Part 34

But what he liked best to produce were Schemes of Books. Accordingly, he sewed together a large work, wherein he merely advised the Learned of things they ought to introduce in Literary History, which History he rated some ells higher than Universal or Imperial History. In his Prolegomena to this performance, he transiently submitted to the Literary republic that Hommel had given a register of Jurists who were sons of wh--, of others who had become Saints; that Baillet enumerates the Learned who _meant_ to write something; and Ancillon those who wrote nothing at all; and the Luebeck Superintendent Goetze, those who were shoemakers, those who were drowned; and Bernhard those whose fortunes and history before birth were interesting. This (he could now continue) should, as it seems, have excited us to similar muster-rolls and matriculations of other kinds of Learned; whereof he proposed a few: for example, of the Learned, who were unlearned; of those who were entire rascals; of such as wore their own hair,--of cue-preachers, cue-psalmists, cue-annalists, and so forth; of the Learned who had worn black leather breeches, of others who had worn rapiers; of the Learned who had died in their eleventh year,--in their twentieth--twenty-first, &c.,--in their hundred and fiftieth, of which he knew no instance, unless the Beggar Thomas Parr might be adduced; of the Learned who wrote a more abominable hand than the other Learned (whereof we know only Rolfinken and his letters, which were as long as his hands[40]); or of the Learned who had clipt nothing from each other but the beard (whereof no instance is known, save that of Philelphus and Timotheus[41]).

[40] _Paravicini Singularia de viris claris. Cent. I. 2._

[41] _Ejusd. Cent. II._ Philelphus quarrelled with the Greek about the quantity of a syllable: the prize or bet was the beard of the vanquished. Timotheus lost his.

Such by-studies did he carry on along with his official labours: but I think the State in viewing these matters is actually mad; it compares the man who is great in Philosophy and Belles Lettres at the expense of his jog-trot officialities, to _concert-clocks_, which, though striking their hours in flute-melodies, are worse time-keepers than your gross stupid _steeple-clocks_.

To return to St. Clara's day. Fixlein, after such mental exertions, bolted out under the music-bushes and rustling-trees; and returned not again out of warm Nature, till plate and chair were already placed at the table. In the course of the repast, something occurred which a Biographer must not omit: for his mother had, by request, been wont to map out for him, during the process of mastication, the chart of his child's-world, relating all the traits which in any way prefigured what he had now grown to. This perspective sketch of his early Past, he committed to certain little leaves, which merit our undivided attention. For such leaves exclusively, containing scenes, acts, plays of his childhood, he used chronologically to file and arrange in separate drawers in a little child's-desk of his; and thus to divide his Biography, as Moser did his Publicistic Materials, into separate _letter-boxes_. He had boxes or drawers for memorial-letters of his twelfth, of his thirteenth, fourteenth, &c. of his twenty-first year, and so on. Whenever he chose to conclude a day of pedagogic drudgery by an evening of peculiar rest, he simply pulled out a letter-drawer, a register-bar in his Life-hand-organ, and recollected the whole.

And here must I in reference to those reviewing Mutes, who may be for casting the noose of strangulation round my neck, most particularly beg, that, before doing so on account of my Chapters being called Letter-boxes, they would have the goodness to look whose blame it was, and to think whether I could possibly help it, seeing the Quintus had divided his Biography into such Boxes himself: they have Christian bowels.

But about his elder brother he put no saddening question to his mother: this poor boy a peculiar Fate had laid hold of, and with all his genial endowment, dashed to pieces on the iceberg of Death. For he chanced to leap on an ice-board that had jammed itself among several others; but these recoiled, and his shot forth with him; melted away as it floated under his feet, and so sunk his heart of fire amid the ice and waves. It grieved his mother that he was not found, that her heart had not been harrowed by the look of the swoln corpse.--O good mother, rather thank God for it!--

