and dear-bought experience, cannot a penetrating spirit learn as
much from the passion of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England,
as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities in
Spain, in France, or in Italy?
much from the passion of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England,
as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities in
Spain, in France, or in Italy?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 to v25 - Rab to Tur
"
"Why then," said she, "I will give it you freely: e'en send
for him to come down. It will highly oblige him, and I dare-
say you will fare the better for it. "
"Well," said I, "I will write him a letter, because he expects
an answer, or maybe he will make a pretense to come down.
How can it go? " "I'll take care of that," said she: "it is in my
instructions. " "Aye," thought I, "so I doubt, by the hint Mr.
Williams gave me about the post-house. "
I wrote to my master as follows:
Honored Sir:
When I consider how easily you might have made me happy,
since all I desire is to be permitted to go to my poor father and
mother; when I reflect upon your former proposal to me in relation
to a certain person, not one word of which is now mentioned; and
upon my being in that strange manner run away with, and still
kept here a miserable prisoner, do you think, sir (pardon your poor
servant's freedom: my fears make me bold),- do you think, I say,
that your general assurances of honor to me can have the effect
they ought to have? O good sir! I too much apprehend that your
notions of honor and mine are very different from one another; I
have no other hope but in your continual absence. If you have any
proposals to make me that are consistent with your honorable profes-
sions, in my humble sense of the word, a few lines will communicate
them to me, and I will return such an answer as befits me.
If
Whatever rashness you may impute to me, I cannot help it; but I
wish I may not be forced upon any that otherwise would not enter
my thoughts. Forgive, sir, my plainness; I should be loth to behave
to my master unbecomingly: but I must say, sir, my innocence is so
dear to me that all other considerations must be dispensed with.
you mean honorably, why should you not let me know it plainly?
Why, sir, I humbly ask, why all this if you mean honorably? It is
not for me to expostulate too freely with you, sir, so greatly my
superior. Pardon me, I hope you will; but as to seeing you, I cannot
bear the dreadful apprehension. Whatever you have to propose to
me, whatever you intend, let my assent be that of a free person, and
not of a sordid slave, who is to be threatened and frightened into a
compliance with measures which your conduct seems to imply. My
restraint is hard upon me; I am very uneasy under it. Shorten it,
I beseech you, or— But I will dare to say no more than that I am
your greatly oppressed, unhappy servant.
## p. 12238 (#280) ##########################################
12238
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
After I had taken a copy of this, I folded it up: and Mrs.
Jewkes coming just as I had done, sat down by me; and said,
when she saw me directing it, "I wish you would tell me if you
have taken my advice, and consented to my master's coming
down. "
"If it will oblige you,” said I, "I will read it to you. "
"That's good," said she; "then I'll love you dearly. "
Said I, "Then you must not offer to alter one word. ”
"I won't," replied she.
So I read it to her. She praised me much for my wording
of it; but said she thought I pushed the matter very close, and
it would better bear talking than writing about. She wanted an
explanation or two about a certain person; but I said she must
take it as she heard it.
"Well, well," said she, "I make no doubt you understand one
another, and will do so more and more. "
I sealed up the letter, and she undertook to convey it.
MISS BYRON'S RESCUE FROM ABDUCTION, BY SIR CHARLES
GRANDISON
RELATED IN A LETTER FROM MISS BYRON TO HER FRIEND MISS SELBY
From Sir Charles Grandison'
A$
S THE chariot drove by houses, I cried out for help. But
under pretense of preventing my taking cold, Sir Hargrave
tied a handkerchief over my face, head, and mouth, having
first muffled me up in the cloak; and with his right arm thrown
round me, kept me fast on the seat: and except that now and
then my struggling head gave me a little opening, I was blinded.
On the road, just after I had screamed, and made another
effort to get my hands free, I heard voices: and immediately the
chariot stopped. Then how my heart was filled with hope! But
alas! it was momentary. I heard one of his men say, "The
best of husbands, I assure you, sir; and she is the worst of
wives. " I screamed again. "Aye, scream and be d-d! Poor
gentleman, I pity him with all my heart. " And immediately the
coachman drove on again. The vile wretch laughed.
I was ready to faint several times. I begged for air; and
when we were in an open road, and I suppose there was nobody
in sight he vouchsafed to pull down the blinding handkerchief,
## p. 12239 (#281) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12239
but kept it over my mouth; so that, except now and then that I
struggled it aside with my head (and my neck is very stiff with
my efforts to free my face), I could only make a murmuring
kind of noise. The curtain of the fore-glass was pulled down,
and generally the canvas on both sides drawn up. But I was
sure to be made acquainted when we came near houses, by his
care again to blind and stifle me up. A little before we were
met by my deliverer, I had, by getting one hand free, unmuffled
myself so far as to see (as I had guessed once or twice before
by the stone pavements) that we were going through a town:
and then I again vehemently screamed; but he had the cruelty
to thrust a handkerchief into my mouth, so that I was almost
strangled, and my mouth was hurt, and is still sore.
At one place the chariot drove out of the road, over rough
ways and little hillocks, as I thought, by its rocking; and then,
it stopping, he let go my hands and endeavored to soothe me.
He begged I would be pacified; and offered, if I would for-
bear crying out for help, to leave my eyes unmuffled all the rest
of the way.
But I would not, I told him, give such a sanction
to his barbarous violence. On the chariot's stopping, one of his
men came up, and put a handkerchief into his master's hands,
in which were some cakes and sweetmeats, and gave him also
a bottle of sack, with a glass. Sir Hargrave was very urgent
with me to take some of the sweetmeats and to drink a glass of
the wine; but I had neither stomach nor will to touch either.
He eat himself very cordially. God forgive me! I wished in
my heart there were pins and needles in every bit he put into
his mouth. He drank two glasses of the wine. Again he urged
I said I hoped I had eat and drank my last.
me.
I saw that I was upon a large, wild, heath-like place, between
two roads, as it seemed. I asked nothing about my journey's
end. All I had to hope for as to an escape (though then I began
to despair of it) was upon the road, or in some town. My jour-
ney's end, I knew, must be the beginning of new trials; for I
was resolved to suffer death rather than to marry him.
The chariot had not many minutes got into the great road
again, over the like rough and sometimes plashy ground, when
it stopped on a dispute between the coachman and the coachman
of another chariot-and-six, as it proved. Sir Hargrave looked
out of his chariot to see the occasion of this stop; and then I
## p. 12240 (#282) ##########################################
12240
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
found means to disengage one hand. I heard a gentleman's
voice directing his own coachman to give way. I then pushed
up the handkerchief with my disengaged hand from my mouth,
and pulled it down from over my eyes, and cried out for help-
«< Help, for God's sake! "
A man's voice (it was my delivere's, as it happily proved) bid
Sir Hargrave's coachman proceed at his peril. Sir Hargrave, with
terrible oaths and curses, ordered him to proceed, and to drive
through all opposition.
The gentleman called Sir Hargrave by his name, and charged
him with being upon a bad design. The vile wretch said he had
only secured a runaway wife, eloped to, and intending to elope
from, a masquerade, to her adulterer: [horrid! ] He put aside
the cloak, and appealed to my dress. The gentleman would not
be satisfied with Sir Hargrave's story. He would speak to me,
and asked me, with an air that promised deliverance, if I were
Sir Hargrave's wife?
"No, no, no, no! " I could only say.
For my own part, I could have no scruple, distressed as I
was, and made desperate, to throw myself into the protection,
and even into the arms, of my deliverer, though a very fine
young gentleman. But you may better conceive than I can
express the terror I was in when Sir Hargrave drew his sword
and pushed at the gentleman, with such words as denoted (for I
could not look that way) he had done him mischief. But when I
found my oppressor pulled out of the chariot by the brave, the
gallant man (which was done with such force as made the chariot
rock), and my protector safe, I was as near fainting with joy as
before I had been with terror. I had shaken off the cloak, and
untied the handkerchief. He carried me in his arms (I could
not walk) to his own chariot. I heard Sir Hargrave curse, swear,
and threaten. I was glad, however, he was not dead.
"Mind him not, madam-fear him not! " said Sir Charles
Grandison. [You know his noble name, my Lucy. ] "Coachman,
drive not over your master: take care of your master! " or
some such words he said, as he lifted me into his own chariot.
He just surveyed, as it were, the spot, and bid a servant let Sir
Hargrave know who he was; and then came back to me. He
ordered his coachman to drive back to Colnebrook. In accents
of kindness he told me that he had there at present the most
## p. 12241 (#283) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12241
virtuous and prudent of sisters, to whose care he would commit
me, and then proceed on his journey to town.
How irresistibly welcome to me was his supporting arm,
thrown round me, as we flew back, compared to that of the vile
Sir Hargrave! Mr. Reeves has given you an account from the
angelic sister. O my Lucy, they are a pair of angels! I have
written a long, long letter, or rather five letters in one, of my
distresses, of my deliverance; and when my heart is stronger I
will say more of the persons, as well as minds, of this excellent
brother and sister.
Just now I have received a congratulatory packet of letters.
And so you expect the particular character and description of
the persons of this more than amiable brother and sister? Need
you to have told me that you do? And could you think that
after having wasted so many quires of paper in giving you the
characters of people, many of whom deserved not to be drawn
out from the common crowd of mortals, I would forbear to give
you those of persons who adorn the age in which they live, and
even human nature?
You don't question, you say, if I begin in their praises, but
my gratitude will make me write in a sublime style; and are
ready, you promise me, to take, with allowance, all the fine
things from me which Mr. Reeves has already taught you to
expect.
Which shall I begin with? You will have a sharp lookout
upon me, you say. Ah, my Lucy! I know what you mean. And
so, if I begin with the character of the brother, then you will
join with my uncle, shake your head, and cry, "Ah, my Har-
riet! " If I begin with the sister, will you not say that I save
my choicest subject for the last? How difficult is it to avoid
censure, when there is a resolution taken to be censorious!
Miss Grandison - Yes, my volant, my self-conducted quill,
begin with the sister, say my Lucy what she pleases: -
Miss Grandison is about twenty-four; of a fine stature. She
has dignity in her aspect, and a very penetrating black eye, with
which she does what she pleases. Her hair is black, very fine,
and naturally curls. She is not fair; but her complexion is deli-
cate and clear, and promises a long duration to her loveliness.
Her features are generally regular; her nose is a little aquiline;
but that is so far from being a blemish, that it gives a kind of
majesty to her other features. Her teeth are white and even,
XXI-766
## p. 12242 (#284) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12242
her mouth is perfectly lovely, and a modest archness appears in
her smiles that makes one both love and fear her, when she
begins to speak. She is finely shaped; and in her air and whole.
appearance, perfectly genteel.
