On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, “You too are an unhappy one,” and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler’s eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne. It joins itself with the narrative of the author’s visit to a church in a village by the wayside, and deals in general with the nature of the clergyman’s relation to his people and the general mediocrity and ineptitude of the average homiletical discourse, the failure of clergymen to relate their pulpit utterance to the life of the common Christian,—all of which is genuine, sane and original, undoubtedly a real protest on the part of Schummel, the pedagogue, against a prevailing abuse of his time and other times. This section represents unquestionably the earnest convictions of its author, and is written with professional zeal. This division is followed by an evidently purposeful return to Sterne’s eccentricity of manner. The author begins a division of his narrative, “Der zerbrochene Postwagen,” which is probably meant to coincide with the post-chaise accident in Shandy’s travels, writes a few lines in it, then begins the section again, something like the interruptedstory of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles. Then follows an abrupt discursive study of his aptitudes and proclivities, interspersed with Latin exclamations, interrogation points and dashes. “What a parenthesis is that!” he cries, and a few lines further on, “I burn with longing to begin a parenthesis again.” On his arrival in Leipzig, Schummel imitates closely Sterne’s satirical guide-book description of Calais10in his brief account of the city, breaking off abruptly like Sterne, and roundly berating all “Reisebeschreiber.” Here in fitting contrast with this superficial enumeration of facts stands his brief traveler’s creed, an interest in people rather than in places, all of which is derived from Sterne’s chapter, “In the Street, Calais,” in which the master discloses the sentimental possibilities of traveling and typifies the superficial, unemotional wanderer in the persons of Smelfungus and Mundungus, and from the familiar passage in “The Passport, Versailles,” beginning, “But I could wish to spy out the nakedness, etc.” No sooner is he arrived in Leipzig, than he accomplishes a sentimental rescue of an unfortunate woman on the street. In the expression of her immediate needs, Schummel indulges for the first time in a row of stars, with the obvious intention of raising a low suggestion, which he contradicts with mock-innocent questionings a few lines later, thereby fastening the attention on the possibility of vulgar interpretation. Sterne is guilty of this device in numerous instances in both his works, and the English continuation of the Sentimental Journey relies upon it in greater and more revolting measure.Once established in his hotel, the author betakes himself to the theater: this very act he feels will bring upon him the censure of the critics, for Yorick went to the theater too. “A merchant’s boy went along before me,” he says in naïve defense, “was he also an imitator of Yorick?” On the way he meets a fair maid-in-waiting, and the relation between her and the traveler, developed here and later, is inspired directly by Yorick’s connection with the fairfille de chambre. Schummel imitates Sterne’s excessive detail of description, devoting awhole paragraph to his manner of removing his hat before a lady whom he encounters on this walk to the theater. This was another phase of Sterne’s pseudo-scientific method: he describes the trivial with the attitude of the trained observer, registering minutely the detail of phenomena, a mock-parade of scholarship illustrated by his description of Trim’s attitude while reading his sermon, or the dropping of the hat in the kitchen during the memorable scene when the news of Bobby’s death is brought.In Schummel’s narration of his adventures in the house of ill-repute there are numerous sentimental excrescences in his conduct with the poor prisoner there, due largely to Yorick’s pattern, such as their weeping on one another’s breast, and his wiping away her tears and his, drawn from Yorick’s amiable service for Maria of Moulines, an act seemingly expressing the most refined human sympathy. The remaining events of this first volume include an unexpected meeting with the kind baker’s wife, which takes place at Gellert’s grave. Yorick’s imitators were especially fond of re-introducing a sentimentalrelationship. Yorick led the way in his renewed acquaintance with thefille de chambre; Stevenson in his continuation went to extremes in exploiting this cheap device.Other motifs derived from Sterne, less integral, may be briefly summarized. From the Sentimental Journey is taken the motif that valuable or interesting papers be used to wrap ordinary articles of trade: here herring are wrapped in fragments of the father’s philosophy; in the Sentimental Journey we find a similar degrading use for the “Fragment.” Schummel breaks off the chapter “La Naïve,”11under the Sternesque subterfuge of having to deliver manuscript to an insistent publisher. Yorick writes his preface to the Journey in the “Désobligeant,” that is, in the midst of the narrative itself. Schummel modifies the eccentricity merely by placing his foreword at the end of the volume. The value of it, he says, will repay the reader for waiting so long,—a statement which finds little justification in the preface itself. It begins, “Auweh!Auweh! Ouais, Helas! . . . Diable, mein Rücken, mein Fuss!” and so on for half a page,—a pitiful effort to follow the English master’s wilful and skilful incoherence. The following pages, however, once this outbreak is at an end, contain a modicum of sense, the feeble, apologetic explanation of his desire in imitating Yorick, given in forethought of the critics’ condemnation. Similarly the position of the dedication is unusual, in the midst of the volume, even as the dedication of Shandy was roguishly delayed. The dedication itself, however, is not an imitation of Sterne’s clever satire, but, addressed to Yorick himself, is a striking example of burning personal devotion and over-wrought praise. Schummel hopes12in Sterne fashion to write a chapter on “Vorübergeben,” or in the chapter “Das Komödienhaus” (pp. 185–210) to write a digression on “Walking behind a maid.” Like Sterne, he writes in praise of digressions.13In imitation of Sterne is conceived the digressive speculation concerning the door through which at the beginning of the book he is cast into the rude world. Among further expressions savoring of Sterne, may be mentioned a “Centner of curses” (p. 39), a “Quentchen of curses,” and the analytical description of a tone of voice as one-fourth questioning, five-eighths entreating and one-eighth commanding (p. 229).The direct allusions to Sterne and his works are numerous. A list of Sterne characters which were indelibly impressed upon his mind is found near the very beginning (pp. 3–4); other allusions are to M. Dessein (p. 65), La Fleur’s “Courierstiefel” (p. 115), the words of the dying Yorick (p. 128), the pococurantism of Mrs. Shandy (p. 187), the division of travelers into types (p. 141), Uncle Toby (p. 200), Yorick’s violin-playing (p. 274), the foolish fat scullion (p. 290), Yorick’s description of a maid’s (p. 188) eyes, “als ob sie zwischen vier Wänden einem Garaus machen könnten.”The second volume is even more incoherent in narration, and contains less genuine occurrence and more ill-considered attempts at whimsicality, yet throughout this volume there areindications that the author is awakening to the vulnerability of his position, and this is in no other particular more easily discernible than in the half-hearted defiance of the critics and his anticipation of their censure. The change, so extraordinary in the third volume, is foreshadowed in the second. Purely sentimental, effusive, and abundantly teary is the story of the rescued baker’s wife. In this excess of sentiment, Schummel shows his intellectual appreciation of Sterne’s individual treatment of the humane and pathetic, for near the end of the poor woman’s narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne’s creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves Schummel’s inability to follow Yorick, though its use shows his appreciation of Sterne’s peculiar genius. The visit of the author, the baker’s wife and her daughter (the former lady’s maid) to the graveyard is Yorickian in flavor, and the plucking of nettles from the grave of the dead epileptic is a direct borrowing. Attempts to be immorally, sensuously suggestive in the manner of Sterne are found in the so-called chapter on “Button-holes,” here cast in a more Shandean vein, and in the adventure “die ängstliche Nacht,”—in the latter case resembling more the less frank, more insinuating method of the Sentimental Journey. The sentimental attitude toward man’s dumb companions is imitated in his adventure with the house-dog; the author fears the barking of this animal may disturb the sleep of the poor baker’s wife: he beats the dog into silence, then grows remorseful and wishes “that I had given him no blow,” or that the dog might at least give him back the blows. His thought that the dog might be pretending its pain, he designates a subtle subterfuge of his troubled conscience, and Goethe, in the review mentioned above, exclaims, “A fine pendant to Yorick’s scene with the Monk.”Distinctly Shandean are the numerous digressions, as on imitation(p. 16), on authors and fairs (p. 45), that which he calls (pp. 226–238) “ein ganz originelles Gemische von Wiz, Belesenheit, Scharfsinn, gesunder Philosophie, Erfahrung, Algebra und Mechanik,” or (p. 253) “Von der Entstehungsart eines Buches nach Erfindung derBuchdrukerkunst,” which in reference to Sterne’s phrase, is called a “jungfräuliche Materie.” He promises (pp. 75 and 108), like Sterne, to write numerous chapters on extraordinary subjects,—indeed, he announces his intention of supplementing the missing sections of Shandy on “Button-holes” and on the “Right and Left (sic) end of a Woman.” His own promised effusions are to be “Ueber die roten und schwarzenRöcke,”, “über die Verbindung der Theologie mit Schwarz,” “Europäischenfrauenzimmerschuhabsätze,”half a one “Ueber die Schuhsohlen” and “Ueber meinen Namen.”His additions to Shandy are flat and witless, that on the “Right and Wrong End of a Woman” (pp. 88 ff.) degenerating into three brief narratives displaying woman’s susceptibility to flattery, the whole idea probably adapted from Sterne’s chapter, “An Act of Charity;” the chapter on “Button-holes” is made a part of the general narrative of his relation to his “Naïve.” Weakly whimsical is his seeking pardon for the discourse with which the Frenchman (pp. 62–66), under the pretext that it belonged somewhere else and had inadvertently crept in. Shandean also is the black margin to pages 199–206, the line upside down (p. 175), thetwelveirregularly printed lines (p. 331), inserted to indicate his efforts in writing with a burned hand, the lines of dashes and exclamation points, the mathematical, financial calculation of the worth of his book from various points of view, and the description of the maiden’s walk (p. 291). Sterne’s mock-scientific method, as already noted, is observable again in the statement of the position of the dagger “at an angle of 30°” (p. 248). His coining of new words, for which he is censured by theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, is also a legacy of Yorick’s method.The third volume bears little relation to Sterne aside from its title, and one can only wonder, in view of the criticism of the two parts already published and the nature of the author’s ownpartial revulsion of feeling, that he did not give up publishing it altogether, or choose another title, and sunder the work entirely from the foregoing volumes, with which it has in fact so contradictory a connection. It may be that his relations to the publisher demanded the issuing of the third part under the same title.This volume is easily divisible into several distinct parts, which are linked with one another, and to the preceding narrative, only by a conventional thread ofintroduction. These comprise: the story of Caroline and Rosenfeld, a typical eighteenth century tale of love, seduction and flight; the hosts’ ballad, “Es war einmahl ein Edelmann;” the play, “Die unschuldige Ehebrecherin” and “Mein Tagebuch,” the journal of an honest preacher, and a further sincere exploitation of Schummel’s ideas upon the clergyman’s office, his ideal of simplicity, kindliness, and humanity. In the latter part of the book Schummel resumes his original narrative, and indulges once more in the luxury of sentimental adventure, but without the former abortive attempts at imitating Sterne’s peculiarities of diction. This last resumption of the sentimental creed introduces to us one event evidently inspired by Yorick: he meets a poor, maimed soldier-beggar. Since misfortune has deprived the narrator himself of his possessions, he can give nothing and goes a begging for the beggar’s sake, introducing the new and highly sentimental idea of “vicarious begging” (pp. 268–9). In the following episode, a visit to a child-murderess, Schummel leaves a page entirely blank as an appropriate proof ofincapacityto express his emotions attendant on the execution of the unfortunate. Sterne also left a page blank for the description of the Widow Wadman’s charms.At the very end of the book Schummel drops his narrative altogether and discourses upon his own work. It would be difficult to find in any literature so complete a condemnation of one’s own serious and extensive endeavor, so candid a criticism of one’s own work, so frank an acknowledgment of the pettiness of one’s achievement. He says his work, as an imitation of Sterne’s two novels, has “few or absolutely no beauties of the original, and many faultsof its own.” He states that his enthusiasm for Tristram has been somewhat dampened by Sonnenfels and Riedel; he sees now faults which should not have been imitated; the frivolous attitude of the narrator toward his father and mother is deprecated, and the suggestion is given that this feature was derived from Tristram’s own frankness concerning the eccentricities and incapacities of his parents. He begs reference to a passage in the second volume14where the author alludes with warmth of appreciation to his real father and mother; that is, genuine regard overcame the temporary blindness, real affection arose and thrust out the transitory inclination to an alien whimsicality.Schummel admits that he has utterly failed in his effort to characterize the German people in the way Sterne treated the English and French; he confesses that the ninety-page autobiography which precedes the journey itself was intended to be Tristram-like, but openly stigmatizes his own failure as “ill conceived, incoherent and not very well told!” After mentioning some few incidents and passages in this first section which he regards as passable, he boldly condemns the rest as “almost beneath all criticism,” and the same words are used with reference to much that follows, in which he confesses to imitation, bad taste and intolerable indelicacy. He calls his pathetic attempts at whimsical mannerisms (Heideldum, etc.), “kläglich, überaus kläglich,” expresses the opinion that one would not be surprised at the reader who would throw away the whole book at such a passage. The words of the preacher in the two sections where he is allowed to air his opinions still meet with his approval, and the same is true of one or two other sections. In conclusion, he states that the first part contains hardly one hundred good pages, and that the second part is worse than the first, so that he is unwilling to look at it again and seek out its faults. The absence of allusions to Sterne’s writings is marked, except in the critical section at the end, he mentions Sterne but once (p. 239), where he calls him “schnurrigt.” This alteration of feeling must have taken place in a brief space of time, for the third volume is signedApril 25, 1772. It is not easy to establish with probability the works of Sonnenfels and Riedel which are credited with a share in this revulsion of feeling.In all of this Schummel is a discriminating critic of his own work; he is also discerning in his assertion that the narrative contained in his volume is conceived more in the