If there be a regular German of the Germans beyond the Rhine and be-north the Alps, whom, notwithstanding (perhaps partly by reason of) his faults and eccentricities, we love, and honour, and reverence, and clasp to our true British breast with a genuine feeling of brotherhood,—this man is Jean Paul Frederick Richter. True, his name to the uninitiated is a sort of offence, and a stumbling-block, almost as much as if you were to introduce the gray, leafless image of transcendental logic in the shape of philosopher Hegel, or the super-potentiated energy of transcendental volition in the shape of philosopher Fichte;—but, my dear friends and readers, consider this only,—what thing pre-eminently great and good is there in the world that has not been in its day an offence and a stumbling-block to the uninitiated? “Wo unto you, when all men speak well of you:” this is a text no less applicable to literature than to religion; and howsoever a certain school of critics—unfortunately not yet altogether extinct—may turn up their snub noses, and apply with orthodox deliberation their cool thermometer which never boils, there are occasions when this text may be quoted most appropriately against them. Even GÖethe, “many-sided” GÖethe, is not free from blame here—he never understood Richter; he judged according to the appearance—not a righteous judgment; his thermometer was too cold. But the great Olympian of Weimar, when with his dark brows he nodded, and from his immortal head the ambrosian locks rolled down in anger against the uprising muse of Frederick Richter, failed of his Homeric parallel in one point—“e?a? d' e?e???e? ???p??”—he did not shake Olympus. He did not cause the eccentric comet-genius of Richter to tame the brilliant lashings of its world-wandering tail—he did not cause Germany, he cannot cause Europe to cease admiring these brilliant coruscations, and that pure lambent play of heaven-licking light. To institute a comparison between Richter and GÖethe were merely to repeat again for the millionth time that old folly of critics, by which they will allow nothing to be understood according to its own nature, but must always drag it into a forced and unnatural contrast with things most unlike itself; were merely to reverse the poles of injustice, and apply to GÖethe as unequal a measure as he and men of his compact and complete external neatness, apply to Richter. We make no foolish and unprofitable comparisons; a wild wood is a wild wood, and a flower-bed is a flower-bed; which of them is best we know not, but we know that they are both good. We know that GÖethe is great, and that Richter is great; which of them is the greater some god, as the Greeks said, may know; but for us mortals it is sufficient to endeavour to sympathise perfectly with the peculiar greatness of each, and appropriate what part of it we may.

We should wish to make this a very long article, and to run a little wild, like Richter himself, if the inspiration would only sustain us; but it may not be. Biographies, even the best, of literary men possess a complete and satisfactory interest only to those who are acquainted in some degree with the works of the author; and Madame de Stael has told us with an authoritative voice that, however great the powers of Richter were, “nothing that he has published can ever extend beyond the limits of Germany.”4 Now, though this has more the air of a narrow last-century judgment than one of the present day, and is, perhaps, more French than English; yet the fact is, that Richter has not hitherto extended his literary influence, except in the case of a few stray individuals, beyond his native country; and his biography can, of course, not expect to meet with the same extensive welcome from a British public that was given to that of Schiller, and Mrs Austin’s Characteristics of GÖethe. Nevertheless, the work from which we shall presently make a few extracts is a most valuable addition to those links that are daily uniting us with more endearing bonds to the Saxon brotherhood beyond the Rhine; it is a step, and a bold one, in advance. We have now almost to satiety made a survey of the neat classical Weimar, and we are plunging at once, with bold fearless swoop, into the very centre of the Fatherland, into the midst of the untrodden fir forests of the Fichtelgebirge, where many great hearts billow out sublime thoughts—hearts that never saw that which is most kindred to them in nature—the sea. So it was with Richter literally. Born at the little mountain town of Wunsiedel, between Bayreuth and Bohemia, and shifting about with a migratory elasticity from Bayreuth to Berlin, from Berlin to Coburg, from Coburg to Heidelberg, he died without having ever feasted his eyes (what a feast to a man like him!) on the glowing blue of the Mediterranean, or drunk in with his ears the “a??????? ?e?asa” the multitudinous laughter of the Baltic wave. A genuine German!—in this respect certainly, and in how many others! A German in imagination—Oh, Heaven! he literally strikes you blind with skyrockets and sunbeams (almost as madly at times as our own Shelley), and circumnavigates your brain with a dance of nebulous Brocken phantoms, till you seriously doubt whether you are not a phantom yourself: a German for kindliness and simplicity and true-heartedness—a man having his heart always in his hand, and his arms ready to be thrown round every body’s neck; greeting every man with a blessing, and cursing only the devil, and—like Robert Burns—scarcely him heartily: a German for devoutness of heart, and purity of unadulterated evangelic feeling, without the least notion, at the same time, of what in Scotland we call orthodoxy, much less of what in England they call church; a rare Christian; a man whom you cannot read and relish thoroughly unless you are a Christian yourself, any more than you can the gospel of John. For Richter also is a preacher in his own way—a smiling, sporting, nay a jesting preacher at time, but with a deep background of earnestness: his jests being the jests not of rude men, but of innocent children; his earnestness the earnestness not of a sour Presbyterian theologian, but of a strong-sighted seraph that looks the sun in the face, and becomes intensely bright. A German further is Richter, and better than a German, in the profoundness of his philosophy and the subtlety of his speculation: a speculation profound, but not dark; a subtlety nice without being finical, and delicate without being meagre. A German further, and specially, is this man, in his vast and various erudition, and in that quality without which learning was never achieved, hard laboriousness and indefatigable perseverance. It is incredible what books he read: not merely literary books, but also and principally scientific books; natural history especially in all its branches from the star to the star-fish; quarto upon quarto of piously gathered extracts were the well-quarried materials, out of which his most light and fantastic, as well as his most solid and architectural fabrics were raised: a merit of the highest order in our estimation; an offence and a scandal to many; for nothing offends conceited and shallow readers so much as to find in an imaginative work allusions to grave scientific facts, of which their butterfly-spirits are incapable. Then, over and above all this, Richter possesses a virtue which only a few Germans possess: he is a man of infinite humour: humour, too, of the best kind; sportive, sunny, and genial, rather than cutting and sarcastic; broad without being gross, refined without being affected. Then his faults, also—and their name is legion—how German are they! His want of taste, his mingled homeliness and sublimity, his unpruned luxuriance, his sentimental wantonness! But let these pass; he who notices them seriously is not fit to read Richter. It requires a certain delicate tact of finger to pluck the rose on this rich bush without being pricked by the thorn; John Bull especially, with his stone and lime church, his statutable religion, and his direct railroad understanding, is very apt to be exasperated by the capricious jerking electric points of such a genuine German genius as Richter. On the pediment of this strange temple we would place in large letters the cry of the CumÆan Sibyl in Virgil— “Procul, O procul este, profani!”
Let no mere mathematician, no mere Benthamite, no mere mechanist, no mere “botanist,” no mere man of taste, and trim man of measured syllables, enter here. Procul, O procul este, profani! It is enchanted ground. We have no quarrel with you; we quarrel with nobody: only keep your own ground, in God’s name, and don’t quarrel with us and our German friend Paul.