* * * * *

After breakfast, to fortify himself with new vigour for his desk, he for some time strolled idly over the house, and, like a Police Fire-inspector, visited all the nooks of his cottage, to gather from them here and there a live ember from the ash-covered rejoicing-fire of his childhood. He mounted to the garret, to the empty bird-coops of his father, who in winter had been a birder; and he transiently reviewed the lumber of his old playthings, which were lying in the netted enclosure of a large canary breeding-cage. In the minds of children, it is regular _little_ forms, such as those of balls and dies, that impress and express themselves most forcibly. From this may the reader explain to himself Fixlein's delight in the red acorn-blockhouse, in the sparwork glued together out of white chips and husks of potato-plums, in the cheerful glass-house of a cube-shaped lantern, and other the like products of his early architecture. The following, however, I explain quite differently: he had ventured, without leave given from any lord of the manor, to build a clay house; not for cottagers, but for flies; and which, therefore, you could readily enough have put in your pocket. This fly-hospital had its glass windows, and a red coat of colouring, and very many alcoves, and three balconies: balconies, as a sort of house within a house, he had loved from of old so much, that he could scarcely have liked Jerusalem well, where (according to Lightfoot) no such thing is permitted to be built. From the glistening eyes, with which the architect had viewed his tenantry creeping about the windows or feeding out of the sugar-trough,--for, like the Count St. Germain, they ate nothing but sugar,--from this joy an adept in the art of education might easily have prophesied his turn for household contraction; to his fancy, in those times, even gardeners'-huts were like large waste Arks and Halls, and nothing bigger than such a fly-Louvre seemed a true, snug, citizen's-house. He now felt and handled his old high child's-stool, which had, in former days, resembled the _Sedes Exploratoria_ of the Pope; he gave his child's-coach a tug and made it run; but he could not understand what balsam and holiness so much distinguished it from all other child's-coaches. He wondered that the real sports of children should not so delight him, as the emblems of these sports, when the child that had carried them on was standing grown up to manhood in his presence.

Before one article in the house he stood heart-melted and sad; before a little angular clothes-press, which was no higher than my table, and which had belonged to his poor drowned brother. When the boy with the key of it was swallowed by the waves, the excruciated mother had made a vow that this toy-press of his should never be broken up by violence. Most probably there is nothing in it, but the poor soul's playthings. Let us look away from this bloody urn.----

Bacon reckons the remembrances of childhood among wholesome medicinal things; naturally enough, therefore, they acted like a salutary digestive on the Quintus. He could now again betake him with new heart to his desk, and produce something quite peculiar--petitions for church-livings. He took the Address-calendar, and for every country parish that he found in it, got a petition in readiness; which he then laid aside, till such time as the present incumbent should decease. For Hukelum alone he did not solicit.--It is a pretty custom in Flachsenfingen that for every office which is vacant, you are required, if you want it, to sue. As the higher use of Prayer consists not in its fulfilment, but in its accustoming you to pray; so likewise petitionary papers ought to be given in, not indeed that you may get the office,--this nothing but your money can do,--but that you may learn to write petitions. In truth, if among the Calmucks, the turning of a calabash[42] stands in the place of Prayer, a slight movement of the purse may be as much as if you supplicated in words.

[42] Their prayer-barrel, Kueruedu, is a hollowed shell, a calabash, full of unrolled formulas of prayer; they sway it from side to side, and then it works. More philosophically viewed, since in prayer the feeling only is of consequence, it is much the same whether this express itself by motion of the mouth or of the calabash.

