Goethe’s criticism of the second volume, already alluded to, is found in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in the issue of March 3, 1772. The nature of the review is familiar: Goethe calls the book a thistle which he has found on Yorick’s grave. “Alles,” he says, “hat es dem guten Yorick geraubt, Speer, Helm und Lanze, nur Schade! inwendig steckt der Herr Präceptor S. zu Magdeburg . . . Yorick empfand, und dieser setzt sich hin zu empfinden. Yorick wird von seiner Laune ergriffen, und weinte und lachte in einer Minute und durch die Magie der Sympathie lachen und weinen wir mit: hier aber steht einer und überlegt: wie lache und weine ich? was werden die Leute sagen, wenn ich lache und weine?” etc. Schummel is stigmatized as a childish imitator and his book is censured as “beneath criticism,” oddly enough the very judgment its own author accords but a few weeks later on the completion of the third volume. The review contains several citations illustrative of Schummel’s style.
The first two parts were reviewed in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek.[16] The length of the review is testimony to the interest in the book, and the tone of the article, though frankly unfavorable, is not so emphatically censorious as the one first noted. It is observed that Schummel has attempted the impossible,—the adoption of another’s “Laune,” and hence his failure. The reviewer notes, often with generous quotations, the more noticeable, direct imitations from Sterne, the conversation of the emotions, the nettle-plucking at the grave, the eccentric orthography and the new-coined words. Several passages of comment or comparison testify to the then current admiration of Yorick, and the conventional German interpretation of his character; “sein gutes, empfindungsvolles Herz, mit Tugend und sittlichem Gefühl erfüllt.” The review is signed “Sr:”[17]
A critic in the Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen for January 17, 1772, treating the first two volumes, expresses the opinion that Jacobi, the author of the “Tagereise,” and Schummel have little but the title from Yorick. The author’s seeking for opportunity to dissolve in emotion is contrasted unfavorably with Yorick’s method, the affected style is condemned, yet it is admitted that the work promises better things from its talented author; his power of observation and his good heart are not to be unacknowledged. The severity of the review is directed against the imitators already arising.
The Magazin der deutschen Critik[18] reviews the third volume with favorable comment; the comedy which Schummel saw fit to insert is received with rather extraordinary praise, and the author is urged to continue work in the drama; a desire is expressed even for a fourth part. The Hamburgische Neue Zeitung, June 4 and October 29, 1771, places Schummel unhesitatingly beside the English master, calls him as original as his pattern, to Sterne belongs the honor only of the invention. The author is hailed as a genius whose talents should be supported, so that Germany would not have to envy England her Yorick.[19]
After Schummel’s remarkable self-chastisement, one could hardly expect to find in his subsequent works evidence of Sterne’s influence, save as unconsciously a dimmed admiration might exert a certain force. Probably contemporaneous with the composition of the third volume of the work, but possibly earlier, Schummel wrote the fourth part of a ponderous novel by a fellow Silesian, Christian Opitz, entitled “Die Gleichheit der menschlichen Herzen, bey der Ungleichheit ihrer äusserlichen Umstände in der Geschichte Herrn Redlichs und seiner Bedienten.” Goedeke implies that Opitz was the author of all but the last part, but the reviewer in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek[20] maintains that each part has a different author, and quotes the preface to the fourth as substantiation. According to this review both the second and fourth parts are characterized by a humorous fashion in writing, and the last is praised as being the best of the four. It seems probable that Schummel’s enthusiasm for Sterne played its part in the composition of this work.
Possibly encouraged by the critic’s approbation, Schummel devoted his literary effort for the following years largely to the drama. In 1774 he published his “Uebersetzer-Bibliothek zum Gebrauche der Uebersetzer, Schulmänner und Liebhaber der alten Litteratur.” The reviewer[21] in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek finds passages in this book in which the author of the “Empfindsame Reisen” is visible,—where his fancy runs away with his reason,—and a passage is quoted in which reference is made to Slawkenberg’s book on noses. It would seem that the seeking for wit survived the crude sentimentality.
