With Lessing the case is similar: a striking statement of personal regard has been recorded, but Lessing’s literary work of the following years does not betray a significant influence from Yorick. To be sure, allusion is made to Sterne a few times in letters40and elsewhere, but no direct manifestation of devotion is discoverable. The compelling consciousness of his own message, his vigorous interest in deeper problems of religion and philosophy, the then increasing worth of native German literature, may well have overshadowed the influence of the volatile Briton.Goethe’s expressions of admiration for Sterne and indebtedness to him are familiar. Near the end of his life (December 16, 1828), when the poet was interested in observing the history and sources of his own culture, and was intent upon recordinghis own experience for the edification and clarification of the people, he says in conversation with Eckermann: “I am infinitely indebted to Shakespeare, Sterne and Goldsmith.”41And a year later in a letter to Zelter,42(Weimar, December 25, 1829), “The influence Goldsmith and Sterne exercised upon me, just at the chief point of my development, cannot be estimated. This high, benevolent irony, this just and comprehensive way of viewing things, this gentleness to all opposition, this equanimity under every change, and whatever else all the kindred virtues may be termed—such things were a most admirable training for me, and surely, these are the sentiments which in the end lead us back from all the mistaken paths of life.”In the same conversation with Eckermann from which the first quotation is made, Goethe seems to defy the investigator who would endeavor to define his indebtedness to Sterne, its nature and its measure. The occasion was an attempt on the part of certain writers to determine the authorship of certain distichs printed in both Schiller’s and Goethe’s works. Upon a remark of Eckermann’s that this effort to hunt down a man’s originality and to trace sources is very common in the literary world, Goethe says: “Das ist sehr lächerlich, man könnte ebenso gut einen wohlgenährten Mann nach den Ochsen, Schafen und Schweinen fragen, die er gegessen und die ihm Kräfte gegeben.” An investigation such as Goethe seems to warn us against here would be one of tremendous difficulty, a theme for a separate work. It is purposed here to gather only information with reference to Goethe’s expressed or implied attitude toward Sterne, his opinion of the British master, and to note certain connections between Goethe’s work and that of Sterne, connections which are obvious or have been already a matter of comment and discussion.In Strassburg under Herder’s43guidance, Goethe seems first to have read the works of Sterne. His life in Frankfurt during the interval between his two periods of university residence was not of a nature calculated to increase his acquaintance with current literature, and his studies did not lead to interest in literary novelty. This is his own statement in “Dichtung und Wahrheit.”44That Herder’s enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Strassburg. Letters written to Merck45(Strassburg, 1770–1771) would seem to show that then too Sterne still stood high in his esteem. Whatever the exact time of Goethe’s first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter’s cultivation in letters.46Less than a year after Goethe’s departure from Strassburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder’s fiancée.47It is not evident whether they read Sterne in the original or in the translation of Zückert, the only one then available, unless possibly the reader gave a translation as he read. Later in the same letter, Caroline mentions the “Empfindsame Reisen,” possibly meaning Bode’s translation. She also records reading Shakespeare in Wieland’s rendering, but as she speaks later still of peeping into the English books which Herder had sent Merck, it is a hazardous thing to reason from her mastery of English at that time to the use of original or translation on the occasion of Goethe’s reading.Contemporary criticism saw in the Martin of “Götz von Berlichingen” a likeness to Sterne’s creations;48and in the othergreat work of the pre-Weimarian period, in “Werther,” though no direct influence rewards one’s search, one must acknowledge the presence of a mental and emotional state to which Sterne was a contributor. Indeed Goethe himself suggests this relationship. Speaking of “Werther” in the “Campagne in Frankreich,”49he observes in a well-known passage that Werther did not cause the disease, only exposed it, and that Yorick shared in preparing the ground-work of sentimentalism on which “Werther” is built.According to the quarto edition of 1837, the first series of letters from Switzerland dates from 1775, although they were not published till 1808, in the eleventh volume of the edition begun in 1806. Scherer, in his “History of German Literature,” asserts that these letters are written in imitation of Sterne, but it is difficult to see the occasion for such a statement. The letters are, in spite of all haziness concerning the time of their origin and Goethe’s exact purpose regarding them,50a “fragment of Werther’s travels” and are confessedly cast in a sentimental tone, which one might easily attribute to a Werther, in whom hyperesthesia has not yet developed to delirium, an earlier Werther. Yorick’s whim and sentiment are quite wanting, and the sensuousness, especially as pertains to corporeal beauty, is distinctly Goethean.Goethe’s accounts of his own travels are quite free from the Sterne flavor; in fact he distinctly says that through the influence of the Sentimental Journey all records of journeys had been mostly given up to the feelings and opinions of the traveler, but that he, after his Italian journey, had endeavored to keep himself objective.51Dr. Robert Riemann in his study of Goethe’s novels,52calls Friedrich in “Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre” a representative of Sterne’s humor, and he finds in Mittler in the “Wahlverwandtschaften” a union of seriousness and the comic of caricature,reminiscent of Sterne and Hippel. Friedrich is mercurial, petulant, utterly irresponsible, a creature of mirth and laughter, subject to unreasoning fits of passion. One might, in thinking of another character in fiction, designate Friedrich as faun-like. In all of this one can, however, find little if any demonstrable likeness to Sterne or Sterne’s creations. It is rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, Goethe’s occasional use of the direct appeal to the reader. Doubtless Sterne’s example here was a force in extending this rhetorical convention.It is claimed by Goebel53that Goethe’s “Homunculus,” suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne’s mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne’s creation. In a meeting of the “Gesellschaft für deutsche Litteratur,” November, 1896, Brandl expressed the opinion that Maria of Moulines was a prototype of Mignon in “Wilhelm Meister.”54The references to Sterne in Goethe’s works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge.55Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for illustrations in Yorick’s description of Paris,56and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refersto Yorick’s (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief.57That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne’s masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830;58he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne’s gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer,59he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne’s influence on German letters. A few other minor allusions to Sterne may be of interest. In an article in theHoren(1795, V.Stück,) entitled “Literarischer Sansculottismus,” Goethe mentions Smelfungus as a type of growler.60In the “Wanderjahre”61there is a reference to Yorick’s classification of travelers. Düntzer, in Schnorr’sArchiv,62explains a passage in a letter of Goethe’s to Johanna Fahlmer (August, 1775), “die Verworrenheiten des Diego und Juliens” as an allusion to the “Intricacies of Diego and Julia” in Slawkenbergius’s tale,63and to the traveler’s conversation with his beast. In a letter to Frau von Stein64five years later (September 18, 1780) Goethe used this same expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Düntzer’s explanation. Düntzer further explains the wordθεοδοκος, used in Goethe’s Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the termθεοδιδακτοςapplied to Walter Shandy. The word is,however, somewhat illegible in the manuscript. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Düntzer himself, nine years after the article in theArchiv, published an edition of the Tagebücher he accepted a readingθεοτατος,65meaning, as he says, “ein voller Gott,” thereby tacitly retracting his former theory of connection with Sterne.The best known relationship between Goethe and Sterne is in connection with the so-called plagiarisms in the appendix to the third volume of the “Wanderjahre.” Here, in the second edition, were printed under the title “Aus Makariens Archiv” various maxims and sentiments. Among these were a number of sayings, reflections, axioms, which were later discovered to have been taken bodily from the second part of the Koran, the best known Sterne-forgery. Alfred Hédouin, in “Le Monde Maçonnique” (1863), in an article “Goethe plagiaire de Sterne,” first located the quotations.66Mention has already been made of the account of Robert Springer, which is probably the last published essay on the subject. It is entitled “Ist Goethe ein Plagiarius Lorenz Sternes?” and is found in the volume “Essays zur Kritik und Philosophie und zur Goethe-Litteratur.”67Springer cites at some length the liberal opinions of Molière, La Bruyère, Wieland, Heine and others concerning the literary appropriation of another’s thought. He then proceeds to quote Goethe’s equally generous views on the subject, and adds the uncritical fling that if Goethe robbed Sterne, it was an honor to Sterne, a gain to his literary fame. Near the end of his paper, Springer arrives at the question in hand and states positively that these maxims, with their miscellaneous companions, were never published by Goethe, but were found by the editors of his literary remains among his miscellaneous papers, and then issued in theninth volume of the posthumous works. Hédouin had suggested this possible explanation. Springer adds that the editors were unaware of the source of this material and supposed it to be original with Goethe.The facts of the case are, however, as follows: “Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre” was published first in 1821.68In 1829, a new and revised edition was issued in the “Ausgabe letzter Hand.” Eckermann in his conversations with Goethe69relates the circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations “Im Sinne der Wanderer” and “Aus Makariens Archiv.” It was later agreed that Eckermann, when Goethe’s literary remains should be published, should place the matter elsewhere, ordered into logical divisions of thought. All of the sentences here under special consideration were published in the twenty-third volume of the “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” which is dated 1830,70and are to be found there, on pages 271–275 and 278–281. They are reprinted in the identical order in the ninth volume of the “Nachgelassene Werke,” which also bore the title, Vol. XLIX of “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” there found on pages 121–125 and 127–131. Evidently Springer found them here in the posthumous works, and did not look for them in the previous volume, which was published two years or thereabouts before Goethe’s death.Of the sentiments, sentences and quotations dealing with Sterne, there are twenty which are translations from the Koran, in Loeper’s edition of “Sprüche in Prosa,”71Nos. 491–507 and 543–544; seventeen others (Nos. 490, 508–509, 521–533,535) contain direct appreciative criticism of Sterne; No. 538 is a comment upon a Latin quotation in the Koran and No. 545 is a translation of another quotation in the same work. No. 532 gives a quotation from Sterne, “Ich habe mein Elend nicht wie ein weiser Mann benutzt,” which Loeper says he has been unable to find in any of Sterne’s works. It is, however, in a letter72to John Hall Stevenson, written probably in August, 1761. The translation here is inexact. Loeper did not succeed in finding Nos. 534, 536, 537, although their position indicates that they were quotations from Sterne, but No. 534 is in a letter to Garrick from Paris, March 19, 1762. The German translation however conveys a different impression from the original English. The other two are not located; in spite of their position, the way in which the book was put together would certainly allow for the possibility of extraneous material creeping in. At their first appearance in the “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” five Sprüche, Nos. 491, 543, 534, 536, 537, were supplied with quotation marks, though the source was not indicated. Thus it is seen that the most of the quotations were published as original during Goethe’s lifetime, but he probably never considered it of sufficient consequence to disavow their authorship in public. It is quite possible that the way in which they were forced into “Wilhelm Meister” was distasteful to him afterwards, and he did not care to call attention to them.Goethe’s opinion of Sterne as expressed in the sentiments which accompany the quotations from the Koran is significant. “Yorick Sterne,” he says, “war der schönste Geist, der je gewirkt hat; wer ihn liest, fühlet sich sogleich frei und schön; sein Humor ist unnachahmlich, und nicht jeder Humor befreit die Seele” (490). “Sagacität und Penetration sind bei ihm grenzenlos” (528). Goethe asserts here that every person of culture should at that very time read Sterne’s works, so that the nineteenth century might learn “what we owed him and perceive what we might owe him.” Goethe took Sterne’s narrative of his journey as a representation of an actual trip, or else he is speaking of Sterne’s letters in the following:“Seine Heiterkeit, Genügsamkeit, Duldsamkeit auf der Reise, wo diese Eigenschaften am meisten geprüft werden, finden nicht leicht Ihresgleichen” (No. 529), and Goethe’s opinion of Sterne’s indecency is characteristic of Goethe’s attitude. He says: “Das Element der Lüsternheit, in dem er sich so zierlich und sinnig benimmt, würde vielen Andern zum Verderben gereichen.”The juxtaposition of these quotations and this appreciation of Sterne is proof sufficient that Goethe considered Sterne the author of the Koran at the time when the notes were made. At precisely what time this occurred it is now impossible to determine, but the drift of the comment, combined with our knowledge from sources already mentioned, that Goethe turned again to Sterne in the latter years of his life, would indicate that the quotations were made in the latter part of the twenties, and that the re-reading of Sterne included the Koran. Since the translations which Goethe gives are not identical with those in the rendering ascribed to Bode (1778), Loeper suggests Goethe himself as the translator of the individual quotations. Loeper is ignorant of the earlier translation of Gellius, which Goethe may have used.73There is yet another possibility of connection between Goethe and the Koran. This work contained the story of the Graf von Gleichen, which is acknowledged to have been a precursor of Goethe’s “Stella.” Düntzer in his “Erläuterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern” says it is impossible to determine whence Goethe took the story for “Stella.” He mentions that it was contained in Bayle’s Dictionary, which is known to have been in Goethe’s father’s library, and two other books, both dating from the sixteenth century, are noted as possible sources. It seems rather more probable that Goethe found the story in the Koran, which was published but a few years before “Stella” was written and translated but a year later,1771, that is, but four years, or even less, before the appearance of “Stella” (1775).74Precisely in the spirit of the opinions quoted above is the little essay75on Sterne which was published in the sixth volume of “Ueber Kunst und Alterthum,” in which Goethe designates Sterne as a man “who first stimulated and propagated the great epoch of purer knowledge of humanity, noble toleration and tender love, in the second half of the last century.” Goethe further calls attenion to Sterne’s disclosure of human peculiarities (Eigenheiten), and the importance and interest of these native, governing idiosyncrasies.These are, in general, superficial relationships. A thorough consideration of these problems, especially as concerns the cultural indebtedness of Goethe to the English master would be a task demanding a separate work. Goethe was an assimilator and summed up in himself the spirit of a century, the attitude of predecessors and contemporaries.C. F. D. Schubart wrote a poem entitled “Yorick,”76beginning“Als Yorik starb, da flogSein Seelchen aufdenHimmelSo leicht wie ein Seufzerchen.”The angels ask him for news of earth, and the greater part of the poem is occupied with his account of human fate. The relation is quite characteristic of Schubart in its gruesomeness, its insistence upon all-surrounding death and dissolution; but it contains no suggestion of Sterne’s manner, or point of view. The only explanation of association between the poem and its title is that Schubart shared the one-sided German estimate of Sterne’s character and hence represented him as a sympathetic messenger bringing to heaven on his death some tidings of human weakness.In certain other manifestations, relatively subordinate, the German literature of the latter part of the eighteenth centuryand