Towards evening--it was Sunday--he went out roving over the village; he pilgrimed to his old sporting-places, and to the common where he had so often driven his snails to pasture; visited the peasant, who, from school-times upwards, had been wont, to the amazement of the rest, to _thou_[43] him; went, an Academic Tutor, to the Schoolmaster; then to the Senior; then to the Episcopal-barn or church. This last no mortal understands, till I explain it. The case was this: some three-and-forty years ago, a fire had destroyed the church (not the steeple), the parsonage, and--what was not to be replaced--the church-records. (For this reason, it was only the smallest portion of the Hukelum people that knew exactly how old they were; and the memory of our Quintus himself vibrated between adopting the thirty-third year and the thirty-second.) In consequence, the preaching had now to be carried on where formerly there had been thrashing; and the seed of the divine word to be turned over on the same threshing-floor with natural corn-seed. The Chanter and the Schoolboys took up the threshing-floor; the female mother-church-people stood on the one sheaves-loft, the Schadeck womankind on the other; and their husbands clustered pyramidically, like groschen and farthing-gallery men, about the barn-stairs; and far up on the straw-loft, mixed souls stood listening. A little flute was their organ, an upturned beer-cask their altar, round which they had to walk. I confess, I myself could have preached in such a place, not without humour. The Senior (at that time still a Junior), while the parsonage was building, dwelt and taught in the Castle: it was here, accordingly, that Fixlein had learned the _Irregular Verbs_ with Thiennette.

[43] In German, as in some other languages, the common mode of address is by the _third_ person: plural, it indicates respect; singular, command: the _second_ person is also used; plural, it generally denotes indifference; singular, great familiarity, and sometimes its product, contempt. _Dutzenfreund, Thouing-friend_, is the strictest term of intimacy; and among the wild _Burschen_ (Students) many a duel (happily, however, often ending like the _Polemo-Midinia_ in _one_ drop of blood) has been fought, in consequence of saying _Du_ (thou) and _Sie_ (they) in the wrong place.--ED.

These voyages of discovery completed, our Hukelum voyager could still, after evening prayers, pick leaf-insects, with Thiennette, from the roses; worms from the beds, and a Heaven of joy from every minute. Every dew-drop was coloured as with oil of cloves and oil of gladness; every star was a sparkle from the sun of happiness; and in the closed heart of the maiden, there lay near to him, behind a little wall of separation (as near to the Righteous man behind the thin wall of Life), an outstretched blooming Paradise.... I mean, she loved him a little.

He might have known it, perhaps. But to his compressed delight he gave freer vent, as he went to bed, by early recollections on the stair. For in his childhood he had been accustomed, by way of evening-prayer, to go over, under his coverlid, as it were, a rosary, including fourteen Bible Proverbs, the first verse of the Psalm, "All people that on Earth," the Tenth Commandment, and, lastly, a long blessing. To get the sooner done with it, he had used to begin his devotion, not only on the stair, but before leaving that place where Alexander studied men, and Semler stupid books. Moored in the haven of the down-waves, he was already over with his evening supplication; and could now, without farther exertion, shut his eyes and plump into sleep.----Thus does there lurk, in the smallest _homunculus_, the model of--the Catholic Church.

So far the Dog-days of Quintus Zebedaeus Egidius Fixlein.--I, for the second time, close a Chapter of this _Life_, as Life itself is closed, with a sleep.

THIRD LETTER-BOX.

_Christmas Recollections. New Occurrence._

For all of us the passage to the grave is, alas! a string of empty insipid days, as of glass pearls, only here and there divided by an orient one of price. But you die murmuring, unless, like the Quintus, you regard your existence as a drum: this has only one single _tone_, but variety of _time_ gives the sound of it cheerfulness enough. Our Quintus taught in the Fourth Class; vicariated in the Second; wrote at his desk by night; and so lived on in the usual monotonous fashion--all the time from the Holidays--till Christmas-eve, 1791; and nothing was remarkable in his history except this same eve, which I am now about to paint.

But I shall still have time to paint it, after, in the first place, explaining shortly how, like birds of passage, he had contrived to soar away over the dim cloudy Harvest. The secret was, he set upon the _Hamburg Political Journal_, with which the lackeys of Schadeck had been for papering their buttons. He could now calmly, with his back at the stove, accompany the winter campaigns of the foregoing year; and fly after every battle, as the ravens did after that of Pharsalia. On the printed paper he could still, with joy and admiration, walk round our German triumphal arches and scaffoldings for fireworks: while to the people in the town, who got only the newest newspapers, the very fragments of these our trophies, maliciously torn down by the French, were scarcely discernible; nay, with old plans he could drive back and discomfit the enemy, while later readers in vain tried to resist them with new ones.