vein of Fielding and Richardson. The Sterne elements are rather embroidered on to the other fabric, or, as he himself says, using another figure, “only fried in Shandy fat.”15Goethe’s criticism of the second volume, already alluded to, is found in theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigenin the issue of March 3, 1772. The nature of the review is familiar: Goethe calls the book a thistle which he has found on Yorick’s grave. “Alles,” he says, “hat es dem guten Yorick geraubt, Speer, Helm und Lanze, nur Schade! inwendig steckt der Herr Präceptor S. zu Magdeburg . . . Yorick empfand, und dieser setzt sich hin zu empfinden. Yorick wird von seiner Laune ergriffen, und weinte und lachte in einer Minute und durch die Magie der Sympathie lachen und weinen wir mit: hier aber steht einer und überlegt: wie lache und weine ich? was werden die Leute sagen, wenn ich lache und weine?” etc. Schummel is stigmatized as a childish imitator and his book is censured as “beneath criticism,” oddly enough the very judgment its own author accords but a few weeks later on the completion of the third volume. The review contains several citations illustrative of Schummel’s style.The first two parts were reviewed in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek.16The length of the review is testimony to the interest in the book, and the tone of the article, though frankly unfavorable, is not so emphatically censorious as the one first noted. It is observed that Schummel has attempted the impossible,—the adoption of another’s “Laune,” and hence his failure. The reviewer notes, often with generous quotations, the more noticeable, direct imitations from Sterne, the conversation of the emotions, the nettle-plucking at the grave, the eccentric orthography and the new-coined words. Several passages ofcomment or comparison testify to the then current admiration of Yorick, and the conventional German interpretation of his character; “sein gutes, empfindungsvolles Herz, mit Tugend und sittlichem Gefühl erfüllt.” The review is signed “Sr:”17A critic in theJenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachenfor January 17, 1772, treating the first two volumes, expresses the opinion that Jacobi, the author of the “Tagereise,” and Schummel have little but the title from Yorick. The author’s seeking for opportunity to dissolve in emotion is contrasted unfavorably with Yorick’s method, the affected style is condemned, yet it is admitted that the work promises better things from its talented author; his power of observation and his good heart are not to be unacknowledged. The severity of the review is directed against the imitators already arising.TheMagazin der deutschen Critik18reviews the third volume with favorable comment; the comedy which Schummel saw fit to insert is received with rather extraordinary praise, and the author is urged to continue work in the drama; a desire is expressed even for a fourth part. TheHamburgische Neue Zeitung, June 4 and October 29, 1771, places Schummel unhesitatingly beside the English master, calls him as original as his pattern, to Sterne belongs the honor only of the invention. The author is hailed as a genius whose talents should be supported, so that Germany would not have to envy England her Yorick.19After Schummel’s remarkable self-chastisement, one could hardly expect to find in his subsequent works evidence of Sterne’s influence, save as unconsciously a dimmed admiration might exert a certain force. Probably contemporaneous with the composition of the third volume of the work, but possibly earlier, Schummel wrote the fourth part of a ponderous novel by a fellow Silesian, Christian Opitz, entitled “Die Gleichheit der menschlichen Herzen, bey der Ungleichheit ihrer äusserlichen Umstände in der Geschichte Herrn Redlichsund seiner Bedienten.” Goedeke implies that Opitz was the author of all but the last part, but the reviewer in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek20maintains that each part has a different author, and quotes the preface to the fourth as substantiation. According to this review both the second and fourth parts are characterized by a humorous fashion in writing, and the last is praised as being the best of the four. It seems probable that Schummel’s enthusiasm for Sterne played its part in the composition of this work.Possibly encouraged by the critic’s approbation, Schummel devoted his literary effort for the following years largely to the drama. In 1774 he published his “Uebersetzer-Bibliothek zum Gebrauche der Uebersetzer, Schulmänner und Liebhaber der alten Litteratur.” The reviewer21in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothekfinds passages in this book in which the author of the “Empfindsame Reisen” is visible,—where his fancy runs away with his reason,—and a passage is quoted in which reference is made to Slawkenberg’s book on noses. It would seem that the seeking for wit survived the crude sentimentality.Two years later Schummel published “Fritzen’s Reise nach Dessau,”22a work composed of letters from a twelve-year old boy, written on a journey from Magdeburg to Dessau. The letters are quite without whim or sentiment, and the book has been remembered for the extended description of Basedow’s experimental school, “Philantropin” (opened in 1774). Its account has been the source of the information given of this endeavor in some pedagogical treatises23and it was re-issued, as a document in the history of pedagogical experiment, in Leipzig, by Albert Richter in 1891. About fifteen years later still the “Reise durchSchlesien”24was issued. It is a simple narrative of a real journey with description of places and people, frankly personal, almost epistolary in form, without a suggestion of Sterne-like whim or sentiment. One passage is significant as indicating the author’s realization of his change of attitude. The sight of a group of prisoners bound by a chain calls to his memory his former sentimental extravagance, and he exclaims: “Twenty years ago, when I was still a sentimental traveler, I would have wasted many an ‘Oh’ and ‘alas’ over this scene; at present, since I have learned to know the world and mankind somewhat more intimately, I think otherwise.”Johann Christian Bock (1724–1785), who was in 1772 theater-poet of the Ackerman Company in Hamburg, soon after the publication of the Sentimental Journey, identified himself with the would-be Yoricks by the production of “Die Tagereise,” which was published at Leipzig in 1770. The work was re-issued in 1775 with the new title “Die Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages.”25The only change in the new edition was the addition of a number of copperplate engravings. The book is inspired in part by Sterne directly, and in part indirectly through the intermediary Jacobi. Unlike the work of Schummel just treated, it betrays no Shandean influence, but is dependent solely on the Sentimental Journey. In outward form the book resembles Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” since verse is introduced to vary the prose narrative. The attitude of the author toward his journey, undertaken with conscious purpose, is characteristic of the whole set of emotional sentiment-seekers, who found in their Yorick a challenge to go and do likewise: “Everybody is journeying, I thought, and took Yorick and Jacobi with me. . . . I will really see whether I too may not chance upon afille de chambreor a harvest-maid,” is a very significant statement of his inspiration and intention. Once started on his journey, the author falls in with a poor warrior-beggar, an adaptation of Sterne’s Chevalier de St. Louis,26and he puts inverse Yorick’s expressed sentiment that the king and the fatherland should not allow the faithful soldier to fall into such distress.Bock’s next sentimental adventure is with a fair peasant-maid whom he sees weeping by the wayside. Through Yorick-like insistence of sympathy, he finally wins from her information concerning the tender situation: a stern stepfather, an unwelcome suitor of his choosing, and a lover of her own. Her inability to write and thus communicate with the latter is the immediate cause of the present overflow. The traveler beholds in this predicament a remarkable sentimental opportunity and offers his services; he strokes her cheek, her tears are dried, and they part like brother and sister. The episode is unquestionably inspired by the episode of Maria of Moulines; in the latter development of the affair, the sentiment, which is expressed, that the girl’s innocence is her own defense is borrowed directly from Yorick’s statement concerning thefille de chambre.27The traveler’s questioning of his own motives in “Die Ueberlegung”28is distinctly Sterne-like, and it demonstrates also Bock’s appreciation of this quizzical element in Yorick’s attitude toward his own sentimental behavior. The relation of man to the domestic animals is treated sentimentally in the episode of the old beggar and his dead dog:29the tears of the beggar, his affection for the beast, their genuine comradeship, and the dog’s devotion after the world had forsaken his master, are all part and parcel of that fantastic humane movement which has its source in Yorick’s dead ass. Bock practically confesses his inspiration by direct allusion to the episode in Yorick. Bock defends with warmth the old peasant and his grief.The wanderer’s acquaintance with the lady’s companion30is adapted from Yorick’sfille de chambreconnection, and Bock cannot avoid a fleshly suggestion, distinctly in the style of Yorick in the section, the “Spider.”31The return journey inthe sentimental moonlight affords the author another opportunity for the exercise of his broad human sympathy: he meets a poor woman, a day-laborer with her child, gives them a few coins and doubts whether king or bishop could be more content with the benediction of the apostolic chair than he with the blessing of this unfortunate,—a sentiment derived from Yorick’s overcolored veneration for the horn snuff-box.The churchyard scene with which the journey ends is more openly fanciful, down-right visionary in tone, but the manner is very emphatically not that of Sterne, though in the midst the Sterne motif of nettle-plucking is introduced. This sentimental episode took hold of German imagination with peculiar force. The hobby-horse idea also was sure of its appeal, and Bock did not fail to fall under its spell.32But apart from the general impulse and borrowing of motif from the foreign novel, there is in this little volume considerable that is genuine and original: the author’s German patriotism, his praise of the old days in the Fatherland in the chapter entitled “Die Gaststube,” his “Trinklied eines Deutschen,” his disquisition on the position of the poet in the world (“ein eignes Kapitel”), and his adulation of Gellert at the latter’s grave. The reviewer in theDeutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften33chides the unnamed, youthful author for not allowing his undeniable talents to ripen to maturity, for being led on by Jacobi’s success to hasten his exercises into print. In reality Bock was no longer youthful (forty-six) when the “Tagereise” was published. TheAlmanach der deutschen Musenfor 1771, calls the book “an unsuccessful imitation of Yorick and Jacobi,” and wishes that this “Rhapsodie von Cruditäten” might be the last one thrust on the market as a “Sentimental Journey.” TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek34comments also on the double inspiration, and the insufficiency and tiresomeness of the performance. And yet Boie35says the papers praised the little book; for himself, however, heobserves, he little desires to read it, and adds “What will our Yoricks yet come to? At last they will get pretty insignificant, I think, if they keep on this way.”Bock was also the author of a series of little volumes written in the early seventies, still under the sentimental charm: (1) Empfindsame Reise durch die Visitenzimmer am Neujahrstag von einem deutschen Yorick angestellt, Cosmopolis (Hamburg) 1771—really published at the end of the previous year; (2) . . . am Ostertage, 1772; (3) Am Pfingsttage, 1772; (4) Am Johannistage, 1773; (5) Am Weynachtstage, 1773. These books were issued anonymously, and Schröder’s Lexicon gives only (2) and (3) under Bock’s name, but there seems no good reason to doubt his authorship of them all. Indeed, his claim to (1) is, according to theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, well-nigh proven by an allusion to the “Tagereise” in the introduction, and by the initials signed. None of them are given by Goedeke. The books are evidently only in a general way dependent on the Sterne model, and are composed of observations upon all sorts of subjects, the first section of each volume bearing some relation to the festival in which they appear.In the second edition of the first volume the author confesses that the title only is derived from Yorick,36and states that he was forced to this misuse because no one at that time cared to read anything but “Empfindsame Reisen.” It is also to be noted that the description beneath the title, “von einem deutschen Yorick angestellt,” is omitted after the first volume. The review of (4) and (5) in theAltonaer Reichs-Postreuterfinds this a commendable resumption of proper humility. The observations are evidently loosely strung together without the pretense of a narrative, such as “Allgemeines Perspectiv durch alle Visitenzimmer, Empfindsamer Neujahrswunsch, Empfindsame Berechnung eines Weisen mit sich selbst, Empfindsame Entschlüsse, Empfindsame Art sein Geld gut unterzubringen,” etc.37An obvious purpose inspires the writer, the furthering of morality and virtue; many of themeditations are distinctly religious. That some of the observations had a local significance in Hamburg, together with the strong sentimental tendency there, may account for the warm reception by theHamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent.38Some contemporary critics maintained a kinship between Matthias Claudius and Yorick-Sterne, though nothing further than a similarity of mental and emotional fibre is suggested. No one claimed an influence working from the English master. Even as late as 1872, Wilhelm Röseler in his introductory poem to a study of “Matthias Claudius und sein Humor”39calls Asmus, “Deutschland’s Yorick,” thereby agreeing almost verbally with the German correspondent of theDeutsches Museum, who wrote from London nearly a hundred years before, September 14, 1778, “Asmus . . . is the German Sterne,” an assertion which was denied by a later correspondent, who asserts that Claudius’s manner is very different from that of Sterne.40August von Kotzebue, as youthful narrator, betrays a dependence on Sterne in his strange and ingeniously contrived tale, “Die Geschichte meines Vaters, oder wie es zuging, dass ich gebohren wurde.”41The influence of Sterne is noticeable in the beginning of the story: he commences with a circumstantial account of his grandfather and grandmother, and the circumstances of his father’s birth. The grandfather is an original undoubtedly modeled on lines suggested by Sterne’s hobby-horse idea. He had been chosen in days gone by to greet the reigning prince on the latter’s return from a journey, and the old man harks back to this circumstance with “hobby-horsical” persistence, whatever the subject of conversation,even as all matters led Uncle Toby to military fortification, and the elder Shandy to one of his pet theories.In Schrimps the servant, another Shandean original is designed. When the news comes of the birth of a son on Mount Vesuvius, master and man discussmultifariousand irrelevant topics in a fashion reminiscent of the conversation downstairs in the Shandy mansion while similar events are going on above. Later in the book we have long lists, or catalogues of things which resemble one of Sterne’s favorite mannerisms. But the greater part of the wild, adventurous tale is far removed from its inception, which presented domestic whimsicality in a gallery of originals, unmistakably connected with Tristram Shandy.Göschen’s “Reise von Johann”42is a product of the late renascence of sentimental journeying. Master and servant are represented in this book as traveling through southern Germany, a pair as closely related in head and heart as Yorick and La Fleur, or Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. The style is of rather forced buoyancy