Richter was born, as we have mentioned, in the little county town of Wunsiedel, in Franconia, and that in the year 1763—about the same time, to use his own words, as the peace of Hubertsburg, which put an end to the famous Seven Years’ War. He was thus four years the junior of Schiller, (born 1759,) and fourteen of GÖethe, (born 1749.) He was, like many other famous literary characters, the son of a clergyman, and blesses God frequently both for this, and that he was not born a cockney, (in Berlin or Vienna,) or in a coach-box, like the children of aristocratic parents, driven about over Europe in their early years, and never knowing the pleasure of having a home. A country vicarage amid mountains, forests, village schools and brawling brooks, gave to Richter’s infancy, and through that to his genius, a calm and peaceful background, over which a multiplicity of whimsical figures might, without painful dissipation, be made to play. In early youth the future prose-poet (for he never wrote a line of metre) displayed great eagerness to learn, and great aptitude for speculation; he was accordingly, by the fond ambition of a pious mother, dedicated, like so many a bookish youth, to the church. But theology, with its prickly fence of stiff dogmas, had no charms for a youth of his extreme sensibility, mercurial versatility, and sparkling freakishness; besides, speculation and questioning were already abroad in the German church, and amid the loud voices of contending doctors, it was a difficult thing for an active and honest thinker to cut the matter short by help of the devil’s recipe in Faust;

Richter, therefore, finding himself without rudder or compass on the wide sea of German theology, much to the grief of his honest mother, was obliged to forswear theology and become author, his genius being stimulated quite as much by poverty as by Apollo, like old Horace.

“Philippi then dismiss’d me with my wings
Sorrily clipt, without or house or home;
And Need, that ventures all, forced me to try
The pen, and become poet.”
The Philippi which dismissed Richter was the University of Leipsic. He came back to Hof penniless, but not hopeless, to his good mother,—striving with a mind in some respects as narrow as her fortune; and here he studied, and brooded, and dreamed, and began to shoot strange coruscations: let us see how:—

“The darkest period of our hero’s life was when he fled from Leipsic and went down in disguise to Hof. The lawsuit had stripped his mother of the little property she inherited from the cloth-weaver, [her father,] and she had been obliged to part with the respectable homestead where the honest man had carried on his labours. She was now living with one or more of Paul’s brothers, in a small tenement, containing but one apartment, where cooking, washing, cleaning, spinning, and all the bee-hive labours of domestic life must go on together.

“To this small and over-crowded apartment, which henceforth must be Paul’s only study, he brought his twelve volumes of extracts, a head that in itself contained a library, a tender and sympathising heart—a true, high-minded, self-sustaining spirit. His exact situation was this: The success of the first and second volumes of his ‘Greenland Lawsuits’ had encouraged him to write a third—a volume of satires, under the singular name of ‘Selections from the Papers of the Devil;’ but for this we have seen he had strained every nerve in vain to find a publisher. This manuscript, therefore, formed part of the little luggage which his friend Oerthel had smuggled out of Leipsic. It was winter, and from his window he looked out upon the cold, empty, frozen street of the little city of Hof, or he was obliged to be a prisoner, without, as he says, ‘the prisoner’s fare of bread and water, for he had only the latter; and if a gulden found its way into the house, the jubilee was such, that the windows were nearly broken with joy.’ At the same time he was under the ban of his costume martyrdom: this he could have laughed at and reformed; but hunger and thirst were actual evils, and when of prisoner’s food he had only the thinner part, he could well exclaim, as Carlyle has said— ‘Night it must be e’er Friedland’s star will beam’
“Without was no help, no counsel, but there lay a giant force within; and so, from the depths of that sorrow and abasement, his better soul rose purified and invincible, like Hercules from his long labours.

“‘What is poverty,’ he said, at this time, ‘that a man should whine under it? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears of a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound.’”

The “costume martyrdom” here mentioned, is a most characteristic affair; and as a great man’s character is often revealed most strikingly in small matters, we shall give it at length.

Partly from fancy, partly from necessity, Paul had adopted a peculiar style of dress, entirely at variance with the fashion of the day. He writes to his mother:—

“As I can make my vests (from extreme poverty) last no longer, I have determined to do without them; and if you send me some over-shirts, I can dispense with these vests. They must be made with open collars À la Hamlet; but this nobody will understand; in short, the breast must be open, so that the bare throat may be seen. My hair, also, I have had cut. [It was the day of queues and powder.] It is pronounced by my friends more becoming, and it spares one the expense of the hair-dresser. I have, still some locks a little curled.”

The young poet was right in suspecting, that “nobody would understand” the right of private judgment in important matters of this kind; but he did not at that time understand himself the extent of torture and martyrdom to which this Hamlet garb was to expose him. Among the good Burgers in Hof the scandal of an unpowdered pate and a bare throat was intolerable; the young author’s firmest friends remonstrated with him, most earnestly and seriously on the subject; but to no purpose: Paul was determined to vindicate his poetical liberty in this matter; however small in itself, there was a principle involved in it of the utmost consequence in social life. See how philosophically the parties argue the point. Pastor Vogel, the earliest prophet of Richter’s future fame, wrote and reasoned as follows:—

“‘You value only the inward, not the outward—the kernel, not the husk. But, with your permission, is not the whole composed of the form and the matter? Is one disfigured? so is the other. You condemn probably the philosophy of Diogenes, that separated its hero so much from other men, that it placed him in a tub. How can you justify yourself, if your philosophy serves you in the same way? No, my friend, you must open your eyes and see that you are not the only son of earth, but, like the ants in their ant-hills, you live in the tumult of life.