the beginning of the nineteenth and the life embodied therein are different from what they would have been had it not been for Sterne’s example. Some of these secondary fruits of the Sterne cult have been mentioned incidentally and exemplified in the foregoing pages. It would perhaps be conducive to definiteness to gather them here.Sterne’s incontinuity of narration, the purposeful irrelation of parts, the use of anecdote and episode, which to the stumbling reader reduce his books to collections of disconnected essays and instances, gave to German mediocrity a sanction to publish a mass of multifarious, unrelated, and nondescript thought and incident. It is to be noted that the spurious books such as the Koran, which Germany never clearly sundered from the original, were direct examples in England of such disjointed, patchwork books. Such a volume with a significant title is “Mein Kontingent zur Modelectüre.”77Further, eccentricity in typography, in outward form, may be largely attributed to Sterne’s influence, although in individual cases no direct connection is traceable. Thus, to the vagaries of Shandy is due probably the license of the author of “Karl Blumenberg, eine tragisch-komische Geschichte,”78who fills half pages with dashes and whole lines with “Ha! Ha!”As has been suggested already, Sterne’s example was potent in fostering the use of such stylistic peculiarities, as the direct appeal to, and conversation with the reader about the work, and its progress, and the various features of the situation. It was in use by Sterne’s predecessors in England and by theirfollowers in Germany, before Sterne can be said to have exercised any influence; for example, Hermes uses the device constantly in “Miss Fanny Wilkes,” but Sterne undoubtedly contributed largely to its popularity. One may perhaps trace to Sterne’s blank pages and similar vagaries the eccentricity of the author of “Ueber die Moralische Schönheit und Philosophie des Lebens,”79whose eighth chapter is titled “Vom Stolz, eine Erzählung,” this title occupying one page; the next page (210) is blank; the following page is adorned with an urnlike decoration beneath which we read, “Es war einmal ein Priester.” These three pages complete the chapter. The author of “Dorset und Julie” (Leipzig, 1773–4) is also guilty of similar Yorickian follies.80Sterne’s ideas found approbation and currency apart from his general message of the sentimental and humorous attitude toward the world and its course. For example, the hobby-horse theory was warmly received, and it became a permanent figure in Germany, often, and especially at first, with playful reminder of Yorick’s use of the term.81Yorick’s mock-scientific division of travelers seems to have met with especial approval, and evidently became a part of conversational, and epistolary commonplace allusion. Goethe in a letter to Marianne Willemer, November 9, 1830,82with direct reference to Sterne proposes for his son, then traveling in Italy, the additional designation of the “bold” or “complete” traveler. Carl August in a letter to Knebel,83dated December 26, 1785, makes quite extended allusion to the classification. Lessing writes to Mendelssohn December 12, 1780: “The traveler whom you sent to me a while ago was an inquisitive traveler. The one with whom I now answer is an emigrating one.” The passage which follows is an apology for thus adding to Yorick’s list.The two travelers were respectively one Fliess and Alexander Daveson.84Nicolai makes similar allusion to the “curious” traveler of Sterne’s classification near the beginning of his “Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781.”85Further search would increase the number of such allusions indefinitely. A few will be mentioned in the following chapter.One of Walter Shandy’s favorite contentions was the fortuitous dependence of great events upon insignificant details. In his philosophy, trifles were the determining factors of existence. The adoption of this theory in Germany, as a principle in developing events or character in fiction, is unquestionable in Wezel’s “Tobias Knaut,” and elsewhere. The narrative, “Die Grosse Begebenheit aus kleinen Ursachen” in the second volume of theErholungen,86represents a wholesale appropriation of the idea,—to be sure not new in Shandy, but most strikingly exemplified there.In “Sebaldus Nothanker” the Revelation of St. John is a Sterne-like hobby-horse and is so regarded by a reviewer in theMagazin der deutschen Critik.87Schottenius in Knigge’s “Reise nach Braunschweig” rides his hobby in the shape of his fifty-seven sermons.88Lessing uses the Steckenpferd in a letter to Mendelssohn, November 5, 1768 (Lachmann edition, XII, p. 212), and numerous other examples of direct or indirect allusion might be cited. Sterne’s worn-out coin was a simile adopted and felt to be pointed.89Jacob Minor in a suggestive article inEuphorion,90entitled “Wahrheit und Lüge auf dem Theater und in der Literatur,” expressed the opinion that Sterne was instrumental in sharpening powers of observation with reference to self-deception in little things, to all the deceiving impulses of the human soul.It is held that through Sterne’s inspiration Wieland and Goethe were rendered zealous to combat false ideals and life-lies in greater things. It is maintained that Tieck also was schooled in Sterne, and, by means of powers of observation sharpened in this way, was enabled to portray the conscious or unconscious life-lie.1.A writer in theGothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1775 (II, 787 ff.), asserts that Sterne’s works are the favorite reading of the German nation.2.A further illustration may be found in the following discourse: “Von einigen Hindernissen des akademischen Fleisses. Eine Rede bey dem Anfange der öffentlichen Vorlesungen gehalten,” von J. C. C. Ferber, Professor zu Helmstädt (1773, 8o), reviewed inMagazin der deutschen Critik, III, St. I., pp. 261 ff. This academic guide of youth speaks of Sterne in the following words: “Wie tief dringt dieser Philosoph in die verborgensten Gänge des menschlichen Herzens, wie richtig entdeckt er die geheimsten Federn der Handlungen, wie entlarvt, wie verabscheuungsvoll steht vor ihm das Laster, wie liebenswürdig die Tugend! wie interessant sind seine Schilderungen, wie eindringend seine Lehren! und woher diese grosse Kenntniss des Menschen, woher diese getreue Bezeichnung der Natur, diese sanften Empfindungen, die seine geistvolle Sprache hervorbringt? Dieser Saame der Tugend, den er mit wohlthätiger Hand ausstreuet?” Yorick held up to college or university students as a champion of virtue is certainly an extraordinary spectacle. A critic in theFrankfurter Gel. Anz., August 18, 1772, in criticising the make-up of a so-called “Landbibliothek,” recommends books “die geschickt sind, die guten einfältigen, ungekünstelten Empfindungen reiner Seelen zu unterhalten, einen Yorick vor allen . . . .” The long article on Sterne’s character in theGötting. Mag., I, pp. 84–92, 1780, “Etwas über Sterne: Schreiben an Prof. Lichtenberg” undoubtedly helped to establish this opinion of Sterne authoritatively. In it Sterne’s weaknesses are acknowledged, but the tendency is to emphasize the tender, sympathetic side of his character. The conception of Yorick there presented is quite different from the one held by Lichtenberg himself.3.The story of the “Lorenzodosen” is given quite fully in Longo’s monograph, “Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi” (Wien, 1898, pp. 39–44), and the sketch given here is based upon his investigation, with consultation of the sources there cited. Nothing new is likely to be added to his account, but because of its important illustrative bearing on the whole story of Sterne in Germany, a fairly complete account is given here. Longo refers to the following as literature on the subject:Martin, inQuellen und Forschungen, II, p. 10, p. 27,Anmerk.24.Wittenberg’s letter inQuellen und Forschungen, II, pp. 52–53.K. M. Werner, in article on Ludw. Philipp Hahn in the same series, XXII, pp. 127 ff.Appell: “Werther und seine Zeit,” Leipzig, 1855, p. 168. (Oldenburg, 1896, p. 246–250).Schlichtegroll: “Nekrolog von 1792,” II, pp. 37 ff.Klotz:Bibliothek, V, p. 285.Jacobi’s Werke, 1770, I, pp. 127 ff.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XIX, 2, p. 174; XII, 2, p. 279.Julian Schmidt: “Aus der Zeit der Lorenzodosen,”Westermann’s Monatshefte, XLIX, pp. 479 ff.The last article is popular and only valuable in giving letters of Wieland and others which display the emotional currents of the time. It has very little to do with the Lorenzodosen.4.The letter is reprinted in Jacobi’s Works, 1770, I, pp. 31 ff., and in an abridged form in the edition of 1807, I, pp. 103 ff.; and in the edition of Zürich, 1825, I, pp. 270–275.5.XI, 2, pp. 174–75.6.Quellen und Forschungen, XXII, p. 127.7.Ibid., II, pp. 52–53.8.This was in a letter to Jacobi October 25, 1770, though Appell gives the date 1775—evidently a misprint.9.Review of “Trois lettres françoises par quelques allemands,” Amsterdam (Berlin), 1769, 8o, letters concerned with Jacobi’s “Winterreise” and the snuff-boxes themselves.10.XII, 2, p. 279.11.Longo was unable to find one of these once so popular snuff-boxes,—a rather remarkable fact. There is, however, a picture of one at the end of the chapter “Yorick,” p. 15 in Göchhausen’s M . . . . R . . . .,—a small oval box. Emil Kuh, in his life of Fredrich Hebbel (1877, I, pp. 117–118) speaks of the Lorenzodose as “dreieckig.” A chronicler in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, p. 51, also gives rumor of an order of “Sanftmuth und Toleranz, der eine dreyeckigte Lorenzodose zum Symbol führte.” The author here is unable to determine whether this is a part of Jacobi’s impulse or the initiative of another.12.Fourth Edition. Berlin and Stettin, 1779, III, p. 99.13.“Christopher Kaufmann, der Kraftapostel der Geniezeit” von Heinrich Düntzer,Historisches Taschenbuch, edited by Fr. v. Raumer, third series, tenth year, Leipzig, 1859, pp. 109–231. Düntzer’s sources concerning Kaufmann’s life in Strassburg are Schmohl’s “Urne Johann Jacob Mochels,” 1780, and “Johann Jacob Mochel’s Reliquien verschiedener philosophischen pädogogischen poetischen und andern Aufsätze,” 1780. These books have unfortunately not been available for the present use.14.For account of Leuchsenring see Varnhagen van Ense, “Vermischte Schriften”, I. 492–532.15.Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, pp. 37 ff. There is also given here a quotation written after Sterne’s death, which is of interest:“Wir erben, Yorick, deine Dose,Auch deine Feder erben wir;Doch wer erhielt im ErbschaftslooseDein Herz? O Yorick, nenn ihn mir!”16.Works of Friedrich von Matthison, Zürich, 1825, III, pp. 141 ff., in “Erinnerungen,” zweites Buch. The “Vaterländische Besuche” were dated 1794.17.Briefe von Friedrich Matthison, Zürich, 1795, I, pp. 27–32.18.Shandy, III, 22.19.Briefe, II, p. 95.20.“Herders Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut”, pp. 92, 181, 187, 253, 377.21.Quoted by Koberstein, IV, p. 168. Else, p. 31; Hettner, III, 1, p. 362, quoted from letters in Friedrich Schlegel’sDeutsches Museum, IV, p. 145. These letters are not given by Goedeke.22.The review is credited to him by Koberstein, III, pp. 463–4.23.XIX, 2, p. 579.24.See “Bemerkungen oder Briefe über Wien, eines jungen Bayern auf einer Reise durch Deutschland,” Leipzig (probably 1804 or 1805). It is, according to theJenaische Allg. Litt. Zeitung(1805, IV, p. 383), full of extravagant sentiment with frequent apostrophe to the author’s “Evelina.” Also, “Meine Reise vom Städtchen H . . . . zum Dörfchen H . . . .” Hannover, 1799. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1799, IV, p. 87. “Reisen unter Sonne, Mond und Sternen,” Erfurt, 1798, pp. 220, 8o. This is evidently a similar work, but is classed byAllg. Litt. Zeitung(1799, I, 477) as an imitation of Jean Paul, hence indirectly to be connected with Yorick. “Reisen des grünen Mannes durch Deutschland,” Halle, 1787–91. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, 217; 1791, IV, p. 576. “Der Teufel aufReisen,” two volumes, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1789. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, p. 826. Knigge’s books of travels also share in this enlivening and subjectivizing of the traveler’s narrative.25.Altenburg, Richter, 1775, six volumes.26.Reviewed inAllg. deutsche Bibl., X, 2, p. 127, andNeue Critische Nachrichten, Greifswald V, p. 222.27.Many of the anonymous books, even those popular in their day, are not given by Goedeke; and Baker, judging only by one external, naturally misses Sterne products which have no distinctively imitative title, and includes others which have no connection with Sterne. For example, he gives Gellius’s “Yoricks Nachgelassene Werke,” which is but a translation of the Koran, and hence in no way an example of German imitation; he gives also Schummel’s “Fritzens Reise nach Dessau” (1776) and “Reise nach Schlesien” (1792), Nonne’s “Amors Reisen nach Fockzana zum Friedenscongress” (1773), none of which has anything to do with Sterne. “Trim oder der Sieg der Liebe über die Philosophie” (Leipzig, 1776), by Ludw. Ferd. v. Hopffgarten, also cited by Baker, undoubtedly owes its name only to Sterne. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, p. 67, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXIV, 2, p. 484; similarly “Lottchens Reise ins Zuchthaus” by Kirtsten, 1777, is given in Baker’s list, but the work “Reise” is evidently used here only in a figurative sense, the story being but the relation of character deterioration, a downward journey toward the titular place of punishment. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, pp. 739 ff.; 1778, p. 12.Allg.deutsche Bibl., XXXV, 1, p. 182. Baker gives Bock’s “Tagereise” and “Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages” as if they were two different books. He further states: “Sterne is the parent of a long list of German Sentimental Journeys which began with von Thümmel’s ‘Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen Frankreichs.’” This work really belongs comparatively late in the story of imitations. Two of Knigge’s books are also included. See p. 166–7.28.“Laurence Sterne und C. M. Wieland, von Karl August Behmer, Forschungen zur neueren Litteraturgeschichte IX. München, 1899. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung fremder Einflüsse auf Wieland’s Dichtung.” To this reference has been made. There is also another briefer study of this connection: a Programm by F. Bauer, “Ueber den Einfluss, Laurence Sternes auf Chr. M. Wieland,” Karlsbad, 1898. A. Mager published, 1890, at Marburg, “Wieland’s Nachlass des Diogenes von Sinope und das englische Vorbild,” a school “Abhandlung,” which dealt with a connection between this work of Wieland and Sterne. Wood (“Einfluss Fieldings auf die deutsche Litteratur,” Yokohama, 1895) finds constant imitation of Sterne in “Don Silvio,” which, from Behmer’s proof concerning the dates of Wieland’s acquaintance with Sterne, can hardly be possible.29.Some other works are mentioned as containing references and allusions.30.In “Oberon” alone of Wieland’s later works does Behmer discover Sterne’s influence and there no longer in the style, but in the adaptation of motif.31.See Erich Schmidt’s “Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe,” Jena, 1875, pp. 46–7.32.1790, I, pp. 209–16.33.This may be well compared with Wieland’s statements concerning Shandy in his review of the Bode translation (Merkur, VIII, pp. 247–51, 1774), which forms one of the most exaggerated expressions of adoration in the whole epoch of Sterne’s popularity.34.Since Germany did not sharply separate the work of Sterne from his continuator, this is, of course, to be classed from the German point of view at that time as a borrowing from Sterne. Mager in his study depends upon the Eugenius continuation for this and several other parallels.35.Sentimental Journey, pp. 31–32.36.“Ich denke nicht, dass es Sie gereuen wird, den Mann näher kennen zu lernen” spoken of Demokritus in “Die Abderiten;” seeMerkur, 1774, I, p. 56.37.Wieland’s own genuine appreciation of Sterne and understanding of his characteristics is indicated incidentally in a review of a Swedish book in theTeutscher Merkur, 1782, II, p. 192, in which he designates the description of sentimental journeying in the seventh book of Shandy as the best of Sterne’s accomplishment, as greater than the Journey itself, a judgment emanating from a keen and true knowledge of Sterne.38.Lebensbild, V, Erlangen, 1846, p. 89. Letter to Hartknoch, Paris, November, 1769. In connection with his journey and his “Reisejournal,” he speaks of his “Tristramschen Meynungen.” See Lebensbild, Vol. V, p. 61.39.Suphan, IV, p. 190. For further reference to Sterne in Herder’s letters, see “Briefe Herders an Hamann,” edited by Otto Hoffmann, Berlin, 1889, pp. 28, 51, 57, 71, 78, 194.40.Lachmann edition, Berlin, 1840, XII, pp. 212, 240.41.Eckermann: “Gespräche mit Goethe,” Leipzig, 1885, II, p. 29; or Biedermann, “Goethe’s Gespräche,” Leipzig, 1890, VI, p. 359.42.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, in den Jahren, 1796–1832.” Ed. by Fr. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1833–4, Vol. V, p. 349. Both of these quotations are cited by Siegmund Levy, “Goethe und Oliver Goldsmith;” Goethe-Jahrbuch, VI, 1885, pp. 282 ff. The translation in this case is from that of A. D. Coleridge.43.Griesebach: “Das Goetheische Zeitalter der deutschen Dichtung,” Leipzig, 1891, p. 29.44.II, 10th book, Hempel, XXI, pp. 195 ff.45.“Briefe an Joh. Heinrich Merck von Göthe, Herder, Wieland und andern bedeutenden Zeitgenossen,” edited by Dr. Karl Wagner, Darmstadt, 1835, p. 5; and “Briefe an und von Joh. Heinrich Merck,” issued by the same editor, Darmstadt, 1838, pp. 5, 21.46.In the “Wanderschaft,” see J. H. Jung-Stilling, Sämmtliche Werke. Stuttgart, 1835, I, p. 277.47.