Was nuzt dir so ein Haus? . . .’”
so he takes the wreathèd cup, drinks joyfully, and follows death, embracing him.
“Das ist mein Tod, ich sehe keinen Knochen,
Womit du ihn, gleich einem Zahnarzt, schmückst,
Geschieht es heute noch, geschieht’s in wenig Wochen,
Dass du, Gevatter Tod, nur meine Hände drückst?
Ganz nach Bequemlichkeit! du bist mir zwar willkommen.”
The latter part of the poem contains a rather extended laudation of the part played by sympathetic feeling in the conduct of life.
That there would be those in Germany as in England, who saw in Sterne’s works only a mine of vulgar suggestion, a relation sometimes delicate and clever, sometimes bald and ugly, of the indelicate and sensual, is a foregone conclusion. Undoubtedly some found in the general approbation which was accorded Sterne’s books a sanction for forcing upon the public the products of their own diseased imaginations.
This pernicious influence of the English master is exemplified by Wegener’s “Raritäten, ein hinterlassenes Werk des Küsters von Rummelsberg.”[80] The first volume is dedicated to “Sebaldus Nothanker,” and the long document claims for the author unusual distinction, in thus foregoing the possibility of reward or favor, since he dedicates his book to a fictitious personage. The idea of the book is to present “merry observations” for every day in the year. With the end of the fourth volume the author has reached March 17, and, according to the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, the sixth volume includes May 22. The present writer was unable to examine the last volume to discover whether the year was rounded out in this way.