and sprightliness, with intentional inconsequence and confusion, an attempt at humor of narration, which is choked by characteristic national desire to convey information, and a fatal propensity to description of places,43even when some satirical purpose underlies the account, as in the description of Erlangen and its university. The servant Johann has mild adventures with the maids in the various inns, which are reminiscent of Yorick, and in one case it borders on the openly suggestive and more Shandean method.44A distinctly borrowed motif is the accidental finding of papers which contain matters of interest. This is twice resorted to; a former occupant of the room in the inn in Nürnberg had left valuable notes of travel; and Johann, meeting a ragged woman, bent on self-destruction, takes from her a box with papers, disclosing a revolting story, baldly told. German mediocrity, imitating Yorick in this regard, and failing of his delicacy and subtlety, brought forth hideous offspring. Anattempt at whimsicality of style is apparent in the “Furth Catechismus in Frage und Antwort” (pp. 71–74), and genuinely sentimental adventures are supplied by the death-bed scene (pp. 70–71) and the village funeral (pp. 74–77).This book is classed by Ebeling45without sufficient reason as an imitation of von Thümmel. This statement is probably derived from the letter from Schiller to Goethe to which Ebeling refers in the following lines. Schiller is writing to Goethe concerning plans for the Xenien, December 29, 1795.46The abundance of material for the Xenien project is commented upon with enthusiastic anticipation, and in a list of vulnerable possibilities we read: “Thümmel, Göschen als sein Stallmeister—” a collocation of names easily attributable, in consideration of the underlying satiric purpose, to the general nature of their work, without in any way implying the dependence of one author on another,47or it could be interpreted as an allusion to the fact that Göschen was von Thümmel’s publisher. Nor is there anything in the correspondence to justify Ebeling’s harshness in saying concerning this volume of Göschen, that it “enjoyed the honor of being ridiculed (verhöhnt) in the Xenien-correspondence between Goethe and Schiller.” Goethe replies (December 30), in approval, andexclaims, “How fine Charis and Johann will appear beside one another.”48The suggestion concerning a possible use of Göschen’s book in the Xenien was never carried out.It will be remembered that Göschen submitted the manuscript of his book to Schiller, and that Schiller returned the same with the statement “that he had laughed heartily at some of the whims.”49Garve, in a letter dated March 8, 1875, speaks of Göschen’s book in terms of moderate praise.50The “Empfindsame Reise von Oldenburg nach Bremen,”51the author of which was a Hanoverian army officer, H. J. C. Hedemann, is characterized by Ebeling as emphatically not inspired by Sterne.52Although it is not a sentimental journey, as Schummel and Jacobi and Bock conceived it, and is thus not an example of the earliest period of imitation, and although it contains no passages of teary sentimentality in attitude toward man and beast, one must hesitate in denying all connection with Sterne’s manner. It would seem as if, having outgrown the earlier Yorick, awakened from dubious, fine-spun dreams of human brotherhood, perhaps by the rude clatter of the French revolution, certain would-be men of letters turned to Yorick again and saw, as through a glass darkly, that other element of his nature, and tried in lumbering, Teutonic way to adopt his whimsicality, shorn now of sentimentalism, and to build success for their wares on remembrance of a defaced idol. This view of later sentimental journeying is practically acknowledged at any rate in a contemporary review, theAllgemeine Litteratur-Zeitungfor August 22, 1796, which remarks: “A sentimental voyage ist ein Quodlibet, wo einige bekannte Sachen und Namen gezwungenen Wiz und matten Scherz heben sollen.”53Hedemann’s book is conspicuous in its effort to be whimsical and is openly satirical in regard to the sentimentalism of former travelers. His endeavor is markedly in Sterne’s manner in his attitude toward the writing of the book, his conversation about the difficulty of managing the material, his discussion with himself and the reader about the various parts of the book. Quite in Sterne’s fashion, and to be associated with Sterne’s frequent promises of chapters, and statements concerning embarrassment of material, is conceived his determination “to mention some things beforehand about which I don’t know anything to say,” and his rather humorous enumerationof them. The author satirizes the real sentimental traveler of Sterne’s earlier imitators in the following passage (second chapter):“It really must be a great misfortune, an exceedingly vexatious case, if no sentimental scenes occur to a sentimental traveler, but this is surely not the case; only the subjects, which offer themselves must be managed with strict economy. If one leaps over the most interesting events entirely, one is in danger, indeed, of losing everything, at least of not filling many pages.”Likewise in the following account of a sentimental adventure, the satirical purpose is evident. He has not gone far on his journey when he is met by a troop of children; with unsentimental coldness he determines that there is a “Schlagbaum” in the way. After the children have opened the barrier, he debates with himself to which child to give his little coin, concludes, as a “sentimental traveler,” to give it to the other sex, then there is nothing left to do but to follow his instinct. He reflects long with himself whether he was right in so doing,—all of which is a deliberate jest at the hesitation with reference to trivial acts, the self-examination with regard to the minutiae of past conduct, which was copied by Sterne’s imitators from numerous instances in the works of Yorick. Satirical also is his vision in Chapter VII, in which he beholds the temple of stupidity where lofty stupidity sits on a paper throne; and of particular significance here is the explanation that the whole company who do “erhabene Dummheit” honor formerly lived in cities of the kingdom, but “now they are on journeys.” Further examples of a humorous manner akin to Sterne are: his statement that it would be a “great error” to write an account of a journey without weaving in an anecdote of a prince, his claim that he has fulfilled all duties of such a traveler save to fall in love, his resolve to accomplish it, and his formal declaration: “I, the undersigned, do vow and make promise to be in love before twenty-four hours are past.” The story with which his volume closes, “Das Ständchen,” is rather entertaining and is told graphically, easily, withoutwhim or satire, yet not without a Sterniandouble entendre.54Another work in which sentimentalism has dwindled away to a grinning shade, and a certain irresponsible, light-hearted attitude is the sole remaining connection with the great progenitor, is probably the “Empfindsame Reise nach Schilda” (Leipzig, 1793), by Andreas Geo. Fr. von Rabenau, which is reviewed in theAllgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung(1794, I, p. 416) as a free revision of an old popular tale, “Das lustige und lächerliche Lalenburg.” The book is evidently without sentimental tinge, is a merry combination of wit and joke combined with caricature and half-serious tilting against unimportant literary celebrities.55Certain miscellaneous works, which are more or less obviously connected with Sterne may be grouped together here.To the first outburst of Sterne enthusiasm belongs an anonymous product, “Zween Tage eines Schwindsüchtigen, etwas Empfindsames,” von L. . . . (Hamburg, 1772), yet the editor admits that the sentiment is “not entirely like Yorick’s,” and theAltonaer Reichs-Postreuter(July 2, 1772) adds that “not at all like Yorick’s” would have been nearer the truth. This book is mentioned by Hillebrand with implication that it is the extreme example of the absurd sentimental tendency, probably judging merely from the title,56for the book is doubtless merely thoughtful, contemplative, with a minimum of overwrought feeling.According to theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen(1775, pp. 592–3), another product of the earlier seventies, the “Leben und Schicksale des Martin Dickius,” by Johann Moritz Schwager, is in many places a clever imitation of Sterne,57although the author claims, like Wezel in “Tobias Knaut,” not to have read Shandy until after the book was written. Surelythe digression on noses which the author allows himself is suspicious.Blankenburg, the author of the treatise on the novel to which reference has been made, was regarded by contemporary and subsequent criticism as an imitator of Sterne in his oddly titled novel “Beyträge zur Geschichte des teutschen Reiches und teutscher Sitten,”58although the general tenor of his essay, in reasonableness and balance, seemed to promise a more independent, a more competent and felicitous performance. Kurz expresses this opinion, which may have been derived from criticisms in the eighteenth century journals. TheFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, July 28, 1775, does not, however, take this view; but seems to be in the novel a genuine exemplification of the author’s theories as previously expressed.59TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek60calls the book didactic, a tract against certain essentially German follies. Merck, in theTeutscher Merkur,61says the imitation of Sterne is quite too obvious, though Blankenburg denies it.Among miscellaneous and anonymous works inspired directly by Sterne, belongs undoubtedly “Die Geschichte meiner Reise nach Pirmont” (1773), the author of which claims that it was written before Yorick was translated or Jacobi published. He says he is not worthy to pack Yorick’s bag or weave Jacobi’s arbor,62but the review of theAlmanach der deutschen Musenevidently regards it as a product, nevertheless, of Yorick’s impulse. Kuno Ridderhoff in his study of Frau la Roche63says that the “Empfindsamkeit” of Rosalie in the first part of “Rosaliens Briefe” is derived from Yorick. The “Leben, Thaten und Meynungen des D. J. Pet. Menadie” (Halle, 1777–1781) is charged by theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothekwith attempt at Shandy-like eccentricity of narrative and love of digression.64One little volume, unmistakably produced under Yorick’s spell, is worthy of particular mention because at its time it received from the reviewers a more cordial welcome than was accorded to the rank and file of Sentimental Journeys. It is “M . . . R . . .” by E. A. A. von Göchhausen (1740–1824), which was published at Eisenach, 1772, and was deemed worthy of several later editions. Its dependence on Sterne is confessed and obvious, sometimes apologetically and hesitatingly, sometimes defiantly. The imitation of Sterne is strongest at the beginning, both in outward form and subject-matter, and this measure of indebtedness dwindles away steadily as the book advances. Göchhausen, as other imitators, used at the outset a modish form, returned to it consciously now and then when once under way, but when he actually had something to say, a message of his own, found it impracticable or else forgot to follow his model.The absurd title stands, of course, for “Meine Reisen” and the puerile abbreviation as well as the reasons assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, a pitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest “Meine Randglossen” is quite inexplicable, since Göchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: “Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalität fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit.”65The book itself, like Sterne’s Journey, is divided into brief chapters unnumbered but named. As the author loses Yorick from sight, the chapters grow longer. Göchhausen has availed himself of an odd device to disarm criticism,—a plan used once or twice by Schummel: occasionally when the imitation is obvious, he repudiates the charge sarcastically, or anticipates with irony the critics’ censure. For example, he gives directions to his servant Pumper to pack for the journey; a reader exclaims, “a portmanteau, Mr. Author, so that everything, even to that, shall be just like Yorick,” and in the following passage the author quarrels with the critics who allow no one to travel with a portmanteau, because an Englishclergyman traveled with one. Pumper’s misunderstanding of this objection is used as a farther ridicule of the critics. When on the journey, the author converses with two poor wandering monks, whose conversation, at any rate, is a witness to their content, the whole being a legacy of the Lorenzo episode, and the author entitles the chapter: “The members of the religious order, or, as some critics will call it, a wretchedly unsuccessful imitation.” In the next chapter, “Der Visitator” (pp. 125 ff.) in which the author encounters customs annoyances, the critic is again allowed to complain that everything is stolen from Yorick, a protest which is answered by the author quite naïvely, “Yorick journeyed, ate, drank; I do too.” In “Die Pause” the author stands before the inn door and fancies that a number of spies (Ausspäher) stand there waiting for him; he protests that Yorick encountered beggars before the inn in Montreuil, a very different sort of folk. On page 253 he exclaims, “fürdiesen schreibe ich dieses Kapitel nicht und ich—beklage ihn!” Here a footnote suggests “Das übrige des Diebstahls vid. Yorick’s Gefangenen.” Similarly when he calls his servant his “La Fleur,” he converses with the critics about his theft from Yorick.The book is opened by a would-be whimsical note, the guessing about the name of the book. The dependence upon Sterne, suggested by the motto, is clinched by reference to this quotation in the section “Apologie,” and by the following chapter, which is entitled “Yorick.” The latter is the most unequivocal and, withal, the most successful imitation of Yorick’s manner which the volume offers. The author is sitting on a sofa reading the Sentimental Journey, and the idea of such a trip is awakened in him. Someone knocks and the door is opened by the postman, as the narrator is opening his “Lorenzodose,” and the story of the poor monk is touching his heart now for the twentieth time as strongly as ever. The postman asks postage on the letter as well as his own trivial fee. The author counts over money, miscounts it, then in counting forgets all about it, puts the money away and continues the reading of Yorick. The postman interrupts him; the author grows impatient and says, “You want four groschen?” and is inexplicablyvexed at the honesty of the man who says it is only three pfennigs for himself and the four groschen for the post. Here is a direct following of the Lorenzo episode; caprice rules his behavior toward an inferior, who is modest in his request. After the incident, his spite, his head and his heart and his “ich” converse in true Sterne fashion as to the advisability of his beginning to read Yorick again. He reasons with himself concerning his conduct toward the postman, then in an apostrophe to Yorick he condemns himself for failing in this little test. This conversation occupies so much time that he cannot run after the postman, but he resolves that nothing, not even the fly that lights on his nose, shall bring him so far as to forget wherefore his friend J . . . . sent him a “Lorenzodose.” And at the end of the section there is a picture of the snuff-box with the lid open, disclosing the letters of the word “Yorick.” The “Lorenzodose” is mentioned later, and later still the author calms his indignation by opening the box; he fortifies himself also by a look at the treasure.66Following this picture of the snuff-box is an open letter to “My dear J . . . ,” who, at the author’s request, had sent him on June 29th a “Lorenzodose.” Jacobi’s accompanying words are given. The author acknowledges the difficulty with which sometimes the self-conquest demanded by allegiance to the sentimental symbol has been won.Yet, compared with some other imitations of the good Yorick, the volume contains but a moderate amount of lavish sentiment. The servant Pumper is a man of feeling, who grieves that the horses trod the dewdrops from the blades of grass. Cast