[55.] “Ausgewählte Briefe,” Bd. II, p. 285 f. Zürich, 1815.
[56.] V, pp. 345–6. 1774.
[57.] See Lebensbild, V, p. 107 and p. 40.
[58.] 1769, p. 840.
[59.] See Behmer, p. 24, and the letter to Riedel, October 26, 1768, Ludwig Wielands Briefsammlung. I, p. 232.
[60.] P. 856.
[61.] These two aspects of the Sterne cult in Germany will be more fully treated later. The historians of literature and other investigators who have treated Sterne’s influence in Germany have not distinguished very carefully the difference between Sterne’s two works, and the resulting difference between the kind and amount of their respective influences. Appell, however, interprets the condition correctly and assigns the cause with accuracy and pointedness. (“Werther und seine Zeit.” p. 246). The German critics repeat persistently the thought that the imitators of Sterne remained as far away from the originals as the Shakespeare followers from the great Elizabethan. See Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, I, 184; Hettner, “Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert,” III, 1, p. 362; Hofer, “Deutsche Litteraturgeschichte,” p. 150.
[ CHAPTER III]
THE PUBLICATION OF THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
On February 27, 1768, the Sentimental Journey was published in London,[1] less than three weeks before the author’s death, and the book was at once transplanted to German soil, beginning there immediately its career of commanding influence and wide-spread popularity.
Several causes operated together in favoring its pronounced and immediate success. A knowledge of Sterne existed among the more intelligent lovers of English literature in Germany, the leaders of thought, whose voice compelled attention for the understandable, but was powerless to create appreciation for the unintelligible among the lower ranks of readers. This knowledge and appreciation of Yorick were immediately available for the furtherance of Sterne’s fame as soon as a work of popular appeal was published. The then prevailing interest in travels is, further, not to be overlooked as a forceful factor in securing immediate recognition for the Sentimental Journey.[2] At no time in the world’s history has the popular interest in books of travel, containing geographical and topographical description, and information concerning peoples and customs, been greater than during this period. The presses teemed with stories of wanderers in known and unknown lands. The preface to the Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen of Leipzig for the year 1759 heralds as a matter of importance a gain in geographical description. The Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, 1773, makes in its tables of contents, a separate division of travels. In 1759, also, the “Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und zu Lande” (Leipzig, 1747–1774), reached its seventeenth volume. These are brief indications among numerous similar instances of the then predominant interest in the wanderer’s experience. Sterne’s second work of fiction, though differing in its nature so materially from other books of travel, may well, even if only from the allurement of its title, have shared the general enthusiasm for the traveler’s narrative. Most important, however, is the direct appeal of the book itself, irresistible to the German mind and heart. Germany had been for a decade hesitating on the verge of tears, and grasped with eagerness a book which seemed to give her British sanction for indulgence in her lachrymose desire.