Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

One of the most instructive traits of Richter’s character is, his great attention to personal purity of heart and self-control. It was a main point with him, as with Quintilian, the sound old rhetorician, that to write or speak well, one must first of all be a good man. In imitation of many excellent and pious persons, Paul kept a diary of the sins that most easily beset him, and a register of moral victories by God’s grace to be won. From this “_Andachts buchlein_,” or “little book of devotion,” the following admirable extracts are given:--

“OF PAIN.

“Every evil is an occasion and a teacher of resolution. Every
disagreeable emotion is a proof that I have been faithless to my
resolutions.

“An evil vanishes, if I do not ask after it. Think of a worse
situation than that in which thou art.

“Not to the evil, but to myself, do I owe my pain. Epictetus was
not unhappy!

“Vanity, insensibility, and custom, make one steadfast.
Wherefore not virtue still more?

“Never say, if you had not _these_ sorrows, that you would bear
others better.

“What is sixty years’ pain to eternity?

“Necessity, if it cannot be altered, becomes resignation.

“OF GLORY.

“Most men judge so miserably; why would you be praised by a
child?

“No one would praise you in a beggar’s frock; be not proud of
the esteem that is given to your coat.

“Do not expect more esteem from others because you deserve more,
but reflect that they will expect still more merit in yourself.

“Do not seek to justify all thy actions. Value nothing merely
because it is thy own, and look not always upon thyself.

“Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions,
but make use of common situations. A long continued walk is
better than a short flight.

“Never act in the heat of emotion: let reason answer first.

“Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a
section; and enjoy the present without wishing to spring on to
another section that lies before thee.

“Seek to acquire that virtue in a month, to which thou feelest
the least inclined.

“It betrays a greater soul to answer a satire with patience,
than with wit.

“If thou wouldst be free, joyful, and calm, take the only means
that cannot be affected by accident--virtue.”

A man who could act on these principles was morally a great man, and worthy of admiration even without genius. To know and feel habitually, as Richter seems to have done, that “EVIL is like the nightmare; the instant you bestir yourself it has already ended,” is to be a moral hero, and a triumphant Christian. See how every thing turns into gold at the touch of such a man!--the way of pædagogy (for he practised the “dominie” too for four years to eke out his scanty earnings,) to him is spread not with thorns, but with violets and primroses. The following account of his pædagogic practice cannot fail to interest many:--

“The deep and marked peculiarities of a poetic nature were never
brought into fuller exercise than by Richter, in the formation
and government of his little school. That which is usually to
men of rich endowments a vexing and wearisome employment, the
daily routine of instruction for little children in the elements
of knowledge, became to him a source of elevated and ennobling
thought. His _mode_ of instruction was the opposite of that from
which he thought he had himself suffered. In this little school
there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the
thoughts of others, but every child was expected to use its own
powers. His exertions seemed mainly directed to awaken in the
children a reproducing and self-creating power; all knowledge
was therefore the material, out of which they were to form new
combinations. In a word, the whole of his instruction was
directed to create a desire for self-study, and thus lead his
pupils to _self-knowledge_. He aimed to bring out, as much as
possible, the talents that God had given his pupils; and, after
exciting a love of knowledge, he left them to a free choice as
to what they would study; but their zeal and emulation were kept
alive by a (so-called) ‘_red book_,’ in which an exact account
of the work of each individual was recorded; this was shown to
parents and friends at the end of the quarter, and so great was
their zeal, that they needed a rein rather than a spur. While he
accustomed the children to the spontaneous activity of all their
faculties, he gave them five hours a-day of direct instruction,
in which he led them through the various departments of human
knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by
comparison and association. From the kingdom of plants and
animals he ascended to the starred firmament, made them
acquainted with the course of the planets, and led their
imaginations to these worlds and their inhabitants. Then he
conducted them through the picture-gallery of the past history
of nations, and placed the heroes, and saints, and martyrs of
antiquity before them, or he turned their attention to the
mystery of their own souls and the destiny of man. Above all,
and with all, he directed their tender, childish hearts, _to a
Father in heaven_. He said, ‘There can be no such companion to
the heart of children, for the whole life, as the ever-present
thought of God and immortality.’”