in the real Yorick mould is the scene in which Pumper kills a marmot (Hamster); upon his master’s expostulation that God created the little beast also, Pumper is touched, wipes the blood off with his cuff and buries the animal with tenderness, indulging in a pathetic soliloquy; the whole being a variant of Yorick’s ass episode.Marked with a similar vein of sentimentality is the narrator’s conduct toward the poor wanderer with his heavy burden: the author asserts that he has never eaten a roll, put ona white shirt, traveled in a comfortable carriage, or been borne by a strong horse, without bemoaning those who were less fortunately circumstanced. A similar and truly Sterne-like triumph of feeling over convention is the traveler’s insistence that Pumper shall ride with him inside the coach; seemingly a point derived from Jacobi’s failure to be equally democratic.67Sterne’s emphasis upon the machinery of his story-telling, especially his distraught pretense at logical sequence in the ordering of his material is here imitated. For example: near the close of a chapter the author summons his servant Pumper, but since the chapter bore the title “Der Brief” and the servant can neither read nor write a letter, he says the latter has nothing to do in that chapter, but he is to be introduced in the following one. Yet with Yorick’s inconsequence, the narrator is led aside and exclaims at the end of this chapter, “But where is Pumper?” with the answer, “Heaven and my readers know, it was to no purpose that this chapter was so named (and perhaps this is not the last one to which the title will be just as appropriate)”, and the next chapter pursues the whimsical attempt, beginning “As to whether Pumper will appear in this chapter, about that, dear reader, I am not really sure myself.”The whimsical, unconventional interposition of the reader, and the author’s reasoning with him, a Sterne device, is employed so constantly in the book as to become a wearying mannerism. Examples have already been cited, additional ones are numerous: the fifth section is devoted to such conversation with the reader concerning the work; later the reader objects to the narrator’s drinking coffee without giving a chapter about it; the reader is allowed to express his wonder as to what the chapter is going to be because of the author’s leap; the reader guesses where the author can be, when he begins to describe conditions in the moon. The chapter “Der Einwurf” is occupied entirely with the reader’s protest, and the last two sections are largely the record of fancied conversations with various readers concerning the nature of the book; here the author discloses himself.68Sterne-like whim is found in thechapter “Die Nacht,” which consists of a single sentence: “Ich schenke Ihnen diesen ganzen Zeitraum, denn ich habe ihn ruhig verschlafen.” Similar Shandean eccentricity is illustrated by the chapter entitled “Der Monolog,” which consists of four lines of dots, and the question, “Didn’t you think all this too, my readers?” Typographical eccentricity is observed also in the arrangement of the conversation of the ladies A., B., C., D., etc., in the last chapter. Like Sterne, our author makes lists of things; probably inspired by Yorick’s apostrophe to the “Sensorium” is our traveler’s appeal to the spring of joy. The description of the fashion of walking observed in the maid in the moon is reminiscent of a similar passage in Schummel’s journey.Göchhausen’s own work, untrammeled by outside influence, is considerable, largely a genial satire on critics and philosophers; his stay in the moon is a kind of Utopian fancy.The literary journals accepted Göchhausen’s work as a Yorick imitation, condemned it as such apologetically, but found much in the book worthy of their praise.69Probably the best known novel which adopts in considerable measure the style of Tristram Shandy is Wezel’s once famous “Tobias Knaut,” the “Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts des Weisen sonst Stammler genannt, aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt.”70In this work the influence of Fielding is felt parallel to that of Sterne. The historians of literature all accord the book a high place among humorous efforts of the period, crediting the author with wit, narrative ability, knowledge of human nature and full consciousness of plan and purpose.71They unite also in the opinion that “Tobias Knaut” places Wezel in the ranks of Sterne imitators, but this can be accepted only guardedly, for in part the novel must be regarded as a satire on “Empfindsamkeit” and hence in some measure be classified as an opposing force to Sterne’s dominion,especially to the distinctively German Sterne. That this impulse, which later became the guiding principle of “Wilhelmine Arend,” was already strong in “Tobias Knaut” is hinted at by Gervinus, but passed over in silence by other writers. Kurz, following Wieland, who reviewed the novel in hisMerkur, finds that the influence of Sterne was baneful. Other contemporary reviews deplored the imitation as obscuring and stultifying the undeniable and genuinely original talents of the author.72A brief investigation of Wezel’s novel will easily demonstrate his indebtedness to Sterne. Yet Wezel in his preface, anticipating the charge of imitation, asserts that he had not read Shandy when “Tobias” was begun. Possibly he intends this assertion as a whim, for he quotes Tristram at some length.73This inconsistency is occasion for censure on the part of the reviewers.Wezel’s story begins, like Shandy, “ab ovo,” and, in resemblance to Sterne’s masterpiece, the connection between the condition of the child before its birth and its subsequent life and character is insisted upon. A reference is later made to this. The work is episodical and digressive, but in a more extensive way than Shandy; the episodes in Sterne’s novel are yet part and parcel of the story, infused with the personality of the writer, and linked indissolubly to the little family of originals whose sayings and doings are immortalized by Sterne. This is not true of Wezel: his episodes and digressions are much more purely extraneous in event, and nature of interest. The story of the new-found son, which fills sixty-four pages, is like a story within a story, for its connection with the Knaut family is very remote. This very story, interpolated as it is, is itself again interrupted by a seven-page digression concerning Tyrus, Alexander, Pipin and Charlemagne, which the author states is taken from the one hundred and twenty-first chapter of his “Lateinische Pneumatologie,”—a genuine Sternian pretense, reminding one of the “Tristrapaedia.” Whimsicality of manner distinctly reminiscentof Sterne is found in his mock-scientific catalogues or lists of things, as in Chapter III, “Deduktionen, Dissertationen, Argumentationen a priori und a posteriori,” and so on; plainly adapted from Sterne’s idiosyncrasy of form is the advertisement which in large red letters occupies the middle of a page in the twenty-first chapter of the second volume, which reads as follows: “Dienst-freundliche Anzeige. Jedermann, der an ernsten Gesprächen keinen Gefallen findet, wird freundschaftlich ersucht alle folgende Blätter, deren Inhalt einem Gespräche ähnlich sieht, wohlbedächtig zu überschlagen, d.h. von dieser Anzeige an gerechnet. Darauf denke ich, soll jedermanniglichvom.22.Absatze fahren können,—Cuique Suum.” The following page is blank: this is closely akin to Sterne’s vagaries. Like Sterne, he makes promise of chapter-subject.74Similarly dependent on Sterne’s example, is the Fragment in Chapter VIII, Volume III, which breaks off suddenly under the plea that the rest could not be found. Like Sterne, our author satirizes detailed description in the excessive account of the infinitesimals of personal discomfort after a carouse.75He makes also obscure whimsical allusions, accompanied bytypographicaleccentricities (I, p. 153). To be connected with the story of the Abbess of Andouillets is the humor “Man leuterirte, appelirte—irte,—irte,—irte.”The author’s perplexities in managing the composition of the book are sketched in a way undoubtedly derived from Sterne,—for example, the beginning of Chapter IX in Volume III is a lament over the difficulties of chronicling what has happened during the preceding learned disquisition. When Tobias in anger begins to beat his horse, this is accompanied by the sighs of the author, a really audible one being put in a footnote, the whole forming a whimsy of narrative style for which Sterne must be held responsible. Similar to this is the author’s statement (Chap. XXV, Vol. II), that Lucian, Swift, Pope, Wieland and all the rest could not unite the characteristics which had just been predicated of Selmann. Like Sterne, Wezel converses with the reader aboutthe way of telling the story, indulging76in a mock-serious line of reasoning with meaningless Sternesque dashes. Further conversation with the reader is found at the beginning of Chapter III in Volume I, and in Chapter VIII of the first volume, he cries, “Wake up, ladies and gentlemen,” and continues at some length a conversation with these fancied personages about the progress of the book. Wezel in a few cases adopted the worst feature of Sterne’s work and was guilty of bad taste in precisely Yorick’s style: Tobias’s adventure with the so-called soldier’s wife, after he has run away from home, is a case in point, but the following adventure with the two maidens while Tobias is bathing in the pool is distinctly suggestive of Fielding. Sterne’s indecent suggestion is also followed in the hints at the possible occasion of the Original’s aversion to women. A similar censure could be spoken regarding the adventure in the tavern,77where the author hesitates on the edge of grossness.Wezel joined other imitators of Yorick in using as a motif the accidental interest of lost documents, or papers: here the poems of the “Original,” left behind in the hotel, played their rôle in the tale. The treatment of the wandering boy by the kindly peasant is clearly an imitation of Yorick’s famous visit in the rural cottage. A parallel to Walter Shandy’s theory of the dependence of great events on trifles is found in the story of the volume of Tacitus, which by chance suggested the sleeping potion for Frau v. L., or that Tobias’s inability to take off his hat with his right hand was influential on the boy’s future life. This is a reminder of Tristram’s obliquity in his manner of setting up his top. As in Shandy, there is a discussion about the location of the soul. The character of Selmann is a compound of Yorick and the elder Shandy, with a tinge of satiric exaggeration, meant to chastise the thirst for “originals” and overwrought sentimentalism. His generosity and sensitiveness to human pain is like Yorick. As a boy he would empty his purse into the bosom of a poor man; but his daily life was one round of Shandean speculation, largelyabout therelationshipsof trivial things: for example, his yearly periods of investigating his motives in inviting his neighbors Herr v.**and Herr v.***every July to his home.Wezel’s satire on the craze for originality is exemplified in the account of the “Original” (Chap. XXII, Vol. II), who was cold when others were hot, complained of not liking his soup because the plate was not full, but who threw the contents of his coffee cup at the host because it was filled to the brim, and trembled at the approach of a woman. Selmann longs to meet such an original. Selmann also thinks he has found an original in the inn-keeper who answers everything with “Nein,” greatly to his own disadvantage, though it turns out later that this was only a device planned by another character to gain advantage over Selmann himself. So also, in the third volume, Selmann and Tobias ride off in pursuit of a sentimental adventure, but the latter proves to be merely a jest of the Captain at the expense of his sentimental friend. Satire on sentimentalism is further unmistakable in the two maidens, Adelheid and Kunigunde, who weep over a dead butterfly, and write a lament over its demise. In jest, too, it is said that the Captain made a “sentimental journey through the stables.” The author converses with Ermindus, who seems to be a kind of Eugenius, a convenient figure for reference, apostrophe, and appeal. The novelist makes also, like Sterne, mock-pedantic allusions, once indeed making a long citation from a learned Chinese book. An expression suggesting Sterne is the oath taken “bey den Nachthemden aller Musen,”78and an intentional inconsequence of narration, giving occasion to conversation regarding the author’s control of his work, is the sudden passing over of the six years which Tobias spent in Selmann’s house.79In connection with Wezel’s occupation with Sterne and Sterne products in Germany, it is interesting to consider his poem: “Die unvermuthete Nachbarschaft. Ein Gespräch,”which was the second in a volume of three poems entitled “Epistel an die deutschen Dichter,” the name of the first poem, and published in Leipzig in 1775. This slight work is written for the most part in couplets and covers twenty-three pages. Wezel represents Doktor Young, the author of the gloomy “Night Thoughts” and “Der gute Lacher,—Lorenz Sterne” as occupying positions side by side in his book-case. This proximity gives rise to a conversation between the two antipodal British authors: Sterne says:
On his way to Leipzig, in the post-chaise, the author falls in with a clergyman: the manner of this meeting is intended to be Sterne-like: Schummel sighs, the companion remarks, “You too are an unhappy one,” and they join hands while the human heart beams in the traveler’s eyes. They weep too at parting. But, apart from these external incidents of their meeting, the matter of their converse is in no way inspired by Sterne. It joins itself with the narrative of the author’s visit to a church in a village by the wayside, and deals in general with the nature of the clergyman’s relation to his people and the general mediocrity and ineptitude of the average homiletical discourse, the failure of clergymen to relate their pulpit utterance to the life of the common Christian,—all of which is genuine, sane and original, undoubtedly a real protest on the part of Schummel, the pedagogue, against a prevailing abuse of his time and other times. This section represents unquestionably the earnest convictions of its author, and is written with professional zeal. This division is followed by an evidently purposeful return to Sterne’s eccentricity of manner. The author begins a division of his narrative, “Der zerbrochene Postwagen,” which is probably meant to coincide with the post-chaise accident in Shandy’s travels, writes a few lines in it, then begins the section again, something like the interruptedstory of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles. Then follows an abrupt discursive study of his aptitudes and proclivities, interspersed with Latin exclamations, interrogation points and dashes. “What a parenthesis is that!” he cries, and a few lines further on, “I burn with longing to begin a parenthesis again.” On his arrival in Leipzig, Schummel imitates closely Sterne’s satirical guide-book description of Calais10in his brief account of the city, breaking off abruptly like Sterne, and roundly berating all “Reisebeschreiber.” Here in fitting contrast with this superficial enumeration of facts stands his brief traveler’s creed, an interest in people rather than in places, all of which is derived from Sterne’s chapter, “In the Street, Calais,” in which the master discloses the sentimental possibilities of traveling and typifies the superficial, unemotional wanderer in the persons of Smelfungus and Mundungus, and from the familiar passage in “The Passport, Versailles,” beginning, “But I could wish to spy out the nakedness, etc.” No sooner is he arrived in Leipzig, than he accomplishes a sentimental rescue of an unfortunate woman on the street. In the expression of her immediate needs, Schummel indulges for the first time in a row of stars, with the obvious intention of raising a low suggestion, which he contradicts with mock-innocent questionings a few lines later, thereby fastening the attention on the possibility of vulgar interpretation. Sterne is guilty of this device in numerous instances in both his works, and the English continuation of the Sentimental Journey relies upon it in greater and more revolting measure.