She has charming spirits. I daresay she sings well, from the
airs she now and then warbles in the gayety of her heart. She is
very polite; yet has a vein of raillery, that were she not polite,
would give one too much apprehension for one's ease: but I am
sure she is frank, easy, and good-humored. She says she has but
lately taken a very great liking to reading. She pretends that
she was too volatile, too gay, too airy, to be confined to sedentary
amusements. Her father, however, according to the genteelest
and most laudable modern education for women, had given her
a master who taught her history and geography, in both which
she acknowledges she made some progress. In music she owns
she has skill: but I am told by her maid, who attended me by
her young lady's direction, and who delights to praise her mis-
tress, that she reads and speaks French and Italian; that she
writes finely; and is greatly admired for her wit, prudence, and
obligingness. "Nobody," said Jenny (who is a sensible young
woman, a clergyman's daughter, well educated, and very obliging),
«< can stand against her good-natured raillery. " Her brother, she
says, is not spared; but he takes delight in her vivacity, and gives
way to it, when it is easy to see that he could take her down if
he pleased. "And then," added this good young woman, "she is
an excellent manager in a family, finely as she is educated. She
knows everything, and how to direct what should be done, from
the private family dinner to a sumptuous entertainment; and
every day inspects, and approves or alters, the bill of fare. " By
the way, my Lucy, she is an early riser-do you mind that?
and so can do everything with ease, pleasure, and without hurry
and confusion; for all her servants are early risers of course.
Yet this fine lady loves to go to the public places; and often
goes, and makes a brilliant figure there. She has time for them,
and earns her pleasures by her early rising. Miss Grandison,
Jenny tells me, has two humble servants: [I wonder she has not
two-and-twenty! ] one is Sir Walter Watkins, a man of a large
estate in Somersetshire; the other is Lord G. , son of the Earl
of G. but neither of them highly approved by her; yet, Jenny
says, they are both of them handsome men, and admired by the
ladies. This makes me afraid that they are modern men, and
## p. 12243 (#285) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12243
pay their court by the exterior appearance, rather than by inte-
rior worth. Who, my Lucy, that has heard what my late grand-
father has said, and my grandmamma still says, of the men in
their youthful days, will not say that we have our lots cast in
an age of petit maîtres and insignificants? Such an amiable
woman is Miss Charlotte Grandison. - May I be found, on further
acquaintance, but half as lovely in her eyes as she is in mine!
But now for her brother
my deliverer!
Sir Charles Grandison, in his person, is really a very fine
man. He is tall, rather slender than full; his face, in shape, is a
fine oval; he seems to have florid health-health confirmed by
exercise. His complexion seems to have been naturally too fine
for a man: but as if he were above being regardful of it, his
face is overspread with a manly sunniness [I want a word], that
shows he has been in warmer climates than England; and so it
seems he has, since the tour of Europe has not contented him.
He has visited some parts of Asia, and even of Africa, Egypt
particularly.
-
I wonder what business a man has for such fine teeth and for
so fine a mouth as Sir Charles Grandison might boast of, were
he vain.
In his aspect there is something great and noble, that shows
him to be of rank. Were kings to be chosen for beauty and
majesty of person, Sir Charles Grandison would have few com-
petitors. His eye- indeed, my Lucy, his eye shows, if possible,
more of sparkling intelligence than that of his sister.
Now pray be quiet, my dear Uncle Selby! What is beauty
in a man to me? You all know that I never thought beauty a
qualification in a man. And yet, this grandeur in his person and
air is accompanied with so much ease and freedom of manners,
as engages one's love with one's reverence. His good breeding
renders him very accessible. In a word, he has such an easy
yet manly politeness, as well in his dress as in his address, that
were he not a fine figure of a man, but were even plain and
hard-featured, he would be thought very agreeable.
Sir Charles Grandison, my dear, has traveled, we may say, to
some purpose. Well might his sister tell Mr. Reeves that when-
ever he married he would break half a score hearts.
The good sense of this real fine gentleman is not, as I can
find, rusted over by sourness, by moroseness: he is above quarrel-
ing with the world for trifles; but he is still more above making
## p. 12244 (#286) ##########################################
12244
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
such compliances with it as would impeach either his honor or
conscience. Once Miss Grandison, speaking of her brother, said:
"My brother is valued by those who know him best, not so
much for being a handsome man, not so much for his birth and
fortune, nor for this or that single worthiness, as for being, in
the great and yet comprehensive sense of the word, a good man. ”
And at another time she said that he lived to himself, and to
his own heart; and though he had the happiness to please every-
body, yet he made the judgment or approbation of the world,
matter but of second consideration. "In a word," added she,
"Sir Charles Grandison, my brother" (and when she looks proud,
it is when she says my brother), "is not to be misled either by
false glory or false shame, which he calls the great snares of
virtue. "
But let me tell you, my dear, that Sir Charles does not look
to be so great a self-denier as his sister seems to think him
when she says he lives to himself, and to his own heart, rather
than to the opinion of the world. He dresses to the fashion;
rather richly, 'tis true, than gaudily, but still richly: so that he
gives his fine person its full consideration. He has a great deal
of vivacity in his whole aspect, as well as in his eye. Mrs.
Jenny says that he is a great admirer of handsome women. His
equipage is perfectly in taste, though not so much to the glare
of taste, as if he aimed either to inspire or show emulation. He
seldom travels without a set, and suitable attendants; and (what
I think seems a little to savor of singularity) his horses are not
docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road.
This I took notice of when we came to town. But if he be of
opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a nat-
ural ornament, but are of real use to defend them from the vex-
atious insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them (as Jenny
just now told me was thought to be his reason for not depriving
his cattle of a defense which nature gave them), how far from
a dispraise is this humane consideration! And how, in the more
minute as well as (we may suppose) in the greater instances, does
he deserve the character of the man of mercy, who will be mer-
ciful to his beast!
Do you wonder, Lucy, that I cannot hold up my head, when
I recollect the figure I must make in that odious masquerade
habit, hanging by my clasping arms about the neck of such a
gentleman? Can I be more effectually humbled than by such a
## p. 12245 (#287) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12245
recollection? Surely, surely, I have had my punishment for my
compliances with this foolish world.
But now, I think, something offers of blame in the character
of this almost faultless man, as his sister and her Jenny repre-
sent him to be. I cannot think, from a hint given by Miss
Grandison, that he is quite so frank and so unreserved as his
sister is. "As for my brother," said she, "he winds one about
and about, yet seems not to have more curiosity than one
would wish him to have. Led on by his smiling benignity, and
fond of his attention to my prattle, I have caught myself in the
midst of a tale of which I intended not to tell him one syllable.
'O Sir Charles! where am I got? ' have I said, and suddenly
stopped. -'Proceed, my Charlotte! No reserves to your nearest
friend. ' Yet he has his; and I have winded and winded about
him, as he has done about me, but all to no purpose. "
Now this reserve to such a sister, and in points that she
thinks it imports her to know, is what I do not like in Sir
Charles.
His sister, who cannot think he has one fault, excuses him,
and says that her brother has no other view in drawing her on
to reveal her own heart but the better to know how to serve
and oblige her. But then, might not the same thing be said in
behalf of the curiosity of so generous a sister?
Sir Charles has seen more of the world, it may be said, than
his sister has: he has traveled. But is not human nature the
same in every country, allowing for only different customs? Do
not love, hatred, anger, malice,- all the passions in short, good
or bad, show themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,
and actions of the people of every country? And let men make
ever such strong pretensions to knowledge from their far-fetched.
and dear-bought experience, cannot a penetrating spirit learn as
much from the passion of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England,
as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities in
Spain, in France, or in Italy?
If I am allowed to be so happy as to cultivate this desir-
able acquaintance, then will I closely watch every step of this
excellent man, in hope, however, to find him as perfect as report
declares him, that I may fearlessly make him my theme, as I
shall delight to make his sister my example. And if I were to
find any considerable faults in him, never fear, my dear, but my
gratitude will enlarge my charity in his favor. But I shall, at
## p. 12246 (#288) ##########################################
12246
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
the same time, arm my heart with those remembered failings,
lest my gratitude should endanger it, and make me a hopeless
fool.
I have not said one half of what I intended to say of this
extraordinary man. But having imagined, from the equal love I
have to his admirable sister, that I had found something to blame
him for, my impartiality has carried me out of my path; and
I know not how to recover it, without going a great way back.
Let, therefore, what I have further to say mingle in with my
future narratives, as new occasions call it forth. But yet I will
not suffer any other subject to interfere with that which fills my
heart with the praises, the due praises, of this worthy brother and
sister, to which I intended to consecrate this rambling and very
imperfect letter; and which here I will conclude, with assurances
of duty, love, and gratitude, where so much is due from your
HARRIET BYRON.
## p. 12246 (#289) ##########################################
་
## p. 12246 (#290) ##########################################
or
J. P. RICHTER
## p. 12246 (#291) ##########################################
WL,
+
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## p. 12246 (#292) ##########################################
## p. 12247 (#293) ##########################################
12247
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
(1763-1825)
BY E. P. EVANS
J
EAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER was born as the "twin brother
of spring," on March 21st, 1763, at Wunsiedel, a little town
of the Fichtelgebirge in the principality of Bayreuth, where
his father was assistant schoolmaster and organist. His mother,
Sophie Rosina, was the daughter of a clothier, Johann Paul Kuhn,
who plied his trade in Hof, an important manufacturing centre situ-
ated on a spur of the above-mentioned pine-clad range of mountains.
On the next day after his birth the child was baptized. He had
for his sponsors the maternal grandfather aforenamed, and a book-
binder, Johann Friedrich Thieme; the infant was therefore burdened
at the font with a compound of both their names,- the first of
which he translated some years later into French, out of admiration
for Jean Jacques Rousseau.
When the babe was scarcely five months old, he was taken to the
death-bed of his grandfather Johann Richter, rector or head master of
the school at Neustadt on the Kulm, in the Upper Palatinate. The
dying man, like Jacob of old, laid his hand on the child and blessed
him. The event left a strong impression, not so much in the actual
occurrence as in the repeated relation of it by his father in after
years. "Pious grandfather," exclaims Jean Paul in his autobiography,
"often have I thought of thy hand, blessing as it grew cold, when
fate led me out of dark hours into brighter; and I can already hold
fast to the belief in thy blessing in this world, penetrated, ruled, and
animated as it is by miracles and spirits. "
In the second year of his age his father became pastor of the
church in Joditz, a village not far from Hof, and situated in a charm-
ing region on the Saale; where the boy passed his earliest and most
impressionable years in idyllic surroundings, and cultivated that in-
nate delicacy of feeling for the beauties of nature
warm and wonderfully original expression in the
man.
