Part 10 (1/2)

This letter printed in the Hamburg paper was to explain the snuff-box, which Jacobi had sent to Gleim a few days before, and the desire is also expressed to spread the order. Hence others were sent to other friends.

Jacobi goes on to say: ”Perhaps in the future, I may have the pleasure of meeting a stranger here and there who will hand me the horn snuff-box with its golden letters. I shall embrace him as intimately as one Free Mason does another after the sign has been given. Oh! what a joy it would be to me, if I could introduce so precious a custom among my fellow-townsmen.” A reviewer in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_[5]

sharply condemns Jacobi for his conceit in printing publicly a letter meant for his friend or friends, and, to judge from the words with which Jacobi accompanies the abridged form of the letter in the later editions it would seem that Jacobi himself was later ashamed of the whole affair.

The idea, however, was warmly received, and among the teary, sentimental enthusiasts the horn snuff-box soon became the fad. A few days after the publication of this letter, Wittenberg,[6] the journalist in Hamburg, writes to Jacobi (April 21) that many in Hamburg desire to possess these snuff-boxes, and he adds: ”A hundred or so are now being manufactured; besides the name Lorenzo, the following legend is to appear on the cover: Animae quales non candidiores terra tulit.” Wittenberg explains that this Latin motto was a suggestion of his own, selfishly made, for thereby he might win the opportunity of explaining it to the fair ladies, and exacting kisses for the service. Wittenberg a.s.serts that a lady (Longo guesses a certain Johanna Friederike Behrens) was the first to suggest the manufacture of the article at Hamburg. A second letter[7]

from Wittenberg to Jacobi four months later (August 21, 1769) announces the sending of nine snuff-boxes to Jacobi, and the price is given as one-half a reichsthaler. Jacobi himself says in his note to the later edition that merchants made a speculation out of the fad, and that a mult.i.tude of such boxes were sent out through all Germany, even to Denmark and Livonia: ”they were in every hand,” he says. Graf Solms had such boxes made of tin with the name Jacobi inside. Both Martin and Werner instance the request[8] of a Protestant vicar, Johann David Goll in Trossingen, for a ”Lorenzodose” with the promise to subscribe to the oath of the order, and, though Protestant, to name the Catholic Franciscan his brother. According to a spicy review[9] in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_[10] these snuff-boxes were sold in Hamburg wrapped in a printed copy of Jacobi's letter to Gleim, and the reviewer adds, ”like Grenough's tooth-tincture in the directions for its use.”[11] Nicolai in ”Sebaldus Nothanker” refers to the Lorenzo cult with evident ridicule.[12]

There were other efforts to make Yorick's example an efficient power of beneficent brotherliness. Kaufmann attempted to found a Lorenzo order of the horn snuff-box. Duntzer, in his study of Kaufmann,[13] states that this was only an effort on Kaufmann's part to embrace a timely opportunity to make himself prominent. This endeavor was made according to Duntzer, during Kaufmann's residence in Stra.s.sburg, which the investigator a.s.signs to the years 1774-75. Leuchsenring,[14] the eccentric sentimentalist, who for a time belonged to the Darmstadt circle and whom Goethe satirized in ”Pater Brey,” cherished also for a time the idea of founding an order of ”Empfindsamkeit.”

In the literary remains of Johann Christ Hofmann[15] in Coburg was found the ”patent” of an order of ”Sanftmuth und Versohnung.” A ”Lorenzodose”

was found with it marked XXVIII, and the seven rules of the order, dated Coburg ”im Ordens-Comtoir, den 10 August, 1769,” are merely a topical enlargement and ordering of Jacobi's original idea. Longo gives them in full. Appell states that Jacobi explained through a friend that he knew nothing of this order and had no share in its founding. Longo complains that Appell does not give the source of his information, but Jacobi in his note to the so-called ”Stiftungs-Brief” in the edition of 1807 quotes the article in Schlichtegroll's ”Nekrolog” as his only knowledge of this order, certainly implying his previous ignorance of its existence.

