Critical and Miscellaneous Essays

changes his object and occupation from page | rating (decidedly in bombast) over the grave. to page, often from sentence to sentence, in the Then, it seems, there were meetings held in most unaccountable way; a pleasure journey, and a sickness of fifteen years, are despatched with equal brevity; in a moment you find him married, and the father of three fine children. He dies no less suddenly;—he is studying as usual, writing poetry, receiving visits, full of life and business, when instantly some paragraph opens under him, like one of the trapdoors in the Vision of Mirza, and he drops, without note of preparation, into the shades below. Perhaps, indeed, not for ever: we have instances of his rising after the funeral, and winding up his affairs. The time has been, that when the brains were out the man would die; but Doering orders these matters differently.

various parts of Germany, to solemnize the memory of Richter; among the rest, one in the Museum of Frankfort on the Maine; where a Doctor Börne speaks another long speech, if possible in still more decided bombast. Next come threnodies from all the four winds, mostlyon very splay-footed metre. Thewhole of which is here snatched from the kind oblivion of the newspapers, and "lives in Settle's numbers one day more."

We have too much reverence for the name of Richter to think of laughing over these unhappy threnodies and panegyrists; some of whom far exceed any thing we English can exhibit in the epicedial style. They rather testify, however maladroitly, that the Germans have felt their loss,—which, indeed, is one to Europe at large; they even affect us with a certain melancholy feeling, when we consider how a heavenly voice must become mute, and nothing be heard in its stead but the whoop of quite earthly voices, lamenting, or pretending to lament. Far from us be all remembrance of Doering and Company, while we speak of Richter! But his own works give us some glimpses into his singular and noble nature; and to our readers a few words on this man, certainly one of the most remarkable of his age, will not seem thrown away.

We beg leave to say, however, that we really have no private pique against Doering: on the contrary, we are regular purchasers of his ware; and it gives us true pleasure to see his spirits so much improved since we first met him. In the Life of Schiller, his state did seem rather unprosperous: he wore a timorous, submissive, and downcast aspect, as if like Sterne's Ass, he were saying, "Don't thrash me ;-but if you will, you may!" Now, however, comforted by considerable sale, and praise from this and the other Literaturblatt, which has commended his diligence, his fidelity, and, strange to say, his method, he advances with erect countenance and firm hoof, and even re-ter is little known out of Germany. The only calcitrates contemptuously against such as do him offence. Glück auf dem Weg! is the worst we wish him.

Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Rich

his mode of writing, that to translate him is next to impossible; nay, a dictionary of his works has actually been in part published for the use of German readers! These things have restricted his sphere of action, and may long restrict it to his own country: but there, in return, he is a favourite of the first class; studied through all his intricacies with trustful admiration, and a love which tolerates much. During the last forty years, he has been continually before the public, in various capacities, and growing generally in esteem with all ranks of critics; till, at length, his gainsayers have been either silenced or convinced; and Jean Paul, at first reckoned half-mad, has long ago vindicated his singularities to nearly universal satisfaction, and now combines popularity with real depth of endowment, in perhaps a greater degree than any other writer; being second in the latter point to scarcely more than one of his contemporaries, and in the former second to none.

The biography of so distinguished a person could scarcely fail to be interesting, especially his autobiography; which, accordingly, we wait for, and may in time submit to our readers, if it seem worthy: meanwhile, the history of his life, so far as outward events characterize