Unfortunately his entire education at this period was con-
ducted at home by his father in a desultory and very disadvantageous
way, with no inkling of the pedagogical method which Pestalozzi was
just then putting into practice with the charity-children of Zürich.
The good pastor pursued the old preceptorial system of mechanically
which finds such
writings of the
## p. 12248 (#294) ##########################################
12248
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
memorizing Biblical texts and catechistical doctrines, alternating with
long lists of Latin words and grammatical rules, without any expla-
nation, a form of instruction called "learning by heart," but con-
tributing little or nothing to the development of either heart or head.
History, natural science, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, and even
a branch of knowledge so elementary and useful as orthography,
were utterly neglected; music too, in which the father was quite
accomplished, and for which the son showed decided taste and tal-
ent, found no place in this pietistic and pedantic programme. Oases
in the pedagogical desert were occasional opportunities of reading
by stealth in his father's library; and the eagerness with which he
devoured the dry theological tomes - whose contents, as he con-
fesses, were wholly unintelligible to him-is pathetic proof of his
inborn and insatiable love of letters. It was only after his father
was promoted to the more important pastorate of Schwarzenbach
in 1776, that the youngster of thirteen was sent to school; where
he received systematic instruction from the kind-hearted and clear-
headed Rector Werner, and above all, had access to books that were
books,
poems, romances, and other products of polite literature,
historical works, philosophical treatises, and a casual volume of con-
troversial divinity, which seems to have attracted him in proportion
as it "leaned to the heterodox side. " Three years later he was
sent to the gymnasium at Hof, and in 1781 matriculated as a student
of theology in the University of Leipsic.
Meanwhile the death of his father on April 15th, 1779, had not
only cut off all financial supplies from home, but also reduced the
family to extreme poverty, and caused the widowed mother to look
to him as her only strength and stay. Ofttimes he was on the verge
of starvation, without either money or credit for a loaf of bread, a
bowl of milk, or new soles to his boots; but he struggled on manfully
and cheerfully and overcame all adversities. Hardships arising from
this source could not depress a man who was convinced that as a
rule, "wealth weighs heavier than poverty on talent. " The choice
of theology as a profession—which may have been determined by
family influences, but certainly accorded with his deeply religious
nature grew somewhat distasteful to him even during his prepara-
tory course of study at Hof, and was wholly abandoned soon after he
entered the University, where, as he states, the academical atmo-
sphere was impregnated with religious skepticism, and "most of the
professors and nearly all the students had a leaning to heterodoxy. "
Thus he wrote in one of his letters to Pastor Vogel:
"I am no longer a theologian, and do not pursue any science ex
professo: indeed, none of them have any attraction for me except so
far as they bear upon my literary work; even philosophy is now
indifferent to me, since I doubt everything. "
_____
-
-:
## p. 12249 (#295) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12249
The literary work here referred to was the series of satirical
sketches entitled Grönländische Processe' (Greenland Lawsuits),
published in two parts in 1783-4. It is a rather unripe production;
somewhat in the manner of Hippel's 'Lebensläufe,' but with a deli-
cate vein of sentiment and genuine humor in it reminding the reader
occasionally of Sterne. Unhappily his exuberant fancy runs riot: the
quaintest conceits are clothed in forced and far-fetched similitudes,
often. inextricably mixed; one metaphor gives birth to a dozen; and
the whole living mass, composed of parts without organic connection,
holds together like a mother-opossum and her young by intertwist-
ing their tails. Nevertheless it was a remarkable performance for a
youth of nineteen; rich in promise, and full of deep meanings half
hidden from the hasty reader under a grotesque style.
Of a like character, though rather more mature and therefore less
extravagant, are 'Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren' (Selection from
the Devil's Papers: 1788), and Biographische Belustigungen unter
der Gehirnschale einer Riesin' (Biographical Diversions under the
Brain-pan of a Giantess: 1796). But these works did not suit the
public taste, and brought neither fame nor pecuniary returns to the
author; who in 1784 was obliged to flee from Leipsic, as Lessing had
done thirty-six years before, in order to avoid the debtor's prison.
It may be proper to add that in both cases the creditors, thus con-
strained to possess their souls with patience, received their own
with usury in due time. Meanwhile Jean Paul earned his daily food
as private tutor; but although devoting himself conscientiously and
lovingly to the training of his pupils, gave his best energies to the
more congenial task of "bringing up his own children," namely,
to the writing of books. The first of this literary progeny that
excited favorable attention, and was thought to do credit to him,
was 'Die Unsichtbare Loge' (The Invisible Lodge), which appeared
in two volumes in 1793, and bore the secondary title of 'Mummies. '
From a purely artistic point of view this novel, in which the influ-
ence of Rousseau is clearly perceptible, is a failure. Jean Paul him-
self speaks of it as "a born ruin,»- a quite characteristic example
of mixed metaphor (for ruins, unlike poets, are not born, but made),
though sufficiently expressive of the fact that the work not only
remained unfinished, but was positively unfinishable. The course of
the narration is constantly obstructed, diverted, and covered up by
the masses of miscellaneous matter which are dumped into it, and
borne along by the current until they take shape as a luxuriant and
labyrinthian delta of reflections on all sorts of topics, in which the
stream is at last wholly lost to view. If in its structure it is a chaos
"without form," it is in its substance by no means "void. " It is
also important as a turning-point in the career of the author, who
was not only warmly praised by the critics, but received a still more.
## p. 12250 (#296) ##########################################
12250
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
welcome recognition from the publisher in the form of a hundred
ducats.
It was doubtless due in a great measure to this encouragement,
that a more cheerful and less sardonic tone prevails in his next
novel, 'Hesperus' (1794), as well as in most of his subsequent writ-
ings: Leben des Quintus Fixlein' (Life of Quintus Fixlein: 1796);
Blumen-, Frucht-, und Dornenstücke; oder, Ehestand, Tod, und Hoch-
zeit des Armenadvocaten Siebenkäs' (Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces;
or, Wedded Life, Death, and Nuptials of the Poor Man's Advocate
Siebenkäs: 1796-7); 'Das Kampaner Thal; oder, Über die Unsterblich-
keit der Seele' (The Campan Valley; or, On the Immortality of the
Soul: 1797); Titan' (1800-3); 'Flegeljahre' (Wild Oats: 1804-5); 'Dr.
Katzenbergers Badereise' (Dr. Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath:
1809); 'Der Feldpredigers Schmelzles Reise nach Fläz' (Chaplain
Schmelzle's Journey to Fläz: 1809); Leben Fibels' (Life of Fibel:
1812); and 'Der Komet; oder, Nikolaus Marggraf' (The Comet; or,
Nicholas Marggraf: 1820-2). To these titles, which comprise his prin-
cipal works, may be added 'Die Vorschule der Aesthetik' (Introduc-
tion to Esthetics: 1804); Levana; oder, Erziehungslehre' (Levana;
or, Theory of Education: 1807); and 'Selina; oder, Über die Unster-
blichkeit (Selina; or, On the Immortality of the Soul). The last-
mentioned discourse on his favorite theme was left unfinished at the
time of his death on November 14th, 1825, and borne on his bier to
the grave, but was not published till two years later.
To complete the account of Richter's outer life, it may be added
that after the death in 1797 of his mother, whose last years were
cheered and made comfortable by his literary success, he lived for a
time in Leipsic and Weimar, and then went to Berlin, where in 1801
he found a highly cultivated and thoroughly congenial wife in Caro-
line Mayer, the daughter of a Prussian privy-councilor. In 1804 he
settled permanently in Bayreuth; and four years later the Archbishop
and Prince Primate von Dalberg granted him a pension of one thou-
sand florins, which after the dissolution of the Confederation of the
Rhine in 1813 continued to be paid by the King of Bavaria. Titu-
lar honors were also bestowed upon him: he was made Legations-
rath (Councilor of Legation) by the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen;
in 1817 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy
from the University of Heidelberg; and was chosen a member of the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1820.
Richter's best and most brilliant works of fiction are 'Hespe-
rus,' Titan,' 'Quintus Fixlein,' 'Flegeljahre,' and 'Siebenkäs. ' He
himself seems to have thought most highly of 'Flegeljahre'; but
the critical reader of to-day will probably give the preference to
'Fixlein' and 'Siebenkäs. ' The permanent value of these products
of the imagination, as well as of his so-called scientific writings,-
## p. 12251 (#297) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12251
'Introduction to Esthetics,' 'Levana,' and 'Selina,'-lies less in
their symmetry and unity as artistic creations (in which respects
they are woefully deficient) than in the wealth of isolated thoughts,
aphoristic utterances, and original conceits which they contain. Even
in Germany the dust on the sixty-five volumes of his Complete
Works,' issued shortly after his death, is nowadays seldom disturbed.
It is only in anthologies that he is read or can be really enjoyed.
by the present generation. Even his humor, which is his one precious.
quality, is apt to cloy through excess of sensibility running over into
sentimentality. It is also difficult to find a passage of considerable
length in which his metaphors do not halt, and to use his own com-
parison, go limping along like an actor with a buskin on one foot
and a sock on the other. The meaning, too, is apt to be obscured
by unintelligible allusions; a peculiarity due in part to his lifelong
habit of keeping a commonplace-book, which gradually grew into
numerous volumes, and was filled with notes and excerpts, curious
facts and fancies, serving as material for illustration, and suggesting
tropes overstrained and incomprehensible to the general reader without
a special commentary. Indeed, as early as 1808, the Hamburg pub-
licist Carl William Reinhold deemed it necessary to prepare a dic-
tionary explaining Richter's strange modes of speech, and rendering
the more difficult passages into plain German for the benefit of his
own countrymen and contemporaries. In this respect he is the very
antithesis of Lessing, whose thoughts are simply and strongly ex-
pressed, and need no exegetical apparatus to make them understood.
But with all these defects as an artist, Richter was an original
thinker, a keen but kind-hearted humorist, a genuine poet, and a
noble man. Of the German romanticists he was unquestionably the
healthiest; or rather the least "tainted in his wits. " However much
he may love to peer into graves and charnels, and to weep over the
wrongs and miseries of human life, his melancholy is "a most
humorous sadness"; the wormwood and the gall of cynicism are not
the ingredients of his satire, and in his bosom there beats a stout,
warm, cheerful heart, with no drop of misanthropic bitterness in it.
He studied men and nature through a microscopic lens, and thus
discovered a world of wonders where the common eye saw nothing.
