done, when the fatal sound was heard in his throat, and in a few minutes Hoffmann was no more.

:

Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture might have done great things there lay in it the elements of much moral worth, and talents of almost the highest order. Nor was it weakness of Will that so far frustrated these fine endowments; for in many trying emergencies, he proved that decision and perseverance of resolve were by no means denied him. Unhappily, however, he had found no sure principle of action; no Truth adequate to the guidance of such a mind. What in common minds is called Prudence, was not wanting, could this have sufficed; for it is to be observed, that so long as he was poor, so long as the fetters of everyday duty lay round him, Hoffmann was diligent, unblamable and even praiseworthy but these wants once supplied, these fetters once cast off, his wayward spirit was without fit direction or restraint, and its fine faculties rioted in wild disorder. In the practical concerns of life he felt no interest in religion he seems not to have believed, or even disbelieved; he never talked of it, or would hear it talked of: to politics he was equally hostile, and equally a stranger. Yet the wages of daily labour, the solace of his five senses, and the intercourse of social or gregarious life, were far from completing his ideal of enjoyment: his better soul languished in these barren scenes. and longed for some worthier home. This home, unhappily, he was not destined to find. He sought for it in the Poetry of Art; and the aim of his writings, so far as they have any aim, as they are not mere interjections, expressing the casual moods of his mind, was constantly the celebration and unfolding of this the best and truest doctrine which he had to preach. But here too his common failing seems to have beset him he loved Art with a deep but scarcely with a pure love; not as the fountain of Beauty, but as the fountain of refined Enjoyment; he demanded from it not heavenly peace, but earthly excitement; as indeed through his whole life, he had never learned the truth that for human souls a continuance of passive pleasure is inconceivable, has not only been denied us by Nature, but cannot, and could not be granted.

From all this there grew up in Hoffmann's character something player-like, something false, brawling and tawdry, which we trace both in his writings and his conduct. His philosophy degenerates into levity, his magnanimity into bombast: the light of his fine mind is not sunshine, but the glitter of an artificial firework. As in Art, so in Life he had failed to discover that 'agreeable sensations' are not the highest good. His pursuit of these led him into many devious courses, and the close of his mistaken pilgrimage was the

tavern.

Yet if, in judging Hoffmann, we are forced to condemn him, let it be with mildness, with justice. Let us not forget, that for a mind like his, the path of propriety was difficult to find, still more difficult to keep. Moody, sensitive and fantastic, he wandered through the world like a foreign presence, subject to influences of which common natures have happily no glimpse. A whole scale of the most wayward and unearthly humours stands recorded in his Diary: his head was forever swarming with beautiful or horrible chimeras; a common incident could throw his whole being into tumult, a distorted face or figure would abide with him for days, and rule over him like a spell. It was not things, but the shows of things,' that he saw; and the world and its business, in which he had to live and move, often hovered before him like a perplexed and spectral vision. Withal it should be remembered, that, though never delivered from Self, he was not cruel or unjust, nor incapable of generous actions and the deepest attachment. His harshness was often misinterpreted; for heat of temper deformed the movements of kindness; mockery also was the dialect in which he spoke and even thought, and often, under a calm or bitter smile, he could veil the wounds of a bleeding heart. A good or a wise man we must not call him but to others his presence was beneficent, his injuries were to himself; and among the ordinary population of this world, to note him with the mark of reprobation were ungrateful and unjust.

His genius formed the most important element of his character, and of course participated in its faults. There are the materials of a glorious poet, but no poet has been fashioned out of them. His mind was not cultivated or brought under his own dominion; we admire the rich ingredients of it, and regret that they were never purified, and fused into a whole. His life was disjointed he had to labour for his bread, and he followed three different arts; what wonder that in none of them he should attain perfection? Accordingly, except perhaps as a musician, the critics of his country deny him the name of an Artist: as a poet, he aimed but at popularity, and has attained little more. His intellect is seldom strong, and that only in glimpses; his abundant humour is too often false and local; his rich and gorgeous fancy is continually distorted into crotchets and caprices. In fact, he elaborated nothing; above all, not himself. His knowledge, except in the sphere of Art, is not extensive; for an author, he had read but little; criticisms, even of his own works, he never looked into; and except Richter, whom he saw only once, he seems never to have met with any individual whose conversation could instruct or direct him. Human nature he had studied only as a caricature-painter: men, it is said, in fact interested him chiefly as mimetic objects; their common doings and destiny were without

beauty for him, and he observed and copied them only in their extravagances and ludicrous distortions. His works were written with incredible speed, and they bear many marks of haste: it is seldom that any piece is perfected, that its brilliant and often genuine elements are blended in harmonious union. On the largest of his completed Novels, the Elixiere des Teufels, he himself set no value; and the Kater Murr, which he meant for a higher object, he did not live to finish, nor is it thought he could have finished it. His smaller pieces were mostly written for transitory publications, and too often with only a transitory excellence. We do not read them without interest, without high amusement; but the second reading pleases worse than the first for there is too little meaning in that bright extravagance; it is but the hurried copy of the phantasms which forever masqueraded through the author's mind; it less resembles the creation of a poet, than the dream of an opium-eater.