But these humble avocations were soon to cease. Richter was destined to emerge from the obscurity of a village schoolmaster, and appear on the public stage of Germany as the compeer of Herder and Schiller, of Wieland and Göethe--second to none of these now European names in originality, brilliancy, and vigour of literary talent; superior to all of them in the purity and intensity with which there glowed in him many of those highest moral qualities which distinguish the man and the Christian. The following extract, relating to the publication of his first very successful work, and the commencement of his German celebrity, in the year 1790, is steeped in the purest essence of poetry, and most characteristic of that flow of pure, cheerful, and exalted emotion which freshens one’s moral nature like milk and honey, in all the mature writings of this extraordinary man.

“The weeks that followed the successful reception of the
_Invisible Lodge_ were the ‘Sabbath weeks’ of Paul’s life. He
had had the courage to speak out in the fulness of his nature,
and had found a response in many hearts. In the paradise that
opened before him, he determined to give full course to the
flood of his genius; but he well knew, that the richest fulness
of poetic thought could only exist in connexion with peace of
soul, cheerfulness of disposition, and firmness of purpose, and
that the truth of his representations must arise from
corresponding inward truth and integrity; in short, if he would
be a poet in his works, he must be a poet in his life.

“He carefully continued his book of devotion, his rules and
purposes of life. He never awoke without reviewing the past day;
and where he had been assaulted by the force of any passion,
_there_ he placed a double bulwark, and with quiet satisfaction
celebrated the victory gained. His quick and warm fancy led him
often to outbreaking anger, and his ready wit to satire that was
sometimes wounding, especially when his good-nature was misused;
but the gentlest call led him back to tenderness--the accidental
sight of a boy’s face with tears in his eyes was sufficient to
disarm him; he thought of his future life, of the sorrows that
would draw from him still bitterer tears, and he said, ‘_I_ will
not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall;’ and he
kept his word. Where he was obliged to assert his rights, he did
it so calmly and gently, that the holy treasures of his
life--love and truth--remained for ever undisturbed.

“Every thing living touched his heart--from the humblest flower
that opened its leaves in the grass, up to the shining worlds on
high; children and old men, the beggar and the rich, he would
have embraced them all in the sacred glow of his emotions, or
given all he possessed to make them happy. No one went from him
unconsoled; and when he could give nothing but good counsel, he
gave that. Were it only a poor mountaineer or a travelling
apprentice to whom he could impart the smallest present, he
would dwell the whole day with delight on the circumstance.
Often he would say to himself, ‘Now he will draw the dollar from
his pocket, and reckon which of his long-cherished wishes he can
first satisfy. How often will he think of this day, and of the
unexpected gift, and perhaps _once_ more than usual upon the
Giver of _all_ good.’ Love was the ever-living principle of his
character and of his writings, and before the thought of the
Infinite, all differences in rank vanished away; all were
equally great, or equally little.

“He gained nourishment for this principle from every
circumstance in life. Where others would have been untouched and
cold, there he heard whispered to his spirit the voice of
humanity. Let him speak for himself. He says in his journal:-

“‘I picked up in the choir a faded rose-leaf, that lay under the
feet of the boys. Great God! what had I in my hand but a small
leaf, with a little dust upon it; and upon this small fugitive
thing my fancy built a whole paradise of joy--a whole summer
dwelt upon this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the
boy held this flower in his hand, and when through the church
window he saw the blue heaven and the clouds wandering over it;
when every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and
reminded him of the shadows on the grass from the over-flying
clouds. Good God! thou scatterest satisfaction every where, and
givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost thou
invite us to great and exciting pleasures, but thou givest to
the smallest a lingering perfume.’

“Above all things, his eye hung upon Nature. He lived and wrote
whole days in the open air, on the mountain, or in the woods;
and in the midst of winter he sought from the window the evening
rose-colour, his beloved stars, and that magic enchanter, the
moon. Every walk in the open air was to him the entrance into a
church. He said in his journal--‘Dost thou enter pure into this
vast, guiltless temple? Dost thou bring no poisonous passion
into this place, where flowers bloom and birds sing? Dost thou
bear no hatred where Nature loves! Art thou calm as the stream
where Nature reflects herself as in a mirror? Ah, would that my
heart were as true and as unruffled as Nature when she came from
the hands of her great Creator!’ Every new excursion in this
great temple gave him new strength, and he returned laden with
spiritual treasures. He loved to make short journeys on foot;
where the motion of the body kept the mind in a state of
activity, and the insignificant gained value by its
unexpectedness. A sunny day made him happy, and the perfumes of
a spring morning, or dewy evening, seemed almost to intoxicate
him with their incense; but the hours of night were those of
his highest elevation, when he would lie long hours on the dewy
grass, looking into the opening clouds. He says in his
journal--‘I take my ink-flask in the morning, and write as I
walk in the fragrant air. Then comes my joy, that I have
conquered two of my faults--my disposition to be angry in
conversation, and to lose my cheerfulness through a long day of
dust and musquitoes. Nothing makes one so indifferent to the pin
and musquito thrusts of life, as the consciousness of growing
better.’”