Owing to the circumstances of his youth, the sphere of his observa-
tion of social phenomena was limited, but his vision exceedingly sharp
within this narrow range. His one point of firm footing on the
earth was his genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the
common people, the sufferings and sacrifices of the poor; and here-
in lay his strength.
E. P. Evans
## p. 12252 (#298) ##########################################
12252
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
EXTRA LEAF ON CONSOLATION
From Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces'
A
TIME will come - that is, must come - when we shall be com-
manded by morality not only to cease tormenting others,
but also ourselves. A time must come when man, even on
earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride.
Nature indeed draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of
the breast, so quickly that the wise man can never wholly lay
aside the garb of mourning from his body; but let his soul wear
none. For as it is ever a merit to bear a small suffering
with cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the
worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one;
as the same reason which is valid for the forgiveness of small
injuries is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest.
The first thing that we have to contend against and despise,
in sorrow as in anger, is its poisonous, enervating sweetness,
which we are so loath to exchange for the labor of consoling
ourselves, and to drive away by the effort of reason.
We must not exact of philosophy, that with one stroke of the
pen it shall reverse the transformation of Rubens, who with one
stroke of his brush changed a laughing child into a weeping one.
It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into half-
mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, I will be con-
tent to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me: without
it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be a wasp's
sting.
―
Even physical pain shoots its sparks upon us out of the elec-
trical condenser of the imagination. We could endure the most
acute pangs calmly, if they only lasted the sixtieth part of a
second; but in fact we never have to endure an hour of pain,
but only a succession of the sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty
beams of which are collected into the burning focus of a second,
and directed upon our nerves by the imagination alone. The
most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or
immaterial, namely, our impatience, and the delusion that it will
last forever.
There is many a loss over which we all know for certain that
we shall no longer grieve in twenty-ten-two years. Why do
we not say to ourselves, I will at once then, to-day, throw
-
## p. 12253 (#299) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12253
away an opinion which I shall abandon in twenty years? Why
should I be able to abandon errors of twenty years' standing, and
not of twenty hours?
When I awake from a dream which has painted an Otaheite
for me on the dark ground of the night, and find the flowery
land melted away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, "It was
only a dream. " Why is it that if I had really possessed this
island while awake, and it had been swallowed up by an earth-
quake, why is it that I do not then exclaim, "The island was
only a dream » ? Wherefore am I more inconsolable at the loss
of a longer dream than at the loss of a shorter,- for that is
the difference; and why does man find a great loss less prob-
able, and less a matter of necessity when it occurs, than a small
one?
The reason is, that every sentiment and every emotion is
mad, and exacts and builds its own world. A man can vex him-
self that it is already, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! The
mood not only exacts its own world, its own individual conscious-
ness, but its own time. I beg every one to let his passions, for
once, speak out plainly within himself, and to probe and question
them to the bottom, as to what they really desire. He will be
terror-struck at the enormity of these hitherto only half-muttered
wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love,
that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; pride, two bent
knees.
Translation by Edward Henry Noel.
THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF A MISERABLE MAN
N THE lone stillness of the New-Year's night
IN
An old man at his window stood, and turned
His dim eyes to the firmament, where, bright
And pure, a million rolling planets burned,—
And then down on the earth all cold and white,
And felt that moment that of all who mourned
And groaned upon its bosom, none there were
With his deep wretchedness and great despair.
For near him lay his grave,-hidden from view
Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows
Of age alone. In torturing thought he flew
Over the past, and on his memory rose
## p. 12254 (#300) ##########################################
12254
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
That picture of his life which conscience drew,
With all its fruits,- diseases, sins, and woes;
A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years
Of agony, remorse, and withering fears.
Like spectres now his bright youth-days came back,
And that cross-road of life where, when a boy,
His father placed him first: its right-hand track
Leads to a land of glory, peace, and joy,
Its left to wildernesses waste and black,
Where snakes and plagues and poison-winds destroy.
Which had he trod? Alas! the serpents hung
Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue.
Sunk in unutterable grief, he cried,
"Restore my youth to me! O God, restore
My morn of life! O father! be my guide,
And let me, let me choose my path once more! "
But on the wide waste air his ravings died
Away, and all was silent as before.
His youth had glided by, fleet as the wave;
His father came not,- he was in his grave.
Strange lights flashed flickering by: a star was falling;
Down to the miry marsh he saw it rush
"Like me! " he thought, and oh! that thought was galling,
And hot and heart-wrung tears began to gush.
Sleep-walkers crossed his eyes in shapes appalling;
Gaunt windmills lifted up their arms to crush;
And skeleton monsters rose up from the dim
Pits of the charnel-house, and glared on him!
Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling,
Rich music, heralding the young year's birth,
Rolled from a distant steeple, like the pealing
Of some celestial organ o'er the earth:
Milder emotions over him came stealing;
He felt the soul's unpurchasable worth.
"Return! " again he cried, imploringly;
"O my lost youth! return, return to me! "
And youth returned, and age withdrew its terrors;
Still was he young, for he had dreamed the whole:
But faithful is the image conscience mirrors
When whirlwind passions darken not the soul.
## p. 12255 (#301) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12255
Alas! too real were his sins and errors;
Too truly had he made the earth his goal;
He wept, and thanked his God that with the will,
He had the power, to choose the right path still.
Here, youthful reader, ponder! and if thou,
Like him, art reeling over the abyss,
And shakest off sin's iron bondage now,
This ghastly dream may prove thy guide to bliss;
But should age once be written on thy brow,
Its wrinkles will not be a dream, like this.
Mayest vainly pour thy tears above the urn
Of thy departed youth,-it never will return!
Translation of James Clarence Mangan.
FROM FIRST FLOWER PIECE›
NCE on a summer evening I was lying in the sunshine on a
mountain, and fell asleep. Then I dreamed that I awoke
in a church-yard. The down-rolling wheels of the steeple-
clock, which was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for
the sun in the empty night-heaven, for I thought an eclipse was
veiling it with the moon. All the graves were open, and the
iron doors of the charnel-house were moved to and fro by invis-
ible hands. Shadows which no one cast, flitted on the walls;
and other shadows walked erect in the thin air.
In the open
coffins none were sleeping now but children. In the sky hung in
large folds merely a gray sultry mist, which a giant shadow like
a net was drawing down nearer, tighter, and hotter. Above me
I heard the distant fall of avalanches; under me the first step of
an illimitable earthquake. The church wavered up and down
with two unceasing discords, which contended with each other
and vainly endeavored to mingle in unison. At times a gray
gleam skipped up along its windows, and under the gleam the
lead and iron ran down molten. The net of the mist and the
reeling earth thrust me into that fearful temple, at the door of
which, in two poisonous thickets, two glittering basilisks were
brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient
centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing round
the empty altar; and in all of them the breast, instead of the
heart, quivered and beat. One dead man only, who had just
been buried in the church, still lay on his pillow without a
## p. 12256 (#302) ##########################################
12256
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
quivering breast, and on his smiling countenance stood a happy
dream. But as a living one entered, he awoke, and smiled no
more; he lifted with difficulty his heavy eyelids, but within was
no eye, and in his beating breast there was, instead of a heart,
a wound. He lifted up his hands and folded them to pray;
but the arms lengthened out and dissolved, and the hands, still
folded, fell away. Above, on the vault of the church, stood the
dial-plate of eternity, on which no number appeared, and which
was its own index hand; but a black finger pointed thereon, and
the dead sought to see the time by it. .
An immense and immeasurably extended hammer was about
to strike the last hour of time and shatter the universe, when I
awoke.
My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God; and the
joy, and the weeping, and the faith in him, were my prayer.
And as I arose, the sun was glowing deep behind the full pur-
pled ears of corn, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight
red on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an
aurora; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air
people was stretching out its short wings, and living, as I did,
before the Infinite Father; and from all nature around me flowed
peaceful tones as from distant evening bells.
MAXIMS FROM RICHTER'S WORKS
HⓇ
E WHO remains modest, not when he is praised but when he
is blamed, is truly modest.
OF ALL human qualities, modesty is most easily stifled by
fumes of incense, or of sulphur; and praise is often more hurtful
than censure.
THE truest love is the most timid; the falsest is the boldest.
IF You wish to become acquainted with your betrothed, travel
with him for a few days,-especially if he is accompanied by
his own folks,-and take your mother along.
IT is the misfortune of the bachelor that he has no one to
tell him frankly his faults; but the husband has this happiness.
## p. 12257 (#303) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12257
A MAN ought never to be more delicately attentive to his wife
than after making her a present, in order to lighten the sense of
obligation.
MARRIAGES are so unhappy, because men cannot make up their
minds to substitute love for force and arguments, and because
they wish to attain their purpose by might and right.
LOVE increases in strength with years, and diminishes in its
outward manifestations.
THE wedlock is happiest when one discovers the greatest
advantages in it and not before it. It is therefore perilous to
marry a poet.
MEN of imagination more easily make up with a lady-love
when she is absent than when she is present.
"
JEALOUSY Constitutes the sole difference between love and
friendship. Friendship has therefore one pleasure, and love one
pain, the more.
PAINS of sympathy are the sign of love: but if genuine, they
are not imaginary, and cause more suffering than one's own
pains; for we have at least the right to conquer the latter.
ONE should never hope to be compatible with a wife with
whom one has quarreled as a bride.
IF YOU are unable to refute an argument, you find fault with
the way in which it is put.
No Two persons are ever more confidential and cordial than
when they are censuring a third.
INTERCOURSE with men of the world narrows the heart, com-
munion with nature expands it.
SATAN is a scarecrow set up by the clergy in the spiritual
vineyard.
SO EASILY are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen
wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.
XXI-767
## p. 12258 (#304) ##########################################
12258
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
REFORMERS are constantly forgetting that the hour-hand must
make progress if only the minute-hand keeps moving.
IT IS of little avail that fortune makes us rich, if our desires
make us poor again.
THE Indians mistook the clothes of the first European they
saw for the body; we mistake them for the soul.
IT is not always the best actor that plays the part of king,
either on the stage or in real life.
How quickly and quietly the eye opens and closes, revealing
and concealing a world!
DULL persons look upon the refined as false.
THE head, like the stomach, is most easily infected with poi-
son when it is empty.
THE whole constitution of the English is like their manufac
tured cloth, which may not have a fair gloss, but is capable of
standing bad weather.
THE timid fear before danger, the cowardly in the midst of it,
and the courageous after it is over.
"Why then," said she, "I will give it you freely: e'en send
for him to come down. It will highly oblige him, and I dare-
say you will fare the better for it. "
"Well," said I, "I will write him a letter, because he expects
an answer, or maybe he will make a pretense to come down.
