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K10I1TKK 



when Jean Paul went on to Jena to nee him. The 

 antagonism between llicm wo* deep ami fun. la 

 mental, and lasted till death, being HI times but 

 ill conceale<l by all three. Herder and his wife, on 

 tli<> other hand, greeted the young romance-writer 

 with overflowing admiration, ami gave him their 

 friend-hip, which also endured till death. AH fur 

 Charlotte von Kalb, she did not -top at friendNhip : 

 in spite of having a hnskind already, -he exercised 

 her sex's fabled privilege of leap-year her first 

 letter to him was dated 'J'.ttli February and gave 

 him unasked the love of her vehement heart. 



From this time for a few yearn Jean Paul's life 

 was rich in incident and full of excitement an 

 Odyssey of love adventures, in which he was the 

 object of extravagant idolatry on the part of the 

 women of Germany, especially of aristocratic dames 

 who dabbled in literature. They gave him their 

 love whether or no, anil would nave deserted 

 hiisliand and children for hU sake ; for, though 

 not personally handsome, Jean Paul had a 

 wonderful fascination of manner, particularly 

 towards women. He found all women charm- 

 ing, he was a delightful talker and a good 

 listener, and had a sweet and sympathetic smile 

 qualities that explain a gomi deal. In 1801 

 lie married a Berlin ladv, and three years later 

 settled down at Bayreuth, attracted by its beau- 

 ties of hill and valley, and by its beer. There he 

 spent the rest of his days, leading a simple, busy 

 life, writing his books, playing with his children, 

 tending his pet animals, and taking short summer 

 journeys to different towns of Germany ; the 

 present of a flower filled him with perfect joy. 

 His last years were clouded by the death of his 

 only son, a promising student, in 18*21, and by his 

 own blindness. From 1799 he enjoyed a pension 

 from the Prince-primate Dall>erg, and then from 

 the king of Bavaria. He died on 14th November 

 182.3. The principal works of his married life were 

 the two grand romances, Titan ( 1800-3 ; Kng. 

 trans. 1862) and Wild Gala (1804-3; Eng. trans. 

 as Walt and fait, 1849), the former accounted by 

 himself and by most German critics his master- 

 piece, though Englishmen would generally prefer 

 the latter, as they would certainly prefer Siebenkas 

 to Hesperus ; Schmeltzle's Journey to Flatz ( 1809 ; 

 Eng. trans, by Carlyle, 1827) and Dr Katzenberger's 

 Trip to the Spa ( 1809), the best two of his satirico- 

 hninorous writings; the idyll Fibel's Life (1812) ; 

 the fragment of another grand romance, Nicholas 

 Markgraf, or The Comet (1820-22); a series of 

 reflections on Literature ( Vom-li / <lfr dSsthetik ; 

 improved ed. 1812), containing many excellent 

 things about poetry, humour, wit, style ; another 

 series on Education ( Lenimi, 1807 ; Eng. trans. 

 1848, 1876, and 1887), a lx>ok that ranks with 

 Rousseau's fimile as a standard work on training 

 the young, ami U full of evergreen wisdom ; 

 various patriotic writings (1808-12); and an un- 

 finished Autii/iiiiifrii/i/ii/ (1820), the finest of all hi- 

 Idyll*. 



Jean Paul stands apart entirely by himself in 

 German literature, a humorist of the first water, 

 a Titan, 'a colossal spirit, a lofty and original 

 thinker, a genuine poet [in prose], a high minded, 

 true, and most amiable man. ... He advances not 

 witli one faculty, but with a whole mind, with 

 intellect, and pathos, and wit, and humour, and 

 imagination, moving onward like a mighty host, 

 motley, ponderous, irregular, irresistible. He in 

 not airy, sparkling, ami precise, but deep, billowy, 

 and vast' (Carlyle). Two irreconcilable tendencies 

 strive for mastery in him and his works a dreamy, 

 lachrymose sentimentality, that shrank from the 

 rough buli'ctings of life, and sought refuge in 

 emotional dissipation, luxuriating in tears, caress- 

 ing sorrow, coquetting with love, melting in melan- 



choly longings for the world Ix-yond the grave; 