Richter belonged now to Germany, and should have been transferred immediately, you will think, like Göethe, Schiller, Wieland, Herder, and the other _Dii majorum gentium_, to WEIMAR, the one literary capital of Deutschland; for _political_ capital it neither had then nor has now, nor in the common course of things, notwithstanding the songs of 1813 and the _Zoll-Verein_, is ever like to have. And in Weimar, no doubt, there were some men who looked upon the apparition of the Richter comet with a more favourable eye than senatorian Göethe. Old Father Wieland, in particular, “who had read Tristram Shandy eighty times over,” called him “our Yorick, our Rabelais, the purest spirit!”--and the earnest Herder, with his capacious sympathy, was able to appreciate the religious and Christian element in Paul’s character, which naturally was a mystery to the author of Agathon. Taken as a whole, however, Weimar, with Göethe as its real king and god, was by no means the proper element for Richter. There was too much mere literature in it for one with whom goodness was the one thing needful, and greatness only an accident, agreeable or disagreeable, as the case might be. There was too much head in Weimar, and too little heart. Freedom, indeed, there was, in grand style, from all those civic formalities, and minute observation of small points, which had vexed him so much in Hof. But what one might complain of there, to use his own words, was “PAINTED EGOTISM AND UNPAINTED SCEPTICISM;”--the French Voltaire in a German Avatar! For the true Teut, Richter, that would never do. We are not, therefore, to be surprised if the visit which Paul made to Weimar in 1796, though full of joy and exhilaration, was not followed up by any permanent change in his quiet and retired mode of life. His native secluded region of the Fichtelgebirge was still to be his home. Hof and Bayreuth, in the centre of central Germany, and therefore out of every body’s way, were to boast the possession of this the most German of great German men. How little attraction there was between the calm, cold, artistical contemplativeness of Göethe, and the bickering sportiveness of sunny joy in the essentially moral nature of Richter, the following extract will declare:--

“‘On the second day I threw away my foolish prejudices in favour
of great authors. They are like other people. Here, every one
knows that they are like the earth, that looks from a distance,
from heaven, like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it,
it is found to be made of _boue de Paris_ (Paris mud.) An
opinion concerning Herder, Wieland, or Göethe, is as much
contested as any other. Who would believe that the three
watch-towers of our literature avoid and dislike each other! I
will never again bend myself anxiously before any _great_ man,
only before the _virtuous_. Under this impression, I went
timidly to meet Göethe. Every one had described him as cold to
every thing upon the earth. Madam von Kalb said, he no longer
admires any thing, not even himself. Every word is ice!
Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart. Therefore I
asked Knebel to petrify or incrust me by some mineral spring,
that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil.
Madam von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and
self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from
curiosity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only
one in Weimar in the Italian style--with such steps! A Pantheon
full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast!
At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent.
‘The French are drawing towards Paris,’ said Knebel. ‘Hm!’ said
the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of
light. But at last, the conversation led from the campaign to
art, publications, &c., and Göethe was himself. His conversation
is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned,
penetrating, and calm. At last, he read, that is, he played for
us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame
through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of
the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice, for I
said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and
pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He
considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like
deep-toned thunder, blended with soft whispering rain-drops.
There is nothing like it.’”

To which add the following passage, where we are sorry to find rather an unfavourable mention of our great favourite Schiller. Authors, however, especially poets, are a strange race: he who expects to find them always like their books, knows little. How unlike is Vesuvius, being calm and mantled with green grass, to the same Vesuvius when it spouts molten rock and spits lightning!

