20 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[No. 166. 



p. 229., that Mr. Hayward's note was not written 

 with that writer's usual care. Gothe does not say 

 that his reply to Nicolai's Joys of Werter, though 

 circulated only in MS., destroyed N.'s literary repu- 

 tation : on the contrary, he says that his squib (for 

 it was no more) consisted of an epigram, not fit for 

 communication, and a dialogue between Charlotte 

 and "Werter, which was never copied, and long lost; 

 but that this dialogue, exposing N.'s impertinence, 

 was written with a foreboding of his sad habit, after- 

 wards developed, of treating of subjects out of his 

 depth, which habit, notwithstanding his indisput- 

 able merits of another kind, utterly destroyed his 

 reputation. This was most true : and yet all such 

 assertions must be taken in a qualified sense. 

 Nearly thirty years after this was written I par- 

 took of the hospitality of N. at Berlin. It was in 

 1803, when he was at the head, not of the Berlin 

 literati, but of the book-manufactory of Prussia. 

 He was then what, afterwards and elsewhere, the 

 Longmans, Murrays, Constables, Cottas, and Brock- 

 hauses were, — the great publisher of his age and 

 country. The entrepi'eneur of the Neue Deutsche 

 Bibliothek may be compared with the publishers 

 of our and the French great Cyclopzedias, and our 

 Quarterly Reviews. 



It was unfortunate for the posthumous reputa- 

 tion of the great bibliopolist that he, patronising a 

 school that was dying out, made war on the athletes 

 of the rising school. He assailed nearly every great 

 man, philosopher or poet, from Kant and Gothe 

 downwards, especially of the schools of Saxony, 

 Swabia, and the free imperial cities. No wonder 

 that he became afterwards what Macfleckno and 

 Colly Cibber had been to Dryden and Pope. In 

 some dozen of the Xenien of Gothe and Schiller, 

 in 1797, he was treated as the Arch-Philistine. 



M. M. E. characterises him as the " friend" and 

 " fellow-labourer" of Lessing. Now Lessing was 

 incomparably the most eminent litterateur of the 

 earlier part of that age, — the man who was the 

 forerunner of the philosophers, and whose criti- 

 cisms supplied the place of poetry. The satirists 

 of the Xenien affect to compassionate Lessing, in 

 having to endure a companion so forced on him as 

 Nicolai was, whom they speak of as a " thorn in 

 the crown of the martyr." The few who care for 

 the literary controversies of the age of Gothe in 

 Germany will be greatly assisted by an edition of 

 the Xenien, with notes, published at Dantzig, IS.SS. 



H. C. R. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC COBBESPONDENCE. 



Processes upon Paper. — The favourable manner 

 in which the account I have given of the Collo- 

 dion process has been received, not only by your 

 readers in general, as has been evinced by many 

 private letters, but also by the numerous cor- 

 respondents it has drawn forth, induces me, after 



some little delay, to request space for a descrip- 

 tion of the following processes upon paper. In 

 giving these I wish it to be understood that I 

 may offer but little that is original, my object 

 being to describe, as plainly as I possibly can, 

 these easy methods, and to make no observation 

 but what I have found to be successful in my own 

 hands. I have had the good fortune to obtain 

 the friendship of some of the most successful 

 photographers of the day ; and taking three very 

 eminent ones, I find they have each some pecu- 

 liarities in his mode of manipulation, varying with 

 each other in the strength of the solutions em- 

 ployed, and producing results the most agreeable 

 to their respective tastes. Reviewing these dif- 

 ferent processes in my own mind, and trying with 

 patience the various results, I conclude that the 

 following quantities are . calculated to produce an 

 adequate degree of sensibility in the paper, and 

 yet to allow it to be prepared for the action of 

 light for many hours previous to its use, and yet 

 with more certainty than any other I am ac- 

 quainted with. I think I may always depend 

 upon it for twenty-four to thirty-six hours after 

 excitement, and I have seen good pictures pro- 

 duced upon the third day. I believe it is a rule 

 which admits of no contradiction, that the more 

 you dilute your solution, the longer the excited 

 paper will keep ; but in proportion to its dimi- 

 nished sensibility, the time of exposure must be 

 prolonged, and therefore I am, from this waste of 

 time and other reasons, disposed to place much 

 less value upon the wax-paper process than many 

 do. 



The process I am. about to describe is so simple, 

 and I hope to make it so intelligible to your non- 

 photographic readers, that a perfect novice, using 

 ordinary care, must meet with success ; but should 

 I fail doing so upon all points, any information 

 sought through the medium of " N. & Q." shall 

 meet with explanation from myself, if not from 

 other of your experienced correspondents, whose 

 indulgence I must beg should the communication 

 be deemed too elementary, it being my earnest 

 desire to point out to ai'chseologists who are de- 

 sirous of acquiring this knowledge, how easily 

 they themselves may practise this beautiful art, 

 and possess those objects they would desire to 

 preserve, in a far more truthful state than could 

 be otherwise accomplished. 



I have not myself met that uniform success 

 with any other paper that I have with Turner's 

 photographic of Chafford Mills : a sheet of this 

 divided into two portions forms at the same time 

 a useful and also a very easily-managed size, one 

 adapted for most cameras, forming a picture of 

 nine inches by seven, which is adequate for 

 nearly every purpose. Each sheet being marked 

 in its opposite corners with a plain pencil-mark on 

 its smooth side (vide ante, p. 372.), the surface for 



