Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2013 littp://arcliive.org/details/lifeofjeanpaulfr21leee JW(/y"i A' ^J^ ,^*^*>^* oL. ^^^f-*^^' y J" LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FREDERIC RICHTER. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FREDERIC RICHTER. COMPILED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. TOGETHER WITH HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAx^. " I would gladly, after ray death, have that which has never yet hufj- pened to any author, all my thoughts given to the world — not one should be concealed." Jean Paul. VOL. II. BOSTON : CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. MDCCCXLII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by Charles C. Little and James Beown, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON : PRINTED BY FKEEMAN AND BOLLES, WASHINGTON STREET. CONTENTS VOLUME II. PART THIRD. FROM JEAN Paul's first visit in weimar to his final resi- dence IN BAYREUTH. CHAPTER I. Page Prince Hohenlohe. — Madam von Krudener. — Letters. — " Jubelsenior." — <' Kampaner Thai," ... 1 CHAPTER II. Richter visits the Frauzenbath in Eger. — Death of his Mother. — Emihe von Berlespsh. — Removal from Hof to Leipzig, 13 CHAPTER HI. Residence in Leipzig. — Letters. — Emelie von Berlespsh. — Visits Dresden, 25 CHAPTER IV. Richter returns to Weimar. — Wieland. — Goethe. — VI CONTENTS. Herder. — His attachment to Jean Paul. — Philoso- phy. — Madam von Kalb, 42 CHAPTER V. Richter visits the Court of Hildburghausen. — Mademoi- selle von F. — The four Sister Princesses. — Dedica- tion of Titan. — Visits Berlin, Gl CHAPTER VI. Richter removes to Berlin. — Introduction to Caroline Meyer. — The Meyer Family. — The " Verlobung," 76 CHAPTER VH. Richter's Petition to the King of Prussia. — Marriage. — Caroline's Letters from Weimar, .... 95 CHAPTER VHI. Residence in Meiningen. — Letters. — Birth of Richter's first Child. — Dog's Petition, ]05 CHAPTER IX. Titan, 116 CHAPTER X. Richter leaves Meiningen. — Removes to Coburg. — Birth of his Son. — Death of Herder. — " Flegelyahre." — Bayreuth, 130 PART FOURTH. FROM JEAN Paul's residence in bayreuth to his death. CHAPTER I. Richter removes to Bayreuth. — Social Position. — Per- sonal appearance and habits. — Family. — Letter from his eldest Daughter, 143 CONTENTS. Vll CHAPTER II. "Introduction to ^Esthetics." — ''Freedom Pamphlet." — " Levana." — Richter's View of Napoleon, — Comic Works. — Letter to General Bernadotte, . . , 156 CHAPTER III. Pecuniary embarrassments. — Prince Dalberg. — Paul re- ceives a small Pension. — Extract from Varnhagen von Ense's Memoirs, 174 CHAPTER IV. Domestic Letters. — Journey to Erlangen. — Journey to Nurnberg. — Jacobi, 187 CHAPTER V. Richter in relation with the unhappy. — Letters. — Maria Forster, 204 CHAPTER VI. Richter's love of travelling. — Visits Prince Dalberg. — Visits Heidelberg. — Receives his Doctor's diploma. — Henry Voss. — Animal Magnetism, .... 228 CHAPTER VII. Richter Visits Munchen. — His son Max. — His melan- choly and death, 245 CHAPTER VIII. Richter visits Dresden. — The impression he made upon his relatives, • . . 257 CHAPTER IX. The purely Comic Works of Jean Paul. — The Life of Fibel. — Nicholas Margraf, or the Comet, . . . 267 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. Richler visits Nurnburg on account of his eyes. — Kanne. — His blindness. — Last Letters. — " Selina." . 279 Conclusion, 304 Appendix, 325 PART THIRD, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL CHAPTER I. PRINCE HOHENLOHE. MADAM VON KRUDENER. LETTERS. " JUBELSENIOR." " KAMPANER THAL." I HAVE omitted, for the purpose of con- ^ ^ ^^^ eluding the account of Richter's intimate ^^^^ ^' friendship with Madam von Kalb, two events that took place in the autumn, immediately after his return from Weimar. His wide-spread reputation brought him many proposals to become the in- structer of young persons ; among others the Prin- cess of Hohenlohe came to Hof, and entreated him to take charge of her two sons. The eldest of these princes was afterwards the celebrated Jesuit priest, and worker of miracles. The delusion last- ed a long time, but ceased before the death of the )i LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. prince. His fine exterior, gentle manners, and in- sinuating voice, no doubt made part of the mira- cle. This was an alluring offer, as it promised Richter independence, and a beautiful residence on the Rhine. He answered, " that he was hence- forth determined to educate no children but his own (his books), and that he had so much to say, that if death should surprise him at his writing- table, in his eightieth year, it would be yet too early." The other event, that made a deeper impression upon the imaginative mind of Richter, was a visit from the celebrated enthusiast, Julia von Krudener, the wife of the Russian ambassador in Denmark. This singular woman had been to Leipzig, to visit her son, and came in the full bloom of her remark- able beauty, to his solitary residence, as she said, to seek a comet on its path. Upon Richter, whose soul was always thirsting for the spiritual and ideal in woman, she made an indelible impression, and excited an interest that led to a correspondence of many years' duration. They were only an hour together, but the interest was mutual. There must have been something in Richter's person and manners extremely fascinating to women ; for the impression his works had made on the imagina- tion, was always deepened by an interview ; and LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. d there was some reason why Madam von Kalb should tell him " not to smile, and that the tone that his mind gave without words was sweeter than the sounds of the harmonica." Paul said, in a letter to Otto, '' that, unlike as Madam Krudener was to all other women, so was the impression she had made upon him different from that of all other women." He wrote to her, " The hour in which I saw you floats like the evening glow still lower beneath the horizon. Your letter must again color my atmosphere. You came like a dream, and fled like a dream, and I still live in a dream. . . . " A legend says, that the angels had created men like gods, but that they could not stand up- right until God, by a spark, gave them souls, and raised them to the upright posture. Most of us are still such prostrate men ; but in your soul glows this sun-spark, and you stand among the cold reclining forms, with your glance still turned to heaven." Madam von Krudener answered : " Ineffacea- ble is the hour when your eye, the sound of your voice, the indescribable whole of your emotion in expression and accent, established the sweetest harmony of knowledge and feeling. I know not whether I make myself intelligible, as you know 4 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. how imperfectly I possess your language. You will imagine what I think, for I feel with indescrib- able joy that you wholly understand me, and the Httle that you said to me was penetrating like your glance, and led directly to my inmost heart. Oh, how few men can understand me, and how sweet is the hope to see you here, and to open this heart to you, to show you, without pride and without fear, the virtues as well as the faults of my nature. This need of learning the truth, this living necessity in me to grow better, this thirst after knowledge, and this warm desire to promote the happiness of men ; this expanding love that glows in my heart and breathes in your works, are what makes them so dear to me, and convince me, that through your friendship I shall be better and happier ; and that to you also, the observation of a noble soul, that would fain impart blessings to mankind, will not be indifferent. " I say to you, that I am never deceived in men in whom I can kindle a spark of emotion ; by men of low dispositions I am often offended ; yet who remembers the sting when a gnat falls upon him. Such stings take away the injurious blood, that inflames so easily at the smallest wound, and from which ill-humor and misanthropy are formed. I have climbed that mountain that little minds have LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. O not the power to ascend, and the echo of their voices brings no disharmony to my ears. ^^ Without pride, I may say this to you. Ah ! I cannot be proud — too much remains yet to be improved before I can be satisfied. Gratefully I acknowledge the happiness, that God has given me a heart in which only the memory of the good and beautiful can live ; and that has so lived in the higher regions of virtue and friendship, that the possibility of breathing in a lower world cannot exist. The hand of genius seized my thoughts even in their cradle, and thus I know you can un- derstand me even in my imperfect language.' . . . '' I thank Providence that I have learnt to know you. He gives me, in you, a new and powerful assurance of my future happiness, and in your tears is a world for me. May you be as happy as I wish you, and may the precious emotions you have given me conduce to your own happiness. Remember, meanwhile, I can never forget you. "JULIA. VON KRUDENER." Richter entreated the lady to visit him again in Hof, " that the little blessed island she had thrown into the humble stream of his life might not float away ;" but she did not return, and he met her * French was the native tonorue of Madam von Krudener. 6 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. not again until after his marriage, many years afterwards, in Berlin. Madam von Krudener did not make a favorable impression upon Richter's friends. They accused her of vanity and ostentation. From the course of her life it could scarcely be otherwise ; Jean Paul was not blind to the faults of any one, but his true sympathy with all the weaknesses of hu- manity led him always to place the good and bad qualities in opposite scales ; and he said of her, what might be said of many ostentatious women, " that it was not vanity that made her an artist, but the enjoyment of the representation." From the subsequent life of Madam von Krude- ner, it will appear that Richter was not so pene- trating as his friends in the estimation of her character.' Richter's spirits, after denying himself a return to the Weimar Eden, and further intimacy with Madam von Kalb, were too much depressed to allow him to proceed with his Titan. He oc- cupied himself this winter with two of his minor works, Jubelsenior and the Kampaner Thai. During the progress of his great work, upon which he rested his hopes of immortality, he kept himself ^ See note at the end of the chapter. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. i constantly before the public, and procured the means of subsistence, by a series of smaller works. Like a celebrated painter, he worked up the super- abundance of colors upon his palette into smaller pictures, while his immortal work was yet on the easel. These works differ from his earlier in this, that they never contain a complete picture of character, neither is any elevated philosophical, nor poetical idea in life or character completely carried out. They are merely segments of life, and make no pretension to a full delineation of passion or event. In his earlier romances, almost all the characters had been left incomplete ; the reader is therefore rejoiced to find the author taking them up again, and introducing them anew to his acquaintance in these segments. Balzac, who in every thing else differs more widely than the antipodes from Jean Paul, has in this respect, the same peculiarity. The Juhelsenior is the beautiful and simple re- presentation of an aged minister, and his equally aged wife, celebrating the anniversary of their marriage festival, at the same time with the con- secration of the church,^ and the introduction of a new young pastor, who is in love with the adopted ^ A church consecration is one of the principal country cele- brations in Germany. 8 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. child of the old people. " The aged pair, bowing under the gate of death that leads them to another world, will not withdraw their hands from each other, but keep them constantly clasped over the cold grave stone." " They celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of their marriage festival, with the re- warmed fragments of their own young bride-cake." Jean Paul partook deeply of the religious nature of the Germans ; he delighted in all these humble, simple religious ceremonies ; and he awoke the gratitude of many an old man and many an aged matron, with his intimate sympathy with their well remembered feelings, and the high esteem he ever paid to the silent men, that the loud young century had forgotten. The love of the young people is also mingled in the history, and makes a low, under, but sweet tone in the piece. The Kampaner Thai, or proofs of the immortality of the soul, is one of the most purely serious, and poetically beautiful of all the author's minor works. It was suggested by his friend Charlotte von Kalb's saying, that she sometimes felt doubts overshadow- ing her mind when she thought of annihilation; and as he had written the former letter on immor- tality for Helena's, he wrote this for her consolation. In his intercourse with educated women, Richter had found that in proportion as they were refined LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. \f and thoughtful, they were pained with doubt upon this gieat consolation of humanity — a future exist- ence of the soul. He somewhere says, " that he never heard a cultivated woman speak of meeting again with her lost friends, without detecting at the same time an almost imperceptible sigh of doubt." ' He did not write to convert the infidel, but to establish the wavering faith of the doubtful : " As the plants that grow upon the margin of a stream are as much refreshed by a summer shower, as those whose roots are planted in the dusty high way of life."' I feel that no justice could be done to this beau- tiful work by such an analysis as I could give, and that even my highest praise would be inadequate to express its merits.^ This chapter cannot be more appropriately closed than with a letter from Caroline Herder, in which she has singularly anticipated the definition of the Romantic, which was afterwards given in the Foreign (Quarterly Review. It is written after receiving the Kampaner Thai from the author. " I require indeed the pen of an angel to relate the thousandfold obstacles that have prevented ' I quote from memory, not having the book at hand. 2 See Appendix No. I. 10 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. me, dear, unforgotten friend, from writing to you. I dare not give you circumstantially the Litany of my own little miseries, that united make the great cause of my silence. My eyes suffer, and since some years my health also, so that I have to pre- scribe for myself a severe diet in writing. I rely so securely upon our union in the world of spirits, I am so certain that you think of us, and speak to us, as we to you, without visible signs ; yet visible signs of the sacrament of love are beautiful, as I felt deeply when I received your dear letter with the Kampaner Thai, " Ah, we owe you thanks for Hesperus also. If my husband were not so slavishly chained, you had heard from him before this, upon Hesperus. The whole building is, as it were, filled with choice sacred pictures, and we linger to strengthen, ele- vate and delight the spirit. We might seize the whole at once, but we are unwilling under a thou- sand emotions not to dwell upon each, and the richness of ornament distracts our attention. ^' If you have ever seen the Minster at Stras- burg,^ you will understand me, and not misinter- * " He who casts one eye in thought on the Strasburg Min- ster, and another on the Temples at PcEstum, will understand the difference between the romantic and classical." Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1837. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. H pret this comparison. Perhaps the soul of that great architect has returned, with you, to earth ; and, as at this time pictures in stone are not so essential to us as spiritual representations, he builds with other materials than stone and marble, but in the taste of that time. '' We look for Titan with the utmost impa- tience." NOTE. The Baroness Krudener was educated in Paris, where her father's house was the resort of men of talents, and her beauty and wit were much admired In her fourteenth year she was married to Baron Krudener, who was more than double her age, and accompanied him to Russia, where he was sent as ambassa- dor. Madam Krudener, placed in the first circles, and remark- able for wit and beauty, was surrounded by admirers ; but she was not happy. Her liveliness of temperament led her into levities, which caused a divorce from her husband, and she re- turned to her father's house, in Riga. Riga did not satisfy her. She removed to Paris, and lived alternately at Paris and Peters- burg. She was afterwards attached to the court of the beauti- ful Queen of Prussia; and, sharing her misfortunes, her mind turned from the pleasures of the world to the subject of religion. She was now attracted by the principles of the Moravians, and again went to Paris, where she found many disciples — a fact easily explained. The higher circles in Paris contain many persons accustomed, from early youth, to live on excitement ; who, when age, or any other cause, sickens them of those of fashionable life, fly to devotion, and kindle again for God the burnt-out coal of other passions. She was afterwards con- nected with the mystical Jung Stilling. In 1814, she was in 12 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Paris, much connected with the allied sovereigns, and is said to have had great influence upon the Emperor Alexander. At this time she had prayer-meetings attended by all the distin- guished persons in Paris ; where she was seen in the back- ground, in the dress of a priestess, kneeling in prayer. She afterwards went to Geneva and Bale, everywhere followed by women, poor people, and vagabonds ; sometimes preaching in the open air to three thousand persons. She distributed liber- ally to the poor ; but excited so much sedition, that she was placed under the surveillance of the police, and at length sent to Russia, with orders not to pass the frontier. She was forbidden also to go to Moscow or Petersburg. She retired to the Crimea, and died there in 1824. — Conversations Lexicon. CHAPTER 11. RICHTER VISITS THE FRAUZENBATH IN EGER. DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. EMILIE VON BER- LESPSH. REMOVAL FROM HOF TO LEIPZIG. In the month of June, 1797, Richter ^ ^ ^^^^ found his health, from uninterrupted la- ^^^^ ^' bor, so much impaired, that, to avoid a fit of hypo- chondria, he fled to the baths of Eger, in Saxony, where were collected some of the most distinguish- ed and brilliant persons of the country. Here he was destined to meet another of those enchant- resses, who drew him more powerfully than either of the others from the quiet and regular flow of his studious hours. This was Emilie von Berlespsh, a young, beautiful, and rich widow, of Swit- zerland. Paul's fancy was immediately kindled, and he was soon so much the more captivated, as 14 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the beautiful and spiritual woman professed to love him more with the fancy than the heart, and thus seemed to avoid the rock upon which poor Madam von Kalb had struck. The health of Richter's mother had been grad- ually declining, but he felt no immediate alarm, although her blessing, when he parted, was more fervent and tender than usual ; but the fascination he was under, detained him at the Baths, until he was shocked with the sudden intelligence that she was no more. With bleeding heart, in which re- morse for his absence was mingled, he returned to Hof. It was to Paul a painfully sweet recollection, that he had not gone from her without her bless- ing, and that when he saw her again, she was resting peacefully. The hand of Death, unlike that of Providence, had efiaced from her pale countenance all the lines of sorrow and of years, and in death she looked again young, and calm, and happy. His mother had been so bowed down by her life-long sorrows, that even after Paul had become the child of fame, and she heard his praises on every side, she wore the same subdued and humble expression, and denied herself all de- monstration of joy at the success of her darling LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 15 child. She fulfilled literally the injunction of the apostle, '' to rejoice with trembling.'^ * To add to his sorrow, Paul now first discovered the book, already mentioned, in which his poor mother had kept a record of her httle gains in her midnight spinning. He wrote to Otto, as he placed the faded paper next his heart, '' If all other manuscripts are destroyed, yet will I keep this, good mother ! where the misery of thy nights is recorded, and where in weakness and pain thy thread of life is drawn out."^ For many wrecks Paul was not able to write to his friend Otto, or to mention his loss to any one ; but at length he fled back to Eger, to find, in the sympathy of his new female friend, consolation for this his deepest sorrow. Notwithstanding the fas- cinating beauty and charming qualities of the young widow, Richter would not have been so completely enthralled, had she not also excited his sympathy. She had lost her young husband after * The character oi Lenette, in Siehen/cas, has some of the Iraits of Paul's mother, and she is said to have furnished him with the original. ' In a letter from the Duke of Mechlenburg, this circum- stance is mentioned as a touching feature in the character of Pcichter. It shows the strong affections of his heart, that he should have been so tenderly attached to a character like that of Lcnette. 16 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. a very short period of happy married life, and was left childless. He wrote to Otto, " I have found the first female soul that I can completely unite with, without weariness, without contrariety ; that can improve me while I improve her. She is too noble and too perfect to be eulogized with a drop of ink. She belongs to that class of women, who with firm steps go straight forward on their path, and do not turn, or observe the gazers on the right or left. She has more love in her heart than in her eyes, and therefore she is not understood, nor happy ; and her clear reason and brilliant fancy surpass the glow of her imagination." But although the lady began with the most Pla- tonic affection for Richter, it soon appeared that she demanded a more exclusive devotion, a warmer expression than Paul, with all the claims of his imaginary heroines, could give to one, and those violent passions, and stormy scenes began, that tormented the next twelve months of his life. After Paul had left the Frauzenbath, and returned to Hof, she wrote to him. .... " Follow your heart when it speaks for me, for notwithstanding all your goodness, all your sympathy with me, there is something in me that will always doubt. Do not look upon little hin- drances and outward relations. What we lose at LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 17 the present no eternity can give us back. There is for me only one real, pure joy, and in no future life can there be a higher than the intimate sym- pathy of soul with you. Ah, we have as yet said nothing to each other. " Tomorrow I shall go to Weimar, and there I shall find a letter from you ! This tells me why I have such an inexpressible longing to be there, where no joy except this and meeting with Her- der, awaits me. Ah, I pray you not to love me ; that were silly ; but I pray you to view justly the heaven that you create in me ! and if you can es- timate it, then you will never destroy it. Would that I could write to you something more of thought than feeling ! I know not how it happens that I, who am always nine parts understanding, and one miserable tenth part heart, forget, pen in hand with you, all logic and penetration, and like the most susceptible girl, could discourse of my feelings through whole pages, if the thought of your severe understanding did not stand in warn- ing opposition before me." A week later : — ''I have received your letter. The manner in which I received it is a circum- stance in the history of the letter. But of that another time. Breathless with joy I seized the letter from the hand of the bearer. My nerves VOL. II. 2 1-8 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. trembled ; for some moments I could not read it. At last it was read. But now — I would I could use any other image — but now the high-swelling waves of feeling were instantly checked, as if by a sudden frost. But wherefore ? That, never ask me ! The heaven from which I wrote the first part of this letter is destroyed. " I have been some hours with Herder. We talked of the works of art in Dresden, and of you. Herder said, with the most generous expression, that there was not in Germany, (that is, in the world,) your equal in affluence of mind, and with all, so rich, so pure a heart. Could one say more ? And yet, when I talked of you, they called me an enthusiast ! Further, social life in Weimar is as if a wicked enchantment had dissolved everything, Love, friendship, veneration, the enjoyment of art, even society is here only a sound, a shadow. A leaden night settles on all heads, all hearts, in ap- parently equal uniformity. '' Farewell ! When you are a little good to me, if you would not make it utterly impossible for me to write to you with unreserve, write, but never again in such a manner to your " EMILIE." Richter answered : " How could I take from your view even the smallest blue spot in the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 19 cloud-heaven of life ? Nothing is so painful as an epistolary misunderstanding, when it must be effaced through the slow post, rather than with a glance of the eye. " I stand already at the door of my literary ca- bin, and look at the opening in the distant pros- pect. How few men have a life plan — although many a week, year, youth or business plan. Men in their movements are without aim ; accident, necessity, desire, press one upon them that they take for their own. Gold pieces and medals of honor draw them down in life, and the outward dies without the inward being thought of. The folly of human wishes, indifference to the integrity of the soul, the half fragmentary, half accidentally formed inward, ideal man, where one half is a giant, the other a dwarf, makes one not only mel- ancholy, but desponding. Upon the churchyard of the whole earth should this universal epitaph be placed : ' Here lie the beings who in life knew not what they would have.' " My leave-taking with all dear associates here, gives me many wounds to take with me to Leip- zig. May I there in your precious heart find none. Richter had at length decided upon the remo- 'Val from Hof that is indicated at the conclusion of 20 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. this letter. By the death of his mother the last thread was broken that held him there, and beside the whole care of the education and maintenance of his youngest brother, Samuel, devolved also upon him. He was a youth full of talent ; Paul resolved that he should not suffer, as he had him- self, for the want of a helping hand, and this deter- mined him to remove to Leipzig, where his brother could at the same time enjoy the advantages of the university, and of his own guardian care. Richter's residence in Hof had never been favorable to his genius. He felt that he needed a wider and more brilliant birthplace for his Titan, to which, if it had not been for the demands of Emilie Berlespsh, he would now have been ex- clusively devoted. His wide-spread celebrity, and the homage he had received from all ranks, widened the distance between Paul and his Hofer friends, and even Otto's jealousy could not be concealed at the marks of distinction which he did not share with his friend. Only a heart like Paul's could have resisted the flattery on one side and the re- proaches on the other, and nothing places him in a more amiable light than his tenderness and for- bearance under Otto's jealousy. He says, in answer to a letter filled with fond reproaches : " I have within me a humility that no one has ever LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 21 guessed ; it is not a victory over pride, but a necessity of my nature. The judgments of others deceive me more through immoderate censure than through immoderate praise." As soon as it w^as known that Richter was going to leave Hof, a voice of regret and lamentation broke out on all sides. The young women to whom he had been an instructer and friend, now almost all of them married, would fain have kept him among them, to be the monitor to their children that he had been to them. Vogel, and the Saint Anna, Volkel, and his old instructer Werner, now infirm and aged, all poured in their letters expressing their warm love, their reverence for his noble qualities, and their deep grief at losing one who seems to have been regarded by those who enjoyed his intimacy with sentiments bordering upon idolatry. Richter visited all his near friends, and took leave of others by letter. To Vogel (when he returned his books) he wrote : " Dearest friend, I go as an inhabitant, my brother as a student to Leipzig, and leave for ever the place of my youth. Exactly as at the first time, when I went a student myself to Leipzig, I write to you this second time ; and with the same anxiety with which we see the successive pieces of the machinery of life's stage 22 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. shoved and pressed through each other. To your printed treasures, dearest friend, I am indebted for the greater part of my Library of Extracts, and my gratitude for your love can never be lessened. May Heaven lead in enchanting dreams the inno- cent world of your life before your eyes, and shelter you from the night air and the night frosts. May you and yours be happy, happy, happy !" Vogel answered : " Infinitely, inexpressibly, beloved friend, you give me my books again, and take from us that personal image in which you have come to us from heaven. I weep at it like a child. But why should I suffer you to see my emotions reflected, as it were, in a glass, when you can read in the human heart as in a book ; and yet the less need I color them, for you are holy Nature's first and dearest painter. Let your spirit still hover about us, and let now and then a drop of the old friendship fall into our cup. Thanks, thanks ! nothing but thanks for every enjoyment that from the sea of your love you have created for me. Eternal devotion, eternal reverence, eternal tenderness will be consecrated by my heart to yours. Fare you well, well, well ! thus calls with me my wife, thus call all my children after their friend. " P. S. If I should see the Kampaner Thai, the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 2d ninth or tenth commandment will not stand in my way. You have spoilt my whole reading for me, especially the so called beautiful ! I would that you had not spoiled it, or that I had more money and fewer books. Send me often from Leipzig only the written words, Jean Paul Frederic Richter, and I will practise magic with them. Denuo vale carissime I Carissime vale / " We hear of the phlegmatic Germans ! This letter was from a country pastor, advanced in years. Let us recall the words of the former letter, written just sixteen years before, when Paul, as a poor student, was setting out on foot for Leipzig : " Excellent young German ! from whom in the future I promise the world so much. Fulfil this prophecy ! " If they both remembered the letter, how well seemed the prophecy fulfilled ! Richter and Otto, although living in the same city, had written to each other every day. They would not trust themselves with a parting inter- view, and Richter's last letter to his friend is most touchingly tender. It closes thus : " My last word to you is, be courageous ! Strive with manly power against sickly fantasies, and enter, as I do, always more courageously into active life, that your talents may be more useful to others, and thus to yourself. With this wish, with these hopes, 24 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. my infinitely dear friend, I close my youth's time, and we part silently from each other. If man can bear an eternity in his heart, you will remain eternally in mine. Say this also to your dear brother and sister. I will not seek such a trio in the world, for I shall not find you." After many other farewell messages, Paul closes by recommending to Otto's peculiar kindness a poor girl, who had sometimes, in her illness, served his mother. CHAPTER III. RESIDENCE IN LEIPZIG. LETTERS. EMILIE VON BERLESPSH. VISITS DRESDEN. The residence in Leipzig was a great ^ p j^gg and decided change in the hfe of our ^^edo. Richter. In the tumult and whirlpool of the col- lected literature of the great bookfair of Germany, so distinguished and so original a writer must have become one of the central points. How different from his humble apartment in Hof, where the only sounds that broke upon the quiet of still life, were the drowsy whirring of his mother's spinning wheel, and the unwearied scratching of his own pen. On his arrival in Leipzig, the bookseller Bey gang received him into his house. Richter found there treasures of new books, periodicals, and conven- iences, that held him fast with the enchantment of novelty. But he soon went to his old lodgings in 26 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the Peterstrass, where he found higher chambers, wider windows, a more ornamented stove, in short, elegant furniture, where the " commode was better than any thing he could put in it." Many families admitted him to their most inti- mate domestic circles, and the young attached themselves to him with irresistible impulse. Weisse, now an old man, who had closed his literary career by writing hymns and ABC books for children, and to whom every German child is indebted for his delightful " Child's Friend," took Richter into his family ; and his table, his library, and country house were as open to him as if he had been his first born son. Paul said of him, " In his seventy-second year his face is a thanks- giving for his former life, and a love-letter to all mankind. A Leipziger supper is always a guest repast. Weisse's daughter, a beautiful and ac- complished young lady, presides at his ; but for some years I have been dead to external beauty, and only alive to what is living beneath it." But, as in Weimar, Richter must speak for him- self. Leipzig was the residence of his friend Christian Oertel, who had lately been married, and Richter had not yet seen his young wife. He says, " Oertel had already deposited a letter inviting me to a private interview. After half ar LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 27 hour he opened the door of the next room, and his wife, as tall and slender as Renata, neither beauti- ful, nor unpleasing, but with love-gushing ^ mild eyes, that steal the heart away as by enchantment, fell, although her mother and two sisters were present, upon my neck. I was not less confused than pleased. Her voice is like her eyes. When she sang the forget me not, and some Italian pieces, you may easily think where my ears led my heart, and that the tones, floating between the present and the past, affected me too deeply. Wednesday I was at the concert hall ; there were over a hun- dred performers. Beating the kettle-drum to a parchment thunder, organ, female singers; in short, I heard music for the first time in my life. As the animals to Adam, were the people presented to me, of whom I could name only Ernhardt and Dr. Michaelis and their sons. About eight o'clock, a man came to me without a hat, with tangled hair, and aphoristical voice, and conversation free and bold. It was Thieriot, a violinist and philologist, and apparently an oddity, as he took me for one. He begged me to leave my lodgings, and come and live with him. " Kotzebue has visited, and invited me to dine • It is impossible to translate liehequellenden otherwise. 28 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. with his wife. She appears to be a good mother. Contrary to my expectation his conversation is sleepy, spiritless, and like his eye, without bril- liancy. On the other hand, he appears to be less wicked, than timidly weak. Conscience finds in his panada heart no ground firm enough in which fo fix her hook. '^ I have been with Platner in his family, where I found a completely accomplished wife, and two ex- tremely beautiful daughters, and many distinguish- ed young people. It exceeds the power of my pen to give you a reasonable sketch of my ac- quaintances. Rather would I describe for you the refined, not too full, but costly and deUcious supper parties. Yet I save nothing by them, for I must give the servants drink money, and the maid who lights you down, or up, even in clear daylight, demands the offering penny. " What I promised to tell you of Goethe is insig- nificant. It was merely that he judged favorably of the Hesperus. Further, he sees now, that it is good earnest with me ; but it gives him cramps of the brain when I throw myself from one science into another. ' I show my knowledge too much.' He knows a little also ! but he delivers only the result. ' When I am elevated above the earthly, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 29 even to heaven, then comes suddenly a poor jest,' &.C. In short, he rues this side of my works. ^ " I met a noble Scot, Macdonald, (celebrated in history and in Ossian) at a stranger's table, and at his own, and found in him the twin mind of Blair, whose sermons so delighted me, and whose per- sonal friend he is. No, there is not in the three kingdoms a nobler or more manly breast, under which beats a tenderer, purer, more piously poetic and melancholy spirit. Thus thought a youth long since of the English, from books, and thus he finds it now. He reads and speaks as many lan- guages as the freed American cantons, thirteen. . . . " ' I must tell you of your faults ! ' I have already once, but completely wrong, namely, hint- ed a little vanity. That cannot exist in a mind that so readily performs anonymous work, and withdraws itself from praise. Every son of earth may dare to be somewhat vain, it is only unper- mitted when he conceals it, or displays it too much. Ah, dear Otto, I remark from your letter that you are going back into your old errors, and that, merely, because I write to you chronologi- cally. Written complaints and explanations are, ' It must be confessed there is much justice in this criticism of Goethe's. 30 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. on account of their longer and stronger false im- pressions, more difficult to efface than verbal. Ah, if we could be only one day together in Hof, not merely a full amnesty, but a deep Lethe would hide the little precipices where we have fallen." ' ... ^' Fate is spinning for me, for I hear the whizzing of her wheel, a net-work that will over- spread my whole life. The Berlespsh is here. I find in her a soul that has not once fallen be- neath my ideal, and I should be wholly happy in her friendship, if she would not be too happy with me." The last extract bids us return to Emilie von Berlespsh. A remark has been made by one of his biographers, " that whoever writes the life of Jean Paul must not forget how much influence women exercised upon his destiny." The reader must have already remarked, that although this lady began with the purest Platonism, she soon complained of the coldness of Richter's letters ; and that he never appears to have felt other sentiments for her than those of admiration and esteem. Immediately after Richter's removal to Leipzig she purchased a country house at Gholis, a short * Otto had again expressed his distrust of Richter's affection. See Appendix, No. II. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 31 distance from that city. When Paul visited her he found a quiet, retired apartment in the lower story, fitted up expressly for him as a study, where he could retire if he wished to be alone, or seek society with her and her friends in her apartnrents. Upon all occasions he met a glowing heart, and a warm, disinterested friendship. As a female author Richter placed this lady above most of her sex ; but female authorship was more rare in Germany at this time, than even in England, and this lady v^^as distinguished for a lucidity of arrangement, and strength of expres- sion at all times rare among female authors. About this time she had pubhshed remarks upon the revolution in Switzerland, together with Mallet du Pans's history of the same. Richter himself must unfold her history in connexion with himself. He writes to Otto : " Harpocrates, lay thy finger upon thy lips, for the theme is of her, the purest, most spiritual fe- male soul that I have ever known, but the firmest and most ideal, and possessed with an egotistical coldness of philanthropy that demands and loves nothing but perfection. She fulfils all the duties of benevolence, but without warmth of feehng. At the baths of Eger I treated her with extreme reserve, and took rarely her hand, and only a 32 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. sympathizing part in her hard fate. She intro- duced to me a beautiful, rich, highly moral young lady, her friend from Zurich, for whom no wooer had hitherto been pure and good enough, and wished that I should marry her. Her proposal, when she came now from Weimar, was that my little winnings, and the young lady's property should be thrown together, to purchase a country house, and that she should live constantly with us. She yielded, when I represented the folly and impossibihty of such an arrangement, but her soul hung on mine with more warmth than mine on hers ; and I have lived through fearful scenes, blood-spitting, and swoonings, such as no pen can describe. At length, as I sat one evening reflect- ing upon her severe destiny, my heart melted within me, and I went in the morning and told her I consented to the marriage with herself. She will do whatever I wish ; will purchase a country house, wherever I like best; on the Necker, the Rhine, in Switzerland, or Boigtland. None per- haps will ever love or esteem me more, and yet I am not satisfied ; my fate was not decided by my- self. In so far as greatness and purity of soul and worldly riches can make me happy I shall be so, perhaps. '^ Ah, Otto, I weary to write, when thou art so LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 33 long silent. What have I done to thee ? What mist has again drawn around thee ? Farewell, my brother ! I long, more bitterly, every day, for you. Ah, you have no excuse, if, in an unaltered situa- tion, you alter ; while I, in an altered, remain the same to you." Although Otto was at a distance from the fasci- nations of the lady, his mind was so completely the echo of his friend's, that he had not the power to represent to him, that by such a marriage, even if he gained all the fortunes of Germany, it would be no atonement to a heart like Richter's, for the want of mutual confidence and love. He closes a letter which is only a reflection of the sentiments of Paul's thus, '' But were your wishes not fulfilled, were the longing after love only charmed, not stilled, we know that our, that is, the poet's king- dom, is not of this world." Paul had therefore to achieve his freedom alone, and it is another proof of his extraordinary power, and the elevating in- fluence of his moral nature, that he not only recon- ciled the lady to the refusal of her passionate de- mands, but continued with her upon the most friendly and confidential terms, without further question of love or marriage. Richter's next letter informs his friend, that even before he had received his last, his fate was VOL. II. 3 34 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. decided. '' I told Emilie that I felt no passion for her, and that it would be impossible for us to live happily together. I passed two inconceivably wretched days ; but now her w^ounded heart closes again gently, and bleeds less. I am free, free, free and blest ! In Hof you will hear of it most extensively, but my justification will precede the censure. It depended on myself, after my confessions, to form with her a social and friendly bond. At the end of May we shall go together to Dresden, Seifersdorf, and on the Elbe. ..... I should be much happier in marriage than you imagine. If there were only the spring of love, I would ask little from the summer of marriage. But do not believe that mine is like your sacrificing heart. Ah, in your situation I should be, through youth and beauty, and through great tenderness of soul, completely happy.' '' Let me say no more of you, but only soon, to you — I believe I should for joy and love, among you, die ! Ah, the good Pauhna, tell Renata she must ask me w^hat I think of her silence." We have room but for one more extract from the Leipzig letters ; one that shows the childlike * Otto had long been attached to Amone Herold, but through family opposition their marriage was delayed. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 35 simplicity and openness with which the two friends wrote to each other. " I celebrated my birth-day on the 20th, on ac- count of the birth of the spring ; and on the 21st, on account of my own birth. From an unknown hand, I received brown cloth, that I already doubly wear, as a coat, and as an overcoat for the winter. Madam Feind gave me a cup, with hers and my initial letters interlaced ; Madam Bruningt a neck- cloth ; and the Berlespsh made a little festival, with rose-trees, crowns, etc. ; to which Weisse and some other friends were invited." Richter was now preparing the second volume of the Titan for the press, and was also employed upon the Palingenesieen, But, in the midst of the business and pleasures of that whirlpool, the Leipzig Fair, he was seized with inexpressible long- ing for his late home. He fancied that this heim- weh would be cured by the sight of the green spot near the Lorenzo Church, where his mother re- posed, and his melancholy dissipated by a few days residence with Otto, and quiet and confiden- tial intercourse with his friend, and his friend's VerJobt Amone. After fourteen days with Otto and his family, who resembled him in tenderness, and in attachment to Richter, he returned, strength- ened as much by their love as by the repose and 36 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. freedom from excitement he had found in the httle city of Hof. Shortly after his return, he journeyed with Emihe to Dresden, partly to escape from the tu- mult of the fair, and partly to feel the full enjoy- ment of Nature, under the double charm of the opening spring, and the society of a female friend. It was Richter's first visit in Dresden, and he was disappointed in the social tone of the accomplished Dresdeners. But in Dresden a new, and hitherto unimagined world was opened to him. He be- came acquainted with the Grecian plastic art. A new sun arose over his own, and threw its living beams upon his mind. He wrote to Otto : " As yet, I can impart nothing to you but the hall of Sculpture, that yesterday like a new, huge world pressed into my mind, and nearly crowded the other out. We entered a long, light, vaulted hall, through which extended two rows of pillars. Between these pillars repose the old gods, who have thrown off the world of the grave, or the clouds of heaven, and reveal to us a holy, calm, and blessed world in their forms, and in our own breasts. Here we find the difference between the beauty of a man and that of a god. Tliat excites, though gently, wishes and timidity, but this exists firm and simple, like the blue of ether before the LIFE OF JEAN PA.UL. 37 world and time were created. The repose of per- fection, not of weariness, looks from their eyes and rests upon their lips. Whenever in future I write of great or beautiful objects, these gods will appear before me, and reveal to me the laws of beauty. Now I know the Grecians, and can never forget them." He did not forget them ; but the feeling they awoke in him was a reverend timidity towards them, and desponding reflections upon himself ; as the sight of a large library always made him mel- ancholy, he felt the impossibility of taking in its treasures. He did not enter the hall again. Rich- ter was no\y thirty-five years old, and the feehng may be easily understood of all that he had lost, while his mind was forming, which he was now too old to repair. The sight of perfection in any form excites in susceptible minds the longing after perfection. After his visit to the hall of Sculpture, Richter wrote in a secret pocket-book : " Unknown, unseen ! here in the stillness of my empty chamber comes thy image ! Ah, once, only once, thou All-loving, send to my thirsting heart >that being that, as an eternal pole-star rises above me, and that, alas, I never reach." This visit to the gallery of Sculpture in Dresden inspired him with a desire to renew his acquaint- 38 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ance with the ancients. He says, in a letter to Thieriot afterwards, " During this northern win- ter, my spirit was refreshed in Attica and Ionia. I read with a joy of which Herder can tell you, the Odessey and Iliad, Sophocles, part of Euripi- des and iEschylus. After the last hymns of the Iliad, and the CEdipus in Colonna, one can read nothing but Shakspeare or Goethe. They already affect my Titan, but as the teacher rather than the father." Richter had already found reason to rejoice that he had not formed a more permanent union with Emilie. He says to Otto, '' In future I shall journey alone, and on foot. With Emilie I found upon our journey too much egotism, and too much aristocracy towards those beneath her in rank. I have again made peace with her, although she, not I, has often opened the old wounds. In the spring of 1799, (sub-rosa) she will go to England." The lady went to England, and resided in the Highlands of Scotland, but soon returned with heimweh to her native land. Her troubled life at length reposed happily in another union. ^ ^ Emilie von Berlespsh was a distinguished female German author. I learn from Schindel's biography, that at the time of her acquaintance with Jean Paul she was divorced from her first husband, although in his life she is called a widow. She LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 39 Upon Richter's return to Leipzig, from his Dres- den journey, a deep sorrow awaited him. His brother Samuel, upon whose account, and to pro- mote whose education he had come to Leipzig, a youth of good talents, and originally of a noble disposition, had fallen into dissipated company, and become involved in a deep passion for gaming. He had taken advantage of Richter's absence to break open his desk, and abstract from it one hundred and fifty Rix dollars. With this sum he departed from his brother's lodgings, without leaving any clue by which he could be dis- covered. Paul suffered inexpressibly when he entered his deserted room, and discovered the rose-bush, that had been his brother's care, faded and dried as if it had been long neglected ; but he suffered in- finitely more, when he found that guilt, also, was connected with his flight. He wrote to Otto, '' That lost and deserted one, who knows me so little, and who will never guess that I should be more softened by his return than he would be him- visited Scotland in company with Sir James McDonald, and on her return published a work, called <' Summer hours in Cale- donia." In 1801, she married a second time the Rath Harms, and went with him to Berne, in Switzerland, where she owned estates. 40 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. self, comes before me every night in my dreams. Ah, if he knew how easily his hard fate might be mitigated ! " He did not return, and his subse- quent fortunes occupy a large part of Paul's future correspondence with Otto. Richter was more lenient towards his poor unhappy brother, because he reproached himself with too much indulgence, and too little scrutiny of his conduct while at the university. He never saw him again, but he set- tled on him a yearly sum, to be paid through Otto, who was the medium of communication between them. The boy led a wandering life, probably filled with suffering, and died at a military hospital in Silesia. A strong character should never have the complete control of a weak one. The weak cannot sympathise with the strong, and to conceal his weakness enters into a series of deceptions that often end fatally for the weak. In the course of his journey to discover his brother, Richter visited Halberstadt, the residence of Gleim,^ now an old man ; but the snow that had gathered upon his long locks, had not extinguished the youthful fire of his eye, or shadowed the fines of his noble brow. Gleim stood at the door to ^ The reader may recollect that it was Gleim, who sent Jean Paul the fifty dollars, under the name of Septimus Fixlein. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 41 receive him, and he was equally enchanted by the old man, and by the neighborhood of the Hartz mountains. Paul wrote to Otto: '' Gleim has the fire and the' blindness of a youth. To spare the old man I made only some slight remark, when he compared the sorrows of Lewis XVI. to those of Christ!" He returned to Leipzig at the end of July, re- gretting " that he had found no man for his heart ; that he had indeed found men whose pupil he could be, but none that he could take to his heart." CHAPTER IV. RICHTER RETURNS TO WEIMAR. WIELAND. GOETHE. HERDER. HIS ATTACHMENT TO JEAN PAUL. PHILOSOPHY. MADAM VON KALB. A D 1798 After the loss of his brother, Leipzig aged 35. ^-^j^ ^|j -^^ noise and tumult appeared to Richter an empty and deserted city. Leipzig had indeed never fulfilled the expectations of his youth. All that he had so long dwelt upon in solitude, and that would have made him so infinitely happy as a youth in Leipzig, came too late. The theatre, concerts, the society of people of rank, to one who had been the intimate friend of Herder, appeared empty and idle pleasures, and his longing for the conversation of his friend returned, when there was no longer a reason for his remaining in Leipzig. An invisible hand drew him again to Weimar ; an inward voice whispered to him that LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 43 it was only by the side of Herder that the sun would rise that was to ripen his Titan. On a visit that he made there about this time, when all his former friends received him with the same de- light as at first; Goethe, with more flattering demonstrations of friendship than before, the cir- cle that gathered about him was so choice and so delightful that he determined no longer to resist his secret wishes. Accordingly, at the end of October, just a year from the time he entered it, he left Leipzig, and on the 26th, at evening, entered the gate of Weimar, to him that of a New Jerusalem. The same evening he wrote the following note to Herder : " At length I have passed the Arabian Desert of two years, and have arrived with the same pilgrim's garment, like an Israelite to the promised land, where I wish to conquer nothing but — yourself." Madam vo i Kalb was at her country house, where she suflfered with cheerful resignation the long night that the almost total loss of her sight had drawn around her. In as far as the comfort of a poet depends on outward circumstances, a humble personage claims a page in his biography. This is the Frau Kuhn- holdter, the wife of a saddler, at whose house Jean Paul hired his apartments. He writes as usual to 44 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. his friend Otto : '' My greatest refreshment here, except Herder, is my house Frau. Never was I so happily lodged. No step-genius provides for my comfort and waits upon me, but the lady of the house herself, who takes care of me as a mother would take care of her child. In my ab- sence she had a second door cut in my apartment, and cares for all, and places all in order. At six o'clock she comes in, warms and lights my room, and then brings the hot coffee. I give her a crown, with which she pays all, and keeps an exact account till she needs a new one, and I often have a glass of wine over. She provides my wood, my comforts — takes care of the washing, and when I go a little foot journey, like my mother, she puts up every thing, even the ink glass. And when I return all is ready, as in an expecting family. The duchess mother told me that my house Frau was a great reader. I enquired, and found that she had once taken the (Economical Lexicon from the library. They wondered at it, and it was pur- chased for her by the duchess." These outward cares, for which the good house Frau so well provided, bore upon the whole tenor of Richter's life in Weimar, which was indeed most happy. His reception was even more flat- tering than at first, as personal knowledge had LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 45 confirmed the former admiration. All doors, and all hearts, even the ducal, were opened to him. The noble and intellectual duchess Amelia re- ceived him as a friend of the house, and he was indebted to her descriptions for his knowledge of Isola Bella, Naples, Ischia, and the other parts of Italy, that he has painted with such living colors in his Titan. Richter's genius also was never more creative and sportful, and the little, work that he produced at this time, Bevorstehenden Lebenslauf,^ in fullness of thought, charm of ex- pression, and a gentle play of wit and humor, between the serious and sportive, is not surpassed by any of his longer works. But the reader must not be defrauded of Paul's own naive and simple account. He writes to Otto: " Yesterday I visited Schiller. He was indis- posed, and I went, foolishly, to walk with his wife. She belongs to those agreeable coquettes in con- versation, who do not throw the ball straight back, but keep it up through playful persiflage. She led the author of Hesperus, at twilight, to a beau- tiful eminence, to see another ; but he could only look at her beautiful face, and her still more charming Cleopatra eyes. I always tell her I can- * Approaching life's course. 46 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. not believe a word she says, unless she looks in my face. ... At a learned supper I met Hufe- land and Fichte, and others, that I did not know. Fichte is small, (I thought he had been tall) mod- est, and precise, but not particularly genial. I was lovingly treated by all, especially by Schiller. Ah, I speak too openly with people, and shield myself too little. My table talk at Dresden to Schlegel, obliged his brother, when it was repeat- ed to him, to the expression of his judgment about me.' . . . " I write to you, wrapped in Wieland's wide mantle, that, on account of the cold, his wife lent me. I travelled here on foot, with only my summer coat, and a pocket full of shoes and clean shirts.^ Wieland is slender, erect, with a red scarf, and a red handkerchief bound round his head — talking much of himself, but not with pride — a Httle aristippish, and indulgent towards himself, as towards others — full of parental and conjugal love, but so intoxicated by the muses, that his wife once concealed from him for ten whole days, the death of one of his children. He does not penetrate the relations of things so deeply ' In a severe review of Jean Paul's works. * This was on Paul's first visit from Leipzig, before he had permanently established himself in Weimar. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 47 as Herder, and his judgment is better upon exter- nal social affairs, than upon intimate human rela- tions. He gave me the palm many inches higher than his own, particularly about my dreams and pages upon nature, and increased my outward pride, (my inward, never) about many things. He depreciates himself too much, and was too anxious about my praise of his works." " On my second visit to Wieland,with my wide fluttering summer ornaments, the good patriarch, on account of the hateful cold weather, brought me his coat himself. Today I carried it back. God send every poet such an active, firm, prudent, candid, tender and kind wife. She had read in the newspapers of the danger of resting after being cold, and she brought and insisted upon my draw- ing on warm stockings. Wieland could not sur- vive her, if she were to die, neither she, him. He has told me her heart's history, and also his own.' Ah ! how much I have to relate to your ear and heart. ... In his single, and widowed daughter, beneath plain persons, are good and beautiful hearts ; but with such faces they will not be drawn out. And yet — otherwise — his wife proposed, and he mentioned it to me the next morning, that I should take the opposite house, and eat always * See Appendix, No. III. 48 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. with them. He said I gave him new life, and that they all loved me ! Naturally, as I always make them laugh, and as /cannot help loving so good a family. But that would never do. Two poets can never live together. x\nd I will wear no chain, even were it formed of perfume, and welded by moonbeams — and I should be certain that in the solitude of only their society, I should end by marrying one of their daughters — which is not my plan." " I have just come from Herder. We sat many hours alone in his arbor. Oh, dear Otto, how shall I show you this noble spirit at its right eleva- tion, before which my little soul bends with Span- ish, even Turkish veneration — this man, penetra- ted with the Divinity, whose foot is upon this world, his head and breast in the other. How shall I paint his inspired eye, when poetry or music softens him ? How shall I represent him embracing all the branches of the tree of knowledge, although he seizes masses, not parts, and instead of the tree, shakes the ground upon which it stands. I have often, after spending the evening with him, taken leave with tears. " Apropos, I have also been with Goethe, who received me with more obliging friendship than the first time. I was, in consequence, freer, bolder, less susceptible, and therefore more independent. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 49 He inquired after my manner of working, as it completely surpasses his method, and asked how I liked Fichte. Upon the last, Goethe said, ' He is the great new scholastic. Man are born poets, but they can make themselves philosophers, if they can anywhere fix a transcendental idea. The new (philosophers) make light an object, when it should only show objects.' He will complete the Faust at the end of six months. He said he could always promise himself his work six months beforehand, and he prepares himself by prudent diet. Schiller drinks coffee immoderately, and Malaga also. No one is as moderate in coflfee as I am. " Goethe told us, he had not read a syllable of his Werter until ten years after it was written. * Who would willingly surrender themselves to a past sensation, and recall anger or love,' etc. So also said Herder of his works. What can be said of the self-idolatry of the small literary men of the day, when such men are so humble. I was asham- ed not to he so before them, but I said, * that my things, immediately after they were printed, pleas- ed me extremely, and that I knew no better read- ing — but when I had forgotten my own ideal, I knew none worse.' " Dear Otto, why do you write me so little of yourself? With what right or justice should I give 50 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. you all my personalities, if I did not expect yours in return. Write me soon, what makes you so calm — namely — ' your newly-discovered unseal- ed fountain.' Has no one guessed that it is a gift for distant, thirsting friends, when they are told how often you sneeze, gape, smile, or weep. You imagine me more altered in my views of hu- man life and benevolence than I am. I am the same man as formerly, and have lost nothing but certain hopes and dreams." Otto, in his next letter, discovers the source of his newly acquired contentment, and as it con- denses the philosophy of many tedious volumes, I give an extract from it. " The conviction lies deep and indelible in every human breast, that only those have a right to be happy — more, only those can reproach Destiny, who possess the purest virtue ; that every one should be satisfied with his fate, if he has ever, in the course of his life, acted unjustly or unwisely. I reflected upon my whole life. I have found nowhere what is in the world called happiness, but everywhere gifts that I had not deserved. The more narrowly I looked at these, they shivered, and, like ignoble metals, evaporated in the melt- ing. How small then was the result ? But I did not spare nor deceive myself, and hypocritically LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 51 say, that my desert appeared much smaller, and the more this diminished the more the gifts in- creased. I felt with deep mortification, that there I should have been better, here wiser, or at least more reasonable. Then I was silent within my- self, and said, ' Thou hast received more than thou hast deserved, and if Destiny had given thee nothing but this living faith, and the still, cool air, and the sohtude that thou lovest, still it is more, a thousand times more than thou hast deserved.' . . " I celebrated Amone's birth-day, this year, with emotions wholly different from former ones. In future years, I thought, she will live by me, care for me, and as I have always known her sacrificing love, so I am certain that in every relation with me, be it ever so Hmited, she will be contented. I have lived, in my long connection with her, days of sweet and intimate enjoyment for the mind and heart. How often do I admire in her, her sacri- ficing and forbearing spirit — her tenderness of heart, together with the manly ambition of a philo- sophical spirit ; her silence and patience under the severity of her father, and the narrowness of her family ; — all this makes the prospect of life with her, and only with her, when we have passed the hard circumstances that now divide us, dear to my 52 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. heart. To whom could I say all this, with the prospect of sympathy, but to you, my Richter ? " To this letter Richter answered : " Your excel- lent judgment, upon happiness and desert, was always mine. I have always myself laid the egg out of which the basilisks have crept. On ac- count of my poor brother, I have also some guilt, but less of the heart than of the head. I contend- ed with Goethe upon your assertion ' concerning the Progress of the World.' ' Revolving, we must say,' he answered ; ' d priori progress follows from the belief of a Providence, but not a posteriori is the progress always apparent, at least not in the French revolution. The hardly found truth we must also earn for ourselves. The chambers of the brain are full of seed, for which the feelings and passions are the flower soil and the forcing glasses.' '' A young Haydn is music-director here ; and a female singer, that I visit sometimes, though without beauty, is a perfect gymnastic for wit. She laughs and sings, and, with justice, more than she speaks. She told me, that she asked Goethe how she should receive me, whether she should come trilling to meet me ? ' Child,' said he, ^ do as with me, and be natural.' LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 53 " Herder has one Alphabet of his Metakritic ready. He asked me to look through it, and make corrections. I told him I would, but only to read and restore what he had scratched out. ..." In the great world I despise the men and their joyless joys ; but I esteem the women ; in them alone can one investigate the spirit of the times. Besides, I am freer and better known than in a small place. But, as I said to Herder yester- day, ^ Once married, I shall creep into the small- est nest in the world, and stick nothing but my writing fingers out.' " Caroline Herder, in her reminiscences of his life, gives a beautiful account of Richter's relations at this time with her gifted husband. " In the last month of the year 1798, Jean Paul Richter came to Weimar, and with warm, full heart to Herder. Herder immediately won his love, and his esteem for Richter's great and rich genius increased from day to day. The high mo- ral power breathing in his works, fitting him to be a physician of the times, united both men in a friendship of the closest sympathy. He came, as though sent by a good Providence, exactly at the time when Herder, on account of his political and philosophical principles, was deserted, and nearly forgotten. The happy evening hours that Richter 54 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. passed with us, his perpetually cheerful, youthful soul, his fire, his humor, the animation with which he talked over with Herder everything that hap- pened, always gave him new life. Much as they differed in their views upon one subject, yet were their principles and their emotions always the same. (Herder differed from Richter in his judg- ment of women ; he thought Paul made them too melancholy, too desponding, and perhaps too inac- tive.) Moreover, he valued Richter's genius, his rich, overflowing, poetic spirit, far above the soul- less productions of the time, that contended for the poetic form only. Herder named them brooks without water, and often said '^ that Richter stood, as opposed to them, upon a high elevation, and that he would exchange all artistical forms for his living virtue, his feeling heart, his perennial crea- tive genius ; he brings new, fresh life, truth, vir- tue, reality, into the declining and misunderstood vocation of the poet." " Most intimately united the two friends lived together. Our little evening table, with him, our children, and sometimes Frederic Mayer, was a true sanctuary. Oh, how often has the good Richter there, or walking, or in his httle journeys to the Ettersburg, by his genial humor, robbed Herder of the bitterness of his emotions. He often LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 55 said to me, in the last year of his life, ^ Before I close the Adrastea, I will place there a memento of our Richter, I will show to the whole of Ger- many how we prize him.' " It was thus that our Richter was valued by those who best knew him, and perhaps he now stood upon a higher elevation in the estimation of so- ciety, and in his own, than he had before attained. He had added independence and strength of soul to the consciousness of the value, and to the in- finite reverence he felt for the holy aim of his life. His views were more extensive and richer ; while his heart beat with a more glowing ' philanthropy. He felt that the calling of an author, at this time, when a spiritual revolution was beating in the hearts of men, more important even than the po- litical that was raging without, demanded all the highest qualities of the soul, as well as the devo- tion of the time and heart of him, " Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful, with a singleness of aim." The friendship which about this time he formed with Jacobi, threw him again on the path of phi- losophy, which in his nineteenth year he had abandoned for poetry. From the idealism of Fichte, which made egotism transcendental, he 56 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. turned to what he thought the interests of hu- manity demanded. A personal God, the maker, preserver, and governor of the universe ; the im- mortahty of man, as a self-conscious and accounta- ble being — and to love, as the spring, incitement and impelhng principle of the universe. In these opinions he found in Jacobi an immovable rock, and for these Herder incessantly contended. They had united to pubhsh a periodical under the title of "Auroi'a,^' but the advanced age of Herder, (he was in his sixty-sixth year,) and Jacobi's failing health, prevented the accomplishment of their project. I cannot be guilty of the presumption and te- merity of undertaking to define the different sys- tems of the philosophical writers of the time, so as to be able to determine to which of them Richter adhered ; but I may venture to assert that he dreaded the influence of the Kantish philosophy upon religion and morals, and that he made the idealism of Fichte, (who asserts that all external things are the production of the imagination,) the subject of severe ridicule in his Clavis Fichtiana, and has shown the practical consequences of his system in Schoppe, or Leibgeher, a character intro- duced into more than one of his books, who is crazed by the Ideal philosophy, and maddened by LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 57 the fixed idea, that he has lost his individuality, Richter's biographer asserts, that after the pubUca- tion of Fichte's book upon the destiny of man, he seized every opportunity to express his reverence for the author, and that in his Lavana he inserted a eulogy of Fichte. Jean Paul adhered closely to Herder, and was a fellow believer with Jacobi, the "faith philoso- pher.'^ Those who are acquainted with the ele- vated and religious sentiments '' that echoed to the mighty heart of Herder," will understand the position he took in German philosophy. Richter possessed in an eminent degree what have been called the highest capacities of man, reverence for the holy, and love for the beautiful. Super- stition, bigotry, and fanaticism, seem to have been equally abhorred by him in early life, al- though he said, after the French revolution, " 1 bless the concordat. The deepest superstition is better than Atheism and Theism." In this happy manner the autumn passed in Weimar. In January, Madam von Kalb returned from her country residence, and immediately a storm arose in Richter's Indian summer. She had brought her husband and her own family to con- sent to her divorce, and, as a consequence, insisted 58 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. upon marrying our hero. But he must give his own account of the affair, in a letter to Otto : " After a supper at Herder's, with Madam von Kalb, Herder was sitting by her, for he esteems her highly, and immediately, in the presence of his wife, kissed her heartily ; and as the reflection of this ancient flame fell upon me, she said, ' In the spring, in the spring.' I said afterwards to her, decidedly, no ! and after a glow of eloquence from her, it stands thus — that she shall take no step for, and I no step against the divorce. I have at last acquired firmness of heart. In this affair I am wholly guiltless. I can feel that holy, genial love, that I cannot, indeed, paint with this dark water — but it passes not beyond my dreams." These stormy passages in the life of Richter were of singular advantage in enabling him to complete his Titan, but they were unfavorable to his own happiness ; and, as he said, " the Berlespsh relation bound his hands, and shut his eyes, while some gentler heart that might have been his was lost to him. Shall I always thus play and hope ; fail and end thus. Such women as both these blind one to every quiet female Luna. Ah, what seeds for a paradise I bore in my heart, of which birds of prey have robbed me." LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 59 Richter remained firm through the winter against the seductions of Madam von Kalb. He happily knew that such stormy heroines as Madam Berlespsh and Von Kalb were never formed for wives for him. He needed a mild and gentle spirit, not to dazzle and to be admired, but in whose unselfish love he could find a sanctuary for his heart. Noble and excellent as Richter was, he was yet a poet, and therefore a spiritual egotist, and his wife must minister to the domestic altar the sweet and pure incense of reverence and love. With a Berlespsh he could have found no repose, with Madam von Kalb there could have been no security. No genius of either sex should marry a genius. The result of the poetic nature seems to be an in- tense personality. I do not mean selfishness or even egotism — but the poet lives in his own crea- tions ; they are his domain, his kingdom, and he cannot go out of them, to enter into the heart or interests of an individual, although he understands better than another the great heart of humanity, and lives in the soul of the universe. His wife should be willing to be only a ray, to be absorbed, and have no individual existence, except in him. How could this be, were both poets, both demand- ing supremacy, and the acknowledgment of indi- vidual superiority ? Far happier, far more grace- 60 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ful is it for the woman to remain in the attitude of a priestess at the domestic altar, not of man, be- cause he is a man, but because he is a poet, and to keep the flame pure by no slavish offering, but by the holy incense of admiration and reverence. The work that appeared this year from the pen of Richter, " Selections from the Papers of the Devil," recast and rewritten, was entitled " Palin- genesien," horn again. Ten years before, Richter had met with great difficulty in finding an editor for these satires. Disputes were held upon the title — the printer wishing them to appear as " Philo- sophical and cosmopolitan Remains of Faust, ^^ or " Selections from the writings of Sir Lucifer.^^ Jean Paul adhered to his own title, but the book attracted little attention at the time. It was now wholly rewritten, and only about ten of the original satires retained; these being the only pages that could have a direct reference to the present time, and be combined with a dramatic action. A critic, speaking of this book, says, " It is one of the works of the author that gives the most lucid explanation of the being and nature of the poet, and places poetical influences in the clearest hght." CHAPTER V. RICHTER VISITS THE COURT OF HILDBURGHAUSEN. MADEMOISELLE VON F. THE FOUR SISTER PRINCESSES. DEDICATION OF TITAN. VISITS BERLIN. In the spring of 1799, Madam von Kalb, ^ ^ j^gg having invited Amone, the betrothed of ^»®''^^' Otto, to accompany her, retired to one of her country houses, and all question of the divorce was thenceforth dropped. Richter could not pass the genial season of spring without a longing desire to wander ; he therefore accepted an invitation to visit the court of Hildburghausen, from whose duke he had re- ceived the diploma of Legations rath. He was also drawn thither by the powerful attraction of a young lady, Caroline von F., whom he had met in Weimar the previous winter, and who was an at- 62 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. tendant on the duchess of Hildburghausen. This new attachment was so far happier for Richter, that the lady did not belong to the class of eccen- tric beings who had before entangled him, but the storm that nipped and destroyed its fruit in the bud, came from the opposition of her noble rela- tions. His letters describe the delightful residence of a few weeks at this court, and the flattering kind- ness of the duchess. She was one of the four beautiful sisters to whom he afterwards dedicated his Titan, He must first describe his situation at the court, and then the lady of his love. His letter is to Otto. " Paint to yourself the heavenly duchess, with her childlike eyes, her whole face full of love and the charm of youth, her voice like the nightin- gale's, and her mother's heart — then the not less beautiful sister, the princess von Solms, and the third, the princess of Thun and Taxis, and their lovely, healthy children, who all arrived on the same day that I did. We will pass the men, but with the princess von Solms I could be happy in a mountain coal mine. All these women read me, and love me truly, and urge me to stay yet eight days longer, when the fourth, the yet more charm- ing sister, the queen of Prussia, is expected. I LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 63 am invited to dinner every evening. The duke is extremely goodnatured, but could not at first be much au fait with me. He remarked that I took too little asparagus, and helped me, not only to this, but to the first young venison, which is not indeed wonderfully good. Yesterday I fantasied upon the flute before the court. You are shocked and frightened. But for more than half a year I have done it passably, before Gleim, Weisse, Herder, and the duchess mother. I have also here an established brother and sisterhood, and could be a Zinzendorf. No, it would be ungrateful if I did not receive the love of the Germans as the richest reward of my authorship. " My Carohne lives with her mother, sisters and brother, and the time I am not at court is passed with her. I know her now more intimately, and in no female soul have I found such serene, sedu- lous, religious morality ; immovable and incorrupti- ble in its smallest branches. One feels, alas, by her moral tenderness, that he has been long in Weimar. If I were united with her, my whole being, even the smallest stain, would be purified. She does not read, as young ladies usually do, merely to dissolve a sentimental manna upon her tongue, but to learn ; that is, she reads history and natural history. She has formed a complete herb- 64 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. arium, and a succession of ingenious flower paint- ings. She makes verses, as you will learn by the accompanying enclosure, and therefore she cannot forget the satire upon female poetry in J. P.'s letters.^ It was true, she said, but too bitter. She drinks no wine at dinner, and passes great part of her time in the open air, in the garden. ^ Now that I am healthy,' she says, ' I will make myself hardy.' . . . Her delicate mother cer- tainly guesses all, and by her silence gives con- sent. I dare tell you all. With three kind words you can give this dear being three heavens. . . . Her complexion is fair, and pale red, her brow poetical and feminine, her eyebrows strong, indeed too much so, and her eyes dark. The nose is the reverse of little and short ; the lips naturally cut, and the chin a little too prominent. Of the beauty of her hair I enclose a proof. Pray return it immediately. I derive from her, God knows why, unless it is my five-and-thirty years, a sense of firmness and security that enables me to enjoy the present hour, without anxiety for future years ; and thus my life completes its circle, its enchanted circle." Richter was now more genuinely attached than ^ See Jean Paul's " Conjectural Biography." LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 65 he had ever been, and the lady appeared to have reciprocated his emotions ; but the course of their love was turbid and ruffled. Paul was tortured all through the summer by the caprices of Caro- Hne's noble relatives. At one time she gained their consent to the betrothment, and Richter wrote, full of joy to Otto, to postpone his marriage with Amone, that they might have the happiness of solemnizing both on the same day, and both re- tiring to the little city of Bayreuth, there to realize the plans of their youth. All these changes are related most faithfully to his friend, and he closes one of his letters with these words : " How can I tell you. Otto, how entirely I esteem her — not merely love, for that is always so easy." The winter passed in frequent correspondence, and in May his friends, the Herders, went with him to Ilmaneau, where Caroline then was, to celebrate the festival of betrothment.' Certainly ' The '' Vcrlohung" is often, but not always, a solemn cere- mony in German society. It means that the lover is formally accepted by the lady and her family. If there be no reason for keeping the affair secret, the relations and friends, on both sides, are assembled, a little festival takes place, and the young peo- ple are presented as " Verlobt," affianced, or, as we say in this country, "engaged." The marriage ceremony, vi^hich takes place afterwards, is more private, and attended by fewer wit- nesses. In this country we have the custom of " Verlobung," VOL. II. 5 66 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Richter had never loved apparently so naturally and prudently, and the encouragement of the Herders was to him a guarantee of his future hap- piness. They found that his Caroline surpassed even the description of her lover. There was something about her fascinating to people not ex- actly of the world, and that took the Herders by surprise. What took place at this time is not exactly known, the opposition of the relatives does not appear to have prevented the betrothment, but some little moral differences, that would have destroyed the whole happiness of the marriage. Richter returned to Weimar with a crushed heart — he had no words to describe the agitation his disappointment occasioned ; for a moment the health of this strong and firm being sank under without the ceremony; and here, as Mrs. Jameson, in her pleasant notes to the princess Amelia's Dramas, observes, " the engaged youth is expected to devote every leisure minute to the society of bis betrothed ; he attends her to all public places, and to every private party, (as it is not considered good manners to invite them separately,") and less restraint is placed on the in- tercourse of the lovers here, than even in Germany. In Eng- land, it may be presumed, from Mrs. Jameson, the lovers do not appear much together before marriage ; and in France it is offending against hicn-seance, ever to leave them alone to- gether. In this, as in other habits of social life, we have been permitted, in this countrij, to select what is good and agreeable, from all others. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 67 the blow, and the thought of returning again to the desert world. He thus closed a letter to Otto : " The blow is given that has cut me to the inmost heart. I also am superstitious — misfortunes and happiness come twice, not three times. I long infinitely for the little corner of my birth, and the innocent and touching scenes about you.' You know not how my heart, even to sadness, dwells upon your day of ceremony.' We can never lose each other, therefore everything, even the weather, will be important to me, as it concerns you, and our Amone." Otto, who appears to have felt a singularly warm interest in the Fraulein von F., insisted upon knowing more distinctly the causes of the rupture. Richter says, in reply, " Merely little moral differences, but such as would have de- stroyed the whole happiness of marriage." But there was also the opposition of the lady's noble family, who probably looked with the eyes of worldly prudence, not merely upon their sister's violation of all German conventionahsm, in uniting herself with an author, but trembled for the strait- * Otto and his sister Frederica were both married at this time ; and Otto immediately removed to Bayreuth. Otto's Verlobung day. 68 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ened circumstances into which her disinterested inexperience would lead her. In a letter, written to her at the breaking off the betrothment, Paul says ; " Only one fault have I, and only I, committed throughout, that after so many earlier lessons from experience, I did not immediately, as soon as we had once conversed with each other, write this letter to you, and im- press it upon my own heart." Otto, to whom the correspondence was trans- mitted, draws, as he was accustomed to do, these wise, but alas, too tardy reflections, for the use of his friend : ^' It is a weak perverseness of our nature, and yet an antidote against egotism, that when we see a being worthy of our esteem, we turn from what we discover in them that is disagreeable, and be- lieve that if we shut our eyes so as not to see them, the little spots are not there ; as if we could avert the divine and human sentence which de- crees, that inequalities and blemishes, shall, in the course of time, become more, instead of less ap- parent, and that because we blind ourselves, they should vanish and be obliterated. That your sep- aration is right, that it is the work of destiny, and that you have completed the decree of a higher Power, that you should not be happy together, is LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 69 true, and that the good and unfortunate Caroline will be the most unhappy, is also true ; because she will never be in a situation to understand the disparity and inequality between you. Because the advantages of the separation are more ap- parent to you than the advantages of the union, you can justify the separation to yourself ; but it is the reverse with Caroline ; she can never under- stand the (disadvantages of the union, because her disinterested generosity and affection would oblit- erate them all ; while she feels the unhappiness of the separation." We see from these extracts that Richter was not altogether blameless with regard to the Frau- lein von F., because his deeper penetration and experience of life, had enabled him from the be- ginning, to understand the disparities, whether of a moral or conventional nature, which would have rendered their union unhappy ; and yet he per- mitted himself to win the love of the lady. She seems to have been greatly attached to him, and for his sake would have sacrificed the privileges of rank, and accepted the inconveniences of poverty ; and it was no balm to a wounded heart, or to wounded pride, that he had had the sagacity to foresee the issue. As women, we may be permitted to protest 70 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. against Richter, in connexion with our sex. It is true, that he has written beautifully and elo- quently of women ; and has perhaps, done much to elevate and spiritualize their views and affec- tions ; but in actual life he was not wholly sincere with the beings he professed to reverence. After the fancy for the little blue-eyed peasant girl, till his marriage, he does not appear to have felt the truth and tenderness of an equal love. He was dreaming of an ideal, spiritual love, like a far off luminous star, while he permitted himself to write letters to his four or five Hofer friends, that from any but a poet, would have been thought genuine declarations of love. In his connexion with Madam von Kalb and Emilie Berlespsh, he was more sinned against than sinning ; in the one case he retreated before dis- honor, in the other before a marriage in which there could be no genuine and mutual affection ; but even here he appropriated their unselfish af- fections, their disinterested devotion, to purposes of artistic creation ; he made them the models for the female characters in his works, and they lived to see the warm pulses of their hearts registered, and made a standard by which to count the feverish or healthful pulsation of other hearts. In the usual acceptation of the word, Richter LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 71 was not an enemy to women, but his devotion to them was not a genuine devotion to them, as women ; he did not love them for themselves ; he loved them artistically ; and as the artist drapes his model in every graceful form to produce effect, Jean Paul made use of the power his genius gave him over the minds of women, to draw out the sweet affections, the hidden depths of the heart, revealed only to love, to increase his pschycologi- cal knowledge for the public. In spite of all the various causes of interruption, Richter was never more completely absorbed in work than through this winter. The first volume, and the comic appendix to Titan, was ready for the press, and he had printed his history of " Charlotte Corday,^' and Clavis Fichtiana. Nei- ther of these were works of the first impor- tance, but they served to keep him before the public while his great work was in preparation. The Clavis Fichtiana was, at the time, one of his most celebrated works, and attracted much attention upon its publication. Fichte's popu- larity was so great, or the interest in metaphysical speculations so intense, that the booksellers paid him six louis d'ors a sheet, for his lectures, while Goethe received only five, at the same time, for his most admired works. It would not, perhaps, be 72 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. interesting to inquire at this distance of time, and in another country, why Jean Paul threw himself so entirely into the philosophical and metaphysical contests of the day. From all that can be gath- ered from his letters, it would seem to be his friendship for Herder and Jacobi ; but he gained nothing, even from them, and he widened the distance between himself and Goethe and Schiller. His letters at this time to his friend Otto, to whom he confided every intimate, and every pass- ing emotion, betray discontent and restlessness ; a deep longing for quiet and retirement, yet an un- willingness to retire until he had formed a union that would satisfy his heart, if not his ideal — although, at present, he certainly did not place his demands too high. He says ; " I would fain find a gentle girl who could cooli: something for me : and who would sometimes smile, and sometimes weep with me." During the whole of this winter, Richter was flattered and courted by the four beautiful prin- cesses already mentioned ; and he obtained per- mission to dedicate his Titan to them. The dedication of Titan to the four distin- guished sisters, the daughters of the duke of Meck- lenburg, is not to the sisters wpon the throne, for he mentions only their baptismal names, and com- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 73 mends his Titan to their favor as exalted human, not princely beings ; and when his friends repre- sented that his Titan contained bitter satires against princes, he answered, '' that his dedication was to them as women, not princesses, and that his satire touched princes only, not their wives." This pretty piece of flattery is thus presented : The queen of Love and her three attendant graces look from their cold Olympus, through the atmosphere, and long to descend to our earth, where the soul loves more because it suffers more ; and although it is darker, it is warmer than on Olympus. They hear the sacred hymns of Poly- hymnia, as she wanders invisible through the earth, to elevate and console man, and they mourn that they are so distant from the sighs of the helpless. Then they resolved to clothe themselves in the veil of humanity, and descend to earth. As they touched the flowers of earth, and threw no shadow, the queen of heaven raised her sceptre and decreed, that these immortals should be mortal, and take the form of the four sisters, Louisa, Charlotte, Theresa and Frederica, and the loves were changed into their children, and flew into the arms of the moth- ers. Then their hearts beat with new love, and Polyhymnia, as she hovered invisibly near, gave them the voice and the heart to charm, and to console humanity. 74 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The rupture of his ties with the Fraulein von F. made Richter very desirous to remove for a short time from Weimar, where he was constantly meet- ing her family ; fortunately, a singular circum- stance drew him at this time to Berlin. The previous March he had received an anony- mous letter from Belgard, Upper Pomerania, to- gether with his Hesperus, translated into French. The writer promised to make herself known as soon as an answer to her letter gave her courage. Richter answered immediately, which was not his custom to anonymous letters ; and the lady made herself known as the lady Josephine von Sydon ; French by birth, but who had so far be- come mistress of the German language, as to read it with ease, and to translate it into her mother tongue. Her love of Richter's works had excited the highest admiration for their author, and an ardent desire to become personally acquainted with him. Richter now went to Berlin to meet her, with whom he had formed a friendship by means of a correspondence in different languages, and with the partition wall of mountains also between them. It rarely happens, that a friendship formed with- out a personal interview, through the charm of correspondence, will not disappoint one of the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 75 parties when they meet. We have none of the letters of Josephine, but Richter's expectations were more than satisfied. He wrote to Otto ; " My Josephine has increased my esteem and ad- miration. What southern naivete, simpHcity and openness, carried to almost childish excess ; south- ern animation, firmness and tenderness, with a true German eye and heart." This year also, in the midst of his intimacy with the four princesses, he wrote his Eulogy of Char- lotte Corday, the female Brutus of the French revolution, in every line of which breathes the holiest love of freedom. Paul represents Corday as sacrificing, not the opposer of legitimacy, but the tyrant of a republic ; and has the boldness to make a governing German count a fellow admirer of the heroine. He defended the deed, not from feeUng, but from principle. She destroyed Marat, not as a citizen, but as an enemy of the state, in a civil war ; consequently, he regarded her act not as the offence of an individual against an indi- vidual, but as the act of a party, against a corrupt and apostate member. CHAPTER VI. RICHTER REMOVES TO BERLIN. INTRODUCTION TO CAROLINE MEYER. THE MEYER FAMILY. THE " VERLOBUNG." Berlin was at this time to our Richter a ^ ^ jg^Q newly discovered part of the world. The ^^^^ ^^' society was distinguished by a higher culture, a more refined tone, through the accomplishments of the women, to which the beautiful Queen Louisa, one of the four sisters, lent a splendor and a charm at that time unequalled elsewhere. But Richter must speak for himself. " I have been here two-thirds of a week, and must remain the following, as Offland, on my ac- count, will perform the Wallenstein. I have never been received in any city with such idolatry. After such an elevation, I can henceforth only sit upon the steps of the throne, never again upon its sum- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 77 mit. I avoid the merely learned, and therefore I meet with no envy ; but only a too warm enthu- siasm, that does not make me proud of myself, but of humanity. How it refreshes the heart to find the same sighs for the spiritual in a thousand hearts that arise in mine, and prove, that we have with- in us a common heaven. " The splendid queen invited me immediately to Sans Souci. Heavens ! what simplicity, frank- ness, accomphshment and beauty ! I dined with her, and she showed me the kindest attention. The learned Zollner invited eighty persons to meet me at the York Lodge ; gentlemen, their wives and daughters, of the learned circles. I have a watch chain of the hair of three sisters, and so much hair has been begged of me, that if I were to make it a traffic, I could live as well from the outside of my cranium, as from what is under it. " I have been often with the highly accomplish- ed minister. Von Alvensleben. The tone at the court table was easy and good ; with Alvensleben one may speak as freely as upon this sheet. Only in Berlin is freedom and law ! " The reader will recollect, that when Jean Paul was nameless, and struggling with the waves of poverty, that nearly made shipwreck of his hopes, from Berlin was the first plank thrown that brought 78 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. him to land.^ Now he says, " they threw a couple of worlds upon his head." The impression that he made upon the BerHn- ians, we learn from the journal of a lady at this time published. She says, " Among the wonder- ful peculiarities of our time, and from which our country will receive a distinguished radiance, is the appearance of Jean Paul. As yet, few among us know him, but those who have seen him look upon him as an apparition from another world, as a prophet who has come thence to perform mira- cles incomprehensible to the senses. No one had scented his approach ; of so rare a man, no one had received an idea. Like a beam of light he flashed among us, but cheering as the star of day is his lingering here. He cannot be more than forty, though he has a bald head. All the riches of language appear to have been created for him. Nature is his dwelling, customs his playthings, and men his machines. Like the sun, he shines through the curtains of art, and the labyrinth of the heart," etc. It was not only in the journals of ladies that Richter was favored ; the beautiful queen, whose ' MoritZj in Berlin, from whom he received a hundred ducats for the manuscript of the Invisible Lodge. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 79 fate has thrown a touching interest over everything relating to her, continued firm and steady in her friendship. She never spoke of him but with a deep feehng of his worth as a man and an author ; and with the brother of the queen, Prince George of Mecklenburg, he formed a friendship that was uninterrupted till his death. In Schliermaker he found a congenial spirit, and formed many friend- ships with distinguished women. Taking into view all these circumstances, it is not surprising that Richter should form the resolu- tion to remove to Berlin, and fix there his perma- nent residence. A secret and unacknowledged inclination, as well as an unseen and Providential hand guided him to the happiness he had so long been seeking. The separation from his friends the Herders, cost him some painful and lingering hours, but a more powerful wish drew him onward, and before the end of the year he had accomplished his removal. It was in October, 1800, that Richter finally made in Berlin his permanent residence. On his first visit at the festival that Zollner made for him at the York Lodge, he met the secret tribunal counsellor, Meyer, and his two unmarried daugh- ters. A httle accident, his being too late to take the place assigned him at the right hand of the 80 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. presidentj brought him to an unoccupied seat at the side of Carohne, the second daughter of the counsellor. It was the only vacant place at the table, and the young lady's heart began to beat when she saw the wonderful man, the observed of all observers, approach it, and with timid humility she shrank from supporting a conversation with him ; but as Richter had come from dining at Sans Souciy the conversation about the queen and the court immediately became interesting. The mild- ness and friendliness of Paul's manner, wrought a sudden change from timidity to the most ingenu- ous confidence in the soul of Caroline Meyer. Richter, in his personal appearance and manners, exerted a magical influence over all minds, and nothing interested him so deeply as the unveiling of an innocent female heart. He was touched ; and at rising from the table gave Caroline the flower from his breast, and asked her to present him to her father. It happened that her sister Ernestine, who sat opposite at the table, and, like a true woman, had observed the impression that had been made on Caroline, now met them with her father. They had seen in his eyes an expres- sion of high esteem for Jean Paul, and secretly happy, about midnight they left the party. Rich- ter led the sisters through the long avenues of the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 81 garden to their carriage, without either expressing the wish to meet again, and bade them silently good night. One day only was permitted to pass before he called at the house of the Rath, with the excuse, that he could not leave Berlin without ex- pressing his gratitude for the agreeable evening he had passed at the York Lodge. But before we proceed with the wooing, we must learn something of the family of the Gehei- mer-Rath Meyer. He was himself one of the most accomplished and distinguished officers of the Prussian government, and had married early in hfe a daughter of the family of Germershause, who had been educated in country simplicity, but in all the severity of the orthodox faith ; and even after her marriage hung with passionate love on the parental house. Herr Meyer was a man who cherished a high ideal of life and its duties ; and uniting the most agreeable accomplishments with the most enlight- ened views, he moved in the distinguished circles of Berlin, one of the most interesting men of the period. By the intolerance of his mother-in-law, and the blind subjection in which she held the will of her daughter, he was either deprived of the en- joyment of his refined tastes, or obliged to live in continual discord with his relations. The numer- VOL. II. C 82 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ous sacrifices that he made to his mother-in-law only increased her asperity, and his wife always taking the side of her mother, at last a coldness and estrangement arose, that after seven years of married life resulted in a mutual agreement of separation. But as Providence had denied him a son, and Herr Meyer desired for his daughters the most Hb- eral culture, and the modern accomplishments, which he could not depend on the mother to sanc- tion, they formed the singular agreement, that the weeks should be passed alternately with either parent ; and actually, every eight days the children were sent backwards and forwards between father and mother. This strange arrangement, which remained a mystery to their young hearts, was a perpetual occasion of self-denial and self-govern- ment. They dared not speak of either parent in the presence of the other ; and the constant ex- change, now from severe religious simphcity to all that was refined and intellectual in social life, and now from the latter to an almost Moravian soli- tude, must have promoted in the minds of the daughters an early development, and given them a strong and entire dependence on each other, as well as on themselves. In their earliest years the children hung fondly LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 83 on the mother, whose tears they vainly tried to wipe away when they left her, and whose sacrific- ing mother's love knew no limits; but as they grew older they found opening to them under the father's roof, a rich school for the cultivation of their higher faculties, to the value of which they soon became sensible. The most zealous desire for a refined culture, especially in philosophy, poetry and the arts, filled the soul of their father. Every moment that he could win from his duties as a servant of the state, he devoted to the culti- vation of his own, and his daughters' taste, in the beautiful arts of poetry, music and painting. Above all in importance, was the cultivation of the moral purity of his children, whom he anxiously protected from the influence of everything low and trivial. He provided them with the best teachers, and filled his house with paintings and other of the choicest works of art. Thus was finked in their opening minds, in company with artists, learned men and poets, a susceptibility to every- thing great and good, which in this family was innate and true, but which an unsympathizing world calls transcendentalism, when affected for purposes of vanity or display. Upon minds so prepared by education, the ac- quaintance of Jean Paul must have made a deep 84 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. impression ; it had already, in that evening at the York Lodge, woven a sweet enchantment about the heart of CaroUne, and when after the interval of a day, in which her imagination had dwelt ex- clusively upon him, he made the unhoped-for visit, he stood near her as a being that she must regard with almost religious veneration. A report had been spread in Berlin, that Caro- line was about being betrothed to her cousin ; and Jean Paul, to leave her entirely free, returned to Weimar without any express manifestation of his wishes. His image, however, was interwoven in all the social enjoyments of the family ; but Caroline's father, with a quick and nice sense of the honor of his daughter, had coldly and severely commanded that there should be no reference to him. The gossips of Berlin spread a report, that Caroline had kissed the hand of Jean Paul in public, and the father, jealous of the slightest shade on the deli- cacy of his daughter, forbade her to speak of him, until he should himself make some more decided demonstration of his wishes. This command was the occasion of the following letter from Caroline to her father : " It is a great pity that we cannot receive the noblest and best among men with interest and LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 85 warmth. I feel indeed, dear father, that 1 have thereby lost your esteem. It pains me much, but the consciousness alone that I am free from all enthusiasm and all extravagance in esteeming and admiring such excellence, raises me in a certain degree above all mortification. Your dissatisfac- tion with me arises from the suspicion that some- thing different from reverence has taken possession of my heart. Did you know how pure, how inex- pressibly pure my interest in Jean Paul is, a man like you could not on that account esteem me less. With Leonora in Tasso, I can say, ' I love in him only what is most excellent and most exalted.' Ask your own judgment, whether this is extrava- gance. Truly, a more exalted man we can never meet. " Perhaps you still misunderstand me. I must bear it, and I should be too proud to justify what I think and feel, to any other than my father. Of his writings permit me to say, that the influence they exert upon me, is exactly that which you de- mand from a good book, namely, to be made wiser and better. Is what he gives me unsound ? Its effect then must be as wonderful as if poison in a medicine were changed into a heahng blessing. I have indeed become better, and feel within my- 86 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. self the power to improve. This meeting has been the most momentous circumstance of my hfe, and I know nothing except this emotion in my heart, that can ever make me happy or unhappy. No- thing outward, by my God, nothing that men reckon fortune or happiness, can charm or interest me again ; and if Providence should prepare trials for me, I shall not be unhappy. " Owe, a sore trial, I feel it deeply, dear father, is the doubt of your love. It may be that I have deserved to lose it ; and on this point my tears of regret, but not of repentance, must flow ! " Never was I less excited or extravagant than now. Yes, I will cherish this sentiment. It does not injure me ; I will conceal, but not part with it. I see indeed that it will be my first struggle, to suffer silently, if the sanctuary of my emotions is violated. The warmth with which I have written will be with you, dear father, my apology for writing." In reading this letter, in which Caroline avows such faith in Richter, and such confidence in the truth of her own feelings, we must recollect that they had never spoken of love, their eyes had met, and her destiny was decided ; and if Providence had so decreed, that they had never met again, LIFE OF JEAN PA.UL. 87 Caroline would have mourned him in widowhood of heart. In the same happy confidence she wrote to her married sister : '' I believed I should have been unhappy when we were separated ; that the painful reality of part- ing would drive me from the ideal height to which his presence had elevated me. But I feel a cour- age and power to bear life, such as I never felt before. I could be happy without ever again seeing him in this life.'