“‘Would you not hold that painter unwise, who should offend in costume—paint his Romans in sleeves and curled hair; the person of a man with petticoat and open bosom? Oh! that is not to be endured! Yet, a couple of proverbs—‘Swim not against the tide.’ ‘Among wolves, learn to howl.’ ‘Vulgar proverbs!’ you will say. Yes, but elevated wisdom. The true philosophy is, not for others to adapt themselves to us, but for us to adapt ourselves to others. Whoever forgets this great axiom, advances few steps without stumbling. But what do you seek? In the midst of Germany to become a Briton? Do you not in this way say, ‘Put on your spectacles, ye little people, and behold! see that you cannot be what I am.’ Ah, to speak thus, your modesty forbids! Avoid every thing that in the smallest degree lessens your value among your contemporaries.’

“To this gentle remonstrance, Paul replied:—‘I answer your letter willingly, for the sake of its argument, which your good heart rather than your good head has dictated. Your proverbs are not reasons, or if they are, they prove too much: for if I would swim with the stream, this stream would often make shipwreck of my virtue—the kingdom of vice is as great and extensive as the kingdom of fashion; and if I must howl with the wolves, why should I not rob with them? If the shell is injured the kernel suffers also,’ you say. But wherefore? Let us decide what does injure the shell. You consider that an evil to Diogenes which others hold an advantage. Did the so-called injury rob this great man of his philosophy, his good heart, his wit, his virtue? It robbed him not—but it gave him peace, independence of outward judgments, freedom from tormenting wants, and the incapacity of being wounded; and with this consciousness he could venture upon the punishment of every vice. Great man! Thank God that thou wert born in a country where they wondered at thy wisdom, instead of, as at present, punishing it. Fools would commit the only wise man to a madhouse; but, like Socrates, he would ennoble his prison.

“‘The painter would be ridiculous in offending against costume.’ This is true, but more witty than applicable to me. I need only say, that the painter of costume is not the greatest in his art; he is great whose pencil creates, not after the tailor, but after God; paints bodies, not dresses. The painter’s creations can only please through form, which is the shell; and am I designed for that? Is it my destination, with my organised ugliness, to please? Scarcely—if I would.

“‘But enough. I hold the constant regard that we pay in all our actions to the judgments of others as the poison of our peace, our reason, and our virtue. Upon this slave’s chain have I long filed, but I scarcely hope ever to break it.’

“This humorous controversy was kept up for some months on paper, as games of chess are played in Holland, without either party saying check to the king. At last Paul consented, as he called it, to inhull his person, and put an end to this tragicomical affair, by the following circular addressed to his friends:—

‘ADVERTISEMENT.

“‘The undersigned begs to give notice, that whereas cropped hair has as many enemies as red hair, and said enemies of the hair are likewise enemies of the person it grows upon; whereas, further, such a fashion is in no respect Christian, since, otherwise, Christian persons would adopt it; and whereas especially, the undersigned has suffered no less from his hair than Absalom did from his, though on contrary grounds; and whereas it has been notified to him, that the public proposed to send him into his grave, since the hair grows there without scissors: he hereby gives notice, that he will not willingly consent to such extremities. He would, therefore, inform the noble, learned, and discerning public in general, that the undersigned proposes on Sunday next to appear in the various important streets of Hof, with a false, short queue; and with this queue, as with a magnet, and cord of love, and magic rod, to possess himself forcibly of the affection of all and sundry, be they who they may.

“J. P. F. R.’”

Points of this kind have been often argued seriously enough between loving aunts solicitous of propriety, and brisk nephews solicitous of independence, perhaps also affecting singularity; but let it stand here discussed more profoundly and systematically by a sensible German pastor and a profound German poet-philosopher, in perpetuam rei memoriam. Right or wrong, nothing could mark the man more decidedly; always independent and original in his principles of action, and ever willing to yield to innocent prejudice when he had once openly vindicated his principle.

To pass from trifles to the serious business of authorship, the following extract is most instructive and full of character:—

“As these years, spent with his mother in Hof, were the most uninterruptedly studious of Richter’s life, it seems the place to give some account of the manner in which he pursued his studies. That plan must be a good one, and of use to others, of which he could say, ‘Of one thing I am certain; I have made as much out of myself, as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.’

“First in importance, he aimed, in the rules he formed for himself, at a just division of time and power, and he never permitted himself, from the first, to spend his strength upon any thing useless. He so managed his capital, that the future should pay him all ever-increasing interest on the present. The nourishment of his mind was drawn from three great sources—living Nature, in connexion with human life; the world of books, and the inner world of thought; these he considered the raw material given him to work up.

“We have already mentioned his manuscript library. In his fifteenth year, before he entered the Hof gymnasium, he had made many quarto volumes, containing hundreds of pages of closely-written extracts from all the celebrated works he could borrow, and from the periodicals of the day. In this way he had formed a repertory of all the sciences. For if, in the beginning, when he thought himself destined to the study of theology, his extracts were from philosophical theology, the second volume contained natural history, poetry, and, in succession, medicine, jurisprudence, and universal science. He had also anticipated one of the results of modern book-making. He wrote a collection of what are now called hand-books, of geography, natural history, follies, good and bad names, interesting facts, comical occurrences, touching incidents, &c.

“He observed Nature as a great book, from which he was to make extracts, and carefully collected all the facts that bore the stamp of a contriving mind, whose adaptation he could see, or only anticipate, and formed a book which bore the simple title ‘Nature.’