it, may be stated in few words. He was born | the streets of Bayreuth, we have heard, he was at Wunsiedel in Bayreuth, in March, 1763. seldom seen without a flower in his breast. A His father was a subaltern teacher in the Gym- man of quiet tastes, and warm, compassionate nasium of the place, and was afterwards pro- affections! His friends he must have loved moted to be clergyman at Schwarzbach on the as few do. Of his poor and humble mother Saale. Richter's early education was of the he often speaks by allusion, and never without scantiest sort; but his fine faculties and un- reverence and overflowing tenderness. "Unwearied diligence supplied every defect. Un- happy is the man," says he, " for whom his own able to purchase books, he borrowed what he mother has not made all other mothers venercould come at, and transcribed from them, often able!" and elsewhere:-"O thou who hast great part of their contents,-a habit of ex- still a father and a mother, thank God for it in cerpting, which continued with him through the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, life, and influenced, in more than one way, his and needs a bosom wherein to shed them!"— mode of writing and study. To the last, he We quote the following sentences from Doerwas an insatiable and universal reader; so ing, almost the only memorable thing he has that his extracts accumulated on his hands, written in this volume :"till they filled whole chests." In 1780, he "Richter's studying or sitting apartment ofwent to the University of Leipzig; with the fered, about this time, (1793,) a true and beauhighest character, in spite of the impediments tiful emblem of his simple and noble way of which he had struggled with, for talent and ac- thought, which comprehended at once the high quirement. Like his father, he was destined and the low. Whilst his mother, who then for Theology; from which, however, his va- lived with him, busily pursued her household grant genius soon diverged into Poetry and Phi- work, occupying herself about stove and dreslosophy, to the neglect, and, ere long, to the ser, Jean Paul was sitting in a corner of the final abandonment, of his appointed profession. same room, at a simple writing-desk, with few Not well knowing what to do, he now accepted or no books about him, but merely with one a tutorship in some family of rank; then he or two drawers containing excerpts and manuhad pupils in his own house,-which, how-scripts. The jingle of the household operations ever, like his way of life, he often changed; for by this time he had become an author, and, in his wanderings over Germany, was putting forth,-now here, now there,-the strangest books, with the strangest titles: For instance,Greenland Lawsuits,-Biographical Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess;-Selection from the Papers of the Devil;—and the like. In these indescribable performances, the splendid faculties of the writer, luxuriating as they seemed in utter riot, could not be disputed; nor, with all its extravagance, the fundamental strength, honesty, and tenderness of his nature. Genius will reconcile men to much. By degrees, Jean Paul began to be considered not a strange, crackbrained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon, but a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration. His writings procured him friends and fame; and at length a wife and a settled provision. With Caroline Mayer, his good spouse, and a pension (in 1802) from the King of Bavaria, he settled in Bayreuth, the capital of his native province; where he lived thenceforth, diligent and celebrated in many new departments of literature; and died on the 14th of November, 1825, loved as well as admired by all his countrymen, and most by those who had known him most intimately.

A huge, irregular man, both in mind and person, (for his portrait is quite a physiognomical study,) full of fire, strength, and impetuosity, Richter seems, at the same time, to have been, in the highest degree, mild, simplehearted, humane. He was fond of conversation, and might well shine in it: he talked, as he wrote, in a style of his own, full of wild strength and charms, to which his natural Bayreuth accent often gave additional effect. Yet he loved retirement, the country, and all natural things; from his youth upwards, he himself tells us, he may almost be said to have lived in the open air; it was among groves and meadows that he studied,—often that he wrote. Even in

seemed not at all to disturb him, any more than did the cooing of the pigeons, which fluttered to and fro in the chamber,—a place, indeed, of considerable size."-P. 8.

Our venerable Hooker, we remember, also enjoyed " the jingle of household operations," and the more questionable jingle of shrewd tongues to boot, while he wrote; but the good thrifty mother, and the cooing pigeons, were wanting. Richter came afterwards to live in finer mansions, and had the great and learned for associates; but the gentle feelings of those days abode with him: through life he was the same substantial, determinate, yet meek and tolerating man. It is seldom that so much rugged energy can be so blandly attempered; that so much vehemence and so much softness will go together.

The expected edition of Richter's works is to be in sixty volumes: and they are no less multifarious than extensive; embracing subjects of all sorts, from the highest problems of transcendental philosophy, and the most passionate poetical delineations, to Golden Rules for the Weather-Prophet, and instructions in the Art of Falling Asleep. His chief productions are novels: the Unsichtbare Loge (Invisible Lodge); Flegeljahre (Wild-Oats); Life of Fixlein; the Jubelsenior (Parson in Jubilee); Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz; Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath; Life of Fibel; with many lighter pieces; and two works of a higher order, Hesperus aud Titan, the largest and the best of his novels. It was the former that first (in 1795) introduced him into decisive and universal estimation with his countrymen: the latter he himself, with the most judicious of his critics, regarded as his master-piece. But the name Novelist, as we in England must understand it, would ill describe so vast and discursive a genius: for, with all his grotesque, tumultuous pleasantry, Richter is a man of a truly earnest, nay, high and solemn character;

changes his object and occupation from page | rating (decidedly in bombast) over the grave.

to page, often from sentence to sentence, in the most unaccountable way; a pleasure journey, and a sickness of fifteen years, are despatched with equal brevity; in a moment you find him married, and the father of three fine children. He dies no less suddenly; he is studying as usual, writing poetry, receiving visits, full of life and business, when instantly some paragraph opens under him, like one of the trapdoors in the Vision of Mirza, and he drops, without note of preparation, into the shades below. Perhaps, indeed, not for ever: we have instances of his rising after the funeral, and winding up his affairs. The time has been, that when the brains were out the man would die; but Doering orders these matters differently.

