that every reader feels as if they were written ex- pressly for him, and wishes to thank the author, as if for a personal favour. Among the letters that touched him most deeply, was one from a Madam Fisher, who told him she had sent her copy of Hesperus to the state prisoners in the fortress of Spandau; and described, in lively colours, the consolation they had derived from it. The same lady, with her husband, visited his mother's hou.se, with the hope of seeing him, while he was absent at Bayreuth; and we need no longer blush for the American habit of pilfering relics, when we learn, that this enthusiastic pair secreted and carried away from Paul's writing-table his worn-out pens. Another letter is from the pastor of Anhalt-Zerbst, enclosing a letter, and a purse beautifully netted with gold thread, from a lady who wished to remain unknown. The unknown was afterwards discovered to be the Princess Anhalt-Zerbst. Paul's answer is too characteristic to be omitted. " May some good genius open the cloud through which your hand only, although full of gifts, has been reached to me, and show me the concealed angel. Your sex and your worth predict to me the common fate of a tender exotic be- longing to a warmer climate, whose root and stem are planted in the winter of reality, and whose beautiful flower only the forcing-house of Poetry can bring to blossom. Is it so? Then only the wish remains, that all your blossoms may find their spring all your fruit its sun. . . . The inward nature finds all that it longs for in hope and virtue; and if it seeks more in the present, and in reality, it finds only wounds.'' . . Richter was aware that a strenuous industry was necessary to banish that longing for "Weimar that was beating at the bottom of his heart, and that was kept intensely alive by his letters from Madam von Kalb. But there was a voice of 220 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. warning, as well as of wooing, in these letters. She wrote to him in November of this year, 1796: " It is well that you not only come in a short time, but that we should decide upon your residence here. The Herders' life is turned within themselves, and become altogether recluse; but with what joy will they admit you! Your residence will bring them new refreshment. Wiehmd will rejoice, and there are many others. I think of the spring like a bird that is then to be released from prison. Herder, "Wieland, Knebel, Kin- siedel, and my Littleness, will form your society. What need you more? A dwelling? That your friends will furnish you; they can do it without trouble. Yes, you can have a house already furnished, either Knebel's dwelling in the market, or his garden-house. For your coffee, the waiter will furnish it; and if you will dine at home, as the food from a restaurateur's, if long continued, would injure your health, you will permit me the pleasure of sending you your dinner. I have thought it all out; and even if you pay for your house, I can promise you that three months will not cost you more than ten rix- dollars. If at present you are without money, your friends here can lend you some hundreds of dollars. And what if it were for ever ! Of what use is our trumpery, if our friends cannot enjoy it with us? I despise those that are wooed by princes and pensions, but I despise those much more who have not the heart to take anything from a friend. " I pray you go to no Court, or the like. Hold yourself high, and avoid all situations of the kind. Man is oppressed there, and learns that all is empty, and at last repents. Princes esteem only those who can do without them. But / do not, therefore, esteem those who make satires upon Courts, for it is not possible that it can be otherwise What have I yet to say? Ah, not much. Be wise as Minerva, and happy as Apollo! Do not smile you smile too beautifully! The tones that your spirit yields are sweeter without words than the sounds of the harmonica." To this truly feminine letter, Richter ansAvered : . . . . LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 221 " Your letter brought your sofa and our evening hours into my apartment May into December! It is right, perhaps, that a poor friend should be as rich as his richer, while both have but one heart and one purse; but the friend should divide his foead only, but not the ornaments of his table, with his poorer friend. I might indeed borrow money for my fast days, but not for my festival joys." .... At the contusion of the preface to the new edition of Quiiitus Fixlein, Eichter inserted a species of myth, called the Mondfin- sterness, which his biographer asserts had direct reference to Madam von Kalb. He expresses very fully his opinions and feelings upon female purity, and his abhorrence of all but the most legitimate unions; and considers every marriage in which the purest love fails on either side, as no better than a work of seduction. Richter sent the preface in manuscript to Charlotte, and after waiting some weeks, she answered in a way to shock and dis- please him. Madam von Kalb appears to have been deeply tinged with the modern French, and perhaps German aesthetic doctrine, that as all purity is from within, the external relations of life are of little consequence in a moral point of view. This is so much the more dangerous, as it is an effort to conceal from oneself that want of elevation in which nature conspires to de- ceive one. She avowed the opinion, so humiliating to a woman, that nature should suffer no restraint. She says in her answer, " that religion upon the earth is nothing but the unfolding and elevation of all our powers, and the disposition that our nature has received ; that the creature should suffer no restraint, and that love needs no laws." Richter was shocked, and henceforth an enstrangement took place between him and his friend.