How can it go? " "I'll take care of that," said she: "it is in my
instructions. " "Aye," thought I, "so I doubt, by the hint Mr.
Williams gave me about the post-house. "
I wrote to my master as follows:
Honored Sir:
When I consider how easily you might have made me happy,
since all I desire is to be permitted to go to my poor father and
mother; when I reflect upon your former proposal to me in relation
to a certain person, not one word of which is now mentioned; and
upon my being in that strange manner run away with, and still
kept here a miserable prisoner, do you think, sir (pardon your poor
servant's freedom: my fears make me bold),- do you think, I say,
that your general assurances of honor to me can have the effect
they ought to have? O good sir! I too much apprehend that your
notions of honor and mine are very different from one another; I
have no other hope but in your continual absence. If you have any
proposals to make me that are consistent with your honorable profes-
sions, in my humble sense of the word, a few lines will communicate
them to me, and I will return such an answer as befits me.
If
Whatever rashness you may impute to me, I cannot help it; but I
wish I may not be forced upon any that otherwise would not enter
my thoughts. Forgive, sir, my plainness; I should be loth to behave
to my master unbecomingly: but I must say, sir, my innocence is so
dear to me that all other considerations must be dispensed with.
you mean honorably, why should you not let me know it plainly?
Why, sir, I humbly ask, why all this if you mean honorably? It is
not for me to expostulate too freely with you, sir, so greatly my
superior. Pardon me, I hope you will; but as to seeing you, I cannot
bear the dreadful apprehension. Whatever you have to propose to
me, whatever you intend, let my assent be that of a free person, and
not of a sordid slave, who is to be threatened and frightened into a
compliance with measures which your conduct seems to imply. My
restraint is hard upon me; I am very uneasy under it. Shorten it,
I beseech you, or— But I will dare to say no more than that I am
your greatly oppressed, unhappy servant.
## p. 12238 (#280) ##########################################
12238
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
After I had taken a copy of this, I folded it up: and Mrs.
Jewkes coming just as I had done, sat down by me; and said,
when she saw me directing it, "I wish you would tell me if you
have taken my advice, and consented to my master's coming
down. "
"If it will oblige you,” said I, "I will read it to you. "
"That's good," said she; "then I'll love you dearly. "
Said I, "Then you must not offer to alter one word. ”
"I won't," replied she.
So I read it to her. She praised me much for my wording
of it; but said she thought I pushed the matter very close, and
it would better bear talking than writing about. She wanted an
explanation or two about a certain person; but I said she must
take it as she heard it.
"Well, well," said she, "I make no doubt you understand one
another, and will do so more and more. "
I sealed up the letter, and she undertook to convey it.
MISS BYRON'S RESCUE FROM ABDUCTION, BY SIR CHARLES
GRANDISON
RELATED IN A LETTER FROM MISS BYRON TO HER FRIEND MISS SELBY
From Sir Charles Grandison'
A$
S THE chariot drove by houses, I cried out for help. But
under pretense of preventing my taking cold, Sir Hargrave
tied a handkerchief over my face, head, and mouth, having
first muffled me up in the cloak; and with his right arm thrown
round me, kept me fast on the seat: and except that now and
then my struggling head gave me a little opening, I was blinded.
On the road, just after I had screamed, and made another
effort to get my hands free, I heard voices: and immediately the
chariot stopped. Then how my heart was filled with hope! But
alas! it was momentary. I heard one of his men say, "The
best of husbands, I assure you, sir; and she is the worst of
wives. " I screamed again. "Aye, scream and be d-d! Poor
gentleman, I pity him with all my heart. " And immediately the
coachman drove on again. The vile wretch laughed.
I was ready to faint several times. I begged for air; and
when we were in an open road, and I suppose there was nobody
in sight he vouchsafed to pull down the blinding handkerchief,
## p. 12239 (#281) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12239
but kept it over my mouth; so that, except now and then that I
struggled it aside with my head (and my neck is very stiff with
my efforts to free my face), I could only make a murmuring
kind of noise. The curtain of the fore-glass was pulled down,
and generally the canvas on both sides drawn up. But I was
sure to be made acquainted when we came near houses, by his
care again to blind and stifle me up. A little before we were
met by my deliverer, I had, by getting one hand free, unmuffled
myself so far as to see (as I had guessed once or twice before
by the stone pavements) that we were going through a town:
and then I again vehemently screamed; but he had the cruelty
to thrust a handkerchief into my mouth, so that I was almost
strangled, and my mouth was hurt, and is still sore.
At one place the chariot drove out of the road, over rough
ways and little hillocks, as I thought, by its rocking; and then,
it stopping, he let go my hands and endeavored to soothe me.
He begged I would be pacified; and offered, if I would for-
bear crying out for help, to leave my eyes unmuffled all the rest
of the way.
But I would not, I told him, give such a sanction
to his barbarous violence. On the chariot's stopping, one of his
men came up, and put a handkerchief into his master's hands,
in which were some cakes and sweetmeats, and gave him also
a bottle of sack, with a glass. Sir Hargrave was very urgent
with me to take some of the sweetmeats and to drink a glass of
the wine; but I had neither stomach nor will to touch either.
He eat himself very cordially. God forgive me! I wished in
my heart there were pins and needles in every bit he put into
his mouth. He drank two glasses of the wine. Again he urged
I said I hoped I had eat and drank my last.
me.
I saw that I was upon a large, wild, heath-like place, between
two roads, as it seemed. I asked nothing about my journey's
end. All I had to hope for as to an escape (though then I began
to despair of it) was upon the road, or in some town. My jour-
ney's end, I knew, must be the beginning of new trials; for I
was resolved to suffer death rather than to marry him.
The chariot had not many minutes got into the great road
again, over the like rough and sometimes plashy ground, when
it stopped on a dispute between the coachman and the coachman
of another chariot-and-six, as it proved. Sir Hargrave looked
out of his chariot to see the occasion of this stop; and then I
## p. 12240 (#282) ##########################################
12240
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
found means to disengage one hand. I heard a gentleman's
voice directing his own coachman to give way. I then pushed
up the handkerchief with my disengaged hand from my mouth,
and pulled it down from over my eyes, and cried out for help-
«< Help, for God's sake! "
A man's voice (it was my delivere's, as it happily proved) bid
Sir Hargrave's coachman proceed at his peril. Sir Hargrave, with
terrible oaths and curses, ordered him to proceed, and to drive
through all opposition.
The gentleman called Sir Hargrave by his name, and charged
him with being upon a bad design. The vile wretch said he had
only secured a runaway wife, eloped to, and intending to elope
from, a masquerade, to her adulterer: [horrid! ] He put aside
the cloak, and appealed to my dress. The gentleman would not
be satisfied with Sir Hargrave's story. He would speak to me,
and asked me, with an air that promised deliverance, if I were
Sir Hargrave's wife?
"No, no, no, no! " I could only say.
For my own part, I could have no scruple, distressed as I
was, and made desperate, to throw myself into the protection,
and even into the arms, of my deliverer, though a very fine
young gentleman. But you may better conceive than I can
express the terror I was in when Sir Hargrave drew his sword
and pushed at the gentleman, with such words as denoted (for I
could not look that way) he had done him mischief. But when I
found my oppressor pulled out of the chariot by the brave, the
gallant man (which was done with such force as made the chariot
rock), and my protector safe, I was as near fainting with joy as
before I had been with terror. I had shaken off the cloak, and
untied the handkerchief. He carried me in his arms (I could
not walk) to his own chariot. I heard Sir Hargrave curse, swear,
and threaten. I was glad, however, he was not dead.
"Mind him not, madam-fear him not! " said Sir Charles
Grandison. [You know his noble name, my Lucy. ] "Coachman,
drive not over your master: take care of your master! " or
some such words he said, as he lifted me into his own chariot.
He just surveyed, as it were, the spot, and bid a servant let Sir
Hargrave know who he was; and then came back to me. He
ordered his coachman to drive back to Colnebrook. In accents
of kindness he told me that he had there at present the most
## p. 12241 (#283) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12241
virtuous and prudent of sisters, to whose care he would commit
me, and then proceed on his journey to town.
How irresistibly welcome to me was his supporting arm,
thrown round me, as we flew back, compared to that of the vile
Sir Hargrave! Mr. Reeves has given you an account from the
angelic sister. O my Lucy, they are a pair of angels! I have
written a long, long letter, or rather five letters in one, of my
distresses, of my deliverance; and when my heart is stronger I
will say more of the persons, as well as minds, of this excellent
brother and sister.
Just now I have received a congratulatory packet of letters.
And so you expect the particular character and description of
the persons of this more than amiable brother and sister? Need
you to have told me that you do? And could you think that
after having wasted so many quires of paper in giving you the
characters of people, many of whom deserved not to be drawn
out from the common crowd of mortals, I would forbear to give
you those of persons who adorn the age in which they live, and
even human nature?
You don't question, you say, if I begin in their praises, but
my gratitude will make me write in a sublime style; and are
ready, you promise me, to take, with allowance, all the fine
things from me which Mr. Reeves has already taught you to
expect.
Which shall I begin with? You will have a sharp lookout
upon me, you say. Ah, my Lucy! I know what you mean. And
so, if I begin with the character of the brother, then you will
join with my uncle, shake your head, and cry, "Ah, my Har-
riet! " If I begin with the sister, will you not say that I save
my choicest subject for the last? How difficult is it to avoid
censure, when there is a resolution taken to be censorious!
Miss Grandison - Yes, my volant, my self-conducted quill,
begin with the sister, say my Lucy what she pleases: -
Miss Grandison is about twenty-four; of a fine stature. She
has dignity in her aspect, and a very penetrating black eye, with
which she does what she pleases. Her hair is black, very fine,
and naturally curls. She is not fair; but her complexion is deli-
cate and clear, and promises a long duration to her loveliness.
Her features are generally regular; her nose is a little aquiline;
but that is so far from being a blemish, that it gives a kind of
majesty to her other features. Her teeth are white and even,
XXI-766
## p. 12242 (#284) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12242
her mouth is perfectly lovely, and a modest archness appears in
her smiles that makes one both love and fear her, when she
begins to speak. She is finely shaped; and in her air and whole.
appearance, perfectly genteel.