Then, it seems, there were meetings held in various parts of Germany, to solemnize the memory of Richter; among the rest, one in the Museum of Frankfort on the Maine; where a Doctor Börne speaks another long speech, if possible in still more decided bombast. Next come threnodies from all the four winds, mostly on very splay-footed metre. Thewhole of which is here snatched from the kind oblivion of the newspapers, and "lives in Settle's numbers one day more."

We have too much reverence for the name of Richter to think of laughing over these unhappy threnodies and panegyrists; some of whom far exceed any thing we English can exhibit in the epicedial style. They rather testify, however maladroitly, that the Germans have felt their loss,-which, indeed, is one to Europe at large; they even affect us with a certain melancholy feeling, when we consider how a heavenly voice must become mute, and nothing be heard in its stead but the whoop of quite earthly voices, lamenting, or pretending to lament. Far from us be all remembrance of Doering and Company, while we speak of Richter! But his own works give us some glimpses into his singular and noble nature; and to our readers a few words on this man, certainly one of the most remarkable of his age, will not seem thrown away.

Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Rich

thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country, is his saying, imported by Madame de Staël, and thankfully pocketed Of his Life of Richter, these preliminary ob- by most newspaper critics: "Providence has servations may be our excuse for saying but given to the French the empire of the land, to little. He brags much, in his preface, that it the English that of the sea, to the Germans that is all true and genuine; for Richter's widow, of-the air!" Of this last element, indeed, his it seems, had, by public advertisement, cau- own genius might easily seem to have been a tioned the world against it; another biography, denizen: so fantastic, many-coloured, far-grasppartly by the illustrious deceased himself, part-ing, every way perplexed and extraordinary in ly by Otto, his oldest friend and the appointed his mode of writing, that to translate him is next editor of his works, being actually in prepara- to impossible; nay, a dictionary of his works tion. This rouses the indignant spirit of Doer- has actually been in part published for the use ing, and he stoutly asseverates, that, his docu- of German readers! These things have rements being altogether authentic, this biogra- stricted his sphere of action, and may long rephy is no pseudo-biography. With greater truth strict it to his own country: but there, in rehe might have asseverated that it was no bio- turn, he is a favourite of the first class; studied graphy at all. Well are he and Hennings of through all his intricacies with trustful admiGotha aware that this thing of shreds and ration, and a love which tolerates much. Durpatches has been vamped together for sale ing the last forty years, he has been continually only. Except a few letters to Kunz, the Bam- before the public, in various capacities, and berg bookseller, which turn mainly on the pur-growing generally in esteem with all ranks of chase of spectacles, and the journeyings and critics; till, at length, his gainsayers have freightage of two boxes that used to pass and been either silenced or convinced; and Jean repass between Richter and Kunz's circulating Paul, at first reckoned half-mad, has long ago library; with three or four notes of similar im- vindicated his singularities to nearly universal portance, and chiefly to other booksellers, there satisfaction, and now combines popularity with are no biographical documents here, which real depth of endowment, in perhaps a greater were not open to all Europe as well as to Hein-degree than any other writer; being second in rich Doering. Indeed, very nearly one-half of the latter point to scarcely more than one of the Life is occupied with a description of the his contemporaries, and in the former second funeral and its appendages,-how the "sixty to none. torches, with a number of lanterns and pitch- The biography of so distinguished a person pans," were arranged; how this patrician or pro- could scarcely fail to be interesting, especialfessor followed that, through Friedrich-street, ly his autobiography; which, accordingly, we Chancery-street, and other streets of Bayreuth; and how at last the torches all went out, as Doctor Gabler and Doctor Spatzier were pero

wait for, and may in time submit to our readers, if it seem worthy: meanwhile, the history of his life, so far as outward events characterize

man of quiet tastes, and warm, compassionate affections! His friends he must have loved as few do. Of his poor and humble mother he often speaks by allusion, and never without reverence and overflowing tenderness. “Unhappy is the man," says he, " for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable!" and elsewhere:-"O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it in the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein to shed them!"We quote the following sentences from Doering, almost the only memorable thing he has written in this volume:

