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 JEAN PAUL RICHTER 
 
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 LONDON : 
 A. W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT. 
 
 1859. 
 
T^ 
 
 
 THE CAMPANER THAL; 
 
 OR, 
 
 DISCOURSES ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 EY JEAN EAUL FE. EICHTEE. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, BT JULIETTE GOWA. 
 
 Seconu ffiuitton, £eftfse» anC (ffiomcteU. 
 
 " — — Report also, we regret to say, is all that we know of the Campaner Thai, one of 
 Richter's beloved topics, or rather the life of his whole philosophy ; glimpses of which look 
 forth on us from almost every one of his writings. He died while engaged, under recent and 
 almost total blindness, in enlarging and remodelling this Campaner Thai. The unfinished 
 manuscript was borne upon his coffin to the burial vault ; and Klopstook's hymn, ' Aufer- 
 stehen wirst du ! ' ' Thou shalt arise, my soul,' can seldom have been sung with more appro- 
 priate application than over the grave of Jean Paul."— Carlyle's Miscellanies. 
 
 Frice 4s. 6d. 
 
 LONDON : 
 A. W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOFSGATE WITHOUT, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of this little volume, is to present the English 
 
 reader with a picture of the great German author, Jean 
 
 Paul. To effect this, the writer has interwoven a short 
 
 biographical sketch, with such selections from his works, 
 
 as seemed most characteristic of the mind that gave them 
 
 birth, or eminently conspicuous for their truth and beauty. 
 
 The life of Eichter has already appeared in English, and 
 
 Carlyle has made the name of Jean Paul familiar in this 
 
 country, by his masterly critical essays; still, except by 
 
 name, he is very little known, and his works are far too 
 
 un-English and peculiar, for them ever as a whole, to become 
 
 popular among Anglo-Saxon readers. The writer of this 
 
 sketch has endeavoured, by briefly glancing at the main 
 
 features in his biography, to connect them with the portions 
 
 of his works translated. Parenthetical essays, called by 
 
 Eichter " Extra Leaves," and short aphorisms have been 
 
 principally selected, as it is in these, it appears to the 
 
 translator, that the genius of Richter more especially 
 
 displays itself. In the " Essay on Charlotte Corday," 
 
 and in that " On the Death of the Young," Eichter 
 
 expresses sentiments in which the writer does not concur ; 
 
 but in neither case does he think their fervid eloquence 
 
 was intended as incense to the Moloch, war, but rather 
 
 as a tribute to that abnegation of self, which constitutes 
 
 the basis of all true heroism. In the " Repeated Promise 
 
 of Amendment," we have an instance of what very 
 
 frequently occurs in his writings; a simple narrative is 
 
 made the groundwork for the most elaborate description, 
 
 enriched by copious illustration and gorgeous imagery — a 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 massive structure reared upon the slenderest foundation. 
 The reason for introducing a paraphrase by De Qnincey, 
 in place of a literal translation, was that the original 
 is of too mystical a nature to present so sublime a picture 
 of space to the reader, as the admirable composition 
 referred to. "With this exception, and that of the "Dream 
 of the Dead Christ," no piece translated in this little work 
 has, as far as the writer can ascertain, ever before appeared 
 in English. There is no author that requires more study 
 and reflection than Jean Paul, and often that which at 
 first appears mere high-sounding nonsense, is found to be 
 deep comprehensive truth. If, from the intricacy of the 
 sentences, or an insufficient acquaintance with the pecu- 
 liarities of the German language, the translator has any- 
 where misapprehended or perverted the meaning of 
 Eichter, none will be more glad to see his error exposed 
 and corrected, than himself. In conclusion, if the ten- 
 dency of this little volume be to refine the feelings, to 
 enlarge the understanding, to exalt and purify the imagi- 
 nation, and to expand the heart ; and if it give to the reader 
 a juster and grander conception of the sublime in man, 
 the sublime in nature, and the sublime in Grod — it will not 
 have been written in vain. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 This volume has been principally compiled from the following 
 sources : — 
 
 Jean Paul's Sammtliche "Werke. 
 
 "Wahrheit aus meinem Leben — Jean Paul. 
 
 Biographie Jean Paul's von Ernst Forster. 
 
 Carlyle's Essays, from one of which is taken the criticism on 
 Eichter, quoted at the end of this volume, originally extracted from 
 " German Romance," a work the writer has never seen. 
 
 "Life of Eichter," published originally in Boston, and subse- 
 quently in Chapman and Hall's Catholic Series. 
 
 Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, translated by Noel. 
 
$flm $)anL 
 
 It is a common remark in the present day, that 
 great men are scarce ; and although this may be but 
 partially true, yet as a rule, it is undoubtedly correct. 
 This paucity of genius in the present age, is the more 
 striking when contrasted with the galaxy of talent 
 which graced the generation immediately preceding 
 it. The civil commotions, wars, and revolutions, 
 which shook kingdoms to their foundations, over- 
 turned monarchies, and freed nations that had been 
 groaning under despotism for hundreds of years, 
 seemed but gently to rock the cradle of the muses, 
 to arouse nature from her lethargy, and to bring 
 forth men, who were to instruct, adorn, dazzle, 
 and enlighten, not only the period that gave them 
 birth, but all succeeding ages. Germany, more es- 
 pecially in the time of her greatest national degra- 
 dation and misery, was to take up a position in the 
 literary world, to which she had never before aspired. 
 The language in which Luther taught and wrote, 
 was before this time held in but very low esteem, 
 and whilst French was spoken in every court in 
 Europe, German was scarcely understood at its own. 
 It was reserved for Schiller, Goethe, and their con- 
 
 B 
 
O JEAN PAUL. 
 
 temporaries, to raise the literature of their country 
 from its then ignoble position, and to bring out and 
 develop the resources of their long neglected mother 
 tongue. 
 
 Among the mighty spirits of this age, none stands 
 more conspicuous for depth of thought, beauty of 
 expression, richness of diction and grandeur of ima- 
 gination, though veiled in a very difficult and original 
 style, than he whose life and writings we would fain 
 portray ; he who has been termed by his admiring coun- 
 trymen, Jean Paul der Einzige — Jean Paul the only. 
 
 In the heart of Germany, at the North of Bavaria, 
 is situated a table-land, which takes its name from 
 the pine forests with which it is clad, the Fichtelge- 
 birge. Here in the spring of 1763, in the midst of 
 this isolated mountain region, was born Johann Paul 
 Friedrich Eichter. His pedigree was not long, nor 
 his ancestors noble ; his mother was the daughter of 
 a cloth weaver of Hof, whilst his paternal grand- 
 father was a schoolmaster and under-curate ; as he 
 himself says, in the highest degree poor and pious. 
 
 His father for some time occupied the same posi- 
 tion ; but in consequence of a slight preferment, he 
 removed to Eegensburg, and subsequently to Won- 
 siedel, where he settled, and our poet was born. The 
 youthful Eichter' s path lay not through the flowery 
 meadows of luxury, which so often engender sloth, 
 even in great minds ; — he had to climb the steep 
 hill of adversity, with the sharp blasts of poverty in 
 his face. His father was kind but severe, and his 
 plan of education was very peculiar. He on one occa- 
 sion, when our poet was between eight and nine years 
 
JEAN PAUL. 7 
 
 old, brought him a Latin Dictionary to learn off by 
 heart, but upon the repeated mispronunciation of the 
 word " lingua" he took it away, much to the morti- 
 fication and chagrin of the youthful student. In the 
 little village of Joditz, to which the elder Bichter 
 subsequently removed, the "happy days of childhood," 
 which left such an indelible impression on the mind 
 of our author, were spent, and here he formed those 
 simple tastes, and that ardent attachment to his 
 native mountain home, which never deserted him 
 through life. 
 
 In his autobiography occurs the following de- 
 scription of a winter evening in the little parsonage 
 of Joditz. " In the long twilight, the father paced 
 to and fro, and the children trotted after him, creep- 
 ing under his dressing-gown, and clinging if possible 
 to his hands. At the sound of the vesper-bell, we 
 placed ourselves in a circle, and devoutly chanted 
 the hymn." * Die finstre Nacht bricht stark herein.' 
 " In villages only, for in towns there is more night 
 than day work, have the evening bells a genuine 
 significance, and are indeed the swan song of the day ; 
 the evening bell is, as it were, a muffle to the overloud 
 heart, and like a Ranz des Yaches of the plains, calls 
 man from labour and turmoil to the land of stillness 
 and of dreams." 
 
 It was with the utmost difficulty that the poor 
 parish priest contrived to make his meagre income 
 meet the requirements of his young family, and 
 many were the excursions which young Fritz 
 had to take to his grandmother, in Hof, who, for 
 a merely nominal payment, often assisted in re- 
 
 b2 
 
8 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 plenishing the exhausted larder of the honest minister 
 of Joditz. In the autumn, after the seven hours lessons, 
 for the father was a rigid disciplinarian, the two boys, 
 Paul and Adam, counted it one of their greatest 
 pleasures to be permitted to accompany him into his 
 little potato plot on the other side of the Saale, where 
 they by turn assisted him in collecting the potatoes 
 which he dug for the family supper, and gathered 
 nuts from the hazel bushes by which the field was 
 surrounded. Such were the simple joys which glad- 
 dened Jean Paul's childhood, and to which he con- 
 stantly recurs with ever increasing fondness. Through 
 the patronage of Frau von Plotho, the exertions of 
 the disinterested and indigent minister were re- 
 warded by his being made pastor to the market-town 
 of Schwarzenbach. Thus in each of his removals he 
 followed the course of the Saale. 
 
 Insignificant as this offspring of the pine clad sum- 
 mits of Central Europe must appear, to those who only 
 know it on the map — to those who, as we, have seen it 
 either in summer when it winds like a silver thread 
 through the dark foliage of the Fichtelgebirge, or 
 when the autumn rains have sufficiently filled its stony 
 bed to permit it to bear upon its bosom the timber 
 rafts, which, having been cut down and constructed in 
 this little mountain island, are carried by its current 
 into the Elbe and the ocean ; or in winter, when it 
 noiselessly glides under its hard, bright, covering of 
 ice, or in spring when the snows having dissolved on 
 the surrounding hills, swelling the little brooks, its 
 tributaries, it bursts the icy manacles in which it has 
 lain fettered through the long winter months, and 
 
JEAN PAUL. 9 
 
 comes boiling and bubbling along, bearing with it 
 the debris of its prison-house ; — it will always be 
 remembered as one of the most beautiful and 
 picturesque of German rivers: and perhaps it was 
 the murmur of this mountain stream, that first awaked 
 the poetic nature that was lying dormant in the boy. 
 Like the river too, so peaceful was his course through 
 the mountain heights of childhood, whose gentle 
 ripple seemed but a prelude to the storms and tem- 
 pests of the great ocean of life towards which he was 
 hurrying. During Paul's three years residence in 
 Schwarzenbach, he devoted himself zealously to self 
 improvement, and here he commenced copying in 
 manuscript all works that attracted his attention, of 
 which alone, before his 20th anniversary, he had 
 collected a considerable library. When sixteen, he 
 was transferred to the Gymnasium (public school), 
 in Hof, where he remained for two years, during which 
 time he was left, by the death of his father, the main- 
 stay and support of his widowed mother and younger 
 brothers and sisters. At eighteen, he entered the 
 University of Leipzig, almost without funds, and his 
 outward college life was a series of struggles with 
 poverty, in which it required all his natural buoyancy 
 and trustfulness, to prevent his succumbing to this 
 dire foe. His inner life at this time is far more diffi- 
 cult to describe. His friends' wish was that he should 
 follow the profession of his father and grandfather, 
 hence his studies were principally ethical. It must 
 be remembered that the moral and religious world of 
 Germany was suffering from the beginning of that 
 revolution from which it is only now recovering, and 
 
10 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 whose effects have been scarcely less gigantic than 
 those of the French, with which it was intimately 
 connected. We of course refer to the progress of 
 infidelity, which, in the form of rationalism, spread 
 through the length and breadth of the land. It was 
 not to be expected that the young student should 
 escape the contagion of the disease, which had turned 
 the heads of the wisest of his countrymen ; but his 
 heart was too warm to permit him to be led away 
 for long into the dreary mazes of scepticism, and his 
 head was too clear not to perceive that the conclusions 
 that resulted in atheism, were equally un philosophical 
 with those that tended to the opposite extreme of 
 superstition. Besides his theological and classical 
 studies, he devoted considerable time to the acquire- 
 ment of the French and English languages, in whose 
 literatures he soon became deeply interested. Of 
 Gallic Authors, Yoltaire and Rousseau were his 
 favorites, whilst he speaks with great enthusiasm of 
 Shakspeare, Pope and Swift, as the most excellent of 
 Anglican writers. 
 
 But whilst devoting himself with the utmost ardour 
 to the cultivation of his intellect, those of his Leipzig 
 letters that have been preserved, breathe the purest 
 affection and most cordial sympathy for his mother, 
 whose weak though amiable nature tended greatly 
 to aggravate her trials. Paul too had his trials ; the 
 remittances from Hof were like angels' visits, and 
 often, notwithstanding his excessive frugality, he 
 knew not where to procure food for his evening meal, 
 or wood for his fire. It was not to be wondered at, 
 under these circumstances, that he should wish to 
 
JEAN PAUL. 11 
 
 adopt some plan by which to relieve himself from 
 his pecuniary embarrassments, and to become a sup- 
 port, instead of being a burden, to his bereaved 
 parent. She in her letters strongly urges him as 
 soon as possible to don the clerical frock, but this 
 step was much against his tastes, and he constantly re- 
 minds her of the cost of the license, which by both 
 mother and son, was regarded as an almost insuperable 
 obstacle. It was now that he thought of writing as a 
 means of obtaining bread ; yes, gentle reader, frown if 
 you will and scorn the man, who could write from such 
 mean and sordid motives ; it matters little how you 
 may be affected by the circumstance, but it is, and 
 remains a fact, that our hero was poor, and that his 
 first books were composed with the duns at the door, 
 and want staring him in the face from every part of 
 his little, half furnished room in the Peterstrasse. 
 Singular in all things, the titles of his works were 
 almost as singular as their contents and style. His 
 first essay was entitled the " Praise of Folly," for 
 which he in vain attempted to find a publisher ; he 
 did not however permit himself to be discouraged by 
 this ill- success, but set vigorously to work again, 
 and in six months had completed his second effort, 
 " Greenland Lawsuits." This he managed to dispose of 
 for fifteen louis d'or. These two effusions of his pen 
 consisted of satires on a variety of subjects, and are 
 only interesting to us as his first essays, and also for 
 the frank and fearless manner in which he espouses 
 those principles of civil and religious liberty, that 
 were always so dear to him, and from which he never 
 swerved. Encouraged by the success of the first 
 
12 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 volume of his "Greenland Lawsuits/' lie wrote a 
 second, for which he'received 120 thalers, but by which 
 we are afraid his publisher was a loser, for he could 
 not be persuaded on any terms to take a third, which 
 the fertile brain of Paul had soon produced. The 
 following extract is from the second volume. " Like 
 the caterpillar, man crawls for a while on the earth ; 
 he is then received by it, in the wooden chrysalis, 
 the coffin, where he rests throughout the winter; 
 in the spring he breaks through the shell and rises 
 out of the cold earth, with new and unsullied beauty." 
 No wonder that when he went back to Hof for his 
 vacation, not finding his book appreciated as he 
 had expected, he should be greatly delighted by 
 the enthusiastic admiration expressed for it by a 
 young girl, his townswoman. Some letters passed 
 between them of that peculiar description, yclept 
 billet-doux, and matters went so far that he pre- 
 sented her with a manuscript book of extracts from 
 the latest authors, and she, him with a ring ; but it 
 was a mushroom attachment, and we have reason to 
 believe was broken off, without much regret by either 
 party. About this time he gave up the queue and 
 powder, which was then universally worn, as ex- 
 pensive and useless, and also otherwise altered his 
 dress to suit his convenience : he had meanwhile ex- 
 changed his apartment in the Peterstrasse, for lodgings 
 in a garden in the suburbs. A certain magister Grafen- 
 heim had also his residence in this garden, and so indig- 
 nant was he at meeting a person in his walks, who com- 
 mitted the monstrous impropriety of wearing no queue 
 and a bare throat, that he was the ultimate means of 
 
JEAN PAUL. 13 
 
 driving his poorer neigbour back to bis town-lodgings. 
 Here be continued to study and write, but as no one 
 would buy bis writings, he at length found it necessary 
 to lay down his pen, and, to avoid the pertinacity of 
 his more pressing creditors, to secure an outside place 
 on the night coach for Hof, where he arrived in the 
 winter of 1784, at the age of twenty-one. Thus ended 
 the college life of Kichter, not to him a time of extrava- 
 gance and riot, as to many of our English youth ; 
 not a life of gaiety, with duels, beer drinking, and 
 torch processions, by which the German too often 
 relieves the monotony of his studies, but a course of 
 rough and severe, though for his spirit, healthful dis- 
 cipline, a skirmishing ground on which the battle of 
 life was begun by some hand-to-hand tussles with 
 the gaunt giant, poverty. In one corner of the little 
 trunk, the only luggage that he brought with him 
 from Leipzig, was the manuscript of a second satire, 
 which bore the extraordinary title of a " Selection 
 from the devil's papers." It, like its predecessors, 
 contained much that was excellent, but was even less 
 successful ; as has been said, the public taste demanded 
 pap and treacle, and not this fiery sort of curry. As 
 specimens of its general style, we here give two 
 thoughts taken from it. " This earth is but a little 
 back alley in the city of God, — a dark closet full of 
 confused and distorted pictures from a more beau- 
 tiful world — the border of God's creation — an atmos- 
 phere of vapours round a better sun — the numerator 
 to an, as yet, invisible denominator — verily it is almost 
 nothing." "To man is given the difficult double 
 task of raising his soul heavenwards, and satisfying 
 
 b3 
 
14 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 his material wants, as the chamois climbs upwards 
 as he feeds ; or of weaving his earthly into his future 
 life, as the moon, though revolving round the earth, 
 nevertheless journeys round the sun." 
 