“When he meditated a new work, the first thing was to stitch together a blank book, in which he sketched the outlines of his characters, the principal scenes, thoughts to be worked in, &c., and called it ‘Quarry for Hesperus,’ ‘Quarry for Titan,’ &c. One of his biographers has given us such a book, containing his studies for Titan, which occupies seventy closely-printed duodecimo pages.

“Richter began also in his earliest youth to form a dictionary, and continued it through the whole of his literary life. In this he wrote down synonymes, and all the shades of meaning of which a word was susceptible. For one word he had found more than two hundred. Add to this mass of writing, that he copied all his letters, and it is surprising how any time remained. He made it a rule to give but one half of the day to writing, the other remained for the invention of his various works, which he accomplished while walking in the open air.

“These long walks, through valley and over mountain, steeled his body to bear all vicissitudes of weather, and added to his science in atmospheric changes, so that he was called by his townsmen the weather prophet. He is described by one who met him on the hills, with open breast and flying hair, singing as he went, while he held a book in his hand. Richter at this time was slender, with a thin pale face, a high nobly-formed brow, around which curled fine blonde hair. His eyes were a clear soft blue, but capable of an intense fire, like sudden lightning. He had a well-formed nose, and, as his biographer expresses it, ‘a lovely lip-kissing mouth.’ He wore a loose green coat and straw hat, and was always accompanied by his dog.

“As Richter from every walk returned to the little household apartment where his mother carried on her never-ceasing female labours, where half of every day he sat at his desk, he became acquainted with all the thoughts, all the conversation, the whole circle of the relations of the humble society in Hof. He saw the value and significance of the smallest things. The joys, the sorrows, the loves and aversions, the whole of life, in this Teniers’ picture passed before him. He himself was a principal figure in this limited circle. He sat with Plato in his hand, while his mother scattered fresh sand on the floor for Sunday, or added some small luxury to the table on days of festival. His hardly-earned groschen went to purchase the goose for Martinmas, while he dreamed of his future glory among distinguished men. Long years he was one of this humble society. He did not approach it as other poets have done, from time to time, to study for purposes of art the humbler classes; he felt himself one of them, and in this school he learned that sympathy with humanity which has made him emphatically in Germany the ‘poet of the poor.’”

One of the most instructive traits of Richter’s character is, his great attention to personal purity of heart and self-control. It was a main point with him, as with Quintilian, the sound old rhetorician, that to write or speak well, one must first of all be a good man. In imitation of many excellent and pious persons, Paul kept a diary of the sins that most easily beset him, and a register of moral victories by God’s grace to be won. From this “Andachts buchlein,” or “little book of devotion,” the following admirable extracts are given:—

“OF PAIN.

“Every evil is an occasion and a teacher of resolution. Every disagreeable emotion is a proof that I have been faithless to my resolutions.

“An evil vanishes, if I do not ask after it. Think of a worse situation than that in which thou art.

“Not to the evil, but to myself, do I owe my pain. Epictetus was not unhappy!

“Vanity, insensibility, and custom, make one steadfast. Wherefore not virtue still more?

“Never say, if you had not these sorrows, that you would bear others better.

“What is sixty years’ pain to eternity?

“Necessity, if it cannot be altered, becomes resignation.

“OF GLORY.

“Most men judge so miserably; why would you be praised by a child?

“No one would praise you in a beggar’s frock; be not proud of the esteem that is given to your coat.

“Do not expect more esteem from others because you deserve more, but reflect that they will expect still more merit in yourself.

“Do not seek to justify all thy actions. Value nothing merely because it is thy own, and look not always upon thyself.

“Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions, but make use of common situations. A long continued walk is better than a short flight.

“Never act in the heat of emotion: let reason answer first.

“Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a section; and enjoy the present without wishing to spring on to another section that lies before thee.

“Seek to acquire that virtue in a month, to which thou feelest the least inclined.

“It betrays a greater soul to answer a satire with patience, than with wit.

“If thou wouldst be free, joyful, and calm, take the only means that cannot be affected by accident—virtue.”

A man who could act on these principles was morally a great man, and worthy of admiration even without genius. To know and feel habitually, as Richter seems to have done, that “EVIL is like the nightmare; the instant you bestir yourself it has already ended,” is to be a moral hero, and a triumphant Christian. See how every thing turns into gold at the touch of such a man!—the way of pÆdagogy (for he practised the “dominie” too for four years to eke out his scanty earnings,) to him is spread not with thorns, but with violets and primroses. The following account of his pÆdagogic practice cannot fail to interest many:—

“The deep and marked peculiarities of a poetic nature were never brought into fuller exercise than by Richter, in the formation and government of his little school. That which is usually to men of rich endowments a vexing and wearisome employment, the daily routine of instruction for little children in the elements of knowledge, became to him a source of elevated and ennobling thought. His mode of instruction was the opposite of that from which he thought he had himself suffered. In this little school there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the thoughts of others, but every child was expected to use its own powers. His exertions seemed mainly directed to awaken in the children a reproducing and self-creating power; all knowledge was therefore the material, out of which they were to form new combinations. In a word, the whole of his instruction was directed to create a desire for self-study, and thus lead his pupils to self-knowledge. He aimed to bring out, as much as possible, the talents that God had given his pupils; and, after exciting a love of knowledge, he left them to a free choice as to what they would study; but their zeal and emulation were kept alive by a (so-called) ‘red book,’ in which an exact account of the work of each individual was recorded; this was shown to parents and friends at the end of the quarter, and so great was their zeal, that they needed a rein rather than a spur. While he accustomed the children to the spontaneous activity of all their faculties, he gave them five hours a-day of direct instruction, in which he led them through the various departments of human knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by comparison and association. From the kingdom of plants and animals he ascended to the starred firmament, made them acquainted with the course of the planets, and led their imaginations to these worlds and their inhabitants. Then he conducted them through the picture-gallery of the past history of nations, and placed the heroes, and saints, and martyrs of antiquity before them, or he turned their attention to the mystery of their own souls and the destiny of man. Above all, and with all, he directed their tender, childish hearts, to a Father in heaven. He said, ‘There can be no such companion to the heart of children, for the whole life, as the ever-present thought of God and immortality.’”