“Herder’s Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut, April, 1771, to April, 1773,” edited by Düntzer and F. G. von Herder, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1858, pp. 247 ff.48.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1774, February 22.49.Kürschner edition of Goethe, Vol. XXII, pp. 146–7.50.See introduction by Dünster in the Kürschner edition, XIII, pp. 137 ff., and that by Fr. Strehlke in the Hempel edition, XVI. pp. 217 ff.51.Kürschner edition, Vol. XXIV, p. 15; Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1789.52.“Goethe’s Romantechnik,” Leipzig, 1902. The author here incidentally expresses the opinion that Heinse is also an imitator of Sterne.53.Julius Goebel, in “Goethe-Jahrbuch,” XXI, pp. 208 ff.54.SeeEuphorion, IV, p. 439.55.Eckermann, III, p. 155; Biedermann, VI, p. 272.56.Eckermann, III, p. 170; Biedermann, VI, p. 293.57.Eckermann, II, p. 19; Biedermann, VII, p. 184. This quotation is given in the Anhang to the “Wanderjahre.” Loeper says (Hempel, XIX, p. 115) that he has been unable to find it anywhere in Sterne; see p. 105.58.See “Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter.” Zelter’s replies contain also reference to Sterne. VI, p. 33 he speaks of the Sentimental Journey as “ein balsamischer Frühlingsthau.” See also II, p. 51; VI, p. 207. Goethe is reported as having spoken of the Sentimental Journey: “Man könne durchaus nicht besser ausdrücken, wie des Menschen Herz ein trotzig und verzagt Ding sei.”59.“Mittheilungen über Goethe,” von F. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1841, II, p. 658. Also, Biedermann, VII, p. 332.60.See Hempel, XXIX, p. 240.61.Kürschner, XVI, p. 372.62.IX, p. 438.63.See “Briefe von Goethe an Johanna Fahlmer,” edited by L. Ulrichs, Leipzig, 1875, p. 91, and Shandy, II, pp. 70 and 48.64.“Goethe’s Briefe an Frau von Stein,” hrsg. von Adolf Schöll; 2te Aufl, bearbeitet von W. Fielitz, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1883, Vol. I, p. 276.65.References to the Tagebücher are as follows: Robert Keil’s Leipzig, 1875, p. 107, and Düntzer’s, Leipzig, 1889, p. 73.66.See also the same author’s “Goethe, sa vie et ses oeuvres,” Paris, 1866; Appendice pp. 291–298. Further literature is found: “Vergleichende Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung,” 1863, No. 36, and 1869, Nos. 10 and 14.Morgenblatt, 1863, Nr. 39, article by Alex. Büchner, Sterne’s “Coran und Makariens Archiv, Goethe ein Plagiator?” andDeutsches Museum, 1867, No. 690.67.Minden i. W., 1885, pp. 330–336.68.“Druck vollendet in Mai” according to Baumgartner, III, p. 292.69.II, pp. 230–233. May 15, 1831.70.Goedeke gives Vol. XXIII, A. l. H. as 1829.71.Hempel, XIX, “Sprüche in Prosa,” edited by G. von Loeper, Maximen und Reflexionen; pp. 106–111 and 113–117.72.Letters, I, p. 54.73.This seems very odd in view of the fact that in Loeper’s edition of “Dichtung und Wahrheit” (Hempel, XXII, p. 264) Gellius is referred to as “the translator of Lillo and Sterne.” It must be that Loeper did not know that Gellius’s “Yorick’s Nachgelassene Werke” was a translation of the Koran.74.The problem involved in the story of Count Gleichen was especially sympathetic to the feeling of the eighteenth century. See a series of articles by Fr. Heibig inMagazin für Litteratur des In- und Auslandes, Vol. 60, pp. 102–5; 120–2; 136–9. “Zur Geschichte des Problems des Grafen von Gleichen.”75.Weimar edition, Vol. XLI, 2, pp. 252–253.76.Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1839, IV, pp. 272–3.77.Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1775. SeeGothaische Gel. Zeitungen, 1776, I, pp. 208–9, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXII, 1, p. 139.Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen, September 27, 1776. This does not imply that Sterne was in this respect an innovator; such books were printed before Sterne’s influence was felt,e.g.,Magazin von Einfällen, Breslau, 1763 (?), reviewed inLeipziger Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, February 20, 1764. See also “Reisen im Vaterlande,—Kein Roman aber ziemlich theatralisch-politisch und satyrischen Inhalts,” two volumes; Königsberg and Leipzig, 1793–4, reviewed inAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1795, III, p. 30. “Der Tändler, oder Streifereyen in die Wildnisse der Einbildungskraft, in die Werke der Natur und menschlichen Sitten,” Leipzig, 1778 (?), (Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1779, p. 48). “Meine Geschichte oder Begebenheiten des Herrn Thomas: ein narkotisches Werk des Doktor Pifpuf,” Münster und Leipzig, 1772, pp. 231, 8o. A strange episodical conglomerate; seeMagazin der deutschen Critik, II, p. 135.78.Leipzig, 1785 or 1786. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1786, III, p. 259.79.Altenburg, 1772, by von Schirach (?).80.SeeAuserlesene Bibl. der neuesten deutschen Litteratur, IV, pp. 320–325, and VII, pp. 227–234.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XXIII, 1, p. 258; XXVI, 1, p. 209.81.Riedel uses it, for example, in his “Launen an meinen Satyr,” speaking of “mein swiftisch Steckenthier” in “Vermischte Aufsätze,” reviewed inFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1772, pp. 358–9.Magazin der deutschen Critik, I, pp. 290–293.82.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Marianne Willemer (Suleika).” Edited by Th. Creizenach, 2d edition; Stuttgart, 1878, p. 290.83.“K. L. von Knebel’s literarischer Nachlass und Briefwechsel;” edited by Varnhagen von Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig, 1835, p. 147.84.See Mendelssohn’s Schriften; edited by G.B.Mendelssohn, Leipzig, 1844, V, p. 202. See also letter of Mendelssohn to Lessing, February 18, 1780.85.Third edition, Berlin and Stettin, 1788, p. 14.86.II, pp. 218 ff.87.II, 2, p. 127.88.These two cases are mentioned also by Riemann in “Goethe’s Romantechnik.”89.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., May 8, 1772, p. 296.90.III, pp. 276 ff.CHAPTER VIIMITATORS OF STERNEAmong the disciples of Sterne in Germany whose literary imitation may be regarded as typical of their master’s influence, Johann Georg Jacobi is perhaps the best known. His relation to the famous “Lorenzodosen” conceit is sufficient to link his name with that of Yorick. Martin1asserts that he was called “Uncle Toby” in Gleim’s circle because of his enthusiasm for Sterne. The indebtedness of Jacobi to Sterne is the subject of a special study by Dr. Joseph Longo, “Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi;” and the period of Jacobi’s literary work which falls under the spell of Yorick has also been treated in an inaugural dissertation, “Ueber Johann Georg Jacobi’s Jugendwerke,” by Georg Ransohoff. The detail of Jacobi’s indebtedness to Sterne is to be found in these two works.Longo was unable to settle definitely the date of Jacobi’s first acquaintance with Sterne. The first mention made of him is in the letter to Gleim of April 4, 1769, and a few days afterward,—April 10,—the intelligence is afforded that he himself is working on a “journey.” The “Winterreise” was published at Düsseldorf in the middle of June, 1769. Externally the work seems more under the influence of the French wanderer Chapelle, since prose and verse are used irregularly alternating, a style quite different from the English model. There are short and unnumbered chapters, as in the Sentimental Journey, but, unlike Sterne, Jacobi, with one exception, names no places and makes no attempt at description of place or people, other than the sentimental individuals encountered on the way. He makes no analysis of national, or even local characteristics: the journey, in short, is almost completely without place-influence.There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, a more conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi’s Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick’s sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical side of Yorick’s work. Jacobi, unlike his model, but in common with other German imitators, is insistent in instruction and serious in contention for pet theories, as is exemplified by the discussion of the doctrine of immortality. There are opinions to be maintained, there is a message to be delivered. Jacobi in this does not give the lie to his nationality.Like other German imitators, too, he took up with especial feeling the relations between man and the animal world, an attitude to be connected with several familiar episodes in Sterne.2The two chapters, “Der Heerd” and “Der Taubenschlag,” tell of a sentimental farmer who mourns over the fact that his son has cut down a tree in which the nightingale was wont to nest. A similar sentimental regard is cherished in this family for the doves, which no one killed, because no one could eat them. Even as Yorick meets a Franciscan, Jacobi encounters a Jesuit whose heart leaps to meet his own, and later, after the real journey is done, a visit to a lonely cloister gives opportunity for converse with a monk, like Pater Lorenzo,—tender, simple and humane.The “Sommerreise,” according to Longo, appeared in the latter part of September, 1769, a less important work, which, in the edition of 1807, Jacobi considered unworthy of preservation. Imitation of Sterne is marked: following a criticism by Wieland the author attempts to be humorous, but with dubious success; he introduces a Sterne-like sentimental character which had not been used in the “Winterreise,” a beggar-soldier,and he repeats the motif of human sympathy for animals in the story of the lamb. Sympathy with erring womanhood is expressed in the incidents related in “Die Fischerhütte” and “Der Geistliche.” These two books were confessedly inspired by Yorick, and contemporary criticism treated them as Yorick products. TheDeutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, published by Jacobi’s friend Klotz, would naturally favor the volumes. Its review of the “Winterreise” is non-critical and chiefly remarkable for the denial of foreign imitation. TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,3in reviewing the same work pays a significant tribute to Sterne, praising his power of disclosing the good and beautiful in the seemingly commonplace. In direct criticism of the book, the reviewer calls it a journey of fancy, the work of a youthful poet rather than that of a sensitive philosopher. Wieland is credited with the astounding opinion that he prefers the “Sommerreise” to Yorick’s journey.4Longo’s characterization of Sterne is in the main satisfactory, yet there is distinctly traceable the tendency to ignore or minimize the whimsical elements of Sterne’s work: this is the natural result of his approach to Sterne, through Jacobi, who understood only the sentimentalism of the English master.5Among the works of sentiment which were acknowledged imitations of Yorick, along with Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” probably the most typical and best known was the “Empfindsame Reisen durch Deutschland” by Johann Gottlieb Schummel. Its importance as a document in the history of sentimentalism is rather as an example of tendency than as a force contributing materially to the spread of the movement. Its influence wasprobably not great, though one reviewer does hint at a following.6Yet the book has been remembered more persistently than any other work of its genre, except Jacobi’s works, undoubtedly in part because it was superior to many of its kind, partly, also, because its author won later and maintained a position of some eminence, as a writer and a pedagogue; but largely because Goethe’s well-known review of it in theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigenhas been cited as a remarkably acute contribution to the discriminating criticism of the genuine and the affected in the eighteenth-century literature of feeling, and has drawn attention from the very fact of its source to the object of its criticism.Schummel was born in May, 1748, and hence was but twenty years of age when Germany began to thrill in response to Yorick’s sentiments. It is probable that the first volume was written while Schummel was still a university student in 1768–1770. He assumed a position as teacher in 1771, but the first volume came out at Easter of that year; this would probably throw its composition back into the year before. The second volume appeared at Michaelmas of the same year. His publisher was Zimmermann at Wittenberg and Zerbst, and the first volume at any rate was issued in a new edition. The third volume came out in the spring of 1772.7Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation. On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the title of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, “Versuch über die menschliche Natur.”8These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation. This is interesting in connection with Böttiger’s claim that the whole cavalcade of sentimental travelers who trotted along after Yorick with all sorts of animals and vehicles was a proof of the excellence and power of Bode’s translation. As one would naturallyinfer from the title of Schummel’s fiction, the Sentimental Journey is more constantly drawn upon as a source of ideas, motifs, expression, and method, than Tristram Shandy, but the allusions to Sterne’s earlier book, and the direct adaptations from it are both numerous and generous. This fact has not been recognized by the critics, and is not an easy inference from the contemporary reviews.The book is the result of an immediate impulse to imitation felt irresistibly on the reading of Sterne’s narrative. That the critics and readers of that day treated with serious consideration the efforts of a callow youth of twenty or twenty-one in this direction is indicative either of comparative vigor of execution, or of prepossession of the critical world in favor of the literary genre,—doubtless of both. Schummel confesses that the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. “I had just finished reading it,” he says, “and Heaven knows with what pleasure, every word from ‘as far as this matter is concerned’ on to ‘I seized the hand of the lady’s maid,’ were imprinted in my soul with small invisible letters.” The characters of the Journey stood “life-size in his very soul.” Involuntarily his inventive powers had sketched several plans for a continuation, releasing Yorick from the hand of thefille de chambre. But what he attempts is not a continuation but a German parallel.In the outward events of his story, in the general trend of its argument, Schummel does not depend upon either Shandy or the Journey: the hero’s circumstances are in general not traceable to the English model, but, spasmodically, the manner of narration and the nature of the incidents are quite slavishly copied. A complete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne as a model can be established. Schummel’s narrative is often for many successive pages absolutely straightforward and simple, unbroken by any attempt at Shandean buoyancy, and unblemished by overwrought sentiment. At the pausing places he generally indulges in Sternesque quibbling.A brief analysis of the first volume, with especial reference to the appropriation of Yorick features, will serve to show the extent of imitation, and the nature of the method. In outward form the Sentimental Journey is copied. The volume is not divided into chapters, but there are named divisions: there is also Yorick-like repetition of section-headings. Naturally the author attempts at the very beginning to strike a note distinctly suggesting Sterne: “Is he dead, the old cousin?” are the first words of the volume, uttered by the hero on receipt of the news, and in Yorick fashion he calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin’s death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, a brief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.9The author’s relation to his parents is adapted directly from Shandy, since he here possesses an incapable, unpractical, philosophizing father, who determines upon methods for the superior education of his son; and a simple, silly mockery of a mother.Left, however, an orphan, he begins his sentimental adventures: thrust on the world he falls in with a kindly baker’s wife whose conduct toward him brings tears to the eyes of the ten-year old lad, this showing his early appetite for sentimental journeying. A large part of this first section relating to his early life and youthful struggles, his kindly benefactor, his adventure with Potiphar’s wife, is simple and direct, with only an occasional hint of Yorick’s influence in word or phrase, as if the author, now and then, recalled the purpose and the inspiration. For example, not until near the bottom of page 30 does it occur to him to be abrupt and indulge in Shandean eccentricities, and then again, after a few lines, he resumes the natural order of discourse. And again, on page 83, he breaks off into attempted frivolity and Yorick whimsicalityof narration. In starting out upon his journey the author says: “I will tread in Yorick’s foot-prints, what matters it if I do not fill them out? My heart is not so broad as his, the sooner can it be filled; my head is not so sound; my brain not so regularly formed. My eyes are not so clear, but for that he was born in England and I in Germany; he is a man and I am but a youth, in short, he is Yorick and I am not Yorick.” He determines to journey where it is most sentimental and passes the various lands in review in making his decision. Having fastened upon Germany, he questions himself similarly with reference to the cities. Yorick’s love of lists, of mock-serious discrimination, of inconsequential reasonings is here copied. The call upon epic, tragic, lyric poets, musicians, etc., which follows here is a further imitation of Yorick’s list-making and pseudo-scientific method.