Somewhat akin to these attempts to incorporate Yorick's ideas is the fantastic laying out of the park at Marienwerder near Hanover, of which Matthison writes in his ”Vaterlandische Besuche,”[16] and in a letter to the Hofrath von Kopken in Magdeburg,[17] dated October 17, 1785. After a sympathetic description of the secluded park, he tells how labyrinthine paths lead to an eminence ”where the unprepared stranger is surprised by the sight of a cemetery. On the crosses there one reads beloved names from Yorick's Journey and Tristram Shandy. Father Lorenzo, Eliza, Maria of Moulines, Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby and Yorick were gathered by a poetic fancy to this graveyard.” The letter gives a similar description and adds the epitaph on Trim's monument, ”Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother,”[18] a quotation, which in its fuller form, Matthison uses in a letter[19] to Bonstetten, Heidelberg, February 7, 1794, in speaking of Bock the actor. It is impossible to determine whose eccentric and tasteless enthusiasm is represented by this mortuary arrangement.

Louise von Ziegler, known in the Darmstadt circle as Lila, whom Merck admired and, according to Caroline Flaschsland, ”almost compared with Yorick's Maria,” was so sentimental that she had her grave made in her garden, evidently for purposes of contemplation, and she led a lamb about which ate and drank with her. Upon the death of this animal, ”a faithful dog” took its place. Thus was Maria of Moulines remembered.[20]

It has already been noted that Yorick's sympathy for the brute creation found cordial response in Germany, such regard being accepted as a part of his message. That the spread of such sentimental notions was not confined to the printed word, but pa.s.sed over into actual regulation of conduct is admirably ill.u.s.trated by an anecdote related in Wieland's _Teutscher Merkur_ in the January number for 1776, by a correspondent who signs himself ”S.” A friend was visiting him; they went to walk, and the narrator having his gun with him shot with it two young doves. His friend is exercised. ”What have the doves done to you?” he queries.

”Nothing,” is the reply, ”but they will taste good to you.” ”But they were alive,” interposed the friend, ”and would have caressed (geschnabelt) one another,” and later he refuses to partake of the doves. Connection with Yorick is established by the narrator himself: ”If my friend had not read Yorick's story about the sparrow, he would have had no rule of conduct here about shooting doves, and my doves would have tasted better to him.” The influence of Yorick was, however, quite possibly indirect through Jacobi as intermediary; for the latter describes a sentimental family who refused to allow their doves to be killed. The author of this letter, however, refers directly to Yorick, to the very similar episode of the sparrows narrated in the continuation of the Sentimental Journey, but an adventure original with the German Bode. This is probably the source of Jacobi's narrative.

The other side of Yorick's character, less comprehensible, less capable of translation into tangibilities, was not disregarded. His humor and whimsicality, though much less potent, were yet influential. Ramler said in a letter to Gebler dated November 14, 1775, that everyone wished to jest like Sterne,[21] and the _Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen_ (October 31, 1775), at almost precisely the same time, discourses at some length on the then prevailing epidemic of whimsicality, showing that shallowness beheld in the then existing interest in humor a justification for all sorts of eccentric behavior and inconsistent wilfulness.

Naturally Sterne's influence in the world of letters may be traced most obviously in the slavish imitation of his style, his sentiment, his whims,--this phase represented in general by now forgotten triflers; but it also enters into the thought of the great minds in the fatherland and becomes interwoven with their culture. Their own expressions of indebtedness are here often available in a.s.signing a measure of relations.h.i.+p. And finally along certain general lines the German Yorick exercised an influence over the way men thought and wanted to think.

The direct imitations of Sterne are very numerous, a crowd of followers, a motley procession of would-be Yoricks, set out on one expedition or another. Musaus[22] in a review of certain sentimental meanderings in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_,[23] remarked that the increase of such journeyings threatened to bring about a new epoch in the taste of the time. He adds that the good Yorick presumably never antic.i.p.ated becoming the founder of a fas.h.i.+onable sect. This was in 1773. Other expressions of alarm or disapprobation might be cited.

Through Sterne's influence the account of travels became more personal, less purely topographical, more volatile and merry, more subjective.[24]

Goethe in a pa.s.sage in the ”Campagne in Frankreich,” to which reference is made later, acknowledges this impulse as derived from Yorick. Its presence was felt even when there was no outward effort at sentimental journeying. The suggestion that the record of a journey was personal and tinged with humor was essential to its popularity. It was probably purely an effort to make use of this appeal which led the author of ”Bemerkungen eines Reisenden durch Deutschland, Frankreich, England und Holland,”[25] a work of purely practical observation, to place upon his t.i.tle-page the alluring lines from Gay: ”Life is a jest and all things shew it. I thought so once, but now I know it;” a promise of humorous att.i.tude which does not find fulfilment in the heavy volumes of purely objective description which follow.