But these humble avocations were soon to cease. Richter was destined to emerge from the obscurity of a village schoolmaster, and appear on the public stage of Germany as the compeer of Herder and Schiller, of Wieland and GÖethe—second to none of these now European names in originality, brilliancy, and vigour of literary talent; superior to all of them in the purity and intensity with which there glowed in him many of those highest moral qualities which distinguish the man and the Christian. The following extract, relating to the publication of his first very successful work, and the commencement of his German celebrity, in the year 1790, is steeped in the purest essence of poetry, and most characteristic of that flow of pure, cheerful, and exalted emotion which freshens one’s moral nature like milk and honey, in all the mature writings of this extraordinary man.

“The weeks that followed the successful reception of the Invisible Lodge were the ‘Sabbath weeks’ of Paul’s life. He had had the courage to speak out in the fulness of his nature, and had found a response in many hearts. In the paradise that opened before him, he determined to give full course to the flood of his genius; but he well knew, that the richest fulness of poetic thought could only exist in connexion with peace of soul, cheerfulness of disposition, and firmness of purpose, and that the truth of his representations must arise from corresponding inward truth and integrity; in short, if he would be a poet in his works, he must be a poet in his life.

“He carefully continued his book of devotion, his rules and purposes of life. He never awoke without reviewing the past day; and where he had been assaulted by the force of any passion, there he placed a double bulwark, and with quiet satisfaction celebrated the victory gained. His quick and warm fancy led him often to outbreaking anger, and his ready wit to satire that was sometimes wounding, especially when his good-nature was misused; but the gentlest call led him back to tenderness—the accidental sight of a boy’s face with tears in his eyes was sufficient to disarm him; he thought of his future life, of the sorrows that would draw from him still bitterer tears, and he said, ‘I will not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall;’ and he kept his word. Where he was obliged to assert his rights, he did it so calmly and gently, that the holy treasures of his life—love and truth—remained for ever undisturbed.

“Every thing living touched his heart—from the humblest flower that opened its leaves in the grass, up to the shining worlds on high; children and old men, the beggar and the rich, he would have embraced them all in the sacred glow of his emotions, or given all he possessed to make them happy. No one went from him unconsoled; and when he could give nothing but good counsel, he gave that. Were it only a poor mountaineer or a travelling apprentice to whom he could impart the smallest present, he would dwell the whole day with delight on the circumstance. Often he would say to himself, ‘Now he will draw the dollar from his pocket, and reckon which of his long-cherished wishes he can first satisfy. How often will he think of this day, and of the unexpected gift, and perhaps once more than usual upon the Giver of all good.’ Love was the ever-living principle of his character and of his writings, and before the thought of the Infinite, all differences in rank vanished away; all were equally great, or equally little.

“He gained nourishment for this principle from every circumstance in life. Where others would have been untouched and cold, there he heard whispered to his spirit the voice of humanity. Let him speak for himself. He says in his journal:-

“‘I picked up in the choir a faded rose-leaf, that lay under the feet of the boys. Great God! what had I in my hand but a small leaf, with a little dust upon it; and upon this small fugitive thing my fancy built a whole paradise of joy—a whole summer dwelt upon this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the boy held this flower in his hand, and when through the church window he saw the blue heaven and the clouds wandering over it; when every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and reminded him of the shadows on the grass from the over-flying clouds. Good God! thou scatterest satisfaction every where, and givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost thou invite us to great and exciting pleasures, but thou givest to the smallest a lingering perfume.’

“Above all things, his eye hung upon Nature. He lived and wrote whole days in the open air, on the mountain, or in the woods; and in the midst of winter he sought from the window the evening rose-colour, his beloved stars, and that magic enchanter, the moon. Every walk in the open air was to him the entrance into a church. He said in his journal—‘Dost thou enter pure into this vast, guiltless temple? Dost thou bring no poisonous passion into this place, where flowers bloom and birds sing? Dost thou bear no hatred where Nature loves! Art thou calm as the stream where Nature reflects herself as in a mirror? Ah, would that my heart were as true and as unruffled as Nature when she came from the hands of her great Creator!’ Every new excursion in this great temple gave him new strength, and he returned laden with spiritual treasures. He loved to make short journeys on foot; where the motion of the body kept the mind in a state of activity, and the insignificant gained value by its unexpectedness. A sunny day made him happy, and the perfumes of a spring morning, or dewy evening, seemed almost to intoxicate him with their incense; but the hours of night were those of his highest elevation, when he would lie long hours on the dewy grass, looking into the opening clouds. He says in his journal—‘I take my ink-flask in the morning, and write as I walk in the fragrant air. Then comes my joy, that I have conquered two of my faults—my disposition to be angry in conversation, and to lose my cheerfulness through a long day of dust and musquitoes. Nothing makes one so indifferent to the pin and musquito thrusts of life, as the consciousness of growing better.’”

Richter belonged now to Germany, and should have been transferred immediately, you will think, like GÖethe, Schiller, Wieland, Herder, and the other Dii majorum gentium, to Weimar, the one literary capital of Deutschland; for political capital it neither had then nor has now, nor in the common course of things, notwithstanding the songs of 1813 and the Zoll-Verein, is ever like to have. And in Weimar, no doubt, there were some men who looked upon the apparition of the Richter comet with a more favourable eye than senatorian GÖethe. Old Father Wieland, in particular, “who had read Tristram Shandy eighty times over,” called him “our Yorick, our Rabelais, the purest spirit!”—and the earnest Herder, with his capacious sympathy, was able to appreciate the religious and Christian element in Paul’s character, which naturally was a mystery to the author of Agathon. Taken as a whole, however, Weimar, with GÖethe as its real king and god, was by no means the proper element for Richter. There was too much mere literature in it for one with whom goodness was the one thing needful, and greatness only an accident, agreeable or disagreeable, as the case might be. There was too much head in Weimar, and too little heart. Freedom, indeed, there was, in grand style, from all those civic formalities, and minute observation of small points, which had vexed him so much in Hof. But what one might complain of there, to use his own words, was “PAINTED EGOTISM AND UNPAINTED SCEPTICISM;”—the French Voltaire in a German Avatar! For the true Teut, Richter, that would never do. We are not, therefore, to be surprised if the visit which Paul made to Weimar in 1796, though full of joy and exhilaration, was not followed up by any permanent change in his quiet and retired mode of life. His native secluded region of the Fichtelgebirge was still to be his home. Hof and Bayreuth, in the centre of central Germany, and therefore out of every body’s way, were to boast the possession of this the most German of great German men. How little attraction there was between the calm, cold, artistical contemplativeness of GÖethe, and the bickering sportiveness of sunny joy in the essentially moral nature of Richter, the following extract will declare:—