^ The elevation of a pure and ideal love is here truly expressed. Caroline felt herself raised above the accidents of life, and happy in the ideal pre- sence of the being she reverenced above all others. But Richter had not left her without some slight intimation of his wishes. When he returned to Berlin, in October, Caroline was the first person informed, by a few lines, in which he asked per- mission to visit her family that evening. Their hearts had spoken too truly, for them to be longer silent ; and that very evening, as he conducted Caroline to visit her mother, his tongue was loosed, and their destiny forever united. Early the next morning, kneeling at the bed- side of her father, and whispering in his ear that Richter had spoken, Carohne asked his blessing on their love, and received this consoling assur- C50 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ance ; " My child, if the satisfaction of your father can add anything to your happiness, beheve me no union could give me so much joy. I feel it a reward for all my care of your education." Truly, the father must have been as unw^orldly and as unselfish as the daughter, for Richter had not the prospect of a dollar, except those he could coin, as Sir Walter Scott said in another case, "from the rich mine of his intellect, and stamp with the mark of his genius." It must be ac- knowledged, in a worldly point of view, this connexion appears romantic, if not imprudent. Caroline had been educated in all the luxury of refinement, at least in her father's house, and his fortune depending on his office, he could give his daughters no dowry.' ^ Caroline, although educated in the luxury of refinement, was probably accustomed to great frugality of expense, as the salary of a Berlin Gehiemer-Rath, is, in some instances, only two thousand florins. Richter says, in one of his letters, <' She is cold towards all ornament in dress, but not to the necessity of maiden neatness, and on my account she puts on her splendid new blue dress, to which I have added a white satin, at four Louis d'ors, together with a hat for one Louis d'or. I wish I could hang my heart, as a golden ornament, over hers. I would draw it out of my breast." Richter seems to have had a passionate admiration for a white hat and a black veil, for a lady. Clotilda's hat occupies a large space in Hesperus. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 89 Although Jean Paul had dedicated his Titan to princesses, they had given him nothing but empty praise in return. In the correspondence with the Rath Meyer, not a word is said of property. Richter says, when he asks the father for his daughter ;...'' In this moment of my great request, all other things appear too little to be touched upon by either of us. I approach the man, for whom my esteem and love, even without the relation I desire, would be almost fihal ; as his feminine tenderness and manly philosophy have together nourished the root of this beautiful flower of the sun, and made it so firm, yet so tender. To this good father of this good daughter, I pre- sent my short, but weighty prayer. Let her be mine ! she will be happy, as I shall be ! " Herr Meyer answered, '' That it had been the aim of all his plans, in the education of his daugh- ters, to prepare them to unite themselves to such men as himself — and that he gave his uncondi- tional consent." The mother, also, in German phrase, sent her ja-wort, and the betrothing of two noble hearts took place immediately. Paul had, at last, in his thirty-eighth year, found the ideal of female perfection and lovehness that had always haunted his imagination. He says ; ^' Caroline has exactly that inexpressible love for 90 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. all beings, that I have till now, failed to find even in those who in every thing else possess the splen- dor and purity of the diamond. She preserves in the full harmony of her love to me, the middle and lower tones of sympathy for every joy and sorrow of others." In describing her to Otto, he says, ^' She has the beauty, rare among Germans, of a dark soft eye and Madonna brow " — '' self-sacrificing love, without equal ; modesty, openness ; and in the midst of the purest love for me, her heart trembles at every sound of sorrow. She has the warmest friends among women and young girls, and the innumerable visits of congratulation that she re- ceived at the news of our Verlobung, shows how much she is beloved by the Berliners." We have no means of forming a judgment of Caroline Meyer, except from her letters to Richter, which have all the simplicity and tenderness of Klopstock's Meta. But they are only the beauti- ful expression of a submissive tenderness, and boundless reverence. The letter to her son, which will appear hereafter, discloses independent thought, and is altogether of a higher order. Mrs. Austin says, " It is the habit of Paul's countrymen to re- quire from women the virtues of attached and in- dustrious servants, rather than of equal, intelligent, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 91 and symps.ihing friends ;" and although Jean Paul in so many places in his works protests against this tendency of his countrymen, and pleads most eloquently for the emancipation of women from their state of servitude, his minute directions to Caroline about household affairs, whenever he leaves home, look as if he had readily assumed the manly superiority of his countrymen. Paul, while he describes in SeibenJcas, with ex- quisite penetration, the miseries of an ill-assorted union, asserts that he shall be " happy if one falls to his lot, upon whose opened eyes and heart the flowery earth and beaming heavens strike, not in infinitesimals, but in large and towering masses ; for whom the great whole is something more than a nursery or a ball-room ; one who, with a feeling at once tender and discriminating, with a heart at once pious and large, forever improves the man whom she has wedded." ^ The coldest of Richter's biographers speaks thus of Carohne ; " Purity of mind, unlimited love ■ I fear Paul's Caroline will be despised by the fashion of our age, if I should translate a letter, where he tells Otto, that she ripped a dress apart, dyed it herself, put it together again, and wore it the next evening, in a large party. And yet her father's house was filled with the most valuable works of art, and Caro- line could herself read Plato in Greek. 92 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. to her parents and sisters, and benevolence to all mankind, were native to her. She added inex- pressible reverence for Richter, and unconditional submission to his wishes. With a love for all that was beautiful in art, she had very moderate views of the value of the outward in life ; great enthu- siasm of feeling, and through trial and experience a penetrating knowledge of the world ; but with an accomplished education, and almost unlimited resources within herself, her outward life and appearance was modest, and without pretension. With their peculiar education, Caroline and her sisters possessed qualities singularly adapted to form the happiness of domestic life, but to Caro- line only, Providence granted this satisfaction." ^ ^ The eldest sister of Caroline had been already three years married to Carl Spazier, who was at this time the editor of a helles lettre newspaper (Eleganten Zeitmig,) in Leipzig. After a marriage of many outward difficulties, he left her a destitute widow, with four young children. She entered upon the thorny path of female authorship, and continued their literary journal. Jean Paul contributed many of his ephemeral pieces to its pages, and Caroline also assisted her with her elegant and graceful pen. The author, to whom I have been indebted in this biography, F. Otto Spazier, is her son. The youngest sister, Ernestine, married about the same time with Caroline, to August Mahlman, died, after a few years of married life, of a broken heart; occasioned, as her nephew says, by an unfaithful husband and a childless marriage. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 93 She was marked out indeed for distinguished happiness, and the biographer goes on to say, " that no female nature could have resisted Paul. The enchantment of his smile, and the power, the magnetic influence of his eye — the inspiration and elevation that was enthroned upon his brow ; the musical, but touchingly tender intonations of his voice, together with the mystery that involved the author of Hesperus, who was thought to have lived upon a solitary island ; all this would have given every woman, without exception, to his hand, and Caroline had the felicity to be chosen from all." She had beside the happiness of being chosen by him, the guarantee of that happiness, from the fact that, in spite of the seductions that had sur- rounded him at a time when the bonds of do- mestic society were every where falling loose, he had passed through all, with a singular purity of life ; among all the women, who, as his biogra- pher says, " would have left at his call, lover or husband," not one had suffered in reputation, on his account.^ ' Such enthusiasm for an author would be incredible, had we not recently seen in our own circle, in the visit of Mr. Dickens, 94 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the enthusiasm that genius alone excites, without the accessories of fortune or rank, or any claim except that which appeals di- rectly to the heart; the delineation of human affections, and human relations, the touches of nature that make the whole world kindred. CHAPTER VII. RICHTER S PETITION TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA. MARRIAGE. CAROLINE'S LETTERS FROM WEI- MAR. Our Richter had never been so happy as ^ ^ jg^j the few months after his betrothment to ^^^'^ ^' Carohne. The learned and social circles of Ber- Hn had many charms for him. They were com- posed, as he says, of Jews, ministers, officers, learned men and women. Tieck, Fichte, and the Schlegels showed themselves so friendly that he believed, in his simplicity, he should win that school to himself. The merely learned only, displeased him. To use his own figurative language : " The roots of their dry deism were planted in sand, and bore only withered leaves and no flowers ; and no breath of perfume came from them." But he conceived the warmest esteem for Schliermacher, 96 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. whose ^' Reden uher Religion " he calls " an in- spired and inspiring work, a simple and beautiful temple, whose contents are a true God's service." At this time, spite of their philosophical differ- ences, the exalted character of Fichte attached Jean Paul intimately to him. He also renewed his acquaintance with Madam von Krudener. From the exciting tumult of the society of the great, where he was courted and admired, he turned with a sense of domestic tranquillity to the quiet circle in which his betrothed moved. This, from the circumstance of the separation of her parents, was necessarily limited, although they were not excluded from any. The queen had presented them, through the medium of her brother George, upon hearing of the betrothment of Richter and Caroline Meyer, a costly service of silver — but nothing more useful or enduring appeared in prospect. In the mean time, the spring returned ; but with- out some pecuniary provision Richter could not afford to remain in Berlin. " Is there none," said old Gleim, '^ is there none who can say to the king, we must keep J. P. F. R. in Berlin. He does you honor, and will bring money into the city. Is there none who will be a LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 97 Colbert ? no Scholenburg ? no Hardenburg ? no Voss ? not even the queen ? " Richter at last, though reluctantly, addressed the following letter to the king : " May your royal majesty be graciously moved to listen to the prayer of a man, that not only from dwelling under your government, but from birth and disposition, rejoices in the happiness of your reign. The loss of my father was never to me, but through, me, supplied to my family. I was already a writer at the age when men begin to read. Through years of poverty and labor, I at last won a hearing from the public, and lately a more extensive audience. My aim has been to elevate the sinking faith in God, virtue, and im- mortality, and in an age of egotism and revolu- tions, to warm again the cold humanity of men's hearts. As this object has been dearer to me than any other reward, I have sacrificed every other ; time, health and the richer winnings of other pur- suits. '' But now, when I am entering upon the cares of marriage, where my own sacrifices should not extend to another, I feel excused by my conscience if I petition the throne (that has so many to listen to, and to make happy) that I also may be ex- cused, if respectfully I submit my prayer^ My 98 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. gratitude, and joyful sympathy in the happiness of my country will be the same, however justice and goodness may decide." The king in answer, gave Richter to understand, through one of his courtiers, " how much it had rejoiced him to observe, that by his talent and in- dustry alone, exercised in the face of such unfa- vorable outward circumstances, he had placed him- self at the head of the literature of his country. He was not indifferent to literary merit, and would be glad to have Richter remain his subject ; and if any vacant prebend should offer, he would remem- ber him." It seems to us almost a degradation of genius hke Richter's, that he should have petitioned in vain for a small ecclesiastical benefice, for (although some humorous letters passed between him and Otto on the subject — Richter saying, "that he should place watchmen on the church towers to strike the last hours of the old prebends," and Otto answering, " that they were always long-lived, few dying under a hundred years,") he received no prebend. He would have been fettered also under the obligation to remain in Prussia. Accordingly, on the 27th of May, after a private solemnization of their marriage, Richter and his young bride left LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 99 the dust and noise of the city to enjoy, in quiet and without witnesses, their long dreamed-of happiness. They travelled in the month of bloom and flow- ers over the beautiful parts of Dessau, visited the Herders in Weimar, and then went to Meiningen, where Jean Paul anticipated for a time to estabhsh his " Portative Parnassus J^ Here is the letter of Caroline to her father, a week after her marriage. "Weimar, June 3, 1801. " I write to you, my beloved father, for the first time, from the most charming resting place. We arrived last evening, about 8 o'clock, after the most delightful journey that was ever taken, except the pain of the separation from you, that often made me insensible to many lovely spots. But the care that my good Richter took of me, and of everything that could touch my heart, softened my emotions, gently and happily ! Indeed, there are few such men — so sympathising and attentive to the smallest little things, and to all the actual of life. '' As we approached Weimar, my heart began to beat. The place, beautifully surrounded with hills, lies low, and we look from above all over the city. It is larger and gayer than I expected, and there is much life and joy everywhere. In the morning the market was held before our door, 100 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. where there was more tumult than in the BerUn market, and the music at the Stadthause imparts a cheerful gaiety that is read on all faces. "But now, the most delightful thing that could have happened. As soon as we arrived on Wednesday evening, we went to Herder's. It was already dark. With a beating heart I stepped into the sacred house. The aged mother sat in the parlor alone, knitting. Richter opened the door quietly, and we stood before her. Her sur- prise is not to be described. She looked at me with astonishment — ran to call all the house to- gether — turned back — and knew not what to do for joy. Now while we debated whether Richter alone, or whether we should both go up to the Herders at once, the venerable man stood in the door. I discovered him first. ' There he is,' I said with emotion. He stepped calmly near, and turned me with penetrating eyes towards the light, and as he looked fixedly at me, ' God be praised,' he said, ' I am now satisfied.' He was surprised ; he had formed no image of me, and he doubted whether Richter would be happy. He loves me now equally with him, and he was as much moved as a father who has found his lost children. He went in great emotion up and down the apartment — then he came again to me, and said with touch- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 101 ing tenderness, ' yes, you are what he must have — you need not speak, we see already all 1 ' I was so much affected, that I could say nothing, and the evening passed like a quiet festival. ^' I tell you all, my dear father, for Richter wishes it, just as it happened, for it will make you happy to know your daughter so beloved ; and principally, that we both know from this sympathy how much Richter deserves to be loved. '' This is infinite — here is his home. Father and mother dwell with the deepest warmth upon what he mutually feels for them, and he appears more splendid to me than ever. Indeed, I might from this moment date a new era in my love. " I cannot describe Herder to you ; through Richter you know enough of him. He goes qui- etly in and out, so reflective, so serious, so harmo- nious, so gentle and musical his voice, his dress so patriarchal. He does not affect me as other poetical men, as notwithstanding he has an iron firmness and decision that makes weakness blush before him, he manifests the refined politeness of a man of the world, without being insincere. He has so much dignity as not to pardon the slightest insult, because he esteems the dignity of human nature, not on account of his individual worth, for 102 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. he is so modest that he veils his eyes Hke a young girl who is praised for the first time, if his own merit is spoken of. " His wife has far exceeded my expectations. She has not the masculine form, but only the manly soul that I anticipated. She has risen with her husband, but she stands firm by herself. She is equally acquainted with ancient and modern literature, speaks decidedly upon all the sciences, but inclines herself in a loving, modierly manner to me. In her house she is very active and busy, but without littleness. A certain well-to-do- ness rules, without luxury. The apartments are simply, but cheerfully furnished. At the table everything goes on quietly, without anxiety in the hostess ; the old servants are well trained, moving reverently about, observing attentively the master's wishes. They will hardly let me part from them, but we are so inexpressibly happy in the little quiet apartment with Richter's old hostess, that we would always rather remain alone. So happy as I am, dearest father, I never believed I should be. Every minute binds our souls closer to each other. It will sound extravagant to you if I say, the high enthusiasm which Richter excited in me, has continually risen as we have entered into real LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 103 life together. Never can a misunderstanding arise between us. My mind, through love and the highest goodness is so tenderly tuned, and my sense of obligation so elevated, that I never as formerly despond. Hovv could I place my will in opposition to this splendid humanity that works only through love and humility. Thank God, I have a husband witli whom love in married hfe can only take the path of honor and morality ; one that I must obey, as we obey virtue itself. And this man so loves me ! that I have nothing to wish but that we may die together. I press myself to your heart." It is but just, although at the risk of satiety, that the reader should also learn, from Richter himself, the perfect happiness, that he imparts to Otto, thus unreservedly. " That the brightest and purest fountain of love to mankind takes nothing from love to the indi- vidual, I learn from my Caroline. Every day it becomes more expansive. Rare as beautiful is her adoration of the spiritual, of poetry and nature ; wonderful her disinterestedness and complete ab- negation of self. There is nothing that she would not do for me, or others. World-long cares are to her nothing, as her industry and love of duty are 104 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. infinite. As she loves me, she loves all my clothes, and would make them all herself. ^' As yet we have had nothing, or only very little to irritate. I cannot say that I am satisfied, but I am certainly blest. Ah, see her ! What are words ! Marriage has made me love her more ro- mantically, deeper, infinitely more than before ! " CHAPTER VIII. RESIDENCE IN MEININGEN. LETTERS. BIRTH OF RICHTEr's first child. dog's PETITION. As soon as our Richter and his bride had ^ ^ ^^^^ accomphshed what, in modern phrase, is ^^^'^ ^^' called the bridal tour, they hastened to the enjoy- ment, of what had always been his ideal dream, complete social independence, in immediate union with nature. His inclinations drew him to Bay- reuth to be near his friend Otto ; but he felt almost a maiden diffidence to expose the intoxication of his love, in the first year of his married life to his old female friends. He wished, also, until the Titan was completed, to be near the accessories of princely life, which the httle court of Meiningen, retired as it was, could furnish. They established themselves in Meiningen, therefore, and here Jean Paul began that domes- 106 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. tic Still life, that remained uninterrupted till the day of his death. A letter from Caroline to Otto, a few days after their entrance into their new abode, shows the del- icacy and tact of the woman, who felt that she had almost taken the place of her husband's friend in his heart. " ' When you have taken your seat at Meinin- gen, I shall step from mine and go to you.' So you write to us. Richter has already estabUshed himself, and waits for the beloved Otto to make the promise true, and come and fall upon his heart. My husband leaves the invitation to me, and the information that we are ready, and that you can now, without any hindrance, accept it. " Our young furnishing, now five days old, has a thousand wants ; yet you will find Richter's cham- ber ordered after the old fashion, as he has altered nothing, and you will feel at home. * Mine is also domestic and friendly — yours alone is wholly poor, that you may not remain there long, but be always ready to come to us. I am a docile being, and will always exactly obey your wishes. You shall arrange all after your own domestic order. We will be melancholy or gay, and we will cele- brate our second marriage-day, when our union through the presence of our friend, is first truly consecrated. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 107 " Rest is inexpressibly welcome to my husband after a three weeks' journey. We suffered our- selves to be detained fourteen days in Weimar, for the sake of the charming little dwelling of the good hostess, and through the love of the Herders. In Gotha we received Schlichtgeroll's hearty greet- ing, and the following evening we selected a little dwelling in Meiningen, where we could unpack. Now we only wait for the rising of the sun, and the appearance — dare I say it — of o?/r friend." A letter from Paul, of a later date, to the same friend, completes the picture of domestic life. '^ My Caroline, who wins the love of all — of the men by her beauty, and of the women through her enchanting truth and goodness, constrains me, by happiness, to be contented here. We have the whole place for friends. Her indeed, too great indifference to outward life, her absorption in quiet employment, her heavenly, faithful, virgin love, her unconditional compliance with my lightest wish, makes our love yet younger and fresher than in the beginning, when it was merely young. That you will fall in love with her, is only too certain. I feel that marriage is something holy and heav- enly. . . . " As yet I find no trouble. If I have a guest, I seem to sit here as a guest myself, so elegantly 108 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and completely my Caroline knows how to order every thi ig. You cannot know the whole value of a married union, as you have always lived with sisters, and never, like myself, alone. " The whole of the next month will be beauti- ful. God send me you or Emanuel, or I shall go to you in the autumn with Caroline." A letter from Caroline to her father follows: — '' O my best father, how do I thank you that you have at length written ! I was on the point of writing again. My husband, as we sat together, was speaking of the incomprehensibility of your silence — ^ Could there be a letter mislaid ? ' when the maid brought in yours, and that of Gretchen's. With how many tears have I read the dear words. I live so simply calm, that I hold fast every thing that was ever dear to me — and your image ! how it takes hold of me. How often, in spirit, do I lean upon your shoulder ! But that it renders me too melancholy for the happiness of my beloved husband, nature often makes me so tender, that in very longing after you and my mother, I should sometimes weep. '' I came here with uncertain, timid expectations. The duchess of Meiningen received us with ex- treme joy, and showed us many houses ; but this made me really melancholy, and the first night I LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 109 slept not at all, for all my fine dreams of domestic economy were destroyed. This little city is not so ideal as I had imagined ; few of the houses have gardens, and only very small courts. The rooms are large, with many windows, and very high. " In the morning we went in pursuit of cheaper and more simple dwellings, and were so happy as to find one, isolated, but with very respectable domestic conveniences. As quickly as possible we were in it. My helpful, never-failing good- humored husband arranged his own chamber, I mine, and thus we were at the end of the first day apparendy in order. The rest I could complete with all leisure, and now the clock-work of our little domestic life goes on without stopping. Our maid is active, and, 1 hope, good. '' My husband is perpetually satisfied with all as it is, and I form myself so wilhngly after his wishes ; that in my heart I feel the intimate and sweet conviction that I can be to him all that he needs. Let me repeat, that I am every day hap- pier — there is nothing without or within to dis- turb us. Now when the moments of enthusiasm are over, you will believe that my judgment is sound. Richter is the purest, the holiest, the most godlike man that hves. Could others be ad- 110 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. mitted, as I am, to his inmost emotions, how much more would they esteem him. There are moments when my soul lies kneeling before him, and I fear only death. Every one finds him stronger and fresher. He is also calmer than he was in Berlin, and his life is more regular. We rise about six, and dine at twelve o'clock. At the latest, Richter goes to bed at ten. From principle and economy he has left off wine, and drinks only beer. He is in every thing at the same time so kind and so firm " The reader will, perhaps, think there is too much of these domestic letters — but how beauti- fully are they the unstudied expression of that chaste, meek, and enduring love that belongs al- most exclusively to domestic life, in which Caro- line's heart was nourished, as the flowers are fed from the light and the dew of heaven. Only one more letter of this period shall find a place here. It is a little note that Caroline wrote to her husband when he had taken a short journey to Leibenstein. It was their first separation, and in answer to a line from him. '' Ah ! could I fall on thy heart, and thank thee that thou hast thought of me ! I stood exactly in the same place on the floor, covering the little Sjnnde with gauze, when your letter came. As you left me yesterday in LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Ill the carriage, it seemed to my childish fancy that the stranger Jean Paul, that did not belong to me, sat there, and how deserted I felt, all was so empty and void. I stifled my regret, and went into your chamber, and put every thing in order. Your handkerchief, just left, had yet some warmth in it, and I took it with me. Then I had nothing more to care for, and I felt a great loneliness. I took up the unbound part of Titan, and have, in- deed, read it wholly through. How often did I sink at your feet as I read, and I looked opposite to your sofa, as if my voice would reach you. Ah, I do not deserve you, and am in myself nothing, " Today I wrote letters. It is wonderfully still in our quiet dwelling. No one has been here, and only the newspaper yesterday. In the cellar all stands in military order. It gives me joy to obey you when you are distant. How heavenly will our meeting be. " God take thee into his holy protection. May the sunbeams kiss thee, and I be worthy to de- serve thy heart. Farewell I my soul, my heaven ! " The eighteen months Richter passed at Mein- ingen, flowed with that quiet uniformity that Caro- line loved no less than her husband. Jean Paul was so much sought after by the duke, that Caro- line mourns over his too frequent absences from 112 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. her ; and Paul writes to Otto, " I never believed that a prince would be my friend — but the duke is nearly that, although I refuse his frequent even- ing invitations, sometimes as many as six in a week. He comes to us often, and lately he dined with us. He would build me a house here, which God forbid, as I seek no eternity in Meiningen.'' In the winter of this year Paul went with the duke to Oberland in a sleigh. In Newhouse, he says, they gave us, in an amateur theatre, a comedy by four peasants. '' It was performed three times in the day, as the place was too small to admit many, and the old company went out, as fresh came in. From time to time, as the duke and the prince of Hesse Philipsthal sat among the peasants, a jug of good beer was passed backwards and forwards, from which all drank in turn." One letter more from Meiningen, of Septem- ber, 1802, and we close this chapter. " Dear old friend. Your expressions over my wife touched me deeply. You should have had, as of a princess, the diarium of her double hfe — but indeed it lasts no longer. This very night she had, with her still continued blooming health, pains that prevented sleep. In the morning the mid- wife (an accomplished one from Jena,) declared that in two hours the birth would take place. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 113 About eleven o'clock it was followed by a godlike little daughter. Heavens 1 you will be as trans- ported as I was, when the nurse brought me, as out of a cloud, my second love, with the blue eyes wide open, a beautiful high brow, kiss-lipped, heart-touching, and with the little nose of my Caroline. " God is near at the birth of every child. Who does not find him in this incomprehensible mechan- ism of pain, in this sublimity of his exquisite ma- chinery, in this prostration of our own independ- ence, ivill never find him. 1 concealed, to spare my wife, as well as I could, my weeping admira- tion, but she perceived, and returned much of it. In my solitary apartment I had (ah, how I wished for you or Emanuel,) only my own rapture, and God, and my hound. " It is a large child, splendidly formed, wholly like myself, which rejoices my Caroline, but I hold modestly back from the little nose. Only on her account did I wish for a boy — but I tell her a girl will be dearer to me, as our parental education would not wholly answer for a boy, but for a girl it will be every thing ; and with this pure, firm and enlightened mother, she can be nothing less than a second diamond. 114 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. "Now is all again well with me — and the world and heaven are open, and I have my wife again. In the midst of her pain she yet brought me my breakfast this morning. Ah, how do I again learn to esteem and pity the poor women. I have the best people about me — the pastor's daughter, without equal — the honest waiting woman, &c. Let me prattle, good old friend, to you and Amone — you are the first listeners. '' To-day I went to the duke, and asked him to give a title to the fairest work I should ever give to the public. He answered, ' Georgine.' ' Truly, he sympathizes kindly with human feehngs." Caroline added to this letter, with the child on her left arm. '' Beloved Otto ! who is so blest as I ? with two, so dear, to love ! C." One other little incident belongs to the Mein- ingen residence. On account of the hunting sea- son all the dogs of citizens were put under arrest. Richter, in his attachment to these faithful friends of man, if not in some other characteristics, resem- bled Scott, and was always accompanied in his rambles by one or more dogs. Upon the decree of arrest being published, he sent his hound to the duke with the following petition : ' George was the prince's own name. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 115 '' That I may accompany my master, when he goes to Welkershausen or to Grimmathal. " I can bring attestation from my master that I understand as little of hunting as he does, and that I keep close behind his stick in all his rambles. And the only game that I permit myself, is what the government advertiser recommends, sometimes a poor field mouse. " That I shall lose my bread if my master dare not place me outside his door, where is, indeed, my only station. I constitute his animal establish- ment ; his poultry, his pheasantry, and his body guard. You love him half as much as he does you, and often, when you have been with him, you have had the grace to stroke me, poor hound, and to say, ' Come, Spitz ! ' Thus will I confide in my fortunate dogstar, that it will permit, be- fore 1 am cut into shoes, and worn on the feet of others, that I may appear before your gracious presence upon my own." The petition was granted, and Paul was per- mitted to keep his dog. At the same time with the poet's first child, the last volume of Titan was given to the world. It had been ten years in progress, and during that time the author had printed several minor works. CHAPTER IX, TITAN. I APPROACH this great work with diffidence, with real humihty, and feel that I am entirely incompe- tent to give to the English reader a just idea of a work so thoroughly German, so difficult for him to appreciate, and yet by which Jean Paul, if he is read at all, is usually appreciated in this country. In speaking of it, I shall be somewhat indebted to the author from whom I have already quoted. In the ten years during which Titan had been in progress, Jean Paul had published several works, all of which had been in subordination to this. His commentator says, " that of this, the Invisible Lodge was the cradle, and the others, as they fol- lowed, only the educators." And as I have said before, it was like the great picture to which all the serious and sacred hours of the painter are de- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 117 voted, while others of less note, take up his casual moments, and are the nurses of the inspiration that is lavished upon this. The great idea of Titan, is that which so many poets and romance writers have endeavored to represent, and which Goethe has so nobly evolved in Faust — the limitations and compensations of life — that all power as soon as it aims to exceed its just bounds, breaks down ; that all who would violate the laws of eternal justice, necessarily fail. Hence the title of the book, taken from the con- test of the ancient Titans against the gods. " Every heaven stormer finds his hell, as surely as every mountain its valley." In Albano, the hero of the novel, Richter has accomplished the object twice attempted before without success (in the In- visible Lodge, and in Hesperus), through birth, ed- ucation, trial and experience, to form a perfectly har- monious character. '• He is not, like Victor, a man seeming and feeling only, but a man of deeds, and unites with the highest love the highest sphere of ac- tion. He is not merely an esthetic example, but a real character, in which life and action are identified with poetic representation." And yet he does not, I think, enlist so much the sympathies of the reader as Victor in Hesperus ; his treatment of Linda is perhaps too harsh and stern. The great dissonance in Titan has probably 118 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. prevented many from going beyond the first vol- ume. During the composition of the jfirst half of the first volume, the author intended to give it the tragicomic character of some of his other works, and that the comic should enter largely into its composition. But his visit to Weimar, and, in consequence, his enlarged range of characters, es- pecially his connection with Madam von Kalb, induced him to change his plan ; to make it a serious romance, and reserve the satirical and comic elements for an appendix. Through the last half of the first volume, he is apparently contending with the witty and antithetic manner of his early works. The outline of the story is this. Two German principalities, Hohenflies and Haarhaar, are in con- tention for the succession — each has a supporter. Haarhaar, the German gentleman, Von Bouverot, as he is called, a gambler, a voluptuary, but con- noisseur in art, who follows Luigi, the pretended only son of the Hohenflies prince to Italy, and there by every kind of excess subjects him to a lingering dissolution. The supporter of the Ho- henflies dynasty, is the Knight don Gaspard de Cesara, who in addition to his devotion to the old prince, the father of Luigi, is influenced by per- sonal revenge for having been refused the hand of a Haarhaar princess. To preserve Albano, the se- cond son of the old prince of Hohenflies, from the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 119 arts that had admhiistered a slow and consuming poison to the Hfe of Luigi, his birth is concealedj and he is educated as the son of Don Gaspard ; his parents having entered into a bond that at the death of Luigi, the claims of his birth shall be established, and that he shall marry Linda, the daughter of Don Gaspard. To keep up the de- ception, that Albanoishis son, Gaspard gives him- self out as the guardian of his daughter Linda. She is called the countess de Romero, and is left in Spain with her mother, where every thing con- spires to nurse and increase the eccentricity and romantic enthusiasm of her character. Her mother soon dies : Linda is left without female influence, and at liberty to travel wherever her love of inde- pendence leads her. She accordingly goes to Switzerland, and there, in the solitude of the mountains, endeavors to establish a school of in- dustry and innocence. Not succeeding, she re- moves to Italy, and nourishes her passion for the beautiful, by living in the midst of the monuments of art, in that exquisite climate. Albano, whose parents were travelling at the time, was born, together with a twin sister, at Isola Bella, where he remains until the death of his mother, in his third year. He is then taken to Germany as the son of Don Gaspard, and placed in the family of Wehrfritz, the provincial director, 120 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. as their foster son. He remains secluded in the country, until his eighteenth year, and, on account of his resemblance to his father, the old prince, is not permitted to visit Pestitz, the capital of Ho- henflies. He grows up a powerful, pure, innocent, well instructed youth, endowed with the most brilliant and attractive qualities, and with a beauty of person that charms every beholder. While a country recluse, he has that longing for love and friendship, the intense thirst for intercourse with great spirits, that Richter makes a characteristic of all his heroes ; and forms in imagination an attach- ment both of love and friendship with the son and daughter of the court minister Frauloy, through the medium of their instructers, who give lessons at the same time to all the young people. Don Gaspard, with his knowledge of the roman- tic character of Linda, and by the help of his brother, an alchemist, ventriloquist, juggler, and liar, makes use of magical means, deceptive glasses, and voices issuing apparently from the clouds, to accomplish his object, the union of Al- bano with his daughter ; and although, from con- sciousness and pride, (for the same means are practiced on Albano.) they avoid each other, yet, when they accidentally meet, a mysterious influ- ence draws them irresistibly together. Before this takes place, however, the death of LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 121 the old prince and the elevation of Luigi, although dying slowly, allows Albano to go to Pestitz. With his fresh, beautiful, ingenuous character, he cements his secretly-formed friendship with Ro- quairoL the son of the minister, and his love for Liana is confirmed by her beautiful feminine na- ture. The first love of these young people is one of the most touching episodes in all Richter's works. It is a Romeo and Juliet, WTitten and performed in heaven. Liana is one of those spiritual beings, with angelic souls, and almost transparent bodies, that Richter loved to draw : disinterested, reli- gious, humble, sacrificing all to duty, and suffering without a murmur. She lives one fleeting spring of happiness, in which her love, hidden like the perfume of the violet in the heart of the flower, is breathed only in whispers ; and when opposed by her fiend-hearted father and her icy mother, though sensitive as the wind-flower, she remains true to Albano, and will only renounce her love when informed of his royal birth. But with her love she renounces life ; and the death of the young, usually so sad, is here beguiled of melan- choly by the beautiful mysticism that surrounds it WMth spiritual existences, and clothes Liana with the robes of angels, before she leaves her mortal investment. Albano is taken from the deathbed of Liana to 122 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Italy, where he meets Linda. Through various influences, she has given up a dazzhng and en- chanting being. Albano, rich in fancy and full of lov^ for all that is beautiful, is instantly captivated. The character of Linda is said to have been modelled from that of Madam von Kalb. She is bold, proud, free, with an infinite generosity and nobility of soul. Her glowing Spanish heart and Italian imagination have never been restrained by the conventionalisms of courtly society. Like Madam von Kalb, she gives way to fits of passion- ate jealousy ; like her, she avows the peculiar es- thetic philosophy upon love — '' that love needs not the bond of marriage, that like an iron ring upon a delicate flower, checks and destroys its tender bloom." She has also Madam von Kalb's doubts upon the immortality of the soul, and even her occasional blindness, which in poor Linda led to such fatal consequences. Albano's powerful character subdued Linda's pride ; with the most childlike love she yielded her independence, and her haughty nature seemed to melt away under the sun of love. In their various journeys in Italy, to Iscliia, Isola Bella, and the palace and gardens of Borromeo, Richter has almost surpassed Madam de Stael. These glowing descriptions are more unique from the circum- stance of his never having visited the places ; he LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 123 was wholly indebted to the Duchess Amelia for the perfumed Italian breath of the whole, which cold reality would have chilled. We come now reluctantly to the evil genius of the romance, Roquairol, the son of Froulay and brother of Liana. He is a child of the times, a victim of the vicious institutions of society, and of an unsuitable education. Richter in this charac- ter has furnished us with almost a prophetic exam- ple of those artistic paintings, of which we have seen so many since his death ; in France even in the times in which we live. An example, where the culture of the mind, without the attendant culture of the heart, is carried so far as to excite and mislead the judgment of the wisest. An asso- ciation of intelligence and crime, of artistic power of the imagination, united with perversity of heart to mar and destroy all the beauty of the painting. But Jean Paul has not, as other authors of such characters, painted his hero half angel, half devil ; he has made him wholly hateful : he has not, like Lovelace, the charm of graceful manners ; nor, like Byron's heroes, the attraction of personal beau- ty ; he excites no sentiment but that of aversion, and when he falls, pity even cannot regret his fate. At the age of twelve, he conceived a vio- lent passion for Linda, and attempted even then to shoot himself, because the little girl turned her 124 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. back upon him and expressed her aversion. Upon her return from Italy, and when Albano's claims to her hand were acknowledged, he determined to add revenge upon Albano to the fatal resentment of his murderous love. A slight contest arose be- tween the lovers, occasioned by Linda's quickness of resentment, and Albano absented himself for a few days. According to a psychological law of love, Linda is now more tender than ever, and her cold independence melts under the thought of estrangement. Roquairol forges Albano's hand- writing, and asks for an interview. Deceived by his counterfeiting the voice and dress of Albano, and by her evening blindness ; seduced also by her own views of love, that it should yield all with- out the bond of marriage, the superb and proud Linda surrenders all to the madness of Roquairol I With the boldness of despair, he has the whole history of his love, and its catastrophe, performed in a tragedy he had already written, and at the end of the fourth act shoots himself. Linda, crushed in body and soul, retires forever to her living tomb ! and Don Gaspard, who had thought to make use of men as the instruments to accom- plish his ambitious purposes, disappears from the scene. But the romance does not end thus tragically and hopelessly. Albano, failing twice in love and LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 125 twice subdued — by the physical death of Liana, and the moral death of the noble Linda — rises again above his fate. The death of his brother, Luigi, takes place at this moment. Educated as one of the people, and prepared to regenerate the corrupt dynasty to which he belongs, and to pour healing streams into the impure society of the time, he ascends the throne, and becomes a bene- factor and reformer. Idoine, a princess of Haarhaar, who had made a voluntary vow, never to marry beneath her rank ; and in a Httle province of her own had created a paradise, where pure morals, religion, industry and happiness prevailed ; with a strong, rational, yet tender and beautiful nature, bears also a striking personal resemblance to Liana, — and the romance ends with her union with Albano. This is a rough outline of the plan and action of Titan. Within it revolves much that is great and beautiful and touching in life ; almost all the er- rors, and sorrows and pains of humanity ; love, in all its forms, from its delicate fragrance, like that of the lily of the valley, to the volcanic flame that burns and destroys ; nature, in the idyllic simpli- city of German village life, in ornamented parks and gardens, in Alpine mountains, and in the in- toxication of spring in the Italian climate ; art, 126 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. from the breathing tones of the flute to the noble beauty of Grecian sculpture ; poetry, delicate irony, hidden satire, and broad humor. Througliout the whole work an elevated poetic justice is preserved ; not the common conventional justice that demands vice to be punished and vir- tue rewarded in this world, but a deeper philoso- phy, in which the mind itself, and the affections, though crushed and disappointed, are their own reward. Thus Albano, twice broken hearted, stands at last, great in himself and in his own in- tegrity, with the bride he had chosen from her re- semblance to his first love, upon the elevation his experience and trials, and his own great qualities fitted him to adorn. Liana, the humble, pure, gentle being, the vic- tim of an unsuitable education ; too tender for the winter of this rough life, is happy in death, because she feels that Albano will be thus restored to his birthright, and by a beautiful spiritual mysticism she will still be the protecting guardian of her eartlily love. It is only against the fate of the romantic and proud Linda, that every reader rebels. Richter received many letters entreating him to alter or avert it. Jacobi even threatened him with the loss of his friendship if he left her under the sen- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 127 tence of this moral death. But Richter adhered to his purpose, which was, to give a lesson of hu- mility to those who, strong in self-reliance, throw aside the guards of custom, the sanction of laws, as unnecessary to their more refined and spiritual natures. But Linda, even in the moment of her humiliating grief, is consoled by the momentary belief that Albano may be her brother, and that she may have been saved from a deeper and more terrible fate. Many other characters revolve around these, the principal in the drama. Schoppe, the former Leib- geiber, appears again, crazed by the philosophy of Fichte, ever accompanied, and trying in vain to escape from his Ich (me) ; Dian, a Greek artist, and his simple and affectionate Greek wife, exist- ing in an atmosphere of beauty ; the minister's lady, cold and ascetic ; the princess bride of Luigi, a malicious and heartless coquette ; Spener, the court chaplain, proud of his sanctity, and of his spiritual power, etc. etc. The four volumes of the Titan were printed in three successive years. Great, indeed, was the disappointment of the reading public, when, after ten years of expectation, the first volume made its appearance. The discrepancy between its first and last portions, displeased both parties of Rich- 128 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ter's admirers. Those who loved Jean Paul's earlier manner, were disappointed to lose it, and the admirers of his serious romances were dis- pleased at the intrusion of the comic into this. The second volume, containing- the episode of Liana, appeared at the end of a year, and was violently condemned as sentimental, mystical, too much in the style of the fashionable weeping school of fiction. When at length the last two volumes came out, disclosing the moral annihilation of a being so charming to the imagination of every reader as Linda, indignation was added to disap- pointment. Just then the battle of Jena occurred, and more important concerns took its place with the reading public. Like all really great works, Titan has survived the popular disapprobation ; and the more it is read the more it will be acknowl- edged a work of exalted genius, pure morality, and perennial beauty. Spazier, whom I have so often quoted, tells us, that in the last weeks of the poet's life, when he was engaged with him in a revision of his whole works for a new edition, Richter had determined by an earlier development, and more psychologi- cal analysis of the character of Linda to show, that with her previously-formed opinions and educa- tion, the catastrophe was unavoidable. And to LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 129 illustrate more fully the axiom, " that character and destiny are the same thing." How much it is to be regretted he did not live to fulfil his intention ; that an author, who touches the sick heart so tenderly, that if for purposes of art he must lay bare the inmost recesses of weak- ness and frailty, covers them again from the cut- ting air of scorn, with the downy, warm breast of pity and love, should have left a passage that can- not be read without deep mortification and pain. The coincidence between this work and the Clarissa of Richardson, is remarkable. The ca- tastrophe similar. One, indeed, induced by the lethargy of the mind, the other by that of the physical powers, each leaving the soul unstained. In both instances the authors were assailed with reproaches and letters, entreating them to alter or conceal the fate of their heroines, but each, for purposes of higher than conventional morality, adhered inflexibly to his original plan.' • The machinery of ventriloquism and jugglery introduced into Titan impairs its beauty, confuses the attention of the reader, does not help the development of character, and most readers would prefer to have it wholly omitted. VOL. II. 9 CHAPTER X. RICHTER LEAVES MEININGEN. REMOVES TO CO- BURG. BIRTH OF HIS SON. DEATH OF HER- DER. " FLEGELYAHRE." BAYREUTH. A D 1803 '^^^ work that succeeded the Titan, the aged 40. '' Fkgehjahre,^^ is perhaps the most per- sonal of all the works of the poet. While writing it, his desire to return to the place of his birth, the land of his youthful hopes and dreams, became irrepressible. He would not let the duke of Meiningen be- come acquainted with his wish from any other lips than his own ; he wrote to him, therefore, '' that, like wandering rats in the spring, he felt an irre- sistible instinct to move, and that with wife, and child, and hound, he should depart in May, and draw nearer to the Fichiclgehirge.'''' The duke answered, " that he was not enough LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 131 of a naturalist to understand the species of wan- dering rats called geniuses, though he believed he knew one genius sufficiently to call him his friend." He gave his consent with extreme reluctance, and Paul found it difficult to resist his earnest entrea- ties, and his princely ofter to build him a conve- nient dwelling, to let him import his favorite Bayreuth beer, free from impost, and to add every new book to his library. The soHtude of Meinin- gen oppressed him ; but his first removal was only to Coburg, a short distance from the prince, and a stage nearer to the attraction of the mountain magnet, and the friend Otto. The year that Richter dwelt in Coburg has been passed over in silence by his biographers. No reason has been given why he selected this small city, and there appears to have been no per- son there who could lend attraction to such a residence. But it was marked by two events that affected him deeply, the birth of his son, and the death of his friend Herder. This last, the death of Herder, cast a deep shadow that reached him and his domestic joys. He had loved and reverenced none like Herder, and no author had had so much influence over him. Not that they resembled each other as authors, but the same deeply religious spirit inspired 132 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. them both, and the aim of both was to build up the wavering faith of the age, in God, virtue and immortaUty. " I would willingly," he wrote to the son of his dead friend, " I would willingly journey to his holy sepulchre to renew my joyful and my sad recollections of him. But with wjiat could I still my grief when I found him no longer there ? Weimar, or rather his deserted house, has made me a Jew, who can remain no longer in the city, but must, as soon as he inscribed in the church- record the birth of a child, depart, and journey onward." ^ The residence in Coburg was also marked by the publication of the Flegelyahre. Carlyle says the word may be translated " wild oats,^' but it seems to mean the same as " Wanderyahre/^ or apprenticeship, as Goethe uses it in '^ Meister.'