Part 2 (2/2)

The first notice of Sterne's death is probably that in the _Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten_ of Hamburg in the issue of April 6, 1768, not three weeks after the event itself. The brief announcement is a comparison with Cervantes. The _Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen_ chronicles the death of Yorick, August 29, 1768.[60]

Though published in England from 1759-67, Tristram Shandy seems not to have been reprinted in Germany till the 1772 edition of Richter in Altenburg, a year later indeed than Richter's reprint of the Sentimental Journey. The colorless and inaccurate Zuckert translation, as has already been suggested, achieved no real popular success and won no learned recognition. The reviews were largely silent or indifferent to it, and, apart from the comparatively few notices already cited, it was not mentioned by any important literary periodical until after its republication by Lange, when the Sentimental Journey had set all tongues awag with reference to the late lamented Yorick. None of the journals indicate any appreciation of Sterne's especial claim to recognition, nor see in the fatherland any peculiar receptiveness to his appeal. In short, the foregoing acc.u.mulation of particulars resolves itself into the general statement, easily derived from the facts stated: Sterne's position in the German world of letters is due primarily to the Sentimental Journey. Without its added impulse Shandy would have hardly stirred the surface of German life and thought. The enthusiasm even of a few scholars whose learning and appreciation of literature is international, the occasional message of uncertain understanding, of doubtful approbation, or of rumored popularity in another land, are not sufficient to secure a general interest and attentiveness, much less a literary following. The striking contrast between the essential characteristics of the two books is a sufficient and wholly reasonable occasion for Germany's temporary indifference to the one and her immediate welcome for the other. Shandy is whimsicality touched with sentiment. The Sentimental Journey is the record of a sentimental experience, guided by the caprice of a whimsical will. Whimsicality is a flower that defies transplanting; when once rooted in other soil it shoots up into obscurity, masquerading as profundity, or pure silliness without reason or a smile. The whimsies of one language become amazing contortions in another. The humor of Shandy, though deep-dyed in Sterne's own eccentricity, is still essentially British and demands for its appreciation a more extensive knowledge of British life in its narrowest, most individual phases, a more intensive sympathy with British att.i.tudes of mind than the German of the eighteenth century, save in rare instances, possessed. Bode a.s.serts in the preface to his translation of the Sentimental Journey that Shandy had been read by a good many Germans, but follows this remark with the query, ”How many have understood it?” ”One finds people,” he says, ”who despise it as the most nonsensical twaddle, and cannot comprehend how others, whom they must credit with a good deal of understanding, wit, and learning, think quite otherwise of it,” and he closes by noting the necessity that one be acquainted with the follies of the world, and especially of the British world, to appreciate the novel. He refers unquestionably to his own circle of literati in Hamburg, who knew Tristram and cared for it, and to others of his acquaintance less favored with a knowledge of things English. The Sentimental Journey presented no inscrutable mystery of purposeful eccentricity and perplexing personality, but was written large in great human characters which he who ran might read. And Germany was ready to give it a welcome.[61]

[Footnote 1: A reviewer in the _Frankfurter Gel. Anz._, as early as 1774, a.s.serts that Sterne had inspired more droll and sentimental imitations in Germany than even in England. (Apr. 5, 1774.)]

[Footnote 2: See Bibliography for list of books giving more or less extended accounts of Sterne's influence.]

[Footnote 3: Sterne did, to be sure, a.s.sert in a letter (Letters, I, p. 34) that he wrote ”not to be fed but to be famous.” Yet this was after this desire had been fulfilled, and, as the expression agrees with the tone and purpose of the letter in which it is found, it does not seem necessary to place too much weight upon it. It is very probable in view of evidence collected later that Sterne _began_ at least to write Tristram as a pastime in domestic misfortune. The thirst for fame may have developed in the progress of the composition.]

[Footnote 4: Fitzgerald says ”end of December,” Vol. I, p. 116, and the volumes were reviewed in the December number of the _Monthly Review_, 1759 (Vol. XXI, pp. 561-571), though without any mention of the author's name. This review mentions no other publisher than Cooper.]

[Footnote 5: Quoted by Fitzgerald, Vol. I, p. 126.]

[Footnote 6: The full t.i.tle of this paper was _Staats- und gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten_.]

[Footnote 7: Meusel: Lexicon der vom Jahr 1750 bis 1800 vers...o...b..nen teutschen Schriftsteller. Bd. XV. (Leipzig bey Fleischer) 1816, pp, 472-474.]

[Footnote 8: Berlin, bei August Mylius. 1764.]

[Footnote 9: Behmer (L. Sterne und C. M. Wieland, p. 15) seems to be unaware of the translations of the following parts, and of the authors.h.i.+p.]

[Footnote 10: This attempt to supply a ninth volume of Tristram Shandy seems to have been overlooked. A spurious third volume is mentioned in the Natl. Dict. of Biography and is attributed to John Carr. This ninth volume is however noticed in the _London Magazine_, 1766, p. 691, with accompanying statement that it is ”not by the author of the eight volumes.” The genuine ninth volume is mentioned and quoted in this magazine in later issues, 1767, p. 78, 206.]

[Footnote 11: This edition is reviewed also in _Almanach der deutschen Musen_, 1774, p. 97.]

[Footnote 12: ”Kein Deutscher, welcher das Uebersetzen aus fremden Sprachen als ein Handwerk ansieht.”]

[Footnote 13: I, p. 111.]

[Footnote 14: ”Lexicon der Hamburgischen Schriftsteller,” Hamburg, 1851-1883.]

[Footnote 15: Tristram Shandy, I, p. 107, and Zuckert's translation, I, p. 141.]

[Footnote 16: In this review and in the announcement of Sterne's death, this periodical refers to him as the Dean of York, a distinction which Sterne never enjoyed.]

[Footnote 17: 1767, p. 691. The reference is given in the Register to 1753-1782 erroneously as p. 791.]

[Footnote 18: ”Predigten von Laurenz Sterne oder Yorick.” Zurich, bey Fuesslin & Comp, 1766-69. 3 vols.]

[Footnote 19: The _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_ was founded in 1765.]

[Footnote 20: XII, 1, pp. 210-211 and 2, p. 202.]

[Footnote 21: For full t.i.tle see Bibliography.]

[Footnote 22: Vol. I, p. 460.]

[Footnote 23: Edited by Klotz and founded in 1767, published at Halle by J. J. Gebauer. Vol. I, Part 2, p. 183.]

[Footnote 24: Vol. II, p. 500.]

[Footnote 25: The former says merely ”the last parts”, the latter designates ”the last three.”]

[Footnote 26: III, 1, pp. 1 ff.]

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