“‘On the second day I threw away my foolish prejudices in favour of 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 boue de Paris (Paris mud.) An opinion concerning Herder, Wieland, or GÖethe, is as much contested as any other. Who would believe that the three watch-towers of our literature avoid and dislike each other! I will never again bend myself anxiously before any great man, only before the virtuous. Under this impression, I went timidly to meet GÖethe. Every one had described him as cold to every thing upon the earth. Madam von Kalb said, he no longer admires any thing, not even himself. Every word is ice! Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart. Therefore I asked Knebel to petrify or incrust me by some mineral spring, that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil. Madam von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from curiosity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only one in Weimar in the Italian style—with such steps! A Pantheon full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast! At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing towards Paris,’ said Knebel. ‘Hm!’ said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But at last, the conversation led from the campaign to art, publications, &c., and GÖethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned, penetrating, and calm. At last, he read, that is, he played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice, for I said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft whispering rain-drops. There is nothing like it.’”

To which add the following passage, where we are sorry to find rather an unfavourable mention of our great favourite Schiller. Authors, however, especially poets, are a strange race: he who expects to find them always like their books, knows little. How unlike is Vesuvius, being calm and mantled with green grass, to the same Vesuvius when it spouts molten rock and spits lightning!

“‘I went yesterday to see the stony Schiller, from whom, as from a precipice, all strangers spring back. His form is worn, severely powerful, but angular. He is full of sharp-cutting power, but without love. His conversation is nearly as excellent as his writings. As I brought a letter from GÖethe, he was unusually pleasant; he would make me a fellow-contributor to the Horen (a periodical,) and would give me a naturalization act in Jena.’

“Notwithstanding this courtesy, Richter did not repeat his visit to Schiller, and his intimate union with Herder excluded all hope of his being drawn to the party of GÖethe. The latter wrote to Schiller, ‘I am glad you have seen Richter. His love of truth and his wish for self-improvement have prepossessed me in his favour; but the social man is a sort of theoretical man, and I doubt if Richter will ever approach us in a practical way, although in theory he seems to have some pretensions to belong to us.’ They were never friends. Richter could not conceal his disappointment at the character of GÖethe’s latter poetical works; and soon after his return to Hof he wrote to Knebel in relation to one of them, ‘that in such stormy times we needed a TyrtÆus rather than a Propertius.’ The remark reached GÖethe’s ears; and GÖethe, usually so indifferent to censure or criticism, showed himself deeply susceptible and offended at this so-called ‘manifestation of arrogance in Herr Richter.’”

But if the “many-sided GÖethe”—wanting, as he certainly did, one important side of humanity, namely, the moral side—could not appreciate the genius of Richter fully, there was one who did—that, as we have already intimated, was Herder. This great man, as his intelligent wife has left on record, “valued Richter’s genius—his rich, overflowing, poetic Spirit—far above the soulless productions of the times, that contended for the poetic form only. He named them brooks without water; and often said that Richter stood, as opposed to them, on a high elevation; and that he would exchange all artistical forms for his living virtue, his feeling heart, his perennial creative genius. He brings new fresh life, truth, virtue, reality, into the declining and misunderstood vocation of the poet.” Such was Herder’s estimate of Paul; and herein precisely lies his true grandeur. A perfect Titan as an author, in the common relations of social and domestic life he is a god. Aiming at the highest things, he lives happy among the smallest. Soaring habitually among the loftiest ideas, he is “sympathising and attentive to the smallest little things, and to all the actual of life.” This is the testimony of his wife—not every wife of a literary man, great or small, in these times, can give such a testimony. It has been a fashion with men of a certain fashion of genius to fall in love furiously, and to be ecstatically moved in the licentious roving of the eyes; but to shrink from the joining of hands, to hate marriage, and to damn the fireside. But Richter was of a different—of a more healthy, and a more happy humour. Did St Paul ever bear a nobler testimony to the “honourable” condition of marriage than the following?—

“That the brightest and purest fountain of love to mankind takes nothing from love to the individual, I learn from my Caroline. Every day it becomes more expansive. Rare as beautiful is her adoration of the spiritual of poetry and nature; wonderful her disinterestedness and complete abnegation of self. There is nothing that she would not do for me, or others. World-long cares are to her nothing, as her industry and love of duty are infinite. As she loves me, she loves all my clothes, and would make them all herself.

“As yet we have had nothing, or only very little, to irritate. I cannot say that I am satisfied, but I am certainly blest. Ah, see her! What are words! Marriage has made me love her more romantically, deeper, infinitely more than before!”

Richter, therefore, was a domestic man in the highest sense of the word. Would you know what domestic happiness means? Take the following—’tis from a daughter:—

“I love to represent the dear friendly man, with brown study-coat and socks hanging down, as he entered our mother’s chamber the first thing in the morning to greet her. The hound springs on before him, and the children hang about him, and seek, when he leaves the room, to thrust their little feet into the slippers behind, when he raises his feet a little, so as to hang on him more securely. One springs before, (at that time my blessed brother lived,) the other two hang on his coat-skirts until he reaches his own chamber-door; where all leave him, for only the dog must enter there.

“When we were very small, we lived in a two-story house; my father worked above, in the attic. We crept on our hands and feet over the stairs, and hammered on the door till the father himself arose and opened it, and after our noisy ingress, closed it again—then he took from an old chest a trumpet and a fife, with which we made noisy music while he continued writing. We ventured in again many times in the day to play with a squirrel that he had at that time, and that in the evening he took out with him in his pocket, and always made one of the family circle.