^ Like most of the romances of Jean Paul, espe- cially to the English reader, the beginning of this work will be strange, puzzling, and apparently ab- surd, and he will be tempted a hundred times to throw down the book in despair or contempt ; but he will be well rewarded for persevering till he finds his way through the intricate labyrinth of the ' See Appendix, No. III. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 133 introduction. Paul wrote to Otto while he was writing it, " I work now with inexpressible plea- sure and care upon the history of my brothers — of J. P. In this I can make the highest satirical leaps, and its objectivity gains by them." It is said to be the most personal of all the author's works. In it he has represented his own already so often mentioned double nature, in the personal relations of Walt and Vult, twin brothers, nourished by the same mother's bosom, and " unit- ed in such a manner that they cannot live apart, and yet cannot look into each other's eyes, or em- brace each other. They are opposite magnets that are continually drawn to each other, but meeting, are thrust asunder as by positive and negative electricity." Walt, — the earnest, sentimental, ideal enthusiast, is represented as anticipating a para- dise in every-day life, surrounding the simplest scenes in nature, and the most common people with a halo of poetic glory ; from his simple and absent nature knowing nothing, and beheving nothing of craft, or cunning, or vice ; extracting delight from every flower, even from every weed in his path, — is twin-brother to Vult, an eccentric humorist, a musician, ventriloquist, an exquisite mimic, who can take all forms, and in the ine- qualities of life looks with penetrating eyes only 134 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. on the meanest side ; knowing too well, and de- spising the vices of hypocrisy, he dissects and tears to shreads every tender emotion, delighting only in the wildest sport, and allaying the thirsting emptiness of the heart with satire, wit and humor. Each seeks to gain an ascendency over the other — Walt by the seducing and vanquishing power of pure, disinterested love ; Vult by the imposing ascendency of knowledge of society, and extensive worldly experience. The interest of the book consists, first, in the psychological relation of the twins to each other ; second, in the severe experience of life, to which the angelic and poetic nature of Walt is subjected ; and third, the resemblance of the two united brothers to the double nature of the author. Both born in humble life, the good-for-nothing Vult is soon enlisted as a soldier — Walt, whose disposi- tion leads him to the clerical life, is deterred from entering the church by the tears of his mother, who dreads for her son the poverty in which her own life has been passed. His father, who an- swers to our justice of the peace, educates him for a notary. A rich and childless man, the Croesus of the village, has become interested in Walt, by reading a poem of his, in which he describes the happiness LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 135 of a Swedish Pastor's life, and determines to put it in his power to follow his inclinations, by making him his heir. Yet he hedges around his legacy with such conditions, and places the heir in such intricate relations with avaricious and cunning executors, that the reader foresees that the noble- minded and unsuspicious Walt, through the dream- ing and unworldly nature of the poet, will sur- render the whole gift into their hands. By the conditions of the will he is placed in various rela- tions with the persons, into whose hands, for every fault he commits, he forfeits a part of the inherit- ance. His experienced and worldly-wise twin brother Vult, follows him as his shadow, and en- deavors to protect him by his better knowledge, and cold experience of the world, from the blun- ders of his unsuspicious nature ; but by a kind of poetic optimism, Walt converts every loss into a lesson of wisdom, or into an occasion for dis- closing his own unselfish and beautiful nature. Unknown to each other, and without disclosing it, they both love the same excellence in the beauti- fully feminine, but highborn TVina. Although the helpless Walt, through his earnest nature and poetical character, touches her heart, yet without the knowledge of life, and sagacity of his brother, he could never have breathed his reverential love 136 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. into her ear. Wina, is for Walt a distant star, which he may love and worship, but never reach. It vi^ould have been as improbable as that Jean Paul should himself, marry a princess. And the reason that the book breaks off so abruptly is, no doubt, that it would have violated all probability, and all German conventionalism, to have brought Walt's love for Wina to a happy termination ; and yet a poet could be permitted to love nothing inferior. This was the first work that Jean Paul began and finished immediately after his marriage, when he had obtained the object of his lifelong desires ; and over the whole work is thrown the charm of a serene and heavenly twilight, a soothing repose, like the disposition in which it was written. The Flegdyahre is the truest expression of the inmost nature of the poet — the picture of his hopes, his longings, his griefs, his disappointments ; and it contains his views upon the value of his own at- tainments, and shows their discrepancy with the actual world in which he moved and lived. By a German critic, it is said, " it leaves upon the mind of the reader the impression, that it is the most artistically faultless, the gentlest and most beautiful of the peculiar romances of Jean Paul.'* For many long years Paul cherished the illusion, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 137 that he should continue and complete this the most faultless of his works. This seems to be the proper place to introduce a little sketch of the social group, in the midst of which Richter passed his life after his removal to the httle city of Bayreuth, " little city of my hab- itation, which I belong to on this side the grave ! " at the foot of the Fichtelgebirge on the south, which took place this year. The reader will recol- lect, perhaps, the introductory sketch of the sim- plicity of manners in this secluded region. Mod- ern improvement and refinement must have been increased by Emanuel the Jew, who was culti- vated and beneficent, a patron of the arts, and who lived there in a style of the most generous hospitality. In the Otto family, originally from Hof, mar- riage had made many changes. Frederica, Rich- ter's pupil and friend, had married Wernlien, the pastor of Wonsiedel. Frederica seems to have been one of these women without fascinating qualities, but to whom every one turns and relies upon in times of difficulty and sorrow. After her marriage. Otto wrote to Richter thus : " Frederica writes that she is very much satisfied, and hves very happily with Wernlien. She has taken the reins of housekeeping completely into her own 138 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. hands. All is furnished and ordered after her views, and she does not let the remarks of others make her waver. I rejoice that she has begun in this way, because the disagreeables of her situa- tion will be softened thus, if not destroyed, and this firmness of hers is the only way. Of Otto's own marriage, he gives Richter the following simple and naive account. He had long been betrothed, which in Germany is the more pub- he marriage, to Amone Herold, whose home is often mentioned as uncomfortable and uncongenial, and to whom Richter, in a dehcate manner, had fre- quently conveyed advice and consolation. '^ The last day of June was my marriage-day ; no one had been informed that it was to take place. At five o'clock in the morning we went alone, as we wished, into the church. We were, believe me, through our own reflections, more elevated than we were by the mechanical exhorta- tions of old R. I took in imagination thee with us, even into the sacristy, where I and my Amone were wed, and thou, my Richter, stood by, and gave us thy blessing. Then I led iVmone back to her father for the last time, and the next morning took her away forever. We departed from Hof. I left my brother, sleeping. We came to Bayreuth, where I intended to hire a dwelhng. But Emanuel had LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 139 cared for all that, and had furnished it with a com- pleteness that extended from the greatest to the smallest things. In addition to what Amone had sent here, he had provided every thing necessary or agreeable. " Represent to yourself our surprise, when we stept into the apartment, and found all, even to the ink-glass and strewing sand ; candles lighted upon my desk, and a barometer near them. All — from the window-curtains to the electrical ma- chine, for I'ghting the fire — from the smallest milk pitcher to the largest kettle, all arranged, every thing in its place, or hanging on its nail." Albretch, Otto's brother, a noble and generous character, who is called the old bachelor, and whom they regret leaving alone when Otto mar- ries, saves them all anxiety on his account by be- coming suddenly attached to a young lady, and marrying in a hurry, as old bachelors are too apt to do. It was to this little circle of attached friends, living in great outward simplicity, that Richter brought his Caroline, rich in every inward and outward quality that could add to it grace or hap- piness. To show the beautiful simplicity of their life, I 140 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. give an extract from Otto, describing his own birthday. He says : " It is the first in domestic life with my Amone, and therefore, doubly dear. Truly, it is some- thing beautiful to observe the anxious care and contrivance of a Housfrau to create some new pleasure, to see how in secret all is directed to one object, to create a happy surprise for her husband. " As I arose on the ninth, and went into my own room, Amone came to meet me, with the most tender love, embraced me, and led me into the common apartment to see what she had pre- pared for me. There, under wreaths of flowers and kindled lights, were a large cake that she had herself made the day before ; pastry and wine that her sister had sent me from Hof. All were sym- metrically placed and beautiful ; and on each side there lay shirts of fine holland, that she had been months before secretly employed in making, to sur- prise me. The love of this good, devoted being touched me even to tears. " The pleasure and emotion of the day were much heightened by the good Emanuel, who always gives me proofs of his esteem and love. In the afternoon, we took a long walk, and then LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 141 we all assembled around his cheerful tea-table. I thought of you the whole day, my Richter, and painted to myself your future birth-days that you would, perhaps, pass with us, when we should all live together in domestic intimacy.' I close this part with a letter from Richter to his wife, on her first birth-day after their marriage. " Even now, as I would begin, tones from the ^Eolian harp come to my ear, as though they would say what I should write to thee, my beloved! New born, for that veiled year, which no winter, but spring clouds only conceal, thy birthday is also mine, and with wishes for thee, my own will be fulfilled. Led by quiet joys among flowers, and sunbeams and pure loving hearts, shall thou pass, dear one, into thy new year. O nothing shall fail thee therein ! But should all else fail, I will ^ Amone Herold was one of Paul's earliest pupils, and most constant correspondents. As her marriage was childless, she gave much of her time to literary pursuits. Her first publica- tion was a translation of Ossian. She afterwards published some novels, that her friend Paul revised. Olto often speaks of her philosophical mind ; and her writings could not have been without value, as Cotta gave her two louis d'ors, nearly ten dol- lars a sheet for her stories. Schindel says: '< She excels in descriptions of scenes of domestic tenderness, and is distin- guished for penetration and power of acute observation." Amone was yet living at the time of the publication of Jean Paul's life. 142 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. remain to thee fast and true ; and when thy future years are past, thou shalt say to me : ' You have kept the vows of love ! You have warmly loved me ! We have been happy ! ' I will be to thee father and mother ! Thou shall be the happiest of human beings, that I also may be happy ! And thus may it be forever ; and may the Infinite hand behind the clouds, that led us together, lay its blessing upon our union, and gives us only the sor- rows that we can bear ! " PART FOURTH. CHAPTER I. RICHTER REMOVES TO BAYREUTH. SOCIAL POSI- TION. PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND HABITS. FAMILY. LETTER FROM HIS ELDEST DAUGH- TER. To return : the poet's life in Coburg, as ^ ^ ^g^^ we have already said, is a complete ^s'^'^^^- blank leaf in his biography. It was easy, there- fore, although he says to Otto, " it is stupid to wander about with wife and children, and cook," — yet it was natural to turn his eyes to the place that had always been the Mecca of his wishes. On the first of August, 1805, the day, Paul said, '^ on which, according to the old Saga^ the Devil fell from heaven, he should return to his upon earth." He soon found a quiet little place in Bayreuth, 144 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. where the green meadows, and the sheltered val- leys, and the misty mountains of his fancy, became fixed and permanent objects in his view. In close neighborhood with Otto and Amone, and his old friend Emanuel, he hired a convenient and pretty house, consisting of four rooms and three cabinets, on the beautiful margin of the Maine, and commanding an extensive prospect of the region he loved so well. Here he lived in the most endearing social intercourse with these friends, which was uninterrupted until the day of his death. But to Jean Paul a place under the free and open heaven to study and muse, was almost as necessary as a shelter for his wife and children ; and he was often seen, in a fine morning, with a sack of books upon his back, a knotted staff in his hand, followed by his faithful Spitz, passing through the Linden avenue that led to a hermitage, far out of the city ; where there was an extensive view over the valley to the Fichtelgebirge. Here was a small peasant's house, in whose upper chamber Richter had furnished a study for in- clement weather. And the good Frau still shows the room where Richter came till the last year of his life, and endeared himself to her by good humor and kindness. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 145 On fine days the poet might be seen sitting not far from the house, under the overhanging Hnden, sunk in his own, or regarding the outward world, until the darkening twilight, or his children, sent by the watchful Caroline, reminded him that it was time to call his friend Otto, who was within the sound of his voice, and return home. With his settlement in Bayreuth, the completion of Titan, and the publication of the Fkgelyahre, began a new existence in the literary, the ideal, and the actual life of Richter. He now stood, in the full ripeness of his age, with an entire knowl- edge, and complete consciousness of his relations to society ; and with a rich treasure of experience both in life and in literature. But on the other hand, all his upward strivings, both in poetry and life, lay behind him. He had obtained, both in domestic life and in fame, all that he had aspired to. The ideal in these paths no longer beckoned him onwards. He had found in his Caroline, if not all a poet could imagine, enough to make a poet's fireside happy ; and as a father and a member of society, he had acquired an easy and honorable position, that would ever bind him in silken fetters to his home, and to the beloved soil of his native district. The calm satisfaction and contentment, the harmonious quiet, the repose VOL. II. 10 146 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and order of his life, also appear in all the works composed after the Titan. Those who have followed us thus far will dwell with satisfaction on this period of Richter's life, " when with a heart at once of the most sportful and the most earnest feelings ; affectionate, and encompassed with the objects of his affections, dili- gent in the highest of all earthly tasks, the acqui- sition and diffusion of truth ; and witnessing from his sequestered home the workings of his own mind on thousands of fellow minds, he was happy and at peace." In his own immediate circle also, the influence of so original a mind, and a heart the truest and tenderest that ever beat, upon his children and neighborhood, must have been deep and perma- nent. He was an enthusiast, but no visionary ; neither were his singularities the result of affecta- tion, as writers in this country, and in England, have asserted ; for affectation is founded in false- hood, and Richter was the truest of human beings. The poetry of his genius had always been reflected in his life ; peace and happiness from within now shewed itself in his external appearance. One of his biographers says, " He had hitherto been pale and lean, he now became stout and robust ; and, had it not been that the delicately formed LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 147 nose, the lovely mouth, the intellectual brow and lightning eye, remained unchanged, he would have been taken for a farmer rather than a poet." But I must not give the reader the impression that Richter was absolutely without faults. He had persevered from the earliest time in the habit of writing down rules for conduct, and strictly regulating his whole manner of life ; from this we learn his inclinations, his secret disgusts, and the faults he was most conscious of. Every Hue shows him full of love and generosity in all the relations of life ; but with his glowing fancy and temperament of fire, he was sometimes harsh and violent, especially after long continued writ- ing, that brought him into an excited state of mind, differing from intoxication only in its cause. Against this he contended strongly ; and his most troubled and penitent hours, appear to have been caused by the transgression of his resolutions on those occasions when he forgot the habitual mild- ness of his character. He mourned also over his violence in argument ; and there are many little billets apologizing to his friends the next day, for the warmth of his opinions the previous evening. Paul loved argument, and was noted for maintain- ing his opinions with great warmth ; he was also extremely unguarded and imprudent. The breach 148 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. between him and the Schlegel school was often widened by unguarded speeches, that were caught up and repeated by curious or mahcious hsteners. In reference to this Paul says in his via recta, " If one effort at reconcihation does not succeed, the second or the third will be certain to." His biographer, a nephew, who Uved much in his family, writes thus of it. After saying that he had been educated with the utmost reverence and even fear of Richter ; that reports had reached him of his oddity and severity, so that he remained a whole day in Bayreuth, and passed his house sev- eral times before he could get courage to knock at the door : " As soon as I entered all my timidity vanished. Richter, indeed, appeared but for a moment, to welcome me, and returned to his study. But the mild splendor of his whole godlike, spiritual and moral being appeared as shown in his wife and children, and everything about them, and threw suddenly a warm, rose-colored glow upon my spirits. ^' I found in them all the most benevolent and heartiest love united with the simplicity and open- ness of the truest innocence ; extraordinary cul- ture, with indeed, a too humble unpretendingness ; the most earnest interest for all that was elevated, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 149 with the most cheerful good humor and love of pleasantry and wit ; a simple manner of living, and ignorance of fashionable luxuries, but the hap- piest contentment, with the truest hospitality. A deep penetration and knowledge of hfe, united with the most childlike purity of heart, that had no eye for the low or the impure ; but unsuspi- cious, they confided in the best, and received as they gave, without distrust. All this intellect and love was clothed in the unstudied exterior of a graceful form." To add to this charming picture of his family, there was the deepest reverence for the husband and father, with the freest and most independent intercourse with him. In proof of this, there is a letter from the eldest daughter, Emelia. ..." I love to represent the dear friendly man, with brown study coat and socks hanging down, as he entered our mother's chamber the first thing in the morning to greet her. The hound springs on before him, and the children hang about him, and seek, when he leaves the room, to thrust their httle feet into the shppers behind, when he raises his feet a little, so as to hang on him more securely. One springs before, (at that time my blessed brother lived,) the other two hang on his coat skirts until he reaches his own chamber-door ; 150 , LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. where all leave him, for only the dog must enter there. " When we were very small, we lived in a two- story house, my father worked above, in the attic. We crept on our hands and feet over the stairs, and hammered on the door till the father himself arose and opened it, and after our noisy ingress, closed it again — then he took from an old chest a trumpet and a fife, with which we made noisy mu- sic while he continued writing. We ventured in again many times in the day to play with a squir- rel that he had at that time, and that in the even- ing he took out with him in his pocket, and always made one of the family circle. " He had, usually, animals that he tamed, about him. Sometimes a mouse: then a great, white, cross spider, that he kept in a paper box with a glass top. There was a little door beneath, by which he could feed his prisoner with dead flies. In the autumn he collected the winter food for his little tree frog and his tame spider. " The father was good to every thing: he could not bear to witness the least pain, not even in the lowest animal. Thus, he never went out without opening the cage of his canary birds, to indemnify the poor animals, who would be melancholy in his absence. He took at one time the most sedulous LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 151 care of a dog, who came in one evening after the loss of the poor dead Alert, as he knew that in the morning he should exchange him for another, and he would have no opportunity to feed him again. You will smile at the connection, but he did the same for a departing servant-maid : pro- viding every thing for her convenience the day be- fore, and delighting the poor girl in the most unusual degree. ^' The children were permitted all sorts of prac- tical jokes towards him. ' Father, dance once/ then he would make some leaps ; or he must speak French, in which he placed wonderful value on the nasal sound, which no one made as well as he. It sounded indeed, curiously, and made my mother laugh. " In the twilight he told us stories ; or spake of God, and other worlds ; or he would tell us of our grandfather, and other splendid things. We ran to gain the wager, which of us should get nearest to him on the sofa. The old money-box, hooped with iron, with a hole in the cover, that two mice might conveniently pass through, was the stepping- stone by which we jumped over the back of the sofa ; for in front it was difficult to press between the table and the repertory for papers. We all three crowded between the back of the sofa and 152 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the father's outstretched legs ; above, at his head, lay the sleeping dog. At last, when we had pressed our limbs into the most inconvenient postures, the story began. " The father knew how to create for himself many little pleasures. Thus, he made all the boxes for his tame animals, after his half-hour's nap in the afternoon. It was a special satisfaction to him to prepare ink, which he did much oftener than was necessary, for Otto wrote long years after with the rejected part. He could never wait to perfect it ; but tried it an hour after it was made. If it was already black, he would come joyfully to us and say — ' Now if it is black already, what will it be tomorrow or after fourteen days ? ' . . . " The mere thought of destruction was painful to him, especially the loss of the work of man's mind. He never burnt a letter ; yes, he treasured even the most insignificant. ' All loss of life,' he said, 'may be restored again, but the creations of these heads, these hearts, never ! The name should be erased, but the soul that speaks its most intimate sentiments in letters, should live.' He had also thick books written full of the remarks, and the habits and peculiarities of his children. " At meals he was very cheerful, and listened to every thing we told him with the greatest sympa- LIFE OF JEAN FALL. 153 thy, and always made something out of the small- est relation ; so that the narrator was always wiser for what he had said. ^' In eating and drinking, he was extremely moderate. He never gave us direct instruction, and yet he taught us always. Our evening table he called a French Table d'hote, that he furnished with twelve dishes taken from the arts and sciences. We tasted of all without being satiated with any, and we all ventured to utter any joke to the father about himself or his entertainment. ^' His punishments for us girls were rather passive than active ; they consisted in refusing some re- quest, or in a severe word ; but my brother some- times received corporal punishment. My father would say, 'Max, this afternoon, at three o'clock, come to me to receive your whipping.' He went punctually and suffered it without a sound. " Our principal festival was Christmas, and our father began early to look after the sacred appear- ance of the present-giving Christkindlein. Four- teen days before he would suffer some little light to creep through. If we had been very good, in the day, when he came home in the evening from the Harmony, he would bring us some little present, and say, " Today, good children, I went into the garden of the Harmony, and as I looked toward 154 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. heaven, there came a rose-red cloud before me, and there sat the ChrisiMndlein ; and as you have been good to-day he sent you this." ^ Christmas week he went himself to the fair, and when we saw him coming back, and the angles and pro- tuberances of his cloak betraying what he wished to conceal in its folds, we ran down the steps and would try to hang on him. Then he would cry out, artfully feigning anger, ' Touch me at your peril ! ' '' When the evening came, as soon as it was twi- hght, we must all withdraw, my mother and all. He arranged every thing himself; and when the tree was lighted we were recalled, and then we could not be gay enough to satisfy him. He wished to educate us with the frugality with which fate reconciled him in his childhood. Thus he never gave us pocket money ; but on the three domestic fair days in Bayreuth he gave each of us three kreutzers f later it arose to six, and a short time before my first communion I received a four- and-twenty kreutzer piece. ' The reader will recollect how dear this illusion of German children was to Jean Paul, in his own childhood. Strange he could preserve it in his own children, when the schoolmaster had been so long abroad — Tr. 2 A kreutzer is about a penny, or one cent and a half. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 155 " Last year I and my sister received a dollar ; but it might as well have been thrown away. I learnt with great difficulty the use of money ; and if, as I know not who, asserts, a thousand angels can sit on the point of a needle, so we founded a thou- sand plans upon our dollar. But they, with it, vanished in the air. " I will relate only two little things more. First, how my father assisted the poor gardeners, who belonged to the garden of the Harmony, where he wrote. He always gave them five guilders ^ at once, from which the Frau must bring one back at the end of the month to show him ; to this he would add a sechzer (six kreutzers) interest, as he called it. ^' Once more — will it weary you if I relate, that he kept an empty toilet box, in which there were little holes for penny and two-penny pieces, and that, like Swift, when he went to walk, he carried these small pieces in the left waistcoat pocket, to give to the poor people." * A guilder, or florin, is about forty cents. The value of these coins is nominal. They vary greatly in the different states of Germany. CHAPTER II. FREEDOM richter's view of napoleon. comic works. letter to general bernadotte. A. D. 1805 '^^^ Introduction to Esthetics was the aged 42. g^^^ |^^^j^ published after the Flegelyahre. This is apparently a scientifically critical work, but is not free from the personality that characterises all the productions of Jean Paul. It is only frag- mentary. It makes no pretension to a complete theory of the beautiful in art, and can therefore lead to no serious errors ; but it resembles all the other works of this author, which receive their worth and significance from one another, and can be thoroughly understood only through each other and through a knowledge of their author ; thus this work can only be fully understood through the pe- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 157 culiarities of the others, and they through this. It is remarkable as closing with an eloquent eulogy of Herder, who died while it was in preparation. As it would exceed the limits of this work to attempt an analysis of it, I mention it only as the cause of the loss of the Canonicate, formerly prom- ised to Paul by the king of Prussia. It was dedi- cated, by permission, to the Duke Aemel von Go- tha, a prince wlio had always shown a singular friendship for Richter, and delighted in his society. This prince had raised himself much above the conventionalisms of his own rank, and in his let- ters to Paul laughed at the pedantry of court ceremonies. 1 In his dedication, Paul mentioned and praised the hitherto unknown poetical productions of the duke, and the dedication is accidentally so word- ed, as if the duke had, although he had not, pre- viously seen it. All this appeared to the dean of the philosophical faculty at Jena indiscreet, and he refused his imprimatur to the publication. Richter was deeply offended at this pretended * This is probably the same " Duke of Gotha, with long legs and red hair," of whom Betine gives so pleasant an impression in her letters to Gunderode. He was one of the most genial and wittiest princes of the time, who raised himself with won- derful boldness above the prejudices of his rank. 158 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. guardianship of himself and his princely friend. He experienced, for the first time, the despotism of the censure of the press ; he was frightened at the desolation it threatened to carry into the king- dom of the mind, and he determined to make a bold appeal against this instrument of tyranny. He obtained permission of the duke to print the whole history of the affair, together with all their previous correspondence ; the prince refusing to soften or repress any of the cynical or satirical re- marks in the letters, relative to his own cast. At the end of three weeks this protest against the censure of the press, together with the duke of Gotha's letters, was published, under the protection of the noble prince Dalberg, and under the name of the Frcyheitsbuchlein, (Freedom's pamphlet.) A step like this, that no other literary character would have ventured upon, could not fail to excite the utmost attention in Germany. But the in- creasing political storms of the period, and the darkening atmosphere, turned all minds to the critical situation of affairs, and Richter lost all the gratitude and reward of his courageous patriotism, except that which he always carried in his own breast, an ardent love and devotion to freedom. Soon after, there was a festival in Woiisiedel, to celebrate a visit from the king and queen of Prus- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 159 sia, and Richter, at the request of Hardenburg, prepared a musical entertainment, for which he wrote his first verses. There were also present at this festival one or two of the sister Graces to whom he had dedicated his Titan, and Richter took this opportunity to remind their majesties of the promised prebend, and learnt, with astonish- ment, that since the publication of the Freyheits- buchlein, the king did not intend to recollect his promise. The admirers of Jean Paul must rejoice, that he was not bound to the suppression of any opinion, by holding office under any prince. He was com- pletely independent of everything but his con- science. It is impossible for us in this country to understand the conventionalisms of society in the old aristocratic countries, or the wide differences of rank, that place a gulf between a literary man and a prince : to us, the republican or democratic pride of wealth, that enables a vulgar soul to as- sume the attitude of patronage to a man of genius, would be far more intolerable, than the generous pride of ancestry in a man, or of nobility in a wo- man ; a woman, who might also receive the hom- age of a man of genius, for her accomplished man- ners, or her refined and feminine dignity. We learn from the literature of the old coun- 160 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. tries, that nobility has always stooped to cherish genius ; and has sometimes, as Leonora, Tasso, betrayed it ; and that in the middle ranks of life there is an indifference to talent without wealth, that does not admit it to such distinction as it re- ceives with us. The poet seems to be " the aristocrat of the world," looking always to the shining summits of life ; but, to use Paul's comparison, " needing to be cherished, like the canary bird, with soft warm hands, before he can be made to sing." Paul's nephew, speaking of this subject, says, " There was no German poet so favored by the highest nobility, and so coldly treated by the citizens, as Jean Paul ; while the latter, for his contests for them in hterature and pohtics, not only gave him not the smallest thanks, but consid- ered themselves injured by his independence and outward contempt of forms ; and slandered him as an original, or laughed at him as an oddity ; the nobility, especially princes, treated him with ten- derness and attention. They were pleased that he never bowed low to them,' and permitted him ' " Paul never bent his back, but had a wholly peculiar way of bowing. He nodded only the head ; and this to the highest as to the lowest, in a manner so noble and amiable, while he at LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 161 all sorts of freedom in dress, and peculiar openness and unreserve in his conversation with them. As he was infinitely surprised at this partiahty for so democratic a poet, and sometimes imagined that through his representations he had converted Le- gitimacy to liberal opinions, he therefore talked openly, not from social vanity, but to do them honor, of his intimate relations with exalted men and women. This often brought him into a false position with people of his own rank, and im- paired the influence of his generous and hberal opinions." Many anecdotes are told in his biography, of Paul's independence in his intercourse with the nobihty — such as his presenting himself at a par- ticular door of the Weimar theatre, where none were entitled to enter who were not also entitled to wear a sword. Paul answered, '' that he should feel himself as much degraded by putting on a sword as others were by having it taken off";" and he was permitted to pass, etc. To return from this digression. Richter, through his literary labors, had hitherto been completely independent. He had obtained for the Flegel- the same time made a greeting gesture with the right hand, that expressed as much respect as good humor and friendliness." VOL. II, 11 162 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. yahre, that generous publisher Cotta, who had paid him seven louis d'ors a sheet ; ' and the po- pularity which he had lost by the Titan was com- pletely regained by this work. But at this time, when he possessed more than ever the favor of the public, the whole commerce of Germany, through the wars of Napoleon, and especially the book- trade, was thrown into trouble and confusion ; this, added to the diminished resources of all classes, which disinclined them to the purchase of large works, diminished also the resources of our Richter, at the same moment that his family was increased by the birth of another daughter. His limited income was to be regretted, because he was obliged, for the sake of providing immediate small sums for the support of his family, to divide and weaken his powers, in the production of short essays, tales, and other contributions to the ephem- eral hterature, the fashionable annuals, and ladies' almanacs of the period. * Reckoning a louis d'or at four dollars, which is the nom- inal value, amounts to twenty-eight dollars a sheet. It was ex- tremely important for Richter to fall into the hands of an honest publisher, for, through simplicity or ignorance, he never speci- fied the number of copies of any of his works. The printers, therefore, printed an unlimited number ; and this is the reason his works reached so few editions during his life. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 163 To the widowed sister of his wife, Minna S^a- zier, who supported her young family by editing an ahnanac for ladies, and to whom he sent many contributions, he wrote, " that it was easier for him to write a volume than a sheet, and that he could bear any limitation better than an intellect- ual one." In this same letter, he says, in answer to tlie request of the sister, that Caroline would write something for her Almanac, " Caroline is a poet ill her life, and hy that very life, rather than upon paper, and for the public." Paul's third child, a daughter, was named for his dearest friend, softening Otto into the pretty feminine name of Odilia. The unfolding and culture of all that was good and beautiful in his children, was one of the most delightful employments of Richter. He knew that a better future was only to be acquired by a better youth, and he employed himself in wnimgLevana, his work upon education. A critic says, that " in no other of his works is the whole man, in his inward and outward being, and in his relations with and reciprocal dependen- cies on the outward world, so unfolded as in this. As is the case with all his other works, they reflect light upon this, and they also are better understood if read by the light derived from this," 164 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Perhaps it will be an objection to this work, especially in so practical an age and country as this, that the tendency of Richter's system of edu- cation is, to make all men and women, if not ac- tually writers and poets, yet supremely thinking and spiritual beings. The tendency is to with- draw too much talent from actual and practical life, and direct it to speculative and intellectual pursuits. One of the marked peculiarities of Richter was, that in actual life he was the most practical of men, suffering none of the minutia, that could influence the convenience of others, to escape him, but in his instructions all was spiritual and transcendental. No writer upon education has thrown so much light upon the holy and hidden impulses of the child's soul ; no one has written with such rever- ence of the childish nature, and the necessity in a teacher of respecting the individuality of the child ; and not, as has been too much the practice, mea- suring all upon the same Procrustes' bed. It is in fact a commentary upon those words of the Saviour, " Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," and no less of the other verse, '' in my father's house are many man- sions," some prepared for angelic minds, and others for those of an humbler order, but all are filled. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 165 That which had distinguished all his works was even more apparent in this, a singular knowledge of the female heart in its deepest and most delicate folds. This he had gained in his Hofer solitude, where he lived almost exclusively with women, and in his subsequent correspondence with his female friends. Perhaps there never was a writer to whom women so completely surrendered their confidence. He understood the false position in which women are placed in some parts of the civilized world, and he had, on that account, more leniency for their vices and weaknesses than for the other sex. Richter strove in this work to return to a sim- plicity of expression, and plain lucid style of writ- ing, which he had long since abandoned, but which he thought better adapted to the persons he wished now to benefit ; and also in order to explain all scientific and too learned illustrations, he pub- lished at the same time a Lexicon fur Frauen. Lexicon for Ladies. Although the passages are innumerable in Jean Paul's works, where he speaks of women with tenderness and respect, and, for the above men- tioned reason, treats them with leniency, yet it is impossible to surpass the bitter contempt, the concentrated scorn, with which he speaks of those 166 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. women who have thrown off the restraints of their sex, or of those cold and selfish coquettes, " whose hearts have become as hard within their breasts as the stones that glitter on the outside." This book, the Levana, was more favorably re- ceived than any book he had ever published. The sympathy was so universal tliat the whole of the edition was sold during the disastrous year of 1807. Even Goethe forgot his hostihty to the author, and seeing an extract from the work, wrote to a friend, '' I know not how to say good enough of this ex- tract from Levana, and desire, with impatience, the whole work." About two weeks after the publication of Levana occurred the battle of Jena, and the last hopes for Germany, (of those who placed their hopes upon the resistance of Prussia) failed ; and that remark- able time began when the greater part of the nation suffered a complete prostration before the preponderance of the genius of Napoleon. It is difficult to gather from Richter's biogra- phers the precise view he took, at this time, of the aims of Napoleon. We find this passage in his journal. '' Did I certainly know," he wrote in 1805, " that Napoleon was in the wrong, and as certainly all just means of resistance against him, ah ! it were easy to venture even life against him LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 167 with the pen. But this uncertainty fearfully crip- ples the courage of the cosmopolitan, who must discern his aims through their consequences. This it is that perplexes and obstructs, and is the reason that, among so many thousand intricacies and involvements of human affairs, no sacrificing soul finds it easy to give his life to discover the right. The moral principle, that the intention, the will, is every thing, helps not here, for we need the discernment to discover the will." That Richter believed at first in the sincerity of Napo- leon, appears from his writing to Otto upon being informed of his assuming the diadem. " Who has not gnashed his teeth, upon hearing of his imperial majesty in France. Yet I do not hate Buonaparte as much as I despise the French ; and Goethe was more far-sighted than half the world ; for in the beginning of the revolution he despised them as much as at the end." But even at the confederation of the Rhine, Richter did not share the complete prostration that involved the rest of the nation. " His pro- phetic feeling told him at that time, what better experience has taught the nations of Europe, that all must unite in the common cause of freedom ; and that one without the rest could not advance in the road to civilization and better government." 168 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. He perhaps thought that Napoleon, by destroying some of the old and rotting institutions, and clear- ing away the rubbish, was preparing the way for the advancement of light and freedom, and that Austria, w^ho would imprison her subjects forever in spiritual darkness, deserved no support from his pen. He held the depression of the hopes and spirits of the people as one of the greatest evils of the time ; and he sought to enhven and keep up their courage by writings purely comic, that had no other aim than to contribute to their cheerful- ness. These were the " Circular Letter of Attila Schmalzle,'' and the " Baihjourney of Dr. Katzen- hurger,^' both infinitely rich in purely comic scenes. They were received with inexpressible delight by the whole nation, and contributed to raise the spirits of the people. Richter also contributed his share to the revival, at this time, of the old Ger- man or Volks literature. It is well known that apprehensions were felt of the too great prepond- erance of the French in the literature of the time. The exertions of Brentano, Arnim, and Von der Hogen, with whom Tieck and the Schlegels joined, arose from this cause. They published anew the Niehelungenlied, the Knabens Wunderhorn, and went even to the bringing out of Fouque's extravagances, and to complete caricature in his later works. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 169 The war had yet no other immediately disas- trous consequences for Richter than that of with- drawing his friend Otto from his family and neigh- borhood. He had been appointed quartermaster to prince William of Prussia, and accompanied the army, so that the correspondence of the friends was renewed, although with the difficulty of trans- mitting letters through a country occupied with troops. But in the autumn of 1806 the French troops were stationed in Bayreuth, and Richter must have suffered a very inconvenient interrup- tion of his peaceful labors, had two or three officers, as was usual in such circumstances, been quartered in his quiet and orderly dwelling. He picked up, therefore, his former knowledge of French, and wrote the following letter to general Bernadotte : Quatre Verites, deux Esperances et une Demande. Verites. Premiere : Vous, Monsiegneur, n'aves du triste dieu Mars, que la valeur ; et vousaimes les hommes et les lettres autant, que la gloire. Seconde : Moi, je suis auteur — je vis pour ecrire et j'ecris pour vivre — ma plume nourritma femme, trois enfans, un chien, un oiseau et moi- 170 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. meme. C'est pourquoi que ce seroit appauvrir le pauvre que d'y ajouter un etre vivant et mangeant de plus. Troisieme. La Muse veut de la solitude, et la guerre ou la victoire veut (votre Altesse le salt) tout I'Europe. Quatrieme. La nation Francoise a toujours honore les lettres, qui I'ont honore a leur tour — sa gloire s'achevant par la valeur s'est commencee par les lettres — I'Empereur Napoleon a laisse Gottingen et Heidelberg aux Muses. Esperances. L J'espere que la piece ci-jointe, quoiqu'elle flatte plus qu'elle ne peint, prouvera a Votre Al- tesse, que j'ai obtenu quelques suffrages de ma nation pour mes oeuvres romantiques, philoso- phiques et morales. IL J'espere, qu'en cas de guerre ma maison, ou plustot mon etude sera exemte de la charge d'avoir des troupes en quartier et qu'elle demeurera I'asyle de ma Muse. Demande. J'implore I'humanite de Votre Altesse a realiser ces esperances, apres les avoir pardonnees. Q,u'une ligne de Votre main veuille m'assurer la paix, que LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 171 meritent la poesie et la philosophie, parce qu'elles la propagent. La main vaillante verse le sang ; la main bienfaisante tarit les larmes — mais Vous aves les deux mains. Je suis, Monseigneur, avec le respect le plus profond Votre Altesse tres-humble serviteur Jean Paul Fr. Richter. Richter thus disarmed his enemies ; he was per- mitted to pursue his labors without interruption, and soon produced the comic works already men- tioned. By his wit he escaped, also, another un- just imposition. He had been taxed, together with the capitalists of Bayreuth, to support the war. He wrote to the minister, and asked " if one who had only money enough for his daily wants, and who was indebted to Bayreuth for nothing but beer and ennui, could be reckoned a capitalist — that he would pay a just, although he would deny an unjust demand, if it were only four grotschen, for all was indifferent to him except justice." The minister answered, " that, as the exact tariff could not be fixed, thought was free from contri- bution," and invited Richter to dine with him. We have seen that Richter did not, in the 172 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. darkest times, share the universal depression of his country ; a prophetic insight into the future ena- bled him to penetrate the cloud, and to see that an eclipse was not the end of all things. In all his political writings, an unwavering hope, like the voice and guarantee of Providence, leads him through that dark time. But when roused, as by the voice of a trumpet, all Germany arose against the power of Napoleon, no one entered with word and deed more warmly into the holy cause than Jean Paul. In his ^' Dawning for Germany, ^^ he did not limit himself to prophesying from the whole course of history a better future for Germany, or to reminding the nation of its power and advan- tages ; he strove to destroy that oppressive feeling of the preponderance of the French, which had extended to all ranks ; that eye and spirit-bHnding belief in the star of Napoleon, that weighed with almost Turkish fatality upon the people. With a courage that bordered on rashness, he endeavored to confine the admiration of Napoleon within its just limits. He often asked the question, '' what then does a great conqueror deserve ? " He placed his merit beneath the science of a Newton, the courage of a Socrates or a Cato, and the admira- ble wisdom of the true republicans of all time, etc. LIFE OF JEAN PA.UL. 173 And this he ventured to write and pubhsh, while he owed his freedom in his own house to the French marshal Davoust. How gloriously is he contrasted with another great poet of the time, who was living joyously in retirement, drinking cape wine, busy with his op- tics, and studying osteology, for which "there could not be a better opportunity, for every battle- field of his country was sown with preparations." * ^ Knebel wrote to Richter, after the battle of Jena : " Goethe sent me, in my necessity, a couple of flasks of cape wine, that came at the exact time to a man that the French had wholly drank dry. He was the whole time busy with his optics. We study here under his instruction, osteology, for which it is an excellent time, as every field is sown with preparations." CHAPTER III. PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. PRINCE DALBERG. PAUL RECEIVES A SMALL PENSION. EXTRACT FROM VARNHAGEN VON ENSe's MEMOIRS. A D 1808 I^icHTER at this time suffered some anxiety aged 4o. ^^ account of his diminished pecuniary resources. The book concerns of the time were becoming every day more unfavorable, and pressed heavily upon authors. A great work required from him concentrated attention, leisure, and quiet thought ; neither of which could he command, feeling, as he did, deep sympathy with the troubles of his country ; neither would the booksellers ven- ture upon any large work ; he was obliged, there- fore, to break down and divide his powers in the production of many of the ephemeral essays of the day. At this time and talent-consuming em- ployment, he worked so incessantly that at last his LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 175 firm health was shaken,' and immediate rest or recreation became absolutely requisite. He was attacked with a tertian fever that obliged him to give up writing every third day. " On that day," he says, "he read philosophy, and was able to forget the ague fit when the shaking would per- mit him to hold the book." Richter had dedicated his " Peace Sermons " to Carl Von Dalberg,^ Prince Primate of the Confed- eration of the Rhine. In this dedication he hinted so delicately at his poverty that the prince, in an extremely gracious answer, was obliged to ask him to declare his wishes. * Jean Paul's contributions to the periodical literature of the day, fill several volumes of his collected works. The titles of some of these contributions are," upon the Advantages of being Deaf in one Ear ; " " June Night Thoughts; " '' The Dream of a Madman ; " " Marriage Looking-glasses ; " " The Pleas- ure we feel in the Joys of Children ; " " Fragments from my art of always being Cheerful ; " " Upon the Evergreen of our Feelings," and many reviews of modern works. * This prince is mentioned so often, that it should be known that he was one of the most generous noble men of the time, and a munificent patron of literature. He was Archbishop of Ratesbon and Bishop of Worms, and is the same Prince Bishop that Betine Brantano mentions so playfully and so pleasantly in Goethe's Correspondence loith a Child. " In 1813 he volunta- rily resigned all his possessions as a sovereign prince, retaining only })is ecclesiastical dignity, and retired to private life. He afterwards devoted himself to letters, and published many moral 176 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Richter answered ; '^ An author of more than forty volumes, an orphan, who has Hved more for, than hy the sciences, ventures now, after three years' war, the birth of three children, and the failure of three of his booksellers, to wish for a winter pension to enable him to recover his health through more reading, and less writing." It was not in the prince's power to do more at the moment than to send Jean Paul a consid- erable present, with a most kind and courteous letter. But early in the following year he sur- prised him with a pension of a thousand guilders, (four hundred dollars,) which he paid out of his private purse until 1811, when the payment of the same sum was placed on the common pension fund of Bavaria. Richter was now in comparatively happy circum- stances. With their simple habits, and his Caro- line's good economy and watchfulness, four hun- dred dollars, in addition to his daily earnings, made them rich. A letter to Otto, who was separated from him by the war, is characteristic of this period. ..." How often this winter have I wished that you could have met me in the street, or in and legal treatises." It was a brother of this prince who was Schiller's first patron. — Coversations Lex. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 177 the Harmony, then you would have seen my little squirrel upon my shoulder, who bites no longer. I ventured to carry him in my pocket when I held Dobineck's son before the baptism font ; but I was obliged to grasp hihri several times, and wind him in my handkerchief, for if, while I held the blessed little godson in my arms, the rogue had crept upon my shoulder, there would have been a universal disturbance of the baptism, and everything serious. At this moment the little fellow sleeps upon my sofa. " Had it not been for the war, my Lcvana would have come to a second edition — wonderful ! For none of my books have I so much feared the judgment of the public, and of fate ; as much as I hoped, by the Titan — but the pubhc always sur- prises one so, at least unpleasantly. My inmost being remains strong, dry, cold ! The spring, with all its starry heaven, has not melted me. I would remain strong and cold, even till the great world's game of Europe is won. Opposition only spurs me on, to work, to work with the best, and with the utmost of my powers for the improvement of all. . . . What time destroys, these exertions will restore. If the devils are a majority, yet the angels are a larger — yes, I say a larger, for in human nature ten angels are worth a hundred VOL. II. 12 178 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. devils : were it not so, the excess of weak, foolish, and bad, would long since have sunk humanity, instead of saving it. . . . . . . '• I rejoice even now at your future joy over my three unlike, but unspoilt rose-buds of children — and it is difficult to say which will be your favorite. Ah, were you here ! and yet I cannot desire it, as you are now building your future fortune. You have, on account of your knowledge and desert, the greater claims. This war should give you full confidence in the friendly genius that goes with you through life. Your rare fortune has rejoiced, but not surprised me, and had you anything of my bold grasp into life, you would have had it before. I am curious whether you will appear to me like a man of the world when I see you again. I should think all these grand persons would make you a little bold. My wife greets you heartily, and we both wish you the balsam and nourishment of joy." At this period, 1808, Richter received a visit from Herr Varnhagen von Ense. He has left in his memoirs such a pleasant account of him and his family, that the reader will pardon me for introducing it here. " This forenoon (it was the 23d October,) I went to Jean Paul's. A pleasant, kindly, inquisi- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 179 tive woman, who had opened the door to me, I at once recognised for Jean Paul's wife by her hke- ness to her sister. A child was sent off to call its father. He came directly ; he had been forewarn- ed of my visit by letters from Berlin and Leipsic ; and received me with great kindness. " First of all I had to tell him what I was charg- ed with in the shape of messages, then whatsoever I could tell in any way, about his Berlin friends. He willingly remembered the time he had hved in Berlin, as Marcus Herz's neighbor, in Leder's house, where I, seven years before, had first seen him in the garden by the Spree, with papers in his hand, which it was privately whispered were leaves of Hesperus. This talk about persons, and then still more about literature growing out of that, set him fairly underway, and soon he had more to impart than to inquire. His conversation was throughout amiable and good-natured, always full of meaning, but in quite simple tone and expres- sion. Though I knew beforehand that his wit and humor belonged only to his pen, that he could hardly write the shortest note without these intro- ducing themselves, while on the contrary his oral utterance seldom showed the like, — yet it struck me much that, in this continual movement and vivacity of mood to which he yielded himself, I 180 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. observed no trace of these qualities. His demeanor otherwise was Hke his speaking ; nothing forced, nothing studied, nothing that went beyond the burgher tone. His courtesy was the free expression of a kind heart ; his way and bearing were patri- archal, considerate of the stranger, yet for himself too altogether unconstrained. Neither in the ani- mation to which some word or topic would excite him, was this fundamental temper ever altered ; nowhere did severity appear, nowhere any exhibit- ing of himself, any watching or spying of his hearer ; everywhere kind-heartedness, free move- ment of his somewhat loose-flowing nature, open course for him, with a hundred transitions from one course to the other, howsoever or whitherso- ever it seemed good to him to go. At first he praised everything that was named of our new appearances in literature ; and then when we came a little closer to the matter, there was blame enough and to spare. So of Adam Miiller's Lec- tures, of Friedrich Schlegel, of Tieck and others. He said, German writers ought to hold by the peo- ple, not by the upper classes, among whom all was already dead and gone ; and yet he had just been praising Adam Miiller, that he had the gift of speaking a deep word to cultivated people of the world. He is convinced that from the opening of LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 181 the old Indian world nothing is to be got for us, except the adding of one other mode of poetry to the many modes we have already, but no increase of ideas: and yet he had just been celebrating Friedrich Schlegel's labors with the Sanscrit, as if a new salvation were to issue out of that. He was free to confess that a right Christian in these days, if not a Protestant one, was inconceivable to him ; that changing from Protestantism to Catho- licism seemed a monstrous perversion ; and with this opinion great hope had been expressed, a few minutes before, that the Catholic spirit in Friedrich Schlegel, combined with the Indian, would pro- duce much good I Of Schleiermacher he spoke with respect ; signified, however, that he did not relish his ' Plato ' greatly ; that in Jacobi's, in Herder's soaring flight of soul he traced far more of those divine old sages than in the learned acu- men of Schleiermacher ; a deliverance which I could not let pass without protest. Fichte, of whose ' Addresses to the German Nation,' held in Berlin under the sound of French drums, I had much to say, was not a favorite of his ; the deci- siveness of that energy gave him uneasiness ; he said he could only read Fichte as an exercise, ' gymnastically,' and that with the purport of his philosophy he had now nothing more to do. 182 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. " Jean Paul was called out, and I staid awhile alone with his wife. I had now to answer many new questions about Berlin ; her interest in per- sons and things of her native town was by no means sated with what she had already heard. The lady pleased me exceedingly ; soft, refined, acute, she united with the loveliest expression of household goodness an air of higher breeding and freer management than Jean Paul seemed to mani- fest. Yet, in this respect too, she wilhngly held herself inferior, and looked up to her gifted hus- band. It was apparent every way that their life together was a right happy one. Their three children, a boy and two girls, are beautiful, healthy, well-conditioned creatures. I had a hearty pleasure in them ; they recalled other dear children to my thoughts, whom I had lately been beside ! . . . " With continual copiousness, and in the best humor, Jean Paul (we were now at table) expatiated on all manner of objects. Among the rest, I had been charged with a salutation from Rahel Levin to him, and the modest question, ' Whether he remembered her still ? ' His face beamed with joyful satisfaction : ' How could one forget such a person ? ' cried he impressively. ' That is a woman alone of her kind : I hked her heartily well, and LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 183 more now than ever, as I gain in sense an appre- hension to do it ; she is the only woman in whom I have found genuine humor, the one woman of this world who had humor ! ' He called me a lucky fellow to have such a friend ; and asked, as if proving me and measuring my value, ' How I had deserved that ? ' <^ Monday, 24th October. " Being invited, I went a second time to dine. Jean Paul had just returned from a walk ; his wife, with one of the children, was still out. We came upon his writings ; that questionable string with most authors, which the one will not have you touch, which another will have you keep jinghng continually. He was here what I ex- pected him to be ; free, unconstrained, good-na- tured, and sincere with his whole heart. His ' Dream of a Madman,' just published by Cotta, was what had led us upon this. He said he could write such things at any time ; the mood for it, when he was in health, lay in his own power ; he did but seat himself at the harpsichord, and fanta- sying for a while on it, in the wildest way, deliver himself over to the feeling of the moment, and then write his imaginings, — according to a cer- tain predetermined course, indeed, which however he would often alter as he went on. In this kind 184 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. he had once undertaken to write a ^ Hell,' such as mortal never heard of; and a great deal of it is actually done, but not fit for print. Speaking of descriptive composition, he also started as in fright when I ventured to say that Goethe was less com- plete in this province ; he reminded me of two passages in ' Werter,' which are indeed among the finest descriptions. He said that to describe any scene well the poet must make the bosom of a man his camera obsciira, and look at it through this, then would he see it poetically. . . . ^' The conversation turned on public occurrences, on the condition of Germany, and the oppressive rule of the French. To me discussions of that sort are usually disagreeable ; but it was delightful to hear Jean Paul express, on such occasion, his noble patriotic sentiments ; and for the sake of this rock-island I willingly swam through the empty tide of uncertain news and wavering sup- positions which environed it. What he said was deep, considerate, hearty, valiant, German to the marrow of the bone. I had to tell him much ; of Napoleon, whom he knew only by portraits ; of Johannes von Miiller ; of Fichte, whom he now as a patriot admired cordially ; of the Marquez de la Romana and his Spaniards, whom I had seen in Hamburg. Jean Paul said he at no moment LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 185 doubted, but the Germans, like the Spaniards, would one day rise, and Prussia would avenge its disgrace, and free the country ; he hoped his son would live to see it, and did not deny that he was bringing him up for a soldier. . . . " October 25th, "I staid to supper, contrary to my purpose, having to set out next morning early. The lady was so kind, and Jean Paul himself so trustful and blithe, I could not withstand their entreaties. At the neat and well-furnished table (reminding you that South Germany was now near) the best humor reigned. Among other things we had a good laugh at this, that Jean Paul offered me an intro- duction to one of, what he called his dearest friends in Stuttgart, — and then was obliged to give it up, having irrevocably forgotten his name ! Of a more serious sort again was our conversation about Tieck, Friedrich and Wilhelm Sch]egel,and others of the romantic school. He seemed in ill humor with Tieck at the moment. Of Goethe he said : ' Goethe is a consecrated head ; he has a place of his own, high above us all.' We spoke of Goethe afterwards for some time : Jean Paul, with more and more admiration, nay, with a sort of fear and awe-struck reverence. " Some beautiful fruit was brought in for dessert. 186 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. On a sudden, Jean Paul started up, gave me his hand, and said : ' Forgive me, I must go to bed ! Stay you here in God's name, for it is still early, and chat with my wife ; there is much to say, be- tween you, which my talking has kept back. I am a Spiessburger,^ (of the club of Odd Fellows,) 'and my hour is come for sleep.' He took a candle, and said, good night. We parted with great cordiality, and the wish expressed on both sides, that I might stay at Bayreuth another time." CHAPTER IV. DOMESTIC LETTERS. JOURNEY TO ERLANGEN. JOURNEY TO NURNBERG. JACOBI. We pass over three quiet years, in ^d jgii which no event of importance occurred. ^^'''^ '^^' Through his pension, Paul's circumstances were easier, and a Uttle journey to Erlangen affords an opportunity for inserting a letter to Caroline, which proves that after eleven years of married life, no flower had faded from their wreath of love and happiness. Jane, 1811 " My dear good Caroline. Like this beautiful morning has your long wished-for letter come to me. Every word of it was welcome. Fortunately, I did not receive it till the evening, when I long heartbreakingly for you and the children. " Max, was on the way so tender, pleasant, and 188 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. apparently so contented, loving all, obeying all, (he certainly forgets nothing on a journey,) and so good, that I began to perceive that I could gather the fruit of the education of my children, and how much better they really are, than they sometimes appear. He slept at night vi^ithout undressing, and without a bedcover, like one dead ; and in the morning he was lively, spirited and gay. The thought that I must leave him, would not, the whole day, go from my soul. "The middle-aged Madam S. comes when I ring, and is respectful and ready, and makes my coffee and bed as I like them. Toussaint fulfils every wish, so does the obliging professor Mehmel. In the morning, heaven dwells in my solitary apart- ment, full only of books, and I am as homelike, but more alone, than at Bayreuth. I went into the Italian garden, that stands open without key, and, without kreutzers, on the day of the great penticost church consecration, which Otto can paint for you without ink. This garden terrace is the only throne of nature in the beggarly environs of Erlangen. This alone would frighten me from a residence here, which they all wish to persuade me to. I am unusually well, and joke frequently in society. . . . " I put by the pen, to sup better than usual. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 189 First a morsel of cheese, then a morsel of dessert cake — ah ! sliced potatoes, where are ye ? For in a whole week, none. "June 12. " Since Sunday, for eight days, not a Une ! This one cloud, which is indeed broad enough, draws itself through my blue heaven. Had I not, since two months, certain grounds of consolation, or today, not a wonderful confidence in my anti- cipations that my present cheerfulness does not indicate future misfortunes, I should become fear- ful through your silence — Heavens ! how much you have to tell me, and formerly you were so industrious a letter-writer ! Be joyful, good Caro- line. "14. " At last I am happy, without alloy. Take, for every heart's word, and heart's deed, in my ab- sence, heart's thanks ! Last Sunday I was pro- perly frightened that I forgot your birth-day, and I found it in the calendar under the name of Lu- cretia. After my return we will celebrate it on a fixed day. If you gave attention, you will have seen that the last week in May I wore your ring on the litde finger of my left hand. The heart should also have its festivals.' I could be borne ' The last week in May was the anniversary of Richter's 190 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. on the waves of society here, for every one comes lovingly to me ; but I have so many books before me, that I keep myself solitary — in the evening, reading, and eating with my dog only. Either the old, true, French wine, of which I drink daily a quarter of a bottle, or the air, or very rarely a draft of rosaliera, or the less work, or all together, make me more healthy than I have been for years. No thirst, no dry heat, no tremblings ; pardon these little bodily trifles — but you, dear wife, take in these as much part as I should in the smallest of your ailments. " Next day. " Yesterday I was in Nurnberg with the Hof- meister, young Rottenheim, and the bookseller — I was pleased with the southern, joyful, hearty tone of the people. M. will return with me on Friday. How new and beautiful all will appear marriage. His finding his wife's birth-day under the name of Lucretia, is thus explained. The German custom was to cele- brate, not only the birth-day, but the day in the almanac that bore the person's christian name. The old almanacs contained a name for every day in the year, the name of a saint, or some other remarkable person. When Jean Paul, then, proposed fixing a day to celebrate Caroline's birth-day, he would probably choose the day that bore the name of Caroline. I am indebted for this explanation to the notes upon Mr. Iracey's charming translation of Undine. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 191 to me ! If you have experienced anything that will not be pleasant to me, write it, that I may for- get it on the way, and the heavenly evening of our meeting again pass without a cloud. Ah ! the post draws near, and I have so much to say to my faithful friend, who has done so much for me, and loves me so fervently. Heavens ! how often have I thought of you with overpowering extasy, when, at night, your face, with its indescribable love's eyes, and love's glance, has suddenly appeared to me, as a form out of the empty air. But that ex- tasy remains a reality for me yet — for you live, and I return. Ah, it goes to your soul as to mine." The following year Richter went to Nurnberg to meet Jacobi. The reader will recollect that they had corresponded for some years, but had never met. After mentioning the discomforts of their inn in a letter to Otto, he goes on to describe his friend. " I played with accustomed moderation the lamb, and remained sedate, only saying to my ever-hasty companion, ' In the morning we shall have time enough.' I can now bear witness to my second remark, that there is no better sign of a pleasant future than when the first hour in an inn is miser- able and uncomfortable. . . . 192 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. " At eleven I held to my heart a brother and friend of old longings.' He is not a man of the world, but in the most precious sense a quiet, no- ble ancient. It seems to me that I only meet him again after long separation, we sympathize so en- tirely ; his sisters also please me. In the evening they usually go early to bed, and I sit alone with Jacobi. They bid me not to suffer him to speak much of his childhood ; but often as we have been together, we have scarcely begun to talk, and the eternal conversation upon philosophy, more rarely disputing than agreeing, will leave scarcely room for questions about his early life and former con- * Jacobi was the herald of the new faith. He discovered the weakness and insufficiency of the Kantian system, and showed the emptiness and lameness of a system, the religious concep- tions of which do not extend beyond a narrow and cold mo- rality ; which sees nothing in Christianity but a code of duties ; and represents the Creator of the universe as a mere Supreme Being — apart from i]is creation and from man. But he fell into the opposite extreme ; he denounced philosophy generally, and declared revealed religion to be the sole and exclusive source of truth. In his work, directed against Schelling's book, Of Divine Things, and their Revelation, he declares it as his opinion, " that philosophy is impotent to clear up the eternal mystery, and that we receive light through divine grace alone, not through human reason." Richter did not assent to these opinions, and expresses to Otto his displeasure at this one-sided view of the question. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL, 193 nections. He seeks earnestly, and with pure, warm zeal, unestablished truth. ... In the first quarter of an hour he observed my wavering play- fulness between jest and earnest, and as I excused myself, his sisters said, ' he did the same himself ;' but he does not appear to me to have the true dis- position for humor, and he said himself that he could not read through the Katzenburger and the Fibel, He is always calm, not cold, and it is as easy to him to speak to, to listen to, and to satisfy his enemies, as it is difficult for me to do so. " He remained till midnight alone with me, and with the shadow of the lamp-screen resting upon his face, speaking sofdy, and yet listening to the mightiest themes. And yet, listen ! He will give my earthly planet a new impulse around his higher sun, and be as much to me as Herder was. Yes, more than Herder. Both he cannot be ; and yet, alas, my religious desires for myself can be fulfilled by no man from without — but only from within, by myself alone. ' Could I but see him,' I have hitherto thought, ^ I should become a new man, and desire nothing more ! ' Ah ! . . . " He can be from morning to midnight in soci- ety, enjoying visiting, amusements, and driving, while I remain, much to his astonishment, true to my old rules, and, in the midst of the most anima- VOL. II. 13 194 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ted society, escape to my cool solitude to reproach myself after exciting amusements. As I asked Jacobi whether I did not carry my freedom too far, he half assented, and yet in such a way that I had no satisfaction from his answer. Besides, he considers too much, and is too anxious about appearances, and his consideration with others, and indeed ventures nothing. Thus he earlier ne- gatived my question, whether I should say in my dedication of the Clavis to him, 'that he had read it before its publication,' although he had. All the reviews of his and Schelling's books, as well as the notice of them in the Hamburg newspaper, he carries, neatly folded in paper, about with him ; in all he is praised. The other day, in Erlangen, the professors, and we all, had drunk his health, he stood up, and, to the amazement of all, went round with his glass and touched that of every one at the table. Something of this belongs to his age> and to the four female hands that support and rock him.* " He wears beautiful, new-fashioned, smooth white-topped boots, and hosen ^ of good nankin ; * These are the same aunts Lehna and Lotta, whose excessive care of Jacobi, Bettine describes so graphically, in "The Corres- pondence of a Child." * Gr. for indispensables. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 195 and a gray Russian hat, probably on account of his eyes. '' That he loves me, I know from the way in which he takes leave of me, and from his sisters, and from his gentle reproaches if I do not go to him in the intervals of his being at home ; but how much he blames me, either justly, or unjustly I know not. He speaks often of his own works ; upon my personalities, social, or literary relations, he asked no questions. The excess of our mate- rials for conversation was my fault, and yet there was nothing said of worldly affairs, and not enough of Haman, Goethe and Klopstock, and the little that was said, was in answer to my questions. In politics he is probably liberal. The rest when we meet." There is another letter of the same date to his old friend Emanuel. The reader will recollect that he, as well as Otto, were Richter's neighbors in Bayreuth. '' Nurnberg, 1812. '' You gave me only one token of remembrance, namely, the packed coffer. As I unfolded paper after paper, it seemed as if you spake a word of love to me upon each. It is a half melancholy feeling to have the well-wishing love of an absent friend before one in solitude. For me a solitary 196 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. apartment is a spiritual Brunning hall, full of medicinal water. Solitude shows itself in new relations ; not in your own solitary apartment are you alone, but in a melancholy palace. I have, ridiculously as it sounds, every day a little perverseness, a little contrariety in thinking and acting. I write every morning that for which in practice I require further medicining. " The first maxim is : 'Do everything in its time, put off nothing ! ' and then I have the night equipage carried out of the room, but I leave the coffee equipage upon the other table. " The second day I write : ' Rise above little in- conveniences ' — that is, do not croak and cry alas ! when in the morning you have to draw your shirt on or off, or even your narrow Sunday pantaloons and the rest, before you can sit calmly with your book upon the sofa. '^ The third morning : ' After having been in society, have nothing to repent, but be rather too fearful than too bold.' For, my good friend, when with benevolent intention you think you have spoken only boldly, then you have already spoken too boldly, and the previous improvement is to be every day recapitulated. " ' Arm yourself as powerfully against evil in others as in yourself.' That I do not obey this I LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 197 rule shows itself in my continuing, through fancy, to blacken myself, in comparison with good men. In short, there are no other means in heaven or upon earth to heal and content the inward soul, tut by strengthening that inmost soul itself, and it is foolish to think small helps from without can be lasting means of improvement. . . . " Solitude on one's birthday is the only worthy personal celebration, that a man, thinking calmly and tenderly on the path behind him, and measur- ing seriously that before him, can permit himself. I hate also all business or pleasurable activity on the first day of the year. Frail and feeble man should look upon such elevations in time, like the spider for props to which he fastens the thread of a new web. All weighty things are done in soli- tude, that is, without society. The means of im- provement consist not in projects, or in any violent designs, for these cool, and cool very soon ; but in patient practising for whole long days, by which I make the thing dear to my highest reason. Rea- son works longer than feeling, and enlightens more, for it remains after the other has departed. We must first overcome the little faults, and be easy in this exercise of self-conquest, before we drive away the greater ; and yet after all this, a man is only in the outer court of the Most Holy, 198 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and preparing to whip out of himself the whole of the old Adam ! r." The peace, so ardently desired and so accepta- ble to Germany, was at first disastrous to Richter. The abolishing, by the congress of Vienna, of the grand duchy of Frankfort, and taking away the immense revenue of the prince primate Dalberg, interrupted the payment of his pension, and threat- ened to suspend it entirely. It remained unde- cided for two years, and Jean Paul found himself constrained to send a multitude of petitions to persons of both sexes connected with the congress of Vienna ; among others to the emperor Alexan- der, which both his biographers have given at large, although it seems to us less important than many other of Paul's productions. After waiting two years without any result, he presented a petition to his own king and queen of Bavaria, and the payment henceforth was placed on the pension fund of the kingdom, and regularly received by Richter. That it was not immediately necessary to meet his everyday expenses, appears from a note written to Otto, on the Christmas day after he was secure of the first quarter's payment. All his readers must rejoice that a poet had money to lend. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 199 "December 25, 1815. '' A joyful festival, my Otto. Inform me, when my pension-money comes, whether Emanuel offers to take a part of it for half a year. Shall I not give him too much trouble, or can he even use it ? I remark, that when men lend money, they value only the interest, and thereby become cursedly avaricious — so I will lend little, and spend more. *^I bring you a long-cherished prayer. My purse is open to you at all times and for any sum within it. Five hundred florins ' lie wholly useless there ; so that I deserve nothing by the change to yours, except indeed the pleasure. Enjoy it also, old heart's friend. r." This is the place to give a few extracts from the private journal called Via recti, which was begun this year, and is the glass, in which we see the man and the author reflected. He says in the be- ginning " I am a libertine only from within ; I en- joy neither beer nor wi le ; later, I have enjoyed neither company nor punch ; but my inward fan- tasies, conceptions and representations, have re- duced and consumed my life. I say here, and before God, that in all my works, and in all my ' The half of his pension. 200 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. representations, I am pure from all but the best motives, uninfluenced by poverty, the misunder- standing of others, sacrifices, etc. I have held it my duty, not to enjoy, or to gain, but to wiite — however, much time or money I have thus thrown away — yes, joy also — that is, the sight of Swit- zerland, which merely the sacrifice of time forbade ! I deny myself my vesper meal, merely to work ; but I cannot deny myself the interruption that comes from my children. Eating, drinking, money, health are nothing ! The enjoyment of my child- ren, nature, religion, assert their mastery." Paul's nephew relates many beautiful instances of the pleasant intercourse he maintained with his family. " Could one see him when the longing after the exchange of endearing expressions drew him from his quiet and solitary study into the apart- ment of his wife. In his eye was a sunbeam of the purest love, while the loveliest smile played around his mouth as he seemed embarrassed to find an excuse for coming." Then, on the first of April, his delight in the innocent mirth that be- longed to the day. He would mislead every one of his family, and the maid always came in for her share of the mirth. Paul proceeds with his rules. " Throw little pains immediately away. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 201 ^•' Have nothing to repent in society ; be rather too fearful, than too bold. " Show love only to children, not pain, or only that which will excite pity, not shame. " Leave a good, but passionate man, time to re- solve and cool, as you aslo need, yourself. ^' Say not at the first moment no, but wait. " To love only one man truly, thoroughly ! what enjoyment and reward ! '' Attempt, in the midst of work, to be indifferent to complaints, disturbing noises, etc. ^^ One should strive far more earnestly to gain and secure and elevate the love of wife and children than any other foreign love ; for nothing can con- tribute half as much to the happiness of life. " I will give to the children the morning pleasures of morning hours. I can Inter work and read. ^'Children need love more than instruction ; and use and example alone can give it them.^ ^' As Winkelman set apart a half hour daily, to contemplate his Italian joyousness, a man should consecrate a half hour, daily or weekly, to reckon- ing up and considering the virtues of his wife, and ehildren, and nearest friends ; so that their per- fections may not first, at their death, press together ' See Appendix. 202 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. to a burning focus. Often enough, alas, do we need this pressing together, namely, after an offence in order to be on\y justly angry, and reflect all his light upon the offender. " Place in imagination, in every company where you speak much, an enemy before you ; a satirist among the enthusiastic ; a spy, among lovers. " Practise, every day, an acting and an opposing power, that you may be every day stronger rather than weaker. Every occasion to withstand or to sacrifice will be dear to you, without which you will never succeed. But you need only to make use of the daily — go not out of your way to seek sacrifices. '^ With all my inclination to irony upon paper, I have never in actual life, neither alone nor in com- pany, made a man ridiculous, but have answered his weakness with sympathizing earnestness." In the same book Paul says : " Nothing exhausts and touches me as phantasien, on the piano. I could thus kill myself. All buried feelings and spirits arise again ! My hand and eye and heart know no limits ! At last I close with an eternally returning, but too powerful tone ! One can be satisfied with hearing, but never with making mu- sic ; and every true musician could, like the night- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 203 ingales, trill himself to death. When I have phan- tasied long, I break out into violent weeping, with- out thinking of any thing decidedly melancholy. The tones cut deeper and clearer into ear and heart. Tears are my strongest, but most weaken- ing intoxication ! '' No author can foresee the i fluence his works will have either for good, or for evil, for they ex- cite every species of mind, and kindle the inflam- mable. " I could become a great author with Herder's powers and my own application of the same." CHAPTER V. RICHTER IN RELATION WITH THE UNHAPPY. LETTERS. MARIA FORSTER. A. D. 1814 ^^ come now to a trait of Richter's aged 51. character that we can dwell upon with unmixed satisfaction — his relations with the un- fortunate and unhappy who sought his sympathy or advice. There is no author who lives so en- tirely in his own creations as Richter. He himself speaks from the lips of his characters, and gives his readers consolation or pity, elevation or lofty trust. He steps before every heart, and shows it its inmost wishes ; he lifts the veil of secrecy under which it sighs, and shows the reader that he knows and pities all that lies struggling or per- plexed within him. He had experienced deeply in his youth that feeling of heart-solitude, that weighs heavily upon minds of sensibility, and he offers in his works sympathy and aid against this LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 205 fretting sorrow. He had felt how easy, and yet how dangerous it is to take the first wrong step in Hfe, while he knew how to draw lessons of wisdom from the reaction of error or folly. This distin- guishing characteristic of Jean Paul made him the personal friend of his readers, the brother and the father of all orphaned and widowed hearts. By his expanding and never-wearied sympathy he responded to every confidence that was placed in him, and shewed the beautiful harmony of the author with the man, and the power of a true christian brother, in heahng and calming the soul. How many came to him with bowed or broken hearts ; how many in the midst of the storm of passion, sought his counsel and his help ! He was trusted with the most delicate and important secrets by women of all ranks, from princesses to domestic drudges. Men and youths also appealed to him to decide affairs that concerned their entire lives. Repentant sinners sought consolation in a confession to him ; and in some cases he was em- ployed to make reparation, where a breath or a whisper would have tarnished the honor of the parties. He answered with unwearied patience the let- ters of young authors, and their petitions for his judgment upon their hterary works. He read 206 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. them patiently, criticised delicately, and where he could, he gave encouragement. His sympathy and help, even if he could not give a favorable judgment of the work, were never withheld from the author. Thus, while he dwelt at Meiningen he obtained, through his sole exertions, the office of cabinet secretary to the duke, for Earnest Wag- ner. He obtained also a situation for Kanne, the afterwards well known enthusiastic preacher, whose supernaturalism and mysticism, alas I brought Richter's only son to his grave. We have only room for a few of the answers Richter sent to those who sought his advice and sympathy. The first is in answer to a querulous letter from a young man, who writes under the name of Henrich, and which is filled with general complaints at his unhappy destiny. " Dare not to judge from one year of unhappi- ness, the Eternal, who has shewn his paternal care of mankind for six thousand years, and is the same great Father of all. He who has supported, formed, and educated the human race, will not desert one, even the least. Of the smallest ephem- era of a day his providence has protected the race from Adam to us. Let your heart be tender, but your breast strong, and struggle and hope at th ^ same time." LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 207 The next is a person of a higher order of mind, who sent him several letters, and at last, a journal of his life. As the letters were anonymous, they were thrown into the general receptacle of unan- swered letters. At last another despairing letter was sent, that hinted at suicide. Richter sought, and soon discovered his name, and wrote to him the next day. " Wherefore have you not trusted yourself more generously to me ? My silence upon your letters, so filled with mind and heart, was owing princi- pally to the fact that such letters must be answered not with lines, but with sheets ; and that for most of the letters I receive, I have not time even for lines. The letter previous to your journal, covered my horizon with a thick cloud, through the suspi- cion of a misfortune to yourself ; but your journal dispersed the cloud, and gave me again the sun. To an immediate answer, nothing failed me but the name, which I hoped to find in the first letter — but behold that was buried in the great letter vault, where, with a thousand others, it awaited the resurrection — that is, arrangement and order. But the first grasp in the coffer drew forth your first letter, like a roll of destiny. I should wish and advise you more action, and less reflection : but, if we cannot discover the character of an 208 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. author from many books, how much less the cha- racter of a letter-writer from a few pages ; and how difficult it is even after a long acquaintance, to give comprehensive counsels, that shall embrace the v^hole of life. Against your overvalue of myself I have nothing to say. To the youth it is always more healthful to reverence too much than to despise too much. You have a pair of gods too many, but a divinity too little. Trust yourself, or rather the unwersal soul, more. There will fall to you yet many of the blossoms of youth. Thrust out the invisible fruit buds of your soul, and as a man you will profit by the ripened fruit. Flee only the demon of ambition, and the wild ape ^ of vanity, and you will be reconciled with the angel of the good and the beautiful." Among other communications to him was the autobiography of a man, who possessed the fixed idea, that his thoughts, by the medium of animal magnetism, were abstracted from his mind, and used by other people. At the same time, the same person desired Richter to petition the em- peror Francis for a present of not less than twenty thousand dollars to enable him to enjoy the leisure to write an epic poem. In the mean time he prayed ' JFaldtervfel is also the name of a butterfly. i LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 209 Richter to advance two thousand dollars, that he would repay when he received the twenty thou- sand from the emperor. Another letter from another person, demanded that Paul should petition the allied sovereigns of Europe to free Napoleon from his imprisonment at St. Helena. To such absurd requests he gave of course no answer. But I will leave these common instances, to mention only one other, that threw a cloud over Richter's life, and was the occasion of an almost repentant sorrow. The history of the young girl, who knit her being so closely to his, that she could not live without him, seems to us, in this prosaic land and age, so like a fiction of romance, as to be almost incredible in its sad reality. She had known him only through his books ; and what to others is but an abstraction, became to her the life of her soul. This has been mentioned, as a parallel case to that of Bettine Brentano, whose eccentric letters and journal have revealed to us her youthful pas- sion for Goethe. But the cases are quite dissimi- lar. Bettine was living in the midst of the refined society where Goethe ruled, and her glowing im- agination converted him into a Divinity, to be wor- shipped and loved. Bettine had more imagination VOL. II. 14 210 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. than sentiment or passion, and required of Goethe to understand and appreciate her rare intellect as much as answer to her heart. Unfortunately, Goethe was afraid of the ridicule that would attend such a friendship, and wounded her vanity as well as her womanly sensitiveness. Maria Forster was living in solitude, in the midst of sublime mountain scenery. She had no one to sympathize with her passionate nature. She brooded in silence over her communion with Jean Paul, when she found her most secret thoughts, and her own nature revealed to her in his books. To passion and sentiment was united a sensitive con- science and feminine delicacy, and we cannot read her history without the sorrowful conviction, that before she came to the resolution to throw herself into the Rhine, the contest between passion and conscience had destroyed the healthful action of her reason. IMaria was the daughter of a high-hearted Ger- man, who fell under the axe of the guillotine dur- ing the reign of terror in Paris. The heroic death of the father, who despised the means of flight that were held out to him by his friends, and the in- structions of an equally high-minded mother, had increased the original tendency of the daughter's mind to enthusiasm, and given her an inclination LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 211 to solitude, where she Uved in an ideal world, peo- pled only with heroes of the ancient world and those among the moderns who were worthy to en- ter there. Yet she devoted herself with exact fidehty to all filial and domestic duties, and did not avoid the society about her. She rejoiced with the gay and wept with the sorrowful ; but when her work was done, when the cares of the day were over, when the hours of darkness gave the choice of refreshment through sleep, or by communion with other minds, then she turned with ecstasy to her books, and drew from her favor- ite authors not only healthy food, but the intoxi- cation that, in her solitude and with her peculiar temperament, became poison to her mind. Already, in her tenth year, she became acquaint- ed with the writings of Jean Paul, and in her in- nocent, childish enthusiasm, wrote him a letter. As she entered womanhood, he became the ideal of all that was dreamed or imagined. He was the only living mortal that was admitted into her ideal world ; the purest and holiest of men, a saint, " a new Christ for her/^ who could alone bear her over the waves of life, that threatened right and left to overwhelm her. To be near him in some form, or in some relation, was the only contingency in which she could find peace. To hold some 212 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. kind of communion with him was a necessity of her nature. She must speak to him, or she must die. Accordingly, in her thirteenth year, she wrote to him thus : " Is it not too bold — dare I write to the dearest friend of man, and call him my father ? Ah, I shall perhaps never see him whom I have to thank for so much, for the dearest benefits, the most elevated truths, all the good that excites my imitation, and a whole eternity that has opened before my soul. When I think of your infinite goodness, I burst into tears and my heart is filled with blessings for you. This firm faith in you is a blessing of which no man can rob me. " You will ask, perhaps, who it is that speaks thus boldly to you ? But I am only a little girl — too httle that I need to mention my name. Ah, where I grown, as I shall be, no land and no sea should prevent me from once in my life seeing him who has lor^ held the place of a father in my heart. But my own faults and intervening rela- tions hold me back ; and I would not trust myself to write one word to you if I did not hope to de- serve your indulgence and pardon for my wishes. " I scarcely have a wish but the highest, to be so good as to deserve your esteem, and the joy of having you once call me daughter. My whole life LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 213 is only a striving after goodness ; and yet, oh ! father ! wherefore does it go so slowly forwards ? It is grievous that for me it is only goodness ; that I am only true and honest.^ But I will not bur- then you with my faults." Maria continued to write, and closed every let- ter with her ardent wish to go to Richter. The first portion of her correspondence only expressed a wish for a spiritual union with Jean Paul, and a meeting in that future world for which he had pre- pared her soul ; but at length her letters betrayed her longing to be near him, her impatience for a more intimate union. But now her eyes were opened, and it was as if she had touched the godhke with sacrilegious hands. In bitter repentance and tears she wrote the next day a letter, with her name, in which she endeavored to soften the impa- tience of the first, and to recall the contents of the postscript, but in fact repeating them both. A third and fourth letter followed in quick succession, in which she strove in vain to conceal the conflict that devoured her whole moral nature, and while she prayed him to forget her, she still held fast the hope of being admitted into his family. Now she waited with burning impatience for an ' She means to say, that she has no talent. 214 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. answer. She could not reckon the distance, the interruption of the post by the warUke condition of the country, the hterary labors of her friend, or the many possibilities that lie between the recep- tion and the answer to a letter. One only idea took possession of her mind — the thought of be- ing despised by the most beloved of men ; and to find contempt where she had looked for heaUng and sympathy, was too intolerable to be borne, and this infant, as she was in years and experi- ence, could find no peace except in death. In the twilight of a May morning she sought the river, and there, to make her resolution doubly sure, she placed a knife in her bosom. She look- ed round on the home where her mother still slept, which the first rays of the sun was just touching with splendor, and the thought of the inconsolable sorrow of her widowed mother made her waver in her purpose, and her sister, who had been a wit- ness of the despairing night Maria had passed, and had followed her without betraying the cause of her fearful anticipations, arrested her, and saved her from her despair. They walked home in si- lence, and Maria resolved that while her mother lived she would never leave her. But at last the expected letter arrived from Richter, and here it is. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 215 " Your four letters from a good but over-ex- cited heart have been received. I guessed the name, and so did a friend of mine, in the first hour. Your noble, departed father is worthy of so good a daughter. But as the earth did not reward him, may he now, when he looks down upon his daughter, be rewarded by seeing her full of a pure ardor for goodness and virtue. He would speak to her thus — ^ May a good man re- ceive my dear Maria as a daughter, and be to her a spiritual father. He will calm her excitement with a kindness and indulgence that cannot be imagined ; he will tell her that in actual life, especially in marriage, the strength of passion in women, even innocent violence, has been the thorns and daggers upon which happiness has fallen, and bled ; that the mightiest and holiest of men, even Christ, was all gentleness, mildness, and peace. He will tell her she may soar with the wings of the spirit, but with the outward limbs must she only walk. She may kindle a holy fire in her heart, but must not act till the fire has be- come a pure light to guide her. I also, who speak to you in the name of your own father, de- sire such for my dear Maria, and will be that father to her. " Your dream to come to me, you have, on 216 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. awaking, laid aside. Leave your mother ? Never ! I shall more probably go to you than you come here. I and my v^^ife both love you, and greet you kindly. Remain alw^ays good, my daughter. ^' R." Maria received the handwriting of Richter with floods of tears, before she looked within the letter for consolation and hope. She answered grate- fully, and sent him, at the same time, the letter she had written the night before, that frightful May morning, when she had entreated him to look upon her as one departed, who could not endure to live under the thought of his contempt. Richter was shocked and alarmed at the reck- lessness, to which the choice between life and death seemed so easy. His own peace was endangered as well as Maria's happiness, and he wrote again with true paternal earnestness. ^' Dear Maria. The abundance of what I have to say to you, of which much should go only from the lips to the ear, and my want of time, have delayed my answers to your last letters. The first that you wrote to me after my answer has shaken me more than any calamity for many years ; for had it not been for an apparent acci- dent, you would have thrown a frightful death- shadow over the whole of my future life. You LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 217 should see my coffer of letters, of which at the best 1 have not, for want of time, answered one- sixth part, and between me and my best friends there is often a delay of months. Your first four letters truly animated me. I saw in them only a rare exalted love, and a glowing soul, but not a single line unworthy of you or of me, and I an- swered them with more interest and joy than I usually express. You demanded the answers only too hastily, too punctually. Might I then not have journeyed, or been sick, or dead, or absent, or engaged in business ? The fearful step that you would on that account have taken, I must, notwithstanding the greatness of mind it betrays, condemn most severely ! — but never let there be mention of it between us. Besides, I wish you on your own account, and on mine, to shew my two letters to your good mother, whose most painful sorrows I well know how to imagine. You think much too well of me as a man. No author can be as moral as his works, as no preacher is as pious as his sermons. Write to me in future very often all that is nearest your heart, either of joy or sorrow. You will thus relieve your mind of what rests upon it. You have become, by a peculiar bond, more knit to my life than any other absent acquaintance : only draw not false conclusions 218 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. from my long silence. Very delightful to me will be our first meeting. May you be happy, my child ; may these apparently only slightly and calmly written words, rejoice, and not confuse or wound your heart. Your father r." After the reception of this letter peace returned to the heart of Maria, but only for a short time ; the arrow had entered deeply, and the wound would not heal. In the fatal hour that she re- solved on self-destruction she imagined that her inclination was more than a childish reverence, that it demanded a warmer love than that of a father, and on this account she resolved never to see Richter, and bound herself with a sacred vow never to indulge the wish of meeting. She wrote to him : " The only honorable way that can lead me to the heart, for which I so long, is the grave. You will never be seen by me on this earth, for I love you too much ; therefore, write to me something consoling ; tell the poor Maria, that you will love her when we meet beyond this world. She can think of no joy in heaven, if there, as here, she is divided from the only soul through which she lives. " Never again write me a letter so full of wisdom as the first, but rather one in which there is LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 219 nothing but a lock of your hair ; and be assured I will not cease to write till you tell me you have sent it, willingly, and your good wife also, for I deserve it, and would give half my hopes of hap- piness for it. " I have no greeting for you from my mother, highly as she esteems Jean Paul, as neither she, nor any one knows to whom I write, nor any thing of the whole history. For, as she asked me at that time ^ wherefore I would tear myself from her,' I promised her never to leave her, if she would ask me no questions. She cannot know how resolute I am, nor yet again how unreserved, and that it is my dearest happiness that Jean Paul has taken me for his adopted child. Ah, my father, love me only and be happy." Richter sent the desired lock of hair and wrote : " Dear Maria : The lock, that my wife has cut from my bald pate, is the best answer to your last letter. Be not anxious, I pray you, that I shall let your letters, written as they will, be misunder- stood to your disadvantage. I understand your warm, idealizing heart and its great power, how then shall the words of a moment make me err? What I complain of is, that the sun-heat of your mind ripens too soon, or rather scorches and dries up its sweet fruit. Your vow never to see me 220 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. comes to nothing, (now comes sermonizing, which you have forbidden,) for in the first place, one cannot vow for others ; and, secondly, we vow only to do what is good and leave the bad ; and this vow we bring with us into the world in the form of conscience, and no newer oath can con- tradict it. Another thing ; to swear to avoid a cer- tain city, or a certain man, without reason, is to seek to control Providence ; and, finally, your vow does not extend to me, and I shall see you when- ever I can. No, I paint to myself the hour when you will first see my Caroline and my children, and then me, and I shall also see all your friends. " Dear good Maria, you are the only invisible correspondent to whom I write so unreservedly, and send my hair. Could I do it if I had not so much esteem for you, and so much confidence that you would do much more for me than I de- serve or can ever repay. Would you only not err when from business or necessity I am silent to your letters. Do not torment yourself, for your pain is doubled in me. Your father, r." ^' P. S. I have much cause to wish that you should tell all to your mother and sister, and find in their confidential love no occasion for oppo- sition." The result of this, perhaps, too kind and tender LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 221 letter was far otherwise than Richter expected. The words so gently admonitory sank hke poison drops into Maria's heart. " He loves me," she cried, '' he will seek me ! He suffers on my ac- count." Again the hope, the desire to see him, grew to madness, and yet the veil of holy inno- cence lay upon her, and the fear that she had passed the limits of womanly delicacy and reserve distracted her. Richter observed, with deep anxiety, the con- flicting tempest in her soul — but he wrote no more I Then light flashed into her mind ; she saw her error, and with heart-breaking repentance she wrote to him, promising to be again only a child — a loving child, and nothing more. Then he wrote to her thus : "I have received your last six letters regularly, but not always actually without the seals broken.' . . . Your last three letters were wel- come to me, as they again beautifully spake of the only possible relation that can exist between us, that of a father and daughter. A relation in which your first letters enchanted me, and which has hitherto remained unchanged on my part. In this relation alone I ventured to love you so deeply, to send you the lock of my hair, to give you my * Richter wished her to understand that her letters were inspected in passing through the post office. 222 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. confidence, and to oppose your incomprehensible scruples to our meeting. The word father is for a father, no less than the word daughter, a sacred and holy word. Dearer than all other words ! " Why do you imagine me troubled ? I am happy with my children and my Caroline, and as truly beloved by them as they are by me. The sciences are my heaven. Why then should I be unhappy, except at these disastrous times, when all the na- tions of Europe bleed ? ^' Your unreserve gives me no pain, at least, un- less you feel it yourself ; on the contrary, it gives me only joy. You idolize me too much instead of following my counsels. I shall, therefore, offer you no more advice, so well do I know the female heart, especially the souls of fire to which you be- long. Send me, instead of letters that I have not time to answer, rather journals of your life, your family, your little experiences. '' May it be well with you, dear daughter, and the gentle spirit of love, without that of fire, fill your breast.^ r." 1 Richter, in this advice, showed his knowledge of the hu- man heart, especially of the female heart. He wished to en- gage her to expend that intensity of feeling under which she was suffering, in narrative, perhaps in imaginary scenes and sor- rows, that are often in female authors only the too faithful transcript of real feelings. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 223 Maria's self-tormenting spirit now assumed an- other form. The image of the best and most be- loved of men, as it dwelt in her heart, had been profaned, and to restore herself to him demanded an expiation. No sacrifice was too great, and she would have thrown off the burthen of life had not her promise to her suffering mother restrained her. But the mother died, and Maria was free. An- other care restrained her, the solitary and beloved orphan sister. But at this time an old friend of the family returned, unexpectedly, after a long absence, and took the orphan sister under his protection. He was an honest, firm, and benevo- lent man, and Maria could safely trust her sister's happiness to his keeping. Now she could go to the beloved, and fall at his feet, and ask again to be his daughter. No ! the meeting she desires must be for another world, where there can exist none but spiritual re- lations. The domestic affairs of her friend and sister were all arranged ; every minute care taken for their comfort ; all her duties scrupulously per- formed, and now that the aim of her wishes was reached, she wrote to Richter. " Do not be angry, dearest father, at receiving these lines from your unfortunate Maria. My 224 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. mother has been two months dead, and she will consent that I shall now follow her. She wished me to take care of my sister — that is done. Her happiness is secure, and I can no longer endure to live, where mine has so incomprehensibly failed. Ah ! in the great universe of God there will yet be a place where I can recover my peace, and be as I wish. I have suffered so much ! I dare to die 1 Ah, you will despise me as long as I live, for you will never understand how I have languished to do something for you, or for those dear to you, and how much the thought has killed me, when I learnt that I could not make you happy. But despise me not so much, as not to let your children, of whom I cannot think without tears, accept a httle present from me. Let them not know from whom it came. I would willingly be wholly forgotten, and unmarked, vanish away. No one can learn my history from myself. I have burnt all books and journals. Your hair only remains on my neck, and I take it with me. Farewell, beloved father ! Ah, that it must be so with me ? Oh that it were all a dreamy and I had never written to you ! My unfortunate spirit will hover about you. Perhaps I shall be permitted to give you a sign, or to bring you some higher knowledge." Together with Maria's letter, Richter received LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 225 one from the friend already mentioned, giving an account of her death. " The letter of Maria, which you will receive with this, will leave no doubt of her sad fate. What to us is a dark riddle, will find perhaps with you, who knew the unfortunate better than we did, a clear solution. She had long desired that death should come to her accidentally. But in vain. How often she inhaled, but without effect, the poisonous breath of pestilence. A thou- sand times she stretched herself upon the sick couch of the dying, and pressed her cheek upon that of death ; but the poisoned arrow touched her not, and no bloom faded from her youthful cheek. Then came May again, with its dark recollections from the past year ; but Maria was apparently happy, with a festive and wild gaiety alternating with earnest and cheerful calmness. On the fatal day she read and wrote, and prepared the evening meal for the friend and her sister. She covered the table, and fulfilled with graceful attention, the duties of a kind hostess. She rose from table to write a letter, and at about eight o'clock asked her sister to sit down with their friend at the piano, and embraced her at the same moment, with warmth and agitation. She threw herself on the breast of the friend, and said, while VOL. II. 15 226 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. her voice was choked with tears, ' Take care oj my sister.^ Scarcely had she gone, when an in- expressible anxiety was felt by both. They looked around, and saw the letters Maria had left, and hastened to seek the unfortunate ! '' They met a multitude of people bringing the body of a young girl, that a fisherman had drawn from the stream. It was Maria ! They bore the body into the nearest house, and means of resuscitation were used, till at length she opened her eyes." But Maria's purpose to die was too strong ; she resisted all the means of recovery, and although perfectly conscious, and calm, and self-possessed, before morning she had ceased to breathe. Her death drew a dark cloud over Jean Paul ; but he rejoiced that he had not followed the coun- sels of those who had advised him to treat her with severity or ridicule. I do not envy the mind that can find anything to ridicule in the melancholy history of this poor victim of the imagination, or in the far less tragi- cal result of Bettine's enthusiastic admiration of Goethe. Bettine lived in the same society with Goethe, and was happy in all the actual relations of life. Maria, on the contrary, brooded in soli- tude over an ideal image of the poet ; or rather LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 227 she found her own nature reflected in his pages, and, hke Narcissus of old, she fell in love with her own ideal. With all his boasted knowledge of the female heart, we must still think that Jean Paul erred in his treatment of Maria. At this time she was seventeen, and he was fifty years old ; and, as his biographers assert, he had lost the traces of the poet, at least in his exterior appearance. Had he permitted Maria to go to him, no doubt her pas- sion would have been cured. She would have found him fulfilling all the duties of a good citi- zen, a kind father, a faithful husband ; living a prosaic life, with his squirrels and birds ; her imagination, heated by solitude, and an intense spiritual egotism, would have fallen naturally into the calmness of the every-day domestic duties, in which woman's destiny is cast. CHAPTER VL RICHTER S LOVE OF TRAVELLING. VISITS PRINCE DALBERG. VISITS HEIDELBERG. RECEIVES HIS doctor's diploma. — henry VOSS. ANI- MAL MAGNETISM. A. D. 1816 ^^^ ^"^^ ^^^ ^^ more cheerful incidents. aged 53. -^^ j.^^^^ already learnt from Richter's youthful history how much value he attached to the pleasures and advantages of journeying. Dur- ing the war, and while his pension was withheld, the old desire slumbered, or was only indulged in short excursions to Erlangen and Nurnberg. But now he was again easy in his pecuniary relations, and his history will be best learnt from his letters to Caroline, on his various journeys, from 1816 to 1821. We cannot but wonder that the beloved wife was never his companion upon these excur- sions ; but then he would not have enjoyed what LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 229 he called the chief pleasure of travelling, the de- light of returning to her. Caroline was a true woman, and a true wife : one of those self-sacrificing, devoted beings, who, regardless of her own pleasures, was careful for the comfort of others. Every thing was prepared by her for Richter's convenience on these occa- sions, even to the packing of the carriage, where he continued his literary works on the road, read- ing and writing, as if he were in his own study. Paul left exact directions for his family in his absence : a sort of testament for each. To the youngest daughter was committed the care of the weather-frog ; to her sister the Canary birds, and the spiders ; and for his wife such written direc- tions as the following : "In case of fire, the dark bound manuscripts must be^r5^ saved. Second. The money ; and pa- per coffer afterwards. Third. Record every dollar that you take out, and the date, hut further of the spending, not. Fourth. Let both the doors of my study be shut, and do not let the squirrel go in. Let all the windows be closed also, on account of the flies, and open them only on the day of my arrival. Fifth. Lend no book without recording it. I pray thee heartily, to eat regularly, and to drink a little beer, that you may be blooming. Do :230 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. not be anxious about me. Do not remain always in the house, and take Spitz with you when you go out." He rewarded Carohne's minute cares by long and constant letters. He appears in all his jour- neys to have written to her every other day. We regret that her letters are not also given to us ; but from the few we have, modest and beautiful as they are, we see his genius reflected in her's as the light of a distant star is reflected in the dew of the violet. Richter's first journey is to visit the prince pri- mate Dalberg, to whom he had been indebted for the first tw^o years of his pension. The grateful disposition of the poet is evinced in this, that instead of visiting the enchanting scenes upon the Rhine he had so longed for, he should first go to the solitary Regensburg, before all things, to fulfil a duty of remembrance to the deserted and for- gotten Dalberg. " Regensburg, August, 1816. ^' The prince is a tall, old man, somewhat bent, with a strongly marked profile, especially the nose ; the left eye is always, through weakness, closed. In conversation, as in everything else, he is more of a learned man than of a prince. . . . The first day, from eleven to twelve, he asked only about LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 231 my wife, and at dinner also, when he drank her health. By evening our acquaintance was more perfect, than, since Herder's death, I have enjoyed with any one. Never in so short a time has a prince won my love. Since then, I have been with him every day from six o'clock until half past seven. We sit in the twilight with a half-emptied flask between us, and talk about religion, philoso- phy, and all the sciences. In faith and works he is a spiritualist, in the best sense of the word. He told me, unreservedly, of the mistakes of his youth, in short, of a hundred things, that can only be repeated verbally. His working day con- sists of ten hours ; two hours he gives to public transactions ; two he labors upon his work upon Christianity. After intellectual exertion, prayer, he said, strengthened and refreshed his mind more than anything beside. His religious axioms are, the highest veneration for God, and the deepest self-humiliation. Against my placing Christ be- neath God, he said, in a gentle tone, merely no ! He desired my judgment of the great question of Pilate. It is not easily answered, but mine satis- fied him. I spare the good old man of seventy- four all disputations. He told me, if he ever received the twenty thou- sand florins, that without solicitation the Congress of 232 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Vienna had agreed to pay him, he should do some- thing for my wife, after my course was finished.* About eight o'clock last evening the prince took me to visit the Count Westerhold, a friend of La- vater's, who, on account of his ten years of gout, admits no one earlier. Enter his apartment, you have been there for years ! Think of a table with a curious lamp, that I know not how to name, suspended above it. On the sofa his mild and sweet wife ; the prince near her, and opposite, the eldest daughter, who is mending pens for her two little sisters, who, at a distant table, are preparing their lessons for their teacher ; the count, also, was writing at the great work-table. I have never seen such home-like simplicity in the apartment of a noble. We were all happy, especially the prince, and I was like an old outserviced poodle, that had got comfortably upon his stool. There was tea, with rack, and afterwards archbishop.^ " Evening suppers and tea, as with us, are usual here. Except the first time, I have been always in boots. You see to what boldness a quiet, self- formed man may come. I would the situation of the learned were more respectable here. I was ' The prince died suddenly, without a will, and Caroline re- ceived nothing. * Mulled wine, with roasted oranges in it. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 233 never so moderate in conversation ; and in drink- ing, I am completely to be wondered at. " Yesterday, as I came from the heavenly gar- den at Pruflingen, I received your precious letter. It brought me a more beautiful Eden than the one I had just left. From strong emotion I vi^as silent. Ah, could I have, instead of the pale image in my thoughts, your warm, living eyes before me ! I shall leave here Friday the sixth, and get home about seven on Saturday. The children can go half an hour before to see if I have come, so that I may have you alone at first. ^' Wherefore, good soul, do you excuse your necessary expenses ? I fear only that you spare the money too much. I shall employ the two days of my journey back in moral observations, for which I have written a special book (that I studied also at Bayreuth, little as you observed me) to strengthen my mind against the perversity, which I inherit from my father, of making everywhere false lights and shades. My Primas alone has a heart full of pure love, and free from all selfish- ness. You would fall weeping upon his breast. Farewell, my beloved ! Act freely, and do not trouble thvself, nor thine. r." The following year, 1817, Richter visited Hei- delberg, and saw, for the first time, the enchant- ing shores of the Rhine. His account of his re- 234 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ception, of his Doctor's diploma, and of a fete that was made for him upon the Necker, are so naive and betray so innocent a vanity, that they should not be withheld from the reader. " Heidelberg, July, 1817. " On the very day, my beloved dear heart, that I have become Doctor of philosophy^ will I write to you. How shall I paint to you the love and esteem, even to excess, with which I am here re- ceived. The dog even, could he speak, would tell you he had never been so well fed, and from such beautiful hands. I have lived hours such as I never passed before, especially on the water ex- cursions ; listening to the vivats of the students, and the singing of old Italian music. But I thank the All Good as much as I can thank him, by mild- ness, quietness, modesty, love and justice to every one. I am most intimate with Paulus, and his wife, who is not after the Jena report, a pretend- ing, hterary coquette, but an enlightened, accom- plished hausfrau, and their beautiful daughter, So- phia, who reads indeed, nothing but me and the Bible, and understands the most difficult parts, or suffers herself to be enlightened. » Paul's naive delight at receiving his Doctor's diploma was expressed with the most childlike simplicity. He tells Caroline that Max must translate it, so that she could show it to the friends and neiirhbors. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 235 " On Sunday there was a water party on the Necker. It seemed to me like Hfe in my romances, as the long vessel with an awning, ornamented with oak branches and ribbon streamers, and fol- lowed by a boat filled with musicians, parted for the mountains of Bergen. The greater part of the ladies and men sat at the long table in the centre of the vessel. Students, professors, beauti- ful girls, women, the crown prince of Sweden, and a splendid Englishman, a young prince von Waldeck, all united in the most innocent enjoy- ment. My cap, and the hat of the prince were demanded from the other end of the table by two beautiful girls, and returned wreathed with oak leaves, and we must both wear them thus. . . . " One cloud after another withdrew from the sky. Upon the old castle rocks waved flags and handkerchiefs, and the young people shouted vivats. In our vessel there was much singing, and boat after boat followed us with music. In the even- ing a youth with a guitar sang my favorite song, ' Name not the name.' I was so powerfully affected, that I was obliged to think of foolish and stupid things to restrain the excess of my emotion ; and thus in a beautiful evening, the whole little world of joy returned without the smallest interrup- tion, accident or misunderstanding, to their homes. " Thus blessed, and indeed encroaching on the 236 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. gifts of the Infinite, I stood in the darkness of the night in a circle of students, singing vivais, and gave my hand to be seized by a hundred hands, while I looked gratefully to heaven. " August. " Dearest ! I w^rite again upon my holy moun- tain ! How shall I paint to you the open heaven into which I looked as the Upper Rhine opened before me. It flows eternally before me. I have passed from admiration to admiration. I was received in all the cities in the same manner. In Manheim they gave, on my account, the opera of the Vestal, by Spantini, which usually melts and weakens, by its exquisite beauty. I would, hear- ing these tones, depart from life. What lovely female forms came before me. I have not seen for ten years so many, and so youthful, and been kissed with such emotion ; but I felt, thereby, the holiness, and elevation and deep-rooted nature of married love, and that this, in comparison, is only a rootless and scentless flower. The love of mar- ried life, in comparison with this, is like embrac- ing one's own children rather than those of a stranger. 1 know decidedly, that my domestic heaven can and will be only the repetition of what it has been ; and that it shall exceed the past for thy happiness, thou true and good ! *' Max must study at Heidelberg. Pure, pro- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 237 tecting spirits, in the form of my friends, will sur- round him. You will always, dear Max, be to your mother as you were the day after your com- munion, and not afar off trouble me. I so gladly think of you thus ; and it would be hard if, on my return, I could not embrace you with the same affection as the others. I think often of you, dear- est Caroline, often with painful longing; I will never repeat so long a journey without you. You would be so loved here, by Swartz, Hegel, and Paulus ! ..." Ah ! well, dearest ! I have here much, too much to do, although I steal time to work from the fairest hours. When I return I will ac- complish more, go out less, live abstemiously, and say often to the body ' thou must ! ' It is incom- prehensible the true oversight that one takes of himself, and the faults that one discovers in him- self, when he arrives in a new place, under new relations. It is so with me, and I shall return to thee a new and improved edition of myself. Fare- well, beloved ! Greet my Emanuel, and his Eman- uelle, and Otto, and the good Kinderlein ; they will soon again be crowding on my sofa." In this Heidelberg journey, Richter formed the most intimate friendship with Henry Voss, a man 238 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. much younger than himself, indeed young enough to have been the friend of his son. He wrote with great dehght to his wife, " that in the true German Voss, he had, in his old age, found a new /AoM." ^ Richter was now fifty-four years old, and Voss " stood beside him like his youth." It is a rare blessing to the old to go back, and as it were live over again their youthful years in another and younger mind. It is hke a new blossoming of hfe, after the fruit has been gathered. In this journey Richter also made the discovery of his power of imparting animal magnetism, and he afterwards made use of it to alleviate pain in his suffering friends. While he was at Heidelberg, a lady brought her daughter, suffering from severe tooth-ache, to him, after he had retired for the night. He rose instantly, and came into the hall with bare feet, and with the utmost patience and tenderness exerted the magnetic power, and sent the young lady home in a deep and quiet sleep. But while, on one side, the discovery of this power was a rich source of humorous excitement, and an occasion of benevolent exertion for others, the practical use of it at so late a period of life, sud- * The reader will recollect tliou is only used in the familiar intercourse of intimate friendship. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 239 denly impaired his vigor, and helped, with other evils, to bring on an early and premature old age. The following year, 1818, Jean Paul left home again, to visit Frankfort and renew his pleasure by again seeing Heidelberg and the Rhine ; but he seems to begin to feel the weariness of travelling alone. He wrote to Caroline : " The fairest prospect to me this afternoon was your apartment, surrounded by our children. In the morning will your eyes and heart hover about me, and remind me of a day' that has now become holier and dearer than in its first birth. Be only joyful and hoping, as I am, and we shall need nothing more. Children ! would you create a joy for your father, while he is away, make your mo- ther happy by your goodness and love, and you will be truly dear to your father." The next day : — " Perhaps I have consecrated our yesterday's festival by a health-giving action. I passed through Wurzburg, on account of the misdirection of my pension by the finance director. But I said not a word of the mistake, for he had a consumptive daughter of sixteen years, that the family physician had given over. I proposed to ^ Twenty-seventh of May, their wedding-day. 240 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. this man (as he had no faith in it,) magnetism, merely as a last possible saving means. With his consent I magnetised the daughter in bed, and put her into a profound and gentle sleep. Another physician, an excellent young man, who has learnt in Berlin, will continue the magnetism. I have, at least, saved the good mother from premature tears, for without magnetism the daughter must certainly die. Her face is already like white marble sculp- tured on a monument. It was my only consola- tion yesterday, when I had nothing to press to my heart but my own empty arms, that you would make for yourself a real joy, in thinking of this day, of our short separation and eternal reunion. Farewell, most beloved, my heart kisses the child- ren ! Had I, of the six or eight eyes, one only here ! " " Frankfort, May 30. " To Caroline. Yesterday, in the midst of the coldest weather, 1 reached this great, splendid city. On the way I have gained on the right ear a wholly gray lock, and on the left, one nearly so. I must thank either the cold or the cap for this natural powder. ... I am in the house of the rich bookseller, Wenner. Paying is not to be thought of. I could not, without great trouble, insist upon paying for wine and beer. His some- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 241 what sickly, but noble and diffident (childless) wife, a singer and sketcher, and my warmest reader, has provided for the most minute con- veniences. I have three splendid chambers and a private staircase. Near the writing-table a bell for the servants, wax lights and silver candlesticks, and, if I desire it, the most complete solitude. The lady wept for joy when I came here. Wenner has much goodness in his countenance, in which there is a strong resemblance to Goethe, and he always acts without many words. " There are as many ugly female faces here, as there were beautiful in Mainze — truly, broadly, ugly. Till now I have only met and spoken with matrons, except two single ladies, which the hu- morist, Goethe's early passion, invited me to meet this evening at Brentano's. I can scarcely enjoy this heavenly weather, because there is no garden out of the city, where I can go. . . . '' How often I thought yesterday, on the water, under the splendid canopy of night, of you, and said, '^ Ah, could my Caroline enjoy her birth- day festival with me ; and this morning I awoke melancholy at the thought that you are always alone, or only with the children, on your birth- day. But I need no festival of life to remind me of your love. The careful preparation and pack- VOL. II. 16 242 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ing of every article, the new wristbands on the shirts, every morning remind me of the pious hand that so lovingly orders everything for my comfort." The Frankfort enthusiasm for Richter was a repetition of the Heidelberg. They also gave him a night festival, in boats on the Maine, which was nearly a repetition of that on the Necker, except that the boats were illuminated with colored lamps, and the shore with torches. He extended his journey to Heidelberg, and seems, almost for the first time in his hfe, to have made the melancholy discovery, that the same joys, although the elements are the same, are never felt a second time with the same intensity. He wrote to Caroline : "I depart from Heidel- berg in a wholly different disposition from the last time, although there was nothing then that ought to have been unpleasant or painful to you. In- deed, I look with too prosaic eyes upon every- thing. The poetic flower of love of the last year, is (alas, for it was so innocent) entirely faded, as in its nature it could know neither continuance nor resuscitation. What I truly dream of, is our evenings together. How long shall they last? First Max withdraws, then the little girls, and we sit alone together ; at last you are wholly alone. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. S43 Ah ! let us love as long as there is yet time to love ! Eternally your own r." . . . " As I passed through OfFenback, a beau- tiful mother of six children came out to meet me, and pressed into my hand a leaf of thanks for the Levana. Never female eyes, except yours, looked so amiably at me. What open, beautiful faces there are in this Offenbach. The love of my fel- low men is the only dew for my arid soul." To understand the first part of the letter just read, it is necessary to refer to a circumstance mentioned by one of Richter's biographers. In his first journey to Heidelberg, the daughter of Paulus, the beautiful and spirituelle Sophia Paulus, is said to have made an impression on the heart of Richter, that renewed all his romantic dreams of a spiritual love. This lady was afterwards cele- brated for her literary productions, and by a short and unhappy marriage with William August Schle- gel. Notwithstanding Jean Paul's deep, and hardly gained knowledge of the female heart, he is said to have spoken, after his return home, with such openness and frequency of Sophia, as to awake a painful jealousy, and humiliating distrust in the heart of his devoted wife. The reader may judge by a letter he wrote to the beautiful Sophia, after his return, how far the jealousy of Caroline had any real foundation. 244 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. '' My Sophia : My first written word is to you. In the evening, in Manheim, I could not leave the apartment where there had been so much love, and in the morning I could not remain there,^ but went for the whole day to Steinburg. This Stein- burg held out to me a pure heaven, and if you will share it, a perfect one. He and others would get up for me the opera of the Vestal, which is the Madonna, the others are only nuns among operas. . . . You and the Rhine belong together, and when I meet it again, your image, like that of a star, will hover over it, and cast a splendor upon it, wherever it flows. How often I took the front seat in the carriage yesterday, to look at the Hei- delberg mountains, that arose shining in the dis- tance, as the clouds hung over the place where I was. . . . And so farewell, never-to-be-forgotten Sophia. Write me, above all things, every pain that you feel, for I know your joys. Nothing can divide us, not even the great happiness that I so devoutly wish thee ! ^ r." * Sophia and her father accompanied him to Manheim, on his return. ' Her marriage with August Schlegel, which lasted only a few weeks, when she returned to her parents in Heidelberg. The mother of Sophia was one of the most distinguished literary women in Germany, and she was herself remarkable for her study of Shakspeare, and knowledge of English literature. CHAPTER VII. VISITS MUNCHEN. RICHTER. HIS SON MAX. HIS MELANCHOLY AND DEATH. Richtxr's journey, in the spring of 1820, a.d.isso, was to visit his son Max, who had been ^^^** ^^' placed, at the age of sixteen, at the Gymnasium at Munchen. An extract from one of his letters will afford an insight into the character of this in- teresting young man, whose early death threw a cloud over his family, that never wholly passed away. " Dear Caroline, — Upon the way from Regens- burg to Landshut, God sent me, in the forenoon, three cloudless, heavenly blue, sunny hours, and I had, for the first and last time in that journey, an idylhc frame of mind, for which I have languished long years ; and that endures no society except that of the coachman, who sings in the distance as mine 246 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. does. In the afternoon, where the distant pros- pect over Landshut opens richly, the devil himself I believe seized the opportunity, and poured so out of the clouds, that he drowned the beautiful Isar, and the bridge and the mountain crown over Landshut. '' This rainy introduction into Munchen contin- ued as far as the Black Eagle. I sought Max in vain in his nest up five flights of stairs, and then went to the Schlichtgeroll's. I found them as spirituelle as in former times, but they convinced me of a truth I have long suspected, that years take from women more of the outward, than from man of the inward. " They conjecturrd that Max was with their son ; and in two minutes he hung sobbing upon my breast. His form and face have filled out splendidly. He is half a head taller than I am ; blooming, and fuller in the face. He was more neatly and elegantly dressed than I am, and yet wears only the clothes he brought from home. His personal appearance corresponds with, yes, exceeds his letters, and my whole heart yearns towards the pure, free, powerful, but unpretending youth. As he went with me from the Schlichtge- roll's, he asked, ^ how then is my mother ? ' but his voice failed him for weeping. This is pure, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 247 honest sincerity, without extravagance. He will take nothing of all I brought for him, not even the watch, as he says, * he needs nothing.' ... He deprived me of one night's sleep, by telhng me of his sorrowful life in the beginning of winter, in his first destitute lodgings, with only a little iron stove that imparted no heat, his windows broken, and his wood stolen, with nothing to enjoy at morning and evening, as at home ; his clothes, from his ex- treme thinness, all too wide for him ; and in the sohtary city without one friend, he wept all night from home-sickness, and yet continued to study till twelve o'clock." This letter will prepare the reader to understand the character of this son of the poet, whose melan- choly fate opened a wound in the father's heart that never closed, but continued to bleed till it ex- hausted his own life. From early childhood Max had devoted himself to learning with incredible industry. In his fifteenth year he had read the old and new testaments in the original languages, Homer, and the Greek tragedians. His too ascet- ical and mistaken sense of duty in Munchen, and in Heidelberg, where he was afterwards sent ; the intensity of his industry, the faithfulness with which he imitated his father's frugality, the few alleviations and comforts he would allow himself, 248 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and the high tone of his rehgious enthusiasm, soon and imperceptibly undermined the healthy tone of his body and mind. Although distinguished for the facility with which he learned all languages, he was deficient in imagination and in creative power, and the poor young man was discouraged in not finding the rich results he had expected from his faithful indus- try ; and in his painful doubts of himself, he attri- buted his failure to a want of sincerity of purpose, and took refuge in the mysticism of a severe, in- nocence-condemning, supernatural theology. Unhappily, Heidelberg was at this time the hot- bed of those unintelligible teachers, to whom the poor youth turned for support in the sea of his doubts ; and when he could not comprehend their mystical and philosophical phrases, he attributed it to his own intellectual incapacity, and instead of turning to his father to find the cheerful and ra- tional exercise of true devotion, he sank deeper in despondency. The early martyrdom of this interesting youth was partly the tragic result of Jean Paul's system of education. The whole tendency of his teach- ing is to cultivate the higher powers of the intel- lect, to excite the imagination, to make poets and literary men ; and those to whom nature had not LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 249 imparted the higher intellectual gifts, were dis- couraged in his presence. His personal influence also, upon every one who came into intimate asso- ciation with him, was overpowering ; they believed the true aim of life was to become like him, a poet, or a literary man. Even women were not exempt from this influence, and his eldest daughter believed it her duty to remain unmarried, and to devote herself to the pursuits of her father, as his companion and friend. Happily, the instincts of woman's nature will sooner or later lead out of the labyrinths of theory, and after her father's death she became a happy wife, contented with the feminine duties of a good hausfrau. Richter had seen from the beginning the errors to which his son inclined ; and though he had warned him seriously and earnestly, he thought them perhaps only a stage in the intellectual progress of the youth, that he would soon pass over. But, alas, the poisoned arrow had entered too deeply, and his father's letters, instead of heal- ing, but intimated prophetically, the issue. He wrote to him : " My good Max : Your letters have rejoiced and touched our hearts. But the Kanne theo- logical watering-pot, that has showered you so effectually, makes me anxious for your youth; an irrecoverable period of life, that should be 250 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. cheerful and joyous without monkish vagaries, and, but a preparation for a serious useful man- hood. This Kanne, always and eternally one- sided, is exactly as enthusiastic in his theology, and in the pitiful life of his saints, as he was in his ancient wars, where he held all the historical persons of the Old Testament, merely as astro- nomical emblems. '^ Study the history of the establishment of Christianity ; the letters of the apostles and evan- gelists, that were first collected at the end of tlie second century, that were known through Irenius, and particularized in the beginning of the third century by Origen. In all the conversa- tions of Christ there is not a single word of the doctrine of all souls falling at the same time with Adam, or of satisfaction for sin. May God, my dear son, direct you to the cheerful Christianity of a Herder, and Jacobi, and Kant. Read rather, as I did in Leipzig, Arrian's Epictetus, the loving Antoninu's observations, and Plutarch's biographies, than Kanne, who is as worthless as an exeget, as he is an historian. There is no other Revelation, than the ever continuing. Our whole orthodoxy, like Catholicism itself, first centered in the evangelists, and every century opens and produces new views. Oh, could I complete my work on 2dtra Christian- ity ! With this new monkism you will destroy in LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 251 yourself all joy, power and ardor, and in the end gain nothing. " I am somewhat calmed with regard to your ultra christian despondency, by the hope that it has a physical source in your exclusively sedentary and studious life. It is indeed a poor consolation. The vigor of youth may enable you for some years to surpass others in knowledge, but then alas ! my son ! you come before me, in imagination, in the years of full ripeness, twenty-five or thirty, pale, emaciated ! apparently more dead than alive ! God spare me that sight ! " The father was, indeed, spared that sight ! — The inclination of his son to mysticism took a more decided form, and leaving philology as a human science, he devoted himself entirely to theology, as to the free gift of God. Rehgious enthusiasm assumed with this poor young man not only the form of distrust in, and contempt for all his intellectual gifts, but it was united with a severe asceticism of life, that he concealed for a long time from his parents. To his strenuous self-con- suming industry, he added the most limited parsi- mony in food and expenses of every kind, and threw over this life-consuming self-denial, the tender veil of duty, thinking thus to spare his parents every sacrifice on his account. 252 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. His mother, also, upon whom he hung with childhke love, and who stood by him as a con- soling and protecting spirit, wrote to him thus : ..." Your letter, under all the views we can take of it, must yet make us melancholy ; and I hasten, before every thing else, to inform you of it, and draw you, dear Max, from your tormenting errors. Your father loves you inexpressibly, and esteems you so entirely, that he can ask nothing from Providence, but such a son as you are. I, and your sisters, and all our friends, bless God that you are so pure, so innocent, the joy of your family, and of the world ; that you have preserved the honesty and truth of your mind in striving after science, and that there is ever developed in you the love of the holy, the true, and the beauti- ful. What would you then further ? Can men be gods ? Nothing is to be said against your placing your ideal so very high. But if your jealousy of yourself, on one side, holds you in that touching humility that so well becomes the great- est men, yet real religion is only apparent, when added to our earnest struggle for the highest, cheerfulness stands as a companion at her side. To strive against the limitations of humanity, that are opposed more or less to every individual mind, is not pious — is not permitted by God. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 953 Oh, suffer your beautiful enthusiasm for faith, to show itself in this childlike submission. Strive, but torture not yourself with just nor unjust crim^ inations, when neither the one nor the other be- long to you. Depend upon the aid that is lent you, and the success flowing therefrom will give you rest and peace. * The lioness covets not the lion's mane ; The mother pheasant, sighs not for ornament; With proud neck the swan sails the sea, Humbly, his mate shelters her young. The rivulet murmurs most sweetly, But bears no proud navy on its breast. The ruby outlasts the fragrant rose, But the dewy tears of evening Shed no mild radiance from it. Vain man ! What wouldst thou be ? Be thyself! Covet no greater gift.' " This extract from Plato's poems, that pleased me so much on the first reading, happily expresses my views. Oh how painful to me is your melan- choly, and the slavish, unjust self-accusation before God, that impairs all your active powers ; that excess of religious sensibility, that instead of the cheerful and loving power of christian faith, pours only death-streams into all the veins of life. " Adieu, my dear son. I embrace you a thou- sand times, with the warmest love." 254 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. This wise and tenderly maternal letter, will make the reader regret there are not more of Caroline's to her son, where the riches of an intel- lectual nature are united with the tenderness of a mother's heart. The anxious solicitude of the parents of Max was only too soon justified. The too sensitive and conscientious youth returned home at the end of the year, shaken, pale, emaciated! and a ner- vous fever of a few days' continuance, consigned him to an early grave. This melancholy death of his son, at the age of nineteen, like a heavy blow, seemed to strike our Richter to the earth. The firm, strong man, whom we have seen, like a block of marble, by every previous stroke becoming only more polished and statuelike, was shattered and broken by the death of his son. He could not bear the sight of any book his son had touched ; and the word Philology, (the science in which Max excelled) went through his heart like a bolt of ice. He had such wonderful power over himself as to go on with his comic romance of Nicholas Margraff, while his eyes continually dropped tears. He wept so much in secret that his eyes became im- paired, and he trembled for the total loss of sight. Wine, that had previously, after long-suslained LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 255 labor, been a cordial to him, he could not bear to touch ; and after employing the morning in writing, he spent the whole afternoon lying on the sofa in his wife's apartment, his head supported by her arm. Caroline stifled the yearnings of a mother, bereaved of her only son, to comfort and support her husband, She contrived every artifice to draw him from his grief — proposing amusements for her daughters, to induce him to dress and shake off his despondency, and go out ; but at the same time she represented him " as a true angel " in his sorrow. At the end of three months Richter was able to write to his friend, Henry Voss. " How often, for a quarter of a year, have you complained of me, excused me, and again com- plained, and yet at last excused me, poor devil that I am. Ah ! I could not do otherwise. My being has suffered not merely a wound, but a com- plete cutting off of all joy. All former losses are unlike the last, and my longing after him grows always more painful. Not on his account do I need consolation, but for the loss of his love. I have still the power to avoid constantly dwelHng upon him, although every Grecian author, yes, even the word Philology cuts me to the heart. But to 256 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. hear or see anything that was his ! Ah, that I cannot bear ! Enough of this. " I am revising the third volume of the Comet, The book upon immortahty demands the strength, that I can only dare to think of in the fullness of health. In looking over the thirty years' work I find, that it descends into the depths of philoso- phy-' I will open new light for a thousand veiled and tearful eyes, and shew them new kingdoms in the future world of existence ! What new year shall I wish to you all ? One only, that has not the most distant resemblance to my own ! ^ ^ The Campaner Thai. Jean Paul began, on the day of his son's burial, a new work on the immortality of the soul, upon the foundation of the Campaner Thai. ^ In Richter's letters to his wife, I have translated only what was personal to himself and family ; allusions to persons and passing events are wholly unintelligible to us. CHAPTER VIII. RICHTER VISITS DRESDEN. THE IMPRESSION HE MADE UPON HIS RELATIVES. When the spring returned, that season ^ ^ jggg that Richter so loved, and that had never ^sedsg. failed to exhilarate him, his friends urged him again to journey, hoping to awaken new hopes, or to turn his thoughts from his heart-consuming sorrow. The loss of his son, also, made him wish to draw closer the bonds of relationship with the members of his wife's family. Caroline's sister, Minna Spazier, had lived many years in DresdeUj and supported her orphan children by her literary exertions.^ One of these sons was born in the ' Caroline Wilhelmine, called Minna Spazier, married the second time, a person of the name of Ulhe, and added his name to that of Spazier, her literary name. She was now living in Dresden, editor of the Slnngrun (Evergreen) a periodical, in which Jean Paul, and many distinguished female authors assisted her. VOL. II. 17 258 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. same year and month with the poet's son Max. Such a coincidence could not fail to interest the imagination of a man who attached so much im- portance to coincidences, and to the time of his own birth. He wrote, therefore, to his sister-in- law : ^' I come to you with a written petition, for which I will thank you verbally. In April I would enjoy again the beautiful city of Dresden, where many years ago, in the train of the Frau von Ber- lespsch, I lost more than I found. Ah! I need now not to forget, for that would be impossible, but to continue to remember all that I have ever loved. I seek in Dresden only music, nature, that is, the environs of the city, and loving men. In myself, much has changed. Time treats wounded men like a block of marble, and beats off, with heavy blows, piece after piece, even if it were the form of a son. Ah ! that we were indeed of marble ! " To the young Richard Spazier, the twin cousin of Max, to whom we have been much indebted through the course of this biography, we owe an account of the first meeting with Richter. " The children had been educated in the utmost reverence for their uncle, the poet, and although they had heard of his works, they had never read a line of his. Their mother received the announce- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 259 merit of his visit with some timidity, and prepared her children for his reception with stories of his severity, of his penetrating knowledge of every weakness in others, and infinite firmness in their suppression in himself. He says, ^ even my eldest pattern brother trembled at the thought of appear- ing before Richter. My situation was most pain- ful ; born on the same year and day with his own son Max, my mother, in her maternal solicitude, looked upon it as the finger of Providence, indi- cating that I should supply to the afflicted father the loss of his son, and pointed out this as the de- cisive moment of my life. Ah, what could be ex- pected of a youth of nineteen years, who had never read a line of his works, who had been half a year at the university, and was just in the most shining period of Philistery.^ What would the severe moralist say to my beard, my renownist^ dress, my pipe, my open breast, my unshorn locks. I heard his voice in the hall and would have fled, but it was too late, and pale as a cloth, and with trem- bhng hps I stood before him. But it was only for a moment, and fear gave place to astonishment. I saw a strong, but undersized, apparently kind- hearted man, with brown face, an eye that did not ^ For the meaning of these words the reader is referred to Howit's " Student's Life in Germany." 260 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. annihilate, but beamed mildly, even tenderly upon me. He was dressed in a summer coat of invisi- ble green, with a straw hat. He held a strong stick in his hand, and was followed by a white poodle. I felt in a moment that here was a man who would leave to every one his own indepen- dence, who would not make himself the standard of morals or manners, and that the want of a neck- cloth would be no crime in his eyes. And so it remained the whole time he was with us — he de- manded nothing — he asked not that we should give him our time, or yield our opinions to his. He received, gratefully, the attentions we offered him, but left every one the liberty to speak freely the freest opinions. Instead of feeling reserve or constraint in his presence, he seemed to enlarge the region of self-dependence, to excite and draw out the resources of our minds. My students' nature, that others abhorred, he would draw to- wards him and protect — yes, he was often the direct advocate of youthful impulses. " After he had been with us some time, from gratitude, and, perhaps, to give him pleasure, I read the most celebrated of his works, the Titan : the book left me for the most part cold, with the exception of the charming scenes in Italy, and the character of Linda ; but my indignation was LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 261 extreme at the catastrophe of Linda. Richler received, without the smallest surprise, my decla- ration, that I had never before read anything of his, and observed just as calmly, that I wsls extremely displeased at the fate of Linda. He even led himself, to my excuse, by saying that Ja- cobi, and the best judges, had expressed the same displeasure ; but for the purpose he had in view it could not have been otherwise ; and no encou- ragement to read another of his works passed his lips. At last, it happened one morning, that he asked after my studies, and my aim in life. I answered only, 'that I would learn all that was best and most beautiful, but that I had not yet made choice of a profession.' He sought to help me to know myself, by asking •• if I had not a favorite author ? ' I had not, at that time, but I told him ' that as a boy I had learnt Homer by heart, and that I now longed to read Tacitus.' 