* At the same time with the above letter, Madam von Kalb * See Appendix, No. III. u2 222 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. sent Richter the first number of the Musen Alnunnn; a perio- dical conducted by Schiller, which had served to increase the discord between the ruling spirits of the age; Herder had wholly withdrawn into himself. This strengthened Richter's decision to remain at home with his mother, working with un- exampled activity upon the new editions of his Hesperus and Quintus Fixlein, and the days that the great wa.sh took place visiting his old friends at Arzburg, Schwarzenbach, &c., and returning only late at night, when he always found his poor watchful mother sitting, after her hard day's work, at the wheel, by the glimmering light of a poor fire. APPENDIX. I. OF Riehter's " Bon-mot Anthology," a rich collection of the re- marks of his seven pupils, only a small extract can be given. Of these, Richter says he has written them down, from many others, without adding to, or taking a word from them : The ages of the children were : Leo Vogel, 15 years ; George Cloter, 11; Carl Volkel, 11 ; Samuel Cloter, 10 ; Wilhelmine, 9 ; Fritz Cloter, 7 ; Emilie, 7. Wilhelmine. Men without colour are like diamonds without colour, the most beautiful. Fritz asks : Why God, who forsees that men will be wicked, yet gives them good things ? Wilhelmine. The day with the sun is like the giant Polyphe- mus, who had only one great eye. The same. In our school it is like a Quaker meeting, where all may speak. Leo. Life is a clock, that is wound up and then runs down and George added, and in Heaven is again wound up. Leo. Abraham, at the sacrifice of Isaac, was like the Carthage- mans, who sacrificed their children to Moloch or Saturn, Wilhelminc. God, alone, is a soul without a body ; and we, that is our souls, do not come into the grave, but into the body ; and Carl. God is the soul of the earth, and moves it, and the body is the grave of the soul. Wilhelminc. The countenance changes colour like the chame- leon, from fear and anger. Samuel. Men are, like electricity, attracted by metals. 224 APPENDIX. George. Men are bad in this world, and after death become bet- ter ; as crabs look black in their dwelling-place, the water, and become after death red and beautiful. George. People with deep sunken eyes are considered more capable of intellectual employments, as the mole, on account of her deep eyes, can go deeper under the ground. The same. As an angel bore the Loretto house, so also were the sciences in the dark ages carried into Italy. Samuel. The glass is the echo of seeing. Carl. Man has two fathers-his own, and God. Wilhelmine. The earth is a great clock-work. Men are the wheels, and animals are the little teeth upon them. Leo. And the soul is the regulator. George. The sympathetic nerve is the chain that winds around the fusee.* George. The earth is God's Botany Bay, because we are here made better, or punished or rewarded. George. As every person thinks the whole time, it is incorrect to say one thinks more than another. Emilie. People who dress the most plainly are the wisest ; as birds, whose plumage is the least gay, sing more delightfully than others. Carl. Europe, that is half Catholic, half Lutheran, is a religious Centaur. Wilhelmine. We write with one end of the feather, after the goose has long before written with the other. George said of one who had often been whipped, that he had a chymical affinity with the stick. Leo. Some persons, through beating, are made to attract know- ledge magnetically, as iron is made magnetic through blows. Fritz. The world must be eternal, as God is eternal, and God must be in the world, as he is everywhere. Fritz. God is the provider for our table. George. The Confessional is the holy sepulchre, to which we make a crusade to obtain the forgiveness of our sins. George. The fire stolen from heaven by Prometheus, was the forbidden tree of knowledge. Fritz. The days of our life are the week-days, in which we work for the Sunday of the second life. Fritz. In this life we are only apprentices ; in the next we shall be masters. The age of the speakers should be remembered. APPENDIX. 225 II. JOHAXX WILHELM LcDwio GLEiM was born in. 1719, in the Prin- cipality of Halberstadt. He lost his parents in infancy, and was educated at the charge of some benevolent families. After some time, he was appointed Secretary to the Chapter at Halberstadt, where he lived very agreeably. He corresponded with all the lite- rary men of Germany, and used to assemble them around him at Halberstadt, where they used to enjoy poetry and life together. He was intimate with them all, for friendship was the element of his life. He was never married. His clever niece, Dorothea, so often celebrated under the name of Gleminde, kept his house. The war- songs that he published during the Seven Years' War, raised his fame to the highest pitch. He drew, and established around him, a circle of young literary friends ; and his zeal for their social welfare, as well as their literary fame, knew no bounds. He had the rare talent of mixing with all classes and sorts of men, on the most kindly footing. His songs for the people show this. He was a philanthropist in the truest and noblest sense of the word. Two years before his death he became totally blind. In the eighty-fourth year of his age he took leave of his friends, and died tranquil and resigned. The Germans have given him the fairest of all titles, " Father Gleim." The following- is extracted from Goethe's Tag-und-Jahres Hefte : " The groundwork of Gleim's character was a passionate benevo- lence, which he endeavoured to render active in word and in deed, encouraging every one by conversation and writing ; labouring to diffuse a universal and pure feeling of humanity. He was a friend of all ; beneficent to the