“He had, usually, animals that he tamed, about him. Sometimes a mouse; then a great, white, cross spider, that he kept in a paper box, with a glass top. There was a little door beneath, by which he could feed his prisoner with dead flies. In the autumn he collected the winter food for his little tree frog and his tame spider.

“The father was good to every thing: he could not bear to witness the least pain, not even in the lowest animals. Thus, he never went out without opening the cage of his canary birds, to indemnify the poor animals, who would be melancholy in his absence. He took at one time the most sedulous care of a dog, who came in one evening after the loss of the poor dead Alert, as he knew in the morning he should exchange him for another, and he would have no opportunity to feed him again. You will smile at the connexion, but he did the same for a departing servant maid: providing every thing for her convenience the day before, and delighting the poor girl in the most unusual degree.

“The children were permitted all sorts of practical jokes towards him. ‘Father, dance once;’ then he would make some leaps; or he must speak French, in which he placed wonderful value on the nasal sound, which no one made as well as he. It sounded, indeed, curiously and made my mother laugh.

“In the twilight he told us stories; or spake of God and other worlds; or he would tell us of our grandfather, and other splendid things. We ran to gain the wager, which of us should get nearest to him on the sofa. The old money-box, hooped with iron, with a hole in the cover, that two mice might conveniently pass through, was the stepping-stone by which we jumped over the back of the sofa, for in front it was difficult to press between the table and the repertory for papers. We all three crowded between the back of the sofa and the father’s out-stretched legs; above, at his head, lay the sleeping dog. At last, when we had pressed our limbs into the most inconvenient postures, the story began.

“The father knew how to create for himself many little pleasures. Thus, he made all the boxes for his tame animals, after his half-hour’s nap in the afternoon. It was a special satisfaction to him to prepare ink, which he did much oftener than was necessary, for Otto wrote long years after with the rejected part. He could never wait to perfect it, but tried it an hour after it was made. If it was already black, he would come joyfully to us, and say,—‘Now, if it be black already, what will it be to-morrow, or after fourteen days?’

“The mere thought of destruction was painful to him, especially the loss of the work of man’s mind. He never burned a letter; yes, he treasured even the most insignificant. ‘All loss of life,’ he said, ‘may be restored again, but the creations of these heads, these hearts, never! The name should be erased, but the soul that speaks its most intimate sentiments in letters, should live.’ He had also thick books written full of the remarks and the habits and peculiarities of his children.

“At meals he was very cheerful, and listened to every thing we told him with the greatest sympathy, and always made something out of the smallest relation; so that the narrator was always wiser for what he had said.

“In eating and drinking he was extremely moderate. He never gave us direct instruction, and yet he taught us always. Our evening table he called a French table-d’hote, that he furnished with twelve dishes taken from the arts and sciences. We tasted of all without being satiated with any, and we all ventured to utter any joke to the father about himself or his entertainment.

“His punishments for us girls were rather passive than active; they consisted in refusing some request, or in a severe word; but my brother sometimes received corporal punishment. My father would say—‘Max, this afternoon, at three o’clock, come to me to receive your whipping.’ He went punctually, and suffered it without a sound.”

But we become diffuse. There are many scenes in the quiet life of Richter, that, like the above, are perfect domestic idyls—but we must hasten to the last; ’tis like those which preceded it, surpassing lovely. Never have we encountered, in the wide world of biographic books, a death-bed scene, so full of love, and joy, and peace, as the death-bed of Jean Paul Frederick Richter. Nothing more, however, than one might have expected; for men generally—so experienced clergymen observe—die as they live. One thing only we must remark, before giving our last extracts; towards the close of his career, the bright, sun-gazing genius of Richter was struck, like Milton’s, not with celestial, but with terrestrial blindness. For some space before he died, his favourite world of flowers and green fields was already a blank to him. In the month of October 1823, his nephew, Otto Spazier, to whom we are indebted for the principal part of these biographical details, shortly before his death, being called to visit the blind old poet, writes as follows:—

“‘Such a call from the immortal old man, as it entered my solitary apartment,’ says his nephew, ‘filled me with delight. The reverend image of his beautiful old age, a just reward for a holy life, rose before me, and with joyful haste I travelled through the wet days of October, and entered his study on the evening of the twenty-fourth of that month. The same joyful tremor affected me as formerly, when, at the twilight hour, I had listened here with his family to the voice of wisdom. The windows of his room looked towards the rising sun, and far over the garden and over scattered trees and houses, towards the Flichtelgebirge, that bounded the horizon. A mingled perfume of flowers and grapes led the fancy to southern climes, to beautiful blue June days, or to the vintage on the Rhine. His sofa, where he usually read in a reclining posture, was opposite this window, and before it his writing table, upon which appeared a regular confusion of pens, paper of all colours, glasses, flowers, books, among which last were the small English editions of Swift and Sterne. At the other window stood a small piano, and near this a smaller table. Depending from the cage of his birds was a little ladder, that led to his own work-table, where the birds were permitted to roam among the confusion, sprinkling with water from the flower glass the sheet upon which the poet was writing. Often was Paul seen to stop in his most excited passages, to let his little canary, with her young, travel, undisturbed, over the page, where the water she scattered from her feathers mingled with the ink from his pen. In the corner of the room was a door by which, unobserved, Richter could descend the steps into the garden, and on a cushion near it rested his white, silky-haired poodle. A hunting pocket and rosewood staff hung near. All three had often been the companions of his wandering, when, on beautiful days, he went through the chestnut avenue to the little Rolwenzell cottage.

“‘All in the room retained its usual position, but the ruling hand appeared to have been absent. The light was shaded, and the windows hung with green curtains; the robust form that in former years, even before the snowdrop had loosened the icy crust of winter, had worked long hours with uncovered breast in the open air, lay supported with cushions, and shrouded in furs upon the sofa; his body drawn together, and eyes for ever closed. ‘Heaven,’ said he, ‘chastens me with a double rod, and one is a heavy cudgel! (meaning his blindness); but I shall be well again now. Ah! we have so much to say and to do. But we shall have a thousand hours—at least, minutes.’ His voice was weaker, his words slower, and it cut me to the heart to hear him speak of himself. It was late—and soon his wife, ever watchful, called me away, to return to him again in the morning.’