 It was during our hero's residence in Hof, in the 
 maternal house, after his final departure from Leipzig, 
 that he contracted the most enduring friendship of 
 his life, a friendship which will bear comparison with 
 any of which history, either sacred or profane, has given 
 us an account. Christian Otto was the son of a 
 Lutheran pastor of tolerably affluent circumstances, 
 and proved himself to be at once a most kind and 
 devoted friend and a patient and impartial critic to 
 the young author. In the little room in his mother's 
 house in Hof, in the midst of all kinds of domestic duties 
 and disturbances, Bichter pursued a most unflinching 
 course of study and writing ; six hours he devoted to 
 actual transcribing, and his remaining time to composi- 
 tion ; the latter was always with him an out-door em- 
 ployment, and it is not surprising that the beautiful 
 scenery through which he wandered, should have 
 deeply affected so ardent a temperament. Notwith- 
 standing his own actual want, Kichter contrived to 
 spare a louis d'or for a still poorer friend, Herman, 
 one of his schoolfellows, a youth of considerable 
 scientific and literary acquirements, but whose sickly 
 body was ill suited for a restless and ever active mind. 
 His struggles too for existence at college had been 
 as severe as those of his friend, but his constitution 
 being different, his health at length gave way to the 
 double attacks of his mind within and the world 
 without ; the sword wore out its scabbard, and Bichter 
 
JEAN PAUL. 15 
 
 had one friend the less. Paul's pecuniary difficulties 
 were fortunately greatly lessened by the request of 
 Adam von Oerthel (another of his college friends) 
 that he would become tutor to his youngest brother. 
 This offer he gladly accepted, but did not find it what 
 he expected, as Herr von Oerthel the father, was 
 narrow-minded, miserly, and cold-hearted, and his 
 pupil had none of those endearing qualities that cha- 
 racterised his brother. Still his position was bearable 
 as long as his friend Adam was there to cheer and 
 support him with kindness and sympathy, but at 
 length he died, and then Bichter determined to 
 return to his mother at Hof, not much the richer for 
 his three years tutorship. He now consented to be- 
 come teacher to the children of three of his friends 
 and patrons in Schwarzenbach, and resided by turn 
 with each. Into his employment he threw his 
 whole soul, and his system of instruction may be 
 justly called education ; he did not pile fact upon fact 
 until the mind of the little possessor was wearied and 
 disgusted, but he carefully led his pupils to think for 
 themselves, and watched with anxious interest, the 
 development of the powers of their minds, even keep- 
 ing a manual of any sayings which evinced reflection 
 on their part. In the spring of 1790, he com- 
 menced his first great work, "The Invisible Lodge." 
 Previous to this he had, as he himself says, been 
 working in a vinegar manufactory, that is to say, 
 his writings had been marked by a bitter satire, 
 which was no part of his real nature. As soon as he 
 had completed this experiment, he sent it to Moritz of 
 Berlin, who was extremely delighted with it, and 
 
16 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 offered the hitherto despised author thirty ducats for 
 his manuscript. The same evening he received this 
 unexpected and most welcome remittance, he walked 
 by the light of the stars from Schwarzenbach to Hof, 
 to the miserable little apartment so dear to him, as 
 " home." There he found his careworn mother, 
 though late, still sitting over her wheel, and he 
 hesitated not a moment to empty his hard- won trea- 
 sure into her lap. In the " Invisible Lodge," Richter 
 has endeavoured to represent most of the friends of 
 his youth ; he has also given us some portions of his 
 biography, clothed in a poetic garb, together with 
 many of his peculiar ideas on education. This romance 
 was never finished ; in his preface to it, when pre- 
 paring in his old age an edition of all his works for 
 the press, he says, " The whole world's history is but 
 an unfinished romance, on this side the grave we 
 see the entanglements, on the other we shall see the 
 unravellings." 
 
 The plan of the story is, that its hero, Gustavus, 
 is brought up until he is some ten years old in a cave 
 underground, having intercourse only with his tutor 
 (called by J. P. " the genius ") who teaches him as 
 much as is compatible with his tender years, and who 
 tells him that death is most desirable, for that then 
 he will be admitted into a more beautiful and better 
 world. 
 
 "With this short introduction, we will translate the 
 " Resurrection Scene," as it perhaps gives a better 
 idea of this work than any other selection we could 
 make. 
 
 " Four priests stand in the vast cathedral of nature, 
 
JEAN TAUL. 17 
 
 and worship on God's altars, the mountains : grey 
 icy winter, with the snow white ephod ; autumn laden 
 with harvests, that it lays on God's altars and that 
 man may take ; the fiery youth summer, who works 
 till nightfall that he may worship ; and lastly, child- 
 like spring in his white adornment of blossoms, which 
 he sprinkles before the great spirit, and in his worship 
 all that hear him join. And assuredly for the chil- 
 dren of men is the spring the most beautiful priest. 
 This flower-clad worshipper was the first that the 
 little Gustavus saw at the altar. Before sunrise on 
 the first of June, the genius knelt down and prayed 
 with upraised hands and dumb trembling lips, a 
 prayer that embraced the whole future life of Gus- 
 tavus. A flute from above toned forth a loving 
 welcome, and the genius himself overcome said, i It 
 calls us from earth to heaven, come with me, my Gus- 
 tavus.' The little one trembled between joy and 
 fear. The flute continues. They go together up the 
 ladder — two anxious beating hearts throb wildly with 
 anxiety and expectation ; the genius throws the door 
 open by which the world had been shut out, and lifts 
 his charge on to the earth with the blue sky above 
 him. Now the great waves of the living sea burst 
 over Gustavus ; breathless, and with eye and heart 
 overcome with emotion, he views the immeasurable 
 face of nature, and trembling draws closer to his genius. 
 But when after the first entrancement he opens his 
 heart to these streams, as he feels the thousand arms 
 with which the great spirit of the universe draws 
 him to itself, as he notices the green spring flowers, 
 which he fears to crush to death with his light step, 
 
18 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 as his eye directed upwards wanders through the 
 expanse of heaven, the opening of infinitude, as he 
 shudders lest the great masses of dark cloud from 
 above should fall and overwhelm him, as he sees the 
 mountains standing like new worlds on ours, as he 
 finds himself surrounded by an infinite number of 
 existences on all sides, birds, quadrupeds, insects, and 
 the giant trees, that stretch their living arms towards 
 him, as the morning wind fans his burning cheek, 
 and seems to him like the mighty breath of an ap- 
 proaching genius, and lastly, as his burdened vision 
 follows the course of a butterfly, as it noiselessly wings 
 its way from flower to flower, and finally settles on a 
 leaf; the sky begins to redden, and throwing aside 
 the fringe of night's dark mantle, there appears on 
 the horizon, like a crown of God fallen from the 
 throne of the Deity, the sun. Gustavus cries, * There 
 stands God/ and with dazzled heart and eye, and the 
 most fervent prayer his childish bosom can contain, 
 throws himself upon the turf. Again, throw open 
 thy eyes, thou dear one ; no longer is their gaze 
 directed on the fiery lava orb, thou liest on thy 
 mother's breast, and her heart within is thy sun 
 and thy God. For the first time, behold the indes- 
 cribably sacred mother's smile ; for the first time, hear 
 the maternal voice ; for the two first to meet thee in 
 paradise are thy parents. heavenly hour ! The 
 sun shines, every dew-drop glistens with his rays, 
 tears fall from the eyes of four mortals, who stand 
 moved and happy on an earth — far distant from 
 heaven. Oh destiny veiled in obscurity ! Will our 
 death be like that of Gustavus ? Obscure fate, that 
 
JEAN PAUL. 19 
 
 sits behind our earth, as were it a mask, and gives us a 
 little time to be ; Oh, when death lays us low, and a 
 great genius raises us from our narrow vault into 
 heaven, when then our souls are overwhelmed by its 
 glories and joys, wilt thou there also give us a well 
 known bosom upon which to turn our newly awakened 
 eye ? Oh fate, wilt thou there restore to us what we 
 here can never forget ? No eye will be turned upon 
 this page, that has not wept something here, that it 
 hopes to find again there. Alas ! after this life full 
 of death, will no well-known form meet us to whom 
 we can say, welcome ? Man's destiny remains dumb 
 behind the mask, his tear stands upon the grave, 
 and the sun beams not into the tear ; but our loving 
 heart dies not in immortality and before the presence 
 of the Almighty it lives." 
 
 Schiller, when in after life speaking of his " Rob- 
 bers " says, that his greatest error lay in attempt- 
 ing to depict men before he knew any, and this we 
 think was the case with Jean Paul. 
 
 In his "Invisible Lodge" he introduces us with 
 the utmost freedom to noblemen, courtiers, and 
 princes, when as yet his study of character had been 
 restricted to the farmers and country parsons of his 
 native district. After the publication of this work, 
 Richter continued to reside in Schwarzenbach, faith- 
 fully fulfilling the duties of tutor to his young pupils, 
 and occupying his leisure hours with the preparation 
 of his Hesperus. He at this time kept a kind of 
 "Book of Devotion," in which he put down the 
 most rigid rules for his every day life, and what a life 
 it was ! It does one good in the dreary annals of self- 
 
20 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 ishness, which, make up the sum of the world's history, 
 here and there to meet with, alas, at long intervals, 
 the lives of such men, who make love and affection 
 for their kind, the guiding principles of their conduct, 
 and learn to find their happiness in the prosperity of 
 their fellows. All who came to him for assistance 
 and consolation, he, if possible, assisted and consoled, 
 and by so doing, although it kept him on the verge of 
 want, we doubt not he obtained more inward comfort 
 and satisfaction, than if he had grown rich by follow- 
 ing to the letter, the maxims of "Poor Richard's 
 Almanack." He had a passionate love for nature, 
 spending as much of his time as possible in long 
 rambles, and no poet so nearly embodied " Beattie's 
 Ideal," when he says : — 
 
 " Lo ! where the stripling wrapt in wonder, roves 
 Beneath the precipice, o'erhung with pine ; 
 And sees on high amidst the encircling groves, 
 From cliff to cliff the foaming torrent shine, 
 While waters, woods, and winds, in concert join, 
 And echo swells the chorus to the skies. 
 
 " And oft he traced the uplands to survey, 
 When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn, 
 The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray, 
 And lake dim glea ming on the smoky lawn ; 
 Far to the west, the long long vale withdrawn. 
 And now he faintly kens the hounding fawn 
 And villager abroad at early toil. 
 But lo ! the sun appears, and heaven, earth and ocean 
 
 smile. 
 And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb, 
 When all in mist the world below was lost." 
 
JEAN PAUL. 21 
 
 We might make the quotation longer, but let this 
 suffice. The Hesperus, the work by which Jean Paul 
 is best known out of Germany, did not meet with the 
 reception that the success of the " Invisible Lodge" 
 had led him to expect, and for it he only received 200 
 florins, £18. From it we make two selections : the 
 one is part of an extra leaf on the " Wilderness and 
 Promised Land of Mankind," which, after long and 
 somewhat obscure remarks, he thus beautifully con- 
 cludes. 
 
 " A golden age will one day come, which already 
 every wise and virtuous man enjoys, when individuals, 
 but not peoples will sin, when man will not have 
 more joy, but more virtue, when the people will take 
 part in thinking, and the thinker in working, when 
 military, as well as judicial murder will be universally 
 condemned, and cannon-balls will be only seen when 
 turned up by the plough. When this happy time 
 shall arrive, our children's children will have ceased 
 to be. We now stand in the evening and see the sun 
 go down amid crimson clouds, that promise a peaceful, 
 calm, sabbath for mankind, but our successors will 
 have to wander through a stormy night, through a 
 poisonous fog, till at last a pure, fresh, morning wind 
 shall rise over a happier world and dispel the clouds. 
 Centuries have been, where mankind, eye-bound, was 
 led from one prison to another ; there can be no other 
 centuries, but those in which individuals sink as 
 peoples rise, when peoples fall, as humanity rises, and 
 when the human race itself sinks, falls, and ends, 
 when the globe dissolves. What then consoles us ? 
 A veiled eye behind time, an infinite heart beyond 
 
22 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 the grave. There is a higher arrangement than we 
 can show. There is a providence in the world's 
 history as in each one's life, that the reason boldly 
 rejects, and the heart boldly accepts. There must 
 be a providence, which, by rules unknown to us, con- 
 nects this earth as daughter-land to a higher city of 
 Grod — there must be a Grod, a virtue, an eternity." 
 
 The other is a portion of Emanuel's letter on God, 
 which we will leave to speak for itself. 
 