“‘I went yesterday to see the stony Schiller, from whom, as from
a precipice, all strangers spring back. His form is worn,
severely powerful, but angular. He is full of sharp-cutting
power, but without love. His conversation is nearly as excellent
as his writings. As I brought a letter from Göethe, he was
unusually pleasant; he would make me a fellow-contributor to the
_Horen_ (a periodical,) and would give me a naturalization act
in Jena.’

“Notwithstanding this courtesy, Richter did not repeat his visit
to Schiller, and his intimate union with Herder excluded all
hope of his being drawn to the party of Göethe. The latter wrote
to Schiller, ‘I am glad you have seen Richter. His love of truth
and his wish for self-improvement have prepossessed me in his
favour; but the social man is a sort of theoretical man, and I
doubt if Richter will ever approach us in a practical way,
although in theory he seems to have some pretensions to belong
to us.’ They were never friends. Richter could not conceal his
disappointment at the character of Göethe’s latter poetical
works; and soon after his return to Hof he wrote to Knebel in
relation to one of them, ‘that in such stormy times we needed a
Tyrtæus rather than a Propertius.’ The remark reached Göethe’s
ears; and Göethe, usually so indifferent to censure or
criticism, showed himself deeply susceptible and offended at
this so-called ‘manifestation of arrogance in Herr Richter.’”

But if the “many-sided Göethe”--wanting, as he certainly did, one important side of humanity, namely, the moral side--could not appreciate the genius of Richter fully, there was one who did--that, as we have already intimated, was Herder. This great man, as his intelligent wife has left on record, “valued Richter’s genius--his rich, overflowing, poetic Spirit--far above the soulless productions of the times, that contended for the poetic form only. He named them brooks without water; and often said that Richter stood, as opposed to them, on a high elevation; and that he would exchange all artistical forms for his living virtue, his feeling heart, his perennial creative genius. He brings new fresh life, truth, virtue, reality, into the declining and misunderstood vocation of the poet.” Such was Herder’s estimate of Paul; and herein precisely lies his true grandeur. A perfect Titan as an author, in the common relations of social and domestic life he is a god. Aiming at the highest things, he lives happy among the smallest. Soaring habitually among the loftiest ideas, he is “sympathising and attentive to the smallest little things, and to all the _actual_ of life.” This is the testimony of his wife--not every wife of a literary man, great or small, in these times, can give such a testimony. It has been a fashion with men of a certain fashion of genius to fall in love furiously, and to be ecstatically moved in the licentious roving of the eyes; but to shrink from the joining of hands, to hate marriage, and to damn the fireside. But Richter was of a different--of a more healthy, and a more happy humour. Did St Paul ever bear a nobler testimony to the “honourable” condition of marriage than the following?--

“That the brightest and purest fountain of love to mankind takes
nothing from love to the individual, I learn from my Caroline.
Every day it becomes more expansive. Rare as beautiful is her
adoration of the spiritual of poetry and nature; wonderful her
disinterestedness and complete abnegation of self. There is
nothing that she would not do for me, or others. World-long
cares are to her nothing, as her industry and love of duty are
infinite. As she loves me, she loves all my clothes, and would
make them all herself.

“As yet we have had nothing, or only very little, to irritate. I
cannot say that I am satisfied, but I am certainly _blest_. Ah,
see her! What are words! Marriage has made me love her more
romantically, deeper, _infinitely more_ than before!”

Richter, therefore, was a domestic man in the highest sense of the word. Would you know what domestic happiness means? Take the following--’tis from a daughter:--

“I love to represent the dear friendly man, with brown
study-coat and socks hanging down, as he entered our mother’s
chamber the first thing in the morning to greet her. The hound
springs on before him, and the children hang about him, and
seek, when he leaves the room, to thrust their little feet into
the slippers behind, when he raises his feet a little, so as to
hang on him more securely. One springs before, (at that time my
blessed brother lived,) the other two hang on his coat-skirts
until he reaches his own chamber-door; where all leave him, for
only the dog must enter there.

“When we were very small, we lived in a two-story house; my
father worked above, in the attic. We crept on our hands and
feet over the stairs, and hammered on the door till the father
himself arose and opened it, and after our noisy ingress, closed
it again--then he took from an old chest a trumpet and a fife,
with which we made noisy music while he continued writing. We
ventured in again many times in the day to play with a squirrel
that he had at that time, and that in the evening he took out
with him in his pocket, and always made one of the family
circle.