With Lessing the case is similar: a striking statement of personal regard has been recorded, but Lessing’s literary work of the following years does not betray a significant influence from Yorick. To be sure, allusion is made to Sterne a few times in letters40and elsewhere, but no direct manifestation of devotion is discoverable. The compelling consciousness of his own message, his vigorous interest in deeper problems of religion and philosophy, the then increasing worth of native German literature, may well have overshadowed the influence of the volatile Briton.
Goethe’s expressions of admiration for Sterne and indebtedness to him are familiar. Near the end of his life (December 16, 1828), when the poet was interested in observing the history and sources of his own culture, and was intent upon recordinghis own experience for the edification and clarification of the people, he says in conversation with Eckermann: “I am infinitely indebted to Shakespeare, Sterne and Goldsmith.”41And a year later in a letter to Zelter,42(Weimar, December 25, 1829), “The influence Goldsmith and Sterne exercised upon me, just at the chief point of my development, cannot be estimated. This high, benevolent irony, this just and comprehensive way of viewing things, this gentleness to all opposition, this equanimity under every change, and whatever else all the kindred virtues may be termed—such things were a most admirable training for me, and surely, these are the sentiments which in the end lead us back from all the mistaken paths of life.”
In the same conversation with Eckermann from which the first quotation is made, Goethe seems to defy the investigator who would endeavor to define his indebtedness to Sterne, its nature and its measure. The occasion was an attempt on the part of certain writers to determine the authorship of certain distichs printed in both Schiller’s and Goethe’s works. Upon a remark of Eckermann’s that this effort to hunt down a man’s originality and to trace sources is very common in the literary world, Goethe says: “Das ist sehr lächerlich, man könnte ebenso gut einen wohlgenährten Mann nach den Ochsen, Schafen und Schweinen fragen, die er gegessen und die ihm Kräfte gegeben.” An investigation such as Goethe seems to warn us against here would be one of tremendous difficulty, a theme for a separate work. It is purposed here to gather only information with reference to Goethe’s expressed or implied attitude toward Sterne, his opinion of the British master, and to note certain connections between Goethe’s work and that of Sterne, connections which are obvious or have been already a matter of comment and discussion.
In Strassburg under Herder’s43guidance, Goethe seems first to have read the works of Sterne. His life in Frankfurt during the interval between his two periods of university residence was not of a nature calculated to increase his acquaintance with current literature, and his studies did not lead to interest in literary novelty. This is his own statement in “Dichtung und Wahrheit.”44That Herder’s enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Strassburg. Letters written to Merck45(Strassburg, 1770–1771) would seem to show that then too Sterne still stood high in his esteem. Whatever the exact time of Goethe’s first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter’s cultivation in letters.46Less than a year after Goethe’s departure from Strassburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder’s fiancée.47It is not evident whether they read Sterne in the original or in the translation of Zückert, the only one then available, unless possibly the reader gave a translation as he read. Later in the same letter, Caroline mentions the “Empfindsame Reisen,” possibly meaning Bode’s translation. She also records reading Shakespeare in Wieland’s rendering, but as she speaks later still of peeping into the English books which Herder had sent Merck, it is a hazardous thing to reason from her mastery of English at that time to the use of original or translation on the occasion of Goethe’s reading.
Contemporary criticism saw in the Martin of “Götz von Berlichingen” a likeness to Sterne’s creations;48and in the othergreat work of the pre-Weimarian period, in “Werther,” though no direct influence rewards one’s search, one must acknowledge the presence of a mental and emotional state to which Sterne was a contributor. Indeed Goethe himself suggests this relationship. Speaking of “Werther” in the “Campagne in Frankreich,”49he observes in a well-known passage that Werther did not cause the disease, only exposed it, and that Yorick shared in preparing the ground-work of sentimentalism on which “Werther” is built.
According to the quarto edition of 1837, the first series of letters from Switzerland dates from 1775, although they were not published till 1808, in the eleventh volume of the edition begun in 1806. Scherer, in his “History of German Literature,” asserts that these letters are written in imitation of Sterne, but it is difficult to see the occasion for such a statement. The letters are, in spite of all haziness concerning the time of their origin and Goethe’s exact purpose regarding them,50a “fragment of Werther’s travels” and are confessedly cast in a sentimental tone, which one might easily attribute to a Werther, in whom hyperesthesia has not yet developed to delirium, an earlier Werther. Yorick’s whim and sentiment are quite wanting, and the sensuousness, especially as pertains to corporeal beauty, is distinctly Goethean.
Goethe’s accounts of his own travels are quite free from the Sterne flavor; in fact he distinctly says that through the influence of the Sentimental Journey all records of journeys had been mostly given up to the feelings and opinions of the traveler, but that he, after his Italian journey, had endeavored to keep himself objective.51
Dr. Robert Riemann in his study of Goethe’s novels,52calls Friedrich in “Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre” a representative of Sterne’s humor, and he finds in Mittler in the “Wahlverwandtschaften” a union of seriousness and the comic of caricature,reminiscent of Sterne and Hippel. Friedrich is mercurial, petulant, utterly irresponsible, a creature of mirth and laughter, subject to unreasoning fits of passion. One might, in thinking of another character in fiction, designate Friedrich as faun-like. In all of this one can, however, find little if any demonstrable likeness to Sterne or Sterne’s creations. It is rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, Goethe’s occasional use of the direct appeal to the reader. Doubtless Sterne’s example here was a force in extending this rhetorical convention.
It is claimed by Goebel53that Goethe’s “Homunculus,” suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne’s mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne’s creation. In a meeting of the “Gesellschaft für deutsche Litteratur,” November, 1896, Brandl expressed the opinion that Maria of Moulines was a prototype of Mignon in “Wilhelm Meister.”54
The references to Sterne in Goethe’s works, in his letters and conversations, are fairly numerous in the aggregate, but not especially striking relatively. In the conversations with Eckermann there are several other allusions besides those already mentioned. Goethe calls Eckermann a second Shandy for suffering illness without calling a physician, even as Walter Shandy failed to attend to the squeaking door-hinge.55Eckermann himself draws on Sterne for illustrations in Yorick’s description of Paris,56and on January 24, 1830, at a time when we know that Goethe was re-reading Sterne, Eckermann refersto Yorick’s (?) doctrine of the reasonable use of grief.57That Goethe near the end of his life turned again to Sterne’s masterpiece is proved by a letter to Zelter, October 5, 1830;58he adds here too that his admiration has increased with the years, speaking particularly of Sterne’s gay arraignment of pedantry and philistinism. But a few days before this, October 1, 1830, in a conversation reported by Riemer,59he expresses the same opinion and adds that Sterne was the first to raise himself and us from pedantry and philistinism. By these remarks Goethe commits himself in at least one respect to a favorable view of Sterne’s influence on German letters. A few other minor allusions to Sterne may be of interest. In an article in theHoren(1795, V.Stück,) entitled “Literarischer Sansculottismus,” Goethe mentions Smelfungus as a type of growler.60In the “Wanderjahre”61there is a reference to Yorick’s classification of travelers. Düntzer, in Schnorr’sArchiv,62explains a passage in a letter of Goethe’s to Johanna Fahlmer (August, 1775), “die Verworrenheiten des Diego und Juliens” as an allusion to the “Intricacies of Diego and Julia” in Slawkenbergius’s tale,63and to the traveler’s conversation with his beast. In a letter to Frau von Stein64five years later (September 18, 1780) Goethe used this same expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Düntzer’s explanation. Düntzer further explains the wordθεοδοκος, used in Goethe’s Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the termθεοδιδακτοςapplied to Walter Shandy. The word is,however, somewhat illegible in the manuscript. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Düntzer himself, nine years after the article in theArchiv, published an edition of the Tagebücher he accepted a readingθεοτατος,65meaning, as he says, “ein voller Gott,” thereby tacitly retracting his former theory of connection with Sterne.
The best known relationship between Goethe and Sterne is in connection with the so-called plagiarisms in the appendix to the third volume of the “Wanderjahre.” Here, in the second edition, were printed under the title “Aus Makariens Archiv” various maxims and sentiments. Among these were a number of sayings, reflections, axioms, which were later discovered to have been taken bodily from the second part of the Koran, the best known Sterne-forgery. Alfred Hédouin, in “Le Monde Maçonnique” (1863), in an article “Goethe plagiaire de Sterne,” first located the quotations.66
Mention has already been made of the account of Robert Springer, which is probably the last published essay on the subject. It is entitled “Ist Goethe ein Plagiarius Lorenz Sternes?” and is found in the volume “Essays zur Kritik und Philosophie und zur Goethe-Litteratur.”67Springer cites at some length the liberal opinions of Molière, La Bruyère, Wieland, Heine and others concerning the literary appropriation of another’s thought. He then proceeds to quote Goethe’s equally generous views on the subject, and adds the uncritical fling that if Goethe robbed Sterne, it was an honor to Sterne, a gain to his literary fame. Near the end of his paper, Springer arrives at the question in hand and states positively that these maxims, with their miscellaneous companions, were never published by Goethe, but were found by the editors of his literary remains among his miscellaneous papers, and then issued in theninth volume of the posthumous works. Hédouin had suggested this possible explanation. Springer adds that the editors were unaware of the source of this material and supposed it to be original with Goethe.
The facts of the case are, however, as follows: “Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre” was published first in 1821.68In 1829, a new and revised edition was issued in the “Ausgabe letzter Hand.” Eckermann in his conversations with Goethe69relates the circumstances under which the appendices were added to the earlier work. When the book was in press, the publisher discovered that of the three volumes planned, the last two were going to be too thin, and begged for more material to fill out their scantiness. In this perplexity Goethe brought to Eckermann two packets of miscellaneous notes to be edited and added to those two slender volumes. In this way arose the collection of sayings, scraps and quotations “Im Sinne der Wanderer” and “Aus Makariens Archiv.” It was later agreed that Eckermann, when Goethe’s literary remains should be published, should place the matter elsewhere, ordered into logical divisions of thought. All of the sentences here under special consideration were published in the twenty-third volume of the “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” which is dated 1830,70and are to be found there, on pages 271–275 and 278–281. They are reprinted in the identical order in the ninth volume of the “Nachgelassene Werke,” which also bore the title, Vol. XLIX of “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” there found on pages 121–125 and 127–131. Evidently Springer found them here in the posthumous works, and did not look for them in the previous volume, which was published two years or thereabouts before Goethe’s death.
Of the sentiments, sentences and quotations dealing with Sterne, there are twenty which are translations from the Koran, in Loeper’s edition of “Sprüche in Prosa,”71Nos. 491–507 and 543–544; seventeen others (Nos. 490, 508–509, 521–533,535) contain direct appreciative criticism of Sterne; No. 538 is a comment upon a Latin quotation in the Koran and No. 545 is a translation of another quotation in the same work. No. 532 gives a quotation from Sterne, “Ich habe mein Elend nicht wie ein weiser Mann benutzt,” which Loeper says he has been unable to find in any of Sterne’s works. It is, however, in a letter72to John Hall Stevenson, written probably in August, 1761. The translation here is inexact. Loeper did not succeed in finding Nos. 534, 536, 537, although their position indicates that they were quotations from Sterne, but No. 534 is in a letter to Garrick from Paris, March 19, 1762. The German translation however conveys a different impression from the original English. The other two are not located; in spite of their position, the way in which the book was put together would certainly allow for the possibility of extraneous material creeping in. At their first appearance in the “Ausgabe letzter Hand,” five Sprüche, Nos. 491, 543, 534, 536, 537, were supplied with quotation marks, though the source was not indicated. Thus it is seen that the most of the quotations were published as original during Goethe’s lifetime, but he probably never considered it of sufficient consequence to disavow their authorship in public. It is quite possible that the way in which they were forced into “Wilhelm Meister” was distasteful to him afterwards, and he did not care to call attention to them.