 " Oh, Julius, Julius, said I, the earth is great — but 
 the heart that rests upon it is greater than the earth 
 or sun, for it alone thinks the greatest thought. 
 Suddenly a cool breeze rose where the sun had just 
 set. The whole atmosphere was in motion, and a 
 broad air-stream, in whose current the forests bowed 
 their lofty tops, swept through the heavens. The 
 altars of nature, the mountains, were overlaid with 
 black mourning — we ourselves were enveloped in 
 mist — the heavens were shut out from our view. At 
 the foot of the black vault, played transparent 
 lightnings, and the thunders rolled around its base. 
 The storm rose and tore it to pieces ; it drove the 
 floating remnants of its prison through the ether, and 
 cast the huge masses of vapour below the horizon ; 
 and long it continued to sweep over the plain. But 
 behind the curtain that it tore away, there shone forth 
 that most beautiful of all things, a star-bespangled sky. 
 Like a sun, the greatest thought that man can think 
 rose in my breast. My soul was overwhelmed when 
 I gazed into the heavens, and it was exalted when I 
 looked upon the earth. For the Eternal has inscribed 
 His name in glittering stars in the sky, and has 
 written it in gentle flowers on the earth. * * * 
 
JEAN PAUL. 23 
 
 "We kneel here on this little earth before infinitude, 
 before the immeasurable universe floating above us, 
 before the radiant vault of space. Raise thy soul 
 and understand what I say unto thee. Thou hearest 
 the whirlwind that drives the clouds round the earth, 
 but thou hearest not the whirlwind that drives the 
 earth round the sun, nor the greatest whirlwind that 
 bears the suns themselves, round a Hidden All. Step 
 from the earth into the empty ether ; here rest awhile 
 and see how it has shrunk to a flying mountain range, 
 that, with six others, ever journeys round the sun ; 
 mountains, with attendant little hills, rise and sink 
 before thee in the sunlight — then, behold the round, 
 flashing, lofty vaidt, built of suns, through which the 
 eternal night, in which it stands, looks in. Thou 
 mayest fly for thousands of years, yet wilt thou not 
 stand upon the last sun, nor step out into the night 
 beyond. Thou mayest shut thine eye and throw thy- 
 self with the speed of thought over the abyss, and over 
 the entire visible heaven, and when thou again openest 
 it, rushing streams will cross thy path, of bright waves 
 of suns, and dark drops of earths, and in the east and 
 the west, will stand to thee unknown systems, and the 
 fiery wheel of a new milky- way will revolve in the 
 stream of time. Yes, when an all-powerful hand 
 should lift thee quite beyond our heaven, and thou 
 lookedst back, and fixedst thine eye on the sea of suns 
 that gradually paled and dried up with distance, till at 
 last creation hung as a faint still cloud, deep in the 
 night, thou mightest then think thyself alone, and 
 look around thee, and thou wouldest see as many 
 suns and constellations blaze above, below, around, and 
 
24 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 the faint little cloud would hang still fainter among 
 them ; and upon the whole dazzling empyrean would 
 be countless, faint, small, clouds. 
 
 " Oh, Julius, Julius, between the rushing hills of fire, 
 between the milky-ways, hurled from one abyss to 
 the other, there floats a small dust made of six thou- 
 sand years and the human race. Oh ! Julius, who is 
 it that looks upon and cares for that fluttering grain, 
 made up of all our hearts ? The sea of worlds without 
 shore or bottom, flows here, and ebbs there. The moth, 
 the earth, hovers round and round the sunlight, and 
 at last flies into it and is destroyed. Oh ! Julius, who 
 regards and takes care of the fluttering dust on the 
 moth, in the midst of an ever-changing chaos ? Oh ! 
 Julius, when each moment sounds the death-knell of 
 a man and a world ! when time extinguishes the 
 planets like sparks, and crushes calcined suns to pow- 
 der, when the constellations, like distant lightnings, 
 pierce through the darkness, when one system of 
 worlds after the other is drawn down into the abyss, 
 and the everlasting grave is never full, and the ever- 
 lasting heaven never empty ; Oh ! Julius, who re- 
 gards and supports us poor beings of dust ? Thou all 
 merciful One, Thou supportest us, Thou infinite One, 
 Thou, Oh, God ! Thou formest us, Thou seest us, 
 Thou lovest us. Oh ! Julius, raise thy spirit and 
 listen to the greatest thought that man can think. 
 Where eternity is, where immensity is, and where 
 the night begins, an infinite Spirit stretches forth its 
 arms, and lays them around the great falling universe, 
 and bears it and warms it. I, and thou, and every 
 man, and every angel, and every worm, rest on His 
 
JEAN PAUL. 25 
 
 bosom, and the surging, boiling sea of suns, and 
 worlds, is but a child in His arms. He looks through 
 the sea, in which trees of coral full of worlds rest, and 
 sees on the tiniest coral, the little worm which am I, 
 and He gives to the worm the nearest drop and a 
 blessed heart, and a future, and an eye that reaches 
 up to Thee, yes, Oh, God! up to Thee, up to Thy heart. 
 
 " Deeply moved, Julius said, with tears in his eyes, 
 Thou seest, Oh Spirit of love, me also, poor blind boy ; 
 come into my soul when I am alone, and the soft rain 
 falls upon my cheek, and I feel an unutterable love. 
 Oh ! Thou good, great, Spirit, assuredly I have already 
 felt and loved Thee- 
 
 " Emanuel, tell me yet more, tell me His thoughts 
 and His beginning. Gfod is eternity — God is truth — 
 God is holiness — He has nothing, He is everything — 
 the whole heart compasses Him, but no thought. 
 
 " Everything infinite and wonderful in man is His 
 reflection ; but to penetrate further, seek not. Crea- 
 tion hangs as a veil, woven of suns and spirits, over 
 the infinite One, and eternities pass over the veil and 
 draw it not aside from the glory which it hides." 
 
 The firm conviction that this life is but the prepa- 
 ration for the next, but the school to a higher, a holier, 
 and a happier state of being, is well expressed in a few 
 lines at the conclusion of one of his minor writings at 
 this time. 
 
 " Yes, truly, our earth is in the shade. But man is 
 higher than his resting place ; he looks upwards and 
 spreads out the wings of his soul, and when the sixty 
 minutes that we call sixty years are over, he rises, and 
 the ashes of his plumage fall away, and the soul, 
 
26 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 without aught of the grossness of earth, and pure as 
 a melody, ascends into heaven. But even here, in the 
 midst of his dim, obscure life, he sees the mountain tops 
 of the future world glow in the beams of a sun that 
 does not rise here below. Thus the inhabitant of the 
 North Pole, in the long winter night, during which the 
 sun never rises, sees at mid-day, an Aurora that 
 gilds the loftiest peaks around him, and he thinks of 
 his long summer, when his sun will never set." 
 
 " Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" was his next 
 great work. It is principally a description of the 
 struggles with poverty of Siebenkas, the Poors' advo- 
 cate, a theme on which he was quite at home, and 
 could write volumes. In it occurs the remarkable 
 dream of the " Dead Christ," a composition so con- 
 spicuous for its boldness and originality, that it was 
 deemed worthy of translation, and insertion in Madame 
 de Stael's " Allemagne." It was when under the in- 
 fluence of phantasieren on the piano, an exercise of 
 which he was excessively fond, that Jean Paul com- 
 posed his dreams,* a kind of writing in which he 
 succeeded, perhaps better than in any other. 
 
 We here attempt the following translation of 
 this grand and striking dream. 
 
 * If my heart were so miserable, that every feeling that 
 pointed to the existence of a God were destroyed, I would 
 terrify myself with this my essay, and it would cure me and 
 give me back my feelings. 
 
 Note oe the Translator. — Before seeing this dream in the 
 original, we had read the excellent translations of Messrs. 
 Carlyle and Noel, and though we have not intentionally copied 
 
JEAN PAUL. 27 
 
 " The object of this conception must serve as the 
 apology for its boldness. Some men deny the exis- 
 tence of God, with as little feeling as most of us 
 grant it. Even in our true systems, we collect but 
 words, counters, and medals, like avaricious anti- 
 quaries, and not till long afterwards, do we exchange 
 the words for feelings, the coins for enjoyments, 
 One may for twenty years believe in the immortality 
 of the soul, and only in the twenty-first, in some 
 great moment, awake to full consciousness of the 
 glorious character of this belief, of the warmth of 
 this naptha spring. Even so was I terrified by the 
 poisonous fog that envelopes him, who for the first time 
 enters the atheistic seminary. I could with less pain 
 deny immortality than the deity ; in the one case I 
 lose only a world hidden by clouds, in the other I 
 lose this present world, that is to say its sun. The 
 whole spiritual universe is burst and shattered by 
 the hand of atheism, into countless separate exist- 
 ences, that run and wander together, into and out of 
 one another, without unity or permanency. None is 
 so utterly alone in the universe, as the denier of God ; 
 with an orphaned heart, that has lost the greatest 
 of fathers, he mourns upon the immeasurable corpse 
 of nature, that no master spirit governs and sustains, 
 but that grows in its grave, and he mourns until 
 he himself crumbles away from the huge corpse beside 
 him. The whole world lies before him, like the great 
 
 from either, we Lave doubtless imbibed a good deal of the 
 spirit of their versions, and should therefore wish respectfully 
 to acknowledge our obligation. 
 
28 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 half- in- sand-imbedded sphinx, and the universe is 
 the cold iron mask of a shapeless eternity. It is also 
 my object in this composition to inspire with dread 
 those deeply read professors, who, since they like day 
 labourers, have worked in the water-works and 
 mines of critical philosophy, discuss the being of a 
 Grod, as coolly and cold heartedly as if it were merely 
 a question as to the existence of the kraken or the 
 unicorn. For others who are not so far advanced 
 as these learned professors, I will merely remark, 
 that it is quite possible to unite the belief in Atheism 
 with that in immortality ; for the same necessity that 
 cast my bright dew-drop of being in a flower calyx 
 and under a sun, can in the second, recreate it ; 
 indeed, a second embodiment is easier than a first. 
 
 " When we are told in childhood, that the dead at 
 midnight, when our sleep reaches near unto the soul 
 and even darkens our dreams, rise from their slum- 
 bers, and mimic the service of the living in the 
 churches, we shudder at death, because of the dead, 
 and in the stillness and solitude of night, turn away 
 our gaze from the long windows of the silent 'church, 
 afraid to ask ourselves whether their glitter is caused 
 by the moonlight, or not. Childhood's terrors even 
 more than its raptures in dreams again take wing, 
 and play like glow-worms in the little night of the 
 soul. Quench not these little fluttering sparks ! 
 Leave us even our dark, painful, dreams as half 
 shadows of reality. And what could compensate us 
 for our dreams, which bear us away from under the 
 roar of the waterfall into childhood's smooth table- 
 land, where the stream of life glides silently, and 
 like a mirror of heaven towards its precipices. 
 
JEAN PAUL. 29 
 
 " One summer's evening I lay me down on a moun- 
 tain side and slept, and dreamed that I awoke in 
 a church-yard. The tower-clock was striking eleven. 
 I sought the sun in the void night heaven, as I 
 thought it was hidden by an eclipse. All the graves 
 were unclosed, and the iron doors of the charnel 
 house were opened and shut by invisible hands. On 
 the walls were shadows that no one threw, and other 
 shadows stalked upright in mid air. In the open 
 coffins none now slept, but the children. In the sky 
 there hung a grey sultry fog, that a giant shadow 
 like a net drew ever nearer, and closer, and hotter. 
 Above me I heard the distant roar of avalanches ; 
 under me the first shock of an immeasurable earth- 
 quake. The church swayed to and fro, torn by two 
 ceaseless discords, that strove in vain to unite in 
 harmony. Now and again a gray glimmer ran along 
 the windows, and the lead and iron fell down molten ; 
 the net of fog and the heaving earth, drove me 
 towards the temple, at whose entrance, in two poi- 
 sonous nests, brooded two basilisks. I passed through 
 unknown shadows, on whom centuries long passed 
 away were impressed. All the shadows were grouped 
 round the altar, and in each the breast heaved and 
 throbbed in place of a heart. One corpse that had 
 but just been buried in the church, lay still upon his 
 pillow, and his smiling features betrayed the presence 
 of a happy dream. But as a living man entered he 
 awoke and smiled no longer ; he unclosed with pain 
 his tightly sealed eyelid, but within there was no eye, 
 and instead of a heart, there was a wound in his 
 beating breast. He raised his hands and folded 
 
30 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 them to pray, but the arms lengthened out, and the 
 clasped hands fell away from his body. Above, on the 
 roof of the church stood the dial plate of eternity, 
 that bore no figure, and was its own index ; only one 
 black finger pointed to it, and the dead sought to 
 read the time on it. At this moment there sank 
 upon the altar a lofty noble form, having the ex- 
 pression of a never-ending sorrow, and all the dead 
 cried ' Christ, is there no God ? ' He answered 
 1 There is none.' Now, not only the breasts of the 
 dead, but every limb quivered, and one by one 
 melted away. Christ continued — I traversed the 
 worlds, I ascended into the suns, and flew with 
 the constellations through the wildernesses of the 
 heavens — but there is no God. I ascended as far as 
 being throws its shadow, and gazed into the abyss 
 beyond, and cried c Father, where art thou ? ' but 
 I only heard the everlasting storm, that no power 
 governs, and the great rainbow of existence stood, 
 without the sun that formed it, over the abyss, and 
 fell by drops into it. And, as I gazed upwards, into 
 the immeasurable universe for the divine eye, I saw 
 nothing but the empty bottomless eye-socket, and 
 eternity lay upon chaos, and gnawed it and ruminated 
 it. Shriek on, ye discords, rend the shadows with 
 your cries, for He is not. The shadows dissolved 
 like hoar frost at the approach of the warm breath, 
 and all was void. Then came into the church — 
 terrible for the heart to behold — the dead children, 
 who were now awaked in the graveyard, and threw 
 themselves before the lofty form at the altar, and 
 said ' Jesus, have we no father ? ' And he answered. 
 
JEAN PAUL. 31 
 
 with streaming eyes, ' We are all orphans, I and 
 you, we are without a father.' 
 
 " Thereupon the discords shrieked more fiercely, the 
 quivering walls of the temple fell asunder, and the 
 temple and the children sank down, and the earth 
 and the sun followed, and the whole structure of 
 worlds sank after them in its infinitude ; and above — 
 on the summit of infinite nature, stood Christ — and 
 looked into the universe, traversed by a thousand 
 suns, as into a mine dug out of the everlasting night, 
 in which the suns are the miners' lamps, and the 
 milky ways the veins of silver. And as Christ 
 saw the crushing confluence of worlds, the torch 
 dance of celestial meteors, and the coral bank of 
 beating hearts, and when he beheld how one orb 
 after another emptied out her gleaming souls into the 
 sea of death, as a fire-ball strews floating lights on 
 the waves — sublime as the loftiest finite being, he 
 lifted up his eyes to the nothingness and to the im- 
 measurable void and said, ' Empty void nothingness, 
 cold eternal necessity ! Insane chance ! Know ye 
 what is beneath you ? When will you destroy the 
 building and me ? Chance, knowest thou thyself, 
 when with hurricanes thou sweepest through the 
 starry firmament and extinguishest sun after sun, and 
 when the sparkling dew of stars twinkles its last as 
 thou passest by ! How lonely is every one in the wide 
 charnel of the universe ! I am alone by myself. Oh, 
 Father ! Oh, Father ! where is thine infinite bosom, 
 whereon I may rest ; alas, if every being be its own 
 father and creator, why can it not also be its own 
 destroying angel ? Is that a man near me ? Thou 
 
 c2 
 
32 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 poor one ! Your little life is the sigh, of nature, or 
 only its echo. A concave mirror throws its rays on the 
 dust clouds, the ashes of the dead upon your earth, and 
 thus yon cloudy tottering images are formed. Look 
 down into the abyss, over which clouds of ashes float. 
 Mists, full of worlds, arise from the sea of death. 
 The future is a rising vapour, the present a falling 
 one/ Here, Christ looked down and his eyes filled 
 with tears, and he said, ' Ah, I too was once upon it, 
 then I was happy, for I had still my infinite Father, 
 and gazed joyfully from the hills to the immeasurable 
 expanse of heaven, and pressed my pierced breast on 
 his healing image, and cried, even in my cruel death, 
 Father, take thy Son out of his bleeding frame, and 
 lift him up to thy heart. Ah, ye too, too happy 
 dwellers of earth, ye still believe in him. Perhaps 
 at this moment your sun is setting, and ye fall amid 
 blossoms, radiance and tears, and clasp your blessed 
 hands and cry amid a thousand tears of joy. Thou 
 knowest me too, thou Eternal one, and all my wounds, 
 and wilt receive me after death and close them all. 
 Unhappy ones, after death, they will not be closed. 
 When the man of sorrows lays himself with sore 
 wounded back in the earth, to slumber towards a 
 lovelier morning full of truth, full of virtue and of joy, 
 he awakes in the tempestuous chaos, in the everlast- 
 ing midnight, and no morning cometh, and no heal- 
 ing hand, and no infinite father. Mortal, who art 
 near me, if thou still livest, worship him, else thou 
 hast lost him for ever.' And as I fell down and 
 gazed into the gleaming fabric of worlds, I saw the 
 raised rings of the giant serpent of eternity, that lay 
 
JEAN PAUL. 33 
 
 coiled around the universe, and she encircled it 
 doubly and wound herself thousandfold around nature, 
 and crushed the worlds together, and grinding them, 
 squeezed the infinite temple of God's universe into one 
 vast grave ; and everything became confined, gloomy, 
 and terrible, and an immeasurable out-stretched bell- 
 hammer was about to strike the last hour of time, 
 and split creation asunder — when I awoke. My 
 soul wept for joy that it could again worship God, 
 and the joy and the tears and the belief in Him were 
 the prayer. And when I rose, the sun gleamed 
 brightly from behind the full golden ears of corn, 
 and peacefully threw the reflection of his evening 
 glory round the little moon, that was rising in the 
 east without an aurora; and between heaven and 
 earth, a glad fleeting world stretched out its wings, 
 and lived like me in the presence of the infinite 
 Father, and from all nature around me, there arose 
 peaceful tones as from distant evening bells." 
 