“He had, usually, animals that he tamed, about him. Sometimes a
mouse; then a great, white, cross spider, that he kept in a
paper box, with a glass top. There was a little door beneath, by
which he could feed his prisoner with dead flies. In the autumn
he collected the winter food for his little tree frog and his
tame spider.

“The father was good to every thing: he could not bear to
witness the least pain, not even in the lowest animals. Thus, he
never went out without opening the cage of his canary birds, to
indemnify the poor animals, who would be melancholy in his
absence. He took at one time the most sedulous care of a dog,
who came in one evening after the loss of the poor dead _Alert_,
as he knew in the morning he should exchange him for another,
and he would have no opportunity to feed him again. You will
smile at the connexion, but he did the same for a departing
servant maid: providing every thing for her convenience the day
before, and delighting the poor girl in the most unusual degree.

“The children were permitted all sorts of practical jokes
towards him. ‘Father, dance once;’ then he would make some
leaps; or he must speak French, in which he placed wonderful
value on the nasal sound, which no one made as well as he. It
sounded, indeed, curiously and made my mother laugh.

“In the twilight he told us stories; or spake of God and other
worlds; or he would tell us of our grandfather, and other
splendid things. We ran to gain the wager, which of us should
get nearest to him on the sofa. The old money-box, hooped with
iron, with a hole in the cover, that two mice might conveniently
pass through, was the stepping-stone by which we jumped over the
back of the sofa, for in front it was difficult to press between
the table and the repertory for papers. We all three crowded
between the back of the sofa and the father’s out-stretched
legs; above, at his head, lay the sleeping dog. At last, when we
had pressed our limbs into the most inconvenient postures, the
story began.

“The father knew how to create for himself many little
pleasures. Thus, he made all the boxes for his tame animals,
after his half-hour’s nap in the afternoon. It was a special
satisfaction to him to prepare ink, which he did much oftener
than was necessary, for Otto wrote long years after with the
rejected part. He could never wait to perfect it, but tried it
an hour after it was made. If it was already black, he would
come joyfully to us, and say,--‘Now, if it be black already,
what will it be to-morrow, or after fourteen days?’

“The mere thought of destruction was painful to him, especially
the loss of the work of man’s mind. He never burned a letter;
yes, he treasured even the most insignificant. ‘All loss of
life,’ he said, ‘may be restored again, but the creations of
these heads, these hearts, never! The name should be erased, but
the soul that speaks its most intimate sentiments in letters,
should live.’ He had also thick books written full of the
remarks and the habits and peculiarities of his children.

“At meals he was very cheerful, and listened to every thing we
told him with the greatest sympathy, and always made something
out of the smallest relation; so that the narrator was always
wiser for what he had said.

“In eating and drinking he was extremely moderate. He never gave
us direct instruction, and yet he taught us always. Our evening
table he called a French _table-d’hote_, that he furnished with
twelve dishes taken from the arts and sciences. We tasted of all
without being satiated with any, and we all ventured to utter
any joke to the father about himself or his entertainment.

“His punishments for us girls were rather passive than active;
they consisted in refusing some request, or in a severe word;
but my brother sometimes received corporal punishment. My father
would say--‘Max, this afternoon, at three o’clock, come to me to
receive your whipping.’ He went punctually, and suffered it
without a sound.”

But we become diffuse. There are many scenes in the quiet life of Richter, that, like the above, are perfect domestic idyls--but we must hasten to the last; ’tis like those which preceded it, surpassing lovely. Never have we encountered, in the wide world of biographic books, a death-bed scene, so full of love, and joy, and peace, as the death-bed of Jean Paul Frederick Richter. Nothing more, however, than one might have expected; for men generally--so experienced clergymen observe--die as they live. One thing only we must remark, before giving our last extracts; towards the close of his career, the bright, sun-gazing genius of Richter was struck, like Milton’s, not with celestial, but with terrestrial blindness. For some space before he died, his favourite world of flowers and green fields was already a blank to him. In the month of October 1823, his nephew, Otto Spazier, to whom we are indebted for the principal part of these biographical details, shortly before his death, being called to visit the blind old poet, writes as follows:--