'I see,' said he, * that, like every youth, you would be an author,' and he asked me to show him any essay that I had ever attempted to write, etc." In the five weeks that Richter spent in Dresden, everything united, as by mutual consent, to restore his wounded spirit to its former cheerfulness. The fairest blue heaven rested the whole time upon the 262 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. valley of the Elbe. Distinguished strangers, such as Tieck, Tiege, Bottiger, and Carl Forster were then in Dresden. The inhabitants, indeed, mani- fested for him nothing but curiosity, and the court did not notice him. Distinguished and accom- plished women, as usual, crowded around him ; but, to avoid all exciting emotions, he strictly adhered to the rule he had laid down for himself, not to visit more than once at any house. His sister-in- law's family afforded him a domestic circle, where he could enjoy the privacy and the intimate friend- ship he loved. The highly nervous state of his mind made it necessary for him to avoid all ex- citement, and all deep impressions. He therefore did not set his foot within the Dresden gallery, or any other hall of art. He avoided the theatres, and only once heard a mass in a Catholic church, surrounded by friends who shielded him from all exciting emotions. A lady at this time speaks thus of his reserve and self-control in society, when he did not always take the hand that was held out to him, and suf- fered ladies to stand long moments, unnoticed be- hind his chair. " These little apparent incivilities should not bring into question the just, enlight- ened, ever-compassionate disposition, that has made the soul of this extraordinary man its tem- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 263 pie. How beautifully does he extend to every one, even the least intellectual in society, a spiritual arm. He comes to the aid of the poorest with the riches of the mind. How his host and hostess revere him. A wild animal, since he has been under their roof, has become mild and humane ; a miser would build a house, merely to make him a convenient chamber. No, never shall I forget the night when my daughter, suffering from a severe toothache, burst into his lodgings at midnight, and waked him suddenly from his first sleep. How indulgently he came, barefooted, down the garden steps, for the fainting child had thrown herself into a garden seat, and began to stroke her magneti- cally. Soon her pain was alleviated, and after half an hour she was carried in a deep sleep to her own house." How did Richter himself enjoy what gave others so much pleasure ? He wrote to Caroline : "After a long time a blue sky is united with blue moun- tains. . . . God wills, that I should again, and without display, be a little joyful. Among the women who here particularly interest me, is the wife of professor Forster, who sends me frequently, by her httle daughter, fruit and flowers. I enjoy here many pleasures through the society of enlight- 264 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ened men, and the arts, but I long inexpressibly for our life again, at home together." To his young friend, Henry Voss, he also wrote : " The pleasure-gardens of Dresden exceed all Ger- many in beauty of prospect. The Bruhlesh ter- race, in the evening, with its lights, mountains, the bridge and the Elbe, gave me an hour of inward inspiration, that I have for many years sought in vain ; when all hovered over me as in the spring of youth, and within and without all were blessed dreams. It was not melancholy, not even long- ing ; but full intoxication of happiness from within. The Dresden weeks were the last of light and joy Richter ever passed. The death of his friend Henry Voss, immediately after, bereaved him of one who hung upon him even with feminine ten- derness ; and it was during the Dresden residence that he accidentally discovered that the sight of his left eye was so much gone, that he could only see about one inch from it, and that the right eye also was rapidly failing. He wrote most touchingly to the mother of Hen- ry : . . . ''He and my Max lie buried in my soul in one grave, for I know how both could love me ! Whatever other powers your Henry possessed, one glowed within him with resistless fervor — the LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 265 disciple John's capacity of loving. It was strong, firm, trusting, sacrificing ; but not the accidental impulse of an imbecile. His heart beat as strongly against one, as for another. Oh, Henry ! forever lost ! Never more upon this earth shall I be so loved ; but even this guaranties to thee and to us the assurance of meeting again. The sciences need for their enjoyment no immortahty ; but love demands the continuance of its objects ! May your husband and son bind up your maternal heart, till the wound closes, or until all depart to- gether to join the lost one." It may seem to the reader, that there has been in the last year of Jean Paul's life, an unmanly despondency, inconsistent with that Christian sto- icism with which he bore all his early disappoint- ments. But to one whose whole employment and life had consisted in literary pursuits, who had still many works planned, for which he had made vol- uminous preparation, the prospect of closing his writing-desk and leaving his work unfinished, must have been full of melancholy. He had planned, also, before the death of his friend Voss, a com- plete revision of all his printed works, in a new and improved edition, for which Voss was to be- come the editor. He had also begun the Autobi- ograj)hy, which makes the first part of this work ; 266 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and his reluctance to speak of himself at first, and the cloud which his son's death threw over the present, prevented him from continuing that pic- ture of his youth, that lay behind him in magic sun-light. But above all, there lay warm on his heart his beloved work on the Immortality of the Soul ; that work, by the beginning of which he had consecrated the burial-day of his Max, and from whose sepulchre he hoped it would rise phoe- nix-like, and point the way to that immortal home, which was indeed the home of his spirit, and that where he now centered his dearest hopes. And after all these works were completed and all his life's duties finished, he had held, bright in pros- pect before him, a journey to Switzerland and Italy, countries that he had thirsted to visit, and that he had looked to as the reward of a life of industry and zeal ; but now a dark cloud had de- scended, and blotted out all but the inward con- sciousness of duty fulfilled. Richter's nephew mentions the pain with which Jean Paul recurred, in his last days, to the loss he had suffered in never having been able to look upon the sea ; and his severe disappointment, that in his latter days he could not have ascended the Rigi, where, he fancied, he should see nature in her greatest elevation and her most lovely beauty. CHAPTER IX. THE PURELY COMIC WORKS OF JEAN PAUL. — THE LIFE OF FIBEL. — NICHOLAS MARGRAF, OR THE COMET. I HAVE omitted, for the purpose of bringing the active part of the life of Jean Paul to a close, all mention of his later, and purely comic works. After the publication of the Flegelyahre the troubles of the wars of Napoleon came on, when his deep interest in the fate of his country, and the neces- sity of providing for the daily demands of his family by short narratives, essays and reviews, that brought an immediate pecuniary return, prevented him from completing any great and long-sustained work. The Life of Fib el, which he says in the preface was begun in 1806, was given to the public in 1812. In this preface, Paul calls the work "an octavo volume, in which some few harmless, guilt- 268 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. less, lightless, splendorless beings, with the Uke fate, hve their Httle hfe. The whole is a quieting still life, a cradle for the. Farniente of growing readers ; a soft, gray, evening rain, that instead of drawing perfume from flowers, draws it from the lowly, invisible earth ; where at most only a finger- breadth of evening glow shines out." Spazier says, that Fibel was as much a turning- point in the author's works as was the Invisible Lodge; and both are explained and understood only, through his life and his succeeding works. The first was written at the period, when emotion and earnest feeling burst forth from the ice-rind, in which the winter-cold of satire had imprisoned them. In the following season of blooming and ever-increasing love, he had risen in creative pow- er, and in richness of fancy, as his experience of life became more varied and full, till he reached nearly his own ideal in the Titan. Here, in ripened power and self-consciousness, he followed with the Flegelyahre, in which he analyzed and exhibited his inseparable double nature ; his deep and ear- nest emotion, united with excentric and comic humor. In the Esthetics, he sought to justify and reconcile his poetical pecuharities, and the nature of his works, with the universal laws of art and beauty. But now in these last works he LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 269 returned to the point from which he started ; but with altered views, the result of his life and experience. The calm satisfaction and content- ment, the harmonious quiet, the spirit of repose and order that breathed in his life, is imparted to all the works that were written after the Titan, There is moderation in his earnestness and emo- tion, as well as a genial tenderness in his humor, that divides these last from his earlier works, and proves that his poetry was only the reflection of his life, and deeply rooted in it. The theme of all Jean Paul's works is the same, whatever the form in which it is expressed or evolved. This theme, the experience in human life, from the Godlike in man, in contention with the littleness of life ; the spark of the immortal, struggling with earthly damps and obstructions. This, in Paul's convictions, is not the distinction of the few, who, in lively consciousness of the con- test, think themselves unfortunate beings, but is more or less the inheritance of every human being. In his latter works it is no longer a subject for pain, for the illusions of life soften its strivings, and in themselves make man happy. He is healed by the same spear that wounds him. The striv- ings of the ideal in man ; the disproportion be- tween his aspirations and his attainments, that in 270 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. his earlier satires were the occasion of bitter jests ; become in his later works, the subject of a genial and sympathizing humor. The illusions that nour- ish these aspirations, become the source of the highest and purest joys in elevated characters ; and often produce in others, as in Don Quixotte, a humor in which the noblest minds can sympa- thize. Fihel has his illusions, that recreate his whole life ; but the ludicrous contrasts in it are purely objective, and are revealed to the reader alone. The author jokes here, as in his satires, but with wholly different feelings, with sorrow- enlightened wisdom, rather than cutting contempt. He contrives to maintain in the breast of the reader, the secret consciousness, that he is an ex- ception to the general folly, that would live upon illusions ; a feeling that gives to every satirical work its principal value. It produces, therefore, a strange mixture of feehng, the consciousness of universal insufficiency, and of individual success. This is partly the effect of the limited nature of his hero, and partly the result of the period in which it was written, and the circumstances of the author's life. The outward relations of Jean Paul had be- come so harmonious and happy, that his mind was kept in perfect equilibrium. He had reached LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 271 as far as is ever allowed humanity to attain, to the ideal of his former aspirations ; his pension of four hundred dollars, raised him above all pecuniary anxiety ; his children, blooming in health of body and mind, hung upon him vt^ith infinite love ; he enjoyed the fruit of his early industry in his ma- terials for further works, and the food of his mind, in the environment of his beloved nature ; his works appeared to him the best that he could create, and their failures and imperfections not as peculiar to them, but as belonging to the uni- versal imperfection of humanity. The Germans deem the author more successful in his later, than in his earlier works. His hu- morous works are more completely aitistical, and perfect as works of art than his serious. Although ht thought otherwise, humor is more completely his native element. He could not represent a per- fect, unfortunate, elevated character ; but he was completely successful in his happy fools and sim- pletons. Fihel is nothing less than the Don Quixotte of literature ; not merely in the construction of his ABC book, with its bad pictures, and worse verses ; but he beheves he is a world-blessing ge- nius, and that he has given to posterity the most precious works, when he has collected and put 272 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. his name to all the old contemptible rubbish swept from the waste heaps of a bookseller's shelves. Richter, who always united persiflage upon him- self with universal satire, represents the heteroge- neous contents of the books printed with the name of Fibel, as not unlike his own productions, pre- pared from his world-wide extract books ; and identifies the enviable happiness of a being gifted with the illusion of Fibel, with himself, as the re- lator of it, and endeavors to remove the joke from his hero to himself. The reader finds himself in Fibel's childhood, upon the same ground and un- der the same circumstances as in the poet's earlier Idyls. In the schoolhouses of Joditz and Schwarz- enbach, with the well-known consumptive figure of the finch-hunting schoolmaster, and believes at first, that as Wuz and Fixlien had both busied themselves with literary amusements, this is only a repetition of their characters. But Fibel differs from them in this, that it establishes the possibility of the happiest and most joyful existence, in the abdication of all wishes and employments, except those connected with the illusion. The hero seeks no honey except that made from the modest flow- ers of his own little garden. This stands, there- fore, in intimate connection and contrast with the theme of the serious romances — the misery which LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 273 the unsatisfied demands of an over-excited imagi- nation, occasion in the breast of man, being the theme of some of the former. Between the pubhcation of Fibel and the Comet, Paul had the happiness to prepare many of his old works for new editions. We are reminded in this, as well as in his love of animals, and in many other peculiarities, of his resemblance to Sir Walter Scott. It was a work of love. His new editions were all furnished with new prefaces, from which, as in Scott's many humorous incidents, and little biographical particulars may be gathered. In the Comet, the other humorous romance of Richter, the same idea (happiness, from the illu- sions of life, rendered comic by the disproportion between the means and the end,) hes, as with Fi- bel, at the foundation of the work. But the con- ditions of happiness, through the preponderance of imagination in the hero of the Comet, are two ; First, the power of this fancy turns within upon the possessor, and plays only before him ; and, secondly, his intellectual power is so limited that he is not conscious of the errors and falsehoods that his fancy impose upon him. This seems to differ little from the fixed idea of any madman, and Jean Paul might have found a hero for his romance in almost any lunatic asylum. This is VOL. II. 18 274 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. the opposite of that exalted fanaticism of Eman- uel, Liana, Linda and Gustavus, who would bring into actual life the ideal of a higher existence, which is now in contradiction with this actual life, but hereafter may be the soundest wisdom. To such exaltation all poetical natures are more or less inclined. Every species of unrestrained imagi- nation leads to innocent madness ; if from outward circumstances it has not playroom, it concentrates itself upon a fixed idea, that has no connection with the circumstances of actual life. The difference between Don Quixotte and the hero of the Comet is as wide as the circumstances of the times and of their respective nations. Cer- vantes placed the eccentricity of the fixed idea of his hero close upon the limits of probability, while he unites with the errors of imagination in Don Quixotte, a refined understanding and extensive cultivation ; and the satire turns upon the mania of the people of an age just passed. In our times, the fixed idea carried to such absurd extent, would soon make its possessor the inmate of an asylum. Jean Paul takes, for the hero of the Comet, a man whose phantasy has led him, from his earliest youth, to cherish the imagination that he is the son of a prince, and that he must so accomplish himself as to act the prince through life, and thus he will LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 275 find the father upon whose throne he expects to as- cend. The psychological interest, and the humor- ous result, arise from his efforts to conduct himself right royally, in the midst of the most ludicrous outward difficulties, and surrounded by unbeliev- ing friends, who make sport of him, and from the blindness of his fixed idea, and his own limited nature, are able completely to govern him. Nicholas Margraf is the son of parents wholly opposite in character; his mother, a gentle and amiable Catholic, enthusiastic in her love for holy images and pictures of the saints, while her hus- band is cold and heartless ; a miser, wholly engag- ed in the avaricious heaping up and increase of riches, by the gains of his apothecary's shop, and little scrupulous as to the means. The fixed idea of the son must be nourished by the lavish use of money ; and this must be obtained by making diamonds with the chemical apparatus, furnished by the apothecary's business. Richter begins his work in the biographical form, and, as usual, with the childhood and edu- cation of his hero. He brings out, in rich profu- sion, secret and avowed motives, and surrounds his hero with characters of every grade of humor and folly. Jean Paul professed the artistical faith, that a 276 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. fictitious character will not engage the sympathies of the reader, that does not create a moral interest in spite of his faults and weaknesses ; he therefore unites with his hero's limited faculties, a disinter- ested desire to make others happy ; and with his superficial smattering of all the sciences, a princely desire to lavish money. In the course of the work Paul touches with exquisite satire, most of the fol- lies and vices of the time. The vertigoes of edu- cation and finance ; the follies of gold-seeking and title-seeking, of proselyte-making and system-mak- ing ; the coquetry of love, and the affectation of the fine arts. And, in this last great work, he contended with noble courage, armed with his own weapons, for the political freedom of his country, and the object dearest to his heart, the cause and the freedom of the people. In going back to his own childhood to describe that of his hero, to whom he gave the same con- trasts between the destitute present and the anti- cipated splendid future ; the same phantasy for changing stones into gold, that belonged to his own, Jean Paul formed the resolution to unite his own life in a peculiar manner with that of his hero ; and while he parodied the poetry in that of Nicholas Margraf, to place the actual life near it as a companion. He no doubt borrowed the idea LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 277 from Goethe's Dichiung und Wahrheit ; but instead of interweaving them, as Goethe has done, the truth from his own hfe was placed near its poetry, in the image of another. In this way only, can the comic tone and the apparent affectation of speaking in the third person in his Autobiography, be explained or excused. Richter apparently seized the idea of appending his own biography to a comic romance, as only under a humorous form could he lay bare before the world, his concealed emotions, his crushing poverty, and the low and narrow circumstances of his early life. But he seems soon to have found that it was far more agreeable to idealize his own life under the mask of his fictitious heroes, as he had already done from Wuz to Fibel, and thus reflect upon it a poetic splendor, that vanished as soon as the naked truth was opposed to the poetical illusion ; he proceeded, therefore, only to his thirteenth year : afterwards, the death of his son, that rendered the humorous form in which he had begun it, dis- pleasing to him, and his succeeding blindness, never permitted him to resume it. Jean Paul had made more extensive preparation for his Comet than for any other preceding work. The books forming the Quarry consisted of six- 218 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. teen volumes of twelve sheets each. It was left, as already mentioned, incomplete, although Ger- man critics pronounce it one of the most artistically perfect of all the author's works.* * To give a complete analysis of Nicholas Margraf would require sheets instead of pages, and would be quite beyond the limits of this work. In the autobiography the reader has a specimen of Jean Paul's humorous style ; the extract from the Kampaner Thai, in the Appendix, is in his earnest, or what is called his sentimental manner ; while his description of his Curland Visit, also in the Appendix, is a fair specimen of Paul's usual manner of writing. CHAPTER X. RICHTER VISITS NURNBURG ON ACCOUNT OF HIS EYES. KANNE. HIS BLINDNESS. LAST LET- TERS. " SELINA." Accompanied by his daughter Emma, ^ ^ ^^^^ once again only did Richter leave home ^^^^ ^^' to visit a celebrated eye-surgeon in Nurnburg. An extract from his letter to Caroline must suffice. " Nurnburg, August 30, 1823. ..." Yesterday, at noon, I arrived here. In Erlangen I visited Schelling, whose pleasing wife gave us tea. He was full of love, but cannot satisfy me.^ Wednesday, I was with Kanne in his stove-heated chamber, on account of his gout. His is a noble, splendid physiognomy. The outer head has won, through Christianity, what the ^ With his philosophical views. 280 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. inner has lost. He received me with heartfelt love.' But in the midst of his cheerfulness he put out his theological sheeps-ears against his physician, thus — ^ that medicine can do no good — only help from above.' Of objections the little ears would hear nothing. He pointed with true friendly love to my heart, and said ' he would rely upon that — that it would he at last,' — (namely, Kannish.) I answered, ' that with age I removed further from him.' He said, ' In the end we shall see,' — I, ^ and beyond the end ! ' We could live years happily together ; yet, without one moving the smallest pebble's weight of the other. . . . Next week I shall end my useless visit here. My eyes will make journeying always an empty plea- sure, and the most beautiful days one enjoys better at home. Here, there is, alas, no distinguished head ! Among the men, not one. The last time I had Schweigger, Pfaff, Hegel. But I knew all this before, and the ascendency of the merchants, and their coldness towards poetry, and philosophy, and the arts ; and the want of elevation in the women, that always keeps pace with the others, and on whose heads there are rarely faces such as one ' This was the man for whom Richter obtained a situation with the duke of Meiningen, and through whose theological mysticism Richter's son was sacrificed. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 281 meets in the Wendelschen tea dance by the dozen. — I found only one beautiful exception, and was, on my way home, under the starry heavens, a little blessed. " I knew all this before, and therefore I remain in the house, and am glad when the weather is somewhat bad. . . . . . . '' The people here are well meaning and obliging ; as the bookseller Eickhorn, who makes his servant mine, and my good old Osterhausen, who will take me tomorrow to a pleasure-garden. . . . The common people refresh me through their orderly appearance, and their true-hearted- ness. " Poor Hof ! The flames shine always horribly before me. If one could dare to think of himself in such a calamity I But one imagines the loss can be as important nowhere, as to himself. Thus I reflect that, for the second time, all the memo- rials of my youth are burnt ; in Schwarzenbach and in Hof, and if I should return there nothing is left for memory and reflection, and my youth has a second time passed away. We will love each other more truly, my Carohne, since life is so short, so full of changes, so decaying ! I greet ye, my dear children. Greet all thy friends warmly." Richter made no more journeys. His increasing 282 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. blindness rendered all the tender attentions of home necessary, if not to his cheerfulness, at least to his daily comfort. He consulted many cele- brated oculists, tried glass after glass, and many reputed healing remedies ; but, although he parted with the light of day, and his beloved occupations with painful struggles, and ever-increasing regret, he was obliged at last to feel that the contest was hopeless, and resignation his latest duty. Once again was he separated from his wife, which gave occasion to a few more letters, the last, except a few notes, that he ever wrote. Caroline never left home, except upon some call of sorrow or duty ; namely, at the death of her father she visited the widowed mother, and spent some time in Berlin ; now she was sum- moned to the dying bed of her sister Minna Spazier, who has been often mentioned as supporting by literary exertions, her young family in Dresden. From scattered hints it would appear that Minna was very unhappy in her second marriage. No reader can have avoided noticing the singu- lar fact, that united as were Richter and his wife, and apparently sympathizing in every agreeable emotion, and in every social enjoyment, Caroline was never the companion of those little journeys, from which Richter derived such elevation of LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 283 spirits, that it would seem as if the being he loved best, must have been indispensable to his com- plete enjoyment. But for this there were many reasons. Their income was never sufficient to permit them to relax the strictest rules of economy in their expenses ; and, although the recreation of journeying was absolutely necessary to restore the powers of the author, exhausted by intense appli- cation during ten months of the year, Caroline, in her quiet, domestic, feminine duties, did not require the alleviation of novelty or pleasure. Richter, also, in all his journeys, was received diu6. feted as a literary lion, a distinguished author ; he was patronized by people of rank ; and invited to the palaces of princes, not on a footing of equality, but as one who was expected by his wit and celebrity to repay the condescension and flattery graciously bestowed upon him.' Jean Paul had less obsequiousness, and a more manly independence in his intercourse with princes and nobles than any foreign author, with whose works we are acquainted ; and, although it is diffi- cult for us in the new world to understand the wide differences of rank in the old aristocratic countries, we can easily imagine that to a woman of true nobility of soul, and refined delicate feel- ings, all condescending attentions, that implied ^ See Appendix. 284 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. any inferiority in outward advantages would have been painful and derogatory. From what we can gather of the character of Caroline, she seems to have been the guiding and protecting spirit of all who came within her influ- ence ; all her journeys were errands of mercy, all her letters messages of love. She had become, like those beautiful plants that from the centre of the flower send out protecting branches, that shade and refresh after the blossom has fallen. In this last separation Richter wrote to her thus : '* Beloved Caroline : The clock-work of house- keeping goes and strikes accurately, as you have wound it up. Emma does everything well, and takes excellent care of me. She is an excellent Hausmutter (house-mother). The children are good, and every day give me a new joy. I have nothing to wish, but one dearer than all the others near me. We speak longingly of thee, and I shall rejoice at your return, as formerly at my own, when so heavenly a time always followed it." Again: " Beloved Caroline — Letter-writing is, as you know, extremely diflicult on account of the gray paper. The sulphur bath, for which Emma takes punctual care, works excellently, but not im- mediately upon the eyes ; but reading, and, still more, writing, is impossible, as the light is not strong enough. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 285 " Ah, this melancholy half year of my life ! The former years of poverty and contempt were Sun- days in comparison. Now, I am deprived of so much, and condemned to so much. . . . '^ Enjoy, at least for thy sacrificing days, a few joyful hours. Be not too anxious for us who are sound at heart. Visit the terrace often at evening, and, farewell ! farewell 1 " Next day. "Your letter has touched and refreshed me, dearest ! and increased the longing for your return that I have hitherto concealed. Exactly on the morning that, the first time for many months, I went to Rollwenzil's,' your heart's words delight- ed me. I must indeed suffer much — much! for as yet all means help only a little, or impercepti- bly ; but I firmly believe God will send me, even in this extremity, only what is best for me ! " For God's sake provide a good opportunity to return. Venture upon no risks, but think of the poor children who love thee so inexpressibly I Control yourself, and take no formal leave of Minna — rather take none, and tell her before that you must leave her, else she will die in your arms. How do I already rejoice at your relations • The cottage, out of the city, where Jean Paul had his study. 286 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. of your Dresden life. Come, only, soon ! You will be received with thirsting love and jubilee ! Greet the sufferer. Thine 1 r." Thus adjured, Caroline was obhged to leave the death-bed of her sister, and when she returned to her home she found her husband almost wholly deprived of the light. His blindness obliged him to relinquish the hope of finishing Selina, the book upon the immortality of the soul. So fondly had he cherished the hope of completing his proofs of this highest consolation of humanity, that he seem- ed really to believe the Eternal Providence would grant him time ; that darkness would not fall upon him, until he had made it light to others ; and in this view he withstood all indications of illness, and repelled any anticipations of death. The dramatic interest of Selina is slight. The characters of the earlier work, Camjjaner Thai, are again brought before the reader with the beau- tiful addition of Sdina, the daughter of Gione, of the former work. The proofs of immortality are drawn from the positive religious belief of every nation, and of all times ; and Richter wished to impart to them the highest degree of completeness by poetic illustration, as well as by arguments of the deepest philosophy. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 287 '' There are souls," he says, '' for whom hfe has no summer. These should enjoy the advantages of the inhabitants of Spitzbergen, where, through the winter's day, the stars shine clear as through the winter's night. They should have the nearest compensation for their colder and more distant sun." For such persons the book is written. " Take from the wounded soul, lying on the sick- bed of life, the prospect from above, and he is doubly unhappy, and robbed and wounded." The divisions of the book bear the names of the planets ; and it is said in the preface, " as Herodotus gave the divisions of his history, Goethe his Herman and Dorothea, the names of the Muses, so, on account of the greater number and the infe- rior value of his chapters, Jean Paul gave them the names of the eleven planets. At least, he says, there is one resemblance in his chapters, of which the wandering stars need not be ashamed, '' that these, as themselves, revolve around a sun as their centre, which has the double name of God or Immortality." When Richter found his strength, as already mentioned, rapidly failing, instead of going on to the completion of the whole work, he did what he ' See Appendix. 288 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. had never done in any former work, went back, and revised and improved the five planets, or first chapters ; and a few weeks before his death, said, with a deeply melancholy tone, entirely unusual to him, '' that now these chapters were ready for printing." This was the more remarkable, as he was apparently unconscious of the near approach of death, and, although he despaired of ever see- ing the light again, he hoped, by the help of an amanuensis, to complete the numerous works already planned. The last words he ever penned, except a short note to Otto, and these with trenibUng hand, the hnes running into each other and almost illegible, were : '• Knowing each other again (in a future world) is the cardinal point of immortality, as many paternosters close with a relic." " Life departs not from the soul, but vi the soul. It lays its organic sceptre down, and dismisses the world that had hitherto served it, or rather it abandons its empire." Thus unfinished, the work was hidden from Richter's eyes, that yet lay so warmly at his heart that he wrote by the hand of his wife to her nephew. Otto Spazier, to lend him his eyes and pen for its completion. He closes his letter thus : "I expect a delightful life with you. Every LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 289 morning till ten o'clock you shall be left to your own studies ; then, I shall request you also to lend me your eyes, if not your hand, for the chaos of my library. We will read a little, copy a little, talk a little, be a little joyful, and that is all I expect from you You cannot guess what a balsam your arrival will be for my wounded eyes, and for the half of my life crushed by destiny ! " ' " Such a call from the immortal old man, as it entered my solitary apartment," says his nephew, " filled me with delight. The reverend image of his beautiful old age, a just reward for a holy life, rose before me, and with joyful haste I travelled through the wet days of October, and entered his study on the evening of the twenty-fourth of that month. The same joyful tremor affected me as formerly, when, at the twilight hour, I had listened here with his family to his voice of wisdom. The windows of his room looked towards the rising sun, and far over the garden and over scattered trees and houses, towards the Fichtelgebirge, that bounded the horizon. A mingled perfume of flowers and grapes led the fancy to southern climes, to beautiful blue June days, or to the vint- age on the Rhine. His sofa, where he usually * Jean Paul refers to the death of his son. TOL. II. 19 290 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. read in a reclining posture, was opposite this win- dow, and before it his writing table, upon which appeared ^ regular confusion of pens, paper of all colors, glasses, flowers, books, among which last were the small English editions of Swift and Sterne. At the other window stood a small piano, and near this a smaller table. Depending from the cage of his birds was a little ladder, that led to his own work-table, where the birds were permit- ted to roam among the confusion, sprinkling with water from the flower glass the sheet upon which the poet was writing. Often was Paul seen to stop in his most excited passages, to let his little canary, with her young, travel, undisturbed, over the page, where the water she scattered from her feathers mingled with the ink from his pen. In the corner of the room was a door by which, unob- served, Richter could descend the steps into the garden, and on a cushion near it rested his white, silky-haired poodle. A hunting pocket and rose- wood staff* hung near. All three had often been the companions of his wanderings, when, on beau- tiful days, he went through the chestnut avenue, to the little Rolwenzell cottage. All in the room retained its usual position, but the ruling hand appeared to have been absent. The light was shaded, and the windows hung with LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 291 green curtains ; the robust form that in former years, even before the snow drop had loosened the icy crust of winter, had worked long hours, with uncovered breast in the open air, lay supported with cushions, and shrouded in furs upon the sofa ; his body drawn together, and eyes forever closed. " Heaven," said he, " chastens me with a double rod, and one is a heavy cudgel ! (meaning his blindness ;) but I shall be well again now. Ah ! we have so much to say and to do. But we shall have a thousand hours — at least, minutes." His voice was weaker, his words slower, and it cut me to the heart to hear him speak of himself. It was late — and soon his wife, ever watchful, called me away, to return to him again in the morning." Early the next morning he began a complete re- vision of his works. The nephew read aloud, and Paul inserted his alterations. When Spazier thought one necessary, he indicated it by pausing, to draw his attention. With great mildness and patience Paul listened to every objection ; and himself re- lated, explained, praised, and blamed. He recon- sidered and overlived thus his whole spiritual life in his works. In the comparisons scattered through his sixty-four volumes, of which indeed every page is filled, he found only two or three were repeated. 292 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. The arrival of his nephew, and the hope of com- pleting Selina, and the revision of the new edition of his works, gave new life to Richter. Great indeed was his joy, as they were read to him, that he could assert, that he had never written a line against virtue, or one, that for this reason, he could wish to blot. But he soon began to perfect rather those that he considered unfinished, than to con- tinue his new works ; and we must ever regret that he left his Autobiography unfinished ; that he went home before he had given us this golden key to his works ; the psychological unfolding of his poetic nature ; the impression that the ever- changing scenes of life and literature had made upon him since his childhood. This he intended to make a memorial of gratitude to those great men, Gleim, Herder, and Jacobi, to whom he felt himself so much indebted. He had already spoken earnestly of his eternal gratitude to Gleim, for the timely present of fifty dollars ; and he intended to give a full-length picture of the princely form of Herder, and to illustrate his character with beams of light. But alas, it was now too late. His weakness increased so rapidly that he was obliged to resign, but with all possible submission, the design of con- tinuing any of his works. He withdrew from all self-activity, and gave up the pleasure of speaking LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 293 of subjects, that in his circumstances, would have had only an egotistical interest, and devoted him- self for the short remainder of life, to the happi- ness of those about him. The long, dark days of November were cheered by reading. The books that until the last he delighted most to listen to, were Herbarfs Psychology and Herder^s Philoso- phy of the History of Man. When wearied of these, he desired to smile at some humorous work, and his nephew laments that German literature is so poor in books of this kind. At this moment rose higher than ever within our Richter the apostle John's power of love. Age often serves the heart as it does the outward form, takes from it the fullness and tenderness of sympathy, and leaves it hard, and sharply angular ; but in the heart of Jean Paul love was a plant that found ever a richer and a warmer soil, disclosed continually new buds and blossoms, spread its roots and fibres always further, and extended, in his last days, the perfumed shadow, that gave him peace and blessed dreams. He sat, as Spazier describes him,^ Hke an inno- cent, tranquil child, with the firmest confidence in * The narrative from which I have taken that of the last days of Jean Paul, is so extremely inflated and diffuse, that the wish to avoid the same, has perhaps led me to the opposite error. 294 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. God and in future good, although the present was sinking around him. His own pain only increased his interest in the joys of others. His weakness, that denied him acts of love, impelled him to ex- press more fully the language of affection, that had been till now concealed in actions. The friends who visited him never heard a complaint over his blindness ; but to anxious questioning he answered with low, but cheerful, hopeful, signification. When others, thinking to conceal from his situation, spoke of hopes and joys for the future, he drew them immediately to subjects of more universal interest. Self-forgetting, he would speak to his visiters of any other subject. As this was the time of the so-called, freedom's contest in Germany ; deeply as his true German heart had been directed to the interests of, freedom, now its beams spread a glow in his evening sky. As his eyes were extinguished, and expression denied him through this organ, he sought, by a more tender tone of voice, to draw others to his heart, and when his voice also failed, love pervaded the whole expression of his countenance. His cheerfulness was much increased when one or two friends were added to his domestic circle. Otto, or Emanuel came almost every evening. They clustered around his sofa, and here, like an electric LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 295 spark, he kindled all about him. Every new thought received from him organization, and he ever suggested something new ; his picture-lan- guage never wearied ; and the departure of his friends was always too early. One evening the conversation turned upon the sense of smell, and Richter mentioned how strongly the recollection of perfumes excited the imagination. He said " that his father, sometimes, in his boyhood, shut him into his room, and that when he went again into the open air he met the fumes of the tobacco the carpenters smoked, and that tobacco now brought back, like the sound of the cowbell, his whole childhood before his soul. Through the sense of smell, as its impressions are so undecided, the romantic is singularly excited. Schiller always rejoiced in perfumes, while Goethe, the plastic artist, was more interested by the form of the nose. Smell is the most refined of the senses. A gentle and refined Indian would think us all offen- sive animals. Herder had the most delicate sense of smell, but in every thing he was an elephant J^ With this one word Richter delineated Herder's greatness, his delicate organization, which also dis- tinguishes the elephant among animals, and his Indian nature. In the last weeks of his life he could take a less 296 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. active part in the conversation, on account of the weakness of his voice. For this he often touch- ingly asked pardon ; and Carohne sat with, her ear close to him, to interpret to those less accus- tomed to his accents. Eight days before his death the darkest night settled upon him. Even then he sat patiently, trusting the coming spring would bring again for him, the warm sun, and the blue heaven, and the eternal stars. Many times he raised his darkened eyes to the window, hoping a faint ray would pierce the gloom ; once only his pain broke out in words, as his friends were lamenting the helpless- ness of his situation, that prevented him from seeking relief for his other infirmities. The thought for a moment overpowered him, and in the most touching voice he cried out with Ajax in the Iliad, " Light I light only, then may the enemy come ! " The extraordinary talent for music that Richter possessed has often been mentioned. When weary with thought, he would seat himself at the instru- ment, and with an accompaniment on the keys with one hand, he would translate with the other the emotions that filled his mind. When they were tender, he as well as all who heard him, would break out in tears, till all hearts were LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 297 melted. The music of others also affected him deeply, and once in a large party he could not restrain his tears, when Mignon^s song was sung by a young lady. In the evening, during this last dark period, when the day had exhausted him, he longed for the refreshment of music ; but the voices of his children overpowered him, and his father's heart wept at their simplest tones ; but when in the next apartment the sounds appeared to come from a distance, he could listen to the voices that he loved. Then he would turn his face towards the wall, and earth and sorrow were forgotten ; while he flew with the sounds to fairer climes, and flow- ers, and mountains and beautiful forms. When his family returned, they would find him sitting upright on the sofa, and in his face were the traces of emotion, that his darkened eyes could no longer express. Schubart's splendid composition of the Earl King, '' Thou dear child ! come, go with me," Zelter's song of the Harper in Meister, and the many-voiced little song of the people, '' So many stars are in the sky," and many of Goethe's songs lulled him so blessedly, that they seemed to exert a wonderful physical power on his well-being. One evening he said it was as if, during the sing- 298 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ing, some one had drawn over him a soft and warm mantle, and when the sounds ceased, he wondered to find no covering upon him. He was deeply moved one evening, when a young girl sung a Spanish song before his door, accompanied by the guitar. It brought the south into his winter apartment, and excited and warmed his fancy. Richter went every morning to his study, and continued revising with his nephew the new edi- tion of his works, until from weakness of the breast his voice could no longer be heard. The soul seemed to have withdrawn from all the exter- nal organs, and to communicate with the outward world only through the ear ; the eye was turned inward upon the soul, and his biographer says, " The volume of the noble brow seemed to expand still more, as if thought sat visibly upon it ; the outline of the delicate nose became more beauti- ful, and around the firmly closed mouth the most amiable mildness played. That which has come to us from tradition, of the bust of Plato ; what the saints have told us of the expression of the holy Christ, hovered upon his face. Deprived of the veil of human senses, with which the earth protects the dwelling-place of thought, the beauti- ful form spoke only of the spirit, and of immortal- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 299 ity ; a tremor of reverence filled the heart of the spectator, and unconsciously, the hands were fold- ed as if in prayer ; every one who entered spoke softly, as if in the presence of a holy being." On the morning of the fourteenth of November, when his nephew came down, Richter for the first time was absent from his study. Spazier found him in the apartment of his wife, and, although early. Otto and his physician were with them. Caroline sat with her ear close to the mouth of her husband, for she only could now understand the well-known, but imperfect accents. He said " good morning," when his nephew entered, for his hearing was still acute. Through the perpetual night about him, and the irregularity of his repose, Richter had lost the con- sciousness of the course of time, and thought it was already evening. He was confirmed in this impression by the presence of the physician, who usually made his visit in the evening, and not to make him more uneasy they humored the error, and did not try to undeceive him. His nephew read the newspaper to him, and some passages from Herder's spiritual works ; but he seemed this day to thirst more than ever for the voices of his wife and children ; his youngest daughter climbed perpetually on the back of his 300 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. chair, and held her youthful face close to his. The son of Herder came in ; and it so happened, that just at this time the transfer of the princess of Lucca took place in Bayreuth. The incident was more noticed, because it was to the same Saxon prince Max, the transfer of whose first wife, also an Italian princess, Jean Paul had described in Hesperus. So remarkable a coincidence could not escape a poet, who professed, as Richter, to believe in the duality of all things. Young Her- der told him, that the Bust of the prince, as the Portrait in Hesperus, accompanied the princess, borne in a sedan chair, and what appears infinitely comic, dined and reposed wherever the princess rested. This led the conversation to Hesperus, and Richter whispered many alterations he intend- ed to make in that work ; and said it had failed totally of the object he wished to accomplish in writing it. Noon had by this time arrived. Richter, think- ing it was night, said, '* It was time to go to rest ! " and wished to retire. He was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and all was arranged as if for repose ; a small table near his bed, with a glass of water, and his two watches ; a common one and a repeater. His wife now brought him a wreath of flowers that a lady had sent him, for every one LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 301 wished to add some charm to his last days. As he touched them carefully, for he could neither see nor smell them, he seemed to rejoice in the images of the flowers in his mind, for he said repeatedly to Caroline, " My beautiful flowers, my lovely flowers ! " Although his friends sat around the bed, as he imagined it was night, they conversed no longer ; he arranged his arms as if preparing for repose, which was to be to him the repose of death, and soon sank into a tranquil sleep. Deep silence pervaded the apartment. Caro- line sat at the head of the bed, with her eyes im- movably fixed on the face of her beloved husband* Otto had retired, and the nephew sat with Plato's Phcedon in his hand, open at the death of Socrates. At that moment a tall and beautiful form entered the chamber ; and, at the foot of the bed, with his hands raised to heaven and deeply moved, he re- peated aloud the prayer of his Mosaic faith. It was Emanuel, and next to Otto, the most beloved of Richter's friends. About six o'clock the physician entered. Rich- ter yet appeared to sleep ; his features became every moment holier, his brow more heavenly, but it was cold as marble to the touch ; and as the 302 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. tears of his wife fell upon it, he remained immov- able. At length his respiration became less regu- lar, but his features always calmer, more heavenly. A slight convulsion passed over the face ; the phy- sician cried out, " that is death ! " and all was quiet. The spirit had departed ! All sank, praying, upon their knees. This mo- ment, that raised them above the earth with the departing spirit, admitted of no tears ! '' Thus Richter went from earth, great and holy as a poet, greater and holier as a man ! *' Involuntarily we recall the death-bed of another great poet, on that delicious summer's day when the windows were all open, and the only sound the ripple of the Tweed upon its stony bed. Here, in the midst of winter, a deeper repose must have consecrated the death-bed of Richter, as if Nature herself stood reverently still, when her worshiper and interpreter laid down the garment in which he had ministered in her temple. Richter was buried by torch-light : the unfin- ished manuscript of SeUna borne upon his coffin, and the noble ode of Klopstock, — " Thou shalt arise, my Soul ! " sung by the students of the Gymnasium at the burial vault. LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 303 Otto could not survive his loss. He lived only a few months, in order to arrange the unfinished sheets of Selina ; and then, in secret mourning, followed the departed friend. CONCLUSION. I HAVE now finished my task, and I might safely leave the biography of Richter to make its impres- sion upon the reader without one word of com- mentary ; but like Otto, I linger by the tomb of my friend, unwilling to part with him who has been my companion so long. I have not the presumption to imagine that I can enlighten those who have had opportunities to study the works of Jean Paul, from which alone his character can be appreciated ; but in this country it has been the custom to contrast him with Goethe, and to class them, as belonging to opposite schools in literature. They are, indeed, widely different, but the one need not blind us to the excellence of the other. They were widely different in their lives. Goethe grew up in a happy home, where the genial disposition of his mother, who used playfully to say, '' her Wolfgang LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 305 and herself were of the same age," (in fact, he was born in her seventeenth year,) led him to enjoy every natural good, every innocent pleasure ; while Jean Paul, born in poverty, brought up in almost ascetic frugality, tended by a mother so sorrow- bowed, so fearful of joy that she could not even understand her gifted son's fame ; living in an ob- scure village with few associates, and none supe- rior to himself, so that he could form no impartial and accurate estimation of himself, differed in this, as in every other respect from Goethe. Goethe stood upon an elevation above his fellows, attained by what the Germans call universality, the power of observing all the bearings and points of the times, from an elevation far above them all. The difference between Goethe and Richter is not more striking than the anomaly in the charac- ter of each, and the discrepancy between that character and their works. Goethe, whose clas- sical culture would not allow him to violate the unities, whose polished exterior gave him the ap- pearance of a Grecian god, in private life per- mitted himself much license, and of his associates would cry out, " oh, that they had the heart to commit some absurdity ; " while Jean Paul, in his works so wild and luxuriant, that he might be VOL. II. 20 306 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. compared to a great, gnarled oak, making grand music in its branches as they stretched towards heaven, while the httle singing birds nestled in its leaves ; in private life hedged himself round with rules and resolutions, and all the safeguards of order and form. His journals are filled with reit- erated regulations, and expressions of repentant sorrow whenever he violated the least of them. It was safe for Goethe to allow himself the seduc- tions of social and polished hfe ; but Richter, whose great and irregular nature was always breaking through the polished border of conven- tionalism, planted himself around with the thorny hedge of minute observances. Goethe needed no rules, no restraints ; he was in no danger of the discourteous developments of a generous man- hood ; his nature was polished to elegance. If he ever struggled, '' the graces,^' as Bettine said, " kept him prisoner." He needed no reiterated hints in his journal, to do everything in its season, and keep everything in its place ; the clockwork of his nciture went nei- ther too fast nor too slow, and stru(,k the hour at the exact second, while the virtue of neatness was in him almost sublime. Richter's life may be divided into three epochs, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 307 and his works into three corresponding divisions. The first, that of pure satire, terminated with the writing of the " Contented Schoobnaster." The infancy and early youth of Richter alone were genial and poetical. From his entrance into the Hof gymnasium, through his Leipzig life, he was strugghng with actual want, and opposing an iron resolution to an adverse destiny. At this time a cold skepticism shrouded his mind ; he had not broken the crust of that merely intellectual period of his life, when the buds of his fancy and all the warm springs of his heart were imprisoned by the ice of an ungenial belief. At this time, his French and English studies led him to Pope, Shaftesbury, Swift, Rabelais, and the encyclope- daeists. He wrote only satires. To give interest to these essays, that were without all poetical or dramatic charm, he acquired his peculiar manner of writing, crowded his page with figures, compari- sons and antithesis ; ransacked heaven and hell, and all the regions of earth for illustrations, anec- dotes, proverbs, and quaint expressions, and ac- quired what Carlyle has called his claptrap man- ner. This manner was foreign and artificial, for his private journal, written at this period, is free from everything of the kind. This manner of writing became a second nature ; he says himself, 308 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. he could not help it, " that his figures and illus- trations were like mice let out of a trap, one caught hold of the tail of the other in interminable suc- cession." The usual theme of Richter's satires is the con- trast of the infinite in man's breast with the low and narrow circumstances in which he is placed, and in this early period it is treated with the bitter and cutting coldness of a sarcastic laugh. But his soul was soon unsatisfied. He began to long after his inheritance. He could no longer quiet his thirst after a higher good with a scornful laugh. We find in his journal that, '-he laid long hours in the night upon the dewy grass, and longed to allay the thirst of his soul by looking into the starry heavens. When he arose and saw the impression his body had made upon the grass, he thought of his grave, and the flowers thus pressed together ; the terror of annihilation seized him with iron hand. Then came the warm beams of the arisen sun ; and the blessed thought of God, and his love to man, that would burst the gate of the grave ; and his sunken heart rose again." Such moments sometimes occur in life, when a strong and powerful emotion has the effect of the most startling events. We know not whether Richter meant to represent this moment as a turn- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 309 ing from darkness to light ; but the death of his two youthful friends, that occurred at this period, fixed his thoughts upon immortality, and a strenu- ous exertion freed his soul from its fetters. Now, he turned back in imagination to his childhood in Joditz and Schwarzenbach, and it appeared in the ever-increasing light of poetry ; the perfume of his childish faith and early education, w^as again breathed into his life. Now, his heart began to overflow with emotion, and bitter pain at a misdi- rection of his talents, that had deprived his youth of elevation and spiritual joy. He had no longer before his mind, the cold conception of the folhes of fools and simpletons, but also the disappoint- ments and fond longings of the suffering and good. How significant is this passage in his journal of November, in this year. " And you, my brothers, I will love more, I will create for you more joy. I will give up my greater plans, and limit my endeavors, to make you cheerful, and turn my comic powers no longer, as hitherto, to torment you. I will use my art to make myself cheerful, to content myself with every necessary limitation ; and thus to win joy for you. I will make you happy by imparting what I have hitherto gained. Fantasy and wit shall be united to find consola- tion, cheerfulness and joys in the most Hmited of 310 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. life's relations." The result of this holy purpose of his life, were the works, beginning with Wuz, and ending only with the Selina. Few have been like him, faithful to a great idea. He had, as we have seen, consecrated himself to instructing his countrymen through the press, and no office, no emolument, no honor seduced him. In his cold and hungry hut, in his humble school, he wrought out, in patience and solitude, the gems that he afterwards joyfully produced. He sur- rendered his soul to God, and his life became in harmony with the true, the beautiful, the good. The very limited relations in which Richter stood with others, the poverty of incidents in his life, the few characters he knew, the small number from which he could choose his hero, compelled him to go back to his early recollections ; and his memory and fantasy supplied him with a model that answered to the wants of his soul, that in poetry, as in Hfe now, thirsted for love. Wuz is the embryo of a whole succession of such charac- ters appearing in Jean Paul's after romances. He is the first result of the author's creative imagina- tion, and the transition from his satirical to his serious, earnest works. In this conception is first apparent the so much talked-of double nature of Richter, the contradiction, the contest of form LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 311 with tendency. Richter had not in the beginning of his change the courage to manifest his feehngs and emotions. He was ashamed to open his heart to the pubhc ; he is, therefore, in this work, through ridiculous folhes in Wuz, constantly interrupting the earnest impression of the work. But although he had freed by this exertion, his earnest creative power from the mastery of the comic and familiar, the process took place too late for the comic ever to be entirely subjected. The contest continued through all his serious works, and takes the form in them of the most genial humor. He compares this tendency of his nature to the bird Merops, whose tail is turned towards heaven, but in this direction continues to rise. The second peculiarity of Wuz, which is more or less that of all Richter's serious works, is, that he lends to the character the peculiarities of his own childhood. Hence, for the first time, his father and himself, and all the idyls of village hfe, appear in the borrowed light of poetry. As they pass before him he gives them individuality, and the coloring of reality. It seemed only necessary for him to touch his native ground, the home of his childhood, and from them he immediately received inspiration. The contest, as I have said above, of the serious 312 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. and humorous, never ceased. Humor was often, even in his most serious works, the quahty that ruled his nature ; the product not now of con- tempt, but of love ; springing from the heart, as much as from the imagination, and pouring the balm of a sympathizing spirit over the wounds of humanity. If I mistake not, Richter's humor is the quality that has made him so beloved by the Germans. Its origin is a true sensibility to the discrepancies and contrasts of life, and a quick perception of the alleviations, which his rare gifts enabled him to present, with a simple and touch- ing pathos. In his preface to Quintus Fixlien, which is an enlarged repetition of Wuz, he tells us the purpose for which he writes. " That I may show to the whole earth, that we ought to value little joys more than great ones ; the night-gown more than the dress coat ; that Plutus's heaps are worth less than his handfuls ; the plum than the penny for a rainy day ; and that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy. Can I accomplish this, I shall, through means of my book, bring up for posterity a race of men finding refreshment in all things ; in the warmth of their rooms, and of their night caps ; in their pillows, in mere apostle's days, in the evening moral tales of their wives, (Slc. You LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 313 perceive my drift is, that man may become a little tailorbird, which, not amidst the crashing boughs of the storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of life, but upon one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there lies snug." ' The whole of this preface, with its quaint illus- trations, is an exquisite essay upon contentment, and w^orth all the philosophy and all the sermons that ever were written on the art of being happy. In the succession of works that followed this, Jean Paul's power of conception and creation rose higher and higher, till he reached the ideal of his Titan. But the theme is always the same, the con- trast of the ideal with the real, the Godlike spark striving with the mists of earth. This leads us to the third series of his works — The Comic, where the striving after the ideal becomes an illusion, and the source oi joy and contentment, rendered infi- nitely humorous by the limited nature of his he- roes, and the contradiction between the striving of the heart and the striving of the head ; the con- trast of the grand idea with the limited and paltry power of execution ; as in Nicholas Margraf, who believes himself born to be a king, and conducts himself right royally under the meanest and most ' I avail myself gratefully of Carlyle's translation, as I have not the oriorinal at hand. 314 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. pitiful environment. All such characters protect themselves by their ideal, from the frosts and mise- ries of the external world. A true enthusiasm, as Richter says, is '' like the bird of paradise, that slumbers flying, and on his outspread pinions over- sleeps, unconsciously, the earthquakes and confla- grations of life, in its long, fair dream of its ideal mother-land :" an illusion becomes comic and ridi- culous only, when it is like that foolish bird, who thinks she protects her body by hiding her head. I have said too much, perhaps, upon this sub- ject, but it seems to me to solve what has been called the enigma of Jean Paul's works. When we come to the execution of his works, to the outward form, there indeed he falls far short of his own ideal. He pronounced one of his works a horn ruin. All, more or less, partake of that character. His conceptions were glorious, perfect ; the edifice stood whole and secure in his mind, but when he comes to the execution upon paper, it seems to fall together in a confused mass; the fair-proportioned columns, that should support the edifice, stand alone, or are prostrate ; ignoble parts of the structure are thrust out in close con- tact with the beautiful, and mar the just propor- tions of the whole ; the divine pictures, and cabi- nets of gems, that should adorn with chaste beauty, LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 315 are scattered in reckless profusion over every part ; meanness and grace, beauty and deformity, are everywhere mingled together. That Richter was deficient in taste has been allow^ed by his warmest admirers. He had an eye open to beauty, but he had also no disgust at de- formity. He seems, indeed, to have imagined beauty in all deformity, except that of vice. This want of taste may be accounted for, by the homely poverty and meanness of his early life. He had a deep and pervading feeling of moral beauty, he also discerned beauty in the humblest forms, where other eyes had never looked for it. But as he was ignorant of the conventionalisms and ele- gancies of polished life, he did not see meanness and deformity where a fashion-educated eye would have found both. Every form of human life, the humblest domestic occupation, possessed beauty for him ; and, in his view, the hunting of rats was as heroic as the hunting of hares. In this respect he reminds us of Shakspeare, — how soon, after an acquaintance with Shakspeare, are- what the French call his barbarisms, forgotten. The result of the perusal of one of Jean Paul's works is like going through a gallery of pictures, where celestial Madonnas, St. Johns, and St. Ce- cilias hang, side by side, with Dutch Inns, Sancho 316 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. Panzas, and drinking boors ; but we go back again and again to study the divine pictures, and feel their elevating influence, while the others, although admired for their truth and nature, are forgotten as works of art. Another peculiarity of Richter, which has been ridiculed by superficial readers, is, what has been called his sentiment alism. It is not a weeping or sickly sentiment that characterizes Jean Paul, but a tenderness of heart, a poetry of his own, that leads him to cherish the flower planted by the hand of love ; to remember birth-days and anni- versaries ; and to institute many festivals of the heart. It is a religion of the affections, that be- longs to the Germans more than to any other na- tion, that makes them capable of superstitious illusions, but that it would be unjust to call senti- mentalism. Humor also is united with this senti- ment, as in no other author, except Sterne, whom Richter is said to resemble. In this respect he also resembles Burns, uniting with a deeper ten- derness, an equally playful and heartfelt pathos. Humor is fatal to false sentiment, extinguishing it as fire devours water, but it heightens the tender- ness of Richter, as a smile on the lip enhances the charm of a tear in the eye. Ah ! I feel how impossible, and how presump- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 317 tuous it may be, to endeavor, through translations, to do adequate justice to an author whose writings awoke the enthusiasm of the whole German na- tion ; excited the admiration of every rank, and were equally felt by such opposite characters as Lavater and Herder, Jacobi and the ancient Gleim. The circumstances of our own country are, it is true, widely different. Richter appeared in Ger- many in the midst of that mighty shaking that was given by the French revolution to all established institutions, to all artificial distinctions among men. As one of his critics writes, '^ The whole nation, like Jean Paul himself, was laboring with the great idea of spiritual and social emancipation. Napo- leon's giant hand had arrested the advancing steps of freedom, and the nation gave itself back to a secretly growing skepticism of feeling, before which the earnest emotions were ashamed to ap- pear. Under this secret pressure of the heart, Jean Paul's works were like the words of a pro- phet, who appeared before them with the freshest and purest emotions of nature ; he had the cour- age to bare for them his breast and his beating heart, while at the same time he held the scourge over the pitiful restraints and vulgar ridicule before which the tearful eye concealed its love, its long- ing, its enthusiasm and its higher faith." Rich- 318 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. ter's heart beat in unison with the heart of his fel- low men. While Goethe withdrew in philosophic retirement to study osteology, or mark the beauti- ful shades upon the lip of a shell, or the corolla of a plant, Richter threw himself, w ith all his powers, heart and soul, into that uprising of the German people for freedom, which has been called a living Poem. With us, there is, indeed, no restraint in thinking, waiting, or speaking ; but is there not a secret infidelity as to the existence of disinterested and self-sacrificing love ; an extremely practical course of thought, that leads us to place all spirit- ual relations among the illusions of life ? Is there not a cold egotism that disposes us to undervalue everything whose material existence cannot be proved by its solid advantages ? All that deviates from the straight forward railroad path of life, is, with us, called transcendentalism. Even Richter has been said, in this country, to belong to the " Bedlamite school.''^ It would be nearly as just to call Paradise Lost of the Bedlamite school. The charge of affectation, that has been made against Jean Paul, is perhaps as unjust, but is not so easily disproved. All affectation supposes some insincerity, or attempt to appear otherwise than strict truth allows. Now Richter was the truest of men ; he was so open and fearless in the asser- LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 319 tion of all his opinions, that he made almost as many opponents as persons with whom he con- versed. But the charge of affectation applies only to the Jorm of his writings, and as already men- tioned, arose from the nature of his first works. I repeat again, that they were essays and satires, without dramatic form or fictitious incident. To give novelty to old themes, he sought out every strange and striking form of expression ; exhaust- ed every department of science, and all the realms of nature, for illustrations ; heaped image upon comparison, and comparison upon image ; distort- ed, and reversed, and turned his sentences topsy- turvy. He was like a juggler, who, in the absence of all dramatis personse, makes one material assume many different forms, to be now a bird, and directly, by slight of hand, a jewel, a flower, or a stone. This manner became habitual to him, and later, he could not, if he would, have thrown it oflf. Otto was always urging him to translate some one of his works into plain German, and publish it without name or preface. Richter answered, " that he would preserve his own manner, in an age when Schiller found nothing in Thummel, and Her- der nothing in Schleiermacher and Tieck, Schle- gel everything ; when Herder called his (Rich- ter's) style classical, and Merkel called it poor ; 320 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. when Goethe said, the stupid Genovefa was good ; and all were pitifully in opposition to themselves and to each other." It was a heavy disadvantage for Richter, that his estrangement from Goethe took place at the beginning of his popularity ; he lost the benefit of that severe, but candid and friendly criticism, that to one so regardless of all form, would have been of incalculable benefit. The reviews, as he justly complained, bestowed upon him only indiscrimi- nate praise, or boundless censure. Mrs. Austin, among English critics, has been most impartially just. She says, " Jean Paul has overlaid a world of genuine and humane wisdom, with bewildering conceits, and far-fetched, unintelligible illustra- tions. But the reader who will look below the surface, will find, that his knowledge of actual human nature was profound, and his views, as to what human nature should be, benevolent, ele- vated, and consistent with the soundest reason and humanity." Mr. Carlyle, to whom we have been so emi- nently indebted for his beautiful and eloquent es- says upon Richter, has been singularly happy in presenting him to the English reader. But I must be permitted to say, that his genuine admiration has led him to exaggerate the peculiarities of Jean LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. 321 Paul. He has taken the color of that upon which he fed, and now gives it back in intenser shades. His later translations from Jean Paul have been deeply overlaid with Carlyleisms. What may be called the machinery of Jean Paul's romances, is as strange as their form. Like Scott, he prefaces his works with a humorous account of the motive and the manner of their composition, and however serious the subject, it is usually set in a comic frame. His characters are few in number, but with little change, they are always the same company, and appear again and again in tragedy, comedy, or farce. Sometimes, as he says himself, they play their parts upon the " cold Mont Blanc of aristocratic life ;" then, in a sheltered cottage in the valley, or in a shepherd's hut ; his favorite theatre is the quiet parsonage of a country minister, where he takes a part himself, and holds the wire that involves or extricates the mysterious motions of his puppets. One of his favorite modes of addressing the public is in a letter to one of his own fictitious characters, in which he indulges himself in all sorts of witty allusions and humorous remarks. His various works are like episodes, where we meet in other, and far different circumstances, our VOL. II. 21 322 LIFE OF JEAN PAUL. old acquaintances, who belong to one great whole, like characters in real life, who meet and part, and meet again. Those that we have met in their early years in one romance, we see again in a happy old age, or we listen to the eulogy that is pronounced by a successor upon their grave. The reader may be surprised that I have uni- formly called Jean Paul a poet ; but if the defini- tion of poet be, " one that gives expression to what others feel ;" one, who interprets that in the heart which, like the inarticulate lisping of the child, cannot be made known for want of ade- quate expression, then he as truly deserves the name of poet, as if every line he has written, were measured, and rhymed with another Une. His great heart beat with the united pulses of all hu- man hearts. He is the truest interpreter of joy and sorrow, love and grief; and all those hidden feelings that are revealed by the poet, as the sun beam penetrates the mine, and shews its hidden treasures. Finally, no poet's inward life is more distinctly made known than Jean Paul's, in his works. In his elevated characters ; in his Gustavus, his Alba- no, his Dehore. Like a solitary sage he looked out from his hermitage upon the ever-swelling and LIFE OF JEAN PAUL.. 323 rushing waves of the Hterature and pohtics of that remarkable period in which he hved. Unmoved by its passions, still and calm, he was like a holy prophet of its issue. Glowing for freedom, truth, and the happiness of man, yet never faiUng in the clearness of his understanding, or the firm- ness of his will. Full of scorn and hatred of all servility and all tyranny, yet ever free from the folly and madness of enthusiasm. With impar- tiality and justice he weighed the advantages of this world in the same scales in which he had placed the hopes of another. I have seen a cast of the Alps, a few feet square, in which mountain and valley, river and lake are represented in their true position and just proportions. The avalanche, the cataract, and the shepherd's little hut are there ; nothing is added, though much is left out ; but ah, how inadequate to represent those giant palaces of nature, those glorious masses of light and color, rising in the blue depths of ether, close neighbors to the stars. Such a representation the present biography must bear to the real Jean Paul. May it induce those who have the power, to become acquainted with him in his works. APPENDIX WiELAND was born in 1733, (just thirty years before Richter,) in Biberac, in Suabia. His father was a Lu- theran minister. In his fourteenth year he was sent to a cloister, where he penetrated deeply into the spirit of the ancients, and became acquainted with English literature. Every thing conspired to make Wieland a poet — his humble natal roof, hallowed by the presence of his father, a learned, patriarchal pastor; the ancient cloisters of Ber- gen, the still monastic Tubingen, his devotion to Sophia La Roche as to the idea of perfection, and the hope, ever retreating before him, but always kept in view, of one day consecrating himself lo her, and to the highest virtue, as to one and the same thing ; his long residence in Switzerland, where he elaborated his works, and gave them the ele- gance, the clearness, and the natural grace, which cannot be attained by mere drudgery. These glad, bright regions of the golden time ; this paradise of innocence, when he regarded what he imagined and dreamed, as absolute reality, he dwelt on long; but disappointments came; he could not succeed in combining these high interests with the necessities of every day existence; the conflict with the outward world began, and, after long struggles, he accepted 326 APPENDIX. the actual as the necessary^ and henceforth made war upon his former romantic dreams; his idea of Platonic love, and upon all that cannot be shown to exist in reality. Hence- forth he permitted no single impression to have dominion over him. Wieland's change of views maybe in part attributed to his residence with count Stadion. His library, rich in modern French and English literature, helped him to descend from that ideal region, in which he loved to dwell with Sophia La Roche, and after he had been wounded by what is called experience, he threw himself entirely on the side of the real. In his fortieth year he was invited by the duchess Amelia to superintend the education of her sons ; and from this time he was assured of a life of leisure and independence, which was continued to him after he had done with his pupils, by a pension from the duke. Wieland, in possession of complete literary leisure, longed for a more poetical retirement, and bought an estate in Osmanstadt, not far from Weimar. Man, born for so- ciety, often cheats himself with the sweet dream that he can live belter, more joyfully in seclusion. In the excitable days of youth we imagine that solitude is the great refuge against ourselves, the grand remedy for the wounds we receive in the contests of life. It is a grave error. The experience of life teaches us that neither the enjoyments of literature nor art can fill the abyss of the soul. Wieland's happiness was interrupted by the death of Sophia La Roche, the daughter of his first love, and the excellent, careful partner of his life, whom Jean Paul thought he could never survive. He did survive for the space of twelve years, but the solitude of Osmanstadt became too oppressive to his bereaved heart, and his friend the duchess Amelia recalled him to herself. He was henceforth a member of her court and house, and when, with others, he had to bear the APPENDIX. 327 afflictive event of her death, court and city vied with each other to console him.^ Wieland's hearVs history, of which Jean Paul says he imparted the particulars to 1dm, a willing listener, was in part his early and innocent connexion with Sophia La Roche, the grandmother, that Bettine mentions so often in her let- ters to Gunderode. She was the daughter of an eminent physician. Her father possessed an extensive and excellent library, and when she was only two years old he taught her to read by the titles of the books, as they rested on the shelves. Her parents gave her early religious instruction, and cultivated a love for all that is beautiful in nature or art. In her sixteenth year she was strikingly beautiful, and was sought in marriage by a learned Italian, who instructed her in the language and literature of his native land. At this time Sophia had the misfortune to lose her excellent mother, and her father became desirous to have her marriage completed; differences arose, however, in con- sequence of religious scruples. Bianconi insisting that all the children of the marriage, daughters as well as sons, should be educated in the Catholic form of Christianity. The father of Sophia immediately annulled the engage- ment; and poor Sophia was obliged, in the presence of her grandmother, father and aunts, to destroy all the letters and souvenirs of her happy love ; the picture of Bianconi was cut into shreds, and a ring, set with brilliants, broken into pieces, and all committed to the flames. Her mother, who had been her tenderest and most sym- pathizing friend, died too early for the happiness of her daughter ; for she would, no doubt, have found a way to smooth all difficulties; but Sophia, who would shed no tear in the presence of her stern relatives, retired to weep in the solitude of her chamber, where she struggled alone with a new temptation. She received a note from Bianconi ' From the notes to Mrs. Austins Characteristics of Goethe. 328 APPENDIX. urging her to a secret marriage, and a flight to his own country, to the bosom of a noble and loving family. He fortified his request by more than thirty letters from her father, where he had unconditionally promised him his daughter. Sophia would not leave her father without his blessing; but in the depths of her soul, and in unconsoled solitude, she vowed constancy to the man who had done so much for her intellectual nature. With this view she desired to enter upon a noviciate, in order to pass her life in a cloister. Her father would not permit this sacrifice ; but he allowed her the uncontrolled use of her time, and to live in retirement, where she devoted herself to study, and to the sciences and accomplishments that Bianconi preferred. Sophia's disinclination to society obtained for her per- mission from her father to go with her sisters to live with her maternal grandfather, who was brother, to the mother of Wieland. The death of the grandfather occurring soon after, Sophia entered the family of Wieland's father, where she lived, as her biographer expresses it, by her own economy. Young Wieland came in the vacation to his father's house, and the beautiful maiden of nineteen inspired him with the most enthusiastic passion. He was two years younger ; but Sophia could then appreciate his noble cha- racter ; a close friendship was formed between them, and even in old age they thanked God for having led them both under the same roof. Often, they kneeled together, and devoted themselves in prayer, to the eternal pursuit and worship of truth and duty. Wieland says, " It was an ideal, but a true enchantment in which I lived ; and the Sophia that I loved so enthusias- tically, was the idea of perfection embodied in her form. Nothing is more certain than that if destiny had not brought us together I should never have been a poet." They vowed to love each other as long as either lived, and virtue eter- nally. APPENDIX. 329 Sophia returned to her father's house, and Wieland to Tubingen; but longing to see Sophia, impelled him, at the end of two years, to return. He then went to Switzerland, where he lived eight years, but always without the pros- pect of any provision that would allow them to marry. At the end of this time Sophia gave her hand to Herr La Roche. It does not appear whether her father's authority was again, as in the first instance, exerted ; or whether considerations of prudence influenced herself; hut the marriage was a very happy one. She informed Wieland of it by a letter, and he seems to have been convinced that her upright and true heart could not have done otherwise ; and he prayed for the continuance of her friendship. "A friendship that had been so pure and disinterested, need not be broken by another union, and in the land of the blessed, if never in this life, we shall meet each other again." Many years after Sophia's marriage Wieland visited her. As she sat at the window, there was a knock at the door ; — a presentiment that it was her friend, ran through her frame, and she called out to him to enter. At the well known sound of her voice, Wieland remained trans- fixed ; when she opened the door, and met him with the heartiest welcome. He stood speechless. Seeing her eld- est son, a beautiful youth, he called him to him, and bow- ing his head over that of the boy, shed streams of tears. Sophia's husband entered the room, when, taking the hands of Wieland and his wife in his, he pressed them together. The noble La Roche cemented the bond of their friendship, which endured yet many years. Sophia could not be otherwise than happy with a man so gifted with every noble quality, as the one with whom Providence had united her, although she married against the voice of her heart. She had hitherto lived in retire- ment, or in learned circles; she was now introduced by her husband into the exclusive society of the German nobility ; 330 APPENDIX. and her knowledge of the world, gained by reading, was corrected by experience. Her truly enlarged mind rose above the conventionalism, and artificial distinctions of rank, and enabled her to see and acknowledge worth and talent, wherever it existed. After sixteen years' service at the court of a Germaa prince, where Sophia had every opportunity to form friend- ships with distinguished characters, her husband retired to an estate in OfTenback, the beautiful residence from which so many of Bettine's letters are dated, and the letter was written that is published in the body of this work. Here she lived with her husband in the enjoyment of the quiet of domestic life ; in devotion to her favorite sciences, sur- rounded by a beautiful nature — a poet called her house a temple of Euphrosyne, where the pious sacrifice flame was always lighted. Goethe, in his biography, gives an in- teresting account of the manner of life at Oflfenback, and of Madame La Roche. Here, after thirty-five years of happy union, she lost her husband, and soon after the blooming youth of twenty-four years old, whom she mentions so touchingly in her letter to Jean Paul. In consequence of the French war she lost the greater part of her fortune ; but her trust in Providence was so firm, that she never for a moment lost her cheerfulness. After thirty years separation, she visited Wieland at Os- manstadt, near Weimar, where he was living at the time of Jean Paul's second visit at Weimar. Wieland had taken the daughter of Sophia La Roche — Sophia Brentano, into that intimate friendship he had ever preserved with the mother; and after the death of both he said, " What I have once tenderly loved, never dies for me. I help myself wiih illusions. They are dead only to my outward sense, and that is certainly painful." The life of Sophia La Roche was a high ideality, and age, instead of lessening it, only increased its pure and APPENDIX, 331 lofty purposes. She was a living proof of the immortality of the soul, for her life was so spiritual, that it must have come immediately from a higher sphere, and imm.ediately returned there. Her deep religious faith, and firm confi- dence in Providence, were immovable; hence her enthu- siastic love of plants, and all the works of God, and her knowledge of all the appearances and phenomena of na- ture. She was extensively acquainted with the sciences ; well versed in ancient and modern history, and her knowl- edge of the philosophy of history, and observation of the fate of nations, as well as of eminent men, not only estab- lished the benevolence of her heart, but made her patient under sorrows, and grateful for her own happy destiny. Every thing connected with the beautiful arts was infinitely dear to her. In early life her poems and pictures of touch- ing scenes were charming. She held the purity of the female character to be the foun- dation of all domestic happiness; without which, no other female virtue could have its influence or power. She studied the science of education, not only through her ten- der interest in her own children, but to make her little books for the benefit of young people, more useful. All these virtues are expressed in her writings, and make her one of the most distinguished female authors of Germany. They are not highly imaginative, but they recommend vir- tue and domestic happiness in a noble, simple, and attrac- tive manner. Her stories are domestic scenes, after the manner of Richardson. She wrote many real and imagin- ary journeys for young people ; many stories to teach resig- nation under affliction ; books of instruction for young ivivcs and housekeepers, and published many translations from the French and English. The female literature of Germany is rich in books of the kind above mentioned, and those of the Fraulein La Roche are among the best. After her death Wieland had the melancholy satisfactioa 332 APPENDIX. of editing her whole works, and writing many prefaces and notes. — Abridged from SchindeVs Biography. II. Herder was the son of poor parents. His father was the teacher of a humble school for girls, "but an earnest, duty- fulfilling, honest man ; his mother, a sensible, industrious, quiet Hausfrau ; distinguished by her gifts of mind and person, and by accomplishments surpassing others of her sex in lowly life." The history of Herder's youth is the often-repeated tale of the unfolding of mind under every circumstance of oppression and want. In his father's fam- ily all the domestic business and the hours of reading, were strictly regulated. If there was anything to be done, the children durst not excuse themselves. It must be done. It was only by strenuous industry that his father could make his small income meet the expenses of a large family. When his father was satisfied with him, his countenance expressed it; and he laid his hand upon his head, and call- ed him Gottes-Friede, (God's peace.) His name was God- fried. Herder's youth was so quiet and reserved, that his teacher thought him dull, and advised his father lo bind him to some mechanical employment; but he observed, that the young man kept his light burning late at night ; and, going into his room long after midnight, he found the bed covered with Greek and Latin classics, open, as if they had been studied ; and the boy lying asleep in the midst, with the lighted candle in his hand. About this time a regiment was quartered in Herder's native place. The surgeon, a benevolent and enlightened raan, was favorably impressed by the young Herder, and ofifered to take him to Konigsberg to study, either medicine APPENDIX. 333 or surgery; and to obtain help for his already-impaired eyes. The offer was received by his parents as a light from heaven in a dark night; and although Herder felt no inclination to surgery, he regarded this deliverance from his destitute and oppressed situation with joy. Immediately after his arrival at Konigsberg, his friend led him to an anatomical school, and the young Herder sank fainting upon the floor ; from henceforth he could not bear the name of surgery without a nervous shudder. As he returned from the school, he met an old school- fellow, who was a student of theology, and resolved to pre- sent himself for examination to the theological faculty of the college. He was immediately admitted; and although his worldly possessions were only three Prussian dollars and eight grotchen, he wrote to his parents, that he would support himself by his own industry. He kept his word, although he practised the strictest economy, and his food was often, for many days together, only bread and water. At the age of twenty, Herder was chosen a teacher of the Domschule in Riga, and began to preach. With true reli- gious feeling. Herder knew how, in his preaching to excite careless minds and insensible hearts. His themes were immortality, love to God and man, and every virtue. With soul-moving eloquence, the ornaments of a youthful fancy, and a persuasive voice, he seized irresistibly upon every heart; while his fine speaking countenance, his eloquent eye and graceful gestures, heightened the impression made by his sermons. It would be delightful to follow Herder through his life ; but I wish to speak of him only in his union with his ac- complished wife. In reading the lives of literary men and women, no one can avoid the melancholy conviction, that divorces, consequently unhappy marriages, are more fre- quent among them than with any other class. The rea- 334 APPENDIX. sons that might be given for this, would open a sorrowful page in the history of women. It is delightful to find, in the lives of Herder and his wife, two literary characters, living from youth to age in the most beautiful harmony of mind, and of pursuit. Caroline helped her husband in his literary difficulties, sympathized in his disappointments, and vindicated his memory in an eloquent and touching memoir^ published after his death. They were betrothed, long before their poverty would allow them to marry. Herder had become governor to a young prince of Darmstadt, and, in accompanying him, on a visit to a kindred prince, he was invited to preach in the court chapel. Caroline gives the following account of her first meeting with her future husband : " Herder was invited to preach. I heard the voice of an angel, and soul's-words such as I never heard before. In the afternoon I saw him, and stammered out my thanks to him. From this lime forth our souls were one. Our meeting was God^s work ! More intimately could not hearts be united than ours. My love was a feeling, a harmony. Ah, certainly no one knew him as I did, thanks be to God! From this time forward we saw each other daily. I felt a happiness never experienced before, but also an indescriba- ble melancholy; I feared I should never see him again ! " The twenty-fifth of August, we celebrated, in the little circle of his friends, his birth-day. He gave me his first letter, and with this letter I received the holiest gift this earth contained for me — his love ! Ah, I could only thank God ! The twenty-seventh, he left Darmstadt, to go to Strasburg. At the moment of separation, I spoke with him for ihefrst time alone. But no ivords were necessary; we were one heart, and one soul ! No separation could ever divide us.*' It was upon this residence in Strasburg, for an operation upon his eyes, that Herder met Goethe, who has given a APPENDIX. 335 minute account of their intercourse, in his Dichtung und Wahrheit. Caroline gives the following account of their marriage : " A worthy old clergyman married us, in the circle of my relations, by the rose-light of a beautiful evening. It was God's blessing that seemed audibly spoken over our union. The separation from my sisters was painful, but he indem- nified me for all, and gave me a thousandfold more than I deserved. I thought now with pain, how, during our be- trolhment, I had tormented him with asking him to forget me; for I had no fortune, and possessed no other advan- tages to make him as happy as he deserved. In every letter, he told me that I was the blessing of his life ; that I durst not, I should not leave him, for thus he would be alone in the world. That God would never leave us; that He would bless our union." Thirty-three years afterwards, Caroline wrote to Jean Paul, on this anniversary, "I am to-day alone, and in the other world. It is the second of May, our marriag"e day." Their m.arriage w^as indeed a happy one. Herder usually wrote by the side of his wife, and she assisted him by copy- ing his rough sketches and first thoughts. Three years after his marriage. Herder was invited to Weimar to fill the place of Consistorial Rath, and court preacher. Many reports had preceded Herder, of his her- esy and his contempt of forms. They had said, among other things, that he preached in boots and spurs, and that after every sermon he rode three times around the church and out the door on horseback. Accordingly the church was crowded to hear his first sermon. All were charmed with his eloquence. Herder refers to the reports about him in a letter to a friend, where he says, " I live in the whirl- pool of business, a quiet and retired life, and preach in Dr. Luther's coat and surplice." Herder and his wife were both distinguished members of 336 APPENDIX. that delightful literary society, that formed around the duchess Amelia ; where they enjoyed tlie fairest evening hours, with spiritual men and accomplished women, and read the Poets, and acted Shakspeare ; and where we meet again Wieland and Goethe, Knebel and Einsiedel, Madam von Kalb, and all the names so familiar to us in the life of Jean Paul. Herder's first separation from Caroline was occasioned by a journey to Italy, where he spent nearly a year. This was the occasion of many delightful letters. I translate only one. "To-day is the day of our Verlohung in spirit, when I brought you my first letter, my Caroline. Oh, a thousand, thousand times dearer than when, trembling, I gave it to you. Oh, believe it, thou much-tried, good, dear, richly-sacri- ficing, heroic soul ! You have made me all that I now am ; have cared for all, and have given yourself to me a thousand times ! And what have I done for you ? how can I repay you ? Spare your health ; and I am certain, as of my ex- istence, that we shall lead a new bridal life together, hap- pier than the old; for we are wiser, and in the future we shall be better. I am certain our short separation has been a present from the All Good. Remove all doubts from your heart, and be with me with thy good, strong soul, as thy dear, beautiful form is always at my side." Herder wrote also to Jacobi at this time : " I have a wife that is the tree, the consolation and the happiness of ray life. Even in quickly flying, transient thoughts, (which often indeed surprises us,) we are one ! She suffers only when she sees me sufier;at other times she is all peace and activity, full of good courage and cheerful views." Herder's situation in Weimar was never favorable to his happiness. He was oppressed with a multiplicity of affairs, obliged to preach all kinds of occasional sermons, especially APPENDIX. 337 to eulogize all the members of the Ducal family ; and he was constantly opposed in his efforts to improve the schools and the churches under his care, and to place a barrier against the fashionable levity and irreverence for religion, that made giant strides in Weimar during the lime of the revolution in France. Herder died, not of old age, but, as his wife expressed it, " from disappointment over his false position, his failed life ; of highly-excited nerves, and a heart wounded and broken by the evils of the times." After his death, Caroline exerted all her power to collect materials for his life, which she did not publish herself, but prepared them for a literary friend. She arranged his un- published papers, and prepared them for a complete edition of his works; saw her six sons well established in life, and her only daughter married, — and then followed him, from whom her thoughts had never strayed.' I have given this little notice of the Herders to show that literary women are not necessarily eccentric or ego- tistical ; not necessarily mad enthusiasts, or careless house- keepers; faithless wives, or neglectful mothers; but that they may perform all the duties of life as cheerfully, as gracefully, and as faithfully, as if they had never learnt the alphabet of literature. HI. THE KAMPANER THAL. The Kampaner Thai is so beautiful a work, that I wish to give a fuller account of it than I had room for in the text. It purports to be part of a journal, kept by the author in travelling through France, and is addressed to Victor, the hero of the Hesperus. Jean Paul was in the habit of ad- dressing letters to his fictitious characters, as to his other * From the Life of Herder, by Carl L. Ring. VOL. II. 22 338 APPENDIX. correspondents ; and it seems as if it must have been difR- cult for him to draw the line between his living and his imaginary friends. To return. In this imaginary journey he meets a gen- tleman, Carlson, called the Rittmaster, who had been trav- elling with a party of friends, consisting of the baron Wil- helmi, his wife, wife's sister, and their domestic chaplain. Carlson had been deeply attached to Gione, the newly mar- ried wife of the baron ; and it is delicately hinted, that the attachment had been mutual ; but some German conven- tionalisms interfering, she had married, although not very unhappily, against the voice of her heart. The party rest at an inn, where a bridal party are celebrating their nuptials in one apartment, while the young and beautiful daughter of the host lies in her shroud, in another. The sight of the pale face, with its crown of roses, atTects Gione, whose nerves are already weakened, in such a manner as to pro- duce a fainting fit, so long, as to assume the appearance of death. Carlson, whose love for Gione had taken the nun's veil, and he had built around his heart a cloister wall, is betrayed by the sight into the discovery of his concealed passion, which he expresses in an ode, "TAe complaint with- out consolation,^^ and leaves the party before Gione had re- covered from her swoon. Just now, Jean Paul overtakes him ; and having been later at the inn, tells him it was only a fainting fit that had assumed the appearance of death. He returns to the party, and takes Paul with him. They all agree to travel on foot through the beautiful valley (Kampaner Thai,) situated in the upper Pyrennees, at the termination of which is the castle of the baron, the future home of Gione. The description of the valley is in Jean Paul's best manner, and the female characters are made known with exquisite touches. Nadine, the sister, to whom intercourse with the world and a happy tempera- ment have given a playful, light, ever cheerful exterior, is APPENDIX. 339 contrasted with Gione, who has a tender and earnest ex- pression, with a slender and perfectly Grecian style of beauty. Carlson is not an Atheist, but his " complaint with- out consolation," has betrayed his disbelief of a future life, and his faith in annihilation. The chaplain is a disciple of Kant. Jean Paul undertakes to support the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and a future recognition of friends beyond the grave. After asserting many proofs drawn from analogy, the Kantian said, " that from the unity of the universe it may be concluded, that emigrants from the earth will visit every planet; and those delicate souls who shun the sun will find themselves happy in Uranius: that the widely differing climates in the planets was no conclu- sion against the future residence of man upon them, because man can accommodate himself to every climate." Jean Paul answered, *' I have a strong objection against the future voyage pittoresque through the planets; we bear in our own breasts a heaven, full of constellations. There is in our hearts an inward, spiritual world, that breaks like a sun upon the clouds of the outward world. I mean, that inward universe of goodness, beauty, and truth; three worlds that are neither part, nor shoot, nor copy of the out- ward. We are less astonished at the incomprehensible ex- istence of these transcendental heavens, because they are always there, and we foolishly imagine that we create, when we merely perceive them. After ivhat model, with what plastic power, and from what, could we create these same spiritual worlds? The atheist should ask himself, how he received the giant idea of God, that he has neither opposed, nor embodied? an idea that has not grown up by comparing different degrees of greatness, as it is the opposite of every measure and degree. In short, the athe- ist speaks as others, oi prototype and original. " As there are idealists of the outward world who believe that perceiving a thing creates the thing itself; so there 340 APPENDIX. are idealists of the inward world, who deduce the being from tlie appearincr, the souniHrom the echo, instead of, on the contrary, inferring appearance from reality ^ consciousness from the object itself. We take erroneously the power of analyzing our inward world for the ^jrefornaation of the same ; that is, we think ourself the originator and founder, when we are only the genealogist. "This inward world, that is indeed more splendid and admirable than the outward, needs another heaven than the one above us, and a higher world than that the sun warms; therefore, we say justly, not a second earth, or globe, but a second icorld beyond this universe." Gione interrupted me — ''and every virtuous and wise man is a proof of another world." " And," continued Nadine, quickly, " every one who un- deservedly sutlers ! " " Yes," I answered, " that is what draws our thread of life through a long eternity. The threefold echo of virtue, truth, and beauty created by the music of the spheres, calls us from this hollow earth to the neighborhood of the music. Why and ivhcrc/orc were these desires given us ? Merely, that like a swallowed diamond, they should sloMiy cut through our earthly covering. Wherefore were we placed upon this ball of earth, creatures with light wings ; if instead of soaring with our wings of ether, we are to fall back into the earth clods of our birth ? " Carlson asked: " but could not our spiritual powers be given us to preserve and heighten the enjoyments of the pres- ent life ? " " To preserve ? " I answered, " as if an angel would be imprisoned in the body to be its dumb servant ; its stove- warmer and butler; its c?/.