She has charming spirits. I daresay she sings well, from the
airs she now and then warbles in the gayety of her heart. She is
very polite; yet has a vein of raillery, that were she not polite,
would give one too much apprehension for one's ease: but I am
sure she is frank, easy, and good-humored. She says she has but
lately taken a very great liking to reading. She pretends that
she was too volatile, too gay, too airy, to be confined to sedentary
amusements. Her father, however, according to the genteelest
and most laudable modern education for women, had given her
a master who taught her history and geography, in both which
she acknowledges she made some progress. In music she owns
she has skill: but I am told by her maid, who attended me by
her young lady's direction, and who delights to praise her mis-
tress, that she reads and speaks French and Italian; that she
writes finely; and is greatly admired for her wit, prudence, and
obligingness. "Nobody," said Jenny (who is a sensible young
woman, a clergyman's daughter, well educated, and very obliging),
«< can stand against her good-natured raillery. " Her brother, she
says, is not spared; but he takes delight in her vivacity, and gives
way to it, when it is easy to see that he could take her down if
he pleased. "And then," added this good young woman, "she is
an excellent manager in a family, finely as she is educated. She
knows everything, and how to direct what should be done, from
the private family dinner to a sumptuous entertainment; and
every day inspects, and approves or alters, the bill of fare. " By
the way, my Lucy, she is an early riser-do you mind that?
and so can do everything with ease, pleasure, and without hurry
and confusion; for all her servants are early risers of course.
Yet this fine lady loves to go to the public places; and often
goes, and makes a brilliant figure there. She has time for them,
and earns her pleasures by her early rising. Miss Grandison,
Jenny tells me, has two humble servants: [I wonder she has not
two-and-twenty! ] one is Sir Walter Watkins, a man of a large
estate in Somersetshire; the other is Lord G. , son of the Earl
of G. but neither of them highly approved by her; yet, Jenny
says, they are both of them handsome men, and admired by the
ladies. This makes me afraid that they are modern men, and
## p. 12243 (#285) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12243
pay their court by the exterior appearance, rather than by inte-
rior worth. Who, my Lucy, that has heard what my late grand-
father has said, and my grandmamma still says, of the men in
their youthful days, will not say that we have our lots cast in
an age of petit maîtres and insignificants? Such an amiable
woman is Miss Charlotte Grandison. - May I be found, on further
acquaintance, but half as lovely in her eyes as she is in mine!
But now for her brother
my deliverer!
Sir Charles Grandison, in his person, is really a very fine
man. He is tall, rather slender than full; his face, in shape, is a
fine oval; he seems to have florid health-health confirmed by
exercise. His complexion seems to have been naturally too fine
for a man: but as if he were above being regardful of it, his
face is overspread with a manly sunniness [I want a word], that
shows he has been in warmer climates than England; and so it
seems he has, since the tour of Europe has not contented him.
He has visited some parts of Asia, and even of Africa, Egypt
particularly.
-
I wonder what business a man has for such fine teeth and for
so fine a mouth as Sir Charles Grandison might boast of, were
he vain.
In his aspect there is something great and noble, that shows
him to be of rank. Were kings to be chosen for beauty and
majesty of person, Sir Charles Grandison would have few com-
petitors. His eye- indeed, my Lucy, his eye shows, if possible,
more of sparkling intelligence than that of his sister.
Now pray be quiet, my dear Uncle Selby! What is beauty
in a man to me? You all know that I never thought beauty a
qualification in a man. And yet, this grandeur in his person and
air is accompanied with so much ease and freedom of manners,
as engages one's love with one's reverence. His good breeding
renders him very accessible. In a word, he has such an easy
yet manly politeness, as well in his dress as in his address, that
were he not a fine figure of a man, but were even plain and
hard-featured, he would be thought very agreeable.
Sir Charles Grandison, my dear, has traveled, we may say, to
some purpose. Well might his sister tell Mr. Reeves that when-
ever he married he would break half a score hearts.
The good sense of this real fine gentleman is not, as I can
find, rusted over by sourness, by moroseness: he is above quarrel-
ing with the world for trifles; but he is still more above making
## p. 12244 (#286) ##########################################
12244
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
such compliances with it as would impeach either his honor or
conscience. Once Miss Grandison, speaking of her brother, said:
"My brother is valued by those who know him best, not so
much for being a handsome man, not so much for his birth and
fortune, nor for this or that single worthiness, as for being, in
the great and yet comprehensive sense of the word, a good man. ”
And at another time she said that he lived to himself, and to
his own heart; and though he had the happiness to please every-
body, yet he made the judgment or approbation of the world,
matter but of second consideration. "In a word," added she,
"Sir Charles Grandison, my brother" (and when she looks proud,
it is when she says my brother), "is not to be misled either by
false glory or false shame, which he calls the great snares of
virtue. "
But let me tell you, my dear, that Sir Charles does not look
to be so great a self-denier as his sister seems to think him
when she says he lives to himself, and to his own heart, rather
than to the opinion of the world. He dresses to the fashion;
rather richly, 'tis true, than gaudily, but still richly: so that he
gives his fine person its full consideration. He has a great deal
of vivacity in his whole aspect, as well as in his eye. Mrs.
Jenny says that he is a great admirer of handsome women. His
equipage is perfectly in taste, though not so much to the glare
of taste, as if he aimed either to inspire or show emulation. He
seldom travels without a set, and suitable attendants; and (what
I think seems a little to savor of singularity) his horses are not
docked; their tails are only tied up when they are on the road.
This I took notice of when we came to town. But if he be of
opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a nat-
ural ornament, but are of real use to defend them from the vex-
atious insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them (as Jenny
just now told me was thought to be his reason for not depriving
his cattle of a defense which nature gave them), how far from
a dispraise is this humane consideration! And how, in the more
minute as well as (we may suppose) in the greater instances, does
he deserve the character of the man of mercy, who will be mer-
ciful to his beast!
Do you wonder, Lucy, that I cannot hold up my head, when
I recollect the figure I must make in that odious masquerade
habit, hanging by my clasping arms about the neck of such a
gentleman? Can I be more effectually humbled than by such a
## p. 12245 (#287) ##########################################
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
12245
recollection? Surely, surely, I have had my punishment for my
compliances with this foolish world.
But now, I think, something offers of blame in the character
of this almost faultless man, as his sister and her Jenny repre-
sent him to be. I cannot think, from a hint given by Miss
Grandison, that he is quite so frank and so unreserved as his
sister is. "As for my brother," said she, "he winds one about
and about, yet seems not to have more curiosity than one
would wish him to have. Led on by his smiling benignity, and
fond of his attention to my prattle, I have caught myself in the
midst of a tale of which I intended not to tell him one syllable.
'O Sir Charles! where am I got? ' have I said, and suddenly
stopped. -'Proceed, my Charlotte! No reserves to your nearest
friend. ' Yet he has his; and I have winded and winded about
him, as he has done about me, but all to no purpose. "
Now this reserve to such a sister, and in points that she
thinks it imports her to know, is what I do not like in Sir
Charles.
His sister, who cannot think he has one fault, excuses him,
and says that her brother has no other view in drawing her on
to reveal her own heart but the better to know how to serve
and oblige her. But then, might not the same thing be said in
behalf of the curiosity of so generous a sister?
Sir Charles has seen more of the world, it may be said, than
his sister has: he has traveled. But is not human nature the
same in every country, allowing for only different customs? Do
not love, hatred, anger, malice,- all the passions in short, good
or bad, show themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,
and actions of the people of every country? And let men make
ever such strong pretensions to knowledge from their far-fetched.
and dear-bought experience, cannot a penetrating spirit learn as
much from the passion of a Sir Hargrave Pollexfen in England,
as it could from a man of the same or the like ill qualities in
Spain, in France, or in Italy?
If I am allowed to be so happy as to cultivate this desir-
able acquaintance, then will I closely watch every step of this
excellent man, in hope, however, to find him as perfect as report
declares him, that I may fearlessly make him my theme, as I
shall delight to make his sister my example. And if I were to
find any considerable faults in him, never fear, my dear, but my
gratitude will enlarge my charity in his favor. But I shall, at
## p. 12246 (#288) ##########################################
12246
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
the same time, arm my heart with those remembered failings,
lest my gratitude should endanger it, and make me a hopeless
fool.
I have not said one half of what I intended to say of this
extraordinary man. But having imagined, from the equal love I
have to his admirable sister, that I had found something to blame
him for, my impartiality has carried me out of my path; and
I know not how to recover it, without going a great way back.
Let, therefore, what I have further to say mingle in with my
future narratives, as new occasions call it forth. But yet I will
not suffer any other subject to interfere with that which fills my
heart with the praises, the due praises, of this worthy brother and
sister, to which I intended to consecrate this rambling and very
imperfect letter; and which here I will conclude, with assurances
of duty, love, and gratitude, where so much is due from your
HARRIET BYRON.
## p. 12246 (#289) ##########################################
་
## p. 12246 (#290) ##########################################
or
J. P. RICHTER
## p. 12246 (#291) ##########################################
WL,
+
"1
onting
20. 1
11.
11
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7
## p. 12246 (#292) ##########################################
## p. 12247 (#293) ##########################################
12247
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
(1763-1825)
BY E. P. EVANS
J
EAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER was born as the "twin brother
of spring," on March 21st, 1763, at Wunsiedel, a little town
of the Fichtelgebirge in the principality of Bayreuth, where
his father was assistant schoolmaster and organist. His mother,
Sophie Rosina, was the daughter of a clothier, Johann Paul Kuhn,
who plied his trade in Hof, an important manufacturing centre situ-
ated on a spur of the above-mentioned pine-clad range of mountains.
On the next day after his birth the child was baptized. He had
for his sponsors the maternal grandfather aforenamed, and a book-
binder, Johann Friedrich Thieme; the infant was therefore burdened
at the font with a compound of both their names,- the first of
which he translated some years later into French, out of admiration
for Jean Jacques Rousseau.
When the babe was scarcely five months old, he was taken to the
death-bed of his grandfather Johann Richter, rector or head master of
the school at Neustadt on the Kulm, in the Upper Palatinate. The
dying man, like Jacob of old, laid his hand on the child and blessed
him. The event left a strong impression, not so much in the actual
occurrence as in the repeated relation of it by his father in after
years. "Pious grandfather," exclaims Jean Paul in his autobiography,
"often have I thought of thy hand, blessing as it grew cold, when
fate led me out of dark hours into brighter; and I can already hold
fast to the belief in thy blessing in this world, penetrated, ruled, and
animated as it is by miracles and spirits. "
In the second year of his age his father became pastor of the
church in Joditz, a village not far from Hof, and situated in a charm-
ing region on the Saale; where the boy passed his earliest and most
impressionable years in idyllic surroundings, and cultivated that in-
nate delicacy of feeling for the beauties of nature
warm and wonderfully original expression in the
man.