“‘Such a call from the immortal old man, as it entered my
solitary apartment,’ says his nephew, ‘filled me with delight.
The reverend image of his beautiful old age, a just reward for a
holy life, rose before me, and with joyful haste I travelled
through the wet days of October, and entered his study on the
evening of the twenty-fourth of that month. The same joyful
tremor affected me as formerly, when, at the twilight hour, I
had listened here with his family to the voice of wisdom. The
windows of his room looked towards the rising sun, and far over
the garden and over scattered trees and houses, towards the
Flichtelgebirge, that bounded the horizon. A mingled perfume of
flowers and grapes led the fancy to southern climes, to
beautiful blue June days, or to the vintage on the Rhine. His
sofa, where he usually read in a reclining posture, was opposite
this window, and before it his writing table, upon which
appeared a regular confusion of pens, paper of all colours,
glasses, flowers, books, among which last were the small English
editions of Swift and Sterne. At the other window stood a small
piano, and near this a smaller table. Depending from the cage of
his birds was a little ladder, that led to his own work-table,
where the birds were permitted to roam among the confusion,
sprinkling with water from the flower glass the sheet upon which
the poet was writing. Often was Paul seen to stop in his most
excited passages, to let his little canary, with her young,
travel, undisturbed, over the page, where the water she
scattered from her feathers mingled with the ink from his pen.
In the corner of the room was a door by which, unobserved,
Richter could descend the steps into the garden, and on a
cushion near it rested his white, silky-haired poodle. A hunting
pocket and rosewood staff hung near. All three had often been
the companions of his wandering, when, on beautiful days, he
went through the chestnut avenue to the little Rolwenzell
cottage.

“‘All in the room retained its usual position, but the ruling
hand appeared to have been absent. The light was shaded, and the
windows hung with green curtains; the robust form that in former
years, even before the snowdrop had loosened the icy crust of
winter, had worked long hours with uncovered breast in the open
air, lay supported with cushions, and shrouded in furs upon the
sofa; his body drawn together, and eyes for ever closed.
‘Heaven,’ said he, ‘chastens me with a double rod, and one is a
heavy cudgel! (meaning his blindness); but I shall be well again
now. Ah! we have so much to say and to do. But we shall have a
thousand hours--at least, minutes.’ His voice was weaker, his
words slower, and it cut me to the heart to hear him speak of
himself. It was late--and soon his wife, ever watchful, called
me away, to return to him again in the morning.’

“Early next morning he began a complete revision of his works.
The nephew read aloud, and Paul inserted his alterations. When
Spazier thought one necessary, he indicated it by pausing, to
draw his attention. With great mildness and patience Paul
listened to every objection; and himself related, explained,
praised, and blamed. He reconsidered and over-lived thus his
whole spiritual life in his works. In the comparisons scattered
through his sixty-four volumes, of which indeed every page is
filled, he found only two or three were repeated.”

On the 14th November of the same year the curtain was drawn. How calmly--how beautifully!--Read:--

“Noon had by this time arrived. Richter, thinking it was night,
said--‘It was time _to go to rest_!’ and wished to retire. He
was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and all was arranged as
if for repose; a small table near his bed, with glass of water,
and his two watches; common one and a repeater. His wife now
brought him a wreath of flowers that a lady had sent him, for
every one wished to add some charm to his last days. As he
touched them carefully, for he could neither see nor smell them,
he seemed to rejoice in the images of the flowers in his mind,
for he said repeatedly to Caroline--‘My beautiful flowers, my
lovely flowers!’

“Although his friends sat around the bed, as he imagined it was
night, they conversed no longer; he arranged his arms as if
preparing for repose, which was to be to him the repose of
death, and soon sank into a tranquil sleep.

“Deep silence pervaded the apartment. Caroline sat at the head
of the bed, with her eyes immovably fixed on the face of her
beloved husband. Otto had retired, and the nephew sat with
Plato’s _Phaedon_ in his hand, open at the death of Socrates. At
that moment a tall and beautiful form entered the chamber; and,
at the foot of the bed, with his hands raised to heaven, and
deeply moved, he repeated aloud the prayer of his Mosaic faith.
It was Emanuel, and next to Otto, the most beloved of Richter’s
friends.