Once established in his hotel, the author betakes himself to the theater: this very act he feels will bring upon him the censure of the critics, for Yorick went to the theater too. “A merchant’s boy went along before me,” he says in naïve defense, “was he also an imitator of Yorick?” On the way he meets a fair maid-in-waiting, and the relation between her and the traveler, developed here and later, is inspired directly by Yorick’s connection with the fairfille de chambre. Schummel imitates Sterne’s excessive detail of description, devoting awhole paragraph to his manner of removing his hat before a lady whom he encounters on this walk to the theater. This was another phase of Sterne’s pseudo-scientific method: he describes the trivial with the attitude of the trained observer, registering minutely the detail of phenomena, a mock-parade of scholarship illustrated by his description of Trim’s attitude while reading his sermon, or the dropping of the hat in the kitchen during the memorable scene when the news of Bobby’s death is brought.
In Schummel’s narration of his adventures in the house of ill-repute there are numerous sentimental excrescences in his conduct with the poor prisoner there, due largely to Yorick’s pattern, such as their weeping on one another’s breast, and his wiping away her tears and his, drawn from Yorick’s amiable service for Maria of Moulines, an act seemingly expressing the most refined human sympathy. The remaining events of this first volume include an unexpected meeting with the kind baker’s wife, which takes place at Gellert’s grave. Yorick’s imitators were especially fond of re-introducing a sentimentalrelationship. Yorick led the way in his renewed acquaintance with thefille de chambre; Stevenson in his continuation went to extremes in exploiting this cheap device.
Other motifs derived from Sterne, less integral, may be briefly summarized. From the Sentimental Journey is taken the motif that valuable or interesting papers be used to wrap ordinary articles of trade: here herring are wrapped in fragments of the father’s philosophy; in the Sentimental Journey we find a similar degrading use for the “Fragment.” Schummel breaks off the chapter “La Naïve,”11under the Sternesque subterfuge of having to deliver manuscript to an insistent publisher. Yorick writes his preface to the Journey in the “Désobligeant,” that is, in the midst of the narrative itself. Schummel modifies the eccentricity merely by placing his foreword at the end of the volume. The value of it, he says, will repay the reader for waiting so long,—a statement which finds little justification in the preface itself. It begins, “Auweh!Auweh! Ouais, Helas! . . . Diable, mein Rücken, mein Fuss!” and so on for half a page,—a pitiful effort to follow the English master’s wilful and skilful incoherence. The following pages, however, once this outbreak is at an end, contain a modicum of sense, the feeble, apologetic explanation of his desire in imitating Yorick, given in forethought of the critics’ condemnation. Similarly the position of the dedication is unusual, in the midst of the volume, even as the dedication of Shandy was roguishly delayed. The dedication itself, however, is not an imitation of Sterne’s clever satire, but, addressed to Yorick himself, is a striking example of burning personal devotion and over-wrought praise. Schummel hopes12in Sterne fashion to write a chapter on “Vorübergeben,” or in the chapter “Das Komödienhaus” (pp. 185–210) to write a digression on “Walking behind a maid.” Like Sterne, he writes in praise of digressions.13In imitation of Sterne is conceived the digressive speculation concerning the door through which at the beginning of the book he is cast into the rude world. Among further expressions savoring of Sterne, may be mentioned a “Centner of curses” (p. 39), a “Quentchen of curses,” and the analytical description of a tone of voice as one-fourth questioning, five-eighths entreating and one-eighth commanding (p. 229).
The direct allusions to Sterne and his works are numerous. A list of Sterne characters which were indelibly impressed upon his mind is found near the very beginning (pp. 3–4); other allusions are to M. Dessein (p. 65), La Fleur’s “Courierstiefel” (p. 115), the words of the dying Yorick (p. 128), the pococurantism of Mrs. Shandy (p. 187), the division of travelers into types (p. 141), Uncle Toby (p. 200), Yorick’s violin-playing (p. 274), the foolish fat scullion (p. 290), Yorick’s description of a maid’s (p. 188) eyes, “als ob sie zwischen vier Wänden einem Garaus machen könnten.”
The second volume is even more incoherent in narration, and contains less genuine occurrence and more ill-considered attempts at whimsicality, yet throughout this volume there areindications that the author is awakening to the vulnerability of his position, and this is in no other particular more easily discernible than in the half-hearted defiance of the critics and his anticipation of their censure. The change, so extraordinary in the third volume, is foreshadowed in the second. Purely sentimental, effusive, and abundantly teary is the story of the rescued baker’s wife. In this excess of sentiment, Schummel shows his intellectual appreciation of Sterne’s individual treatment of the humane and pathetic, for near the end of the poor woman’s narrative the author seems to recollect a fundamental sentence of Sterne’s creed, the inevitable admixture of the whimsical, and here he introduces into the sentimental relation a Shandean idiosyncrasy: from page 43 the narrative leaps back to the beginning of the volume, and Schummel advises the reader to turn back and re-read, referring incidentally to his confused fashion of narration. The awkwardness with which this is done proves Schummel’s inability to follow Yorick, though its use shows his appreciation of Sterne’s peculiar genius. The visit of the author, the baker’s wife and her daughter (the former lady’s maid) to the graveyard is Yorickian in flavor, and the plucking of nettles from the grave of the dead epileptic is a direct borrowing. Attempts to be immorally, sensuously suggestive in the manner of Sterne are found in the so-called chapter on “Button-holes,” here cast in a more Shandean vein, and in the adventure “die ängstliche Nacht,”—in the latter case resembling more the less frank, more insinuating method of the Sentimental Journey. The sentimental attitude toward man’s dumb companions is imitated in his adventure with the house-dog; the author fears the barking of this animal may disturb the sleep of the poor baker’s wife: he beats the dog into silence, then grows remorseful and wishes “that I had given him no blow,” or that the dog might at least give him back the blows. His thought that the dog might be pretending its pain, he designates a subtle subterfuge of his troubled conscience, and Goethe, in the review mentioned above, exclaims, “A fine pendant to Yorick’s scene with the Monk.”
Distinctly Shandean are the numerous digressions, as on imitation(p. 16), on authors and fairs (p. 45), that which he calls (pp. 226–238) “ein ganz originelles Gemische von Wiz, Belesenheit, Scharfsinn, gesunder Philosophie, Erfahrung, Algebra und Mechanik,” or (p. 253) “Von der Entstehungsart eines Buches nach Erfindung derBuchdrukerkunst,” which in reference to Sterne’s phrase, is called a “jungfräuliche Materie.” He promises (pp. 75 and 108), like Sterne, to write numerous chapters on extraordinary subjects,—indeed, he announces his intention of supplementing the missing sections of Shandy on “Button-holes” and on the “Right and Left (sic) end of a Woman.” His own promised effusions are to be “Ueber die roten und schwarzenRöcke,”, “über die Verbindung der Theologie mit Schwarz,” “Europäischenfrauenzimmerschuhabsätze,”half a one “Ueber die Schuhsohlen” and “Ueber meinen Namen.”
His additions to Shandy are flat and witless, that on the “Right and Wrong End of a Woman” (pp. 88 ff.) degenerating into three brief narratives displaying woman’s susceptibility to flattery, the whole idea probably adapted from Sterne’s chapter, “An Act of Charity;” the chapter on “Button-holes” is made a part of the general narrative of his relation to his “Naïve.” Weakly whimsical is his seeking pardon for the discourse with which the Frenchman (pp. 62–66), under the pretext that it belonged somewhere else and had inadvertently crept in. Shandean also is the black margin to pages 199–206, the line upside down (p. 175), thetwelveirregularly printed lines (p. 331), inserted to indicate his efforts in writing with a burned hand, the lines of dashes and exclamation points, the mathematical, financial calculation of the worth of his book from various points of view, and the description of the maiden’s walk (p. 291). Sterne’s mock-scientific method, as already noted, is observable again in the statement of the position of the dagger “at an angle of 30°” (p. 248). His coining of new words, for which he is censured by theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, is also a legacy of Yorick’s method.
The third volume bears little relation to Sterne aside from its title, and one can only wonder, in view of the criticism of the two parts already published and the nature of the author’s ownpartial revulsion of feeling, that he did not give up publishing it altogether, or choose another title, and sunder the work entirely from the foregoing volumes, with which it has in fact so contradictory a connection. It may be that his relations to the publisher demanded the issuing of the third part under the same title.
This volume is easily divisible into several distinct parts, which are linked with one another, and to the preceding narrative, only by a conventional thread ofintroduction. These comprise: the story of Caroline and Rosenfeld, a typical eighteenth century tale of love, seduction and flight; the hosts’ ballad, “Es war einmahl ein Edelmann;” the play, “Die unschuldige Ehebrecherin” and “Mein Tagebuch,” the journal of an honest preacher, and a further sincere exploitation of Schummel’s ideas upon the clergyman’s office, his ideal of simplicity, kindliness, and humanity. In the latter part of the book Schummel resumes his original narrative, and indulges once more in the luxury of sentimental adventure, but without the former abortive attempts at imitating Sterne’s peculiarities of diction. This last resumption of the sentimental creed introduces to us one event evidently inspired by Yorick: he meets a poor, maimed soldier-beggar. Since misfortune has deprived the narrator himself of his possessions, he can give nothing and goes a begging for the beggar’s sake, introducing the new and highly sentimental idea of “vicarious begging” (pp. 268–9). In the following episode, a visit to a child-murderess, Schummel leaves a page entirely blank as an appropriate proof ofincapacityto express his emotions attendant on the execution of the unfortunate. Sterne also left a page blank for the description of the Widow Wadman’s charms.
At the very end of the book Schummel drops his narrative altogether and discourses upon his own work. It would be difficult to find in any literature so complete a condemnation of one’s own serious and extensive endeavor, so candid a criticism of one’s own work, so frank an acknowledgment of the pettiness of one’s achievement. He says his work, as an imitation of Sterne’s two novels, has “few or absolutely no beauties of the original, and many faultsof its own.” He states that his enthusiasm for Tristram has been somewhat dampened by Sonnenfels and Riedel; he sees now faults which should not have been imitated; the frivolous attitude of the narrator toward his father and mother is deprecated, and the suggestion is given that this feature was derived from Tristram’s own frankness concerning the eccentricities and incapacities of his parents. He begs reference to a passage in the second volume14where the author alludes with warmth of appreciation to his real father and mother; that is, genuine regard overcame the temporary blindness, real affection arose and thrust out the transitory inclination to an alien whimsicality.
Schummel admits that he has utterly failed in his effort to characterize the German people in the way Sterne treated the English and French; he confesses that the ninety-page autobiography which precedes the journey itself was intended to be Tristram-like, but openly stigmatizes his own failure as “ill conceived, incoherent and not very well told!” After mentioning some few incidents and passages in this first section which he regards as passable, he boldly condemns the rest as “almost beneath all criticism,” and the same words are used with reference to much that follows, in which he confesses to imitation, bad taste and intolerable indelicacy. He calls his pathetic attempts at whimsical mannerisms (Heideldum, etc.), “kläglich, überaus kläglich,” expresses the opinion that one would not be surprised at the reader who would throw away the whole book at such a passage. The words of the preacher in the two sections where he is allowed to air his opinions still meet with his approval, and the same is true of one or two other sections. In conclusion, he states that the first part contains hardly one hundred good pages, and that the second part is worse than the first, so that he is unwilling to look at it again and seek out its faults. The absence of allusions to Sterne’s writings is marked, except in the critical section at the end, he mentions Sterne but once (p. 239), where he calls him “schnurrigt.” This alteration of feeling must have taken place in a brief space of time, for the third volume is signedApril 25, 1772. It is not easy to establish with probability the works of Sonnenfels and Riedel which are credited with a share in this revulsion of feeling.