wretched, but more particularly the benefac- tor of indigent youth. Frugal in his household, beneficence seems to have been the only taste on which he expended what was neces- sary to himself. Most of what he did was from his own resources ; more rarely, and not till the latter years of his life, he employed his name and reputation to acquire some influence with kings and ministers. " Altogether, we must admit that he had the sense of the duties of a citizen in the highest and most singular degree ; he held an import- ant public post, and proved himself therein a patriot ; and towards the German Father-Land, and the world a true, genuine Liberal. " And further, as every religion ought to promote the pure and peaceful intercourse of man with man, and as the Christian Evange- 226 APPENDIX. lical religion is peculiarly adapted to that end, he who constantly practises that religion of the upright, which was an integral part of his nature, might well and truly consider himself as the most orthodox of men, and might rept tranquilly in the profession of the established simple rites of the Protestant Church. " After all these lively reminiscences we went to see another image of the departed we visited the sick-bed of Gleim's dying niece, who, under the name of Gleminde, had been for many years the or- nament of a poetic circle. Her sweet, though sickly countenance, was in delicate harmony with the exquisite neatness of all around her ; and we had an interesting conversation on those delightful bygone days, and on the works and ways of her excellent uncle, which were ever present with her. " Lastly, to conclude our pilgrimage solemnly and worthily, we went into the garden, to the grave of this honest and noble old man, to whom it was granted, after so many years of sorrow and suffering, activity and patience, to rest in the spot he loved, sur- rounded with memorials of departed friends." From Mrs. Aiustin's Characteristics of Goethe. m. THE fear of making my book too large has prevented me from giving more of the letters of the friends of Jean Paul than would allow the reader to understand their respective characters. The little that is said in the text of Madam von Kalb induces me to add some further extracts from her letters. In August, 1796, she wrote to him : " I had, perhaps, compelled myself not to write to you, if I had not something to impart that concerns you, that will make you re- joice, and will also be advantageous to you. The first is an extract from the letter of Wieland to Bottigcr. " ' Tell our friend Jean Paul, that his literary visit was one of the sweetest hours of my life ; that he has immediately taken his place in my heart above Jean Jacques, and that I am as yet not cool enough to express in words what I think and feel about him. I rejoice inexpressibly that we shall this winter enjoy his personal society, and I hope the demon that pledges himself to me that we shall both find good in it, is none of those lying spirits that the Adoni Elohim of the Jews had in his Court service, who, when he would lead their kings and prophets upon the ice, made use of deceptive thought.' I take the most intimate part in your welfare, and therefore I have written this to you immediately, that you may APPENDIX. 227 make what use of it you please. I have your air a trois notes, but I cannot part with it, for in this, another longing from the heart of Jean Paul is expressed. " I am not yet, but I hope I shalksoon, perhaps, be sufficiently resigned.* Ah, I shall at last learn to* understand my destiny, for always the same wounds are repeated. Perhaps you will answer me, if it is only a few lines, to tell me that my letter is received, and what I have further to fear or to hope from Jean Paul. " Herr Falk is here. I have not seen, and do not wish to see him. He has also given out a satirical almanac, with which they are here delighted ; but I will have nothing to do with any strange, hetero- geneous nature any writings that degrade the mind. I do not even willingly read Wieland ; he proses always, and sometimes sleeps ; and lowers the fancy always, and sometimes love. Then the words Law, Duty, Virtue, must be defined, and the Evangel of Love vanishes ; this is the reason that I cannot bear the four words. I am not willing to be reminded in the most distant manner of any but a pure existence. " Farewell, my young amiable philosopher, between Scylla and Charybdis ; between the Graces and the Syrens ; between the in- cense of glory and the intoxication of applause ; allured at the same time by the cadences of nightingales in concealing hedges, and the songs of the Muses in princely chambers. "Apropos, Buonaparte looks like you, only he is very small. I am glad of this, for the monster pleases me. " What have I yet to say ? Ah, not much ! Be wise as Minerva, happy as Apollo ! Do not smile ! you smile too beautifully ! The tones that your mind gives are sweeter without words than the sounds of the harmonica." . . . In May, 1799, three years after the above, Madam von Kalb wrote, after receiving the Conjectural Biography : " I read your new book with wholly new pleasure and feeling ; and as I have called to you for three years, Come to me, so I now call again, Come to me, and remain with me ! I understand all. The deep, the light, the reflecting, the imagining. I also could add a page to your life, that might have been, had God sus- tained our love ! " Otto will come to me with his Amone, and will make me pre- sent in every one of your domestic festivals; and if there is sorrow in the house, or a sick child, Hermine will send to me for the soothing counsel of my ever-present and active love. * To his refusal to return to Weimar. 