it, may be stated in few words. He was born | the streets of Bayreuth, we have heard, he was at Wunsiedel in Bayreuth, in March, 1763. seldom seen without a flower in his breast. A His father was a subaltern teacher in the Gymnasium of the place, and was afterwards promoted to be clergyman at Schwarzbach on the Saale. Richter's early education was of the scantiest sort; but his fine faculties and unwearied diligence supplied every defect. Unable to purchase books, he borrowed what he could come at, and transcribed from them, often great part of their contents,-a habit of excerpting, which continued with him through life, and influenced, in more than one way, his mode of writing and study. To the last, he was an insatiable and universal reader; so that his extracts accumulated on his hands, "till they filled whole chests." In 1780, he "Richter's studying or sitting apartment of went to the University of Leipzig; with the fered, about this time, (1793,) a true and beauhighest character, in spite of the impediments tiful emblem of his simple and noble way of which he had struggled with, for talent and ac- thought, which comprehended at once the high quirement. Like his father, he was destined and the low. Whilst his mother, who then for Theology; from which, however, his va- lived with him, busily pursued her household grant genius soon diverged into Poetry and Phi- work, occupying herself about stove and dreslosophy, to the neglect, and, ere long, to the ser, Jean Paul was sitting in a corner of the final abandonment, of his appointed profession. same room, at a simple writing-desk, with few Not well knowing what to do, he now accepted or no books about him, but merely with one a tutorship in some family of rank; then he or two drawers containing excerpts and manuhad pupils in his own house,-which, how-scripts. The jingle of the household operations ever, like his way of life, he often changed; for by this time he had become an author, and, in his wanderings over Germany, was putting forth,-now here, now there, the strangest books, with the strangest titles: For instance,Greenland Lawsuits,-Biographical Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess;-Selection from the Papers of the Devil;-and the like. In these indescribable performances, the splendid faculties of the writer, luxuriating as they seemed in utter riot, could not be disputed; nor, with all its extravagance, the fundamental strength, honesty, and tenderness of his nature. Genius will reconcile men to much. By degrees, Jean Paul began to be considered not a strange, crackbrained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon, but a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration. His writings procured him friends and fame; and at length a wife and a settled provision. With Caroline Mayer, his good spouse, and a pension (in 1802) from the King of Bavaria, he settled in Bayreuth, the capital of his native province; where he lived thenceforth, diligent and celebrated in many new departments of literature; and died on the 14th of November, 1825, loved as well as admired by all his countrymen, and most by those who had known him most intimately.

seemed not at all to disturb him, any more than did the cooing of the pigeons, which fluttered to and fro in the chamber,-a place, indeed, of considerable size."-F. 8.

The expected edition of Richter's works is to be in sixty volumes: and they are no less multifarious than extensive; embracing subjects of all sorts, from the highest problems of transcendental philosophy, and the most passionate poetical delineations, to Golden Rules for the Weather-Prophet, and instructions in the Art of Falling Asleep. His chief productions are novels: the Unsichtbare Loge (Invisible Lodge); Flegeljahre (Wild-Oats); Life of Fixlein; the Jubelsenior (Parson in Jubilee); Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz; Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath; Life of Fibel; with many lighter pieces; and two works of a higher order, Hesperus and Titan, the largest and the best of his novels. It was the former that first (in 1795) introduced him into decisive and universal estimation with his countrymen: the latter he himself, with the most judicious of his critics, regarded as his master-piece. But the name Novelist, as we in England must understand it, would ill describe so vast and discursive a genius: for, with all his grotesque, tumultuous pleasantry, Richter is a man of a truly earnest, nay, high and solemn character;

every one of his writings. He died while engaged, under recent and almost total blindness, in enlarging and remodelling this Campaner Thal: the unfinished manuscript was borne upon his coffin to the burial vault; and Klopstock's hymn, Auferstehen wirst du, "Thou shalt arise, my soul," can seldom have been sung with more appropriate application than over the grave of Jean Paul.

and seldom writes without a meaning far be- | glimpses of which look forth on us from almost yond the sphere of common romancers. Hesperus and Titan themselves, though in form nothing more than "novels of real life," as the Minerva Press would say, have solid metal enough in them to furnish whole circulating libaries, were it beaten into the usual filigree; and much which, attenuate it as we might, no quarterly subscriber could well carry with him. Amusement is often, in part almost always, a mean with Richter; rarely or never his highest end. His thoughts, his feelings, the creations of his spirit, walk before us imbodied under wondrous shapes, in motley and ever-fluctuating groups; but his essential character, however he disguise it, is that of a Philosopher and moral Poet, whose study has been human nature, whose delight and best endeavour are with all that is beautiful, and tender, and mysteriously sublime, in the fate or history of man. This is the purport of his writings, whether their form be that of fiction or of truth; the spirit that pervades and ennobles his delineations of common life, his wild wayward dreams, allegories, and shadowy imaginings, no less than his disquisitions of a nature directly scientific.