With these faults a rigorous criticism may charge Hoffmann; and this the more strictly, the greater his talent, the more undoubted his capability and obligation to avoid them. At the same time, to reject his claim, as has been done, to what the poets call their immortality, seems hard measure. If Callot and Teniers, his models, still figure in picture-galleries; if Rabelais continues, after centuries, to be read, and even the Caliph Vathek, after decades, still finds admirers, the products of a mind so brilliant, wild and singular as that of Hoffmann may long hover in the remembrance of the world; as objects of curiosity, of censure, and, on the whole, compared with absolute Nonentity, of entertainment and partial approval. For the present, at least, as a child of his time and his country, he is not to be overlooked in any survey of German Literature, and least of all by the foreign student of it.

Among Hoffmann's shorter performances, I find Meister Martin noted by his critics as the most perfect: it is a story of ancient Nürnberg, and worked up in a style which even reminds us of the Author of Waverley. Nevertheless, I have selected this Goldne Topf,1 as likelier to interest the English reader: it has more of the faults, but also more of the excellences peculiar to its author, and exhibits a much truer picture of his individuality. To recommend it, criticisms would be unavailing there is no deep art involved in its composition; to minds alive to the graces of Fancy, and disposed to pardon even its aberrations when splendid and kindly, this Mährchen will speak its whole meaning for itself; and to others it has little or nothing to say. The most tolerant will see in it much to pardon; but even under its present disadvantages they may perhaps recog 1 Golden Pot, our only Translation from Hoffmann.

nise in it the erratic footsteps of a poet, and lament with me that his course has ended so far short of the goal.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER, one of the chosen men of Germany and of the World, whom I hoped, in my vanity, perhaps to gratify by this introduction of him to a people whom he knew and valued, has been called from his earthly sojourn since the commencement of my little task, and no voice, either of love or censure, shall any more reach his ear.

The circle of his existence is thus complete his works and himself have assumed their final shape and combination, and lie ready for a judgment, which, when it is just, must now be unalterable. To satisfy a natural and rational curiosity respecting such a character, materials are not wanting; but to us in the mean time they are inaccessible. I have inquired in his own country, but without effect; having learned only that two Biographies of Richter are in the press, but that nothing on the subject has hitherto been published. For the present, therefore, I must content myself with such meagre and transitory hints as were in circulation in his lifetime, and compress into a few sentences a history which might be written in volumes.

Richter was born at Wunsiedel in Bayreuth, on the 21st of March 1763. His father was clergyman of the place, and afterwards of Schwarzbach on the Saale. The young man also was destined for the clerical profession; with a view to which, having finished his school-studies in the Hof Gymnasium, he in 1780 proceeded to the University of Leipzig, with the highest testimonials from his former masters. Theology as a profession, however, he could not relish ; poetry, philosophy and general literature, were his chief pursuits while at Leipzig; from which, apparently after no long stay, he returned to Schwarzbach to his parents, uncertain what he should betake him to. In a little while, he attempted authorship; publishing various short miscellaneous pieces, distinguished by intellectual vigour, copious fancy, the wildest yet truest humour, the whole concocted in a style entirely his own, which, if it betrayed the writer's inexperience, could not hide the existence in him of a highly-gifted, strong and extraordinary mind. The reception of his first performances, or the inward felicity of writing, encouraged him to proceed in the midst of an unsettled and changeful life, his pen was never idle, its productions never otherwise than new, fantastic

and powerful: he lived successively in Hof, in Weimar, Berlin, Meiningen, Coburg, 'raying forth, wherever he might be stationed, the wild light of his genius over all Germany.' At last he settled in Bayreuth, having here, in testimony of his literary merit, been honoured with the title of Legations-Rath, and presented with a pension from his native Prince. In Bayreuth his chief works were written; he had married, and been blessed with two children; his intellectual labours had gained him esteem and love from all ranks of his countrymen, and chiefly from those whose suffrage was of most value; a frank and original, yet modest, good and kind deportment, seems to have transferred these sentiments to his private circle with a heart at once of the most earnest and most sportful cast; affectionate, and encompassed with the objects of his af fection; diligent in the highest of all earthly tasks, the acquisition and the diffusion of Truth; and witnessing from his sequestered home the working of his own mind on thousands of fellow-minds, Richter seemed happy and at peace; and his distant reader loved to fancy him as in his calm privacy enjoying the fruit of past toils, or amid the highest and mildest meditations, looking forward to long honourable years of future toil. For his thoughts were manifold; thoughts of a moralist and a sage, no less than of a poet and a wit. The last work of his I saw advertised, was a little volume entitled, On the Ever-green of our Feelings; and in November (1825), news came that Richter was dead; and a heart, which we had figured as one of the truest, deepest and gentlest that ever lived in this world, was to beat no more.

Of Richter's private character I have learned little; but that little was all favourable, and accordant with the indications in his works. Of his public and intellectual character much might be said and thought; for the secret of it is by no means floating on the surface, and it will reward some study. The most cursory inspection, even an external one, will satisfy us that he neither was, nor wished to be considered as, a man who wrote or thought in the track of other men, to whom common practice is a law, and whose excellencies and defects the common formulas of criticism will easily represent. The very titles of his works are startling. One of his earliest performances is named Selection from the Papers of the Devil; another is, Biographical Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess. His novels are almost uniformly introduced by some fantastic narrative accounting for his publication and obtainment of the story. Hesperus, his chief novel, bears the secondary title of a Dogpost-days, and the chapters are named Dog-posts, as having been conveyed to him in a letter-bag, round the neck of a little nimble Shock, from some unknown Island in the South sea.