Two years later Schummel published “Fritzen’s Reise nach Dessau,”[22] a work composed of letters from a twelve-year old boy, written on a journey from Magdeburg to Dessau. The letters are quite without whim or sentiment, and the book has been remembered for the extended description of Basedow’s experimental school, “Philantropin” (opened in 1774). Its account has been the source of the information given of this endeavor in some pedagogical treatises[23] and it was re-issued, as a document in the history of pedagogical experiment, in Leipzig, by Albert Richter in 1891. About fifteen years later still the “Reise durch Schlesien”[24] was issued. It is a simple narrative of a real journey with description of places and people, frankly personal, almost epistolary in form, without a suggestion of Sterne-like whim or sentiment. One passage is significant as indicating the author’s realization of his change of attitude. The sight of a group of prisoners bound by a chain calls to his memory his former sentimental extravagance, and he exclaims: “Twenty years ago, when I was still a sentimental traveler, I would have wasted many an ‘Oh’ and ‘alas’ over this scene; at present, since I have learned to know the world and mankind somewhat more intimately, I think otherwise.”
Johann Christian Bock (1724–1785), who was in 1772 theater-poet of the Ackerman Company in Hamburg, soon after the publication of the Sentimental Journey, identified himself with the would-be Yoricks by the production of “Die Tagereise,” which was published at Leipzig in 1770. The work was re-issued in 1775 with the new title “Die Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages.”[25] The only change in the new edition was the addition of a number of copperplate engravings. The book is inspired in part by Sterne directly, and in part indirectly through the intermediary Jacobi. Unlike the work of Schummel just treated, it betrays no Shandean influence, but is dependent solely on the Sentimental Journey. In outward form the book resembles Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” since verse is introduced to vary the prose narrative. The attitude of the author toward his journey, undertaken with conscious purpose, is characteristic of the whole set of emotional sentiment-seekers, who found in their Yorick a challenge to go and do likewise: “Everybody is journeying, I thought, and took Yorick and Jacobi with me. . . . I will really see whether I too may not chance upon a fille de chambre or a harvest-maid,” is a very significant statement of his inspiration and intention. Once started on his journey, the author falls in with a poor warrior-beggar, an adaptation of Sterne’s Chevalier de St. Louis,[26] and he puts in verse Yorick’s expressed sentiment that the king and the fatherland should not allow the faithful soldier to fall into such distress.
Bock’s next sentimental adventure is with a fair peasant-maid whom he sees weeping by the wayside. Through Yorick-like insistence of sympathy, he finally wins from her information concerning the tender situation: a stern stepfather, an unwelcome suitor of his choosing, and a lover of her own. Her inability to write and thus communicate with the latter is the immediate cause of the present overflow. The traveler beholds in this predicament a remarkable sentimental opportunity and offers his services; he strokes her cheek, her tears are dried, and they part like brother and sister. The episode is unquestionably inspired by the episode of Maria of Moulines; in the latter development of the affair, the sentiment, which is expressed, that the girl’s innocence is her own defense is borrowed directly from Yorick’s statement concerning the fille de chambre.[27] The traveler’s questioning of his own motives in “Die Ueberlegung”[28] is distinctly Sterne-like, and it demonstrates also Bock’s appreciation of this quizzical element in Yorick’s attitude toward his own sentimental behavior. The relation of man to the domestic animals is treated sentimentally in the episode of the old beggar and his dead dog:[29] the tears of the beggar, his affection for the beast, their genuine comradeship, and the dog’s devotion after the world had forsaken his master, are all part and parcel of that fantastic humane movement which has its source in Yorick’s dead ass. Bock practically confesses his inspiration by direct allusion to the episode in Yorick. Bock defends with warmth the old peasant and his grief.
The wanderer’s acquaintance with the lady’s companion[30] is adapted from Yorick’s fille de chambre connection, and Bock cannot avoid a fleshly suggestion, distinctly in the style of Yorick in the section, the “Spider.”[31] The return journey in the sentimental moonlight affords the author another opportunity for the exercise of his broad human sympathy: he meets a poor woman, a day-laborer with her child, gives them a few coins and doubts whether king or bishop could be more content with the benediction of the apostolic chair than he with the blessing of this unfortunate,—a sentiment derived from Yorick’s overcolored veneration for the horn snuff-box.