Unfortunately his entire education at this period was con-
ducted at home by his father in a desultory and very disadvantageous
way, with no inkling of the pedagogical method which Pestalozzi was
just then putting into practice with the charity-children of Zürich.
The good pastor pursued the old preceptorial system of mechanically
which finds such
writings of the
## p. 12248 (#294) ##########################################
12248
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
memorizing Biblical texts and catechistical doctrines, alternating with
long lists of Latin words and grammatical rules, without any expla-
nation, a form of instruction called "learning by heart," but con-
tributing little or nothing to the development of either heart or head.
History, natural science, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, and even
a branch of knowledge so elementary and useful as orthography,
were utterly neglected; music too, in which the father was quite
accomplished, and for which the son showed decided taste and tal-
ent, found no place in this pietistic and pedantic programme. Oases
in the pedagogical desert were occasional opportunities of reading
by stealth in his father's library; and the eagerness with which he
devoured the dry theological tomes - whose contents, as he con-
fesses, were wholly unintelligible to him-is pathetic proof of his
inborn and insatiable love of letters. It was only after his father
was promoted to the more important pastorate of Schwarzenbach
in 1776, that the youngster of thirteen was sent to school; where
he received systematic instruction from the kind-hearted and clear-
headed Rector Werner, and above all, had access to books that were
books,
poems, romances, and other products of polite literature,
historical works, philosophical treatises, and a casual volume of con-
troversial divinity, which seems to have attracted him in proportion
as it "leaned to the heterodox side. " Three years later he was
sent to the gymnasium at Hof, and in 1781 matriculated as a student
of theology in the University of Leipsic.
Meanwhile the death of his father on April 15th, 1779, had not
only cut off all financial supplies from home, but also reduced the
family to extreme poverty, and caused the widowed mother to look
to him as her only strength and stay. Ofttimes he was on the verge
of starvation, without either money or credit for a loaf of bread, a
bowl of milk, or new soles to his boots; but he struggled on manfully
and cheerfully and overcame all adversities. Hardships arising from
this source could not depress a man who was convinced that as a
rule, "wealth weighs heavier than poverty on talent. " The choice
of theology as a profession—which may have been determined by
family influences, but certainly accorded with his deeply religious
nature grew somewhat distasteful to him even during his prepara-
tory course of study at Hof, and was wholly abandoned soon after he
entered the University, where, as he states, the academical atmo-
sphere was impregnated with religious skepticism, and "most of the
professors and nearly all the students had a leaning to heterodoxy. "
Thus he wrote in one of his letters to Pastor Vogel:
"I am no longer a theologian, and do not pursue any science ex
professo: indeed, none of them have any attraction for me except so
far as they bear upon my literary work; even philosophy is now
indifferent to me, since I doubt everything. "
_____
-
-:
## p. 12249 (#295) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12249
The literary work here referred to was the series of satirical
sketches entitled Grönländische Processe' (Greenland Lawsuits),
published in two parts in 1783-4. It is a rather unripe production;
somewhat in the manner of Hippel's 'Lebensläufe,' but with a deli-
cate vein of sentiment and genuine humor in it reminding the reader
occasionally of Sterne. Unhappily his exuberant fancy runs riot: the
quaintest conceits are clothed in forced and far-fetched similitudes,
often. inextricably mixed; one metaphor gives birth to a dozen; and
the whole living mass, composed of parts without organic connection,
holds together like a mother-opossum and her young by intertwist-
ing their tails. Nevertheless it was a remarkable performance for a
youth of nineteen; rich in promise, and full of deep meanings half
hidden from the hasty reader under a grotesque style.
Of a like character, though rather more mature and therefore less
extravagant, are 'Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren' (Selection from
the Devil's Papers: 1788), and Biographische Belustigungen unter
der Gehirnschale einer Riesin' (Biographical Diversions under the
Brain-pan of a Giantess: 1796). But these works did not suit the
public taste, and brought neither fame nor pecuniary returns to the
author; who in 1784 was obliged to flee from Leipsic, as Lessing had
done thirty-six years before, in order to avoid the debtor's prison.
It may be proper to add that in both cases the creditors, thus con-
strained to possess their souls with patience, received their own
with usury in due time. Meanwhile Jean Paul earned his daily food
as private tutor; but although devoting himself conscientiously and
lovingly to the training of his pupils, gave his best energies to the
more congenial task of "bringing up his own children," namely,
to the writing of books. The first of this literary progeny that
excited favorable attention, and was thought to do credit to him,
was 'Die Unsichtbare Loge' (The Invisible Lodge), which appeared
in two volumes in 1793, and bore the secondary title of 'Mummies. '
From a purely artistic point of view this novel, in which the influ-
ence of Rousseau is clearly perceptible, is a failure. Jean Paul him-
self speaks of it as "a born ruin,»- a quite characteristic example
of mixed metaphor (for ruins, unlike poets, are not born, but made),
though sufficiently expressive of the fact that the work not only
remained unfinished, but was positively unfinishable. The course of
the narration is constantly obstructed, diverted, and covered up by
the masses of miscellaneous matter which are dumped into it, and
borne along by the current until they take shape as a luxuriant and
labyrinthian delta of reflections on all sorts of topics, in which the
stream is at last wholly lost to view. If in its structure it is a chaos
"without form," it is in its substance by no means "void. " It is
also important as a turning-point in the career of the author, who
was not only warmly praised by the critics, but received a still more.
## p. 12250 (#296) ##########################################
12250
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
welcome recognition from the publisher in the form of a hundred
ducats.
It was doubtless due in a great measure to this encouragement,
that a more cheerful and less sardonic tone prevails in his next
novel, 'Hesperus' (1794), as well as in most of his subsequent writ-
ings: Leben des Quintus Fixlein' (Life of Quintus Fixlein: 1796);
Blumen-, Frucht-, und Dornenstücke; oder, Ehestand, Tod, und Hoch-
zeit des Armenadvocaten Siebenkäs' (Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces;
or, Wedded Life, Death, and Nuptials of the Poor Man's Advocate
Siebenkäs: 1796-7); 'Das Kampaner Thal; oder, Über die Unsterblich-
keit der Seele' (The Campan Valley; or, On the Immortality of the
Soul: 1797); Titan' (1800-3); 'Flegeljahre' (Wild Oats: 1804-5); 'Dr.
Katzenbergers Badereise' (Dr. Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath:
1809); 'Der Feldpredigers Schmelzles Reise nach Fläz' (Chaplain
Schmelzle's Journey to Fläz: 1809); Leben Fibels' (Life of Fibel:
1812); and 'Der Komet; oder, Nikolaus Marggraf' (The Comet; or,
Nicholas Marggraf: 1820-2). To these titles, which comprise his prin-
cipal works, may be added 'Die Vorschule der Aesthetik' (Introduc-
tion to Esthetics: 1804); Levana; oder, Erziehungslehre' (Levana;
or, Theory of Education: 1807); and 'Selina; oder, Über die Unster-
blichkeit (Selina; or, On the Immortality of the Soul). The last-
mentioned discourse on his favorite theme was left unfinished at the
time of his death on November 14th, 1825, and borne on his bier to
the grave, but was not published till two years later.
To complete the account of Richter's outer life, it may be added
that after the death in 1797 of his mother, whose last years were
cheered and made comfortable by his literary success, he lived for a
time in Leipsic and Weimar, and then went to Berlin, where in 1801
he found a highly cultivated and thoroughly congenial wife in Caro-
line Mayer, the daughter of a Prussian privy-councilor. In 1804 he
settled permanently in Bayreuth; and four years later the Archbishop
and Prince Primate von Dalberg granted him a pension of one thou-
sand florins, which after the dissolution of the Confederation of the
Rhine in 1813 continued to be paid by the King of Bavaria. Titu-
lar honors were also bestowed upon him: he was made Legations-
rath (Councilor of Legation) by the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen;
in 1817 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy
from the University of Heidelberg; and was chosen a member of the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1820.
Richter's best and most brilliant works of fiction are 'Hespe-
rus,' Titan,' 'Quintus Fixlein,' 'Flegeljahre,' and 'Siebenkäs. ' He
himself seems to have thought most highly of 'Flegeljahre'; but
the critical reader of to-day will probably give the preference to
'Fixlein' and 'Siebenkäs. ' The permanent value of these products
of the imagination, as well as of his so-called scientific writings,-
## p. 12251 (#297) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12251
'Introduction to Esthetics,' 'Levana,' and 'Selina,'-lies less in
their symmetry and unity as artistic creations (in which respects
they are woefully deficient) than in the wealth of isolated thoughts,
aphoristic utterances, and original conceits which they contain. Even
in Germany the dust on the sixty-five volumes of his Complete
Works,' issued shortly after his death, is nowadays seldom disturbed.
It is only in anthologies that he is read or can be really enjoyed.
by the present generation. Even his humor, which is his one precious.
quality, is apt to cloy through excess of sensibility running over into
sentimentality. It is also difficult to find a passage of considerable
length in which his metaphors do not halt, and to use his own com-
parison, go limping along like an actor with a buskin on one foot
and a sock on the other. The meaning, too, is apt to be obscured
by unintelligible allusions; a peculiarity due in part to his lifelong
habit of keeping a commonplace-book, which gradually grew into
numerous volumes, and was filled with notes and excerpts, curious
facts and fancies, serving as material for illustration, and suggesting
tropes overstrained and incomprehensible to the general reader without
a special commentary. Indeed, as early as 1808, the Hamburg pub-
licist Carl William Reinhold deemed it necessary to prepare a dic-
tionary explaining Richter's strange modes of speech, and rendering
the more difficult passages into plain German for the benefit of his
own countrymen and contemporaries. In this respect he is the very
antithesis of Lessing, whose thoughts are simply and strongly ex-
pressed, and need no exegetical apparatus to make them understood.
But with all these defects as an artist, Richter was an original
thinker, a keen but kind-hearted humorist, a genuine poet, and a
noble man. Of the German romanticists he was unquestionably the
healthiest; or rather the least "tainted in his wits. " However much
he may love to peer into graves and charnels, and to weep over the
wrongs and miseries of human life, his melancholy is "a most
humorous sadness"; the wormwood and the gall of cynicism are not
the ingredients of his satire, and in his bosom there beats a stout,
warm, cheerful heart, with no drop of misanthropic bitterness in it.
He studied men and nature through a microscopic lens, and thus
discovered a world of wonders where the common eye saw nothing.
Owing to the circumstances of his youth, the sphere of his observa-
tion of social phenomena was limited, but his vision exceedingly sharp
within this narrow range. His one point of firm footing on the
earth was his genuine sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the
common people, the sufferings and sacrifices of the poor; and here-
in lay his strength.