 Shortly after the publication of Siebenkas, at the 
 earnest request of his literary friends, who had 
 learned to know and love him in his writings, Richter 
 visited Weimar. To this place the great names of 
 Goethe and Schiller had attracted a literary coterie 
 of almost all the great Germans of the age, and here 
 they endeavoured in each others' intercourse and 
 society to find consolation for the national extinction 
 of their country that was apparently impending. By 
 these distinguished men, Jean Paul was received and 
 welcomed as one of themselves. He visited Schiller, 
 Goethe, Wieland and Herder, the last of whom had 
 long been the object of his sincerest admiration, and 
 
34 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 the two authors now formed a friendship that lasted 
 till death. But although in Herder he was not dis- 
 appointed, yet from one of his subsequent letters we 
 clearly see that he now lost much of the reverence 
 which he had previously entertained, for those who 
 stood at the summit of the German Parnassus. He 
 thus writes after two weeks spent in the society of 
 the most famous philosophers and poets of the age. 
 " "What Jean Paul gains, humanity loses in his eyes. 
 Alas ! for my ideal of great men ! I soon threw 
 away my prejudices for great authors. They are like 
 other people. Here every one knows that they are like 
 the earth, that looks from a distance from Heaven, 
 like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it, it 
 is found to be made of mud." Not long after this 
 visit his mother died, and thus the last tie that bound 
 him to Hof was severed. Nevertheless he did not 
 leave this city, to which long residence had made 
 him much attached, without regret, more especially 
 as his friend Otto still continued to reside there. He 
 first went to Leipzig, and thence after a short stay 
 to Weimar, where he zealously prosecuted his writ- 
 ings, for which he now no longer had any difficulty 
 in finding a publisher. It was under the kindly in- 
 fluence of his intercourse with his Weimar friends, 
 who could understand and appreciate him, that he 
 finished the first volume of the Titan, the work which 
 Germans consider his masterpiece. Here also he 
 penned an essay on Charlotte Corday, from which we 
 translate the following copious extracts : — 
 
 " Her life was a fit precursor of her death. The 
 Greeks and Romans and the great authors of her own 
 
JEAN PAUL. 35 
 
 time had made her a republican before the republic. 
 She was bold even in her religious belief. When asked 
 at the revolutionary tribunal if she had a confessor, she 
 replied, 'None/ * * * From this we clearly 
 see that it was no religious fanaticism that consecrated 
 the sword of this virgin destroying angel. Spite of 
 all the fire of her inner being, and all the charms of 
 her person, she was a stranger to love, and esteemed 
 men but little ; because the soul of a woman seeks a 
 higher being, and her sublime spirit could not even 
 find its equal. When the president with wonted 
 brutality asked her a question that touched her honor, 
 she calmly replied, ' I neither met with nor knew a 
 man that was worthy of me, for Marat still lived/ 
 Woman's province seemed to her, narrow, limited, 
 and confined. ' Republican Frenchmen,' she wrote 
 to Barbaroux, ' cannot understand how a woman 
 whose life at its longest stretch is but of little use, 
 should calmly sacrifice it to the fatherland.' * * 
 
 " When even ordinary women live more in the ideal 
 than we, inasmuch as they think more with the heart, 
 we more with the head, and endeavour therefore by 
 the vividness of an imaginary to compensate for the 
 narrowness of their real life, it is still more the 
 case with women of a finer mould, in whom their 
 loftier intellect obeys their finer feeling, not as with 
 us, governs it, and whose misfortune is therefore 
 commonly as great as their worth. 
 
 " Charlotte Corday, living in an age of liberty, and 
 at a time when her fatherland rose and loudly de- 
 manded its emancipation, was inspired and inflamed 
 by the spring month of returning freedom to the 
 
36 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 world. Her long hidden sacred fire burst forth with 
 the universal enthusiasm, and the cherished ideals of 
 her heart now became living realities, and seemed to 
 point out her future course, her whole being kindling 
 into action. This Corday lived to see the ' Mountain/ 
 She lived to see on the 31st of May, the destruction 
 of her fondest hopes, when liberty was compelled 
 either to flee or die, when revolution followed revo- 
 lution, and the state became a sea, in which the 
 inhabitants did nought but prey upon and devour 
 one another ; when in the giant liberty nought re- 
 mained sound and intact but the bloody fang, and 
 Corday herself said, ' I am weary of living amid a 
 fallen and degraded people.' She lived to see a 
 Marat, that mean hypocritical, haughty, physically 
 and morally detestable being, who drunken with 
 blood, far more resembled a skulking vampire, than a 
 lordly beast of prey. He hired, paid, and praised 
 the assassins of September, yet slew not a man with 
 his own hand, but only himself by his vices ; who 
 wished with the blood of 250,000 citizens, to water 
 and nourish the young vine of liberty ; who himself 
 desired a dictator, showing how extremes meet, and 
 who (according to Corday) was organizing by means 
 of bribery a civil war. Yet two days before his death, 
 he was spoken of in the convention as a French Cato, 
 an immortal lawgiver and friend of the people ; he for 
 whose destroying angel new tortures were demanded, 
 was unanimously declared an ornament of Pantheon, 
 and in Corday's last night, was entombed amid long 
 processions and the roar of cannon. 
 
 " ' Let us turn away/ said the Count, ' from this 
 
JEAN PAUL. 37 
 
 loathsome animal, and refresh our vision by the con- 
 templation of the noble heroine, who spurned the reptile 
 with her foot, as she entered the triumphal archway 
 of immortality." In Caen, a force of 60,000 men had 
 been organized against the anarchy reigning in the 
 capital. Corday, convinced that this great expedition 
 was in reality directed against but one man, he who 
 for four years had been the firebrand and assassin of 
 France — Marat — thought joyfully to herself (as she 
 subsequently said) 'You seek but one man, I can 
 spare your blood by the shedding of mine and his 
 alone/ She looked upon herself as a volunteer of 
 the department of Calvados, therefore as a soldier 
 against the states' enemy, not as the avenging Nemesis 
 of a ruler. On the 2nd of June, the determination 
 to die appeared like the angel to the apostle in prison. 
 And as she saw so many youths journeying to Paris, 
 in the hopes of liberty, but only there to find a grave, 
 she gave her hand to the angel that was to lead her 
 out of this life. ' Oh, could we but look deeper into 
 her soul at this moment,' said the Count, ' When 
 she said, my life is now over ; every cheerful prospect 
 is closed to me. All that I have loved and hoped 
 must be given up. Father, friends, children, earthly 
 future, and everything that constitutes the happiness 
 of those around me. Give me the funeral torch, in- 
 stead of the bridal lamp, and let death's cold hand 
 press his black seal upon my budding life.' It is 
 well known that for a whole month after this, she 
 kept her heroic purpose locked in her bosom. But 
 how frivolous and small must have appeared to her 
 at this time the cares and sorrows of life, how free 
 
 c3 
 
38 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 her heart, how pure each virtue, how clear each view. 
 She now stands on the loftiest mountain's summit, 
 and sees the thunder clouds come from below — not 
 from above, and while those in the valley beneath 
 anxiously watch the cloud and await the thunder 
 clap, she feels herself neither shadowed by its vapour 
 nor wet by its fall. By the lofty position of noble 
 warrior, zealous" republican, and God-inspired being, 
 she considers herself amply compensated for the 
 sacrifice of all domestic joys. On the 7th July, she 
 started for Paris, after having written to her father, to 
 prevent misunderstanding and paternal anxiety, that 
 alarmed at the prospect of civil war, she had fled into 
 England. Silent, without a sympathising or supporting 
 friend, the girl of twenty-five parted from all those 
 whom she loved, and in the warmest of life's seasons 
 began the long journey to the altar, where she was to 
 bleed. ' I found myself/ she wrote to Barbaroux, ' in 
 the diligence, with honest mountaineers, who conversed 
 at their ease ; their talk, which was as foolish as their 
 exterior was unattractive, did not a little to send me 
 to sleep, from which I hardly awoke till I arrived in 
 Paris.' With the same calm composure, with the 
 same cool clear vision, she took the first, as she did 
 the last step to the scaffold. The hero feels himself 
 supported and inspired by the band he leads, and 
 who surround him. This heroine went alone, with 
 her own heart, and an invisible sword to the place 
 of execution. She knew well that in Marat's 
 dagger she bore freedom's sceptre, and rode 
 although unseen by the blind populace (on her enter- 
 ing into Paris) in her car of triumph, and already 
 
JEAN PAUL. 39 
 
 arrayed in the robes of a splendid futurity. Tran- 
 quility, calmness and coolness must have come to her 
 spirit, in the firm belief that she, she alone, by her 
 death would prevent a civil war and a civil massacre, 
 and win more for her bleeding fatherland than a 
 battle. Oh, happy, happy is he for whom Gfod has 
 provided some great idea, for which alone he lives 
 and labours, that he values more than his joys, that 
 ever young and fresh, hides from him the wearying 
 monotony of life. ****** 
 
 "Thursday, the 11th of July, Charlotte Corday came 
 to Paris, as to the place of execution of her father- 
 land, of her former inner life, and of her present 
 outer one, like to the still white moon, rising ap- 
 parently out of the hot hollow crater, as at Naples 
 from Yesuvius. She went first to Duperret (an 
 already proscribed Girondist, who was subsequently 
 executed) handed him a letter from Barbaroux, and 
 requested him to conduct her to the Minister of the 
 Interior, of whom she wished to demand some papers 
 for a friend. He excused himself to her, but promised 
 to see and accompany her the following morning. 
 On his return to his guests, he told them how striking 
 and extraordinary the whole manner and bearing of 
 the maiden had seemed to him. On Friday morning 
 she sent a note to Marat, requesting an interview, 
 alleging as her motive, republican secrets ; she came 
 herself in an hour, but in vain. This was in reality 
 a second failure, for she had originally intended to 
 have sacrificed him and consequently herself in the 
 midst of the convention. Such trifling obstacles 
 as the long journey, and hot weather, would have 
 
40 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 extinguished the flame, which for a single evening, 
 might have blazed with similar ardour in the breast 
 of some impulsive fanatic. Corday remained body 
 and soul, calm and firm. At length the honest 
 Duperret came, her much-wished-for visit to the 
 minister had been rendered useless ; she found 
 Duperret staunch, but reserved, and she there- 
 fore only earnestly begged him to withdraw himself 
 from the convention, and to retire to Caen, where he 
 would be of more use. As on the day of Marat's 
 death, he wished to return her visit, she would not 
 see him, not wishing to involve any one in her ruin. 
 The lofty alpine rose had but one sharp thorn against 
 but one man. On the evening of Friday, she wrote 
 to Marat, and urged him more pressingly to see her 
 on the morrow. Saturday came ; not till now did 
 she buy her dagger in the Palais Royal, and hide 
 these scissors of Atropos in her bosom. Upon this 
 she repaired to Marat, with the double certainty 
 that he would die by her hands, she by those of 
 the populace. Though ill from his excesses and in 
 his bath, he admitted her. She named to him freely 
 all the enthusiastic Girondists of Caen and Evreux, 
 who had conspired against the ' Mountain/ that is, all 
 her own most intimate friends. ' Yery well/ said he, 
 ' in a few days I will have them all guillotined in 
 Paris.' Suddenly the Nemesis assumed the form of 
 Charlotte Corday, and turning the butcher knife of 
 Marat against his own heart, thus ended his infamous 
 life. But a gentle verdict will be passed by God and 
 man on the hitherto stainless hand, that a higher spirit 
 plunged into this foul blood. ' This judgment will be 
 
JEAN PAUL. 41 
 
 given/ said the Count. ' Pure as the thunder cloud 
 she once flashed forth lightning on the muddy earth, 
 and then drew back into her native heaven. But 
 how wonderfully did fate with the bath, and the 
 last blood-thirsty words, point out the time and the 
 spot for revenge. By similar chains of accidents, 
 almost all villains have fallen. The Nemesis stands 
 over the world with its avenging dart, beneath 
 kneel the bad, with their eyes bound, and their breast 
 reveals a black heart showing a fatal mark.' Calmly 
 and withoLit attempting flight, she permitted herself 
 to be made prisoner. When the postmaster Drouet 
 drove with her to the c Abbaye/ and by reminding 
 the people, who would have torn her in pieces, of the 
 law, brought them to obedience, she fainted. When 
 consciousness returned, she was much surprised, that 
 the mob, whom she looked upon as an assemblage of 
 savages, should have left her alive, and should have 
 obeyed the law. The weeping of the women pained 
 her deeply, but she added, ' Having saved the father- 
 land, what it costs matters little.' 
 
 " The sheath of the dagger, a little money, her 
 baptismal register, and passport, a gold watch, and an 
 ' address to the people ' were found upon her. At the 
 entrance of the Abbaye, a youth threw himself before 
 her guards, with a request, that he might receive 
 imprisonment and death in her stead : he suffered 
 both, without saving her. Who drops a tear upon 
 the dead, dies quickly after, says superstition ; thus 
 under despotism, the tear shed over the innocent 
 victim kills. The whole night long the enthusiastic 
 maiden spoke of the means of saving the republic. 
 