Goethe’s opinion of Sterne as expressed in the sentiments which accompany the quotations from the Koran is significant. “Yorick Sterne,” he says, “war der schönste Geist, der je gewirkt hat; wer ihn liest, fühlet sich sogleich frei und schön; sein Humor ist unnachahmlich, und nicht jeder Humor befreit die Seele” (490). “Sagacität und Penetration sind bei ihm grenzenlos” (528). Goethe asserts here that every person of culture should at that very time read Sterne’s works, so that the nineteenth century might learn “what we owed him and perceive what we might owe him.” Goethe took Sterne’s narrative of his journey as a representation of an actual trip, or else he is speaking of Sterne’s letters in the following:
“Seine Heiterkeit, Genügsamkeit, Duldsamkeit auf der Reise, wo diese Eigenschaften am meisten geprüft werden, finden nicht leicht Ihresgleichen” (No. 529), and Goethe’s opinion of Sterne’s indecency is characteristic of Goethe’s attitude. He says: “Das Element der Lüsternheit, in dem er sich so zierlich und sinnig benimmt, würde vielen Andern zum Verderben gereichen.”
The juxtaposition of these quotations and this appreciation of Sterne is proof sufficient that Goethe considered Sterne the author of the Koran at the time when the notes were made. At precisely what time this occurred it is now impossible to determine, but the drift of the comment, combined with our knowledge from sources already mentioned, that Goethe turned again to Sterne in the latter years of his life, would indicate that the quotations were made in the latter part of the twenties, and that the re-reading of Sterne included the Koran. Since the translations which Goethe gives are not identical with those in the rendering ascribed to Bode (1778), Loeper suggests Goethe himself as the translator of the individual quotations. Loeper is ignorant of the earlier translation of Gellius, which Goethe may have used.73
There is yet another possibility of connection between Goethe and the Koran. This work contained the story of the Graf von Gleichen, which is acknowledged to have been a precursor of Goethe’s “Stella.” Düntzer in his “Erläuterungen zu den deutschen Klassikern” says it is impossible to determine whence Goethe took the story for “Stella.” He mentions that it was contained in Bayle’s Dictionary, which is known to have been in Goethe’s father’s library, and two other books, both dating from the sixteenth century, are noted as possible sources. It seems rather more probable that Goethe found the story in the Koran, which was published but a few years before “Stella” was written and translated but a year later,1771, that is, but four years, or even less, before the appearance of “Stella” (1775).74
Precisely in the spirit of the opinions quoted above is the little essay75on Sterne which was published in the sixth volume of “Ueber Kunst und Alterthum,” in which Goethe designates Sterne as a man “who first stimulated and propagated the great epoch of purer knowledge of humanity, noble toleration and tender love, in the second half of the last century.” Goethe further calls attenion to Sterne’s disclosure of human peculiarities (Eigenheiten), and the importance and interest of these native, governing idiosyncrasies.
These are, in general, superficial relationships. A thorough consideration of these problems, especially as concerns the cultural indebtedness of Goethe to the English master would be a task demanding a separate work. Goethe was an assimilator and summed up in himself the spirit of a century, the attitude of predecessors and contemporaries.
C. F. D. Schubart wrote a poem entitled “Yorick,”76beginning
“Als Yorik starb, da flogSein Seelchen aufdenHimmelSo leicht wie ein Seufzerchen.”
“Als Yorik starb, da flog
Sein Seelchen aufdenHimmel
So leicht wie ein Seufzerchen.”
The angels ask him for news of earth, and the greater part of the poem is occupied with his account of human fate. The relation is quite characteristic of Schubart in its gruesomeness, its insistence upon all-surrounding death and dissolution; but it contains no suggestion of Sterne’s manner, or point of view. The only explanation of association between the poem and its title is that Schubart shared the one-sided German estimate of Sterne’s character and hence represented him as a sympathetic messenger bringing to heaven on his death some tidings of human weakness.
In certain other manifestations, relatively subordinate, the German literature of the latter part of the eighteenth centuryand the beginning of the nineteenth and the life embodied therein are different from what they would have been had it not been for Sterne’s example. Some of these secondary fruits of the Sterne cult have been mentioned incidentally and exemplified in the foregoing pages. It would perhaps be conducive to definiteness to gather them here.
Sterne’s incontinuity of narration, the purposeful irrelation of parts, the use of anecdote and episode, which to the stumbling reader reduce his books to collections of disconnected essays and instances, gave to German mediocrity a sanction to publish a mass of multifarious, unrelated, and nondescript thought and incident. It is to be noted that the spurious books such as the Koran, which Germany never clearly sundered from the original, were direct examples in England of such disjointed, patchwork books. Such a volume with a significant title is “Mein Kontingent zur Modelectüre.”77Further, eccentricity in typography, in outward form, may be largely attributed to Sterne’s influence, although in individual cases no direct connection is traceable. Thus, to the vagaries of Shandy is due probably the license of the author of “Karl Blumenberg, eine tragisch-komische Geschichte,”78who fills half pages with dashes and whole lines with “Ha! Ha!”
As has been suggested already, Sterne’s example was potent in fostering the use of such stylistic peculiarities, as the direct appeal to, and conversation with the reader about the work, and its progress, and the various features of the situation. It was in use by Sterne’s predecessors in England and by theirfollowers in Germany, before Sterne can be said to have exercised any influence; for example, Hermes uses the device constantly in “Miss Fanny Wilkes,” but Sterne undoubtedly contributed largely to its popularity. One may perhaps trace to Sterne’s blank pages and similar vagaries the eccentricity of the author of “Ueber die Moralische Schönheit und Philosophie des Lebens,”79whose eighth chapter is titled “Vom Stolz, eine Erzählung,” this title occupying one page; the next page (210) is blank; the following page is adorned with an urnlike decoration beneath which we read, “Es war einmal ein Priester.” These three pages complete the chapter. The author of “Dorset und Julie” (Leipzig, 1773–4) is also guilty of similar Yorickian follies.80
Sterne’s ideas found approbation and currency apart from his general message of the sentimental and humorous attitude toward the world and its course. For example, the hobby-horse theory was warmly received, and it became a permanent figure in Germany, often, and especially at first, with playful reminder of Yorick’s use of the term.81Yorick’s mock-scientific division of travelers seems to have met with especial approval, and evidently became a part of conversational, and epistolary commonplace allusion. Goethe in a letter to Marianne Willemer, November 9, 1830,82with direct reference to Sterne proposes for his son, then traveling in Italy, the additional designation of the “bold” or “complete” traveler. Carl August in a letter to Knebel,83dated December 26, 1785, makes quite extended allusion to the classification. Lessing writes to Mendelssohn December 12, 1780: “The traveler whom you sent to me a while ago was an inquisitive traveler. The one with whom I now answer is an emigrating one.” The passage which follows is an apology for thus adding to Yorick’s list.The two travelers were respectively one Fliess and Alexander Daveson.84Nicolai makes similar allusion to the “curious” traveler of Sterne’s classification near the beginning of his “Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781.”85
Further search would increase the number of such allusions indefinitely. A few will be mentioned in the following chapter.
One of Walter Shandy’s favorite contentions was the fortuitous dependence of great events upon insignificant details. In his philosophy, trifles were the determining factors of existence. The adoption of this theory in Germany, as a principle in developing events or character in fiction, is unquestionable in Wezel’s “Tobias Knaut,” and elsewhere. The narrative, “Die Grosse Begebenheit aus kleinen Ursachen” in the second volume of theErholungen,86represents a wholesale appropriation of the idea,—to be sure not new in Shandy, but most strikingly exemplified there.
In “Sebaldus Nothanker” the Revelation of St. John is a Sterne-like hobby-horse and is so regarded by a reviewer in theMagazin der deutschen Critik.87Schottenius in Knigge’s “Reise nach Braunschweig” rides his hobby in the shape of his fifty-seven sermons.88Lessing uses the Steckenpferd in a letter to Mendelssohn, November 5, 1768 (Lachmann edition, XII, p. 212), and numerous other examples of direct or indirect allusion might be cited. Sterne’s worn-out coin was a simile adopted and felt to be pointed.89
Jacob Minor in a suggestive article inEuphorion,90entitled “Wahrheit und Lüge auf dem Theater und in der Literatur,” expressed the opinion that Sterne was instrumental in sharpening powers of observation with reference to self-deception in little things, to all the deceiving impulses of the human soul.It is held that through Sterne’s inspiration Wieland and Goethe were rendered zealous to combat false ideals and life-lies in greater things. It is maintained that Tieck also was schooled in Sterne, and, by means of powers of observation sharpened in this way, was enabled to portray the conscious or unconscious life-lie.
1.A writer in theGothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1775 (II, 787 ff.), asserts that Sterne’s works are the favorite reading of the German nation.2.A further illustration may be found in the following discourse: “Von einigen Hindernissen des akademischen Fleisses. Eine Rede bey dem Anfange der öffentlichen Vorlesungen gehalten,” von J. C. C. Ferber, Professor zu Helmstädt (1773, 8o), reviewed inMagazin der deutschen Critik, III, St. I., pp. 261 ff. This academic guide of youth speaks of Sterne in the following words: “Wie tief dringt dieser Philosoph in die verborgensten Gänge des menschlichen Herzens, wie richtig entdeckt er die geheimsten Federn der Handlungen, wie entlarvt, wie verabscheuungsvoll steht vor ihm das Laster, wie liebenswürdig die Tugend! wie interessant sind seine Schilderungen, wie eindringend seine Lehren! und woher diese grosse Kenntniss des Menschen, woher diese getreue Bezeichnung der Natur, diese sanften Empfindungen, die seine geistvolle Sprache hervorbringt? Dieser Saame der Tugend, den er mit wohlthätiger Hand ausstreuet?” Yorick held up to college or university students as a champion of virtue is certainly an extraordinary spectacle. A critic in theFrankfurter Gel. Anz., August 18, 1772, in criticising the make-up of a so-called “Landbibliothek,” recommends books “die geschickt sind, die guten einfältigen, ungekünstelten Empfindungen reiner Seelen zu unterhalten, einen Yorick vor allen . . . .” The long article on Sterne’s character in theGötting. Mag., I, pp. 84–92, 1780, “Etwas über Sterne: Schreiben an Prof. Lichtenberg” undoubtedly helped to establish this opinion of Sterne authoritatively. In it Sterne’s weaknesses are acknowledged, but the tendency is to emphasize the tender, sympathetic side of his character. The conception of Yorick there presented is quite different from the one held by Lichtenberg himself.3.The story of the “Lorenzodosen” is given quite fully in Longo’s monograph, “Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi” (Wien, 1898, pp. 39–44), and the sketch given here is based upon his investigation, with consultation of the sources there cited. Nothing new is likely to be added to his account, but because of its important illustrative bearing on the whole story of Sterne in Germany, a fairly complete account is given here. Longo refers to the following as literature on the subject:Martin, inQuellen und Forschungen, II, p. 10, p. 27,Anmerk.24.Wittenberg’s letter inQuellen und Forschungen, II, pp. 52–53.K. M. Werner, in article on Ludw. Philipp Hahn in the same series, XXII, pp. 127 ff.Appell: “Werther und seine Zeit,” Leipzig, 1855, p. 168. (Oldenburg, 1896, p. 246–250).Schlichtegroll: “Nekrolog von 1792,” II, pp. 37 ff.Klotz:Bibliothek, V, p. 285.Jacobi’s Werke, 1770, I, pp. 127 ff.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XIX, 2, p. 174; XII, 2, p. 279.Julian Schmidt: “Aus der Zeit der Lorenzodosen,”Westermann’s Monatshefte, XLIX, pp. 479 ff.The last article is popular and only valuable in giving letters of Wieland and others which display the emotional currents of the time. It has very little to do with the Lorenzodosen.4.The letter is reprinted in Jacobi’s Works, 1770, I, pp. 31 ff., and in an abridged form in the edition of 1807, I, pp. 103 ff.; and in the edition of Zürich, 1825, I, pp. 270–275.5.XI, 2, pp. 174–75.6.Quellen und Forschungen, XXII, p. 127.7.Ibid., II, pp. 52–53.8.This was in a letter to Jacobi October 25, 1770, though Appell gives the date 1775—evidently a misprint.9.Review of “Trois lettres françoises par quelques allemands,” Amsterdam (Berlin), 1769, 8o, letters concerned with Jacobi’s “Winterreise” and the snuff-boxes themselves.10.XII, 2, p. 279.11.Longo was unable to find one of these once so popular snuff-boxes,—a rather remarkable fact. There is, however, a picture of one at the end of the chapter “Yorick,” p. 15 in Göchhausen’s M . . . . R . . . .,—a small oval box. Emil Kuh, in his life of Fredrich Hebbel (1877, I, pp. 117–118) speaks of the Lorenzodose as “dreieckig.” A chronicler in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, p. 51, also gives rumor of an order of “Sanftmuth und Toleranz, der eine dreyeckigte Lorenzodose zum Symbol führte.” The author here is unable to determine whether this is a part of Jacobi’s impulse or the initiative of another.12.Fourth Edition. Berlin and Stettin, 1779, III, p. 99.13.