But in this latter province also, Richter has accomplished much. His Vorschule der Aesthetik (Introduction to Esthetics*) is a work on poetic art, based on principles of no ordinary depth and compass, abounding in noble views, and, notwithstanding its frolicsome exuberance, in sound and subtile criticism; esteemed even in Germany, where criticism has long been treated of as a science, and by such persons as Winkelmann, Kant, Herder, and the Schlegels. Of this work we could speak long, did our limits allow. We fear it might astonish many an honest brother of our craft, were he to read it; and altogether perplex and dash his maturest counsels, if he chanced to understand it. Richter has also written on education, a work entitled Levana; distinguished by keen practical sagacity, as well as generous sentiment, and a certain sober magnificence of speculation; the whole presented in that singular style which characterizes the man. Germany is rich in works on Education; richer at present than any other country: it is there only that some echo of the Lockes and Miltons, speaking of this high matter, may still be heard; and speaking of it in the language of our own time, with insight into the actual wants, advantages, perils, and prospects of this age. Among writers on this subject, Richter holds a high place; if we look chiefly at his tendency and aims, perhaps the highest.-The Clavis Fichtiana is a ludicrous performance, known to us only by report; but Richter is said to possess the merit, while he laughs at Fichte, of understanding him; a merit among Fichte's critics, which seems to be one of the rarest. Report also, we regret to say, is all that we know of the Campaner Thal, a Discourse on the Immortality of the Soul; one of Richter's beloved topics, or rather the life of his whole philosophy, *From air avopat, to feel. A word invented by

Baumgarten, (some eighty years ago,) to express generally the Science of the Fine Arts; and now in universal use among the Germans. Perhaps we also might as well adopt it; at least if any such science should ever

arise among us.

We defy the most careless or prejudiced reader to peruse these works without an impression of something splendid, wonderful, and daring. But they require to be studied as well as read, and this with no ordinary patience, if the reader, especially the foreign reader, wishes to comprehend rightly either their truth or their want of truth. Tried by many an accepted standard, Richter would be speedily enough disposed of; pronounced a mystic, a German dreamer, a rash and presumptuous innovator; and so consigned, with equanimity, perhaps with a certain jubilee, to the Limbo appointed for all such wind-bags and deceptions. Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact, all strange things are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely any thing is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common. The current coin of the realm passes into all hands; and be it gold, silver, copper, is acceptable and of known value: but with new ingots, with foreign bars, and medals of Corinthian brass, the case is widely different.

There are few writers with whom deliberation and careful distrust of first impressions are more necessary than with Richter. He is a phenomenon from the very surface; he presents himself with a professed and determined singularity: his language itself is a stone of stumbling to the critic; to critics of the grammarian species, an unpardonable, often an insuperable, rock of offence. Not that he is ignorant of grammar, or disdains the sciences of spelling and parsing; but he exercises both in a certain latitudinarian spirit; deals with astonishing liberality in parentheses, dashes, and subsidiary clauses; invents hundreds of new words, alters old ones, or by hyphen, chains, pairs, and packs them together into most jarring combination; in short, produces sentences of the most heterogeneous, lumber. ing, interminable kind. Figures without limit; indeed the whole is one tissue of metaphors, and similes, and allusions to all the provinces of Earth, Sea, and Air, interlaced with epigrammatic breaks, vehement bursts, or sardonic turns, interjections, quips, puns, and even oaths! A perfect Indian jungle it seems; a boundless, unparalleled imbroglio; nothing on all sides but darkness, dissonance, confusion worse confounded! Then the style of the whole corresponds, in perplexity and extravain fiction or serious treatise, is embaled in some gance, with that of the parts. Every work, be it fantastic wrappage, some mad narrative accounting for its appearance, and connecting it with the author, who generally becomes a per

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