Yet ne'er with wits profane to range, An atheist laugh's a poor exchange When ranting round in pleasure's ring, Religion may be blinded; Or if she gie1 a random sting, It may be little minded; But when on life we 're tempest-driv❜n — A correspondence fix'd wi' Heaven, Adieu, dear, amiable youth! Your heart can ne'er be wanting! May prudence, fortitude, and truth, Erect your brow undaunting! In ploughman phrase, “God send you speed," Still daily to grow wiser; And 1 Give. may ye better reck the rede 3 Than ever did th' adviser! 2 Without. 3 Attend to the counsel. JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER (A. D. 1763-1825.) "RICHTER," writes Carlyle, whose thought and style were profoundly influenced by him, "was born at Wonsiedel in Baireuth, in the year 1763; and as his birthday fell on the 21st of March, it was sometimes wittily said that he and the Spring were born together. Destiny, he seems to think, made another witticism on him; the word Richter being appellative as well as proper, in the German tongue, where it signifies Judge. His Christian name, Jean Paul, which long passed for some freak of his own, and a pseudonym, he seems to have derived honestly enough from his maternal grandfather, Johann Paul Kuhn, a substantial clothmaker in Hof; only translating the German Johann into the French Jean. The Richters, for at least two generations, had been schoolmasters, or very subaltern churchmen, distinguished for their poverty and their piety; the grandfather, it appears, is still remembered in his little circle as a man of quite remarkable innocence and holiness. . . . The father, who at this time occupied the humble post of Tertius (Underschoolmaster) and Organist at Wonsiedel, was shortly afterwards appointed Clergyman in the hamlet of Jodiz; and thence, in the course of years, transferred to Schwarzenbach on the Saale." The removal to Schwarzenbach occurred in the thirteenth year of Jean Paul. Three years later the father died, leaving his family in poverty and debt. Nevertheless, suffering infinite hardships, Paul struggled through the Hof Gymnasium and through Leipzig University, and entered his career of authorship at nineteen, when he produced the satirical sketches which he called "Grönländische Prozesse" (Greenland Lawsuits). "He lived as the young ravens; he was often in danger of starving. "The prisoner's allowance,' says he, is bread and water; but I had only the Richter does not anywhere appear to have latter.' faltered in his progress; for a moment to have lost heart, or even to have lost good humour." In 1784 he rejoined his mother, who had taken up her residence at Hof, and the family, sometimes including several brothers, lived in a single apartment. It was not till 1788 that he could find a publisher for his next book, the "Selection from the Papers of the Devil," and then few readers. "It appears that the Unsichtbare Loge' (Invisible Lodge) sent forth from the Hof spinning establishment in 1793, was the first of his works that obtained any decisive favour. . . . With the appearance of Hesperus,' another wondrous novel, which proceeded from the same single apartment,' in 1796, the siege may be said to have terminated by storm." In 1797 the mother died, and in the following year Richter married, settling himself shortly afterwards at Weimar, where he lived for several years "in high favour with whatever was most illustrious in that city. 666 6 6 "Titan,' one of his chief romances (published at Berlin in 1800), was written during his abode at Weimar; so likewise the Flegeljahre' (Wild Oats); and the Eulogy of 'Charlotte Corday.' . Richter's other novels published prior to this period are the Invisible Lodge;' the 'Siebenkas' (or Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces); the Life of Quintus Fixlein; the Jubalsenior' (Parson in Jubilee): Jean Paul's Letters and Future History,' the Déjeuner in Kuchschnappel,' the Biographical Recreations under the Cranium of a Giantess,' scarcely belonging to this species. The novels published afterwards are the Leben Fibels' (Life of Fibel); Katzenbergers Badereise' (Katzenberger's Journey to the Bath); Schmelzles Reise nach Flätz' (Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz); the Comet,' named also Nicholaus Margraf.' ... "We hope many will agree with us in honouring Richter, such as he was; and, in spite of his hundred real, and his ten thousand seeming faults,' discern under this wondrous guise the spirit of a true Poet and Philosopher. A Poet, and among the highest of his time we must reckon him, though he wrote no verses; a Philosopher, though he promulgated no systems: for, on the whole, that Divine Idea of the World' stood in clear, ethereal light before his mind; he recognized the Invisible, even under the mean forms of these 6 days, and with a high, strong, not uninspired heart, strove to represent it in the Visible, and publish tidings of it to his fellowmen." THOMAS CARLYLE, "Jean Paul Friedrich Richter again" ("Miscellanies," v. iii.). In the fictitious "Life of Quintus Fixlein," Jean Paul, himself one of the characters and the narrator of the story, notes down the following Rules of Life, for his own guidance and that of his friends: QUINTUS FIXLEIN'S RULES OF LIFE. (From Richter's "Life of Quintus Fixlein," translated by Thomas Carlyle.) Little joys refresh us constantly like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring it. Trifles we should let, not plague us only, but also gratify us; we should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also; and if flies often buzz about our room, we should, like Domitian, amuse ourselves with flies, or like a certain still living Elector, feed them. For civic life and its micrologies, for which the parson has a natural taste, we must acquire an artificial one; must learn to love without esteeming it; learn, far as it ranks beneath human life, to enjoy it like another twig of this human life, as poetically as we do the pictures of it in romances. The loftiest mortal loves and seeks the same sort of things with the meanest ; only from higher grounds and by higher paths. Be every minute, Man, a full life to thee! Despise anxiety and wishing, the Future and the Past! If the Second-pointer can be no road-pointer into an Eden for thy soul, the Month-pointer will still less be so, for thou livest not from month to month, but from second to second! Enjoy thy Existence more than thy Manner of Existence, and let the dearest object of thy Consciousness be this Consciousness itself! Make not the Present a means of thy Future; for this Future is nothing but a coming Present; and the Present, which thou despisest, was once a Future which thou desiredest ! Stake in no lotteries, keep at home, give and accept no pompous entertainments, travel not abroad every year! Conceal not from thyself, by long plans, thy household goods, thy chamber, thy acquaintance. Despise Life, that thou mayst enjoy it! Inspect the neighborhood of thy life; every shelf, every nook of thy abode; and nestling in, quarter thyself in the farthest and most domestic winding of thy snail-house! Look upon a capital but as a collection of villages, a village as some blind-alley of a capital; fame as the talk of neighbors at the street-door; a library as a learned conversation, joy as a second, sorrow as a minute, life as a day; and three things as all in all: God, Creation, Virtue! |