There were other efforts to make Yorick’s example an efficient power of beneficent brotherliness. Kaufmann attempted to found a Lorenzo order of the horn snuff-box. Düntzer, in his study of Kaufmann,[13] states that this was only an effort on Kaufmann’s part to embrace a timely opportunity to make himself prominent. This endeavor was made according to Düntzer, during Kaufmann’s residence in Strassburg, which the investigator assigns to the years 1774–75. Leuchsenring,[14] the eccentric sentimentalist, who for a time belonged to the Darmstadt circle and whom Goethe satirized in “Pater Brey,” cherished also for a time the idea of founding an order of “Empfindsamkeit.”
In the literary remains of Johann Christ Hofmann[15] in Coburg was found the “patent” of an order of “Sanftmuth und Versöhnung.” A “Lorenzodose” was found with it marked XXVIII, and the seven rules of the order, dated Coburg “im Ordens-Comtoir, den 10 August, 1769,” are merely a topical enlargement and ordering of Jacobi’s original idea. Longo gives them in full. Appell states that Jacobi explained through a friend that he knew nothing of this order and had no share in its founding. Longo complains that Appell does not give the source of his information, but Jacobi in his note to the so-called “Stiftungs-Brief” in the edition of 1807 quotes the article in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog” as his only knowledge of this order, certainly implying his previous ignorance of its existence.
Somewhat akin to these attempts to incorporate Yorick’s ideas is the fantastic laying out of the park at Marienwerder near Hanover, of which Matthison writes in his “Vaterländische Besuche,”[16] and in a letter to the Hofrath von Köpken in Magdeburg,[17] dated October 17, 1785. After a sympathetic description of the secluded park, he tells how labyrinthine paths lead to an eminence “where the unprepared stranger is surprised by the sight of a cemetery. On the crosses there one reads beloved names from Yorick’s Journey and Tristram Shandy. Father Lorenzo, Eliza, Maria of Moulines, Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby and Yorick were gathered by a poetic fancy to this graveyard.” The letter gives a similar description and adds the epitaph on Trim’s monument, “Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother,”[18] a quotation, which in its fuller form, Matthison uses in a letter[19] to Bonstetten, Heidelberg, February 7, 1794, in speaking of Böck the actor. It is impossible to determine whose eccentric and tasteless enthusiasm is represented by this mortuary arrangement.
Louise von Ziegler, known in the Darmstadt circle as Lila, whom Merck admired and, according to Caroline Flaschsland, “almost compared with Yorick’s Maria,” was so sentimental that she had her grave made in her garden, evidently for purposes of contemplation, and she led a lamb about which ate and drank with her. Upon the death of this animal, “a faithful dog” took its place. Thus was Maria of Moulines remembered.[20]
It has already been noted that Yorick’s sympathy for the brute creation found cordial response in Germany, such regard being accepted as a part of his message. That the spread of such sentimental notions was not confined to the printed word, but passed over into actual regulation of conduct is admirably illustrated by an anecdote related in Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur in the January number for 1776, by a correspondent who signs himself “S.” A friend was visiting him; they went to walk, and the narrator having his gun with him shot with it two young doves. His friend is exercised. “What have the doves done to you?” he queries. “Nothing,” is the reply, “but they will taste good to you.” “But they were alive,” interposed the friend, “and would have caressed (geschnäbelt) one another,” and later he refuses to partake of the doves. Connection with Yorick is established by the narrator himself: “If my friend had not read Yorick’s story about the sparrow, he would have had no rule of conduct here about shooting doves, and my doves would have tasted better to him.” The influence of Yorick was, however, quite possibly indirect through Jacobi as intermediary; for the latter describes a sentimental family who refused to allow their doves to be killed. The author of this letter, however, refers directly to Yorick, to the very similar episode of the sparrows narrated in the continuation of the Sentimental Journey, but an adventure original with the German Bode. This is probably the source of Jacobi’s narrative.
The other side of Yorick’s character, less comprehensible, less capable of translation into tangibilities, was not disregarded. His humor and whimsicality, though much less potent, were yet influential. Ramler said in a letter to Gebler dated November 14, 1775, that everyone wished to jest like Sterne,[21] and the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen (October 31, 1775), at almost precisely the same time, discourses at some length on the then prevailing epidemic of whimsicality, showing that shallowness beheld in the then existing interest in humor a justification for all sorts of eccentric behavior and inconsistent wilfulness.
Naturally Sterne’s influence in the world of letters may be traced most obviously in the slavish imitation of his style, his sentiment, his whims,—this phase represented in general by now forgotten triflers; but it also enters into the thought of the great minds in the fatherland and becomes interwoven with their culture. Their own expressions of indebtedness are here often available in assigning a measure of relationship. And finally along certain general lines the German Yorick exercised an influence over the way men thought and wanted to think.
The direct imitations of Sterne are very numerous, a crowd of followers, a motley procession of would-be Yoricks, set out on one expedition or another. Musäus[22] in a review of certain sentimental meanderings in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,[23] remarked that the increase of such journeyings threatened to bring about a new epoch in the taste of the time. He adds that the good Yorick presumably never anticipated becoming the founder of a fashionable sect. This was in 1773. Other expressions of alarm or disapprobation might be cited.
Through Sterne’s influence the account of travels became more personal, less purely topographical, more volatile and merry, more subjective.[24] Goethe in a passage in the “Campagne in Frankreich,” to which reference is made later, acknowledges this impulse as derived from Yorick. Its presence was felt even when there was no outward effort at sentimental journeying. The suggestion that the record of a journey was personal and tinged with humor was essential to its popularity. It was probably purely an effort to make use of this appeal which led the author of “Bemerkungen eines Reisenden durch Deutschland, Frankreich, England und Holland,”[25] a work of purely practical observation, to place upon his title-page the alluring lines from Gay: “Life is a jest and all things shew it. I thought so once, but now I know it;” a promise of humorous attitude which does not find fulfilment in the heavy volumes of purely objective description which follow.
Probably the first German book to bear the name Yorick in its title was a short satirical sketch entitled, “Yorick und die Bibliothek der elenden Scribenten, an Hrn.—” 1768, 8o (Anspach),[26] which is linked to the quite disgustingly scurrilous Antikriticus controversy.