Pago New Monthly Magazine.-Vol. XXXIV. No. CXXXVIII. 1832. Fraser's Magazine.-Vol. XV. Nos. LXXXV. and LXXXVI. 1837. London and Westminster Review.-Nos. VIII. and LI. 1837. London and Westminster Review.-Nos. IX. and LII. 1837. - 511 CARLYLE'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. [EDINBURGH Review, 1827.] DR. JOHNSON, it is said, when he first heard of Boswell's intention to write a life of him, announced, with decision enough, that, if he thought Boswell really meant to write his life, he would prevent it by taking Boswell's! That great authors should actually employ this preventive against bad biographers is a thing we would by no means recommend; but the truth is, that, rich as we are in biography, a wellwritten life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to furnish the record. But great men, like the old Egyptian kings, must all be tried after death, before they can be embalmed: and what, in truth, are these "Sketches," "Anas," "Conversations," "Voices," and the like, but the votes and pleadings of the ill-informed advocates, and jurors, and judges, from whose conflict, however, we shall in the end have a true verdict? The worst of it is at the first; for weak eyes are precisely the fondest of glittering objects. And, accordingly, no sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself; though, many times, this mirror is so twisted with convexities and concavities, and, indeed, so extremely small in size, that to expect any true image, or any image whatever from it, is out of the question. Richter was much better-natured than Johnson; and took many provoking things with the spirit of a humorist and philosopher; nor can we think that so good a man, even had he foreseen this work of Doering's, would have gone the length of assassinating him for it. Doering is a person we have known for several years, as a compiler, and translator, and ballad-| Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Leben, nebst Characteristik seiner Werke; von Heinrich Doering. (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of his Works; by Heinrich Doering) Gotha. Hennings, 1826. 12mo. ap. 208. monger, whose grand enterprise, however, is his Gallery of Weimar Authors; a series of strange little biographies, beginning with Schiller, and already extending over Wieland and Herder,-now comprehending, probably by conquest, Klopstock also, and lastly, by a sort of droit d'aubaine, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, neither of whom belonged to Weimar. Authors, it must be admitted, are happier than the old painter with his cocks: for they write, naturally and without fear of ridicule or offence, the name and description of their work on the title-page; and thenceforth the purport and tendency of each volume remains indisputable. Doering is sometimes lucky in this privilege; for his manner of composition, being so peculiar, might now and then occasion difficulty, but for this precaution. His biographies he works up simply enough. He first ascertains, from the Leipzig Conversationslexicon or Jörden's Poetical Lexicon, Flögel, or Koch, or other such Compendium or Handbook, the date and place of the proposed individual's birth, his parentage, trade, appointments, and the titles of his works; (the date of his death ycu already know from the newspapers ;) this serves as a foundation for the edifice. He then goes through his writings, and all other writings where he or his pursuits are treated of, and whenever he finds a passage with his name in it, he cuts it out, and carries it away. In this manner a mass of materials is collected, and the building now proceeds apace. Stone is laid on the top of stone, just as it comes to hand; a trowel or two of biographic mortar, if perfectly convenient, being perhaps spread in here and there, by way of cement; and so the strangest pile suddenly arises; amorphous, pointing every way but to the zenith,-here a block of granite, there a mass of pipe-clay; till the whole finishes, when the materials are finished, and you leave it standing to posterity, like some miniature Stonehenge, a perfect architectural enigma. To speak without figure, this mode of lifeWriting has its disadvantages. For one thing. the composition cannot well be what the critics call harmonious; and, indeed, Herr Doering's transitions are often abrupt enough. His hero 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, various parts of Germany, to solemnize the and a sickness of fifteen years, are despatched memory of Richter; among the rest, one in the with equal brevity; in a moment you find him Museum of Frankfort on the Maine; where a married, and the father of free fine children. Doctor Börne speaks another long speech, if He dies no less suddenly he is studying as possible in still more decided bombast. Next usual, writing poetry, receiving visits, full of come threnodies from all the four winds, mostly life and business, when instantly some para-on very splay-footed metre. Thewhole of which graph opens under him, like one of the trap-is here snatched from the kind oblivion of the doors in the Vision of Mirza, and he drops, newspapers, and "lives in Settle's numbers one without. note of preparation, into the shades day more." 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 dif-hibit in the epicedial style. They rather tesferently. 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 ex tify, 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 Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richerect countenance and firm hoof, and even re-ter is little known out of Germany. The only calcitrates contemptuously against such as do thing connected with him, we think, that has him offence. Glück auf dem Weg! is the worst reached this country, is his saying, imported we wish him. 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-grasp. partly 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 Life is occupied with a description of the funeral and its appendages,-how the "sixty torches, with a number of lanterns and pitchpans," were arranged; how this patrician or professor followed that, through Friedrich-street, Chancery-street, and other streets of Bayreuth; and how at last the torches all went out, as Doctor Gabler and Doctor Spatzier were pero 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, especial. ly 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 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 vener able!" 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 Doer. ing, almost the only memorable thing he has written in this volume: "Richter's studying or sitting apartment offered, about this time, (1793,) a true and beautiful emblem of his simple and noble way of thought, which comprehended at once the high and the low. Whilst his mother, who then lived with him, busily pursued her household work, occupying herself about stove and dresser, Jean Paul was sitting in a corner of the same room, at a simple writing-desk, with few or no books about him, but merely with one or two drawers containing excerpts and manuscripts. The jingle of the household operations 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. it, may be stated in fi w 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 went to the University of Leipzig; with the highest character, in spite of the impediments which he had struggled with, for talent and acquirement. Like his father, he was destined for Theology; from which, however, his vagrant genius soon diverged into Poetry and Philosophy, to the neglect, and, ere long, to the final abandonment, of his appointed profession. Not well knowing what to do, he now accepted a tutorship in some family of rank; then he bad pupils in his own house,-which, however, 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. 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 FixA huge, irregular man, both in mind and lein; the Jubelsenior (Parson in Jubilee); person, (for his portrait is quite a physiogno- Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz; Katzenberger's mical study,) full of fire, strength, and impe- Journey to the Bath; Life of Fibel; with many tuosity, Richter seems, at the same time, to lighter pieces; and two works of a higher have been, in the highest degree, mild, simple-order, Hesperus and Titan, the largest and the hearted, 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 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 |