42 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 * I have done my part/ she said (according to Drouet) 
 1 others must do the rest.' At this time the noble 
 Mainzer Adam Lux, heard of her, as an aristocrat 
 and fanatic, but soon after one brave heart looked 
 into a second, he met her on her triumph and funeral 
 chariot on her way to the guillotine, and afterwards 
 mounted it himself on the 10 th of October, because 
 he had written in defence of her and of freedom. * * 
 
 " And let no German forget him ! But is not every- 
 thing past, eclipsed and forgotten in the by-rushing 
 present ? What lofty forms rose out of the impure 
 stream and glittered awhile and sank, as water-plants 
 rise to the surface to blossom, and then sink again 
 laden with fruit. *#*#** 
 
 " The third day of her imprisonment, (which Corday 
 calls the second after her active preparation for her 
 inner peace) she wrote the memorable letters to her 
 father and Barbaroux. The opinion expressed in 
 them on the dead Marat, possessed all its old severity, 
 untouched by soft-heartedness for the dead. To the 
 question of the revolutionary tribunal : 'how she could 
 consider him a monster, when he had given her admis- 
 sion on the receipt of a written complaint ?' she re- 
 plied ; ' What was there in his being humane towards 
 one and a savage to all besides ?' In her second letter to 
 her father, she asked forgiveness for her self-sacrifice 
 and said, ' rejoice that you have given life to a daughter 
 who knows how to die. Let none of my friends weep 
 for me. Their tears would stain my memory, and I 
 die happy/ Her letter to Barbaroux she ended with 
 these words : — ' To-morrow, at five o'clock, my trial 
 commences, and the same day I hope to be in Ely- 
 
JEAN PAUL. 43 
 
 siurn. with Brutus and others of the ancients ; for as to 
 the moderns, I care not for them, they are so bad/ 
 On "Wednesday, the 17th, she stood before the revolu- 
 tionary tribunal. What she there said, would, from 
 another mouth, sound sublime ; but he who once 
 attains to greatness, shows involuntarily and without 
 effort, his elevation ; he inhabits as it were, a table- 
 land. If we wonder at the sharp and cutting answers 
 this gentle creature gave to the sanguinary council 
 before which she stood, we must remember that no 
 noble man could have done less, who found himself in 
 the presence of these blood-stained judges of so many 
 innocent souls ; men, who like the king- snake, coil 
 their rings to resemble a refreshing fountain, to 
 entice the animals, and then to surround and crush 
 them. Corday's life had now but one free moment, 
 in which to a number of questions, she made these 
 replies : — ' All honest men are my accomplices/ 
 c The French have not sufficient strength to be 
 republicans/ and, after being mistaken for another 
 woman, who endeavoured to obtain an interview with 
 the butcher Legendre, she replied : — ' You do not 
 consider, that two such deeds could not have been 
 done at the same time, and it was necessary to begin 
 with Marat/ She received her sentence from the 
 judge with the same cheerfulness with which she had 
 passed it upon herself a month before. She thanked 
 her counsel, the citizen Chauveau, for his courageous 
 defence, and said she was not able to reward him, but 
 requested him, as a token of her regard, to undertake 
 the commission of defraying a small debt for her 
 in the prison. In the evening she mounted the funeral 
 
44 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 car, on which, for two long hours, she wended her 
 weary way to the scaffold, hissed and howled at by 
 the people for whom she died. She was bitterly 
 alone, without a single companion of her heart, or of 
 her fate. Quite unknown to her, she met in the Rue 
 St. Honore, him who was the one, and soon became 
 the other — Adam Lux of Mainz. Oh, why could not 
 her gaze, that sought in vain in the frowning crowd for 
 a heart like her own, find out and recognise this brother 
 of her inner being. Why was this last joy denied her 
 on earth ? To see and to know that the companion and 
 defender of her heart, and the future martyr of her 
 deed, accompanied her to the grave, and then into it, 
 and that a noble soul wept for hers, and then followed 
 it. He was so near to her and witnessed her last mo- 
 ment. But he deserved to see her die. The whole 
 spring- world in the republican's heart blossomed anew, 
 as he saw the glorious calm upon the youthful form, 
 in the red death robe ; the unshaken intrepidity the 
 whole long way to the scaffold in her proud and 
 piercing eyes, and those gentle, sympathising, even 
 tender looks, whose angelic mildness was as bitter to 
 him as it was sweet, with which she received the cease- 
 less insult heaped on her by the mob. No, he who 
 saw such a being live and suffer, could not weep for 
 her, he could only imitate her. The heart struck by 
 the electric fire of enthusiasm would not bear anything 
 earthly near it ; as among the ancients, sites struck 
 by lightning were sacred. Calmly and peacefully 
 Charlotte Corday mounted the scaffold, where she 
 was to lay aside her earthly name, and greeted the 
 furies under the guillotine so mildly, that even they 
 
JEAN PAUL. 45 
 
 were stilled. Let us not linger upon this bloody spot, 
 whence so many sighs and sorrows ring and echo 
 back. * * An executioner severed her 
 
 youthful locks, bared her shoulders * * and 
 laid her blooming life between the gaping shears of 
 fate — and it passed into the eternal world. Oh, not 
 more than a moment can the earthly pain, the earthly 
 death, have darkened her pure spirit, as the moutain- 
 top at the poles hides the sun, but for a moment, 
 between its setting and its rising. And thou, thou 
 noble Mainzer, return with thy fired soul, and speak 
 yet again the bold truth, and then come back to the 
 scaffold. And let none weep over the lofty spirit, 
 but let him offer, like her, what God demands of him, 
 whether it be his life or less." 
 
 And here let us pause a moment, as upon the eve 
 of a most important epoch in the life of our hero : he 
 is now no longer the poor unknown youth, who 
 waits the reply of his publishers, to decide whether 
 he shall, or shall not, give up his mid-day meal ; he 
 is read and admired from the shores of the Baltic to 
 those of the Mediterranean ; he is the favoured guest 
 of princes, and communities delight to do him honour ; 
 more especially is he the object of the regard, ad- 
 miration, reverence, and love of German women; 
 the beautiful, exalted and gifted, deemed it an 
 honour to be introduced to him, and many tra- 
 velled hundreds of miles to see him. From the 
 Queen of Prussia on her throne, down to the old 
 Hausfrau who subsequently kept the cottage on the 
 road fromBaireuth to the Hermitage, where he com- 
 posed his works, all the women with whom he came 
 
46 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 in contact, were irresistibly fascinated, and many of 
 their expressions of affectionate reverence are pre- 
 served in the journals and letters of that time. Whence 
 this fascination, where this charm? "We unhesita- 
 tingly answer^ that it lay in his full appreciation of 
 the female character, and in the unspotted purity of 
 his life and writings. It was an admiration that a 
 Byron could not earn, for with all his genius, he was 
 a selfish, debauched voluptuary ; it was an enthusiasm 
 that goodness and virtue and truth could alone inspire, 
 and it is an honour to Gferman women, that they 
 admired Jean Paul. The event to which we allude 
 was his marriage. The winter of 1800 he spent at 
 Berlin, where he was received with the most un- 
 bounded enthusiasm. The queen invited him to the 
 palace of Sans Souci, and treated him with marked 
 attention; whilst a splendid banquet was given to 
 him at the York Lodge. He says in a letter written 
 at this time, " I have a watch chain of the hair of 
 three sisters, and so much hair has been begged of 
 me, that were I to make it a traffic, I could live as 
 well from the outside of my cranium, as from what is 
 inside it ! " It was at this party at the York Lodge, 
 that he was introduced to the family of Geheimrath 
 (counsellor) Meyer, that consisted of two unmarried 
 daughters. Great pains had been bestowed upon their 
 education by their father, a man of refined and 
 liberal tastes, and his exertions had not been thrown 
 away. Richter was accidently placed next to Caro- 
 line, the youngest, at table, and was so much charmed 
 with her beauty, simplicity, the mental culture which 
 she displayed in her conversation, and perhaps above 
 
JEAN PAUL. 47 
 
 all by tier evident admiration for himself, that he re- 
 quested her to present him to her father, and from that 
 time, was a constant visitor at the residence of Counsel- 
 lor Meyer. Hearing from his daughter Jean Paul's 
 wishes with respect to her, the Geheimrath at once ex- 
 pressed his entire concurrence and approbation. " My 
 child," said he, " if the satisfaction of your father can 
 add anything to your happiness, no union could give 
 me so much joy." "When we consider that at this time 
 Eichter had not a florin but what he received from 
 his publisher, it was indeed on the part of Herr Meyer, 
 in that worldly age of this worldly world, a most 
 unworldly act, thus so cordially to give the hand of 
 his daughter to one, who could most truly say, that 
 all his property lay under his hat. 
 
 They were therefore betrothed and married, and 
 now we shall see Jean Paul in quite a new character. 
 After their wedding, which was privately celebrated, 
 they spent a few weeks in the society of the venerable 
 Herder, at Weimar, and after one or two intermediate 
 wanderings finally removed to Baireuth. Jean Paul 
 decided to settle here just two years after his marriage ; 
 and in the mean time, had been born him a son, and 
 he had published the last volume of the Titan and 
 the Flegeljahre. Of the former work, suffice it to 
 say, that it is the most German and Jean Paulish of 
 all his writings, and consequently presents the greatest 
 difficulties to the English reader. From it we have 
 only taken the two following short pieces ; the one 
 a prayer after sickness, that is replete with deep 
 religious feeling ; the other, the conclusion of an 
 
48 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 extra leaf on forced marriages, in which, after infinite 
 humour and much stern satire, he pathetically calls 
 upon the mothers of Germany to consider the irrepa- 
 rable wrong they are doing their children. 
 
 AFTER SEVERE ILLNESS. 
 
 " And do I again look with blessed eyes into thy 
 blooming world, thou all-loving creator, and weep 
 for very joy ? Why then did I despair ? Why when 
 I sank into darkness, and my beloved ones and the 
 spring were far separated from me, was my weak 
 heart afraid that there was no opening for me to 
 light and life ? For thou wast with me in the dark- 
 ness, and thou ledst me out of the vault into the 
 spring, and thy children were around me, and the 
 bright heaven and all my smiling beloved ones. 
 Thou leadest thy children up a high mountain into 
 heaven and to thee, and they pass through the 
 thunderstorm of life, overclouded, but not struck 
 down, and only their eye is wet. But when I come 
 to thee, when death again throws his dark cloud 
 upon me and draws me away from all loved ones, 
 into a deeper abyss, and thou, thou all merciful one, 
 again freest me and bearest me into thy spring, so 
 much more glorious, even than this ; will then before 
 thy judgment seat, my weak heart beat as joyfully 
 as it now does, and will my human breast dare to 
 breathe in thy celestial spring ? Oh, make me pure 
 in this earthly one, and let me here so live, as if I 
 were already in thy heaven." 
 
JEAN PAUL. 49 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE EXTRA LEAF ON FORCED 
 MARRIAGES. 
 
 " Mother of the poor heart that thou wouldst make 
 happy by its wretchedness, listen to me. Suppose 
 thy daughter at length steel herself to accept the 
 proffered misery, hast thou not turned the rich dream 
 of her existence to an empty sleep, and taken from it 
 the verdant islands of love and the happy days spent 
 on them, and the retrospect ever bright, when their 
 blooming summits lie low on the horizon ? Mother, if 
 this happy time were thine, take it not from thy 
 daughter, and if it were cruelly torn from thee, think 
 of thy bitterest pang and let it not pass to her. 
 Suppose even she make the robber of her soul happy, 
 think what she would have been to its darling, and, if 
 she deserve nothing better than to give pleasure to a 
 jailor to whom she is for ever bound by a prison door. 
 But this picture is too bright. Thou hast cast a dark 
 shadow on the time when man basks in youth's first 
 morning sun. Oh, rather let all the other of life's 
 seasons be sad, they are all so like one another ; the 
 second, the third, the fourth ; but at the sunrise of 
 life, let it not rain, do not darken this never return- 
 ing time. But if thou sacrifice not only joys, a 
 happy marriage and a whole future race, but the 
 being itself whom thou compellest to thy plans and 
 commands, who can console thee, who can justify 
 thee? Who can dry thy tears, if the best of 
 daughters, for it is she who will obey, speak not but 
 die, as the monks of La Trappe watched the burning 
 
50 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 of their cloister, without any breaking his vow of 
 silence. If she, dying with a seared heart, cannot 
 longer hide from thee, that in the very spring time of 
 her young life, she has borne about with her the chills 
 and sorrows of winter; thou wilt not be able to 
 console her, because thou hast destroyed her, and thy 
 conscience will too justly call thee a child murderer ? 
 When at length the worn out victim expires under 
 thy tears, and the young being so sad and early, so 
 weary, yet longing for life, forgiving, yet complain- 
 ing, sinks with longing and heart-rending looks 
 into the bottomless river of death: Oh, guilty 
 mother on the bank, thou that hast pushed her in, 
 who shall console thee ? But to the innocent I would 
 cry out, and pointing to the sad death-scene, would 
 earnestly ask, shall thy daughter also thus miserably 
 perish ? " 
 
 The Flegeljahre was received with universal enthu- 
 siasm ; from it we subjoin a few short pieces con- 
 taining ideas of singular beauty. 
 
 THE REFLECTION OF VESUVIUS IN THE SEA. 
 
 " Look how the flames leap beneath us, fiery streams 
 surround the mountain in the deep, and devour the 
 gardens and vineyards. Yet we glide securely over 
 the flames, and our image smiles back out of the 
 burning wave. Thus spoke the sailor, and gazed 
 thoughtfully on the burning mountain. But I said : 
 Thus the muse bears in its eternal mirror the heavy 
 sorrow of the world, and even the unhappy look 
 therein and are comforted." 
 
JEAN PAUL. 51 
 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 " Ye little ones keep near to God ; the smallest 
 world is nearest to the sun." 
 
 DEATH UNDER THE EARTHQUAKE. 
 
 " The youth stood near his slumbering beloved in a 
 myrtle grove ; the air around her slept, the earth 
 was still, the birds were silent, and the very zephyr 
 slumbered in the roses in her hair and disturbed not 
 a lock. But the sea rose suddenly and its waves came 
 to shore in huge living mountains. ' Aphrodite,' 
 prayed the youth, ' thou art near, thy sea rocks itself 
 tempestuously, hear my prayer, lofty goddess, and 
 unite the lover with his beloved/ The ground coiled 
 round his feet, an invisible net, the myrtles bowed 
 towards him, and the earth thundered, and her gates 
 flew open, and below in Elysium, the beloved one 
 awoke, and by her side stood the happy youth, for 
 the goddess had heard his prayer." 
 
 THE NEAREST SUN. 
 
 " Beyond the suns, are suns in the infinite ether ; 
 their distant ray has for thousands of years been 
 winging its way to our little earth, and has not yet 
 arrived. Oh, thou great loving God, scarcely has 
 man's spirit opened his little e}^e, before thy beams 
 enter, thou sun of suns and of souls." 
 
 THE DEATH OF A BEGGAR. 
 
 " An aged beggar once slept by the side of another 
 poor man, and he groaned in his sleep. Then the 
 other called to him, , to awake him out of a troubled 
 
52 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 dream, lest even the night should oppress his weary 
 bosom. The beggar did not wake, but a light passed 
 along the straw, and his companion looked at him 
 more closely and saw that he was dead. God had 
 awaked him out of a longer dream." 
 
 THE OLD. 
 
 " Yes, they are long shadows, and their evening 
 sun lies cold upon the earth, but they all point to 
 the morning." 
 
 THE KEY OF THE COFFIN. 
 
 " ' Oh, thou lovely, much loved child, so strongly 
 fastened in thy last dark dwelling place, I will 
 always keep the key of thy prison house, and it shall 
 never, never be opened. ' Thus spake the bereaved 
 mother, but her daughter flew past her, blooming 
 and glorious heavenwards and cried, ' Mother, throw 
 away the key ; I am above, not below/ " 
 
 THOUGHT ON A WATERFALL. 
 
 " Above the stormy waterfall hovers the rainbow ; 
 thus the streams of time rush and tear along, but 
 God stands in heaven, and above the surging wave 
 rests the bow of his peace." 
 
 In Caroline, Eichter found every quality of mind 
 and heart that he had wished for in a wife, and when 
 death, twenty years afterwards, came to call away 
 the old man from his labours and honours, he found 
 them even more fervently attached to one another, 
 than when they were first betrothed. 
 