 and a sharp-eyed, wide-awake common sense, 

 that saw workaday realities with the utmost 

 cicarne-s and di-crimination. All his great quali- 

 ties of imagination ami intellect were, however, 

 made ministers to his humour, which had the 

 wiliest range, moving from the petty follies of 

 individual men and the absurdities of social custom 

 up to the paradoxes that are rooted in the per 

 maiiem ordinances of the universe. lie turns his 

 irony a tender, reverent, playful irony upon all 

 the relations of human life, even upon the 

 holiest beliefs of his own heart. And, in spii- 

 of the egotism of genius that often shows itself 

 so strongly in him, Jean Paul had the heart of a 

 truly great and good man. Home calls him the 

 author par excellence of the lowly liorn, the poverty 

 stricken, the neglected, and the despised ; to this 

 class belong some of his tinest characters, as \Vu/, 

 Fixlein, Sielienkas, Vult. As a master of pathos 

 he is put by De Quincey above Sterne. Few, if any, 

 have written with such tender love and such 

 delicate feeling of the idyllic joys of the count >y 

 and the happiness of simple domestic life, particu- 

 larly in the schoolhouse and parsonage. He had a 

 wonderfully deep and sympathetic insight into the 

 nature of woman, but has not created more than 

 one lifelike woman (Lenette). Yet the male 

 characters of his books, in so far as thev are 

 humorous, are generally living beings, or else, if 

 secondary characters, well-drawn pencil sketches 

 in outline. Jean Paul is the classic author of 

 friendships (Siebenkiis and Leibgeber, Walt and 

 Vult); he matched them with bis own friendship 

 for Hermann and Oertel, and for Otto and the Jew 

 Emmanuel Osmund. Nature was to him a living 

 and divine presence : he loved her reverently, from 

 the solemn stars to the tiniest flower, and his 

 descriptions of nature embrace some of the loftiest 

 hymns the spirit of man has chanted to the beauty 

 and sublimity of created things e.g. several 

 passages in Hesperus and Wild Oats, the Dream of 

 the Universe in Siebenkas. God and the immor- 

 tality of the soul were the great fact* ever present 

 to hi- mind, influencing all his thoughts. An 

 enduring sense of the ethic worth of human action, 

 'a noble reverence for the spirit of all gixHlness 

 forms the crown and glory of his culture ' ( Carlyle ). 

 The reason why he is so little known, except by 

 name, is that of all great writers he is one of the 

 most difficult to read, and it may lie added to 

 understand. No reader who has not the strongest 

 constitution can struggle through the tangled 

 thickets of encyclopedic learning, the tortuous 

 wit, the dreary wastes of digression and dullness, 

 the hothouses of tropical sentimentality, amid 

 which the gem-like gardens of hi- cieative art are 

 hidden. His prose is harder to translate than 

 Heine's verse. For literary form, for order, har- 

 mony, or restraint he has not the slightest respect. 

 The principal idea in his (often) long sentences is 

 too frequently lost amid a labyrinth of subordinate 

 clauses. The story is chiefly a peg for .lean Paul 

 to hang Jean Paul's self-conimnnings and rellectioiis 

 upon, a point d'appui for the play of his wit 

 and humour. The wildest improbabilities, the 

 wildest extravagances of fancy, are indulged in 

 without check. Sentence follows sentence teem- 

 ing with allusions, analogies, image-, metaphors, 

 similes, tumbling one over another in inextric- 

 able confusion. A Croesus of idioms, he is the 

 greatest and most prolific word-coiner in the lan- 

 guage : he compels words to adapt themselves to 

 his ideas. Often enough his diction is inflated and 

 liombastic, and his literary taste execrable ; \ et 

 when he is at his best his language marches with 

 a majesty, a dignity, a natural lieaiity that are 

 seldom matched in German literature. " ( 'ai lyle's 