Probably the first German book to bear the name Yorick in its t.i.tle was a short satirical sketch ent.i.tled, ”Yorick und die Bibliothek der elenden Scribenten, an Hrn.--” 1768, 8vo (Ans.p.a.ch),[26] which is linked to the quite disgustingly scurrilous Antikriticus controversy.

Attempts at whimsicality, imitations also of the Shandean gallery of originals appear, and the more particularly Shandean style of narration is adopted in the novels of the period which deal with middle-cla.s.s domestic life. Of books directly inspired by Sterne, or following more or less slavishly his guidance, a considerable proportion has undoubtedly been consigned to merited oblivion. In many cases it is possible to determine from contemporary reviews the nature of the individual product, and the probable extent of indebtedness to the British model. If it were possible to find and examine them all with a view to establis.h.i.+ng extent of relations.h.i.+p, the ident.i.ty of motifs, the borrowing of thought and sentiment, such a work would give us little more than we learn from consideration of representative examples. In the following chapter the attempt will be made to treat a number of typical products. Baker in his article on Sterne in Germany adopts the rather hazardous expedient of judging merely by t.i.tle and taking from Goedeke's ”Grundriss,” works which suggests a dependence on Sterne.[27]

The early relation of several great men of letters to Sterne has been already treated in connection with the gradual awakening of Germany to the new force. Wieland was one of Sterne's most ardent admirers, one of his most intelligent interpreters; but since his relations.h.i.+p to Sterne has been made the theme of special study,[28] there will be needed here but a brief recapitulation with some additional comment. Especially in the productions of the years 1768-1774 are the direct allusions to Sterne and his works numerous, the adaptations of motifs frequent, and imitation of literary style unmistakable. Behmer finds no demonstrable evidence of Sterne's influence in Wieland's work prior to two poems of the year 1768, ”Endymions Traum” and ”Chloe;” but in the works of the years immediately following there is abundant evidence both in style and in subject matter, in the fund of allusion and ill.u.s.tration, to establish the author's indebtedness to Sterne. Behmer a.n.a.lyzes from this standpoint the following works: ”Beitrage zur geheimen Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes und Herzens;” ”Sokrates Mainomenos oder die Dialogen des Diogenes von Sinope;” ”Der neue Amadis;” ”Der goldene Spiegel;” ”Geschichte des Philosophen Danischmende;” ”Gedanken uber eine alte Aufschrift;” ”Geschichte der Abderiten.”[29]

In these works, but in different measure in each, Behmer finds Sterne copied stylistically, in the constant conversations about the worth of the book, the comparative value of the different chapters and the difficulty of managing the material, in the fas.h.i.+on of inconsequence in unexplained beginnings and abrupt endings, in the heaping up of words of similar meaning, or similar ending, and in the frequent digressions.

Sterne also is held responsible for the manner of introducing the immorally suggestive, for the introduction of learned quotations and references to authorities, for the sport made of the learned professions and the satire upon all kinds of pedantry and overwrought enthusiasm.

Though the direct, demonstrable influence of Sterne upon Wieland's literary activity dies out gradually[30] and naturally, with the growth of his own genius, his admiration for the English favorite abides with him, pa.s.sing on into succeeding periods of his development, as his former enthusiasm for Richardson failed to do.[31] More than twenty years later, when more sober days had stilled the first unbridled outburst of sentimentalism, Wieland speaks yet of Sterne in terms of unaltered devotion: in an article published in the _Merkur_,[32] Sterne is called among all authors the one ”from whom I would last part,”[33]

and the subject of the article itself is an indication of his concern for the fate of Yorick among his fellow-countrymen. It is in the form of an epistle to Herr . . . . zu D., and is a vigorous protest against heedless imitation of Sterne, representing chiefly the perils of such endeavor and the bathos of the failure. Wieland includes in the letter some ”specimen pa.s.sages from a novel in the style of Tristram Shandy,”

which he a.s.serts were sent him by the author. The quotations are almost flat burlesque in their impossible idiocy, and one can easily appreciate Wieland's despairing cry with which the article ends.