JEAN PAUL. 53 
 
 The Flegeljahre had been published scarcely a year, 
 when the Introduction to the Aesthetics appeared, 
 and this was soon afterwards followed by " Levana," 
 a work on education, in which subject, as we have 
 already mentioned, Kichter was deeply interested. 
 Like most great men, he was fond of children and 
 never wearied of their company; indeed he filled 
 large volumes of manuscript with their sayings and 
 doings. His next two works, " Dr. Katzenberger's 
 Bath-journey" and " Attila Schmelze's Circular 
 Letter" were purely humorous, and were intended 
 to assist in raising a barrier to the undue influx 
 and ascendancy of French literature, which at this 
 period was much dreaded by all true Germans. 
 Here then in Baireuth, the good man lived and 
 wrote, and so even was the tenor of his life, that 
 there was little to mark the flight of time, but the 
 appearance of new books one by one, and the growth 
 and improvement of his three children, a son and 
 two daughters. In the summer he made short 
 journeys, but he tells his wife that the part of them 
 that gave him most pleasure, was his return to her. 
 In the morning he might often be seen with his 
 poodle by his side and stout staff in his hand, 
 walking towards the Hermitage, in the immediate 
 vicinity of which he rented a little room, where, 
 uninterrupted by domestic bustle, he could zealously 
 prosecute his writings. Of animals he was ex- 
 cessively fond, and was very successful in taming 
 them. His eldest daughter gives a graphic picture 
 of the home of the poet in this little city, " When 
 we were very small, we lived in a two story house ; 
 my father worked above in the attic. We crept on 
 
54 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 our hands and feet up the stairs, and hammered at the 
 trap door, until our father raised it, and after our 
 admission closed it again, then he took from an old 
 chest a broken drum and fife, with which we made 
 noisy music while he continued writing. The father 
 was kind to every one, he could not bear to witness 
 the slightest pain, even in the lowest animal. In 
 the twilight he told us stories, or spake of God and 
 other worlds ; or he would tell us of our grandfather, 
 and other glorious things. We ran to gain the 
 wager, the seat 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 in our haste, 
 climbed over the arm of the sofa ; for in front it was 
 difficult to squeeze through, between the table and 
 the repertory for letters. We all three crowded on to 
 the sofa, by his side,- above at his head lay the sleep- 
 ing dog. When at length we had pressed our limbs 
 into the most inconvenient postures, the story began/' 
 And here it may not be unsuitable to introduce the 
 description given by William Muller of a visit paid 
 to the old Frau Eollwenzeln, who kept the little 
 hostel, where Bichter wrote. "A shady chestnut 
 avenue leads from Baireuth to the Hermitage. 
 About half way, where it forms a sharp angle, and 
 turns suddenly to the left, we stopped before a little 
 time-worn inn, at the door of which stood an old and 
 rather stout little woman, with an open and in- 
 telligent countenance. She wore a costume half 
 town, half village, and received and welcomed us 
 more like neighbours or dear friends, than utter 
 strangers. Good old woman, what dost thou discern 
 
JEAN PAUL. 55 
 
 in us, to make thee pardon our intrusion, which has 
 for its object neither wine nor beer ? Thou didst 
 not ask us to eat or drink, but mysteriously led us 
 up a narrow staircase, threw open a little door- way, 
 and said with tears in thine eyes, but with a look of 
 conscious pride, ' That is the room ; here Jean Paul 
 has daily sat and written for twenty years, here at 
 this table, he has worked hard, Oh he has worked 
 himself to death. I have often said to him, Herr 
 Legations-rath, you are working yourself to death, 
 spare yourself, you can't last long like this. Some- 
 times at two, the dinner hour, I knocked at the 
 door and inquired, Herr Legations-rath will you be 
 pleased to dine ? There he sat, with great thought- 
 ful eyes and gazed at me for a while, before he could 
 collect himself, ' Oh, good Rollwenzeln/ he then said, 
 " but another hour." And when that was expired, 
 I came again, but still he would not listen, and when 
 he at last rose and came down the stairs, he swayed 
 to and fro, and I went before him, lest he should 
 fall. Oh, sir, some who did not know him, said he 
 drank too much, but this was not the case, more 
 than a bottle of Eoussillon during the day, and some- 
 times a little beer in the evening, he has never had in 
 my house, except perhaps on a festival, when he was 
 here with a few good friends. At such seasons, no one 
 could make things so comfortable as the old Eollwen- 
 zeln, and he thought a great deal of me ; but then I 
 tended him like a lord ; indeed had he been my king, 
 father, husband, and son, I could not have loved or ad- 
 mired him more. Ah, he was a man, and though as he 
 wished, I have not read his writings, yet I have always 
 been as pleased, when I heard of their being read and 
 
 d 2 
 
56 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 admired far and wide, as if I had myself assisted him 
 with. them. But rightly to estimate the Herr Lega- 
 tions-rath, you should hear the strangers who come 
 here. Now in Baireuth, they don't know his value, 
 but in Berlin, there, they celebrated his birthday, in 
 a splendid hall, full of great and learned men and 
 even drank my health — he told me so himself. He 
 even promised me, that in his next new book, I 
 should appear. Oh, had he lived, I would not have 
 troubled about this honour. ' The Eollwenzeln here 
 interrupted our silent meditations, and called us back 
 into the little room. ' Alas, when I only think how 
 much the Herr Legations-rath has written on this 
 very spot, and to think when he should have ended ; 
 he often told me he had fifty years more to write, 
 when I entreated him to spare himself and not to let 
 the dinner get cold. No, no such man will again be 
 born. He was not like the men of this world. I have 
 often thought it over, and once I said to him, ' Herr 
 Legations-rath, do not laugh at the old Eollwen- 
 zeln. You are to me as a comet full of light, and 
 we know not whence it comes, nor where it dwells. 
 Another time, his birthday, I thought to myself, 
 Eollwenzeln, thou must do something for the Herr 
 Legations-rath. So I had written on a fine large 
 leaf of paper, ' On this day he saw the light and 
 was light.' Now as he sat to table, there lay on 
 his plate many poems and good wishes, both written 
 and printed. As he turned them over and came to 
 mine, his whole face beamed with pleasure, and he 
 gave me his hand, saying, ' That is from my good 
 Eollwenzeln.' A flower charmed him, or a bird, 
 and his table was never without flowers, and I always 
 
JEAN PAUL. 57 
 
 put one in his button hole. It is about a year since 
 he stayed away and did not come again. I went 
 into the town to see him a few weeks before his 
 death, and having seated myself by his bedside, 
 he asked me ' how I did ?' ' Badly/ I replied, 
 ' badly till you again honour me/ But I knew well 
 that he would never come again, and when I learned 
 that his canary birds were dead, I thought that he 
 would soon follow. The poodle outlived him but a 
 very short time ; I saw the little animal not long since, 
 I scarcely knew it. God, he is now with thee. They 
 gave him a funeral like a Margrave, with torches and 
 carriages, and such a procession, there is no describ- 
 ing it. I had gone on before into the * God's acre,' 
 (grave yard) and as I stood all alone, beside the 
 grave, I thought to myself ' And thou must go down 
 there, Jean Paul/ No, I thought, that is not Jean 
 Paul. And as the coffin stood before me, I thought 
 so again. i And dost thou lie there, Jean Paul ?' 
 ' No, it is not Jean Paul/ There was a funeral ser- 
 mon, and they put a chair for me close to the grave, 
 and when all was over, the family and Herr Otto, and 
 many other gentlemen, pressed my hand/ Tears choked 
 the voice of the good old woman, and we pressed her 
 hand like the bereaved ones at the grave. What is pos- 
 terity's applause, or the loud eulogium of the great on 
 the master mind, compared with thy silent adoration ! 
 May thy humble dwelling be a monument to him, 
 thy house remain unaltered, the room the same, but 
 let it be covered by an arch of triumph, and the 
 arch be encircled with flowers, a bow of heavenly 
 blessing." 
 
 But in the midst of his peaceful retirement, the 
 
X 
 
 58 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 great heart of Jean Paul mourned for bleeding Ger- 
 many and for suffering humanity. It was the time 
 when the insatiable ambition of an unprincipled 
 despot caused all the nations of Europe to pour out 
 their blood like water. Patiently and prayerfully he 
 watched through the long night of Germany's afflic- 
 tion and degradation, confident that the morning 
 must dawn, and manfully he worked to excite and 
 cherish the patriotic love of fatherland, which was 
 eventually to drive Napoleon back over the Ehine. 
 He contributed largely to the serials of the day, and 
 subsequently collected his contributions and published 
 them as " Twilight Thoughts," " Dawnings for Ger- 
 many," "Autumn Flowers," &c. In these writings, 
 he endeavoured to prepare mens' minds for the great 
 struggle for liberty, which with the prophetic eye of 
 genius, he saw approaching ; and when that struggle 
 came, and when it was over, and Germany was again 
 nationally free, he tried to heal his country's wounds 
 and to console the bereaved ones. He thus writes, 
 when there was scarcely a household in all Germany, 
 from the King's palace to the lowliest peasant's cot, 
 that had not lost a near relative in the bloody wars 
 with France. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE YOUNG. 
 
 "Is it not then bright and beautiful to die at such 
 an age in these spring pasture fields ? I blame not 
 here the grief of the bereaved parents, whose worn- 
 out ideals fade for a second time, with the decline of 
 their sons and daughters, and who twice grow old, for 
 their offspring, their second youth, dies before them. I 
 blame not a single tear, with which they lament their 
 
JEAN PAUL. 59 
 
 spring blossoms blighted and without promise of 
 autumnal fruit. I will in no wise condemn the 
 mourning of affection, least of all that of parents ; I 
 will not even say, true as it is, you grieve over 
 the fading of the youthful blossom, as over some- 
 thing new, and consider not that since the creation, 
 each year, a spring has died. I ask you only, is 
 it not better that death, rather .than life, should 
 wither the roses in their cheeks? Is it not well 
 to die at such an age, when the youth and the 
 maiden fly from a world of ideals into a brighter 
 world of ideals, when they bear with them only the 
 bright morning dreams and fresh morning hours of 
 the first life, and where a milder sun rises over them, 
 than the dull, heavy, sultry one of earth's day of toil, 
 where they, exchanging a passing for an everlasting 
 youth, need no time to recover from a long and 
 weary life, and death's angel bursts asunder the rocks 
 that prevent us rising out of the cold, gloomy, intri- 
 cate catacombs of life. And is not this the happiest of 
 deaths ? I answer, no ! for in life's spring time, 
 there is yet a nobler, that of the youth on the battle- 
 field. Oh, ye thousands of mothers, sisters, and 
 lovers, whose tears gush forth anew at these words, 
 because the tears of the loving flow longer than the 
 blood of the beloved, because yon cannot forget the 
 noble, fiery, innocent young hearts, that no longer 
 beat upon your breast, but are lying unknown and 
 undistinguishable by the side of other dead hearts, 
 in one great grave, check not those tears ! but when 
 your eyes are dry, follow with a brighter and a 
 clearer gaze the course of the warriors as they sank, 
 or much rather are arisen. Father, mother, behold 
 
60 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 thy son before his fall. Not yet palsied by the prison 
 fever of life, he parts from you with a joyous farewell. 
 Full of hope and power, without the weary sadness of 
 the dying, he plunges into the fiery battle-death. 
 Borne on by lofty aspirations and supported and 
 inspired by the feeling of honor ; in his eye the foe, 
 in his heart the fatherland. Falling foes, falling 
 friends, inflame his soul, and the rushing cataracts of 
 death cover a trampled world with gloom and with 
 splendour, and with a rainbow. All that is great in 
 man stands forth boldly, and almost divine in his 
 bosom, as in a hall of the Gods : Duty, Fatherland, 
 Freedom, Glory. Now comes from the earth his last 
 wound ; can he feel that which takes away all feel- 
 ing ? No ! between his death and his immortality, no 
 pain can come, and his last joyful thought is to have 
 died for the fatherland. Then he goes crowned as 
 conqueror, into the broad land of peace. There he 
 will not look back to earth for its reward ; his reward 
 he carries with him, but you share it ; you know that 
 no striving after good is altogether fruitless, or with- 
 out benefit to mankind, and you may hope that from 
 the ashes of the dead on the battle altar, will rise the 
 phoenix of the holiest ; and that the skeletons of the 
 warriors, lying in unknown graves, are the anchors 
 that, unseen, uphold the vessel of the State. Parents, 
 will you again shed tears over your sons ? Weep on, 
 but let them be only tears of joy, for man's power, 
 for the pure ardour of youth, for his scorn of death, 
 as of life, yes, for your own human heart, that would 
 rather bear the agony of those tears, than be without 
 the joys of that self- conquest. Yes, be even proud, ye 
 parents ; you too have striven, for you too have made 
 
JEAN PAUL. 61 
 
 a sacrifice : in the colder season of life you have 
 given up a heart that you loved, even more than 
 your own, and have ventured it for the great heart of 
 the fatherland, and, as your child's remained and 
 your's broke, you only wished and wept, but repented 
 not your offering — and with your wound, your offering 
 lives." 
 
 From these miscellaneous writings we select the 
 following pieces : — 
 
 " Too much fortune or too much misery drives both 
 men and nations to immorality ; it is only in the 
 extremes of heat and cold, that the pond fishes hide 
 themselves in the mud." 
 
 " Tyrant, thou seest the sun of liberty sink in a sea 
 of tears and of blood, that so lately shed its beams 
 over the world ; but thy hopes are vain. The mate- 
 rial sun too, sinks amid blood-red threatening clouds, 
 into the ocean, but in the morning it rises unextin- 
 guished, and day again dawns." 
 
 "Our body sinks into the grave, and in the lapse of 
 time, the very epitaph on the gravestone wears away. 
 What then remains ? That for which both were 
 formed, the soul." 
 
 " Youth weeps, so also does old age, but the one is 
 the morning, the other, the evening dew. Thus the 
 youth praised the tears of young eyes. But when the 
 hot meridian sun had dried up the morning dew, and 
 scorched the flowers, and the youth was become an 
 old man, he said, it is true that the evening dew 
 
 d3 
 
62 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 lies cold and dark, throughout the long night, but 
 then the sun comes and it glistens again." 
 
 " The world was moved and troubled, everywhere 
 was sorrow on the blooming earth ; death- clouds of 
 black poisonous incense rose with its offerings to 
 heaven ; man struggled fiercely with man, and both 
 bled. But in the- midst of the tumult there was a 
 region of peace ; the lark soared high in the blue sky, 
 the nightingale thrilled forth its rapturous melody, 
 and other songsters enlivened the grove with their 
 lays, or warmed their naked young against their 
 feathered bosoms. Poets, you too sing ; be like the 
 birds, and always inhabit the pure calm heights." 
 
 " Many flowers open to the sun, but one follows it 
 constantly. My heart, be thou the sunflower, not 
 only open to Gfod, but obey him also." 
 
 THE FAR-SEEING UNBELIEVERS. 
 
 " We have armed our eyes with the telescope and 
 have examined the heavens, and found them empty 
 and void, and immensity is lonely and waste. Oh ! you 
 foolish ones, your telescope is turned upside down." 
 
 THE GLORY OF GENIUS. 
 
 " Gift of genius, thou art like the dew that falls 
 from heaven under the evening star ; unseen and dark, 
 it strengthens the flower through the long night, but 
 when the morning dawns and it glistens brighter than 
 the flowers, the sun comes and takes it away. Gift of 
 genius, thou art like the dew. Hidden in the silent 
 breast, thou, pure and cool, refreshest it a long time, 
 
JEAN PAUL. 63 
 
 but when thou throwest bright hues and splendor on 
 the world around, thou oftentimes soon disappearest 
 and leavest a weary heart behind." 
 
 Written the last day of the year, 1807, when was 
 fought the disastrous battle of Jena, and Germany's 
 hopes were for the time crushed* 
 
 " Strange year ! Hast thou then had the green 
 trees and nightingales and the whole short spring of 
 earth ? Thou standest silent and ashamed, but yet 
 thou hast brought them, but we have not been able 
 to see them through our tears. 
 
 " Morning of the new year dawn quickly upon us, 
 and as on another morning, may the rainbow of peace 
 rise over the retiring flood. And may the beau- 
 teous star of love, that according to the calendar 
 governs the year, not sink, as Hesperus, that pre- 
 cedes the night, but as morning star that heralds the 
 dawn ; and may love be the queen of the year." 
 
 " The more the love of God and of our fellow man 
 abounds, the less self-love is there ; the quicker a 
 planet revolves round the sun, the slower it turns 
 round itself." 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SCIENTIFIC AND POETIC 
 ILLUSION. 
 
 " If the philosopher deceive thee, he gives thee a 
 vapour of earth, that dissolves itself in rain ; if the 
 poet deceive thee, he gives thee a nebula of heaven 
 that resolves itself into suns." 
 
64 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 THE BUTTERFLY IN • THE CHURCH. 
 
 " Let him fly on, whether it be in the little church 
 house, or in the great temple of the universe, for he 
 too preaches." 
 
 TO PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 " Which is the greater ? He who raising himself 
 above the stormy times, looks down upon them calmly 
 from his elevation, or he who leaving his native 
 heights, boldly plunges into the fierce battle 
 struggle? It is sublime when the eagle soars 
 through the thunderstorm into the cheerful heaven 
 beyond, but it is more sublime, when he hovering in 
 the pure blue, plunges through the raging storm on 
 to the rocky crag, where rest his unprotected and 
 trembling young. " 
 
 THE CHILD WITH THE CRUTCH. 
 