“Early next morning he began a complete revision of his works. The nephew read aloud, and Paul inserted his alterations. When Spazier thought one necessary, he indicated it by pausing, to draw his attention. With great mildness and patience Paul listened to every objection; and himself related, explained, praised, and blamed. He reconsidered and over-lived thus his whole spiritual life in his works. In the comparisons scattered through his sixty-four volumes, of which indeed every page is filled, he found only two or three were repeated.”

On the 14th November of the same year the curtain was drawn. How calmly—how beautifully!—Read:—

“Noon had by this time arrived. Richter, thinking it was night, said—‘It was time to go to rest!’ and wished to retire. He was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and all was arranged as if for repose; a small table near his bed, with glass of water, and his two watches; common one and a repeater. His wife now brought him a wreath of flowers that a lady had sent him, for every one wished to add some charm to his last days. As he touched them carefully, for he could neither see nor smell them, he seemed to rejoice in the images of the flowers in his mind, for he said repeatedly to Caroline—‘My beautiful flowers, my lovely flowers!’

“Although his friends sat around the bed, as he imagined it was night, they conversed no longer; he arranged his arms as if preparing for repose, which was to be to him the repose of death, and soon sank into a tranquil sleep.

“Deep silence pervaded the apartment. Caroline sat at the head of the bed, with her eyes immovably fixed on the face of her beloved husband. Otto had retired, and the nephew sat with Plato’s Phaedon in his hand, open at the death of Socrates. At that moment a tall and beautiful form entered the chamber; and, at the foot of the bed, with his hands raised to heaven, and deeply moved, he repeated aloud the prayer of his Mosaic faith. It was Emanuel, and next to Otto, the most beloved of Richter’s friends.

“About six o’clock the physician entered. Richter yet appeared to sleep; his features became every moment holier, his brow more heavenly, but it was cold as marble to the touch; and as the tears of his wife fell upon it, he remained immovable. At length his respiration became less regular, but his features always calmer, more heavenly. A slight convulsion passed over the face; the physician cried out—‘That is death!’ and all was quiet. The spirit had departed!

“All sank, praying, upon their knees. This moment, that raised them above the earth with the departing spirit, admitted of no tears!

“‘Thus Richter went from earth, great and holy as a poet, greater and holier as a man!’

“Involuntarily we recall the deathbed of another great poet, on that delicious summer’s day when the windows were all open, and the only sound the ripple of the Tweed upon its stony bed. Here, in the midst of winter, a deeper repose must have consecrated the deathbed of Richter, as if Nature herself stood reverently still, when her worshipper and interpreter laid down the garment in which he had ministered in her temple.

“Richter was buried by torch light: the unfinished manuscript of Selina5 borne upon his coffin, and the noble ode of Klopstock— ‘Thou shalt arise, my soul!’
was sung by the students of the Gymnasium at the burial vault.”

Thus have we, by favour of your attention, kind reader, endeavoured to open up to the British eye, a few sunny glimpses of one of the choicest spirits whom “the Fatherland” delighteth to honour. Jean Paul, der einzige—the unique, is the received designation of Richter in Germany; a title in his case as deservedly earned by literary labour, as military and political services have earned it likewise, in his proper sphere, for the great Frederick. Pity only that it is by no means such an easy matter to render the works of the author’s genius as appreciable to general admiration, as the actions of the soldier and the policy of the king. Guns and trumpets make a noise over the wide world, from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic, pretty much the same; and, provided the stages of their explosion be large and open enough, the actors will not fail to be noted of all men, and admired. But the voices of wise and good men in books, are of a more curious and delicate melody; and sometimes even the rarest of them cannot be made to vibrate in their full harmonious chords, otherwise than to the nicely-fitted structure of the national ear. This is the case with the French Beranger, and in an eminent degree with our own Burns. The translators, we know, have tried their hands with these men—as what will they not try?—but let them carve and polish as they will, the Frenchman will still limp awkwardly in his Wellington boots, and the Scotsman, though he may retain his warmth, will lose the finest tints of his colour in Deutschland. So even more strikingly is the stamp of indelible nationality imprinted on all the writings of Jean Paul; and it will require peculiarly skilful handling indeed, to take away the point from the French lady’s criticism above quoted, and make all or any one of Richter’s works, like Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” or GÖethe’s “Faust,” a familiar occupant of a cultivated Englishman’s shelves. These works consist almost exclusively of novels or fictitious tales, and these of two kinds: the philosophical or ideal novel—for which, even in its most perfect character, John Bull has no peculiar faculty; and the novel of common life, in which department the same most unphilosophical Bull has attained such an admirable mastership, that to his practical eye the most manful feats of a purely German genius like Richter, are apt to appear puerile and even apish. Nevertheless, we do by no means despair of a selection being made from this great man’s works, such as will not, indeed, popularise him on British ground—for popular in the widest sense he is not even in Germany—but such as may command the ear of all educated men for whom the higher departments of imaginative literature have a charm. Such a collection to our knowledge has not yet been made in this country. When it shall be made, every thing depends on the workman. Richter cannot be translated at random: nor can he be simply transposed, as many a decent sentence-monger may, line after line, and paragraph after paragraph; he is freakish, and will confound a methodical wit lamentably. One decided advantage, however, by way of an introduction to the English Richter, has been gained by the appearance of the present biography. We have learnt to know the man; and the man in this case is as good, perhaps better, than his works. No well-conditioned person, we are convinced, will lay down the biography of Richter without an earnest desire to know something more of such a man. He will be convinced also that the novels of such a writer will not be made up of mere playful arabesques to amuse, of mere pepper and spices to stimulate; he will have felt the breath of a moral regeneration in these pages, and that a novel of Jean Paul is in fact a sermon; an evangelic address, where the gospel is preached, as wit is vented in the old drama, oftentimes by a clown. Next to a mind of extensive culture, and a heart of wide sympathies, a moral preparation of this kind is the grand key to the writings of Frederick Richter.