A few words of comment upon Behmer's work will be in place. He accepts as genuine the two added volumes of the Sentimental Journey and the Koran, though he admits that the former were published by a friend, not ”without additions of his own,” and he uses these volumes directly at least in one instance in establis.h.i.+ng his parallels, the rescue of the naked woman from the fire in the third volume of the Journey, and the similar rescue from the waters in the ”Nachla.s.s des Diogenes.”[34] That Sterne had any connection with these volumes is improbable, and the Koran is surely a pure fabrication. Behmer seeks in a few words to deny the reproach cast upon Sterne that he had no understanding of the beauties of nature, but Behmer is certainly claiming too much when he speaks of the ”Farbenprachtige Schilderungen der ihm ungewohnten sonnenverklarten Landschaft,” which Sterne gives us ”repeatedly” in the Sentimental Journey, and he finds his most secure evidence for Yorick's ”genuine and pure” feeling for nature in the oft-quoted pa.s.sage beginning, ”I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry ''Tis all barren.'” It would surely be difficult to find these repeated instances, for, in the whole work, Sterne gives absolutely no description of natural scenery beyond the most casual, incidental reference: the familiar pa.s.sage is also misinterpreted, it betrays no appreciation of inanimate nature in itself, and is but a cry in condemnation of those who fail to find exercise for their sympathetic emotions. Sterne mentions the ”sweet myrtle” and ”melancholy cypress,”[35] not as indicative of his own affection for nature, but as exemplifying his own exceeding personal need of expenditure of human sympathy, as indeed the very limit to which sensibility can go, when the desert denies possibility of human intercourse. Sterne's att.i.tude is much better ill.u.s.trated at the beginning of the ”Road to Versailles”: ”As there was nothing in this road, or rather nothing which I look for in traveling, I cannot fill up the blank better than with a short history of this self-same bird.” In other words, he met no possibility for exercising the emotions. Behmer's statement with reference to Sterne, ”that his authors.h.i.+p proceeds anyway from a parody of Richardson,” is surely not demonstrable, nor that ”this whole fas.h.i.+on of composition is indeed but ridicule of Richardson.” Richardson's star had paled perceptibly before Sterne began to write, and the period of his immense popularity lies nearly twenty years before. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that his works have any connection whatsoever with Richardson's novels. One is tempted to think that Behmer confuses Sterne with Fielding, whose career as a novelist did begin as a parodist of the vain little printer. That the ”Starling” in the Sentimental Journey, which is pa.s.sed on from hand to hand, and the burden of government which wanders similarly in ”Der Goldene Spiegel”

const.i.tute a parallelism, as Behmer suggests (p. 48), seems rather far-fetched. It could also be hardly demonstrated that what Behmer calls ”die Sternische Einfuhrungsweise”[36] (p. 54), as used in the ”Geschichte der Abderiten,” is peculiar to Sterne or even characteristic of him. Behmer (p. 19) seems to be ignorant of any reprints or translations of the Koran, the letters and the sermons, save those coming from Switzerland.

Bauer's study of the Sterne-Wieland relation is much briefer (thirty-five pages) and much less satisfactory because less thorough, yet it contains some few valuable individual points and cited parallelisms. Bauer errs in stating that Shandy appeared 1759-67 in York, implying that the whole work was issued there. He gives the dates of Sterne's first visit to Paris, also incorrectly, as 1760-62.

Finally, Wieland cannot be cla.s.sed among the slavish imitators of Yorick; he is too independent a thinker, too insistent a pedagogue to allow himself to be led more than outwardly by the foreign model. He has something of his own to say and is genuinely serious in a large portion of his own philosophic speculations: hence, his connection with Sterne, being largely stylistic and ill.u.s.trative, may be designated as a drapery of foreign humor about his own seriousness of theorizing. Wieland's h.e.l.lenic tendencies make the use of British humor all the more incongruous.[37]

Herder's early acquaintance with Sterne has been already treated.

Subsequent writings offer also occasional indication of an abiding admiration. Soon after his arrival in Paris he wrote to Hartknoch praising Sterne's characterization of the French people.[38] The fifth ”Waldchen,” which is concerned with the laughable, contains reference to Sterne.[39]