The name of Helfreich Peter Sturz may well be coupled with that of Lichtenberg, as an opponent of the Sterne cult and its German distortions, for his information and point of view were likewise drawn direct from English sources. Sturz accompanied King Christian VII of Denmark on his journey to France and England, which lasted from May 6, 1768, to January 14, 1769[26]; hence his stay in England falls in a time but a few months after Sterne’s death (March 18, 1768), when the ungrateful metropolis was yet redolent of the late lion’s wit and humor. Sturz was an accomplished linguist and a complete master of English, hence found it easy to associate with Englishmen of distinction whom he was privileged to meet through the favor of his royal patron. He became acquainted with Garrick, who was one of Sterne’s intimate friends, and from him Sturz learned much of Yorick, especially that more wholesome revulsion of feeling against Sterne’s obscenities and looseness of speech, which set in on English soil as soon as the potent personality of the author himself had ceased to compel silence and blind opinion. England began to wonder at its own infatuation, and, gaining perspective, to view the writings of Sterne in a more rational light. Into the first spread of this reaction Sturz was introduced, and the estimate of Sterne which he carried away with him was undoubtedly colored by it. In his second letter written to the Deutsches Museum and dated August 24, 1768, but strangely not printed till April, 1777,[27] he quotes Garrick with reference to Sterne, a notable word of personal censure, coming in the Germany of that decade, when Yorick’s admirers were most vehement in their claims. Garrick called him “a lewd companion, who was more loose in his intercourse than in his writings and generally drove all ladies away by his obscenities.”[28] Sturz adds that all his acquaintances asserted that Sterne’s moral character went through a process of disintegration in London.
In the Deutsches Museum for July, 1776, Sturz printed a poem entitled “Die Mode,” in which he treats of the slavery of fashion and in several stanzas deprecates the influence of Yorick.[29]
“Und so schwingt sich, zum Genie erklärt,
Strephon kühn auf Yorick’s Steckenpferd.
Trabt mäandrisch über Berg und Auen,
Reist empfindsam durch sein Dorfgebiet,
Oder singt die Jugend zu erbauen
Ganz Gefühl dem Gartengott ein Lied.
Gott der Gärten, stöhnt die Bürgerin,
Lächle gütig, Rasen und Schasmin