In all of this Schummel is a discriminating critic of his own work; he is also discerning in his assertion that the narrative contained in his volume is conceived more in the vein of Fielding and Richardson. The Sterne elements are rather embroidered on to the other fabric, or, as he himself says, using another figure, “only fried in Shandy fat.”15
Goethe’s criticism of the second volume, already alluded to, is found in theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigenin the issue of March 3, 1772. The nature of the review is familiar: Goethe calls the book a thistle which he has found on Yorick’s grave. “Alles,” he says, “hat es dem guten Yorick geraubt, Speer, Helm und Lanze, nur Schade! inwendig steckt der Herr Präceptor S. zu Magdeburg . . . Yorick empfand, und dieser setzt sich hin zu empfinden. Yorick wird von seiner Laune ergriffen, und weinte und lachte in einer Minute und durch die Magie der Sympathie lachen und weinen wir mit: hier aber steht einer und überlegt: wie lache und weine ich? was werden die Leute sagen, wenn ich lache und weine?” etc. Schummel is stigmatized as a childish imitator and his book is censured as “beneath criticism,” oddly enough the very judgment its own author accords but a few weeks later on the completion of the third volume. The review contains several citations illustrative of Schummel’s style.
The first two parts were reviewed in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek.16The length of the review is testimony to the interest in the book, and the tone of the article, though frankly unfavorable, is not so emphatically censorious as the one first noted. It is observed that Schummel has attempted the impossible,—the adoption of another’s “Laune,” and hence his failure. The reviewer notes, often with generous quotations, the more noticeable, direct imitations from Sterne, the conversation of the emotions, the nettle-plucking at the grave, the eccentric orthography and the new-coined words. Several passages ofcomment or comparison testify to the then current admiration of Yorick, and the conventional German interpretation of his character; “sein gutes, empfindungsvolles Herz, mit Tugend und sittlichem Gefühl erfüllt.” The review is signed “Sr:”17
A critic in theJenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachenfor January 17, 1772, treating the first two volumes, expresses the opinion that Jacobi, the author of the “Tagereise,” and Schummel have little but the title from Yorick. The author’s seeking for opportunity to dissolve in emotion is contrasted unfavorably with Yorick’s method, the affected style is condemned, yet it is admitted that the work promises better things from its talented author; his power of observation and his good heart are not to be unacknowledged. The severity of the review is directed against the imitators already arising.
TheMagazin der deutschen Critik18reviews the third volume with favorable comment; the comedy which Schummel saw fit to insert is received with rather extraordinary praise, and the author is urged to continue work in the drama; a desire is expressed even for a fourth part. TheHamburgische Neue Zeitung, June 4 and October 29, 1771, places Schummel unhesitatingly beside the English master, calls him as original as his pattern, to Sterne belongs the honor only of the invention. The author is hailed as a genius whose talents should be supported, so that Germany would not have to envy England her Yorick.19
After Schummel’s remarkable self-chastisement, one could hardly expect to find in his subsequent works evidence of Sterne’s influence, save as unconsciously a dimmed admiration might exert a certain force. Probably contemporaneous with the composition of the third volume of the work, but possibly earlier, Schummel wrote the fourth part of a ponderous novel by a fellow Silesian, Christian Opitz, entitled “Die Gleichheit der menschlichen Herzen, bey der Ungleichheit ihrer äusserlichen Umstände in der Geschichte Herrn Redlichsund seiner Bedienten.” Goedeke implies that Opitz was the author of all but the last part, but the reviewer in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek20maintains that each part has a different author, and quotes the preface to the fourth as substantiation. According to this review both the second and fourth parts are characterized by a humorous fashion in writing, and the last is praised as being the best of the four. It seems probable that Schummel’s enthusiasm for Sterne played its part in the composition of this work.
Possibly encouraged by the critic’s approbation, Schummel devoted his literary effort for the following years largely to the drama. In 1774 he published his “Uebersetzer-Bibliothek zum Gebrauche der Uebersetzer, Schulmänner und Liebhaber der alten Litteratur.” The reviewer21in theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothekfinds passages in this book in which the author of the “Empfindsame Reisen” is visible,—where his fancy runs away with his reason,—and a passage is quoted in which reference is made to Slawkenberg’s book on noses. It would seem that the seeking for wit survived the crude sentimentality.
Two years later Schummel published “Fritzen’s Reise nach Dessau,”22a work composed of letters from a twelve-year old boy, written on a journey from Magdeburg to Dessau. The letters are quite without whim or sentiment, and the book has been remembered for the extended description of Basedow’s experimental school, “Philantropin” (opened in 1774). Its account has been the source of the information given of this endeavor in some pedagogical treatises23and it was re-issued, as a document in the history of pedagogical experiment, in Leipzig, by Albert Richter in 1891. About fifteen years later still the “Reise durchSchlesien”24was issued. It is a simple narrative of a real journey with description of places and people, frankly personal, almost epistolary in form, without a suggestion of Sterne-like whim or sentiment. One passage is significant as indicating the author’s realization of his change of attitude. The sight of a group of prisoners bound by a chain calls to his memory his former sentimental extravagance, and he exclaims: “Twenty years ago, when I was still a sentimental traveler, I would have wasted many an ‘Oh’ and ‘alas’ over this scene; at present, since I have learned to know the world and mankind somewhat more intimately, I think otherwise.”
Johann Christian Bock (1724–1785), who was in 1772 theater-poet of the Ackerman Company in Hamburg, soon after the publication of the Sentimental Journey, identified himself with the would-be Yoricks by the production of “Die Tagereise,” which was published at Leipzig in 1770. The work was re-issued in 1775 with the new title “Die Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages.”25The only change in the new edition was the addition of a number of copperplate engravings. The book is inspired in part by Sterne directly, and in part indirectly through the intermediary Jacobi. Unlike the work of Schummel just treated, it betrays no Shandean influence, but is dependent solely on the Sentimental Journey. In outward form the book resembles Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” since verse is introduced to vary the prose narrative. The attitude of the author toward his journey, undertaken with conscious purpose, is characteristic of the whole set of emotional sentiment-seekers, who found in their Yorick a challenge to go and do likewise: “Everybody is journeying, I thought, and took Yorick and Jacobi with me. . . . I will really see whether I too may not chance upon afille de chambreor a harvest-maid,” is a very significant statement of his inspiration and intention. Once started on his journey, the author falls in with a poor warrior-beggar, an adaptation of Sterne’s Chevalier de St. Louis,26and he puts inverse Yorick’s expressed sentiment that the king and the fatherland should not allow the faithful soldier to fall into such distress.
Bock’s next sentimental adventure is with a fair peasant-maid whom he sees weeping by the wayside. Through Yorick-like insistence of sympathy, he finally wins from her information concerning the tender situation: a stern stepfather, an unwelcome suitor of his choosing, and a lover of her own. Her inability to write and thus communicate with the latter is the immediate cause of the present overflow. The traveler beholds in this predicament a remarkable sentimental opportunity and offers his services; he strokes her cheek, her tears are dried, and they part like brother and sister. The episode is unquestionably inspired by the episode of Maria of Moulines; in the latter development of the affair, the sentiment, which is expressed, that the girl’s innocence is her own defense is borrowed directly from Yorick’s statement concerning thefille de chambre.27The traveler’s questioning of his own motives in “Die Ueberlegung”28is distinctly Sterne-like, and it demonstrates also Bock’s appreciation of this quizzical element in Yorick’s attitude toward his own sentimental behavior. The relation of man to the domestic animals is treated sentimentally in the episode of the old beggar and his dead dog:29the tears of the beggar, his affection for the beast, their genuine comradeship, and the dog’s devotion after the world had forsaken his master, are all part and parcel of that fantastic humane movement which has its source in Yorick’s dead ass. Bock practically confesses his inspiration by direct allusion to the episode in Yorick. Bock defends with warmth the old peasant and his grief.
The wanderer’s acquaintance with the lady’s companion30is adapted from Yorick’sfille de chambreconnection, and Bock cannot avoid a fleshly suggestion, distinctly in the style of Yorick in the section, the “Spider.”31The return journey inthe sentimental moonlight affords the author another opportunity for the exercise of his broad human sympathy: he meets a poor woman, a day-laborer with her child, gives them a few coins and doubts whether king or bishop could be more content with the benediction of the apostolic chair than he with the blessing of this unfortunate,—a sentiment derived from Yorick’s overcolored veneration for the horn snuff-box.
The churchyard scene with which the journey ends is more openly fanciful, down-right visionary in tone, but the manner is very emphatically not that of Sterne, though in the midst the Sterne motif of nettle-plucking is introduced. This sentimental episode took hold of German imagination with peculiar force. The hobby-horse idea also was sure of its appeal, and Bock did not fail to fall under its spell.32
But apart from the general impulse and borrowing of motif from the foreign novel, there is in this little volume considerable that is genuine and original: the author’s German patriotism, his praise of the old days in the Fatherland in the chapter entitled “Die Gaststube,” his “Trinklied eines Deutschen,” his disquisition on the position of the poet in the world (“ein eignes Kapitel”), and his adulation of Gellert at the latter’s grave. The reviewer in theDeutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften33chides the unnamed, youthful author for not allowing his undeniable talents to ripen to maturity, for being led on by Jacobi’s success to hasten his exercises into print. In reality Bock was no longer youthful (forty-six) when the “Tagereise” was published. TheAlmanach der deutschen Musenfor 1771, calls the book “an unsuccessful imitation of Yorick and Jacobi,” and wishes that this “Rhapsodie von Cruditäten” might be the last one thrust on the market as a “Sentimental Journey.” TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek34comments also on the double inspiration, and the insufficiency and tiresomeness of the performance. And yet Boie35says the papers praised the little book; for himself, however, heobserves, he little desires to read it, and adds “What will our Yoricks yet come to? At last they will get pretty insignificant, I think, if they keep on this way.”
Bock was also the author of a series of little volumes written in the early seventies, still under the sentimental charm: (1) Empfindsame Reise durch die Visitenzimmer am Neujahrstag von einem deutschen Yorick angestellt, Cosmopolis (Hamburg) 1771—really published at the end of the previous year; (2) . . . am Ostertage, 1772; (3) Am Pfingsttage, 1772; (4) Am Johannistage, 1773; (5) Am Weynachtstage, 1773. These books were issued anonymously, and Schröder’s Lexicon gives only (2) and (3) under Bock’s name, but there seems no good reason to doubt his authorship of them all. Indeed, his claim to (1) is, according to theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, well-nigh proven by an allusion to the “Tagereise” in the introduction, and by the initials signed. None of them are given by Goedeke. The books are evidently only in a general way dependent on the Sterne model, and are composed of observations upon all sorts of subjects, the first section of each volume bearing some relation to the festival in which they appear.
In the second edition of the first volume the author confesses that the title only is derived from Yorick,36and states that he was forced to this misuse because no one at that time cared to read anything but “Empfindsame Reisen.” It is also to be noted that the description beneath the title, “von einem deutschen Yorick angestellt,” is omitted after the first volume. The review of (4) and (5) in theAltonaer Reichs-Postreuterfinds this a commendable resumption of proper humility. The observations are evidently loosely strung together without the pretense of a narrative, such as “Allgemeines Perspectiv durch alle Visitenzimmer, Empfindsamer Neujahrswunsch, Empfindsame Berechnung eines Weisen mit sich selbst, Empfindsame Entschlüsse, Empfindsame Art sein Geld gut unterzubringen,” etc.37An obvious purpose inspires the writer, the furthering of morality and virtue; many of themeditations are distinctly religious. That some of the observations had a local significance in Hamburg, together with the strong sentimental tendency there, may account for the warm reception by theHamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent.38
Some contemporary critics maintained a kinship between Matthias Claudius and Yorick-Sterne, though nothing further than a similarity of mental and emotional fibre is suggested. No one claimed an influence working from the English master. Even as late as 1872, Wilhelm Röseler in his introductory poem to a study of “Matthias Claudius und sein Humor”39calls Asmus, “Deutschland’s Yorick,” thereby agreeing almost verbally with the German correspondent of theDeutsches Museum, who wrote from London nearly a hundred years before, September 14, 1778, “Asmus . . . is the German Sterne,” an assertion which was denied by a later correspondent, who asserts that Claudius’s manner is very different from that of Sterne.40
August von Kotzebue, as youthful narrator, betrays a dependence on Sterne in his strange and ingeniously contrived tale, “Die Geschichte meines Vaters, oder wie es zuging, dass ich gebohren wurde.”41The influence of Sterne is noticeable in the beginning of the story: he commences with a circumstantial account of his grandfather and grandmother, and the circumstances of his father’s birth. The grandfather is an original undoubtedly modeled on lines suggested by Sterne’s hobby-horse idea. He had been chosen in days gone by to greet the reigning prince on the latter’s return from a journey, and the old man harks back to this circumstance with “hobby-horsical” persistence, whatever the subject of conversation,even as all matters led Uncle Toby to military fortification, and the elder Shandy to one of his pet theories.