 " Joyfully the child hops round on his crutch ; and 
 sadly the old man drags himself along on his. What 
 makes the difference between the two children ? 
 Hope and memory. " 
 
 THE SUN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 " What influence does this sun exert over the cold 
 men of fashion and of the world ? The same that 
 the material sun effects on the icebergs ; it can make 
 them shine like burnished gold, but cannot melt them, 
 and they float down into the seas of warmer climes." 
 
 WE CHILDREN. 
 
 " A child was carrying a branch covered with flowers, 
 
JEAN PAUL. 65 
 
 and wished to plant it in the earth, that the sweet 
 blossoms might ripen to sweeter fruit. Suddenly 
 there settled upon it a swarm of young bees, and the 
 terrified child threw it from him, bitterly deploring 
 the fruit he had promised himself. Thus we children 
 often treat providence." 
 
 PRINCES AND PEOPLES. 
 
 "When princes weep, peoples bleed : if the mountain 
 tops are enshrouded in mist, it rains in the valley. 
 Now at last, thank God, the German throne heights 
 are cloudless, and stand out fair and clear, as pointers 
 of a bright future to their common fatherland. But 
 oh, princes, consider that eyes are easier to dry than 
 wounds, and the mountain tops than the valley." 
 
 HERDER AND SCHILLER. 
 
 " Both in youth intended to become surgeons, but 
 destiny said, 'No, there are deeper wounds than 
 those of the body ; heal the deeper ones/ and they 
 both wrote." 
 
 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 " Man sees the spinning wheel of destiny, but not 
 the thread ; therefore, says he, behold the eternal 
 empty round of the universe." 
 
 THE REPEATED PROMISE OF AMENDMENT. 
 
 " Heinrich was a youth of fifteen summers, full of 
 good resolutions that he seldom kept, and faults that 
 he daily repented. He loved his father and teacher 
 much, but his amusements more ; for either of these 
 he would have willingly offered his life, but would 
 
66 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 not bend his will. From this cause the Count, his 
 father, dreaded the time when Heinrich would leave 
 home for college and his travels, where the crooked 
 paths of vice become more flowery and precipitous, 
 and no father's arm can restrain, no father's voice 
 call back. He feared lest he should then sink from 
 weakness to weakness, and return with a soul sullied 
 and polluted ; with all its purity and beauty gone, 
 and having lost even that reflection of virtue, re- 
 pentance. The Count was tender, mild and pious, 
 but over indulgent. The vault where rested his 
 spouse, stood as it were under his every footstep and 
 underlaid each bed, from which he would fain have 
 gathered flowers. It was his birthday, and perhaps 
 from this reason he was ill, for the wounded breast 
 could not bear a day, when the heart beat stronger 
 against it. As he grew weaker and weaker, his 
 agonised son went into the little grave-yard, where 
 stood the tomb of his mother, and one as yet un- 
 tenanted, which his father in his sorrow had erected 
 for himself. Here upon his mother's grave, Heinrich 
 solemnly vowed to wage war with his passions and 
 follies. The birthday of his father seemed to say to 
 him, 'The frail clay that retains thy father and 
 separates him from the dust of thy mother, will soon 
 crumble away, perhaps in a very few days, and he 
 will go grieved and hopeless to thy mother, and he 
 will not be able to tell her that thou art reformed.' 
 And he wept aloud, but oh, unhappy Heinrich, what 
 avail are thy sorrow and tears, without thy amend- 
 ment. After a short time the Count partially re- 
 covered, and in the overflow of joyful emotion and 
 hope, he pressed the repentant boy to his fevered 
 
JEAN PAUL. 67 
 
 breast. Heinrich was excited with, joy at his father's 
 recovery and embrace ; his tutor, who endeavoured 
 by proportioned severity to make up for the father's 
 leniency, tried to set bounds to his intemperate plea- 
 sure. Heinrich was disobedient, and when the tutor 
 reiterated his commands, he rebelled and wounded the 
 feelings of his stern friend deeply. This disturbance 
 with his teacher struck the already weary and 
 stricken heart of the hoping father, like a poisoned 
 dart, and he succumbed to the wound and had to 
 take again to his sick bed. Thoughtlessly man 
 strews around him the flaming coals of his sins, and 
 often only when lying in bis grave, do the scattered 
 sparks burst forth into flames, whose smoke forms a 
 column of shame over bis tomb, that rests for ever 
 upon it. Heinrich, when all hopes of recovery were 
 over, could not look upon the shattered form of his 
 father, without remorse. Silently on his knees like 
 an eye-bound malefactor, he awaited in the next 
 room, the future and the fearful words * he is dead V 
 At length, he went in to the dying man to take a 
 last farewell and receive his forgiveness ; but the 
 father though he gave his love, withheld his confi- 
 dence, saying, ' My son, amend, but do not promise 
 it.' As Heinrich lay in the ante -chamber, over- 
 whelmed with grief and shame, he heard his aged 
 tutor blessing his father, who had also been his pupil, 
 as if already the shades of the last night were 
 gathering round the sick man's life. ' Slumber 
 softly/ said he, ' thou virtuous man, thou faithful 
 scholar ; all the good resolutions that thou hast kept, all 
 thy victories over self, all thy good deeds, will now 
 appear as crimson evening clouds in the twilight 
 
68 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 of thy setting sun. Hope on in thy Heinrich and 
 trust that he may still reform/ The sick man 
 could not shake off his overwhelming faintness, his 
 wandering senses mistook the voice of the tutor for 
 that of his son, and he stammered out, i Heinrich, 
 I cannot see thee, but I hear thee ; lay thy hand upon 
 my heart and swear that thou will amend.' Heinrich 
 sprang into the room, bnt the tutor putting his hand 
 on the dying man's breast, said gently, ' I will 
 swear in thy name.' But as he did so, he felt that 
 the heart had ceased its motion and was resting from 
 the long labour of life, ' Fly, unhappy one ' he cried, 
 ' he has died without hope.' Heinrich fled out of 
 the castle, after promising his teacher to return. 
 Tottering, and weeping aloud, he sought the grave- 
 yard, where the tombs like pale skeletons rose amid 
 the green foliage. He had not the courage to touch 
 the empty future resting place of His father ; but he 
 leaned against the second column, where lay a heart 
 that had not perished through his guilt, his mother's. 
 — Silent, gloomy, and oppressed, he bore his sorrow 
 further ; everywhere he met that which reminded 
 him of his loss and of his guilt. The thought of his 
 undutiful conduct haunted and pursued him. After 
 five gloomy days full of remorse and pain, Heinrich 
 resolved to return to the friend of his father, and 
 console him by the first fruits of his amendment. At 
 night, he entered timidly the house of mourning. 
 As he passed through the grave-yard, the white 
 pyramid over his father's tomb stood awe-inspiring 
 to his soul among the living green of the foliage, as 
 the smoke cloud of a conflagration floats in the pure 
 blue ether of heaven. He leaned his head against 
 
JEAN PAUL. 69 
 
 the cold hard column and could only weep, discon- 
 solate and speechless. Here he stood forsaken. JNo 
 soft voice whispered ' Thou hast been sufficiently 
 punished/ The trees rustled as in rage, and the 
 darkness seemed an abyss ; his loss was irreparable, 
 and he felt it. But now through his tears he noticed 
 a silver star in the sky, that mild as the eye of an 
 immortal spirit, shone down upon him through the 
 trees. A softer sorrow took possession of his breast ; 
 he thought of the promise of amendment, that death 
 alone had prevented, and he sank slowly upon his knees, 
 and gazing up to the stars above him, said, ' Oh, 
 father, father, (and grief choked his voice) here lies 
 thy unhappy child on thy grave, and he swears to 
 thee ; yes, pure righteous spirit, I will alter — accept 
 me again. Oh, couldst thou but give me a sign that 
 thou hadst answered my request.' The leaves rustled 
 near him, slowly a form pushed aside the branches 
 and said, 1 1 have heard thee, I hope again/ It was 
 his father — the transition state between death and 
 sleep, the sister of death, a trance, had like a 
 wholesome, though heavy slumber, again given 
 him life. Thou excellent father, had death borne 
 thee into the glories of the second world, thou couldst 
 not have experienced more joy and rapture., than at 
 this moment, when thy erring son sank repentant 
 on thy bosom, and fulfilled the most cherished hope 
 of thy heart. 
 
 " Before the curtain falls on this short scene, I 
 would ask you young men — Have you parents to 
 whom you have not yet given this pledge ? If so, I 
 would remind you, ere it be too late, that one day, a 
 time will come, when you will be comfortless, and 
 
70 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 in bitterness of soul exclaim, alas, they loved me 
 better than all besides, but I let them die without 
 hope, and I was their last grief." 
 
 The biography of Bichter from the time he set- 
 tled at Baireuth is almost too simple for a detailed 
 account. He was an excellent husband and father, 
 and a constant friend. Numerous letters were conti- 
 nually addressed to him from all parts of Germany, 
 asking advice or assistance, to which he always replied. 
 Young authors came to him for a good word, and 
 among those whom he first introduced to fame, may 
 be mentioned Wagner and Kanne. 
 
 But here we must introduce a tragic story,— it is 
 one that no writer of fiction would ever be excused 
 for detailing as such, it is Werther like, but it sur- 
 passes "Werther. A young girl, the daughter of a 
 victim of the reign of terror, had begun to read the 
 works of Jean Paul in her tenth y^ar, So delighted, 
 so enchanted was she with him, seeing him as she 
 did only through the medium of his writings, that 
 this young creature came to the conclusion, that she 
 could not be happy, except in his society. She ac- 
 cordingly wrote to Bichter, begging that he would for 
 the future, consider her as his daughter. His answers 
 were kind and gentle, and full of advice, he even, at 
 her especial request, got his wife to cut a lock from 
 his now but scantily covered head, sent it to her, and 
 always signed himself " Thy Father." But this was 
 not enough for the impassioned girl; her ideal of 
 him was ever present with her, and the desire to see 
 him became so intense, a desire that she felt she 
 could not rightly gratify, that she at length con- 
 ceived, child as she was, that her only refuge was 
 
JEAN PAUL. 71 
 
 death. At this time, she was living with her 
 mother and sister, and as their happiness greatly 
 depended upon her, she resolved for their sakes to 
 delay the prosecution of her fearful project. The 
 mother died and the sister married, and now believing 
 that the last tie that bound her to earth was severed, 
 and that in another world she would be able to meet 
 him whom she loved so ardently, she carried her fright- 
 ful scheme into execution, after penning the follow- 
 ing letter to Eichter : "Do not be angry, dearest 
 father, at receiving these lines from your unfortu- 
 nate Maria. My 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, and not to desert 
 her in these terrible war times — these are now over. 
 All I could, I have done ; her happiness is secure, 
 and I now hasten to quit a world where mine has so 
 unaccountably failed, where my most earnest strivings 
 after good have been so entirely in vain, and where, 
 since my foolish letters to you, I have passed from 
 despair to despair. Ah ! in the great universe, there 
 will yet be a place where I can recover my peace and 
 be as I wish. I have suffered enough, I long to die ! 
 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. But do 
 not despise me so much, as not to let your children, 
 of whom I cannot think without tears, they are so 
 happy, accept a little present from me. Tell them 
 not whence it comes ; I would willingly be wholly 
 forgotten, and unnoticed pass away. No one has 
 learned my history from myself, and I have burnt 
 all books and journals. Your hair alone was spared, 
 
72 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 it is on my neck, and I take it with me. Again, 
 never-to-be-forgotten, dearest father ! Farewell ! 
 Alas, that it should have been so with me. My un- 
 happy spirit will hover round you, till you again 
 receive it, and take it with you. Oh, could I but 
 give you a sign, or bring you some higher know- 
 ledge." 
 
 This dreadful circumstance threw a gloom over 
 Eichter' s life, that it took long years to dispel. His 
 family was now grown up, and his son Max, a 
 youth of great promise, was sent to Munich to school. 
 Here he devoted himself with the utmost assiduity to 
 his studies, and when removed to the University of 
 Heidelberg, distinguished himself much, especially 
 as a philologist. His severe mental application 
 shattered his constitution, and brought on a melan- 
 choly, that assuming the form of religious fanaticism, 
 quickly robbed him of youth and health. His parents 
 in vain attempted to cheer him. His mental struggles 
 brought on a nervous fever, that ended in death. 
 Eichter never got over this blow, it went to his heart 
 — it was a death-stab to the old man, and left death 
 himself little to do. His sight was much weakened 
 by excessive weeping, and at length entirely yielded 
 to his unremitting literary efforts. 
 
 For many years Eichter had been engaged in the 
 composition of a great comic romance, entitled, " The 
 Comet. " This work was not completed at the time 
 of the death of his son, yet so great was his force of 
 character, that he could compose the most humorous 
 scenes, while his eyes were red and swollen with 
 weeping. A few stray thoughts from this work are 
 well worthy of insertion here. 
 
JEAN PAUL. 
 
 73 
 
 DEATH IN CHILDHOOD. 
 
 " The butterflies die with the setting sun, and live 
 not to disport themselves in the morning beams. 
 You are happier, you little human butterflies ; you 
 sported for awhile at the rising of the sun of life, 
 and flew over a bright world full of flowers, and sank 
 before the morning dew had disappeared." 
 
 THE RAINBOW OVER WATERLOO. 
 
 " When at last, 'stead of the deadly cannon mouths, 
 only the torn limbs smoked, and when to the shout of 
 the combatants had succeeded the wail of the wounded, 
 and death looked out upon his wide fresh cut harvest 
 field, where men and horses lay, some cold and stark, 
 and others dying side by side, there appeared in the 
 east a rainbow, as if the heavens wished to bind up 
 the wounds of the bleeding earth, with a soft lina- 
 ment of colours. 
 
 " To the breaking eyes of the wounded it stood as a 
 triumphal arch with its flower colours and the blue 
 of heaven, the green of earth, and the red of the 
 morning ; the conquerors' wreath given by the sky, 
 and half hidden by the earth ; the half circle of 
 eternity into which the heart escapes, when released 
 from its fetters of clay. 
 
 " And as formerly after the deluge, this joy-inspiring 
 bow was given as a token of future mercy, it now 
 stood as messenger of peace from heaven, after the 
 long down-pouring of blood over Europe, to tell 
 us that the destruction of fellow men, and the 
 ebb and flow of the outpoured brother's blood, should 
 now cease. May the celestial harbinger never betoken 
 aught else, Oh, ye kings ! " 
 
74 
 
 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 " If this were but done, and that accomplished, and 
 all were gone as I could have wished, I should be in 
 the harbour and rest securely, says man, and he does 
 run into a harbour, that he, as the sailor, has hewn in 
 an iceberg, and he rests there, till his harbour either 
 floats or melts away." 
 
 COMPLAINT OF THE BIRD IN THE DARKENED CAGE. 
 
 " How wretched should I be, said the imprisoned 
 bird, in my ceaseless night, without the beautiful tunes, 
 that sometimes like distant rays penetrate into my 
 cage, and brighten my darkest day. But I will impress 
 these heavenly melodies upon me, and like the echo, 
 practice them, till I am able to console myself with 
 them in my darkness. And the little songster learned 
 to sing the melodies that were played before it, and 
 then the cloth was raised, for it was only to teach, 
 that it had been kept in the dark. How often do 
 we men and women complain of the beneficent ob- 
 scuration of our days ? But only then do we rightly 
 complain, when we have thereby learned nothing. 
 And is not our whole earthly existence, but a curtain 
 to the soul ? Oh, when the curtain is drawn aside, 
 may it fly upwards with new melodies ! " 
 
 THE ATHEIST. 
 