Moreover, not only did the facility of conquering the French prepossess him in favour of this journal; but also the circumstance that it--cost him nothing. His attachment to gratis reading was decided. And does not this throw light on the fact, that he, as Morhof advised, was wont sedulously to collect the separate leaves of waste-paper books as they came from the grocer, and to rake among the same, as Virgil did in Ennius? Nay, for him the grocer was a Fortius (the scholar), or a Frederick (the king), both which persons were in the habit of simply cutting from complete books such leaves as contained anything. It was also this respect for all waste-paper that inspired him with such esteem for the aprons of French cooks, which it is well known consist of printed paper; and he often wished some German would translate these aprons: indeed I am willing to believe that a good version of more than one of such paper aprons might contribute to elevate our Literature (this Muse _a belles fesses_), and serve her in place of drivel-bib.--On many things a man puts a _pretium affectionis_, simply because he hopes he may have half stolen them: on this principle, combined with the former, our Quintus adopted into his belief anything he could snap away from an open Lecture, or as a visitor in class-rooms; opinions only for which the Professor must be paid, he rigorously examined.--I return to the Christmas-eve.

At the very first, Egidius was glad, because out of doors millers and bakers were at fisty-cuffs (as we say of drifting snow in large flakes), and the ice-flowers of the window were blossoming; for external frost, with a snug warm room, was what he liked. He could now put fir-wood into his stove, and Mocha coffee into his stomach; and shove his right foot (not into the slipper, but) under the warm side of his Shock, and also on the left keep swinging his pet Starling, which was pecking at the snout of old Schil; and then with the right hand--with the left he was holding his pipe--proceed, so undisturbed, so intrenched, so cloud-capt, without the smallest breath of frost, to the highest enterprise which a Quintus can attempt,--to writing the Class-prodromus of the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, namely, the eighth part thereof. I hold the _first printing_ in the history of a literary man to be more important than the _first printing_ in the history of Letters: Fixlein could not sate himself with specifying what he purposed, God willing, in the following year, to treat of; and accordingly, more for the sake of printing than of use, he farther inserted three or four pedagogic glances at the plan of operations to be followed by his schoolmaster colleagues as a body.

He lastly introduced a few dashes, by way of hooking his thoughts together; and then laid aside the _Opus_, and would no longer look at it, that so, when printed, he might stand astonished at his own thoughts. And now he could take the Leipzig Fair Catalogue, which he purchased yearly, instead of the books therein, and open it without a sigh: he too was in print, as well as I am.

The happy fool, while writing, had shaken his head, rubbed his hands, hitched about on his chair, puckered his face, and sucked the end of his cue.--He could now spring up about five o'clock in the evening, to recreate himself; and across the magic vapour of his pipe, like a new-caught bird, move up and down in his cage. On the warm smoke, the long galaxy of street-lamps was gleaming; and red on his bed-curtains lay the fitful reflection of the blazing windows, and illuminated trees in the neighbourhood. And now he shook away the snow of Time from the winter-green of Memory; and beheld the fair years of his childhood, uncovered, fresh, green and balmy, standing afar off before him. From his distance of twenty years, he looked into the quiet cottage of his parents, where his father and his brother had not yet been reaped away by the sickle of Death. He said to himself: "I will go through the whole Christmas-eve from the very dawn, as I had it of old."