In Schrimps the servant, another Shandean original is designed. When the news comes of the birth of a son on Mount Vesuvius, master and man discussmultifariousand irrelevant topics in a fashion reminiscent of the conversation downstairs in the Shandy mansion while similar events are going on above. Later in the book we have long lists, or catalogues of things which resemble one of Sterne’s favorite mannerisms. But the greater part of the wild, adventurous tale is far removed from its inception, which presented domestic whimsicality in a gallery of originals, unmistakably connected with Tristram Shandy.
Göschen’s “Reise von Johann”42is a product of the late renascence of sentimental journeying. Master and servant are represented in this book as traveling through southern Germany, a pair as closely related in head and heart as Yorick and La Fleur, or Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. The style is of rather forced buoyancy and sprightliness, with intentional inconsequence and confusion, an attempt at humor of narration, which is choked by characteristic national desire to convey information, and a fatal propensity to description of places,43even when some satirical purpose underlies the account, as in the description of Erlangen and its university. The servant Johann has mild adventures with the maids in the various inns, which are reminiscent of Yorick, and in one case it borders on the openly suggestive and more Shandean method.44A distinctly borrowed motif is the accidental finding of papers which contain matters of interest. This is twice resorted to; a former occupant of the room in the inn in Nürnberg had left valuable notes of travel; and Johann, meeting a ragged woman, bent on self-destruction, takes from her a box with papers, disclosing a revolting story, baldly told. German mediocrity, imitating Yorick in this regard, and failing of his delicacy and subtlety, brought forth hideous offspring. Anattempt at whimsicality of style is apparent in the “Furth Catechismus in Frage und Antwort” (pp. 71–74), and genuinely sentimental adventures are supplied by the death-bed scene (pp. 70–71) and the village funeral (pp. 74–77).
This book is classed by Ebeling45without sufficient reason as an imitation of von Thümmel. This statement is probably derived from the letter from Schiller to Goethe to which Ebeling refers in the following lines. Schiller is writing to Goethe concerning plans for the Xenien, December 29, 1795.46The abundance of material for the Xenien project is commented upon with enthusiastic anticipation, and in a list of vulnerable possibilities we read: “Thümmel, Göschen als sein Stallmeister—” a collocation of names easily attributable, in consideration of the underlying satiric purpose, to the general nature of their work, without in any way implying the dependence of one author on another,47or it could be interpreted as an allusion to the fact that Göschen was von Thümmel’s publisher. Nor is there anything in the correspondence to justify Ebeling’s harshness in saying concerning this volume of Göschen, that it “enjoyed the honor of being ridiculed (verhöhnt) in the Xenien-correspondence between Goethe and Schiller.” Goethe replies (December 30), in approval, andexclaims, “How fine Charis and Johann will appear beside one another.”48The suggestion concerning a possible use of Göschen’s book in the Xenien was never carried out.
It will be remembered that Göschen submitted the manuscript of his book to Schiller, and that Schiller returned the same with the statement “that he had laughed heartily at some of the whims.”49Garve, in a letter dated March 8, 1875, speaks of Göschen’s book in terms of moderate praise.50
The “Empfindsame Reise von Oldenburg nach Bremen,”51the author of which was a Hanoverian army officer, H. J. C. Hedemann, is characterized by Ebeling as emphatically not inspired by Sterne.52Although it is not a sentimental journey, as Schummel and Jacobi and Bock conceived it, and is thus not an example of the earliest period of imitation, and although it contains no passages of teary sentimentality in attitude toward man and beast, one must hesitate in denying all connection with Sterne’s manner. It would seem as if, having outgrown the earlier Yorick, awakened from dubious, fine-spun dreams of human brotherhood, perhaps by the rude clatter of the French revolution, certain would-be men of letters turned to Yorick again and saw, as through a glass darkly, that other element of his nature, and tried in lumbering, Teutonic way to adopt his whimsicality, shorn now of sentimentalism, and to build success for their wares on remembrance of a defaced idol. This view of later sentimental journeying is practically acknowledged at any rate in a contemporary review, theAllgemeine Litteratur-Zeitungfor August 22, 1796, which remarks: “A sentimental voyage ist ein Quodlibet, wo einige bekannte Sachen und Namen gezwungenen Wiz und matten Scherz heben sollen.”53
Hedemann’s book is conspicuous in its effort to be whimsical and is openly satirical in regard to the sentimentalism of former travelers. His endeavor is markedly in Sterne’s manner in his attitude toward the writing of the book, his conversation about the difficulty of managing the material, his discussion with himself and the reader about the various parts of the book. Quite in Sterne’s fashion, and to be associated with Sterne’s frequent promises of chapters, and statements concerning embarrassment of material, is conceived his determination “to mention some things beforehand about which I don’t know anything to say,” and his rather humorous enumerationof them. The author satirizes the real sentimental traveler of Sterne’s earlier imitators in the following passage (second chapter):
“It really must be a great misfortune, an exceedingly vexatious case, if no sentimental scenes occur to a sentimental traveler, but this is surely not the case; only the subjects, which offer themselves must be managed with strict economy. If one leaps over the most interesting events entirely, one is in danger, indeed, of losing everything, at least of not filling many pages.”
Likewise in the following account of a sentimental adventure, the satirical purpose is evident. He has not gone far on his journey when he is met by a troop of children; with unsentimental coldness he determines that there is a “Schlagbaum” in the way. After the children have opened the barrier, he debates with himself to which child to give his little coin, concludes, as a “sentimental traveler,” to give it to the other sex, then there is nothing left to do but to follow his instinct. He reflects long with himself whether he was right in so doing,—all of which is a deliberate jest at the hesitation with reference to trivial acts, the self-examination with regard to the minutiae of past conduct, which was copied by Sterne’s imitators from numerous instances in the works of Yorick. Satirical also is his vision in Chapter VII, in which he beholds the temple of stupidity where lofty stupidity sits on a paper throne; and of particular significance here is the explanation that the whole company who do “erhabene Dummheit” honor formerly lived in cities of the kingdom, but “now they are on journeys.” Further examples of a humorous manner akin to Sterne are: his statement that it would be a “great error” to write an account of a journey without weaving in an anecdote of a prince, his claim that he has fulfilled all duties of such a traveler save to fall in love, his resolve to accomplish it, and his formal declaration: “I, the undersigned, do vow and make promise to be in love before twenty-four hours are past.” The story with which his volume closes, “Das Ständchen,” is rather entertaining and is told graphically, easily, withoutwhim or satire, yet not without a Sterniandouble entendre.54
Another work in which sentimentalism has dwindled away to a grinning shade, and a certain irresponsible, light-hearted attitude is the sole remaining connection with the great progenitor, is probably the “Empfindsame Reise nach Schilda” (Leipzig, 1793), by Andreas Geo. Fr. von Rabenau, which is reviewed in theAllgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung(1794, I, p. 416) as a free revision of an old popular tale, “Das lustige und lächerliche Lalenburg.” The book is evidently without sentimental tinge, is a merry combination of wit and joke combined with caricature and half-serious tilting against unimportant literary celebrities.55
Certain miscellaneous works, which are more or less obviously connected with Sterne may be grouped together here.
To the first outburst of Sterne enthusiasm belongs an anonymous product, “Zween Tage eines Schwindsüchtigen, etwas Empfindsames,” von L. . . . (Hamburg, 1772), yet the editor admits that the sentiment is “not entirely like Yorick’s,” and theAltonaer Reichs-Postreuter(July 2, 1772) adds that “not at all like Yorick’s” would have been nearer the truth. This book is mentioned by Hillebrand with implication that it is the extreme example of the absurd sentimental tendency, probably judging merely from the title,56for the book is doubtless merely thoughtful, contemplative, with a minimum of overwrought feeling.
According to theFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen(1775, pp. 592–3), another product of the earlier seventies, the “Leben und Schicksale des Martin Dickius,” by Johann Moritz Schwager, is in many places a clever imitation of Sterne,57although the author claims, like Wezel in “Tobias Knaut,” not to have read Shandy until after the book was written. Surelythe digression on noses which the author allows himself is suspicious.
Blankenburg, the author of the treatise on the novel to which reference has been made, was regarded by contemporary and subsequent criticism as an imitator of Sterne in his oddly titled novel “Beyträge zur Geschichte des teutschen Reiches und teutscher Sitten,”58although the general tenor of his essay, in reasonableness and balance, seemed to promise a more independent, a more competent and felicitous performance. Kurz expresses this opinion, which may have been derived from criticisms in the eighteenth century journals. TheFrankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, July 28, 1775, does not, however, take this view; but seems to be in the novel a genuine exemplification of the author’s theories as previously expressed.59TheAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothek60calls the book didactic, a tract against certain essentially German follies. Merck, in theTeutscher Merkur,61says the imitation of Sterne is quite too obvious, though Blankenburg denies it.
Among miscellaneous and anonymous works inspired directly by Sterne, belongs undoubtedly “Die Geschichte meiner Reise nach Pirmont” (1773), the author of which claims that it was written before Yorick was translated or Jacobi published. He says he is not worthy to pack Yorick’s bag or weave Jacobi’s arbor,62but the review of theAlmanach der deutschen Musenevidently regards it as a product, nevertheless, of Yorick’s impulse. Kuno Ridderhoff in his study of Frau la Roche63says that the “Empfindsamkeit” of Rosalie in the first part of “Rosaliens Briefe” is derived from Yorick. The “Leben, Thaten und Meynungen des D. J. Pet. Menadie” (Halle, 1777–1781) is charged by theAllgemeine deutsche Bibliothekwith attempt at Shandy-like eccentricity of narrative and love of digression.64
One little volume, unmistakably produced under Yorick’s spell, is worthy of particular mention because at its time it received from the reviewers a more cordial welcome than was accorded to the rank and file of Sentimental Journeys. It is “M . . . R . . .” by E. A. A. von Göchhausen (1740–1824), which was published at Eisenach, 1772, and was deemed worthy of several later editions. Its dependence on Sterne is confessed and obvious, sometimes apologetically and hesitatingly, sometimes defiantly. The imitation of Sterne is strongest at the beginning, both in outward form and subject-matter, and this measure of indebtedness dwindles away steadily as the book advances. Göchhausen, as other imitators, used at the outset a modish form, returned to it consciously now and then when once under way, but when he actually had something to say, a message of his own, found it impracticable or else forgot to follow his model.
The absurd title stands, of course, for “Meine Reisen” and the puerile abbreviation as well as the reasons assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, a pitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest “Meine Randglossen” is quite inexplicable, since Göchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: “Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalität fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit.”65The book itself, like Sterne’s Journey, is divided into brief chapters unnumbered but named. As the author loses Yorick from sight, the chapters grow longer. Göchhausen has availed himself of an odd device to disarm criticism,—a plan used once or twice by Schummel: occasionally when the imitation is obvious, he repudiates the charge sarcastically, or anticipates with irony the critics’ censure. For example, he gives directions to his servant Pumper to pack for the journey; a reader exclaims, “a portmanteau, Mr. Author, so that everything, even to that, shall be just like Yorick,” and in the following passage the author quarrels with the critics who allow no one to travel with a portmanteau, because an Englishclergyman traveled with one. Pumper’s misunderstanding of this objection is used as a farther ridicule of the critics. When on the journey, the author converses with two poor wandering monks, whose conversation, at any rate, is a witness to their content, the whole being a legacy of the Lorenzo episode, and the author entitles the chapter: “The members of the religious order, or, as some critics will call it, a wretchedly unsuccessful imitation.” In the next chapter, “Der Visitator” (pp. 125 ff.) in which the author encounters customs annoyances, the critic is again allowed to complain that everything is stolen from Yorick, a protest which is answered by the author quite naïvely, “Yorick journeyed, ate, drank; I do too.” In “Die Pause” the author stands before the inn door and fancies that a number of spies (Ausspäher) stand there waiting for him; he protests that Yorick encountered beggars before the inn in Montreuil, a very different sort of folk. On page 253 he exclaims, “fürdiesen schreibe ich dieses Kapitel nicht und ich—beklage ihn!” Here a footnote suggests “Das übrige des Diebstahls vid. Yorick’s Gefangenen.” Similarly when he calls his servant his “La Fleur,” he converses with the critics about his theft from Yorick.