 " The denier of a living Gfod, holding converse but 
 with himself, when he has once shut out the Highest 
 from his view, must stand in a dead universe, im- 
 prisoned by a cold, gray, deaf, blind, dumb, iron 
 necessity, and verily for him, nothing lives and 
 moves, but his own transient existence. Thus stands 
 
JEAN PAUL. 75 
 
 the wanderer on the ice seas and ice mountains of 
 Switzerland. Around him silence reigns supreme. 
 Nothing moves as far as eye can reach, save some- 
 times when a thin cloud rises upwards, and for a 
 moment breaks the immeasurable immovability. 
 Yes, if he have both excluded God from his belief, 
 and have sunk into misery and sin, his solitude may 
 well be compared to that of the convicted incendiary, 
 who, chained in his hut, sees the faggots rise higher 
 and higher around him, and awaits in utter loneliness, « 
 the lighting of the pile, the signal of his doom." 
 
 JOYS AND SORROWS. 
 
 " As we do not remember the extent and number of 
 our sorrows, as of our joys, we are too apt to forget 
 the fruit that these holly trees have borne. These 
 fruits are perhaps more necessary to our head than to 
 our heart. To love everything, a joyful existence is 
 sufficient; but to see and know all, men, life, and 
 still more ourselves, requires sorrow. The spiritual, 
 like the material eye, must be daily moistened by 
 tears ; to give it elasticity, to soften the light and 
 wash away aught that might be detrimental to it. 
 "We do not notice that we actually weep the whole 
 day long. I speak of the material eye. Yet on 
 different minds, sorrows have a different effect. 
 Those of a pure, warm spirit are the May frosts that 
 harbinger the summer, but those of one, hard, sordid, 
 and corrupt, are autumnal chills, that show only the 
 approach of winter. 
 
 " Every heavy sorrow seems to us at the time an 
 overwhelming crushing load, as the gravestone, tied 
 to the neck of the condemned to sink him in the 
 
76 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 deep; but we do not consider that oftentimes 
 afflictions are but the stones attached to the divers, 
 so that they may descend into the deep and rise 
 again enriched with costly pearls. Joy flies around 
 us as a beautiful captivating harmless butterfly — but 
 alas, it too often leaves behind it eggs, which grow 
 to voracious caterpillars that bite sharply and long, 
 till they, in their turn, change to butterflies. 
 
 " No man is so cowardly as to confess that he 
 crouches before every grief, and contests and endures 
 none. But if thou wilt contest and bear up against 
 one, thou must not except any, but must determine 
 to rise superior to all, to the greatest, as to the least. 
 It were contradictory and absurd to find salves in 
 reason or religion, for bee, but not for serpent- stings, 
 or to suffer them to cure the sprained foot, but not 
 the broken arm. The lives of most men are like 
 water, where but one point receives and reflects the 
 sunshine, and all around is in the shade, and if 
 a cloud pass over this spot, all is obscured. But let 
 thy life be like the diamond, that by nature too, only 
 beams from one spot, but to which the cuttings of 
 art give light surfaces, so that no part is dark. Be 
 then, not in one position cheerful, but in all, and 
 however providence may see fit to treat thee, let thy 
 light continue to shine on." 
 
 Here follows in the original, a sublime dream, 
 illustrative of the immensity of space, which we had 
 intended to translate, but so admirably has it been 
 paraphrased by Mr, De Quincey, that we hesitate 
 not to introduce his version. We think, however, he 
 has in it, not preserved the grand idea that was 
 
JEAN PAUL. 77 
 
 evidently prominent in the mind of the writer. In 
 Richter's introduction to this composition, he chiefly 
 dwells upon the enormous expanse between the 
 celestial bodies. And when he is astounded, over- 
 whelmed and confounded, by the infinitudes through 
 which he passes, and wonders that so vast a portion 
 of the universe should be empty and void ; the angel 
 touches his eyelids, and immediately he beholds the 
 suns and planets as dark bodies traversing a sea of 
 light — the spirit world. 
 
 " God called up from dreams a man into the vesti- 
 bule of heaven, saying, ' Come thou hither, and 
 see the glory of my throne.' And to the servants, 
 that stood around his throne, he said, ' Take him, 
 and undress him from his robes of flesh, cleanse his 
 vision, and put a new breath into his nostrils ; only 
 touch not with any change his human heart, the 
 heart that weeps and trembles.' 
 
 " It was done, and with a mighty angel for his 
 guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage ; 
 and from the terraces of heaven, without sound or 
 farewell, at once they wheeled away into endless 
 space. Sometimes, with the solemn flight of angel 
 wing, they fled through zaarahs of darkness, through 
 wildernesses of death, that divided the worlds of 
 light; sometimes they swept over frontiers that 
 were quickening under prophetic motions from Gfod. 
 Then from a distance that is counted only in heaven, 
 light dawned for a time through a sleepy film ; by 
 unutterable pace, the light swept to them ; they 
 by unutterable pace, to the light. In a moment, the 
 rushing of planets was upon them ; in a moment the 
 blazing of suns was around them. Then came 
 
78 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 eternities of twilight, that reveal but were not re- 
 vealed. On the right hand and on the left towered 
 mighty constellations, that by self repetitions and 
 answers from afar, that by counter positions, built 
 up triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose arch- 
 ways, horizontal, upright, rested, rose at altitude by 
 spans that seemed ghostly, from infinitude. With- 
 out measure were the architraves, past number were 
 the archways, beyond memory the gates. Within 
 were stairs, that scaled the eternities below ; above 
 was below, below was above to the man stripped of 
 gravitating body ; depth was swallowed up in height 
 insurmountable, height was swallowed up in depth 
 unfathomable. Suddenly as thus they rode from 
 infinite to infinite — suddenly as thus they tilted over 
 abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose that systems 
 more mysterious, that worlds more billowy, other 
 heights and other depths, were coming, were nearing, 
 were at hand. Then the man sighed and stopped, 
 shuddered, and wept. His overladen heart uttered 
 itself in tears, and he said, ' Angel, I will go no 
 farther ; for the spirit of man acheth with this infini- 
 tude. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let me lie 
 down in the grave, and hide me from the persecu- 
 tion of the infinite ; for end I see there is none/ 
 And from all the listening stars that shone around, 
 issued a choral voice, ' The man speaks truly. End 
 there is none, that ever yet we heard of ! ' End is 
 there none?' the angel solemnly demanded. ' Is 
 there indeed no end, and is this the sorrow that kills 
 you ?' But no voice answered, that he might answer 
 himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious hands 
 to the heaven of heavens, saying, ' End is there none, 
 
JEAN PAUL. 79 
 
 to the universe of God. Lo, also, there is no begin- 
 
 * » j> 
 
 nmg. 
 
 After the death of his son, Bichter continued to labor 
 unremittingly with his pen, and the work to which he 
 devoted the greatest part of his remaining time and 
 strength, was one on the Immortality of the Soul,, 
 " Selina." We have before mentioned that his sight 
 was failing fast. In 1823, he travelled to Dresden, 
 to consult a celebrated optician in that city, and in 
 1824, to Nuremberg, with the same object ; but all 
 was without avail. He found great difficulty in seeing 
 to write, and the manuscript of the " Selina" exhibits 
 a sad contrast to the beautiful caligraphy of his earlier 
 works. In the autumn of 1825, his physical strength 
 rapidly declined, and this weakness proved the imme- 
 diate precursor of man's hereditary foe. The last 
 words which he forced his erring hand to trace, were 
 these, "Life is not flown with the soul, but in it. Its 
 material sceptre it now resigns. The spirit world 
 which that sceptre governed it dismisses, or rather it 
 abandons. Shall this rich, and till now much more 
 favoured portion of our being, cease, and only the other 
 part remain." Thus the last words of Jean Paul were a 
 statement of his conviction that the soul was immortal. 
 
 During his illness, his gentleness and gratitude for 
 every little service done him, were remarkably con- 
 spicuous. On the 14th of November, a friend brought 
 him some flowers, of which he was excessively fond, 
 although he could no longer see them. He took them 
 in his hand and fell into a soft slumber, from which he 
 never more awoke. And the great mind was gone 
 in death to solve the mighty problem of his life. 
 " Thus Richter. went from earth, great and holy as a 
 
 e2 . 
 
80 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 poet, greater and holier as a man." Thus died Jean 
 Paul, the kind husband, the excellent father, the gifted 
 poet, the enlightened patriot, and above all, the good 
 man. At night, by the light of torches, his body was 
 carried to its last resting place by the side of the much 
 loved son. On his coffin, lay the unfinished manu- 
 script of the "Selina," the book on imm ortality. A 
 long procession followed, and as they gathered round 
 the narrow vault, that was to enclose the earthly 
 remains of the great author, there arose from the lips of 
 the assembled mourners, the triumphant hymn of KLop- 
 stock " Auferstehen wirst du," " Thou shalt arise," 
 and all felt that this was not the end of Jean Paul. 
 
 Our task is now well nigh accomplished. We have 
 briefly sketched the principal incidents in the life of 
 Bichter : we have watched the boy in his play, by 
 the side of the beautiful Saale ; we have accompanied 
 the youth, who with head and heart full to overflowing, 
 but with empty purse and threadbare coat, hurried 
 along the streets of Leipzig, and have traced his foot- 
 steps, as he toiled upwards to competence and fame; we 
 have described his marriage and final settlement in the 
 little town of Baireuth, where within view of his 
 native mountains, he laboured and wrote ; we have 
 wept with the old man over the blighted promise of 
 his son, and have mournfully followed the bier of the 
 aged poet as it was borne at the dead of night through 
 the silent streets ; and have even lingered awhile 
 at the grave to listen to the solemn strains of the re- 
 quiem that pointed to immortality, and to hope beyond 
 the tomb. Of his works, we have introduced such 
 pieces as seemed to us conspicuous for beauty, power, 
 and truth. Yet this little volume would not be com- 
 
JEAN PAUL. 81 
 
 plete without further notice of his character. In 
 person Richter was tall, muscular, and strongly built. 
 His countenance was indicative of his mind. On the 
 lofty, broad, noble brow, was unmistakeably written 
 a profound intellect, whilst in his large lustrous eye, 
 there was almost an excess of feeling. The nose was 
 regular, and the mouth small and fine. The neck 
 was full, giving an idea of power. Of his private 
 character we have already spoken at some length ; 
 dutiful as a son, faithful and affectionate as a husband, 
 and kind and loving as a father, he lived the good 
 man, and he died the good man. He has been com- 
 pared to Sir "Walter Scott, and in many respects, the 
 characters of the two great writers were similar. 
 They both had an excessive fondness for animals, an 
 ardent love for nature, and warm and feeling hearts. 
 But here, to us, the resemblance ceases. Scott is 
 remarkable for a graceful flowing style, peculiarly his 
 own, whilst Richter is as rough and rugged as his 
 native hills. Scott was an aristocrat in everything 
 but birth, whilst the political creed of Richter was 
 something between that of an ancient republican and 
 a modern radical. Of his religion it is difficult to 
 speak, and what we do say, we would say diffidently. 
 That Richter was essentially a devout man, none 
 who have read his works will deny. Even from the 
 short extracts we have given, we have seen that 
 flinging aside the limitations of space and time, he 
 could on the spirit's wing, penetrate beyond the utter- 
 most confines of our system, beyond all the visible 
 heaven, to find the " Hidden All" of the universe, 
 there to cast himself in wonder, love, and adoration, 
 before the throne of " his infinite Father." The ten- 
 
82 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 dency of the age in which he lived, and in which we 
 live, is pre-eminently practical, grasping at particular 
 facts, it cares little for general principles ; if it can 
 get individual, it will not seek out great fundamental 
 laws. The philosophy of Bichter was the very 
 reverse of that of the age : in seeking general laws, 
 he seems to us to have somewhat neglected particulars, 
 and whilst feeling an inexpressible yearning for an 
 infinite Father, to have disregarded, or thrown aside, 
 some of those practices and doctrines of the Christian 
 church, which were instituted by its divine founder, 
 and which by most of its members are considered 
 essential and vital. Nevertheless, in the great strug- 
 gle that was being waged between Goethe and 
 Schiller, as the leaders of the aesthetic philosophers, 
 and Herder and Jacobi, who maintained the supre- 
 macy of revelation, even to human reason, Bichter 
 hesitated not to give his whole influence in favour 
 of the latter, though it cost him no less a price than 
 the friendship of his two illustrious opponents. 
 
 Criticism forms but a small part of this little 
 work, indeed we feel ourselves utterly incapable of 
 reviewing such writings as those of Jean Paul. The 
 following is from the pen of one who was evidently 
 at home in the subject. "To characterize Jean Paul's 
 works would be difficult, after the fullest inspection, 
 to describe them to English readers would be next to 
 impossible. Whether poetical, philosophical, didactic, 
 fantastic, they seem all to be emblems, more or less 
 complete, of the singular mind where they originated. 
 As a whole, the first perusal of them, more particu- 
 larly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive ; and 
 neither their meaning, nor their no meaning, is to be 
 
JEAN PAUL. 83 
 
 discovered without long and sedulous study. They 
 are a tropical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities, 
 but with the fairest flowers and coolest fountains, now 
 over-arching us with high umbrageous gloom, now 
 opening in long gorgeous vistas. We wander through 
 them, enjoying their wild grandeur ; by degrees our 
 half contemptuous wonder at the author passes into 
 reverence and love. His face was long hid from us, 
 but we see him at length in the firm shape of spiri- 
 tual manhood, a vast and most singular nature, but 
 vindicating his singular nature, by the force, the 
 beauty, and benignity that pervade it. In fine we 
 joyfully accept him for what he is, and was meant to 
 be. The graces, the polish, the sprightly elegancies, 
 which belong to men of lighter make, we cannot look 
 for, or demand from him. His movement is essen- 
 tially slow and cumbrous, for he advances, not with 
 one faculty, but with a whole mind ; with intellect, 
 and pathos, and wit, and humour, and imagination, 
 moving onwards like a mighty host, motley, pon- 
 derous, irregular, irresistible. He is not airy, spark- 
 ling and precise, but deep, billowy, and vast. The 
 melody of his nature is not expressed in common 
 notemarks, or written down by the critical gamut, 
 for it is wild and manifold ; its voice is like the voice 
 of cataracts, and the sounding of primeval forests. 
 To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that under- 
 stand it, deep majestic music." The mind of Jean 
 Paul, as seen in his writings, may be compared to the 
 image seen by Nebuchadnezzar, in prophetic vision, 
 " whose brightness was excellent." The fine gold of 
 pure and holy sentiment is the head, the silver of a 
 boundless and sublime imagination, the breast, the 
 
84 JEAN PAUL. 
 
 brass and iron of truth and power, the thighs and 
 legs, whilst the feet are partly formed of clay. Yes, 
 clay did enter into his composition, the clay of a vicious 
 style, offensive to most and repulsive to all. Yet spite 
 of this imperfection, the grandeur and wonderful 
 creative power of his imagination, the richness and 
 exuberance of his imagery, the minute truthfulness 
 with which he paints every joy and sorrow, every hope 
 and aspiration of which the human heart is susceptible, 
 the noble persistency of the support he gives to social 
 and intellectual liberty, to the cause of truth, and of 
 virtue, all proclaim him to be, though not Germany's 
 greatest author, yet the phoenix of her modem litera- 
 ture. We have already likened his childhood to the 
 course of a mountain streamlet, much more may his 
 writings, in their full vigour, be compared to the 
 broad smooth current of a mighty river, which re- 
 flects upon its bosom, not only the varied face of 
 nature, mountain, and forest, not only the habitations 
 of men, but the billowy cloud world, the pure blue 
 ethereal vault beyond, either studded with stars, or 
 enlightened by the rays of the king of day. 
 
 Thus in Jean Paul we find not only nature, not 
 only man depicted, but ideas sublime, vast, over- 
 whelming ; and though somewhat obscured by poetic 
 or philosophic clouds, it is not seldom that we get a 
 glimpse of the " divine eye " beyond. 
 
 Richter's offerings to the muses are like that of 
 Brutus to the oracle. To the casual or superficial 
 observer, they are mere alder sticks, rough, knotted 
 and gnarled, but he who reads and studies them, will 
 assuredly find them inlaid with pure gold. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 
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