E. P. Evans
## p. 12252 (#298) ##########################################
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JEAN PAUL RICHTER
EXTRA LEAF ON CONSOLATION
From Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces'
A
TIME will come - that is, must come - when we shall be com-
manded by morality not only to cease tormenting others,
but also ourselves. A time must come when man, even on
earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride.
Nature indeed draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of
the breast, so quickly that the wise man can never wholly lay
aside the garb of mourning from his body; but let his soul wear
none. For as it is ever a merit to bear a small suffering
with cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the
worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one;
as the same reason which is valid for the forgiveness of small
injuries is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest.
The first thing that we have to contend against and despise,
in sorrow as in anger, is its poisonous, enervating sweetness,
which we are so loath to exchange for the labor of consoling
ourselves, and to drive away by the effort of reason.
We must not exact of philosophy, that with one stroke of the
pen it shall reverse the transformation of Rubens, who with one
stroke of his brush changed a laughing child into a weeping one.
It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into half-
mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, I will be con-
tent to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me: without
it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be a wasp's
sting.
―
Even physical pain shoots its sparks upon us out of the elec-
trical condenser of the imagination. We could endure the most
acute pangs calmly, if they only lasted the sixtieth part of a
second; but in fact we never have to endure an hour of pain,
but only a succession of the sixtieth parts of a second, the sixty
beams of which are collected into the burning focus of a second,
and directed upon our nerves by the imagination alone. The
most painful part of our bodily pain is that which is bodiless or
immaterial, namely, our impatience, and the delusion that it will
last forever.
There is many a loss over which we all know for certain that
we shall no longer grieve in twenty-ten-two years. Why do
we not say to ourselves, I will at once then, to-day, throw
-
## p. 12253 (#299) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12253
away an opinion which I shall abandon in twenty years? Why
should I be able to abandon errors of twenty years' standing, and
not of twenty hours?
When I awake from a dream which has painted an Otaheite
for me on the dark ground of the night, and find the flowery
land melted away, I scarcely sigh, thinking to myself, "It was
only a dream. " Why is it that if I had really possessed this
island while awake, and it had been swallowed up by an earth-
quake, why is it that I do not then exclaim, "The island was
only a dream » ? Wherefore am I more inconsolable at the loss
of a longer dream than at the loss of a shorter,- for that is
the difference; and why does man find a great loss less prob-
able, and less a matter of necessity when it occurs, than a small
one?
The reason is, that every sentiment and every emotion is
mad, and exacts and builds its own world. A man can vex him-
self that it is already, or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! The
mood not only exacts its own world, its own individual conscious-
ness, but its own time. I beg every one to let his passions, for
once, speak out plainly within himself, and to probe and question
them to the bottom, as to what they really desire. He will be
terror-struck at the enormity of these hitherto only half-muttered
wishes. Anger wishes that all mankind had only one neck; love,
that it had only one heart; grief, two tear-glands; pride, two bent
knees.
Translation by Edward Henry Noel.
THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF A MISERABLE MAN
N THE lone stillness of the New-Year's night
IN
An old man at his window stood, and turned
His dim eyes to the firmament, where, bright
And pure, a million rolling planets burned,—
And then down on the earth all cold and white,
And felt that moment that of all who mourned
And groaned upon its bosom, none there were
With his deep wretchedness and great despair.
For near him lay his grave,-hidden from view
Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows
Of age alone. In torturing thought he flew
Over the past, and on his memory rose
## p. 12254 (#300) ##########################################
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JEAN PAUL RICHTER
That picture of his life which conscience drew,
With all its fruits,- diseases, sins, and woes;
A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years
Of agony, remorse, and withering fears.
Like spectres now his bright youth-days came back,
And that cross-road of life where, when a boy,
His father placed him first: its right-hand track
Leads to a land of glory, peace, and joy,
Its left to wildernesses waste and black,
Where snakes and plagues and poison-winds destroy.
Which had he trod? Alas! the serpents hung
Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue.
Sunk in unutterable grief, he cried,
"Restore my youth to me! O God, restore
My morn of life! O father! be my guide,
And let me, let me choose my path once more! "
But on the wide waste air his ravings died
Away, and all was silent as before.
His youth had glided by, fleet as the wave;
His father came not,- he was in his grave.
Strange lights flashed flickering by: a star was falling;
Down to the miry marsh he saw it rush
"Like me! " he thought, and oh! that thought was galling,
And hot and heart-wrung tears began to gush.
Sleep-walkers crossed his eyes in shapes appalling;
Gaunt windmills lifted up their arms to crush;
And skeleton monsters rose up from the dim
Pits of the charnel-house, and glared on him!
Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling,
Rich music, heralding the young year's birth,
Rolled from a distant steeple, like the pealing
Of some celestial organ o'er the earth:
Milder emotions over him came stealing;
He felt the soul's unpurchasable worth.
"Return! " again he cried, imploringly;
"O my lost youth! return, return to me! "
And youth returned, and age withdrew its terrors;
Still was he young, for he had dreamed the whole:
But faithful is the image conscience mirrors
When whirlwind passions darken not the soul.
## p. 12255 (#301) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12255
Alas! too real were his sins and errors;
Too truly had he made the earth his goal;
He wept, and thanked his God that with the will,
He had the power, to choose the right path still.
Here, youthful reader, ponder! and if thou,
Like him, art reeling over the abyss,
And shakest off sin's iron bondage now,
This ghastly dream may prove thy guide to bliss;
But should age once be written on thy brow,
Its wrinkles will not be a dream, like this.
Mayest vainly pour thy tears above the urn
Of thy departed youth,-it never will return!
Translation of James Clarence Mangan.
FROM FIRST FLOWER PIECE›
NCE on a summer evening I was lying in the sunshine on a
mountain, and fell asleep. Then I dreamed that I awoke
in a church-yard. The down-rolling wheels of the steeple-
clock, which was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for
the sun in the empty night-heaven, for I thought an eclipse was
veiling it with the moon. All the graves were open, and the
iron doors of the charnel-house were moved to and fro by invis-
ible hands. Shadows which no one cast, flitted on the walls;
and other shadows walked erect in the thin air.
In the open
coffins none were sleeping now but children. In the sky hung in
large folds merely a gray sultry mist, which a giant shadow like
a net was drawing down nearer, tighter, and hotter. Above me
I heard the distant fall of avalanches; under me the first step of
an illimitable earthquake. The church wavered up and down
with two unceasing discords, which contended with each other
and vainly endeavored to mingle in unison. At times a gray
gleam skipped up along its windows, and under the gleam the
lead and iron ran down molten. The net of the mist and the
reeling earth thrust me into that fearful temple, at the door of
which, in two poisonous thickets, two glittering basilisks were
brooding. I passed through unknown shadows, on whom ancient
centuries were impressed. All the shadows were standing round
the empty altar; and in all of them the breast, instead of the
heart, quivered and beat. One dead man only, who had just
been buried in the church, still lay on his pillow without a
## p. 12256 (#302) ##########################################
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JEAN PAUL RICHTER
quivering breast, and on his smiling countenance stood a happy
dream. But as a living one entered, he awoke, and smiled no
more; he lifted with difficulty his heavy eyelids, but within was
no eye, and in his beating breast there was, instead of a heart,
a wound. He lifted up his hands and folded them to pray;
but the arms lengthened out and dissolved, and the hands, still
folded, fell away. Above, on the vault of the church, stood the
dial-plate of eternity, on which no number appeared, and which
was its own index hand; but a black finger pointed thereon, and
the dead sought to see the time by it. .
An immense and immeasurably extended hammer was about
to strike the last hour of time and shatter the universe, when I
awoke.
My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God; and the
joy, and the weeping, and the faith in him, were my prayer.
And as I arose, the sun was glowing deep behind the full pur-
pled ears of corn, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight
red on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an
aurora; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air
people was stretching out its short wings, and living, as I did,
before the Infinite Father; and from all nature around me flowed
peaceful tones as from distant evening bells.
MAXIMS FROM RICHTER'S WORKS
HⓇ
E WHO remains modest, not when he is praised but when he
is blamed, is truly modest.
OF ALL human qualities, modesty is most easily stifled by
fumes of incense, or of sulphur; and praise is often more hurtful
than censure.
THE truest love is the most timid; the falsest is the boldest.
IF You wish to become acquainted with your betrothed, travel
with him for a few days,-especially if he is accompanied by
his own folks,-and take your mother along.
IT is the misfortune of the bachelor that he has no one to
tell him frankly his faults; but the husband has this happiness.
## p. 12257 (#303) ##########################################
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
12257
A MAN ought never to be more delicately attentive to his wife
than after making her a present, in order to lighten the sense of
obligation.
MARRIAGES are so unhappy, because men cannot make up their
minds to substitute love for force and arguments, and because
they wish to attain their purpose by might and right.
LOVE increases in strength with years, and diminishes in its
outward manifestations.
THE wedlock is happiest when one discovers the greatest
advantages in it and not before it. It is therefore perilous to
marry a poet.
MEN of imagination more easily make up with a lady-love
when she is absent than when she is present.
"
JEALOUSY Constitutes the sole difference between love and
friendship. Friendship has therefore one pleasure, and love one
pain, the more.
PAINS of sympathy are the sign of love: but if genuine, they
are not imaginary, and cause more suffering than one's own
pains; for we have at least the right to conquer the latter.
ONE should never hope to be compatible with a wife with
whom one has quarreled as a bride.
IF YOU are unable to refute an argument, you find fault with
the way in which it is put.
No Two persons are ever more confidential and cordial than
when they are censuring a third.
INTERCOURSE with men of the world narrows the heart, com-
munion with nature expands it.
SATAN is a scarecrow set up by the clergy in the spiritual
vineyard.
SO EASILY are we impressed by numbers, that even a dozen
wheelbarrows in succession seem quite imposing.
XXI-767
## p. 12258 (#304) ##########################################
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JEAN PAUL RICHTER
REFORMERS are constantly forgetting that the hour-hand must
make progress if only the minute-hand keeps moving.
IT IS of little avail that fortune makes us rich, if our desires
make us poor again.
THE Indians mistook the clothes of the first European they
saw for the body; we mistake them for the soul.
IT is not always the best actor that plays the part of king,
either on the stage or in real life.
How quickly and quietly the eye opens and closes, revealing
and concealing a world!
DULL persons look upon the refined as false.
THE head, like the stomach, is most easily infected with poi-
son when it is empty.
THE whole constitution of the English is like their manufac
tured cloth, which may not have a fair gloss, but is capable of
standing bad weather.
THE timid fear before danger, the cowardly in the midst of it,
and the courageous after it is over.