228 APPENDIX. " And when I am weaker, and can no longer leave my solitary chamber, one or the other will spend the evening with me, and in confidential intercourse we will exchange our thoughts, our reading, and our experience.. And when again, under the shadow of the linden trees, the fresh grass springs, and the children in the twilight interrupt their sports with short recollections of me, and the father asks at their return to the house, ' What has happened, and where have they played?' it will be a saying in the village, ' that upon the grave of thy friend the children played most hap- pily and most securely.' " "June 19, 1799. " This is the day I expected a letter from you, and received none, but I will write what has occurred to me respecting your book.* " The Preface has beautiful thoughts. It may prepare for a better time in quiet dispositions ; but how hard it is, when men will have for themselves the Evangel of selfishness, but for woman the severity of the Law. There are also views of things that will have no effect. No caricature can improve or make moral, that is, calm, and happy men. " The Wandering Aurora has pleased me much ; so has the Essay upon Dreams; and indeed all the Philosophical letters. I have written to Herder about them. " The Testament for Daughters is too light a work for you. I must write a testament for daughters, if I am ever so stupid as to know my own errors. The testaments of men, for daughters, sound about thus : 'You have no rights in life. There will be no love for you ; you will be despised, or appropriated. You must love, and make one only happy ; but you dare neither have under- standing nor will of your own. You must not manifest either wishes, joy, or sympathy; and the desires that you possess in com- mon with us, in recollection will appear like guilt.' I know nothing weaker or more ridiculous in a man, than to make known such a knowledge of the female heart ; certainly not for purposes of injury, but for information. "The satire upon the authorship of women I find not entirely true. I may have nothing to do with either ; and even my daughter shall not trouble herself; pride would forbid it. But what you do from self-interest, does not make you get rid of our souls. Like the devil, they will remain in eternity. The happy, loving woman, will be no author ; and to the unhappy, no one will The Conjectural Biography. APPENDIX. 229 have recourse. Wherefore will you not, that women sustain the same troubles, and live by the same illusions as yourselves ? Ambi- tion has never the same power over a female heart as over a man's. She can never forget that she has a heart, and can love ! No illusion, no enthusiasm increases this consciousness of the highest; and the love, of which men sing, is, with women, an eternal truth. " Jean Paul must take care, that with his garden shears, he does not prune the delicate plant too much. He cannot check true genius ; but he may increase its burdens, and accelerate many follies. Shall not women be, what they may and can be ? " It must be, that they have children, and cook, and stitch ; but the graces may unite with the understanding for all these purposes." Madam von Kalb, although Richter calls her a disciple of Herder, was deeply imbued with the aesthetic doctrines taught by Goethe and the Schlegel school. ^Esthetics, as far as I under- stand it, is the pursuit and worship of the beautiful, as the perfec- tion of human life. All morality takes a subordinate station ; but religion is one with the perfect, or beautiful, and by aesthetics, or the love of beauty, the mind is able to soar to religion and immor- tality. Thus a finely- organized soul can exist only in a state of perfection or beauty. One may easily understand the practical consequences of this doctrine ; for as morals were subordinate to the love of the beautiful, and only finely-constituted souls could have any affinity with each other, the relations of social life, if not happily formed, became subordinate , and wefe violated ; or be- came the occasion of profound and terrible misery, as in Goethe's Elective Affinities. Few, like Ottilia, would choose the better part, and die, "because breathed on by unhallowed passion." The evil that Richter most lamented in the aesthetic philosophy was, that it conspired with passion to deceive ; and men imagined that, as all purity was within, outward relations might be violated, without sullying the purity of eine schone seele. We see indications of this philosophy in all Madam von Kalb's letters ; and the letter that occasioned the rupture with Jean Paul avowed the aesthetic doctrine " that religion upon this earth con- sists in the perfection of all the powers, physical as well as spiritual, and that these powers should suffer no restraint, but the weak yield to the strong." Jean Paul's abhorrence of these doctrines, and of the immorality and misery in domestic life, that might be ascribed to them, is ex- pressed in every one of his works, but particularly in a little tale, VOL. I. X 230 APPENDIX. " The Secret Lamentation of the Men of Our Times," in wnich two young persons become attached to each other, with circumstances of singular interest. Their misery and shame, when they dis- cover that they are brother and sister ; the remorseful agony of the father, and the contempt that takes the place of love in the breast of the injured wife, make the interest and instruction of the story ; but like all narratives written for an express moral, it fails in that freedom and fullness of thought that distinguish his spontaneous works. Speaking of domestic morality in Weimar, Paul says : " This is certain, a spiritual and more important revolution than the poli- tical, and far more murderous, is now beating in the heart of the world ; therefore is the vocation of an author, whose heart beats with wholly different principles and aims, so necessary, and de- mands so much heed and circumspection." 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