“Christopher Kaufmann, der Kraftapostel der Geniezeit” von Heinrich Düntzer,Historisches Taschenbuch, edited by Fr. v. Raumer, third series, tenth year, Leipzig, 1859, pp. 109–231. Düntzer’s sources concerning Kaufmann’s life in Strassburg are Schmohl’s “Urne Johann Jacob Mochels,” 1780, and “Johann Jacob Mochel’s Reliquien verschiedener philosophischen pädogogischen poetischen und andern Aufsätze,” 1780. These books have unfortunately not been available for the present use.14.For account of Leuchsenring see Varnhagen van Ense, “Vermischte Schriften”, I. 492–532.15.Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, pp. 37 ff. There is also given here a quotation written after Sterne’s death, which is of interest:“Wir erben, Yorick, deine Dose,Auch deine Feder erben wir;Doch wer erhielt im ErbschaftslooseDein Herz? O Yorick, nenn ihn mir!”16.Works of Friedrich von Matthison, Zürich, 1825, III, pp. 141 ff., in “Erinnerungen,” zweites Buch. The “Vaterländische Besuche” were dated 1794.17.Briefe von Friedrich Matthison, Zürich, 1795, I, pp. 27–32.18.Shandy, III, 22.19.Briefe, II, p. 95.20.“Herders Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut”, pp. 92, 181, 187, 253, 377.21.Quoted by Koberstein, IV, p. 168. Else, p. 31; Hettner, III, 1, p. 362, quoted from letters in Friedrich Schlegel’sDeutsches Museum, IV, p. 145. These letters are not given by Goedeke.22.The review is credited to him by Koberstein, III, pp. 463–4.23.XIX, 2, p. 579.24.See “Bemerkungen oder Briefe über Wien, eines jungen Bayern auf einer Reise durch Deutschland,” Leipzig (probably 1804 or 1805). It is, according to theJenaische Allg. Litt. Zeitung(1805, IV, p. 383), full of extravagant sentiment with frequent apostrophe to the author’s “Evelina.” Also, “Meine Reise vom Städtchen H . . . . zum Dörfchen H . . . .” Hannover, 1799. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1799, IV, p. 87. “Reisen unter Sonne, Mond und Sternen,” Erfurt, 1798, pp. 220, 8o. This is evidently a similar work, but is classed byAllg. Litt. Zeitung(1799, I, 477) as an imitation of Jean Paul, hence indirectly to be connected with Yorick. “Reisen des grünen Mannes durch Deutschland,” Halle, 1787–91. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, 217; 1791, IV, p. 576. “Der Teufel aufReisen,” two volumes, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1789. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, p. 826. Knigge’s books of travels also share in this enlivening and subjectivizing of the traveler’s narrative.25.Altenburg, Richter, 1775, six volumes.26.Reviewed inAllg. deutsche Bibl., X, 2, p. 127, andNeue Critische Nachrichten, Greifswald V, p. 222.27.Many of the anonymous books, even those popular in their day, are not given by Goedeke; and Baker, judging only by one external, naturally misses Sterne products which have no distinctively imitative title, and includes others which have no connection with Sterne. For example, he gives Gellius’s “Yoricks Nachgelassene Werke,” which is but a translation of the Koran, and hence in no way an example of German imitation; he gives also Schummel’s “Fritzens Reise nach Dessau” (1776) and “Reise nach Schlesien” (1792), Nonne’s “Amors Reisen nach Fockzana zum Friedenscongress” (1773), none of which has anything to do with Sterne. “Trim oder der Sieg der Liebe über die Philosophie” (Leipzig, 1776), by Ludw. Ferd. v. Hopffgarten, also cited by Baker, undoubtedly owes its name only to Sterne. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, p. 67, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXIV, 2, p. 484; similarly “Lottchens Reise ins Zuchthaus” by Kirtsten, 1777, is given in Baker’s list, but the work “Reise” is evidently used here only in a figurative sense, the story being but the relation of character deterioration, a downward journey toward the titular place of punishment. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, pp. 739 ff.; 1778, p. 12.Allg.deutsche Bibl., XXXV, 1, p. 182. Baker gives Bock’s “Tagereise” and “Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages” as if they were two different books. He further states: “Sterne is the parent of a long list of German Sentimental Journeys which began with von Thümmel’s ‘Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen Frankreichs.’” This work really belongs comparatively late in the story of imitations. Two of Knigge’s books are also included. See p. 166–7.28.“Laurence Sterne und C. M. Wieland, von Karl August Behmer, Forschungen zur neueren Litteraturgeschichte IX. München, 1899. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung fremder Einflüsse auf Wieland’s Dichtung.” To this reference has been made. There is also another briefer study of this connection: a Programm by F. Bauer, “Ueber den Einfluss, Laurence Sternes auf Chr. M. Wieland,” Karlsbad, 1898. A. Mager published, 1890, at Marburg, “Wieland’s Nachlass des Diogenes von Sinope und das englische Vorbild,” a school “Abhandlung,” which dealt with a connection between this work of Wieland and Sterne. Wood (“Einfluss Fieldings auf die deutsche Litteratur,” Yokohama, 1895) finds constant imitation of Sterne in “Don Silvio,” which, from Behmer’s proof concerning the dates of Wieland’s acquaintance with Sterne, can hardly be possible.29.Some other works are mentioned as containing references and allusions.30.In “Oberon” alone of Wieland’s later works does Behmer discover Sterne’s influence and there no longer in the style, but in the adaptation of motif.31.See Erich Schmidt’s “Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe,” Jena, 1875, pp. 46–7.32.1790, I, pp. 209–16.33.This may be well compared with Wieland’s statements concerning Shandy in his review of the Bode translation (Merkur, VIII, pp. 247–51, 1774), which forms one of the most exaggerated expressions of adoration in the whole epoch of Sterne’s popularity.34.Since Germany did not sharply separate the work of Sterne from his continuator, this is, of course, to be classed from the German point of view at that time as a borrowing from Sterne. Mager in his study depends upon the Eugenius continuation for this and several other parallels.35.Sentimental Journey, pp. 31–32.36.“Ich denke nicht, dass es Sie gereuen wird, den Mann näher kennen zu lernen” spoken of Demokritus in “Die Abderiten;” seeMerkur, 1774, I, p. 56.37.Wieland’s own genuine appreciation of Sterne and understanding of his characteristics is indicated incidentally in a review of a Swedish book in theTeutscher Merkur, 1782, II, p. 192, in which he designates the description of sentimental journeying in the seventh book of Shandy as the best of Sterne’s accomplishment, as greater than the Journey itself, a judgment emanating from a keen and true knowledge of Sterne.38.Lebensbild, V, Erlangen, 1846, p. 89. Letter to Hartknoch, Paris, November, 1769. In connection with his journey and his “Reisejournal,” he speaks of his “Tristramschen Meynungen.” See Lebensbild, Vol. V, p. 61.39.Suphan, IV, p. 190. For further reference to Sterne in Herder’s letters, see “Briefe Herders an Hamann,” edited by Otto Hoffmann, Berlin, 1889, pp. 28, 51, 57, 71, 78, 194.40.Lachmann edition, Berlin, 1840, XII, pp. 212, 240.41.Eckermann: “Gespräche mit Goethe,” Leipzig, 1885, II, p. 29; or Biedermann, “Goethe’s Gespräche,” Leipzig, 1890, VI, p. 359.42.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, in den Jahren, 1796–1832.” Ed. by Fr. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1833–4, Vol. V, p. 349. Both of these quotations are cited by Siegmund Levy, “Goethe und Oliver Goldsmith;” Goethe-Jahrbuch, VI, 1885, pp. 282 ff. The translation in this case is from that of A. D. Coleridge.43.Griesebach: “Das Goetheische Zeitalter der deutschen Dichtung,” Leipzig, 1891, p. 29.44.II, 10th book, Hempel, XXI, pp. 195 ff.45.“Briefe an Joh. Heinrich Merck von Göthe, Herder, Wieland und andern bedeutenden Zeitgenossen,” edited by Dr. Karl Wagner, Darmstadt, 1835, p. 5; and “Briefe an und von Joh. Heinrich Merck,” issued by the same editor, Darmstadt, 1838, pp. 5, 21.46.In the “Wanderschaft,” see J. H. Jung-Stilling, Sämmtliche Werke. Stuttgart, 1835, I, p. 277.47.“Herder’s Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut, April, 1771, to April, 1773,” edited by Düntzer and F. G. von Herder, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1858, pp. 247 ff.48.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1774, February 22.49.Kürschner edition of Goethe, Vol. XXII, pp. 146–7.50.See introduction by Dünster in the Kürschner edition, XIII, pp. 137 ff., and that by Fr. Strehlke in the Hempel edition, XVI. pp. 217 ff.51.Kürschner edition, Vol. XXIV, p. 15; Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1789.52.“Goethe’s Romantechnik,” Leipzig, 1902. The author here incidentally expresses the opinion that Heinse is also an imitator of Sterne.53.Julius Goebel, in “Goethe-Jahrbuch,” XXI, pp. 208 ff.54.SeeEuphorion, IV, p. 439.55.Eckermann, III, p. 155; Biedermann, VI, p. 272.56.Eckermann, III, p. 170; Biedermann, VI, p. 293.57.Eckermann, II, p. 19; Biedermann, VII, p. 184. This quotation is given in the Anhang to the “Wanderjahre.” Loeper says (Hempel, XIX, p. 115) that he has been unable to find it anywhere in Sterne; see p. 105.58.See “Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter.” Zelter’s replies contain also reference to Sterne. VI, p. 33 he speaks of the Sentimental Journey as “ein balsamischer Frühlingsthau.” See also II, p. 51; VI, p. 207. Goethe is reported as having spoken of the Sentimental Journey: “Man könne durchaus nicht besser ausdrücken, wie des Menschen Herz ein trotzig und verzagt Ding sei.”59.“Mittheilungen über Goethe,” von F. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1841, II, p. 658. Also, Biedermann, VII, p. 332.60.See Hempel, XXIX, p. 240.61.Kürschner, XVI, p. 372.62.IX, p. 438.63.See “Briefe von Goethe an Johanna Fahlmer,” edited by L. Ulrichs, Leipzig, 1875, p. 91, and Shandy, II, pp. 70 and 48.64.“Goethe’s Briefe an Frau von Stein,” hrsg. von Adolf Schöll; 2te Aufl, bearbeitet von W. Fielitz, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1883, Vol. I, p. 276.65.References to the Tagebücher are as follows: Robert Keil’s Leipzig, 1875, p. 107, and Düntzer’s, Leipzig, 1889, p. 73.66.See also the same author’s “Goethe, sa vie et ses oeuvres,” Paris, 1866; Appendice pp. 291–298. Further literature is found: “Vergleichende Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung,” 1863, No. 36, and 1869, Nos. 10 and 14.Morgenblatt, 1863, Nr. 39, article by Alex. Büchner, Sterne’s “Coran und Makariens Archiv, Goethe ein Plagiator?” andDeutsches Museum, 1867, No. 690.67.Minden i. W., 1885, pp. 330–336.68.“Druck vollendet in Mai” according to Baumgartner, III, p. 292.69.II, pp. 230–233. May 15, 1831.70.Goedeke gives Vol. XXIII, A. l. H. as 1829.71.Hempel, XIX, “Sprüche in Prosa,” edited by G. von Loeper, Maximen und Reflexionen; pp. 106–111 and 113–117.72.Letters, I, p. 54.73.This seems very odd in view of the fact that in Loeper’s edition of “Dichtung und Wahrheit” (Hempel, XXII, p. 264) Gellius is referred to as “the translator of Lillo and Sterne.” It must be that Loeper did not know that Gellius’s “Yorick’s Nachgelassene Werke” was a translation of the Koran.74.The problem involved in the story of Count Gleichen was especially sympathetic to the feeling of the eighteenth century. See a series of articles by Fr. Heibig inMagazin für Litteratur des In- und Auslandes, Vol. 60, pp. 102–5; 120–2; 136–9. “Zur Geschichte des Problems des Grafen von Gleichen.”75.Weimar edition, Vol. XLI, 2, pp. 252–253.76.Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1839, IV, pp. 272–3.77.Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1775. SeeGothaische Gel. Zeitungen, 1776, I, pp. 208–9, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXII, 1, p. 139.Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen, September 27, 1776. This does not imply that Sterne was in this respect an innovator; such books were printed before Sterne’s influence was felt,e.g.,Magazin von Einfällen, Breslau, 1763 (?), reviewed inLeipziger Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, February 20, 1764. See also “Reisen im Vaterlande,—Kein Roman aber ziemlich theatralisch-politisch und satyrischen Inhalts,” two volumes; Königsberg and Leipzig, 1793–4, reviewed inAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1795, III, p. 30. “Der Tändler, oder Streifereyen in die Wildnisse der Einbildungskraft, in die Werke der Natur und menschlichen Sitten,” Leipzig, 1778 (?), (Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1779, p. 48). “Meine Geschichte oder Begebenheiten des Herrn Thomas: ein narkotisches Werk des Doktor Pifpuf,” Münster und Leipzig, 1772, pp. 231, 8o. A strange episodical conglomerate; seeMagazin der deutschen Critik, II, p. 135.78.Leipzig, 1785 or 1786. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1786, III, p. 259.79.Altenburg, 1772, by von Schirach (?).80.SeeAuserlesene Bibl. der neuesten deutschen Litteratur, IV, pp. 320–325, and VII, pp. 227–234.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XXIII, 1, p. 258; XXVI, 1, p. 209.81.Riedel uses it, for example, in his “Launen an meinen Satyr,” speaking of “mein swiftisch Steckenthier” in “Vermischte Aufsätze,” reviewed inFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1772, pp. 358–9.Magazin der deutschen Critik, I, pp. 290–293.82.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Marianne Willemer (Suleika).” Edited by Th. Creizenach, 2d edition; Stuttgart, 1878, p. 290.83.“K. L. von Knebel’s literarischer Nachlass und Briefwechsel;” edited by Varnhagen von Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig, 1835, p. 147.84.See Mendelssohn’s Schriften; edited by G.B.Mendelssohn, Leipzig, 1844, V, p. 202. See also letter of Mendelssohn to Lessing, February 18, 1780.85.Third edition, Berlin and Stettin, 1788, p. 14.86.II, pp. 218 ff.87.II, 2, p. 127.88.These two cases are mentioned also by Riemann in “Goethe’s Romantechnik.”89.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., May 8, 1772, p. 296.90.III, pp. 276 ff.
1.A writer in theGothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1775 (II, 787 ff.), asserts that Sterne’s works are the favorite reading of the German nation.