The book is opened by a would-be whimsical note, the guessing about the name of the book. The dependence upon Sterne, suggested by the motto, is clinched by reference to this quotation in the section “Apologie,” and by the following chapter, which is entitled “Yorick.” The latter is the most unequivocal and, withal, the most successful imitation of Yorick’s manner which the volume offers. The author is sitting on a sofa reading the Sentimental Journey, and the idea of such a trip is awakened in him. Someone knocks and the door is opened by the postman, as the narrator is opening his “Lorenzodose,” and the story of the poor monk is touching his heart now for the twentieth time as strongly as ever. The postman asks postage on the letter as well as his own trivial fee. The author counts over money, miscounts it, then in counting forgets all about it, puts the money away and continues the reading of Yorick. The postman interrupts him; the author grows impatient and says, “You want four groschen?” and is inexplicablyvexed at the honesty of the man who says it is only three pfennigs for himself and the four groschen for the post. Here is a direct following of the Lorenzo episode; caprice rules his behavior toward an inferior, who is modest in his request. After the incident, his spite, his head and his heart and his “ich” converse in true Sterne fashion as to the advisability of his beginning to read Yorick again. He reasons with himself concerning his conduct toward the postman, then in an apostrophe to Yorick he condemns himself for failing in this little test. This conversation occupies so much time that he cannot run after the postman, but he resolves that nothing, not even the fly that lights on his nose, shall bring him so far as to forget wherefore his friend J . . . . sent him a “Lorenzodose.” And at the end of the section there is a picture of the snuff-box with the lid open, disclosing the letters of the word “Yorick.” The “Lorenzodose” is mentioned later, and later still the author calms his indignation by opening the box; he fortifies himself also by a look at the treasure.66
Following this picture of the snuff-box is an open letter to “My dear J . . . ,” who, at the author’s request, had sent him on June 29th a “Lorenzodose.” Jacobi’s accompanying words are given. The author acknowledges the difficulty with which sometimes the self-conquest demanded by allegiance to the sentimental symbol has been won.
Yet, compared with some other imitations of the good Yorick, the volume contains but a moderate amount of lavish sentiment. The servant Pumper is a man of feeling, who grieves that the horses trod the dewdrops from the blades of grass. Cast in the real Yorick mould is the scene in which Pumper kills a marmot (Hamster); upon his master’s expostulation that God created the little beast also, Pumper is touched, wipes the blood off with his cuff and buries the animal with tenderness, indulging in a pathetic soliloquy; the whole being a variant of Yorick’s ass episode.
Marked with a similar vein of sentimentality is the narrator’s conduct toward the poor wanderer with his heavy burden: the author asserts that he has never eaten a roll, put ona white shirt, traveled in a comfortable carriage, or been borne by a strong horse, without bemoaning those who were less fortunately circumstanced. A similar and truly Sterne-like triumph of feeling over convention is the traveler’s insistence that Pumper shall ride with him inside the coach; seemingly a point derived from Jacobi’s failure to be equally democratic.67
Sterne’s emphasis upon the machinery of his story-telling, especially his distraught pretense at logical sequence in the ordering of his material is here imitated. For example: near the close of a chapter the author summons his servant Pumper, but since the chapter bore the title “Der Brief” and the servant can neither read nor write a letter, he says the latter has nothing to do in that chapter, but he is to be introduced in the following one. Yet with Yorick’s inconsequence, the narrator is led aside and exclaims at the end of this chapter, “But where is Pumper?” with the answer, “Heaven and my readers know, it was to no purpose that this chapter was so named (and perhaps this is not the last one to which the title will be just as appropriate)”, and the next chapter pursues the whimsical attempt, beginning “As to whether Pumper will appear in this chapter, about that, dear reader, I am not really sure myself.”
The whimsical, unconventional interposition of the reader, and the author’s reasoning with him, a Sterne device, is employed so constantly in the book as to become a wearying mannerism. Examples have already been cited, additional ones are numerous: the fifth section is devoted to such conversation with the reader concerning the work; later the reader objects to the narrator’s drinking coffee without giving a chapter about it; the reader is allowed to express his wonder as to what the chapter is going to be because of the author’s leap; the reader guesses where the author can be, when he begins to describe conditions in the moon. The chapter “Der Einwurf” is occupied entirely with the reader’s protest, and the last two sections are largely the record of fancied conversations with various readers concerning the nature of the book; here the author discloses himself.68Sterne-like whim is found in thechapter “Die Nacht,” which consists of a single sentence: “Ich schenke Ihnen diesen ganzen Zeitraum, denn ich habe ihn ruhig verschlafen.” Similar Shandean eccentricity is illustrated by the chapter entitled “Der Monolog,” which consists of four lines of dots, and the question, “Didn’t you think all this too, my readers?” Typographical eccentricity is observed also in the arrangement of the conversation of the ladies A., B., C., D., etc., in the last chapter. Like Sterne, our author makes lists of things; probably inspired by Yorick’s apostrophe to the “Sensorium” is our traveler’s appeal to the spring of joy. The description of the fashion of walking observed in the maid in the moon is reminiscent of a similar passage in Schummel’s journey.
Göchhausen’s own work, untrammeled by outside influence, is considerable, largely a genial satire on critics and philosophers; his stay in the moon is a kind of Utopian fancy.
The literary journals accepted Göchhausen’s work as a Yorick imitation, condemned it as such apologetically, but found much in the book worthy of their praise.69
Probably the best known novel which adopts in considerable measure the style of Tristram Shandy is Wezel’s once famous “Tobias Knaut,” the “Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts des Weisen sonst Stammler genannt, aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt.”70In this work the influence of Fielding is felt parallel to that of Sterne. The historians of literature all accord the book a high place among humorous efforts of the period, crediting the author with wit, narrative ability, knowledge of human nature and full consciousness of plan and purpose.71They unite also in the opinion that “Tobias Knaut” places Wezel in the ranks of Sterne imitators, but this can be accepted only guardedly, for in part the novel must be regarded as a satire on “Empfindsamkeit” and hence in some measure be classified as an opposing force to Sterne’s dominion,especially to the distinctively German Sterne. That this impulse, which later became the guiding principle of “Wilhelmine Arend,” was already strong in “Tobias Knaut” is hinted at by Gervinus, but passed over in silence by other writers. Kurz, following Wieland, who reviewed the novel in hisMerkur, finds that the influence of Sterne was baneful. Other contemporary reviews deplored the imitation as obscuring and stultifying the undeniable and genuinely original talents of the author.72
A brief investigation of Wezel’s novel will easily demonstrate his indebtedness to Sterne. Yet Wezel in his preface, anticipating the charge of imitation, asserts that he had not read Shandy when “Tobias” was begun. Possibly he intends this assertion as a whim, for he quotes Tristram at some length.73This inconsistency is occasion for censure on the part of the reviewers.
Wezel’s story begins, like Shandy, “ab ovo,” and, in resemblance to Sterne’s masterpiece, the connection between the condition of the child before its birth and its subsequent life and character is insisted upon. A reference is later made to this. The work is episodical and digressive, but in a more extensive way than Shandy; the episodes in Sterne’s novel are yet part and parcel of the story, infused with the personality of the writer, and linked indissolubly to the little family of originals whose sayings and doings are immortalized by Sterne. This is not true of Wezel: his episodes and digressions are much more purely extraneous in event, and nature of interest. The story of the new-found son, which fills sixty-four pages, is like a story within a story, for its connection with the Knaut family is very remote. This very story, interpolated as it is, is itself again interrupted by a seven-page digression concerning Tyrus, Alexander, Pipin and Charlemagne, which the author states is taken from the one hundred and twenty-first chapter of his “Lateinische Pneumatologie,”—a genuine Sternian pretense, reminding one of the “Tristrapaedia.” Whimsicality of manner distinctly reminiscentof Sterne is found in his mock-scientific catalogues or lists of things, as in Chapter III, “Deduktionen, Dissertationen, Argumentationen a priori und a posteriori,” and so on; plainly adapted from Sterne’s idiosyncrasy of form is the advertisement which in large red letters occupies the middle of a page in the twenty-first chapter of the second volume, which reads as follows: “Dienst-freundliche Anzeige. Jedermann, der an ernsten Gesprächen keinen Gefallen findet, wird freundschaftlich ersucht alle folgende Blätter, deren Inhalt einem Gespräche ähnlich sieht, wohlbedächtig zu überschlagen, d.h. von dieser Anzeige an gerechnet. Darauf denke ich, soll jedermanniglichvom.22.Absatze fahren können,—Cuique Suum.” The following page is blank: this is closely akin to Sterne’s vagaries. Like Sterne, he makes promise of chapter-subject.74Similarly dependent on Sterne’s example, is the Fragment in Chapter VIII, Volume III, which breaks off suddenly under the plea that the rest could not be found. Like Sterne, our author satirizes detailed description in the excessive account of the infinitesimals of personal discomfort after a carouse.75He makes also obscure whimsical allusions, accompanied bytypographicaleccentricities (I, p. 153). To be connected with the story of the Abbess of Andouillets is the humor “Man leuterirte, appelirte—irte,—irte,—irte.”
The author’s perplexities in managing the composition of the book are sketched in a way undoubtedly derived from Sterne,—for example, the beginning of Chapter IX in Volume III is a lament over the difficulties of chronicling what has happened during the preceding learned disquisition. When Tobias in anger begins to beat his horse, this is accompanied by the sighs of the author, a really audible one being put in a footnote, the whole forming a whimsy of narrative style for which Sterne must be held responsible. Similar to this is the author’s statement (Chap. XXV, Vol. II), that Lucian, Swift, Pope, Wieland and all the rest could not unite the characteristics which had just been predicated of Selmann. Like Sterne, Wezel converses with the reader aboutthe way of telling the story, indulging76in a mock-serious line of reasoning with meaningless Sternesque dashes. Further conversation with the reader is found at the beginning of Chapter III in Volume I, and in Chapter VIII of the first volume, he cries, “Wake up, ladies and gentlemen,” and continues at some length a conversation with these fancied personages about the progress of the book. Wezel in a few cases adopted the worst feature of Sterne’s work and was guilty of bad taste in precisely Yorick’s style: Tobias’s adventure with the so-called soldier’s wife, after he has run away from home, is a case in point, but the following adventure with the two maidens while Tobias is bathing in the pool is distinctly suggestive of Fielding. Sterne’s indecent suggestion is also followed in the hints at the possible occasion of the Original’s aversion to women. A similar censure could be spoken regarding the adventure in the tavern,77where the author hesitates on the edge of grossness.
Wezel joined other imitators of Yorick in using as a motif the accidental interest of lost documents, or papers: here the poems of the “Original,” left behind in the hotel, played their rôle in the tale. The treatment of the wandering boy by the kindly peasant is clearly an imitation of Yorick’s famous visit in the rural cottage. A parallel to Walter Shandy’s theory of the dependence of great events on trifles is found in the story of the volume of Tacitus, which by chance suggested the sleeping potion for Frau v. L., or that Tobias’s inability to take off his hat with his right hand was influential on the boy’s future life. This is a reminder of Tristram’s obliquity in his manner of setting up his top. As in Shandy, there is a discussion about the location of the soul. The character of Selmann is a compound of Yorick and the elder Shandy, with a tinge of satiric exaggeration, meant to chastise the thirst for “originals” and overwrought sentimentalism. His generosity and sensitiveness to human pain is like Yorick. As a boy he would empty his purse into the bosom of a poor man; but his daily life was one round of Shandean speculation, largelyabout therelationshipsof trivial things: for example, his yearly periods of investigating his motives in inviting his neighbors Herr v.**and Herr v.***every July to his home.
Wezel’s satire on the craze for originality is exemplified in the account of the “Original” (Chap. XXII, Vol. II), who was cold when others were hot, complained of not liking his soup because the plate was not full, but who threw the contents of his coffee cup at the host because it was filled to the brim, and trembled at the approach of a woman. Selmann longs to meet such an original. Selmann also thinks he has found an original in the inn-keeper who answers everything with “Nein,” greatly to his own disadvantage, though it turns out later that this was only a device planned by another character to gain advantage over Selmann himself. So also, in the third volume, Selmann and Tobias ride off in pursuit of a sentimental adventure, but the latter proves to be merely a jest of the Captain at the expense of his sentimental friend. Satire on sentimentalism is further unmistakable in the two maidens, Adelheid and Kunigunde, who weep over a dead butterfly, and write a lament over its demise. In jest, too, it is said that the Captain made a “sentimental journey through the stables.” The author converses with Ermindus, who seems to be a kind of Eugenius, a convenient figure for reference, apostrophe, and appeal. The novelist makes also, like Sterne, mock-pedantic allusions, once indeed making a long citation from a learned Chinese book. An expression suggesting Sterne is the oath taken “bey den Nachthemden aller Musen,”78and an intentional inconsequence of narration, giving occasion to conversation regarding the author’s control of his work, is the sudden passing over of the six years which Tobias spent in Selmann’s house.79
In connection with Wezel’s occupation with Sterne and Sterne products in Germany, it is interesting to consider his poem: “Die unvermuthete Nachbarschaft. Ein Gespräch,”which was the second in a volume of three poems entitled “Epistel an die deutschen Dichter,” the name of the first poem, and published in Leipzig in 1775. This slight work is written for the most part in couplets and covers twenty-three pages. Wezel represents Doktor Young, the author of the gloomy “Night Thoughts” and “Der gute Lacher,—Lorenz Sterne” as occupying positions side by side in his book-case. This proximity gives rise to a conversation between the two antipodal British authors: Sterne says: