Chapter 14

"Hoffmann was very short of stature, of yellowish complexion; and he had dark, almost black hair, growing down low upon his forehead, gray eyes which had nothing remarkable about them when they were at rest, but which assumed an uncommonly humorous and cunning expression when he blinked them, as he often did. His nose was thin and of the Roman type, and his mouth tightly closed."Notwithstanding his agility, his body seemed to be capable of endurance, for in contrast with his size his breast was high and his shoulders broad."During the earlier part of his life his dress was sufficiently elegant, without falling into foppery. The only thing he set great and special store by was his whiskers, which he carefully cut so as to form a point against the corners of his mouth...."What particularly struck the eye in his exterior was his extraordinary vivacity of movement, which rose to the highest pitch when he began to narrate anything. His manners at receiving and parting from people-- repeated quick short bendings of the neck without moving the head--had a good deal that appeared to partake of the nature of caricature, and might very readily have been taken for irony had not the impression made by his singular gestures on such occasions been softened by his cordial warmth of manner."He spoke with incredible quickness and in a somewhat hoarse voice, so that he was always very difficult to understand, especially during the last years of his life, when he had lost some of his front teeth. When relating he always spoke in quite short sentences; but when the conversation turned upon art matters and he got enthusiastic--against which, however, he seemed to guard himself--he employed long and finely rounded periods. If he were reading any of his own compositions aloud-- whether literary or official--he hurried over the unimportant parts at such a rate that his listeners had hard work to follow him; but those places which are called 'strong touches' in a picture he emphasised with almost comic pathos; he screwed up his mouth as he read, and looked round to see if his listeners caught the points, so that he often upset both his own and their equilibrium. Owing to this habit he was conscious that he did not read well, and was always uncommonly pleased if anybody else would relieve him of the task; this, however, was a ticklish thing to do, especially in the case of MSS. copy, for every word read falsely or every hesitating glance upon a word to make sure what it was went like a knife to his heart, and this effect he could not conceal. As a singer he was a fine powerful tenor."14To Bamberg Hoffmann went with high hopes of being able to realise the dreams of his life; but his fond expectations were doomed to the bitterest disappointment. His post he barely retained two months. The theatre circumstances were on an exact par with those described inWilhelm Meister(videaturthe name Melina, &c.). Hoffmann's style of directing gave offence to the Bamberg public on the very first evening; Count von Soden had placed the management of the theatre in the hands of a certain Cuno, whose affairs were so embarrassed that he never, or only seldom, paid his officials, and finally became insolvent in February, 1809. The disappointed director, embittered against the public by his failure to recommend himself to them, supported himself and his wife by composing the incidental music for the various pieces given at the theatre, at a small monthly salary (of which he received but little), and by giving music lessons in many of the best families of the town. But the war approaching that district of Germany caused many of these families to leave the place; and Hoffmann began to be in embarrassed circumstances. Then he wrote an extremely droll letter to Rochlitz, the editor of theMusicalische Zeitungat Leipsic, was taken on as a contributor, and continued to work for this magazine all the time he was in Bamberg--producing mostly reviews and criticisms of musical works, and writing fugitive pieces of musical interest. He also composed several pieces of music of various descriptions independently of those which he wrote for the theatre. Nor was his brush idle, for he received several commissions for large family pictures. Thus things went on until the summer of 1809, when a brighter cloud dawned upon him for a time. One fine summer evening he made the acquaintance of Kunz, a bookseller, publisher, and wine-dealer, at the pleasure-resort of Bug (close to Bamberg) in a characteristic manner. Kunz, an honest, jovial, good-natured giant, not lacking humour and gifted with a remarkable talent for mimicry and imitation, became little Hoffmann's fast friend--nay, his only real friend--during the whole of the time the latter remained in Bamberg. They were almost inseparable, associated in all amusements and diversions: they spent many long winter evenings together in pouring out their hearts and experiences to each other in mutual confidences, and many long summer evenings at the "Rose," where according to German custom a throng of visitors gathered to spend the hours between closing business and going to bed. In July, 1810, Holbein, Hoffmann's Glogau friend, came to undertake the management of the Bamberg theatre. This, of course, could not fail to be of advantage to Hoffmann, who, though he did not resume his post of musical director, yet received a permanent engagement to act in a multitude of departments: he was musical composer, architect, scene-painter, part comptroller of the financial arrangements, and director of the repertoire, &c. Under Holbein's management the theatre rose to a flourishing level; classic operas and good plays15were introduced with success, to which the versatile talents of Hoffmann largely contributed. In the evenings the choice spirits of Bamberg, mostly of theatrical and artistic connection, used to assemble in the "Rose," where Hoffmann was the soul of the party, his genius, wit, irony, and drollery being inexhaustible. Whilst sending out flashes of sarcastic wit or gleams of exquisite humour, he would clench a droll or clever description by quickly embodying his thoughts and words in impromptu sketches, which were handed round to the company. Music and singing, often by the actors and actresses, also added to the entertainment of the evening. Mine host of the "Rose" saw his company increased by some scores of visitors when it was known that the inimitable sharp-eyed little music-director was going to be present; and he used to send across (Hoffmann lived the other side of the street only) during the day to inquire if he intended being there in the evening. But on the whole, Hoffmann was more generally feared than loved, or even respected, by the main body of the townsfolk. His vanity was openly displayed; he must lead the conversation, and everybody else must fall in with his humour and his whim, or they might expect some marked rudeness from his bitter tongue; and the fellow had a confoundedly sharp tongue, and no less sharp a pen and pencil. The most wonderful things were said about him in the town, and to those not intimate with him or who did not know him personally, he was a man to be gazed at from a distance; it was hardly safe to seek his acquaintance, although his talk was said to be something extraordinary, and his gestures and grimaces irresistibly diverting, yet he could also launch stinging barbs and on occasion utter insulting sarcasms. In fact the outside public were wont to regard him as invested with a nimbus of wonder, or even as a sort of dæmonic being. Though these evenings were beyond all conception gay and festive, Hoffmann seldom drank to excess. Of course he drank a good deal: he had acquired the habit, as remarked, at Posen, but he was not a common drinker, who drinks for the drink's sake. It was the exhilaration it gave to his spirits and the fire it gave to his mind and brilliant parts that he found attractive in the habit.16Excursions were also made into the country, particularly to Bug; and here, as at Warsaw, the restless "quicksilver" man was everywhere.In March, 1811, he was fortunate to be introduced to Von Weber the musician, whose regard for his musical talents continued undiminished until his death; and in the same month Hoffmann paid a visit to Jean Paul at Bayreuth, and had from him a fairly cordial reception. Towards the end of the year came the intelligence that his uncle Otto Dörffer of Königsberg had died, leaving him heir to his property. But the sum Hoffmann received barely sufficed, if indeed it did suffice, to pay his debts. These had been accumulated first by Hoffmann's own want of prudence--when he had money in his purse he spent it merrily without a thought about the morrow--and secondly, by the frequent illness of his wife, the simple, homely, unassuming, good-natured creature with whom he always lived on happy terms in spite of his own unpardonable vagaries. Curiously enough, he used to labour under the odd delusion that she was gifted with keen critical taste and was an intellectual woman, though this was far from being the truth, according to the express evidence of his bosom-friend Kunz.Amongst Hoffmann's pupils was a young girl of sixteen, Julia M----; this was his favourite pupil. For her he came to conceive an overmastering passion; but whether it was more of the imagination or of the heart it would appear difficult to decide with absolute certainty. He did not know himself; "he preferred to remain a riddle to himself, a riddle which he always dreaded to have solved;" and he demanded from his friend Kunz that he should look upon him as a "sacred inexplicable hieroglyph." The girl, who was pretty and amiable, of good understanding, and of child-like deportment towards her music-master, never for a single moment dreamt of such a thing as his passion for her, and so of course she never consciously encouraged it in any way. She did not even show any signs of possessing a dreamy or poetic temperament, or seem to be inclined to sentimentality, so that Hoffmann's extraordinary infatuation can only be explained as a "fixed insanity." At any rate, it powerfully affected his mind, and left an indelible trace upon him almost down to his dying day. The day on which her betrothal to a stupid, weak-minded man, a man in all respects unworthy of her, was celebrated at the pleasure-resort of Pommersfelden (four hours from Bamberg), was one which shook Hoffmann's storm-tossed soul to its profoundest depths. He had hated himself for his weakness, and yet could not or would not manfully resolve to break through it. Now he was compelled to do so, and in a way that was galling to the utmost degree. Her marriage turned out an unhappy one; and eight years later, that is two years before his death, hearing she was in great trouble, he sent many kind messages to her through a mutual friend. These relations are detailed with striking truth and fidelity in theNachricht von den neusten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza, published in theFantasiestücke in Callot's Manier(1814-15). Perhaps, if we sufficiently compare the descriptions which he gives of various heroines in his tales (all of which were written after this time),17and bear in mind the common characteristic running through them all, namely, that he puts them before us more as individual pictures than as developments of character, giving us purely objective sketches of them after the manner of a painter--if we compare these descriptions with what we know of Hoffmann's mind and character, his restless, brilliant imagination, and the taint of sensuousness that helped to mar its purity, his keen eye for beauty in form and colour, his strong talent for seeing the things with which he came in contact through an unmistakable veil of either love or hatred, we may perhaps hazard the opinion, without risk of going far wrong, that it was his imagination-- the imagination that made up such a large part of the man--that was principally concerned in this remarkable passion; if his heart was also touched, as it would undoubtedly appear to have been, the road to it must no less undoubtedly have been found through his imagination.Early in 1812 Hoffmann was invited to a banquet at the monastery of the Capuchins; and the visit made an extraordinary impression upon him. All during dinner he could not keep his eyes off a gray-haired old monk with a fine antique head, genuine Italian face, strong-marked features, and long snow-white beard. On being introduced to Father Cyrillus he asked him innumerable questions about the secrets of monastic life, especially about those things of which "we profane have only dim guesses, no clear conceptions." They got into a poetic and exalted frame of mind, and rose just as it was getting dusk to inspect the chapel and crypt, and other objects of interest. In the crypt Hoffmann was powerfully agitated: he reverently doffed his hat, his wine-heated face became terribly pale, and he visibly showed that he was held in the thraldom of supernatural awe. When Father Cyrillus went on to point out the spot where his own mortal remains should rest, and to indulge in certain pious exhortations to them (Hoffmann and Kunz) to shed a tear upon his grave if they should come there again in after years, Hoffmann lost control of himself; he stood like a marble pillar, his face and eyes set, his hair standing on end, unable to utter a word.18Then making a gesture upwards he hurried out of the crypt with hasty uncertain steps. The impressions made upon him by this visit, and the observations he gathered, he employed in theElixiere des TeufelsandKater Murr(pt. II.), the meeting betweenKapellmeisterKreisler and Father Hilarius, as well as the description of the monastery and its situation in the latter, being invested with a fine poetic flavour.The scene in the crypt points to another side of Hoffmann's character, or rather personality, which hitherto has not been alluded to. In fact, it does not seem, as far as can be gathered from the biographical sources, that it began to be strongly developed until the Bamberg period. We have seen how that early in life he conceived a decided antipathy to the prosaic and the commonplace, and his career up to this point furnishes abundant evidence that he hated with a genuine hatred to keep in the ruts of custom and conventionality, as if bound to do so because such was prescribed by custom and conventionality. His sentiments he never concealed, and his actions harmonised, almost without exception, strictly with his sentiments; for one of his most striking and instructive characteristics was the remarkable fearlessness which he displayed no less in his actual conduct than in his habits of thought. Affectation was far from him; thorough genuineness was stamped upon all he did, showing unmistakably that it came direct from the man himself. In fact it might be said, with special significance, that his inner and his outer life--the in other cases invisible life of the soul and the visible life in action--were perfectly correlated, if not one and indivisibly the same. Being then thus honest with himself,19and detesting as he did all that was commonplace and wearying, fiat and stale and dull, it is no wonder that he should tend to fall into the opposite extreme, and should delight in the unusual, the singular, the extraordinary. Further, when we remember his fine imaginative powers, his inimitable humour, his vanity, his poetic cast of mind, his bitterness against the public for not appreciating his musical talents, and his consequent fits of fierce defiance and satiric gloom, there is still less cause for wonder when we find this propensity for seeking the uncommon and the marvellous deepening and developing in time into an unconquerable penchant for what was grotesque and eccentric, for what was fantastic, unnatural, ghostly, and horrible. He loved to occupy his fancy most with the extremes of human action, and to dive down into the most secret and unexplored recesses of human nature to bring back thence some wild startling trait that scarce any other imagination save his own would have discovered. If he ever studied human nature at all, it was along the border-lands of rationality; those misty shadowy states, such as insanity, monomania, and hypochondriacal somnambulism, where the soul hardly knows itself and loses touch of reality and almost of self- consciousness. These and the like mysterious states of being exercised a strange fascination upon his spirit. He was constantly pursued by the idea that some secret and dreadful calamity would happen to him, and his mind was often haunted by images of awful form and by "doubles" of himself and others. He even believed he saw visions with his own bodily eyes, and no expostulations of his friends could drive this belief out of his head. Not only when he was engaged in writing, but even in the midst of an ordinary conversation, at supper, or whilst drinking a social glass of wine or rum, he would suddenly exclaim, "See there-- there--that ugly little pigmy--see what capers he cuts. Pray don't incommode yourself, my little man. You are at liberty to listen to us as much as you please. Will you not approach nearer? You are welcome." (Here, and occasionally, he would accompany his words with violent muscular contortions of the face.) "Pray what will you take? Oh! don't go, my good little fellow." All this, or similar disconnected phrases, he used to utter with his eyes fixed and riveted upon the place where he affirmed he saw the vision; and if his word was doubted or he was laughed at as a stupid foolish man, he would knit his brows and with great earnestness reiterate his assertions and appeal to his wife to support him, saying, "I often see them, don't I, Mischa" (Misza, Mischa, short form for the Polish name Michaelina)?This side of Hoffmann's individuality is not only one of the most characteristic of him, it is necessary to grasp it in order to understand his written works. These remarks will also serve to make more intelligible the sensation aroused in Hoffmann the evening he was at the Capuchin monastery. It is in theElixiere des Teufelsthat these noteworthy traits find in most respects their fullest expression.To return to the historical narrative. The storyMeister Martinand the unfinishedDer Feindowe their origin to a visit which Hoffmann paid to Erlangen and Nuremberg in March, 1812. In the same year he also devoted some attention to sport, and learned to use a sportsman's rifle; but his imagination was always swifter than his rifle-charge. Asittingsparrow he did at length contrive to hit, but a flying one, or a hare, or even a deer, he never could succeed in knocking over, that is to say the real animals. Clods of earth and tufts of grass which his imagination conjured into game he could sometimes hit, but no living animal would ever be likely to approach near him, for his quick restless movements and mercurial gestures were a standing impediment to any game ever coming within shot of him unless actually driven close past his "stand," and then his excitement either made him fire too soon or else miss. Nevertheless, he enjoyed these sporting excursions, in his own eccentric fashion, immensely.20During the summer Hoffmann took up his residence for four weeks in the picturesque ruins of the castle of Altenburg, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bamberg, where, whilst living a hermit's life in company with his spouse, he painted one of the towers with frescoes illustrative of incidents in the life of Count Adalbert von Babenberg, whose residence the castle had formerly been. But he also occupied himself with literary schemes; it was in this retreat that he wrote certain sketches designed to form parts of a work which long occupied his mind, but which never came to anything, namely, theLichte Stunden eines wahnsinnigen Musikers(Rational Intervals of a Crack-brained Musician). In this he purposed to develop his opinions on the theory of music and the principles of harmony. The fragments were afterwards revised and appeared as theKreislerianain theFantasiestücke.In the next month, July, his star of adversity was again to be in the ascendant. Holbein severed his connection with the theatre, and Hoffmann lost his fixed income. Things grew darker and darker for him, until he was almost reduced to actual want; at any rate he came to be in very embarrassed circumstances. Singular to say, however, under all this cloud of adversity he maintained a shining face and a light heart behind it. This was peculiar to him; Rochlitz says "he belonged to the large class of men who can bear ill fortune better than good fortune." During this time of distress, which was a repetition of his dark days in Berlin in 1807-8, he displayed a remarkable activity in his usual pursuits. His criticism ofDon Juan, and exposition of the problem of Mozart's great opera, for which Hoffmann cherished a profound and almost extravagant admiration, owes its origin to this period.21An anecdote in relation to this will also illustrate his true passionate admiration of art. Kunz lost a child, for which he grieved sadly; two days afterwards Hoffmann advised him to go with him to seeDon Juanat night, declaring it would assuage his grief and soothe and comfort his heart. Of course Kunz looked upon the idea as preposterous. Nevertheless Hoffmann would not be denied; he exerted all his arts of persuasion to induce his friend to go. At last Kunz did go; on the way to the theatre Hoffmann discoursed of the opera in such a sensible, acute, and touching way, and so poetically and with especial reference to his friend's loss, and afterwards in the theatre he expressed his sympathy in such kind and delicate lines, whilst tears of genuine feeling stood in his eyes, that his friend was obliged to admit, "This music of the spheres, which I had heard at least a dozen times before, exerted a greater power over me than all the dictates of reason or the consolations of friends."In February, 1813, the struggling ex-director received an altogether unexpected letter from Joseph Seconda, offering him the post of music- director to his opera company at Dresden; and on April 21, 1813, Hoffmann's residence in Bamberg, which may be regarded as the turning- point in his life, came to an end. Four days later he arrived at his destination without encountering any very serious adventure on the road, although it swarmed most of the way with scouting Bashkirs, Cossacks, Prussian hussars, and Russian dragoons, and was thickly lined with heavy guns and munition-waggons,--massing for the battle of Lützen (May 2). On arriving at Dresden Hoffmann found quite unexpectedly his friend Hippel, and with him spent several right happy days. Then he was summoned by Seconda to join him at Leipsic, for Seconda seems to have spent his time between this town and Dresden. But the journey was postponed until May 20th, owing to the proximity of the contending forces and the consequent unsettled state of the country. In the intervals several sharp skirmishes between the Russians and French took place in and close around Dresden. As might be expected, Hoffmann could not check his irrepressible desire to be in the thick of the excitement; on May 9th he was standing close beside one of the town gates when a ball struck against a wall near him and in the rebound hit him on the shin; he quietly stooped down and picked up the flattened "coin," and preserved it as a memento, "being quite satisfied with that one memento, unselfishly not asking for any more," as he wrote. Even during these troubled restless days he worked at theFantasiestücke. On the way to Leipsic happened a startling occurrence, which probably served as the prototype for the catastrophe at the end ofDas Majorat(The Entail). The coach was upset and a newly married Countess was taken up dead; Hoffmann's own wife also received a severe wound on the head. Seconda's troupe only remained in Leipsic a few weeks longer; permission was given him to play in the Court theatre at Dresden; hence on 24th June we find Hoffmann on his way back to Dresden, and deriving in his characteristic fashion much amusement from a waggon heavily laden with theatrical appurtenances, living and non-living, something in the style of the carriage scene inDie Fermate.The return, however, was a return into the very hottest scene of the struggle between the Allies and Napoleon. On August 26th and 27th the fight raged furiously around the walls of Dresden; the quarter in which Hoffmann was living was shelled; the people in the house "bivouaced" under the stone stairs, trembling with fear and anxiety. Hoffmann, however, could not bear to hide away, so he slipped out by a back door and went to join one of his theatrical friends. Looking out of his window they watched the damage done by the shells, and saw one burst in the market-place below, crushing a soldier's head, tearing open the body of a passing citizen, and seriously wounding three other people not far away. Keller the actor, in his start of apprehension, let his glass fall out of his hand; "I," says Hoffmann, "drank mine empty and cried, 'What is life? Not able to bear a little bit of hot iron? Poor weak human nature! God give me calmness and courage in the midst of danger! We can get over it all better so.'" Then he returned to the anxious party under the steps, taking them wine and rum--the latter was Hoffmann's favourite drink. His presence brought the unfailing good spirits and humour which hardly ever deserted him, even under the darkest cloud of adversity. On the 29th he visited the battle-field and saw its cruel sights and its horrors. But other horrors were in store for the inhabitants of the city; for the next few weeks Dresden was besieged, and her citizens suffered from famine and pestilence and all the other usual terrible concomitants of a siege.Hoffmann's literary activity through all these weeks of turmoil was something astonishing. Whilst the thunders of cannon were making "the ground to tremble and the windows to shake," and the shells were bursting around him and the sharp crack and dull ping of bullets were incessantly striking upon his ear, this extraordinary man sat unconcerned amidst it all, absorbed in literary or musical composition, either writing hisGoldener Topf(orDer Dichter und der ComponistorDer Magnetiseur) or working out his operaUndine, which was begun in Bamberg in 1812. Even when suffering from the dysentery which raged in the place, his intellectual activity went on without being impaired. In a letter to Kunz of date Sept 8th of this year he writes, "I am, as you will observe, unwearied in cultivating the fine arts, and if to-morrow or the day after I am not blown into the air by a Prussian or Russian or Austrian shell, you will find me fat and well-favoured from art enjoyments of every sort."It was through Kunz's intervention that the Introduction prefixed to theFantasiestückewas obtained from Jean Paul, and that against Hoffmann's own wish, for all introductions except those which stand asprolegomenabefore a scientific work he hated--when a well-known writer prefixed an introduction before the work of an unknown as a sort of attestation, it seemed to him like "an incendiary letter which the young author takes into his hand in order to go and beg for applause with it." Another short passage from one of his letters to Kunz of this same summer may here be quoted as illustrating a trait in his character:--"So far about business; and now the earnest request that you will keep in mind and constantly before your eyes who and what I am, and let our business even be inspired with that spirit of cheerfulness and good- humour which always marked our intercourse with each other, and even in money matters prevented the dead, stiff, frosty mercantile style from coming to the surface. I am sure it was quite foreign to both of us, and could only excite in us such fear as we feel when set upon by an angry 'wauwau,' at which afterwards we can only laugh to each other."This unwillingness, nay almost repugnance to look at things from their serious side, was quite characteristic of him. "But these areodiosa" was a frequent phrase in his mouth.On 9th December Seconda and his opera company once more repaired to Leipsic, and Hoffmann of course along with them. There on New Year's Day he was struck down by a severe attack of inflammation in the chest, aggravated by gout, in consequence of a violent cold caught in the theatre; the case was so severe and grave that his life was at times in danger. "Podagrists are generally visited by an especial humour-- brilliant fancies; this comforts me; I experience the truth of it, since often when I feel the sharpest pangs I writecon amore," he states in a letter to Kunz (24th March). And during his illness one of his friends "found him in one of the meanest rooms in one of the meanest inns, sitting on a wretched bed, but ill protected against the cold, and with his feet drawn up by gout." A board was lying in front of him, and he appeared to be busy doing something upon it. "God bless me!" exclaimed his friend, "whatever are you doing?" "Making caricatures," replied Hoffmann laughing--"caricatures of the cursed Frenchman; I am inventing them, drawing them, and colouring them." He also wrote about this time theVision auf dem Schlachtfelde bei Dresdenand other pieces, and finished hisUndine; further, whilst in this distressing condition, he began theElixiere des Teufels, the first volume of which was completed in less than a month. This work he intended to be an illustration, or illustrative exposition of his own notions, of "a man who even at his birth was an object of contention between the powers divine and demoniacal, and his tortuous wonderful life was intended to exhibit in a clear and distinct light those secret and mysterious combinations between the human spirit and all those Higher Principles which are concealed in all Nature, and only flash out now and again--and these flashes we call chance." That he succeeded in his purpose cannot be maintained. His own individuality was too strong for him: he failed to handle his subject from a sufficiently independent standpoint. He was not the artist creating a work that was quite outside himself; he was rather the silk-worm spinning his entangling threads round about himself. The book can scarcely be read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human weakness-- a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible--all this detracts from the artistic merits of the work, but invests it with a corresponding proportion of interest as a revealer of some of the deepest secrets and hidden phases of the human soul, if one only has the courage to wade through it. The dreamy mystifications and the wild insanity and mystic passion of Brother Medardus are not unrelieved by scenes and characters which bear the stamp of bright poetic beauty and rich comic humour (e.g., the character of the Abbess of the Cistercian convent, thejäger, the description of the monastery, the scenes with Mr. Ewson and BelcampoaliasSchönfeld).For some reason which cannot be quite made out for certain, either in consequence of his continued illness or because of a quarrel with Seconda, Hoffmann found himself once more adrift in the world without an anchor to hold fast by in February, 1814. In striking contrast with his treatment by the Bamberg public, his talents as director whilst with Seconda's company were fully and adequately appreciated, both by the artistes and the orchestra, as well as by the general public. This may have been due to two causes; first, the actors and actresses were not embarrassed by his directing from the pianoforte instead of with the violin as those in Bamberg were, and in the second place his criticisms and essays on musical subjects in Rochlitz'sMusicalische Zeitunghad gained him a certain reputation as an authority in musical matters. After having refused the offer of a post as music-director in his native city of Königsberg in February (1814), he was agreeably surprised by Hippel's promise to secure his return into official life. Accordingly towards the end of September in that same year he set out for Berlin.Here ends what may be termed the second act of this very unsettled, eventful life. That this wandering aside from the career he first started upon--viz., that of law and public life to tread the thorny precarious path of art was fraught with greater consequences than can be estimated upon the unfortunate man's character, will be evident from what has been already stated. These dark years were those mainly instrumental in stifling the good germs that had once been in him, and yet more did they result in encouraging and bringing out prominently all his less praiseworthy qualities. As his works and his life are so intimately interwoven, and as his works were nearly all written subsequent to this disastrous period, it seemed desirable to dwell somewhat upon the events and circumstances of the earlier part of his life. With the view of showing that Hoffmann himself fully understood the nature and tendency of his existence in Bamberg, the following passages are quoted from a letter written to Dr. Speyer in that town in July, 1813:--"I felt in my own mind perfectly convinced that I must get out of Bamberg as soon as possible if I was not to be ruined altogether. Call vividly to mind what my life in Bamberg was from the first moment of my arrival, and you will allow that everything co-operated like an hostile demoniacal power to thrust me forcibly from the path I had chosen, or rather from art, to which I had devoted my entire existence, my very self with all my activities and energies. My position under Cuno, and even all those unbargained-for duties which were thrown upon me by Holbein, notwithstanding their many seductive attractions, but above all those scenes with----which I shall never forget and never overcome, the old man's miserable stupid platitudes, which yet in another respect had a pernicious influence, those wretched, terrible scenes with----and last of all with----, whom I always thought a parvenu ill-bred imp,--in a word, everything that went against all effort and doing and work in the higher life, in which a man raises himself on alert wing above the stinking morass of his miserable crust-begging life, engendered within me an inward dissension--an inward strife, which much sooner than any external commotion around me would have caused me to perish. Every harsh and undeserved indignity I had to suffer only increased my secret rancour, and whilst accustoming myself more and more to wine as a stimulant and so stirring up the fire to make it bum more merrily, I heeded not that this was the only way by which good could come out of the ruinous evil. In these few words, in this brief statement, I hope you will find the key to many things which may have appeared to you contradictory, if not enigmatical Buttranseant cum ceteris."22Again, it can scarcely be doubted that we have a description of his own state when he writes in theElixiere(Part II.), "I am what I appear to be, and do not appear as what I really am; to myself an unsolvable riddle, I am at variance with my own self."The change of residence to Berlin did little to improve Hoffmann's circumstances. During the first ten months he was, according to the conditions imposed, labouring to make himself acquainted with the changes that had taken place in legal procedure, and to fit himself for entering the service of the state again and resuming his interrupted career; but he received no compensation for his pains; he had to support himself as best he could by the fruits of his pen. On July 1, 1815, he was appointed to a clerkship in the department of the Minister of Justice, which post he exchanged on 1st May, 1816, for that of Councillor in the Supreme Court, being also restored to all his rights of seniority as though no break had ever taken place in his official career. The duties attaching to this office he continued to discharge with his accustomed diligence and skill until promoted in the autumn of 1821 to be a member of the Senate of Higher Appeal in the same court. Notwithstanding his sad and disappointing experiences, and the tempestuous times of his "martyr years" at Bamberg, he was not yet disgusted with the life of an artist. His hopes were not yet alienated from the calling that hovered before his mind as an ideal for so many years. Whilst battling, with somewhat less of reckless high spirits and humour, against the embarrassments and pecuniary difficulties which he had to encounter during these ten months, he was also dreaming of an appointment asKapellmeister(orchestral director) or as musical composer to a theatre. He says upon this point in a letter to Hippel, of date March 12, 1815, "I cannot anyhow cease to interest myself in art; and had I not to care for a dearly beloved wife, and were it not my duty to try and procure her a comfortable life after what she has gone through with me, I would rather become a music schoolmaster again than let myself be stamped in the juristic fulling-mill."23After more than one disappointment in his efforts to secure permanent and remunerative employment, in which efforts he was assisted by his influential friend Hippel, he became a clerk, as already stated, in the department of the Minister of Justice.In his social relations Hoffmann was more fortunate. He now enjoyed the close companionship of Hitzig again, and through Hitzig was introduced into a select circle which counted amongst its members such men as Fouqué (author ofUndine), Chamisso (ofPeter Schlemihlfame), Contessa, Koreff, Tieck, Bernhardi, Devrient, and others. The harassing tumultuous days he had passed through during the last eight years had now begun to make him gentler and more modest; his character was more tempered, and his behaviour more subdued. His good-nature too took such a prominent place in the qualities he displayed that Hitzig's children were quite delighted with their father's newly arrived friend; for them Hoffmann wrote the pleasant little fairy taleNussknacker und Mäusekönig(Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Before the end of 1815 he had finished the second part of theElixiere des Teufels, to which he himself attached no value, since its connection with the first part was broken; its author's ideas had got into another track; feelings and circumstances were changed. Still less than Schiller withDon Carlos. did Hoffmann succeed in making an artificial junction between the two parts of his work atone for its breach of artistic unity; he even said later of the first part, "I ought not to have had it printed." Besides this second part of theElixiere, he also wrote the concluding pieces of theFantasiestücke, namely,Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht, which owes its existence to Chamisso'sPeter Schlemihland to Chamisso himself, who is portrayed in the work; and alsoDie Correspondenz des Kapellmeisters Kreisler mit dem Baron Wallborn, that is Hoffmann himself and Baron von Fouqué. With the latter Hoffmann spent a happy fortnight in 1815 at his seat of Nennhausen near Rathenow; Hitzig was also of the party. In August of the following year the operaUndinewas put upon the stage. Though Fouqué's libretto did not pass without some adverse criticism, all voices were unanimous in praise of the music. Von Weber the musician especially expressed himself warmly in admiration of it, affirming that it was "one of the most talented productions of recent times;" and he especially singled out for attention its truth, its smooth-flowing melodies, and its instrumentation; it was "in truthonegush" of music. The opera was repeated more than a score of times, when unfortunately the theatre was burnt down, and Hoffmann, who lived immediately adjoining it, was almost burnt out of house and home at the same time.Through the success of this opera as well as through that of hisFantasiestücke, Hoffmann found himself celebrated. He was invited as the hero of the evening to the fashionable tea circles of Berlin, where ignorant or half-educateddilettantiaffected an interest in art matters, that was over-strained and wanting in sincerity when it was not ridiculous. For what was there the man could not do? He wrote books about which all Germany was talking, he could improvise on the pianoforte, compose operas, sketch caricatures, and streams of wit gushed from him so soon as he opened his mouth. The homage showered upon him at these gatherings flattered Hoffmann's vanity for a time, but he soon saw the motives for which he was asked to be present--to amuse the guests with his wit, to accompany the daughter or lady of the house on the piano, to discuss art matters in a becoming way now with an old grandmother, now with a grave professor, to tell diverting anecdotes, to tickle the lazy minds of those who listened with some spicy satire upon their enemies--in fact to be made a useful show of. Quickly fathoming these motives, Hoffmann proved himself readily equal to the occasion: as soon as he began to get bored, which very frequently was the case, he made the most hideous grimaces, and when he saw the company were preparing to draw something from him by way of criticism which they could carry further and perhaps repeat again as springing from their own acute judgment, he began to talk the most arrant nonsense he could think of, or to fire off some of his stinging sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but blank and embarrassed faces around him--everybody thinking the man was mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, but they had already sufficiently sown the seeds of fresh mischief in him.To have more money in his pockets than he just required for the immediate wants of the moment was always fatal to him, and no less so was the excitement attendant upon the giddy whirl of pleasure and social popularity, or what stood for such. These were rocks of danger upon which he always struck. The former led him to indulge in his reprehensible habit of drinking, and the latter soon made him upset all the systems of order and regulation. Day he turned into night and night into day. He shunned for the most part the society of Hitzig and his circle of friends, with their stimulating discussions that cultivated the mind whilst unfolding and developing the feelings, and frequented a low wine-shop and the common coarse company that was to be met with there. Hence during nearly all the rest of his life, that is, from 1816 to 1821, he spent his mornings in the discharge of his official duties at the Supreme Court (two mornings a week, Monday and Thursday), or in writing; the afternoons he generally slept, or in summer took a walk; and the evenings and nights always found him in the wine-shop of his choice; and he never liked to leave it until morning came, nor did any other engagements prevent him from putting in an appearance at his habitual haunt, even though it were past midnight before he were free. As already remarked, however, it was not to sit and drink like a sot that he gave way to this degrading habit, but to get himself "exalted" as he called it, and then when he was duly "exalted" came the firework display of wit and glowing fancy, going on hour after hour without rest or interruption for the space of five or six hours at once. If his tongue was not the medium through which he discharged the creations of his teeming imagination, his eagle eye was spying out all that was ridiculous or strikingly extraordinary, or even what was possessed of a touch of pathos or deep feeling, or he employed his hand in sketching and drawing inimitable caricatures. He never sat idle and silent, and drank steadily and stolidly as so many confirmed drinkers do. Hitzig, who was deeply grieved at this downward course of his friend and at the estrangement it had brought about between them, contrived to draw him away from his demoralising companions of the wine-shop for at least one night a week. On that evening there was a small gathering at Hoffmann's house, moderation being strictly enjoined as one of the chief regulations of the meeting. This small circle, which consisted of Hoffmann, Hitzig, Contessa, and Koreff,24and an occasional friend or two whom one of them introduced, called itself "The Serapion Brethren," this title being adopted from the fact that the first meeting was held on the night of the anniversary of that saint, according to Frau Hoffmann's Polish almanac. It is interesting to remark that amongst these occasional guests figures the great Danish poet Oehlenschläger in the year 1816. In a letter written to Hoffmann on March 26th, 1821, recommending a young fellow-countryman to him, Oehlenschläger says, "Dip him also a little in the magic sea of your humour, respected friend, and teach him how a man can be a philosopher and seer of the world under the ironical mantle of the mad-house, and what is more an amiable man as well;" and he subscribes himself, "A. Oehlenschläger, Serapion Brother."In 1817 was published the collection of tales calledDie Nachtstücke, embracingDer Sandmann(The Sand-man) andDas Majorat(The Entail), which reproduce personages and experiences belonging to the years in Königsberg;Die JesuitenkircheandDas steinerne Herz, going back to his life in Glogau;Das Gelübde, built upon a story related by his wife as connected with her native town of Posen;Das Sanctus, which was suggested by an incident in Berlin soon after Hoffmann's arrival there; anddas öde Haus, this last due to the way in which he was incessantly haunted by the appearance of a closed house in theUnter den Linden. These were mostly written in 1816 and 1817; and to them he addedIgnas Denner, which possesses some merit, but is of too gloomy and darkly unpleasant a cast to be attractive to English readers; it was written during the first days in Dresden, just after his emancipation from the Bamberg thraldom. Whilst in it he gives free rein to sombre melancholy, and dips his pen in "midnight blackness," inBerganza, written about the same time, he has poured out the cynical bitterness and scathing scorn which was then undoubtedly gnawing at his heart.Der Sandmann, though embodying reminiscences of its author's youth, also contains material derived from an incident which took place during a visit of Hoffmann's to Fouqué's country-seat near Ratenow, and Nathanael was recognised by Fouqué as meant for himself.Das Majoratis, as already stated, a lasting memorial to his old great-uncle, Vöthöry; the moral backbone of the story--the evil destiny attaching to the successors of a man whose ambition aimed at founding a powerful family by an act of injustice to his youngest son--reminds the reader forcibly of the purpose that runs through Hawthorne'sHouse with the Seven Gables. Of the in many respects admirable storyDas Gelübde-- it is to be regretted that it is marred by the dangerous nature of the subject;25it is else poetically treated and invested with a spirit of weird mysticism that would have made it rank higher than what it does. The others in the collection are of lesser merit.The next year 1818 saw no important work from Hoffmann's pen; but in 1819 appearedDie seltsame Leiden eines Theaterdirekters, a book written in the form of a dialogue, which was due to the example of his favourite, Diderot's "Rameau's Nephew" (by Goethe), and which conveys a tolerably faithful account of Hoffmann's experiences in the capacity indicated whilst in the town on the Regnitz, and indeed is useful as illustrating the condition of the German stage generally at that period. This was followed by a kind of fairy tale,Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober; as this book was generally believed to be a local satire upon persons and circumstances well known, it entailed many severe strictures and much unpleasantness upon its writer. The truth about it seems to be this: the idea--that of a sort of ugly kobold of the Handy Andy type--was suggested by a sudden fancy during an attack of fever, and in a moment of semi-delirium. On recovering his health again, Hoffmann set to work in his impetuous and hasty way, and worked out the idea in probably less than a fortnight. Similarly hisMeister Floh, one of the last and weakest caricatures he wrote, was likely to have entailed disagreeable consequences upon him, had not his last illness come before any authoritative steps could be taken. For he had made use of incidents which came to his knowledge in the official discharge of his duties, and which were of such a character that they ought to have been guarded as inviolable secrets; and he further employed certain phrases which he took from confidential papers that likewise came into his hands in consequence of his public position. In extenuation of his fault, or perhaps in explanation of it, be it remarked that his conduct does not appear to have been actuated by premeditated or deliberate malice, but to have sprung solely from his recklessness and want of prudence: the ridiculous appealed to his sense of humour so irresistibly that nothing was sacred against it, and so nothing was safe from it.In the summer of 1819 Hoffmann was ordered by his physician to visit the Silesian baths; and he derived excellent benefit from the prescription, coming home stronger and in a more healthful frame of mind than his friends had seen him for a long time. Soon after his return he was appointed on the commission selected to inquire into those secret societies and other suspicious political organisations which were particularly active about this time (Burschenschaften,Landsmannschaftenin their political aspect). Towards the end of the year he published the first two volumes of theSerapionsbrüder, the third volume following in 1820 and the fourth in 1821. These volumes contain all his tales that had appeared in various magazines and serial publications, together with others now first published, and are linked together by a running commentary, or rather they are set into it as into a framework; the Serapion Society are represented as meeting at stated intervals, when one or more of the members relate a tale. The discussions which precede and follow the tales are full of sage remarks about art and art-matters and other ripe practical wisdom, and contain perhaps more matured thought than anything else that proceeded from Hoffmann's pen. Of these numerous stories the best have been selected for translation in these two volumes, namely,Der Artushof(Arthur's Hall),Die Fermate(The Fermata),Doge und Dogaresse(Doge and Dogess),Meister Martin der Küfner und seine Gesellen(Master Martin the Cooper and his Journey men ),Das Fräulein von Scudéri(Mademoiselle de Scudéri),Spieler Glück(Gambler's Luck), andSignor Formica. The remaining twelve tales call for no special mention, except perhapsNussknacker, which has been already alluded to,Das fremde Kind, a curious mixture of reality and fairyland, andDer Zusammenhang der Dinge, which is not devoid of interest. Several of the things in this collection suggest comparison with Poe's writings for weirdness and bizarre imaginative power, though of course there are wide differences between the styles of the two writers.In March, 1820, came a letter of good wishes from Beethoven, whose music Hoffmann greatly admired; hence the letter was a source of much real pleasure to him. Spontini, the well-known writer of operas, came to Berlin in the summer of the same year and was received by Hoffmann with every mark of respect. It was indeed maintained that the composer ofUndineshowed an unworthy servility in the way in which he publicly acknowledged Spontini's talent. Whether this is true would appear doubtful; servility was not one of the author's failings, though vanity was. By Spontini's ministering to his vanity Hoffmann may have been provoked to return him the compliment in his own coin, but it is hardly likely that he went so far as to flatter against his own conviction or against his better judgment. Of his longer and more ambitious works the one which he ranked highest in merit wasLebensansichten des Katers Murr, nebst Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler, the first volume of which appeared in 1820 and the second in 1822. In respect of literary form and execution, as well as of artistic worth, this is undoubtedly Hoffmann's most finished production (i.e.of his longer works). It contains a good deal of genial, keen, and subtle satire, conveyed in the doings of Murr the tom-cat; and it is also a useful source for early biographical details, both of facts and of mental development and opinions, contained in the "waste-paper leaves" (treating of Kreisler), inserted at frequent intervals between those which carry on the life and adventures of Murr. The third volume, which was all ready and completed in the author's head, and only wanted writing down, never came to the birth. The first two volumes present to us a personification of Hoffmann's humoristic self, and the third was to culminate in Kreisler's insanity, a result brought about by the disappointments and baffling experiences he encountered in life--Hoffmann's own career, that is; and the whole was to conclude with theLichte Stunden eines wahnsinnigen Musikers,--a work which had been occupying his mind ever since he was in Bamberg, and which had not yet been executed. In 1821 was published one of his weakest things, a fairy tale,Prinzessin Brambilla, which is greatly wanting in clearness of conception, though he himself ranked it highly.The excesses in which Hoffmann had for so long indulged brought at last, as may easily be conceived, their own inevitable retribution. The first herald of the approaching physical troubles was the death (November 30, 1821) of the sagacious cat who was the real hero ofKater Murr. Hoffmann was much cut up by the death of his favourite, which he described to Hitzig with truly touching pathos.26Soon after this he was suddenly stricken down by disease--tabes dorsalis; his body gradually died, beginning at the feet and moving up to the brain, a process which lasted several weeks. But from the autumn of 1821 to April, 1822, he was cheered by the daily visits of the beloved friend of his youth, Hippel, who had come up to Berlin for that space of time. Hoffmann celebrated his 46th birthday with this true friend, and with Hitzig and others less dear. Hoffmann and Hippel were dwelling fondly upon the days of their youth and reviving old recollections, when mention was made of death and dying. Hitzig remarked in substance that "life was not the highest of all goods;" this caused the suffering Hoffmann to reply with passionate emphasis, such as he did not give way to on any other occasion during the course of the evening, "No, no--let me live, live--let me only live, no matter in what condition." "There was something awful," says Hitzig, "in the way in which these words burst from his lips." And his wish was fulfilled in terrible wise; one limb after the other failed to perform its office; his feet and hands and certain parts of his inner organism became quite dead. On the day before he died he was virtually a corpse as far as his neck; and so he was full of hope that he should soon be well again, since he "felt no more pain then." Even in this truly pitiable and helpless condition his imagination continued to pour forth a stream of the most whimsical and humorous fancies, and his cheerfulness was even greater than in the days of sound health. Hippel's departure in April was a hard blow to him. About four weeks before his death he underwent the sharp operation of being burned on each side of the spine with red-hot irons. When Hitzig entered the room after the terrible operation was over, Hoffmann cried, "Can you smell the flavour of roast meat?" and he said that whilst the doctors were burning him, the thought entered his mind that the "Minister of Police was having him leaded lest he should slip out as contraband;"--he was shrivelled up to a mummy almost, so that, owing to his small size as well, a woman could carry him in her arms. Though his body was thus a perfect wreck, his mental powers were as brilliant and keen as ever; and when his hands proved useless to him, he engaged the services of an amanuensis and went on dictating until almost the very hour of his death. In fact, the last thing he spoke about was a direction for his writer to read to him the passages where he had broken off inDer Feind; then he turned his face to the wall; the fatal rattle was heard in his throat; and all Hoffmann's earthly troubles were over (June 25, 1822).It is very remarkable that the works dictated by this extraordinary man on his deathbed show an almost total departure from the style of most of his previous tales. He no longer records his own experiences,--the events and occurrences, the sentiments and thoughts, that were peculiarly his own,--but he writes from a purely objective standpoint, andcreates. Of most of his other works it may be said that they arehe; but of these it can only be said they arehisin the sense that they owed their origin to him.Meister Johannes Wacht, one of these, is translated in Vol. II. The scene is laid in Bamberg, and the characters of the story were also said to be faithful portraits of actual people in Bamberg; yet we look in vain to find anything like Hoffmann himself in it.Des Vetters Eckfenster, though hardly a tale, is yet one of the best things Hoffmann has written. Those who know Émile Souvestre'sUn Philosophe sous les Toitswould find in this thing of Hoffmann's dying days something to their taste; it is a running commentary on personages seen in the market from the writer's own window, and each little scene brings before us a true and lifelike character in a few weighty and well-chosen words.Die Genesung, a mere sketch, arose out of the dying man's pathetic longing to see the green of the woods and the meadows.Der Feind, a fragment full of promise, is a tale of old Nuremberg of the days of Albrecht Dürer, who figures in it. Before being deprived of the use of his hands he had written several other short tales, amongst which may be mentionedDie Doppeltgänger, as being a favourite theme with Hoffmann, andDer Elementargeist, a weird, entrancing story. InDie Räuberhe gives us a weak version of Schiller's celebrated work.In Hoffmann we have an instance of a man who nearly all his life long failed to get himself placed amid the circumstances in the midst of which it was his one burning wish to be placed. He never found his right calling. He is a man ruined by circumstances (zerfahren). He was not wanting in warm natural feeling, as is proved by his close and faithful friendships with Hippel, Hitzig, and Kunz; and more than one instance of spontaneous kindness and of winning amiability are preserved by his biographer.27In youth his mind and heart were full of noble thoughts and aspirations, and he was sincerely desirous to educate himself up to better things. We see it in "May it never happen to me that my heart is not readily receptive of every communication from without, as well as for every feeling within, for the head must never injure the heart, nor must the heart ever run away with the head, that is my idea of culture," and "an excitable heart and a restless nature will never let us be quite happy, but will have a beneficial influence upon our education, upon our striving after greater perfection." His poetic temperament, and such like poetic tendencies, found no responsive sympathy amongst his relatives. Being thrust back upon himself and then having his feelings centred, when at length they did meet with sympathetic appreciation, in such a way as could only bring disappointment and unhappiness, he was early made a fit instrument for circumstances to play upon, and sorely was he buffeted by them through all the years from going to Posen right down until the day of his death. But this result must also be traced partly to the want of a parent's loving, watchful eye. In those years which are the most important for moulding a boy's character he was practically left to go his own way. True, his uncle Otto held him down to habits of industry and order; but he did nothing to encourage the boy's better and higher nature, or guide it sympathetically along the paths where it was striving to find its own way. Hoffmann had no high idea of the moral dignity of man, and at times even seemed to have but little conception of it. The relations upon which he lived with his uncle Otto and the history of his own father prevented this sense of moral worth from being planted in his mind. The germ which bore fruit in his love for extremes, for what was extraordinary and quite out of the common beaten track of life, was probably engendered in the following way. Not finding the sympathy he needed in his efforts after a better life, he turned in upon himself and began to despise the petty details of everyday existence; and several passages in his letters clearly go to show that his unhappiness and discontent were largely due to the fact of his overlooking the real enjoyment to be derived from the small occurrences and events of every day, which rightly viewed are capable of affording such a large fund of real contentment. In a letter to Hippel early in 1815, he himself states, "For my shattered life I have really only myself to blame; I ought to have shown more resolution and less levity in my earlier years. When a youth, when a boy, I ought to have devoted myself entirely to Art and never to have thought of anything else. But of course something also was due to perverse education." It must not be supposed, however, from the above that he was deficient in firmness or strength of will. The perseverance with which he worked through his early examinations, as well as the energy and zeal he brought to bear upon his official duties, contradict such supposition. Specific instances might also be quoted did space permit; it will be enough to recall his resolve never to gamble. It is stated that he avowed his intention to amend his ways if he recovered from his last fatal illness. The real key to his wayward character lies in the fact just alluded to, that he had no conception of the supreme importance of moral worth. This was the backbone wanting in his character; and for this reason we fail to detect any steady sterling course of action through all the vicissitudes of his life. If he had a ruling motive it was capricious humour; at any rate it swayed him more than anything else. On one day he would laugh at what had annoyed him on the day preceding, or be delighted to-day at what he had greeted yesterday with irony. Nobody knew better than himself how he was tyrannised over by his changeable moods. "My capricious humour (Laune) is the first weather-prophet I know, and if I had the good-will and were bored I could make an almanac," is one of his expressions; and another runs, "You know that my capricious humour is oftenMaître de Flaisir." Besides being thus the creature of caprice, he was also impulsive, impetuous, and wont to act with impassioned haste. These qualities were revealed in his restless vivacious eyes, in his movements and gestures, and even broke out in extraordinary grimaces, as already remarked. And just in the same fervid eager way he often seized upon an idea or a pleasing fancy, till it took complete possession of him; he could not rid himself of it. With this was combined his remarkable quickness of perception and comprehension; a single gesture or phrase was often sufficient to enable him to grasp a character. What he hated above all things was dulness--ennui; this never failed to provoke his keenest irony and bitterest sarcasms. In his last years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage.An old German poet says, "Seht das Loos der Menschheit--Heute Freude, Morgen Leid;"28but with Hoffmann joy and pain were frequently more closely allied than this even: whilst the jest was on his lips the sting would be in his heart. In this, as well as in several other features of his stormy career, he did indeed resemble his countryman Heine. One of the necessities of his nature was human society--not simply society, however, but people who could appreciate him, who could fall in with his moods, and either follow intelligently when he led, or lend him a stimulating and helping hand to keep the ball of wit and jollity rolling. An illustration of this is found in the fact that he "did not love the society of women. If he could not mystify them, or draw them into the circle of his fantasies, or discover in them any decided talent for comicality, he preferred the society of men." Amongst women, however, after those of the class just named, he was most interested in young and pretty girls, being attracted by the charm of their fresh beauty, not by the charm of their mind. Learned women he hated.Hoffmann was, as already observed, the child of extremes. These were revealed not only in his life and action, but also in his writings; for his writings are the man. Indeed German critics have said that his works, particularly theFantasiestücke, are "lyrics in prose." What they mean by this phrase is chiefly that the things he wrote exhibit subjective phrases of his nature, and are disconnected, or rather not connected, not balanced parts of a systematic whole. This is true so far as it is true that Hoffmann never did complete a long work, except theElixiere, and this work, as there has been occasion to point out, consists of two disjointed parts. One of the things that strike us most in reading his books is the peculiar mixture of the real and the unreal, of matters appertaining to actual life and of fantasies born only of the imagination. Very often the imagination would be called by most people a diseased imagination; but it is not always so, sometimes it is the poet's imagination. Hence, from this blending or close alternation of reality with what is not of the earth--hence came his love for fairy tales, tales in which we meet with kobolds, imps, witches, little monsters of all kinds--the spirits and apparitions in fact which used to haunt his excited fancy in such a strange way. Several of these are poetic creatures, whom he handles in a light, graceful, and pleasing style (Goldener Topf,Nussknacker,Das fremde Kind, &c.); others, on the other hand, are drawn in horrible and unearthly colours and awaken the sentiments of awe and dread. What he loved especially to dwell upon was the "night side of natural science," the puzzling relations between the psychic and the physical principles both in man and in Nature. Hence such states as somnambulism, magnetism, dreams, dark forebodings of the terrible, inhuman passions, and such things as automata and vampyres, had for him an insuperable attraction. Insanity was a mystery that haunted his thoughts for years: it figures largely inDie ElixiereandDer Sandmann; and in the third part ofKater Murrit was his intention to represent Kreisler's battle with adverse circumstances as culminating in insanity. Handling these, and states and situations equally hideous, fantastic, and grotesque, with extraordinary clearness and precision both of thought and of language, considering the often misty nature of the subjects he treats of, and pouring upon the vivid pictures he conjures up the brightness of his wit and the exuberant gaiety and grace of his fancy, he succeeds in creating scenes, situations, and characters which seem verily instinct with real life. This end was attained principally by the true genius he displayed in perception, apprehension, and description. His graphic descriptive power is that which mainly procured him his wide-reaching fame during his own lifetime, not only in Germany but also in France, and is that which principally gives to his works whatever permanent value they may possess. With a painter's eye he grasps a character or a scene by a few of its more prominent and essential features, and with a painter's hand and eye he sketches them in a few telling strokes. The reader must not look to find in Hoffmann any clever or subtle analysis of the deeper motives that work towards the development of character; all that Hoffmann can give him will be talentedpictures. He himself lays down his canon of literary spirit in the introduction to the first volume of theSerapionsbrüder--

"Hoffmann was very short of stature, of yellowish complexion; and he had dark, almost black hair, growing down low upon his forehead, gray eyes which had nothing remarkable about them when they were at rest, but which assumed an uncommonly humorous and cunning expression when he blinked them, as he often did. His nose was thin and of the Roman type, and his mouth tightly closed."Notwithstanding his agility, his body seemed to be capable of endurance, for in contrast with his size his breast was high and his shoulders broad."During the earlier part of his life his dress was sufficiently elegant, without falling into foppery. The only thing he set great and special store by was his whiskers, which he carefully cut so as to form a point against the corners of his mouth...."What particularly struck the eye in his exterior was his extraordinary vivacity of movement, which rose to the highest pitch when he began to narrate anything. His manners at receiving and parting from people-- repeated quick short bendings of the neck without moving the head--had a good deal that appeared to partake of the nature of caricature, and might very readily have been taken for irony had not the impression made by his singular gestures on such occasions been softened by his cordial warmth of manner."He spoke with incredible quickness and in a somewhat hoarse voice, so that he was always very difficult to understand, especially during the last years of his life, when he had lost some of his front teeth. When relating he always spoke in quite short sentences; but when the conversation turned upon art matters and he got enthusiastic--against which, however, he seemed to guard himself--he employed long and finely rounded periods. If he were reading any of his own compositions aloud-- whether literary or official--he hurried over the unimportant parts at such a rate that his listeners had hard work to follow him; but those places which are called 'strong touches' in a picture he emphasised with almost comic pathos; he screwed up his mouth as he read, and looked round to see if his listeners caught the points, so that he often upset both his own and their equilibrium. Owing to this habit he was conscious that he did not read well, and was always uncommonly pleased if anybody else would relieve him of the task; this, however, was a ticklish thing to do, especially in the case of MSS. copy, for every word read falsely or every hesitating glance upon a word to make sure what it was went like a knife to his heart, and this effect he could not conceal. As a singer he was a fine powerful tenor."14

"Hoffmann was very short of stature, of yellowish complexion; and he had dark, almost black hair, growing down low upon his forehead, gray eyes which had nothing remarkable about them when they were at rest, but which assumed an uncommonly humorous and cunning expression when he blinked them, as he often did. His nose was thin and of the Roman type, and his mouth tightly closed.

"Notwithstanding his agility, his body seemed to be capable of endurance, for in contrast with his size his breast was high and his shoulders broad.

"During the earlier part of his life his dress was sufficiently elegant, without falling into foppery. The only thing he set great and special store by was his whiskers, which he carefully cut so as to form a point against the corners of his mouth....

"What particularly struck the eye in his exterior was his extraordinary vivacity of movement, which rose to the highest pitch when he began to narrate anything. His manners at receiving and parting from people-- repeated quick short bendings of the neck without moving the head--had a good deal that appeared to partake of the nature of caricature, and might very readily have been taken for irony had not the impression made by his singular gestures on such occasions been softened by his cordial warmth of manner.

"He spoke with incredible quickness and in a somewhat hoarse voice, so that he was always very difficult to understand, especially during the last years of his life, when he had lost some of his front teeth. When relating he always spoke in quite short sentences; but when the conversation turned upon art matters and he got enthusiastic--against which, however, he seemed to guard himself--he employed long and finely rounded periods. If he were reading any of his own compositions aloud-- whether literary or official--he hurried over the unimportant parts at such a rate that his listeners had hard work to follow him; but those places which are called 'strong touches' in a picture he emphasised with almost comic pathos; he screwed up his mouth as he read, and looked round to see if his listeners caught the points, so that he often upset both his own and their equilibrium. Owing to this habit he was conscious that he did not read well, and was always uncommonly pleased if anybody else would relieve him of the task; this, however, was a ticklish thing to do, especially in the case of MSS. copy, for every word read falsely or every hesitating glance upon a word to make sure what it was went like a knife to his heart, and this effect he could not conceal. As a singer he was a fine powerful tenor."14

To Bamberg Hoffmann went with high hopes of being able to realise the dreams of his life; but his fond expectations were doomed to the bitterest disappointment. His post he barely retained two months. The theatre circumstances were on an exact par with those described inWilhelm Meister(videaturthe name Melina, &c.). Hoffmann's style of directing gave offence to the Bamberg public on the very first evening; Count von Soden had placed the management of the theatre in the hands of a certain Cuno, whose affairs were so embarrassed that he never, or only seldom, paid his officials, and finally became insolvent in February, 1809. The disappointed director, embittered against the public by his failure to recommend himself to them, supported himself and his wife by composing the incidental music for the various pieces given at the theatre, at a small monthly salary (of which he received but little), and by giving music lessons in many of the best families of the town. But the war approaching that district of Germany caused many of these families to leave the place; and Hoffmann began to be in embarrassed circumstances. Then he wrote an extremely droll letter to Rochlitz, the editor of theMusicalische Zeitungat Leipsic, was taken on as a contributor, and continued to work for this magazine all the time he was in Bamberg--producing mostly reviews and criticisms of musical works, and writing fugitive pieces of musical interest. He also composed several pieces of music of various descriptions independently of those which he wrote for the theatre. Nor was his brush idle, for he received several commissions for large family pictures. Thus things went on until the summer of 1809, when a brighter cloud dawned upon him for a time. One fine summer evening he made the acquaintance of Kunz, a bookseller, publisher, and wine-dealer, at the pleasure-resort of Bug (close to Bamberg) in a characteristic manner. Kunz, an honest, jovial, good-natured giant, not lacking humour and gifted with a remarkable talent for mimicry and imitation, became little Hoffmann's fast friend--nay, his only real friend--during the whole of the time the latter remained in Bamberg. They were almost inseparable, associated in all amusements and diversions: they spent many long winter evenings together in pouring out their hearts and experiences to each other in mutual confidences, and many long summer evenings at the "Rose," where according to German custom a throng of visitors gathered to spend the hours between closing business and going to bed. In July, 1810, Holbein, Hoffmann's Glogau friend, came to undertake the management of the Bamberg theatre. This, of course, could not fail to be of advantage to Hoffmann, who, though he did not resume his post of musical director, yet received a permanent engagement to act in a multitude of departments: he was musical composer, architect, scene-painter, part comptroller of the financial arrangements, and director of the repertoire, &c. Under Holbein's management the theatre rose to a flourishing level; classic operas and good plays15were introduced with success, to which the versatile talents of Hoffmann largely contributed. In the evenings the choice spirits of Bamberg, mostly of theatrical and artistic connection, used to assemble in the "Rose," where Hoffmann was the soul of the party, his genius, wit, irony, and drollery being inexhaustible. Whilst sending out flashes of sarcastic wit or gleams of exquisite humour, he would clench a droll or clever description by quickly embodying his thoughts and words in impromptu sketches, which were handed round to the company. Music and singing, often by the actors and actresses, also added to the entertainment of the evening. Mine host of the "Rose" saw his company increased by some scores of visitors when it was known that the inimitable sharp-eyed little music-director was going to be present; and he used to send across (Hoffmann lived the other side of the street only) during the day to inquire if he intended being there in the evening. But on the whole, Hoffmann was more generally feared than loved, or even respected, by the main body of the townsfolk. His vanity was openly displayed; he must lead the conversation, and everybody else must fall in with his humour and his whim, or they might expect some marked rudeness from his bitter tongue; and the fellow had a confoundedly sharp tongue, and no less sharp a pen and pencil. The most wonderful things were said about him in the town, and to those not intimate with him or who did not know him personally, he was a man to be gazed at from a distance; it was hardly safe to seek his acquaintance, although his talk was said to be something extraordinary, and his gestures and grimaces irresistibly diverting, yet he could also launch stinging barbs and on occasion utter insulting sarcasms. In fact the outside public were wont to regard him as invested with a nimbus of wonder, or even as a sort of dæmonic being. Though these evenings were beyond all conception gay and festive, Hoffmann seldom drank to excess. Of course he drank a good deal: he had acquired the habit, as remarked, at Posen, but he was not a common drinker, who drinks for the drink's sake. It was the exhilaration it gave to his spirits and the fire it gave to his mind and brilliant parts that he found attractive in the habit.16Excursions were also made into the country, particularly to Bug; and here, as at Warsaw, the restless "quicksilver" man was everywhere.

In March, 1811, he was fortunate to be introduced to Von Weber the musician, whose regard for his musical talents continued undiminished until his death; and in the same month Hoffmann paid a visit to Jean Paul at Bayreuth, and had from him a fairly cordial reception. Towards the end of the year came the intelligence that his uncle Otto Dörffer of Königsberg had died, leaving him heir to his property. But the sum Hoffmann received barely sufficed, if indeed it did suffice, to pay his debts. These had been accumulated first by Hoffmann's own want of prudence--when he had money in his purse he spent it merrily without a thought about the morrow--and secondly, by the frequent illness of his wife, the simple, homely, unassuming, good-natured creature with whom he always lived on happy terms in spite of his own unpardonable vagaries. Curiously enough, he used to labour under the odd delusion that she was gifted with keen critical taste and was an intellectual woman, though this was far from being the truth, according to the express evidence of his bosom-friend Kunz.

Amongst Hoffmann's pupils was a young girl of sixteen, Julia M----; this was his favourite pupil. For her he came to conceive an overmastering passion; but whether it was more of the imagination or of the heart it would appear difficult to decide with absolute certainty. He did not know himself; "he preferred to remain a riddle to himself, a riddle which he always dreaded to have solved;" and he demanded from his friend Kunz that he should look upon him as a "sacred inexplicable hieroglyph." The girl, who was pretty and amiable, of good understanding, and of child-like deportment towards her music-master, never for a single moment dreamt of such a thing as his passion for her, and so of course she never consciously encouraged it in any way. She did not even show any signs of possessing a dreamy or poetic temperament, or seem to be inclined to sentimentality, so that Hoffmann's extraordinary infatuation can only be explained as a "fixed insanity." At any rate, it powerfully affected his mind, and left an indelible trace upon him almost down to his dying day. The day on which her betrothal to a stupid, weak-minded man, a man in all respects unworthy of her, was celebrated at the pleasure-resort of Pommersfelden (four hours from Bamberg), was one which shook Hoffmann's storm-tossed soul to its profoundest depths. He had hated himself for his weakness, and yet could not or would not manfully resolve to break through it. Now he was compelled to do so, and in a way that was galling to the utmost degree. Her marriage turned out an unhappy one; and eight years later, that is two years before his death, hearing she was in great trouble, he sent many kind messages to her through a mutual friend. These relations are detailed with striking truth and fidelity in theNachricht von den neusten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza, published in theFantasiestücke in Callot's Manier(1814-15). Perhaps, if we sufficiently compare the descriptions which he gives of various heroines in his tales (all of which were written after this time),17and bear in mind the common characteristic running through them all, namely, that he puts them before us more as individual pictures than as developments of character, giving us purely objective sketches of them after the manner of a painter--if we compare these descriptions with what we know of Hoffmann's mind and character, his restless, brilliant imagination, and the taint of sensuousness that helped to mar its purity, his keen eye for beauty in form and colour, his strong talent for seeing the things with which he came in contact through an unmistakable veil of either love or hatred, we may perhaps hazard the opinion, without risk of going far wrong, that it was his imagination-- the imagination that made up such a large part of the man--that was principally concerned in this remarkable passion; if his heart was also touched, as it would undoubtedly appear to have been, the road to it must no less undoubtedly have been found through his imagination.

Early in 1812 Hoffmann was invited to a banquet at the monastery of the Capuchins; and the visit made an extraordinary impression upon him. All during dinner he could not keep his eyes off a gray-haired old monk with a fine antique head, genuine Italian face, strong-marked features, and long snow-white beard. On being introduced to Father Cyrillus he asked him innumerable questions about the secrets of monastic life, especially about those things of which "we profane have only dim guesses, no clear conceptions." They got into a poetic and exalted frame of mind, and rose just as it was getting dusk to inspect the chapel and crypt, and other objects of interest. In the crypt Hoffmann was powerfully agitated: he reverently doffed his hat, his wine-heated face became terribly pale, and he visibly showed that he was held in the thraldom of supernatural awe. When Father Cyrillus went on to point out the spot where his own mortal remains should rest, and to indulge in certain pious exhortations to them (Hoffmann and Kunz) to shed a tear upon his grave if they should come there again in after years, Hoffmann lost control of himself; he stood like a marble pillar, his face and eyes set, his hair standing on end, unable to utter a word.18Then making a gesture upwards he hurried out of the crypt with hasty uncertain steps. The impressions made upon him by this visit, and the observations he gathered, he employed in theElixiere des TeufelsandKater Murr(pt. II.), the meeting betweenKapellmeisterKreisler and Father Hilarius, as well as the description of the monastery and its situation in the latter, being invested with a fine poetic flavour.

The scene in the crypt points to another side of Hoffmann's character, or rather personality, which hitherto has not been alluded to. In fact, it does not seem, as far as can be gathered from the biographical sources, that it began to be strongly developed until the Bamberg period. We have seen how that early in life he conceived a decided antipathy to the prosaic and the commonplace, and his career up to this point furnishes abundant evidence that he hated with a genuine hatred to keep in the ruts of custom and conventionality, as if bound to do so because such was prescribed by custom and conventionality. His sentiments he never concealed, and his actions harmonised, almost without exception, strictly with his sentiments; for one of his most striking and instructive characteristics was the remarkable fearlessness which he displayed no less in his actual conduct than in his habits of thought. Affectation was far from him; thorough genuineness was stamped upon all he did, showing unmistakably that it came direct from the man himself. In fact it might be said, with special significance, that his inner and his outer life--the in other cases invisible life of the soul and the visible life in action--were perfectly correlated, if not one and indivisibly the same. Being then thus honest with himself,19and detesting as he did all that was commonplace and wearying, fiat and stale and dull, it is no wonder that he should tend to fall into the opposite extreme, and should delight in the unusual, the singular, the extraordinary. Further, when we remember his fine imaginative powers, his inimitable humour, his vanity, his poetic cast of mind, his bitterness against the public for not appreciating his musical talents, and his consequent fits of fierce defiance and satiric gloom, there is still less cause for wonder when we find this propensity for seeking the uncommon and the marvellous deepening and developing in time into an unconquerable penchant for what was grotesque and eccentric, for what was fantastic, unnatural, ghostly, and horrible. He loved to occupy his fancy most with the extremes of human action, and to dive down into the most secret and unexplored recesses of human nature to bring back thence some wild startling trait that scarce any other imagination save his own would have discovered. If he ever studied human nature at all, it was along the border-lands of rationality; those misty shadowy states, such as insanity, monomania, and hypochondriacal somnambulism, where the soul hardly knows itself and loses touch of reality and almost of self- consciousness. These and the like mysterious states of being exercised a strange fascination upon his spirit. He was constantly pursued by the idea that some secret and dreadful calamity would happen to him, and his mind was often haunted by images of awful form and by "doubles" of himself and others. He even believed he saw visions with his own bodily eyes, and no expostulations of his friends could drive this belief out of his head. Not only when he was engaged in writing, but even in the midst of an ordinary conversation, at supper, or whilst drinking a social glass of wine or rum, he would suddenly exclaim, "See there-- there--that ugly little pigmy--see what capers he cuts. Pray don't incommode yourself, my little man. You are at liberty to listen to us as much as you please. Will you not approach nearer? You are welcome." (Here, and occasionally, he would accompany his words with violent muscular contortions of the face.) "Pray what will you take? Oh! don't go, my good little fellow." All this, or similar disconnected phrases, he used to utter with his eyes fixed and riveted upon the place where he affirmed he saw the vision; and if his word was doubted or he was laughed at as a stupid foolish man, he would knit his brows and with great earnestness reiterate his assertions and appeal to his wife to support him, saying, "I often see them, don't I, Mischa" (Misza, Mischa, short form for the Polish name Michaelina)?

This side of Hoffmann's individuality is not only one of the most characteristic of him, it is necessary to grasp it in order to understand his written works. These remarks will also serve to make more intelligible the sensation aroused in Hoffmann the evening he was at the Capuchin monastery. It is in theElixiere des Teufelsthat these noteworthy traits find in most respects their fullest expression.

To return to the historical narrative. The storyMeister Martinand the unfinishedDer Feindowe their origin to a visit which Hoffmann paid to Erlangen and Nuremberg in March, 1812. In the same year he also devoted some attention to sport, and learned to use a sportsman's rifle; but his imagination was always swifter than his rifle-charge. Asittingsparrow he did at length contrive to hit, but a flying one, or a hare, or even a deer, he never could succeed in knocking over, that is to say the real animals. Clods of earth and tufts of grass which his imagination conjured into game he could sometimes hit, but no living animal would ever be likely to approach near him, for his quick restless movements and mercurial gestures were a standing impediment to any game ever coming within shot of him unless actually driven close past his "stand," and then his excitement either made him fire too soon or else miss. Nevertheless, he enjoyed these sporting excursions, in his own eccentric fashion, immensely.20

During the summer Hoffmann took up his residence for four weeks in the picturesque ruins of the castle of Altenburg, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bamberg, where, whilst living a hermit's life in company with his spouse, he painted one of the towers with frescoes illustrative of incidents in the life of Count Adalbert von Babenberg, whose residence the castle had formerly been. But he also occupied himself with literary schemes; it was in this retreat that he wrote certain sketches designed to form parts of a work which long occupied his mind, but which never came to anything, namely, theLichte Stunden eines wahnsinnigen Musikers(Rational Intervals of a Crack-brained Musician). In this he purposed to develop his opinions on the theory of music and the principles of harmony. The fragments were afterwards revised and appeared as theKreislerianain theFantasiestücke.

In the next month, July, his star of adversity was again to be in the ascendant. Holbein severed his connection with the theatre, and Hoffmann lost his fixed income. Things grew darker and darker for him, until he was almost reduced to actual want; at any rate he came to be in very embarrassed circumstances. Singular to say, however, under all this cloud of adversity he maintained a shining face and a light heart behind it. This was peculiar to him; Rochlitz says "he belonged to the large class of men who can bear ill fortune better than good fortune." During this time of distress, which was a repetition of his dark days in Berlin in 1807-8, he displayed a remarkable activity in his usual pursuits. His criticism ofDon Juan, and exposition of the problem of Mozart's great opera, for which Hoffmann cherished a profound and almost extravagant admiration, owes its origin to this period.21An anecdote in relation to this will also illustrate his true passionate admiration of art. Kunz lost a child, for which he grieved sadly; two days afterwards Hoffmann advised him to go with him to seeDon Juanat night, declaring it would assuage his grief and soothe and comfort his heart. Of course Kunz looked upon the idea as preposterous. Nevertheless Hoffmann would not be denied; he exerted all his arts of persuasion to induce his friend to go. At last Kunz did go; on the way to the theatre Hoffmann discoursed of the opera in such a sensible, acute, and touching way, and so poetically and with especial reference to his friend's loss, and afterwards in the theatre he expressed his sympathy in such kind and delicate lines, whilst tears of genuine feeling stood in his eyes, that his friend was obliged to admit, "This music of the spheres, which I had heard at least a dozen times before, exerted a greater power over me than all the dictates of reason or the consolations of friends."

In February, 1813, the struggling ex-director received an altogether unexpected letter from Joseph Seconda, offering him the post of music- director to his opera company at Dresden; and on April 21, 1813, Hoffmann's residence in Bamberg, which may be regarded as the turning- point in his life, came to an end. Four days later he arrived at his destination without encountering any very serious adventure on the road, although it swarmed most of the way with scouting Bashkirs, Cossacks, Prussian hussars, and Russian dragoons, and was thickly lined with heavy guns and munition-waggons,--massing for the battle of Lützen (May 2). On arriving at Dresden Hoffmann found quite unexpectedly his friend Hippel, and with him spent several right happy days. Then he was summoned by Seconda to join him at Leipsic, for Seconda seems to have spent his time between this town and Dresden. But the journey was postponed until May 20th, owing to the proximity of the contending forces and the consequent unsettled state of the country. In the intervals several sharp skirmishes between the Russians and French took place in and close around Dresden. As might be expected, Hoffmann could not check his irrepressible desire to be in the thick of the excitement; on May 9th he was standing close beside one of the town gates when a ball struck against a wall near him and in the rebound hit him on the shin; he quietly stooped down and picked up the flattened "coin," and preserved it as a memento, "being quite satisfied with that one memento, unselfishly not asking for any more," as he wrote. Even during these troubled restless days he worked at theFantasiestücke. On the way to Leipsic happened a startling occurrence, which probably served as the prototype for the catastrophe at the end ofDas Majorat(The Entail). The coach was upset and a newly married Countess was taken up dead; Hoffmann's own wife also received a severe wound on the head. Seconda's troupe only remained in Leipsic a few weeks longer; permission was given him to play in the Court theatre at Dresden; hence on 24th June we find Hoffmann on his way back to Dresden, and deriving in his characteristic fashion much amusement from a waggon heavily laden with theatrical appurtenances, living and non-living, something in the style of the carriage scene inDie Fermate.

The return, however, was a return into the very hottest scene of the struggle between the Allies and Napoleon. On August 26th and 27th the fight raged furiously around the walls of Dresden; the quarter in which Hoffmann was living was shelled; the people in the house "bivouaced" under the stone stairs, trembling with fear and anxiety. Hoffmann, however, could not bear to hide away, so he slipped out by a back door and went to join one of his theatrical friends. Looking out of his window they watched the damage done by the shells, and saw one burst in the market-place below, crushing a soldier's head, tearing open the body of a passing citizen, and seriously wounding three other people not far away. Keller the actor, in his start of apprehension, let his glass fall out of his hand; "I," says Hoffmann, "drank mine empty and cried, 'What is life? Not able to bear a little bit of hot iron? Poor weak human nature! God give me calmness and courage in the midst of danger! We can get over it all better so.'" Then he returned to the anxious party under the steps, taking them wine and rum--the latter was Hoffmann's favourite drink. His presence brought the unfailing good spirits and humour which hardly ever deserted him, even under the darkest cloud of adversity. On the 29th he visited the battle-field and saw its cruel sights and its horrors. But other horrors were in store for the inhabitants of the city; for the next few weeks Dresden was besieged, and her citizens suffered from famine and pestilence and all the other usual terrible concomitants of a siege.

Hoffmann's literary activity through all these weeks of turmoil was something astonishing. Whilst the thunders of cannon were making "the ground to tremble and the windows to shake," and the shells were bursting around him and the sharp crack and dull ping of bullets were incessantly striking upon his ear, this extraordinary man sat unconcerned amidst it all, absorbed in literary or musical composition, either writing hisGoldener Topf(orDer Dichter und der ComponistorDer Magnetiseur) or working out his operaUndine, which was begun in Bamberg in 1812. Even when suffering from the dysentery which raged in the place, his intellectual activity went on without being impaired. In a letter to Kunz of date Sept 8th of this year he writes, "I am, as you will observe, unwearied in cultivating the fine arts, and if to-morrow or the day after I am not blown into the air by a Prussian or Russian or Austrian shell, you will find me fat and well-favoured from art enjoyments of every sort."

It was through Kunz's intervention that the Introduction prefixed to theFantasiestückewas obtained from Jean Paul, and that against Hoffmann's own wish, for all introductions except those which stand asprolegomenabefore a scientific work he hated--when a well-known writer prefixed an introduction before the work of an unknown as a sort of attestation, it seemed to him like "an incendiary letter which the young author takes into his hand in order to go and beg for applause with it." Another short passage from one of his letters to Kunz of this same summer may here be quoted as illustrating a trait in his character:--

"So far about business; and now the earnest request that you will keep in mind and constantly before your eyes who and what I am, and let our business even be inspired with that spirit of cheerfulness and good- humour which always marked our intercourse with each other, and even in money matters prevented the dead, stiff, frosty mercantile style from coming to the surface. I am sure it was quite foreign to both of us, and could only excite in us such fear as we feel when set upon by an angry 'wauwau,' at which afterwards we can only laugh to each other."

"So far about business; and now the earnest request that you will keep in mind and constantly before your eyes who and what I am, and let our business even be inspired with that spirit of cheerfulness and good- humour which always marked our intercourse with each other, and even in money matters prevented the dead, stiff, frosty mercantile style from coming to the surface. I am sure it was quite foreign to both of us, and could only excite in us such fear as we feel when set upon by an angry 'wauwau,' at which afterwards we can only laugh to each other."

This unwillingness, nay almost repugnance to look at things from their serious side, was quite characteristic of him. "But these areodiosa" was a frequent phrase in his mouth.

On 9th December Seconda and his opera company once more repaired to Leipsic, and Hoffmann of course along with them. There on New Year's Day he was struck down by a severe attack of inflammation in the chest, aggravated by gout, in consequence of a violent cold caught in the theatre; the case was so severe and grave that his life was at times in danger. "Podagrists are generally visited by an especial humour-- brilliant fancies; this comforts me; I experience the truth of it, since often when I feel the sharpest pangs I writecon amore," he states in a letter to Kunz (24th March). And during his illness one of his friends "found him in one of the meanest rooms in one of the meanest inns, sitting on a wretched bed, but ill protected against the cold, and with his feet drawn up by gout." A board was lying in front of him, and he appeared to be busy doing something upon it. "God bless me!" exclaimed his friend, "whatever are you doing?" "Making caricatures," replied Hoffmann laughing--"caricatures of the cursed Frenchman; I am inventing them, drawing them, and colouring them." He also wrote about this time theVision auf dem Schlachtfelde bei Dresdenand other pieces, and finished hisUndine; further, whilst in this distressing condition, he began theElixiere des Teufels, the first volume of which was completed in less than a month. This work he intended to be an illustration, or illustrative exposition of his own notions, of "a man who even at his birth was an object of contention between the powers divine and demoniacal, and his tortuous wonderful life was intended to exhibit in a clear and distinct light those secret and mysterious combinations between the human spirit and all those Higher Principles which are concealed in all Nature, and only flash out now and again--and these flashes we call chance." That he succeeded in his purpose cannot be maintained. His own individuality was too strong for him: he failed to handle his subject from a sufficiently independent standpoint. He was not the artist creating a work that was quite outside himself; he was rather the silk-worm spinning his entangling threads round about himself. The book can scarcely be read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human weakness-- a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible--all this detracts from the artistic merits of the work, but invests it with a corresponding proportion of interest as a revealer of some of the deepest secrets and hidden phases of the human soul, if one only has the courage to wade through it. The dreamy mystifications and the wild insanity and mystic passion of Brother Medardus are not unrelieved by scenes and characters which bear the stamp of bright poetic beauty and rich comic humour (e.g., the character of the Abbess of the Cistercian convent, thejäger, the description of the monastery, the scenes with Mr. Ewson and BelcampoaliasSchönfeld).

For some reason which cannot be quite made out for certain, either in consequence of his continued illness or because of a quarrel with Seconda, Hoffmann found himself once more adrift in the world without an anchor to hold fast by in February, 1814. In striking contrast with his treatment by the Bamberg public, his talents as director whilst with Seconda's company were fully and adequately appreciated, both by the artistes and the orchestra, as well as by the general public. This may have been due to two causes; first, the actors and actresses were not embarrassed by his directing from the pianoforte instead of with the violin as those in Bamberg were, and in the second place his criticisms and essays on musical subjects in Rochlitz'sMusicalische Zeitunghad gained him a certain reputation as an authority in musical matters. After having refused the offer of a post as music-director in his native city of Königsberg in February (1814), he was agreeably surprised by Hippel's promise to secure his return into official life. Accordingly towards the end of September in that same year he set out for Berlin.

Here ends what may be termed the second act of this very unsettled, eventful life. That this wandering aside from the career he first started upon--viz., that of law and public life to tread the thorny precarious path of art was fraught with greater consequences than can be estimated upon the unfortunate man's character, will be evident from what has been already stated. These dark years were those mainly instrumental in stifling the good germs that had once been in him, and yet more did they result in encouraging and bringing out prominently all his less praiseworthy qualities. As his works and his life are so intimately interwoven, and as his works were nearly all written subsequent to this disastrous period, it seemed desirable to dwell somewhat upon the events and circumstances of the earlier part of his life. With the view of showing that Hoffmann himself fully understood the nature and tendency of his existence in Bamberg, the following passages are quoted from a letter written to Dr. Speyer in that town in July, 1813:--

"I felt in my own mind perfectly convinced that I must get out of Bamberg as soon as possible if I was not to be ruined altogether. Call vividly to mind what my life in Bamberg was from the first moment of my arrival, and you will allow that everything co-operated like an hostile demoniacal power to thrust me forcibly from the path I had chosen, or rather from art, to which I had devoted my entire existence, my very self with all my activities and energies. My position under Cuno, and even all those unbargained-for duties which were thrown upon me by Holbein, notwithstanding their many seductive attractions, but above all those scenes with----which I shall never forget and never overcome, the old man's miserable stupid platitudes, which yet in another respect had a pernicious influence, those wretched, terrible scenes with----and last of all with----, whom I always thought a parvenu ill-bred imp,--in a word, everything that went against all effort and doing and work in the higher life, in which a man raises himself on alert wing above the stinking morass of his miserable crust-begging life, engendered within me an inward dissension--an inward strife, which much sooner than any external commotion around me would have caused me to perish. Every harsh and undeserved indignity I had to suffer only increased my secret rancour, and whilst accustoming myself more and more to wine as a stimulant and so stirring up the fire to make it bum more merrily, I heeded not that this was the only way by which good could come out of the ruinous evil. In these few words, in this brief statement, I hope you will find the key to many things which may have appeared to you contradictory, if not enigmatical Buttranseant cum ceteris."22

"I felt in my own mind perfectly convinced that I must get out of Bamberg as soon as possible if I was not to be ruined altogether. Call vividly to mind what my life in Bamberg was from the first moment of my arrival, and you will allow that everything co-operated like an hostile demoniacal power to thrust me forcibly from the path I had chosen, or rather from art, to which I had devoted my entire existence, my very self with all my activities and energies. My position under Cuno, and even all those unbargained-for duties which were thrown upon me by Holbein, notwithstanding their many seductive attractions, but above all those scenes with----which I shall never forget and never overcome, the old man's miserable stupid platitudes, which yet in another respect had a pernicious influence, those wretched, terrible scenes with----and last of all with----, whom I always thought a parvenu ill-bred imp,--in a word, everything that went against all effort and doing and work in the higher life, in which a man raises himself on alert wing above the stinking morass of his miserable crust-begging life, engendered within me an inward dissension--an inward strife, which much sooner than any external commotion around me would have caused me to perish. Every harsh and undeserved indignity I had to suffer only increased my secret rancour, and whilst accustoming myself more and more to wine as a stimulant and so stirring up the fire to make it bum more merrily, I heeded not that this was the only way by which good could come out of the ruinous evil. In these few words, in this brief statement, I hope you will find the key to many things which may have appeared to you contradictory, if not enigmatical Buttranseant cum ceteris."22

Again, it can scarcely be doubted that we have a description of his own state when he writes in theElixiere(Part II.), "I am what I appear to be, and do not appear as what I really am; to myself an unsolvable riddle, I am at variance with my own self."

The change of residence to Berlin did little to improve Hoffmann's circumstances. During the first ten months he was, according to the conditions imposed, labouring to make himself acquainted with the changes that had taken place in legal procedure, and to fit himself for entering the service of the state again and resuming his interrupted career; but he received no compensation for his pains; he had to support himself as best he could by the fruits of his pen. On July 1, 1815, he was appointed to a clerkship in the department of the Minister of Justice, which post he exchanged on 1st May, 1816, for that of Councillor in the Supreme Court, being also restored to all his rights of seniority as though no break had ever taken place in his official career. The duties attaching to this office he continued to discharge with his accustomed diligence and skill until promoted in the autumn of 1821 to be a member of the Senate of Higher Appeal in the same court. Notwithstanding his sad and disappointing experiences, and the tempestuous times of his "martyr years" at Bamberg, he was not yet disgusted with the life of an artist. His hopes were not yet alienated from the calling that hovered before his mind as an ideal for so many years. Whilst battling, with somewhat less of reckless high spirits and humour, against the embarrassments and pecuniary difficulties which he had to encounter during these ten months, he was also dreaming of an appointment asKapellmeister(orchestral director) or as musical composer to a theatre. He says upon this point in a letter to Hippel, of date March 12, 1815, "I cannot anyhow cease to interest myself in art; and had I not to care for a dearly beloved wife, and were it not my duty to try and procure her a comfortable life after what she has gone through with me, I would rather become a music schoolmaster again than let myself be stamped in the juristic fulling-mill."23After more than one disappointment in his efforts to secure permanent and remunerative employment, in which efforts he was assisted by his influential friend Hippel, he became a clerk, as already stated, in the department of the Minister of Justice.

In his social relations Hoffmann was more fortunate. He now enjoyed the close companionship of Hitzig again, and through Hitzig was introduced into a select circle which counted amongst its members such men as Fouqué (author ofUndine), Chamisso (ofPeter Schlemihlfame), Contessa, Koreff, Tieck, Bernhardi, Devrient, and others. The harassing tumultuous days he had passed through during the last eight years had now begun to make him gentler and more modest; his character was more tempered, and his behaviour more subdued. His good-nature too took such a prominent place in the qualities he displayed that Hitzig's children were quite delighted with their father's newly arrived friend; for them Hoffmann wrote the pleasant little fairy taleNussknacker und Mäusekönig(Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Before the end of 1815 he had finished the second part of theElixiere des Teufels, to which he himself attached no value, since its connection with the first part was broken; its author's ideas had got into another track; feelings and circumstances were changed. Still less than Schiller withDon Carlos. did Hoffmann succeed in making an artificial junction between the two parts of his work atone for its breach of artistic unity; he even said later of the first part, "I ought not to have had it printed." Besides this second part of theElixiere, he also wrote the concluding pieces of theFantasiestücke, namely,Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht, which owes its existence to Chamisso'sPeter Schlemihland to Chamisso himself, who is portrayed in the work; and alsoDie Correspondenz des Kapellmeisters Kreisler mit dem Baron Wallborn, that is Hoffmann himself and Baron von Fouqué. With the latter Hoffmann spent a happy fortnight in 1815 at his seat of Nennhausen near Rathenow; Hitzig was also of the party. In August of the following year the operaUndinewas put upon the stage. Though Fouqué's libretto did not pass without some adverse criticism, all voices were unanimous in praise of the music. Von Weber the musician especially expressed himself warmly in admiration of it, affirming that it was "one of the most talented productions of recent times;" and he especially singled out for attention its truth, its smooth-flowing melodies, and its instrumentation; it was "in truthonegush" of music. The opera was repeated more than a score of times, when unfortunately the theatre was burnt down, and Hoffmann, who lived immediately adjoining it, was almost burnt out of house and home at the same time.

Through the success of this opera as well as through that of hisFantasiestücke, Hoffmann found himself celebrated. He was invited as the hero of the evening to the fashionable tea circles of Berlin, where ignorant or half-educateddilettantiaffected an interest in art matters, that was over-strained and wanting in sincerity when it was not ridiculous. For what was there the man could not do? He wrote books about which all Germany was talking, he could improvise on the pianoforte, compose operas, sketch caricatures, and streams of wit gushed from him so soon as he opened his mouth. The homage showered upon him at these gatherings flattered Hoffmann's vanity for a time, but he soon saw the motives for which he was asked to be present--to amuse the guests with his wit, to accompany the daughter or lady of the house on the piano, to discuss art matters in a becoming way now with an old grandmother, now with a grave professor, to tell diverting anecdotes, to tickle the lazy minds of those who listened with some spicy satire upon their enemies--in fact to be made a useful show of. Quickly fathoming these motives, Hoffmann proved himself readily equal to the occasion: as soon as he began to get bored, which very frequently was the case, he made the most hideous grimaces, and when he saw the company were preparing to draw something from him by way of criticism which they could carry further and perhaps repeat again as springing from their own acute judgment, he began to talk the most arrant nonsense he could think of, or to fire off some of his stinging sarcasms steeped in the bitterness of gall, till there were none but blank and embarrassed faces around him--everybody thinking the man was mad; but he went away delighted at the consternation he had been instrumental in causing. The givers of fashionable teas soon ceased to invite Hoffmann to their entertainments, but they had already sufficiently sown the seeds of fresh mischief in him.

To have more money in his pockets than he just required for the immediate wants of the moment was always fatal to him, and no less so was the excitement attendant upon the giddy whirl of pleasure and social popularity, or what stood for such. These were rocks of danger upon which he always struck. The former led him to indulge in his reprehensible habit of drinking, and the latter soon made him upset all the systems of order and regulation. Day he turned into night and night into day. He shunned for the most part the society of Hitzig and his circle of friends, with their stimulating discussions that cultivated the mind whilst unfolding and developing the feelings, and frequented a low wine-shop and the common coarse company that was to be met with there. Hence during nearly all the rest of his life, that is, from 1816 to 1821, he spent his mornings in the discharge of his official duties at the Supreme Court (two mornings a week, Monday and Thursday), or in writing; the afternoons he generally slept, or in summer took a walk; and the evenings and nights always found him in the wine-shop of his choice; and he never liked to leave it until morning came, nor did any other engagements prevent him from putting in an appearance at his habitual haunt, even though it were past midnight before he were free. As already remarked, however, it was not to sit and drink like a sot that he gave way to this degrading habit, but to get himself "exalted" as he called it, and then when he was duly "exalted" came the firework display of wit and glowing fancy, going on hour after hour without rest or interruption for the space of five or six hours at once. If his tongue was not the medium through which he discharged the creations of his teeming imagination, his eagle eye was spying out all that was ridiculous or strikingly extraordinary, or even what was possessed of a touch of pathos or deep feeling, or he employed his hand in sketching and drawing inimitable caricatures. He never sat idle and silent, and drank steadily and stolidly as so many confirmed drinkers do. Hitzig, who was deeply grieved at this downward course of his friend and at the estrangement it had brought about between them, contrived to draw him away from his demoralising companions of the wine-shop for at least one night a week. On that evening there was a small gathering at Hoffmann's house, moderation being strictly enjoined as one of the chief regulations of the meeting. This small circle, which consisted of Hoffmann, Hitzig, Contessa, and Koreff,24and an occasional friend or two whom one of them introduced, called itself "The Serapion Brethren," this title being adopted from the fact that the first meeting was held on the night of the anniversary of that saint, according to Frau Hoffmann's Polish almanac. It is interesting to remark that amongst these occasional guests figures the great Danish poet Oehlenschläger in the year 1816. In a letter written to Hoffmann on March 26th, 1821, recommending a young fellow-countryman to him, Oehlenschläger says, "Dip him also a little in the magic sea of your humour, respected friend, and teach him how a man can be a philosopher and seer of the world under the ironical mantle of the mad-house, and what is more an amiable man as well;" and he subscribes himself, "A. Oehlenschläger, Serapion Brother."

In 1817 was published the collection of tales calledDie Nachtstücke, embracingDer Sandmann(The Sand-man) andDas Majorat(The Entail), which reproduce personages and experiences belonging to the years in Königsberg;Die JesuitenkircheandDas steinerne Herz, going back to his life in Glogau;Das Gelübde, built upon a story related by his wife as connected with her native town of Posen;Das Sanctus, which was suggested by an incident in Berlin soon after Hoffmann's arrival there; anddas öde Haus, this last due to the way in which he was incessantly haunted by the appearance of a closed house in theUnter den Linden. These were mostly written in 1816 and 1817; and to them he addedIgnas Denner, which possesses some merit, but is of too gloomy and darkly unpleasant a cast to be attractive to English readers; it was written during the first days in Dresden, just after his emancipation from the Bamberg thraldom. Whilst in it he gives free rein to sombre melancholy, and dips his pen in "midnight blackness," inBerganza, written about the same time, he has poured out the cynical bitterness and scathing scorn which was then undoubtedly gnawing at his heart.Der Sandmann, though embodying reminiscences of its author's youth, also contains material derived from an incident which took place during a visit of Hoffmann's to Fouqué's country-seat near Ratenow, and Nathanael was recognised by Fouqué as meant for himself.Das Majoratis, as already stated, a lasting memorial to his old great-uncle, Vöthöry; the moral backbone of the story--the evil destiny attaching to the successors of a man whose ambition aimed at founding a powerful family by an act of injustice to his youngest son--reminds the reader forcibly of the purpose that runs through Hawthorne'sHouse with the Seven Gables. Of the in many respects admirable storyDas Gelübde-- it is to be regretted that it is marred by the dangerous nature of the subject;25it is else poetically treated and invested with a spirit of weird mysticism that would have made it rank higher than what it does. The others in the collection are of lesser merit.

The next year 1818 saw no important work from Hoffmann's pen; but in 1819 appearedDie seltsame Leiden eines Theaterdirekters, a book written in the form of a dialogue, which was due to the example of his favourite, Diderot's "Rameau's Nephew" (by Goethe), and which conveys a tolerably faithful account of Hoffmann's experiences in the capacity indicated whilst in the town on the Regnitz, and indeed is useful as illustrating the condition of the German stage generally at that period. This was followed by a kind of fairy tale,Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober; as this book was generally believed to be a local satire upon persons and circumstances well known, it entailed many severe strictures and much unpleasantness upon its writer. The truth about it seems to be this: the idea--that of a sort of ugly kobold of the Handy Andy type--was suggested by a sudden fancy during an attack of fever, and in a moment of semi-delirium. On recovering his health again, Hoffmann set to work in his impetuous and hasty way, and worked out the idea in probably less than a fortnight. Similarly hisMeister Floh, one of the last and weakest caricatures he wrote, was likely to have entailed disagreeable consequences upon him, had not his last illness come before any authoritative steps could be taken. For he had made use of incidents which came to his knowledge in the official discharge of his duties, and which were of such a character that they ought to have been guarded as inviolable secrets; and he further employed certain phrases which he took from confidential papers that likewise came into his hands in consequence of his public position. In extenuation of his fault, or perhaps in explanation of it, be it remarked that his conduct does not appear to have been actuated by premeditated or deliberate malice, but to have sprung solely from his recklessness and want of prudence: the ridiculous appealed to his sense of humour so irresistibly that nothing was sacred against it, and so nothing was safe from it.

In the summer of 1819 Hoffmann was ordered by his physician to visit the Silesian baths; and he derived excellent benefit from the prescription, coming home stronger and in a more healthful frame of mind than his friends had seen him for a long time. Soon after his return he was appointed on the commission selected to inquire into those secret societies and other suspicious political organisations which were particularly active about this time (Burschenschaften,Landsmannschaftenin their political aspect). Towards the end of the year he published the first two volumes of theSerapionsbrüder, the third volume following in 1820 and the fourth in 1821. These volumes contain all his tales that had appeared in various magazines and serial publications, together with others now first published, and are linked together by a running commentary, or rather they are set into it as into a framework; the Serapion Society are represented as meeting at stated intervals, when one or more of the members relate a tale. The discussions which precede and follow the tales are full of sage remarks about art and art-matters and other ripe practical wisdom, and contain perhaps more matured thought than anything else that proceeded from Hoffmann's pen. Of these numerous stories the best have been selected for translation in these two volumes, namely,Der Artushof(Arthur's Hall),Die Fermate(The Fermata),Doge und Dogaresse(Doge and Dogess),Meister Martin der Küfner und seine Gesellen(Master Martin the Cooper and his Journey men ),Das Fräulein von Scudéri(Mademoiselle de Scudéri),Spieler Glück(Gambler's Luck), andSignor Formica. The remaining twelve tales call for no special mention, except perhapsNussknacker, which has been already alluded to,Das fremde Kind, a curious mixture of reality and fairyland, andDer Zusammenhang der Dinge, which is not devoid of interest. Several of the things in this collection suggest comparison with Poe's writings for weirdness and bizarre imaginative power, though of course there are wide differences between the styles of the two writers.

In March, 1820, came a letter of good wishes from Beethoven, whose music Hoffmann greatly admired; hence the letter was a source of much real pleasure to him. Spontini, the well-known writer of operas, came to Berlin in the summer of the same year and was received by Hoffmann with every mark of respect. It was indeed maintained that the composer ofUndineshowed an unworthy servility in the way in which he publicly acknowledged Spontini's talent. Whether this is true would appear doubtful; servility was not one of the author's failings, though vanity was. By Spontini's ministering to his vanity Hoffmann may have been provoked to return him the compliment in his own coin, but it is hardly likely that he went so far as to flatter against his own conviction or against his better judgment. Of his longer and more ambitious works the one which he ranked highest in merit wasLebensansichten des Katers Murr, nebst Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler, the first volume of which appeared in 1820 and the second in 1822. In respect of literary form and execution, as well as of artistic worth, this is undoubtedly Hoffmann's most finished production (i.e.of his longer works). It contains a good deal of genial, keen, and subtle satire, conveyed in the doings of Murr the tom-cat; and it is also a useful source for early biographical details, both of facts and of mental development and opinions, contained in the "waste-paper leaves" (treating of Kreisler), inserted at frequent intervals between those which carry on the life and adventures of Murr. The third volume, which was all ready and completed in the author's head, and only wanted writing down, never came to the birth. The first two volumes present to us a personification of Hoffmann's humoristic self, and the third was to culminate in Kreisler's insanity, a result brought about by the disappointments and baffling experiences he encountered in life--Hoffmann's own career, that is; and the whole was to conclude with theLichte Stunden eines wahnsinnigen Musikers,--a work which had been occupying his mind ever since he was in Bamberg, and which had not yet been executed. In 1821 was published one of his weakest things, a fairy tale,Prinzessin Brambilla, which is greatly wanting in clearness of conception, though he himself ranked it highly.

The excesses in which Hoffmann had for so long indulged brought at last, as may easily be conceived, their own inevitable retribution. The first herald of the approaching physical troubles was the death (November 30, 1821) of the sagacious cat who was the real hero ofKater Murr. Hoffmann was much cut up by the death of his favourite, which he described to Hitzig with truly touching pathos.26Soon after this he was suddenly stricken down by disease--tabes dorsalis; his body gradually died, beginning at the feet and moving up to the brain, a process which lasted several weeks. But from the autumn of 1821 to April, 1822, he was cheered by the daily visits of the beloved friend of his youth, Hippel, who had come up to Berlin for that space of time. Hoffmann celebrated his 46th birthday with this true friend, and with Hitzig and others less dear. Hoffmann and Hippel were dwelling fondly upon the days of their youth and reviving old recollections, when mention was made of death and dying. Hitzig remarked in substance that "life was not the highest of all goods;" this caused the suffering Hoffmann to reply with passionate emphasis, such as he did not give way to on any other occasion during the course of the evening, "No, no--let me live, live--let me only live, no matter in what condition." "There was something awful," says Hitzig, "in the way in which these words burst from his lips." And his wish was fulfilled in terrible wise; one limb after the other failed to perform its office; his feet and hands and certain parts of his inner organism became quite dead. On the day before he died he was virtually a corpse as far as his neck; and so he was full of hope that he should soon be well again, since he "felt no more pain then." Even in this truly pitiable and helpless condition his imagination continued to pour forth a stream of the most whimsical and humorous fancies, and his cheerfulness was even greater than in the days of sound health. Hippel's departure in April was a hard blow to him. About four weeks before his death he underwent the sharp operation of being burned on each side of the spine with red-hot irons. When Hitzig entered the room after the terrible operation was over, Hoffmann cried, "Can you smell the flavour of roast meat?" and he said that whilst the doctors were burning him, the thought entered his mind that the "Minister of Police was having him leaded lest he should slip out as contraband;"--he was shrivelled up to a mummy almost, so that, owing to his small size as well, a woman could carry him in her arms. Though his body was thus a perfect wreck, his mental powers were as brilliant and keen as ever; and when his hands proved useless to him, he engaged the services of an amanuensis and went on dictating until almost the very hour of his death. In fact, the last thing he spoke about was a direction for his writer to read to him the passages where he had broken off inDer Feind; then he turned his face to the wall; the fatal rattle was heard in his throat; and all Hoffmann's earthly troubles were over (June 25, 1822).

It is very remarkable that the works dictated by this extraordinary man on his deathbed show an almost total departure from the style of most of his previous tales. He no longer records his own experiences,--the events and occurrences, the sentiments and thoughts, that were peculiarly his own,--but he writes from a purely objective standpoint, andcreates. Of most of his other works it may be said that they arehe; but of these it can only be said they arehisin the sense that they owed their origin to him.Meister Johannes Wacht, one of these, is translated in Vol. II. The scene is laid in Bamberg, and the characters of the story were also said to be faithful portraits of actual people in Bamberg; yet we look in vain to find anything like Hoffmann himself in it.Des Vetters Eckfenster, though hardly a tale, is yet one of the best things Hoffmann has written. Those who know Émile Souvestre'sUn Philosophe sous les Toitswould find in this thing of Hoffmann's dying days something to their taste; it is a running commentary on personages seen in the market from the writer's own window, and each little scene brings before us a true and lifelike character in a few weighty and well-chosen words.Die Genesung, a mere sketch, arose out of the dying man's pathetic longing to see the green of the woods and the meadows.Der Feind, a fragment full of promise, is a tale of old Nuremberg of the days of Albrecht Dürer, who figures in it. Before being deprived of the use of his hands he had written several other short tales, amongst which may be mentionedDie Doppeltgänger, as being a favourite theme with Hoffmann, andDer Elementargeist, a weird, entrancing story. InDie Räuberhe gives us a weak version of Schiller's celebrated work.

In Hoffmann we have an instance of a man who nearly all his life long failed to get himself placed amid the circumstances in the midst of which it was his one burning wish to be placed. He never found his right calling. He is a man ruined by circumstances (zerfahren). He was not wanting in warm natural feeling, as is proved by his close and faithful friendships with Hippel, Hitzig, and Kunz; and more than one instance of spontaneous kindness and of winning amiability are preserved by his biographer.27In youth his mind and heart were full of noble thoughts and aspirations, and he was sincerely desirous to educate himself up to better things. We see it in "May it never happen to me that my heart is not readily receptive of every communication from without, as well as for every feeling within, for the head must never injure the heart, nor must the heart ever run away with the head, that is my idea of culture," and "an excitable heart and a restless nature will never let us be quite happy, but will have a beneficial influence upon our education, upon our striving after greater perfection." His poetic temperament, and such like poetic tendencies, found no responsive sympathy amongst his relatives. Being thrust back upon himself and then having his feelings centred, when at length they did meet with sympathetic appreciation, in such a way as could only bring disappointment and unhappiness, he was early made a fit instrument for circumstances to play upon, and sorely was he buffeted by them through all the years from going to Posen right down until the day of his death. But this result must also be traced partly to the want of a parent's loving, watchful eye. In those years which are the most important for moulding a boy's character he was practically left to go his own way. True, his uncle Otto held him down to habits of industry and order; but he did nothing to encourage the boy's better and higher nature, or guide it sympathetically along the paths where it was striving to find its own way. Hoffmann had no high idea of the moral dignity of man, and at times even seemed to have but little conception of it. The relations upon which he lived with his uncle Otto and the history of his own father prevented this sense of moral worth from being planted in his mind. The germ which bore fruit in his love for extremes, for what was extraordinary and quite out of the common beaten track of life, was probably engendered in the following way. Not finding the sympathy he needed in his efforts after a better life, he turned in upon himself and began to despise the petty details of everyday existence; and several passages in his letters clearly go to show that his unhappiness and discontent were largely due to the fact of his overlooking the real enjoyment to be derived from the small occurrences and events of every day, which rightly viewed are capable of affording such a large fund of real contentment. In a letter to Hippel early in 1815, he himself states, "For my shattered life I have really only myself to blame; I ought to have shown more resolution and less levity in my earlier years. When a youth, when a boy, I ought to have devoted myself entirely to Art and never to have thought of anything else. But of course something also was due to perverse education." It must not be supposed, however, from the above that he was deficient in firmness or strength of will. The perseverance with which he worked through his early examinations, as well as the energy and zeal he brought to bear upon his official duties, contradict such supposition. Specific instances might also be quoted did space permit; it will be enough to recall his resolve never to gamble. It is stated that he avowed his intention to amend his ways if he recovered from his last fatal illness. The real key to his wayward character lies in the fact just alluded to, that he had no conception of the supreme importance of moral worth. This was the backbone wanting in his character; and for this reason we fail to detect any steady sterling course of action through all the vicissitudes of his life. If he had a ruling motive it was capricious humour; at any rate it swayed him more than anything else. On one day he would laugh at what had annoyed him on the day preceding, or be delighted to-day at what he had greeted yesterday with irony. Nobody knew better than himself how he was tyrannised over by his changeable moods. "My capricious humour (Laune) is the first weather-prophet I know, and if I had the good-will and were bored I could make an almanac," is one of his expressions; and another runs, "You know that my capricious humour is oftenMaître de Flaisir." Besides being thus the creature of caprice, he was also impulsive, impetuous, and wont to act with impassioned haste. These qualities were revealed in his restless vivacious eyes, in his movements and gestures, and even broke out in extraordinary grimaces, as already remarked. And just in the same fervid eager way he often seized upon an idea or a pleasing fancy, till it took complete possession of him; he could not rid himself of it. With this was combined his remarkable quickness of perception and comprehension; a single gesture or phrase was often sufficient to enable him to grasp a character. What he hated above all things was dulness--ennui; this never failed to provoke his keenest irony and bitterest sarcasms. In his last years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage.

An old German poet says, "Seht das Loos der Menschheit--Heute Freude, Morgen Leid;"28but with Hoffmann joy and pain were frequently more closely allied than this even: whilst the jest was on his lips the sting would be in his heart. In this, as well as in several other features of his stormy career, he did indeed resemble his countryman Heine. One of the necessities of his nature was human society--not simply society, however, but people who could appreciate him, who could fall in with his moods, and either follow intelligently when he led, or lend him a stimulating and helping hand to keep the ball of wit and jollity rolling. An illustration of this is found in the fact that he "did not love the society of women. If he could not mystify them, or draw them into the circle of his fantasies, or discover in them any decided talent for comicality, he preferred the society of men." Amongst women, however, after those of the class just named, he was most interested in young and pretty girls, being attracted by the charm of their fresh beauty, not by the charm of their mind. Learned women he hated.

Hoffmann was, as already observed, the child of extremes. These were revealed not only in his life and action, but also in his writings; for his writings are the man. Indeed German critics have said that his works, particularly theFantasiestücke, are "lyrics in prose." What they mean by this phrase is chiefly that the things he wrote exhibit subjective phrases of his nature, and are disconnected, or rather not connected, not balanced parts of a systematic whole. This is true so far as it is true that Hoffmann never did complete a long work, except theElixiere, and this work, as there has been occasion to point out, consists of two disjointed parts. One of the things that strike us most in reading his books is the peculiar mixture of the real and the unreal, of matters appertaining to actual life and of fantasies born only of the imagination. Very often the imagination would be called by most people a diseased imagination; but it is not always so, sometimes it is the poet's imagination. Hence, from this blending or close alternation of reality with what is not of the earth--hence came his love for fairy tales, tales in which we meet with kobolds, imps, witches, little monsters of all kinds--the spirits and apparitions in fact which used to haunt his excited fancy in such a strange way. Several of these are poetic creatures, whom he handles in a light, graceful, and pleasing style (Goldener Topf,Nussknacker,Das fremde Kind, &c.); others, on the other hand, are drawn in horrible and unearthly colours and awaken the sentiments of awe and dread. What he loved especially to dwell upon was the "night side of natural science," the puzzling relations between the psychic and the physical principles both in man and in Nature. Hence such states as somnambulism, magnetism, dreams, dark forebodings of the terrible, inhuman passions, and such things as automata and vampyres, had for him an insuperable attraction. Insanity was a mystery that haunted his thoughts for years: it figures largely inDie ElixiereandDer Sandmann; and in the third part ofKater Murrit was his intention to represent Kreisler's battle with adverse circumstances as culminating in insanity. Handling these, and states and situations equally hideous, fantastic, and grotesque, with extraordinary clearness and precision both of thought and of language, considering the often misty nature of the subjects he treats of, and pouring upon the vivid pictures he conjures up the brightness of his wit and the exuberant gaiety and grace of his fancy, he succeeds in creating scenes, situations, and characters which seem verily instinct with real life. This end was attained principally by the true genius he displayed in perception, apprehension, and description. His graphic descriptive power is that which mainly procured him his wide-reaching fame during his own lifetime, not only in Germany but also in France, and is that which principally gives to his works whatever permanent value they may possess. With a painter's eye he grasps a character or a scene by a few of its more prominent and essential features, and with a painter's hand and eye he sketches them in a few telling strokes. The reader must not look to find in Hoffmann any clever or subtle analysis of the deeper motives that work towards the development of character; all that Hoffmann can give him will be talentedpictures. He himself lays down his canon of literary spirit in the introduction to the first volume of theSerapionsbrüder--

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