2.A further illustration may be found in the following discourse: “Von einigen Hindernissen des akademischen Fleisses. Eine Rede bey dem Anfange der öffentlichen Vorlesungen gehalten,” von J. C. C. Ferber, Professor zu Helmstädt (1773, 8o), reviewed inMagazin der deutschen Critik, III, St. I., pp. 261 ff. This academic guide of youth speaks of Sterne in the following words: “Wie tief dringt dieser Philosoph in die verborgensten Gänge des menschlichen Herzens, wie richtig entdeckt er die geheimsten Federn der Handlungen, wie entlarvt, wie verabscheuungsvoll steht vor ihm das Laster, wie liebenswürdig die Tugend! wie interessant sind seine Schilderungen, wie eindringend seine Lehren! und woher diese grosse Kenntniss des Menschen, woher diese getreue Bezeichnung der Natur, diese sanften Empfindungen, die seine geistvolle Sprache hervorbringt? Dieser Saame der Tugend, den er mit wohlthätiger Hand ausstreuet?” Yorick held up to college or university students as a champion of virtue is certainly an extraordinary spectacle. A critic in theFrankfurter Gel. Anz., August 18, 1772, in criticising the make-up of a so-called “Landbibliothek,” recommends books “die geschickt sind, die guten einfältigen, ungekünstelten Empfindungen reiner Seelen zu unterhalten, einen Yorick vor allen . . . .” The long article on Sterne’s character in theGötting. Mag., I, pp. 84–92, 1780, “Etwas über Sterne: Schreiben an Prof. Lichtenberg” undoubtedly helped to establish this opinion of Sterne authoritatively. In it Sterne’s weaknesses are acknowledged, but the tendency is to emphasize the tender, sympathetic side of his character. The conception of Yorick there presented is quite different from the one held by Lichtenberg himself.
3.The story of the “Lorenzodosen” is given quite fully in Longo’s monograph, “Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi” (Wien, 1898, pp. 39–44), and the sketch given here is based upon his investigation, with consultation of the sources there cited. Nothing new is likely to be added to his account, but because of its important illustrative bearing on the whole story of Sterne in Germany, a fairly complete account is given here. Longo refers to the following as literature on the subject:
Martin, inQuellen und Forschungen, II, p. 10, p. 27,Anmerk.24.Wittenberg’s letter inQuellen und Forschungen, II, pp. 52–53.K. M. Werner, in article on Ludw. Philipp Hahn in the same series, XXII, pp. 127 ff.Appell: “Werther und seine Zeit,” Leipzig, 1855, p. 168. (Oldenburg, 1896, p. 246–250).Schlichtegroll: “Nekrolog von 1792,” II, pp. 37 ff.Klotz:Bibliothek, V, p. 285.Jacobi’s Werke, 1770, I, pp. 127 ff.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XIX, 2, p. 174; XII, 2, p. 279.Julian Schmidt: “Aus der Zeit der Lorenzodosen,”Westermann’s Monatshefte, XLIX, pp. 479 ff.
Martin, inQuellen und Forschungen, II, p. 10, p. 27,Anmerk.24.
Wittenberg’s letter inQuellen und Forschungen, II, pp. 52–53.
K. M. Werner, in article on Ludw. Philipp Hahn in the same series, XXII, pp. 127 ff.
Appell: “Werther und seine Zeit,” Leipzig, 1855, p. 168. (Oldenburg, 1896, p. 246–250).
Schlichtegroll: “Nekrolog von 1792,” II, pp. 37 ff.
Klotz:Bibliothek, V, p. 285.
Jacobi’s Werke, 1770, I, pp. 127 ff.
Allg. deutsche Bibl., XIX, 2, p. 174; XII, 2, p. 279.
Julian Schmidt: “Aus der Zeit der Lorenzodosen,”Westermann’s Monatshefte, XLIX, pp. 479 ff.
The last article is popular and only valuable in giving letters of Wieland and others which display the emotional currents of the time. It has very little to do with the Lorenzodosen.
4.The letter is reprinted in Jacobi’s Works, 1770, I, pp. 31 ff., and in an abridged form in the edition of 1807, I, pp. 103 ff.; and in the edition of Zürich, 1825, I, pp. 270–275.
5.XI, 2, pp. 174–75.
6.Quellen und Forschungen, XXII, p. 127.
7.Ibid., II, pp. 52–53.
8.This was in a letter to Jacobi October 25, 1770, though Appell gives the date 1775—evidently a misprint.
9.Review of “Trois lettres françoises par quelques allemands,” Amsterdam (Berlin), 1769, 8o, letters concerned with Jacobi’s “Winterreise” and the snuff-boxes themselves.
10.XII, 2, p. 279.
11.Longo was unable to find one of these once so popular snuff-boxes,—a rather remarkable fact. There is, however, a picture of one at the end of the chapter “Yorick,” p. 15 in Göchhausen’s M . . . . R . . . .,—a small oval box. Emil Kuh, in his life of Fredrich Hebbel (1877, I, pp. 117–118) speaks of the Lorenzodose as “dreieckig.” A chronicler in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, p. 51, also gives rumor of an order of “Sanftmuth und Toleranz, der eine dreyeckigte Lorenzodose zum Symbol führte.” The author here is unable to determine whether this is a part of Jacobi’s impulse or the initiative of another.
12.Fourth Edition. Berlin and Stettin, 1779, III, p. 99.
13.“Christopher Kaufmann, der Kraftapostel der Geniezeit” von Heinrich Düntzer,Historisches Taschenbuch, edited by Fr. v. Raumer, third series, tenth year, Leipzig, 1859, pp. 109–231. Düntzer’s sources concerning Kaufmann’s life in Strassburg are Schmohl’s “Urne Johann Jacob Mochels,” 1780, and “Johann Jacob Mochel’s Reliquien verschiedener philosophischen pädogogischen poetischen und andern Aufsätze,” 1780. These books have unfortunately not been available for the present use.
14.For account of Leuchsenring see Varnhagen van Ense, “Vermischte Schriften”, I. 492–532.
15.Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog,” 1792, II, pp. 37 ff. There is also given here a quotation written after Sterne’s death, which is of interest:
“Wir erben, Yorick, deine Dose,Auch deine Feder erben wir;Doch wer erhielt im ErbschaftslooseDein Herz? O Yorick, nenn ihn mir!”
“Wir erben, Yorick, deine Dose,
Auch deine Feder erben wir;
Doch wer erhielt im Erbschaftsloose
Dein Herz? O Yorick, nenn ihn mir!”
16.Works of Friedrich von Matthison, Zürich, 1825, III, pp. 141 ff., in “Erinnerungen,” zweites Buch. The “Vaterländische Besuche” were dated 1794.
17.Briefe von Friedrich Matthison, Zürich, 1795, I, pp. 27–32.
18.Shandy, III, 22.
19.Briefe, II, p. 95.
20.“Herders Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut”, pp. 92, 181, 187, 253, 377.
21.Quoted by Koberstein, IV, p. 168. Else, p. 31; Hettner, III, 1, p. 362, quoted from letters in Friedrich Schlegel’sDeutsches Museum, IV, p. 145. These letters are not given by Goedeke.
22.The review is credited to him by Koberstein, III, pp. 463–4.
23.XIX, 2, p. 579.
24.See “Bemerkungen oder Briefe über Wien, eines jungen Bayern auf einer Reise durch Deutschland,” Leipzig (probably 1804 or 1805). It is, according to theJenaische Allg. Litt. Zeitung(1805, IV, p. 383), full of extravagant sentiment with frequent apostrophe to the author’s “Evelina.” Also, “Meine Reise vom Städtchen H . . . . zum Dörfchen H . . . .” Hannover, 1799. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1799, IV, p. 87. “Reisen unter Sonne, Mond und Sternen,” Erfurt, 1798, pp. 220, 8o. This is evidently a similar work, but is classed byAllg. Litt. Zeitung(1799, I, 477) as an imitation of Jean Paul, hence indirectly to be connected with Yorick. “Reisen des grünen Mannes durch Deutschland,” Halle, 1787–91. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, 217; 1791, IV, p. 576. “Der Teufel aufReisen,” two volumes, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1789. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1789, I, p. 826. Knigge’s books of travels also share in this enlivening and subjectivizing of the traveler’s narrative.
25.Altenburg, Richter, 1775, six volumes.
26.Reviewed inAllg. deutsche Bibl., X, 2, p. 127, andNeue Critische Nachrichten, Greifswald V, p. 222.
27.Many of the anonymous books, even those popular in their day, are not given by Goedeke; and Baker, judging only by one external, naturally misses Sterne products which have no distinctively imitative title, and includes others which have no connection with Sterne. For example, he gives Gellius’s “Yoricks Nachgelassene Werke,” which is but a translation of the Koran, and hence in no way an example of German imitation; he gives also Schummel’s “Fritzens Reise nach Dessau” (1776) and “Reise nach Schlesien” (1792), Nonne’s “Amors Reisen nach Fockzana zum Friedenscongress” (1773), none of which has anything to do with Sterne. “Trim oder der Sieg der Liebe über die Philosophie” (Leipzig, 1776), by Ludw. Ferd. v. Hopffgarten, also cited by Baker, undoubtedly owes its name only to Sterne. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, p. 67, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXIV, 2, p. 484; similarly “Lottchens Reise ins Zuchthaus” by Kirtsten, 1777, is given in Baker’s list, but the work “Reise” is evidently used here only in a figurative sense, the story being but the relation of character deterioration, a downward journey toward the titular place of punishment. SeeJenaische Zeitungen von gel. Sachen, 1777, pp. 739 ff.; 1778, p. 12.Allg.deutsche Bibl., XXXV, 1, p. 182. Baker gives Bock’s “Tagereise” and “Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages” as if they were two different books. He further states: “Sterne is the parent of a long list of German Sentimental Journeys which began with von Thümmel’s ‘Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen Frankreichs.’” This work really belongs comparatively late in the story of imitations. Two of Knigge’s books are also included. See p. 166–7.
28.“Laurence Sterne und C. M. Wieland, von Karl August Behmer, Forschungen zur neueren Litteraturgeschichte IX. München, 1899. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung fremder Einflüsse auf Wieland’s Dichtung.” To this reference has been made. There is also another briefer study of this connection: a Programm by F. Bauer, “Ueber den Einfluss, Laurence Sternes auf Chr. M. Wieland,” Karlsbad, 1898. A. Mager published, 1890, at Marburg, “Wieland’s Nachlass des Diogenes von Sinope und das englische Vorbild,” a school “Abhandlung,” which dealt with a connection between this work of Wieland and Sterne. Wood (“Einfluss Fieldings auf die deutsche Litteratur,” Yokohama, 1895) finds constant imitation of Sterne in “Don Silvio,” which, from Behmer’s proof concerning the dates of Wieland’s acquaintance with Sterne, can hardly be possible.
29.Some other works are mentioned as containing references and allusions.
30.In “Oberon” alone of Wieland’s later works does Behmer discover Sterne’s influence and there no longer in the style, but in the adaptation of motif.
31.See Erich Schmidt’s “Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe,” Jena, 1875, pp. 46–7.
32.1790, I, pp. 209–16.
33.This may be well compared with Wieland’s statements concerning Shandy in his review of the Bode translation (Merkur, VIII, pp. 247–51, 1774), which forms one of the most exaggerated expressions of adoration in the whole epoch of Sterne’s popularity.
34.Since Germany did not sharply separate the work of Sterne from his continuator, this is, of course, to be classed from the German point of view at that time as a borrowing from Sterne. Mager in his study depends upon the Eugenius continuation for this and several other parallels.
35.Sentimental Journey, pp. 31–32.
36.“Ich denke nicht, dass es Sie gereuen wird, den Mann näher kennen zu lernen” spoken of Demokritus in “Die Abderiten;” seeMerkur, 1774, I, p. 56.
37.Wieland’s own genuine appreciation of Sterne and understanding of his characteristics is indicated incidentally in a review of a Swedish book in theTeutscher Merkur, 1782, II, p. 192, in which he designates the description of sentimental journeying in the seventh book of Shandy as the best of Sterne’s accomplishment, as greater than the Journey itself, a judgment emanating from a keen and true knowledge of Sterne.
38.Lebensbild, V, Erlangen, 1846, p. 89. Letter to Hartknoch, Paris, November, 1769. In connection with his journey and his “Reisejournal,” he speaks of his “Tristramschen Meynungen.” See Lebensbild, Vol. V, p. 61.
39.Suphan, IV, p. 190. For further reference to Sterne in Herder’s letters, see “Briefe Herders an Hamann,” edited by Otto Hoffmann, Berlin, 1889, pp. 28, 51, 57, 71, 78, 194.
40.Lachmann edition, Berlin, 1840, XII, pp. 212, 240.
41.Eckermann: “Gespräche mit Goethe,” Leipzig, 1885, II, p. 29; or Biedermann, “Goethe’s Gespräche,” Leipzig, 1890, VI, p. 359.
42.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, in den Jahren, 1796–1832.” Ed. by Fr. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1833–4, Vol. V, p. 349. Both of these quotations are cited by Siegmund Levy, “Goethe und Oliver Goldsmith;” Goethe-Jahrbuch, VI, 1885, pp. 282 ff. The translation in this case is from that of A. D. Coleridge.
43.Griesebach: “Das Goetheische Zeitalter der deutschen Dichtung,” Leipzig, 1891, p. 29.
44.II, 10th book, Hempel, XXI, pp. 195 ff.
45.“Briefe an Joh. Heinrich Merck von Göthe, Herder, Wieland und andern bedeutenden Zeitgenossen,” edited by Dr. Karl Wagner, Darmstadt, 1835, p. 5; and “Briefe an und von Joh. Heinrich Merck,” issued by the same editor, Darmstadt, 1838, pp. 5, 21.
46.In the “Wanderschaft,” see J. H. Jung-Stilling, Sämmtliche Werke. Stuttgart, 1835, I, p. 277.
47.“Herder’s Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut, April, 1771, to April, 1773,” edited by Düntzer and F. G. von Herder, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1858, pp. 247 ff.
48.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1774, February 22.
49.Kürschner edition of Goethe, Vol. XXII, pp. 146–7.
50.See introduction by Dünster in the Kürschner edition, XIII, pp. 137 ff., and that by Fr. Strehlke in the Hempel edition, XVI. pp. 217 ff.
51.Kürschner edition, Vol. XXIV, p. 15; Tag- und Jahreshefte, 1789.
52.“Goethe’s Romantechnik,” Leipzig, 1902. The author here incidentally expresses the opinion that Heinse is also an imitator of Sterne.
53.Julius Goebel, in “Goethe-Jahrbuch,” XXI, pp. 208 ff.
54.SeeEuphorion, IV, p. 439.
55.Eckermann, III, p. 155; Biedermann, VI, p. 272.
56.Eckermann, III, p. 170; Biedermann, VI, p. 293.
57.Eckermann, II, p. 19; Biedermann, VII, p. 184. This quotation is given in the Anhang to the “Wanderjahre.” Loeper says (Hempel, XIX, p. 115) that he has been unable to find it anywhere in Sterne; see p. 105.
58.See “Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter.” Zelter’s replies contain also reference to Sterne. VI, p. 33 he speaks of the Sentimental Journey as “ein balsamischer Frühlingsthau.” See also II, p. 51; VI, p. 207. Goethe is reported as having spoken of the Sentimental Journey: “Man könne durchaus nicht besser ausdrücken, wie des Menschen Herz ein trotzig und verzagt Ding sei.”
59.“Mittheilungen über Goethe,” von F. W. Riemer, Berlin, 1841, II, p. 658. Also, Biedermann, VII, p. 332.
60.See Hempel, XXIX, p. 240.
61.Kürschner, XVI, p. 372.
62.IX, p. 438.
63.See “Briefe von Goethe an Johanna Fahlmer,” edited by L. Ulrichs, Leipzig, 1875, p. 91, and Shandy, II, pp. 70 and 48.
64.“Goethe’s Briefe an Frau von Stein,” hrsg. von Adolf Schöll; 2te Aufl, bearbeitet von W. Fielitz, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1883, Vol. I, p. 276.
65.References to the Tagebücher are as follows: Robert Keil’s Leipzig, 1875, p. 107, and Düntzer’s, Leipzig, 1889, p. 73.
66.See also the same author’s “Goethe, sa vie et ses oeuvres,” Paris, 1866; Appendice pp. 291–298. Further literature is found: “Vergleichende Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung,” 1863, No. 36, and 1869, Nos. 10 and 14.Morgenblatt, 1863, Nr. 39, article by Alex. Büchner, Sterne’s “Coran und Makariens Archiv, Goethe ein Plagiator?” andDeutsches Museum, 1867, No. 690.
67.Minden i. W., 1885, pp. 330–336.
68.“Druck vollendet in Mai” according to Baumgartner, III, p. 292.
69.II, pp. 230–233. May 15, 1831.
70.Goedeke gives Vol. XXIII, A. l. H. as 1829.
71.Hempel, XIX, “Sprüche in Prosa,” edited by G. von Loeper, Maximen und Reflexionen; pp. 106–111 and 113–117.
72.Letters, I, p. 54.
73.This seems very odd in view of the fact that in Loeper’s edition of “Dichtung und Wahrheit” (Hempel, XXII, p. 264) Gellius is referred to as “the translator of Lillo and Sterne.” It must be that Loeper did not know that Gellius’s “Yorick’s Nachgelassene Werke” was a translation of the Koran.
74.The problem involved in the story of Count Gleichen was especially sympathetic to the feeling of the eighteenth century. See a series of articles by Fr. Heibig inMagazin für Litteratur des In- und Auslandes, Vol. 60, pp. 102–5; 120–2; 136–9. “Zur Geschichte des Problems des Grafen von Gleichen.”
75.Weimar edition, Vol. XLI, 2, pp. 252–253.
76.Gesammelte Schriften, Stuttgart, 1839, IV, pp. 272–3.
77.Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1775. SeeGothaische Gel. Zeitungen, 1776, I, pp. 208–9, andAllg. deutsche Bibl., XXXII, 1, p. 139.Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen, September 27, 1776. This does not imply that Sterne was in this respect an innovator; such books were printed before Sterne’s influence was felt,e.g.,Magazin von Einfällen, Breslau, 1763 (?), reviewed inLeipziger Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, February 20, 1764. See also “Reisen im Vaterlande,—Kein Roman aber ziemlich theatralisch-politisch und satyrischen Inhalts,” two volumes; Königsberg and Leipzig, 1793–4, reviewed inAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1795, III, p. 30. “Der Tändler, oder Streifereyen in die Wildnisse der Einbildungskraft, in die Werke der Natur und menschlichen Sitten,” Leipzig, 1778 (?), (Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1779, p. 48). “Meine Geschichte oder Begebenheiten des Herrn Thomas: ein narkotisches Werk des Doktor Pifpuf,” Münster und Leipzig, 1772, pp. 231, 8o. A strange episodical conglomerate; seeMagazin der deutschen Critik, II, p. 135.
78.Leipzig, 1785 or 1786. SeeAllg. Litt. Zeitung, 1786, III, p. 259.
79.Altenburg, 1772, by von Schirach (?).
80.SeeAuserlesene Bibl. der neuesten deutschen Litteratur, IV, pp. 320–325, and VII, pp. 227–234.Allg. deutsche Bibl., XXIII, 1, p. 258; XXVI, 1, p. 209.
81.Riedel uses it, for example, in his “Launen an meinen Satyr,” speaking of “mein swiftisch Steckenthier” in “Vermischte Aufsätze,” reviewed inFrankfurter Gel. Anz., 1772, pp. 358–9.Magazin der deutschen Critik, I, pp. 290–293.
82.“Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Marianne Willemer (Suleika).” Edited by Th. Creizenach, 2d edition; Stuttgart, 1878, p. 290.
83.“K. L. von Knebel’s literarischer Nachlass und Briefwechsel;” edited by Varnhagen von Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig, 1835, p. 147.
84.See Mendelssohn’s Schriften; edited by G.B.Mendelssohn, Leipzig, 1844, V, p. 202. See also letter of Mendelssohn to Lessing, February 18, 1780.
85.Third edition, Berlin and Stettin, 1788, p. 14.
86.II, pp. 218 ff.
87.II, 2, p. 127.
88.These two cases are mentioned also by Riemann in “Goethe’s Romantechnik.”
89.SeeFrankfurter Gel. Anz., May 8, 1772, p. 296.
90.III, pp. 276 ff.
Among the disciples of Sterne in Germany whose literary imitation may be regarded as typical of their master’s influence, Johann Georg Jacobi is perhaps the best known. His relation to the famous “Lorenzodosen” conceit is sufficient to link his name with that of Yorick. Martin1asserts that he was called “Uncle Toby” in Gleim’s circle because of his enthusiasm for Sterne. The indebtedness of Jacobi to Sterne is the subject of a special study by Dr. Joseph Longo, “Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi;” and the period of Jacobi’s literary work which falls under the spell of Yorick has also been treated in an inaugural dissertation, “Ueber Johann Georg Jacobi’s Jugendwerke,” by Georg Ransohoff. The detail of Jacobi’s indebtedness to Sterne is to be found in these two works.
Longo was unable to settle definitely the date of Jacobi’s first acquaintance with Sterne. The first mention made of him is in the letter to Gleim of April 4, 1769, and a few days afterward,—April 10,—the intelligence is afforded that he himself is working on a “journey.” The “Winterreise” was published at Düsseldorf in the middle of June, 1769. Externally the work seems more under the influence of the French wanderer Chapelle, since prose and verse are used irregularly alternating, a style quite different from the English model. There are short and unnumbered chapters, as in the Sentimental Journey, but, unlike Sterne, Jacobi, with one exception, names no places and makes no attempt at description of place or people, other than the sentimental individuals encountered on the way. He makes no analysis of national, or even local characteristics: the journey, in short, is almost completely without place-influence.There is in the volume much more exuberance of fancy, grotesque at times, a more conscious exercise of the picturing imagination than we find in Sterne. There is use, too, of mythological figures quite foreign to Sterne, an obvious reminiscence of Jacobi’s Anacreontic experience. He exaggerates Yorick’s sentimentalism, is more weepy, more tender, more sympathizing; yet, as Longo does not sufficiently emphasize, he does not touch the whimsical side of Yorick’s work. Jacobi, unlike his model, but in common with other German imitators, is insistent in instruction and serious in contention for pet theories, as is exemplified by the discussion of the doctrine of immortality. There are opinions to be maintained, there is a message to be delivered. Jacobi in this does not give the lie to his nationality.
Like other German imitators, too, he took up with especial feeling the relations between man and the animal world, an attitude to be connected with several familiar episodes in Sterne.2The two chapters, “Der Heerd” and “Der Taubenschlag,” tell of a sentimental farmer who mourns over the fact that his son has cut down a tree in which the nightingale was wont to nest. A similar sentimental regard is cherished in this family for the doves, which no one killed, because no one could eat them. Even as Yorick meets a Franciscan, Jacobi encounters a Jesuit whose heart leaps to meet his own, and later, after the real journey is done, a visit to a lonely cloister gives opportunity for converse with a monk, like Pater Lorenzo,—tender, simple and humane.
The “Sommerreise,” according to Longo, appeared in the latter part of September, 1769, a less important work, which, in the edition of 1807, Jacobi considered unworthy of preservation. Imitation of Sterne is marked: following a criticism by Wieland the author attempts to be humorous, but with dubious success; he introduces a Sterne-like sentimental character which had not been used in the “Winterreise,” a beggar-soldier,and he repeats the motif of human sympathy for animals in the story of the lamb. Sympathy with erring womanhood is expressed in the incidents related in “Die Fischerhütte” and “Der Geistliche.” These two books were confessedly inspired by Yorick, and contemporary criticism treated them as Yorick products. TheDeutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, published by Jacobi’s friend Klotz, would naturally favor the volumes. Its review of the “Winterreise” is non-critical and chiefly remarkable for the denial of foreign imitation. TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,3in reviewing the same work pays a significant tribute to Sterne, praising his power of disclosing the good and beautiful in the seemingly commonplace. In direct criticism of the book, the reviewer calls it a journey of fancy, the work of a youthful poet rather than that of a sensitive philosopher. Wieland is credited with the astounding opinion that he prefers the “Sommerreise” to Yorick’s journey.4Longo’s characterization of Sterne is in the main satisfactory, yet there is distinctly traceable the tendency to ignore or minimize the whimsical elements of Sterne’s work: this is the natural result of his approach to Sterne, through Jacobi, who understood only the sentimentalism of the English master.5
Among the works of sentiment which were acknowledged imitations of Yorick, along with Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” probably the most typical and best known was the “Empfindsame Reisen durch Deutschland” by Johann Gottlieb Schummel. Its importance as a document in the history of sentimentalism is rather as an example of tendency than as a force contributing materially to the spread of the movement. Its influence wasprobably not great, though one reviewer does hint at a following.6Yet the book has been remembered more persistently than any other work of its genre, except Jacobi’s works, undoubtedly in part because it was superior to many of its kind, partly, also, because its author won later and maintained a position of some eminence, as a writer and a pedagogue; but largely because Goethe’s well-known review of it in theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigenhas been cited as a remarkably acute contribution to the discriminating criticism of the genuine and the affected in the eighteenth-century literature of feeling, and has drawn attention from the very fact of its source to the object of its criticism.
Schummel was born in May, 1748, and hence was but twenty years of age when Germany began to thrill in response to Yorick’s sentiments. It is probable that the first volume was written while Schummel was still a university student in 1768–1770. He assumed a position as teacher in 1771, but the first volume came out at Easter of that year; this would probably throw its composition back into the year before. The second volume appeared at Michaelmas of the same year. His publisher was Zimmermann at Wittenberg and Zerbst, and the first volume at any rate was issued in a new edition. The third volume came out in the spring of 1772.7Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation. On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the title of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, “Versuch über die menschliche Natur.”8
These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation. This is interesting in connection with Böttiger’s claim that the whole cavalcade of sentimental travelers who trotted along after Yorick with all sorts of animals and vehicles was a proof of the excellence and power of Bode’s translation. As one would naturallyinfer from the title of Schummel’s fiction, the Sentimental Journey is more constantly drawn upon as a source of ideas, motifs, expression, and method, than Tristram Shandy, but the allusions to Sterne’s earlier book, and the direct adaptations from it are both numerous and generous. This fact has not been recognized by the critics, and is not an easy inference from the contemporary reviews.
The book is the result of an immediate impulse to imitation felt irresistibly on the reading of Sterne’s narrative. That the critics and readers of that day treated with serious consideration the efforts of a callow youth of twenty or twenty-one in this direction is indicative either of comparative vigor of execution, or of prepossession of the critical world in favor of the literary genre,—doubtless of both. Schummel confesses that the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. “I had just finished reading it,” he says, “and Heaven knows with what pleasure, every word from ‘as far as this matter is concerned’ on to ‘I seized the hand of the lady’s maid,’ were imprinted in my soul with small invisible letters.” The characters of the Journey stood “life-size in his very soul.” Involuntarily his inventive powers had sketched several plans for a continuation, releasing Yorick from the hand of thefille de chambre. But what he attempts is not a continuation but a German parallel.
In the outward events of his story, in the general trend of its argument, Schummel does not depend upon either Shandy or the Journey: the hero’s circumstances are in general not traceable to the English model, but, spasmodically, the manner of narration and the nature of the incidents are quite slavishly copied. A complete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne as a model can be established. Schummel’s narrative is often for many successive pages absolutely straightforward and simple, unbroken by any attempt at Shandean buoyancy, and unblemished by overwrought sentiment. At the pausing places he generally indulges in Sternesque quibbling.
A brief analysis of the first volume, with especial reference to the appropriation of Yorick features, will serve to show the extent of imitation, and the nature of the method. In outward form the Sentimental Journey is copied. The volume is not divided into chapters, but there are named divisions: there is also Yorick-like repetition of section-headings. Naturally the author attempts at the very beginning to strike a note distinctly suggesting Sterne: “Is he dead, the old cousin?” are the first words of the volume, uttered by the hero on receipt of the news, and in Yorick fashion he calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin’s death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, a brief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.9The author’s relation to his parents is adapted directly from Shandy, since he here possesses an incapable, unpractical, philosophizing father, who determines upon methods for the superior education of his son; and a simple, silly mockery of a mother.
Left, however, an orphan, he begins his sentimental adventures: thrust on the world he falls in with a kindly baker’s wife whose conduct toward him brings tears to the eyes of the ten-year old lad, this showing his early appetite for sentimental journeying. A large part of this first section relating to his early life and youthful struggles, his kindly benefactor, his adventure with Potiphar’s wife, is simple and direct, with only an occasional hint of Yorick’s influence in word or phrase, as if the author, now and then, recalled the purpose and the inspiration. For example, not until near the bottom of page 30 does it occur to him to be abrupt and indulge in Shandean eccentricities, and then again, after a few lines, he resumes the natural order of discourse. And again, on page 83, he breaks off into attempted frivolity and Yorick whimsicalityof narration. In starting out upon his journey the author says: “I will tread in Yorick’s foot-prints, what matters it if I do not fill them out? My heart is not so broad as his, the sooner can it be filled; my head is not so sound; my brain not so regularly formed. My eyes are not so clear, but for that he was born in England and I in Germany; he is a man and I am but a youth, in short, he is Yorick and I am not Yorick.” He determines to journey where it is most sentimental and passes the various lands in review in making his decision. Having fastened upon Germany, he questions himself similarly with reference to the cities. Yorick’s love of lists, of mock-serious discrimination, of inconsequential reasonings is here copied. The call upon epic, tragic, lyric poets, musicians, etc., which follows here is a further imitation of Yorick’s list-making and pseudo-scientific method.