“About six o’clock the physician entered. Richter yet appeared
to sleep; his features became every moment holier, his brow more
heavenly, but it was cold as marble to the touch; and as the
tears of his wife fell upon it, he remained immovable. At length
his respiration became less regular, but his features always
calmer, more heavenly. A slight convulsion passed over the face;
the physician cried out--‘That is death!’ and all was quiet. The
spirit had departed!

“All sank, praying, upon their knees. This moment, that raised
them above the earth with the departing spirit, admitted of no
tears!

“‘Thus Richter went from earth, great and holy as a poet,
greater and holier as a man!’

“Involuntarily we recall the deathbed of another great poet, on
that delicious summer’s day when the windows were all open, and
the only sound the ripple of the Tweed upon its stony bed.
_Here_, in the midst of winter, a deeper repose must have
consecrated the deathbed of Richter, as if Nature herself stood
reverently still, when her worshipper and interpreter laid down
the garment in which he had ministered in her temple.

“Richter was buried by torch light: the unfinished manuscript of
_Selina_[5] borne upon his coffin, and the noble ode of
Klopstock--

‘Thou shalt arise, my soul!’

was sung by the students of the Gymnasium at the burial vault.”

Thus have we, by favour of your attention, kind reader, endeavoured to open up to the British eye, a few sunny glimpses of one of the choicest spirits whom “the Fatherland” delighteth to honour. JEAN PAUL, _der einzige_--the _unique_, is the received designation of Richter in Germany; a title in his case as deservedly earned by literary labour, as military and political services have earned it likewise, in his proper sphere, for the great Frederick. Pity only that it is by no means such an easy matter to render the works of the author’s genius as appreciable to general admiration, as the actions of the soldier and the policy of the king. Guns and trumpets make a noise over the wide world, from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic, pretty much the same; and, provided the stages of their explosion be large and open enough, the actors will not fail to be noted of all men, and admired. But the voices of wise and good men in books, are of a more curious and delicate melody; and sometimes even the rarest of them cannot be made to vibrate in their full harmonious chords, otherwise than to the nicely-fitted structure of the national ear. This is the case with the French Beranger, and in an eminent degree with our own Burns. The translators, we know, have tried their hands with these men--as what will they not try?--but let them carve and polish as they will, the Frenchman will still limp awkwardly in his Wellington boots, and the Scotsman, though he may retain his warmth, will lose the finest tints of his colour in Deutschland. So even more strikingly is the stamp of indelible nationality imprinted on all the writings of Jean Paul; and it will require peculiarly skilful handling indeed, to take away the point from the French lady’s criticism above quoted, and make all or any one of Richter’s works, like Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” or Göethe’s “Faust,” a familiar occupant of a cultivated Englishman’s shelves. These works consist almost exclusively of novels or fictitious tales, and these of two kinds: the philosophical or ideal novel--for which, even in its most perfect character, John Bull has no peculiar faculty; and the novel of common life, in which department the same most unphilosophical Bull has attained such an admirable mastership, that to his practical eye the most manful feats of a purely German genius like Richter, are apt to appear puerile and even apish. Nevertheless, we do by no means despair of a selection being made from this great man’s works, such as will not, indeed, popularise him on British ground--for popular in the widest sense he is not even in Germany--but such as may command the ear of all educated men for whom the higher departments of imaginative literature have a charm. Such a collection to our knowledge has not yet been made in this country. When it shall be made, _every thing depends on the workman_. Richter cannot be translated at random: nor can he be simply transposed, as many a decent sentence-monger may, line after line, and paragraph after paragraph; he is freakish, and will confound a methodical wit lamentably. One decided advantage, however, by way of an introduction to the English Richter, has been gained by the appearance of the present biography. We have learnt to know the man; and the man in this case is as good, perhaps better, than his works. No well-conditioned person, we are convinced, will lay down the biography of Richter without an earnest desire to know something more of such a man. He will be convinced also that the novels of such a writer will not be made up of mere playful arabesques to amuse, of mere pepper and spices to stimulate; he will have felt the breath of a moral regeneration in these pages, and that a novel of Jean Paul is in fact a sermon; an evangelic address, where the gospel is preached, as wit is vented in the old drama, oftentimes by a clown. Next to a mind of extensive culture, and a heart of wide sympathies, a moral preparation of this kind is the grand key to the writings of FREDERICK RICHTER.

A TALE OF THE MASORCHA CLUB.

AT BUENOS AYRES.