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CARLYLE'S

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS.

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1827.]

DR. JOHNSON, it is said, when he first heard | monger, whose grand enterprise, however, is 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,"

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,

"Voices," and the like, but the votes and plead- but for this precaution, occasion difficulty,

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 aate and

ings 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, accord-place of the proposed individual's birth, his ingly, 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.

parentage, trade, appointments, and the titles of his works; (the date of his death you 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 Richter was much better-natured than John- here and there, by way of cement; and so the son; and took many provoking things with the strangest pile suddenly arises; amorphous, spirit of a humorist and philosopher; nor can pointing every way but to the zenith,-here a we think that so good a man, even had he fore- block of granite, there a mass of pipe-clay; seen this work of Doering's, would have gone till the whole finishes, when the materials are the length of assassinating him for it. Doer-finished, and you leave it standing to posteing is a person we have known for several years, as a compiler, and translator, and ballad

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rity, 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 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.

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 recalcitrates contemptuously against such as do him offence. Glück auf dem Weg! is the worst we wish him.

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. The whole 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 Richter is little known out of Germany. The only 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 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, 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

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. "Un-
happy is the man," says he," for whom his own
mother has not made all other mothers vener-
able!" and elsewhere: 0 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 of-
fered, about this time, (1793,) a true and beau-
tiful emblem of his simple and noble way of
Whilst his mother, who then
thought, which comprehended at once the high
and the low.
lived with him, busily pursued her household
work, occupying herself about stove and dres-
ser, 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 manu-
scripts. The jingle of the household operations
seeined 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.

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 had 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.

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 2

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 It is seldom that so much same substantial, determinate, yet meek and tolerating man. 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 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

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