At his very rising he finds spangles on the table; sacred spangles from the gold-leaf and silver-leaf, with which the Christ-child[44] has been emblazoning and coating his apples and nuts, the presents of the night.--On the mint-balance of joy, this metallic foam pulls heavier than the golden calves, and golden Pythagoras'-legs, and golden Philistine-mice of wealthier capitalists.--Then came his mother, bringing him both Christianity and clothes: for in drawing on his trousers, she easily recapitulated the Ten Commandments, and, in tying his garters, the Apostles' Creed. So soon as candle-light was over, and day-light come, he clambers to the arm of the settle, and then measures the nocturnal growth of the yellow wiry grove of Christmas-Birch; and devotes far less attention than usual to the little white winter-flowerage, which the seeds shaken from the bird-cage are sending forth in the wet joints of the window-panes.--I nowise grudge J. J. Rousseau his _Flora Petrinsularis_;[45] but let him also allow our Quintus his _Window-flora_.--There was no such thing as school all day; so he had time enough to seek his Butcher (his brother), and commence (when could there be finer frost for it?) the slaughtering of their winter-meat. Some days before, the brother, at the peril of his life and of a cudgelling, had caught their stalled-beast--so they called the sparrow--under a window-sill in the Castle. Their slaughtering wants not an axe (of wood), nor puddings, nor potted meat.--About three o'clock the old Gardener, whom neighbours have to call the Professor of Gardening, takes his place on his large chair, with his Cologne tobacco-pipe; and after this no mortal shall work a stroke. He tells nothing but lies; of the aeronautic Christ-child, and the jingling Ruprecht with his bells. In the dusk, our little Quintus takes an apple; divides it into all the figures of stereometry, and spreads the fragments in two heaps on the table: then as the lighted candle enters, he starts up in amazement at the unexpected present, and says to his brother: "Look what the good Christ-child has given thee and me; and I saw one of his wings glittering." And for this same glittering he himself lies in wait the whole evening.

[44] These antique Christmas festivities Richter describes with equal _gusto_ in another work (_Briefe und Zukuenftige Lebenslemf_); where the Christ-child (falsely reported to the young ones, to have been seen flying through the air, with gold wings); the Birch-bough fixed in a corner of the room, and by him made to grow; the fruit, of gilt sweetmeats, apples, nuts, which (for good boys) it suddenly produces, &c. &c. are specified with the same fidelity as here.--ED.

[45] Which he purposed to make for his Island of St. Pierre in the Bienne Lake.

About eight o'clock,--here he walks chiefly by the chronicle of his letter-drawer,--both of them, with necks almost excoriated with washing, and in clean linen, and in universal anxiety lest the Holy Christ-child find them up, are put to bed. What a magic night!--What tumult of dreaming hopes!--The populous, motley, glittering cave of Fancy opens itself, in the length of the night, and in the exhaustion of dreamy effort, still darker and darker, fuller and more grotesque; but the awakening gives back to the thirsty heart its hopes. All accidental tones, the cries of animals, of watchmen, are, for the timidly devout Fancy, sounds out of Heaven; singing voices of Angels in the air, church-music of the morning worship.

Ah! it was not the mere Lubberland of sweetmeats and playthings which then, with its perspective, stormed like a river of joy against the chambers of our hearts; and which yet, in the moonlight of memory, with its dusky landscapes, melts our souls in sweetness. Ah! this was it, that then for our boundless wishes there were still boundless hopes: but now reality is round us, and the wishes are all that we have left!

At last came rapid lights from the neighbourhood playing through the window on the walls, and the Christmas trumpets, and the crowing from the steeple, hurries both the boys from their bed. With their clothes in their hands, without fear for the darkness, without feeling for the morning-frost, rushing, intoxicated, shouting, they hurry down-stairs into the dark room. Fancy riots in the pastry and fruit-perfume of the still eclipsed treasures, and paints her air-castles by the glimmering of the Hesperides-fruit with which the Birch-tree is loaded. While their mother strikes a light, the falling sparks sportfully open and shroud the dainties on the table, and the many-coloured grove on the wall; and a single atom of that fire bears on it a hanging garden of Eden.----

--On a sudden all grew light; and the Quintus got--the Conrectorship, and a table-clock.

FOURTH LETTER-BOX.

_Office-brokage. Discovery of the promised Secret. Hans van Fuechslein._