Since a German translation appeared in the following year (1771), the German reviews do not, in the main, concern themselves with the English original. The Neues Bremisches Magazin,[78] however, censures the book quite severely, but the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften[79] welcomes it with unquestioning praise. The German rendering was by Johann Gottfried Gellius, and the title was “Yorick’s Nachgelassene Werke.”[80] The Deutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften[81] does acknowledge the doubtful authorship but accepts completely its Yorick tone and whim—“one cannot tell the copyist from the original.” Various characteristics are cited as common to this work and Yorick’s other writings, the contrast, change, confusion, conflict with the critics and the talk about himself. For the collection of aphorisms, sayings, fragments and maxims which form the second part of the Koran, including the “Memorabilia,” the reviewer suggests the name “Sterniana.” The reviewer acknowledges the occasional failure in attempted thrusts of wit, the ineffective satire, the immoral innuendo in some passages, but after the first word of doubt the review passes on into a tone of seemingly complete acceptation.
In 1778 another translation of this book appeared, which has been ascribed to Bode, though not given by Goedeke, Jördens or Meusel. Its title was “Der Koran, oder Leben und Meynungen des Tria Juncta in Uno.”[82] The Almanach der deutschen Musen[83] treats this work with full measure of praise. The Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek[84] accepts the book in this translation as a genuine product of Sterne’s genius. Sammer reprinted the “Koran” (Vienna, 1795, 12o) and included it in his nine volume edition of Sterne’s complete works (Vienna, 1798).
Goethe’s connection with the “Koran,” which forms the most interesting phase of its German career, will be treated later.
Sterne’s unacknowledged borrowings, his high-handed and extensive appropriation of work not his own, were noted in Germany, the natural result of Ferriar’s investigations in England, but they seem never to have attracted any considerable attention or aroused any serious concern among Sterne’s admirers so as to imperil his position: the question in England attached itself as an ungrateful but unavoidable concomitant of every discussion of Sterne and every attempt to determine his place in letters. Böttiger tells us that Lessing possessed a copy of Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” from which Sterne filched so much wisdom, and that Lessing had marked in it several of the passages which Ferriar later advanced as proof of Sterne’s theft. It seems that Bode purchased this volume at Lessing’s auction in Hamburg. Lessing evidently thought it not worth while to mention these discoveries, as he is entirely silent on the subject. Böttiger is, in his account, most unwarrantedly severe on Ferriar, whom he calls “the bilious Englishman” who attacked Sterne “with so much bitterness.” This is very far from a veracious conception of Ferriar’s attitude.
The comparative indifference in Germany to this phase of Sterne’s literary career may well be attributed to the medium by which Ferriar’s findings were communicated to cultured Germany. The book itself, or the original Manchester society papers, seem never to have been reprinted or translated, and Germany learned their contents through a résumé written by Friedrich Nicolai and published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift for February, 1795, which gives a very sane view of the subject, one in the main distinctly favorable to Sterne. Nicolai says Sterne is called with justice “One of the most refined, ingenious and humorous authors of our time.” He asserts with capable judgment that Sterne’s use of the borrowed passages, the additions and alterations, the individual tone which he manages to infuse into them, all preclude Sterne from being set down as a brainless copyist. Nicolai’s attitude may be best illustrated by the following passages:
“Germany has authors enough who resemble Sterne in lack of learning. Would that they had a hundredth part of the merits by which he made up for this lack, or rather which resulted from it.” “We would gladly allow our writers to take their material from old books, and even many expressions and turns of style, and indeed whole passages, even if like Sterne . . . . they claimed it all as their own: only they must be successful adapters; they must add from their own store of observation and thought and feeling. The creator of Tristram Shandy does this in rich measure.”
Nicolai also contends that Sterne was gifted with two characteristic qualities which were not imitation,—his “Empfindsamkeit” and “Laune”—and that by the former his works breathe a tender, delicate beneficence, a character of noble humanity, while by the latter a spirit of fairest mirth is spread over his pages, so that one may never open them without a pleasant smile. “The investigation of sources,” he says, “serves as explanation and does not mean depreciation of an otherwise estimable author.”
By this article Nicolai choked the malicious criticism of the late favorite which might have followed from some sources, had another communicated the facts of Sterne’s thievery. Lichtenberg in the “Göttingischer Taschenkalender,” 1796, that is, after the publication of Nicolai’s article, but with reference to Ferriar’s essay in the Manchester Memoirs, Vol. IV, under the title of “Gelehrte Diebstähle” does impugn Sterne rather spitefully without any acknowledgment of his extraordinary and extenuating use of his borrowings. “Yorick,” he says, “once plucked a nettle which had grown upon Lorenzo’s grave; that was no labor for him. Who will uproot this plant which Ferriar has set on his?” Ferriar’s book was reviewed by the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, LXII, p. 310.
Some of the English imitations of Sterne, which did not actually claim him as author, also found their way to Germany, and there by a less discriminating public were joined in a general way to the mass of Yorick production, and the might of Yorick influence. These works represent almost exclusively the Sterne of the Sentimental Journey; for the shoal of petty imitations, explanations and protests which appeared in England when Shandy was first issued[85] had gone their own petty way to oblivion before Germany awakened to Sterne’s influence.
One of the best known of the English Sentimental Journeys was the work of Samuel Paterson, entitled, “Another Traveller: or Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey through Part of the Netherlands,—by Coriat Junior,” London, 1768, two volumes. The author protested in a pamphlet published a little later that his work was not an imitation of Sterne, that it was in the press before Yorick’s book appeared; but a reviewer[86] calls his attention to the sentimental journeying already published in Shandy. This work was translated into German as “Empfindsame Reisen durch einen Theil der Niederlande,” Bützow, 1774–1775, 2 Parts, 8o. The translator was Karl Friedrich Müchler, who showed his bent in the direction of wit and whim by the publication of several collections of humorous anecdotes, witty ideas and satirical skits.[87]