Tellheim recognizes the value of Just’s service, and honors his subordinate for his unusual faithfulness; yet there exists here no such cordial comradeship as marked the relation between Sterne’s originals. But one may discern the occasion of this in the character of Tellheim, who has no resemblance to Uncle Toby, rather than in any dissimilarity between the characters of the servants. The use of the relation between master and man as a subject for literary treatment was probably first brought into fashion by Don Quixote, and it is well-nigh certain that Sterne took his cue from Cervantes.
According to Erich Schmidt, the episode of Just’s dog, as the servant relates it in the 8th scene of the 1st act, could have adorned the Sentimental Journey, but the similarity of motif here in the treatment of animal fidelity is pure coincidence. Certainly the method of using the episode is not reminiscent of any similar scene in Sterne. Just’s dog is not introduced for its own sake, nor like the ass at Nampont to afford opportunity for exciting humanitarian impulses, and for throwing human character into relief by confronting it with sentimental possibilities, but for the sake of a forceful, telling and immediate comparison. Lessing was too original a mind, and at the time when “Minna” was written, too complete and mature an artist to follow another slavishly or obviously, except avowedly under certain conditions and with particular purpose. He himself is said to have remarked, “That must be a pitiful author who does not borrow something once in a while,”[35] and it does not seem improbable that the figure of Trim was hovering in his memory while he was creating his Just. Especially does this seem plausible when we remember that Lessing wrote his drama during the years when Shandy was appearing, when he must have been occupied with it, and at the first flush of his admiration.
This supposition, however undemonstrable, is given some support by our knowledge of a minor work of Lessing, which has been lost. On December 28, 1769, Lessing writes to Ebert from Hamburg: “Alberti is well; and what pleases me about him, as much as his health, is that the news of his reconciliation with Goeze was a false report. So Yorick will probably preach and send his sermon soon.”[36] And Ebert replies in a letter dated at Braunschweig, January 7, 1770, expressing a desire that Lessing should fulfil his promise, and cause Yorick to preach not once but many times.[37] The circumstance herein involved was first explained by Friedrich Nicolai in an article in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1791.[38] As a trick upon his friend Alberti, who was then in controversy with Goeze, Lessing wrote a sermon in Yorick’s manner; the title and part of the introduction to it were privately printed by Bode and passed about among the circle of friends, as if the whole were in press. We are entirely dependent on Nicolai’s memory for our information relative to this sole endeavor on Lessing’s part to adopt completely the manner of Sterne. Nicolai asserts that this effort was a complete success in the realization of Yorick’s simplicity, his good-natured but acute philosophy, his kindly sympathy and tolerance, even his merry whimsicality.
This introduction, which Nicolai claims to have recalled essentially as Lessing wrote it, relates the occasion of Yorick’s writing the sermon. Uncle Toby and Trim meet a cripple in a ragged French uniform; Capt. Shandy gives the unfortunate man several shillings, and Trim draws out a penny and in giving it says, “French Dog!” The narrative continues:
“The Captain[39] was silent for some seconds and then said, turning to Trim, ‘It is a man, Trim, and not a dog!’ The French veteran had hobbled after them: at the Captain’s words Trim gave him another penny, saying again ‘French Dog!’ ‘And, Trim, the man is a soldier.’ Trim stared him in the face, gave him a penny again and said, ‘French Dog!’ ‘And, Trim, he is a brave soldier; you see he has fought for his fatherland and has been sorely wounded.’ Trim pressed his hand, while he gave him another penny, and said ‘French Dog!’ ‘And, Trim, this soldier is a good but unfortunate husband, and has a wife and four little children.’ Trim, with a tear in his eye, gave all he had left and said, rather softly, ‘French Dog!’”
This scene recalls vividly the encounter between Just and the landlord in the first act of “Minna,” the passage in which Just continues to assert that the landlord is a “Grobian.” There are the same tactics, the same persistence, the same contrasts. The passage quoted was, of course, written after “Minna,” but from it we gather evidence that Corporal Trim and his own Just were similar creations, that to him Corporal Trim, when he had occasion to picture him, must needs hark back to the figure of Just, a character which may well originally have been suggested by Capt. Shandy’s faithful servant.
Among German literati, Herder is another representative of acquaintance with Sterne and appreciation of his masterpiece. Haym[40] implies that Sterne and Swift are mentioned more often than any other foreign authors in Herder’s writings of the Riga period (November, 1764, to May, 1769). This would, of course, include the first fervor of enthusiasm concerning the Sentimental Journey, and would be a statement decidedly doubtful, if applied exclusively to the previous years. In a note-book, possibly reaching back before his arrival in Riga to his student days in Königsberg, Herder made quotations from Shandy and Don Quixote, possibly preparatory notes for his study of the ridiculous in the Fourth Wäldchen.[41] In May, 1766, Herder went to Mitau to visit Hamann, and he designates the account of the events since leaving there as “ein Capitel meines Shandyschen Romans”[42] and sends it as such to “my uncle, Tobias Shandy.” Later a letter, written 27–16, August, 1766, is begun with the heading, “Herder to Hamann and no more Yorick to Tobias Shandy,” in which he says: “I am now in a condition where I can play the part of Yorick as little as Panza that of Governor.”[43] The same letter contains another reference and the following familiar allusion to Sterne: “Grüsen Sie Trim, wenn ich gegen keinen den beleidigenden Karakter Yoriks oder leider! das Schicksal wider Willen zu beleidigen, habe, so ist’s doch gegen ihn und Hartknoch.” These last quotations are significant as giving proof that Shandy had so far forced its claims upon a little set of book-lovers in the remote east, Herder, Hamann and a few others, that they gave one another in play names from the English novel. A letter from Hamann to Herder, dated Königsberg, June 10, 1767, indicates that the former shared also the devotion to Sterne.[44]
In the first collection of “Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Litteratur,” 1767, the sixth section treats of the “Idiotismen” of a language. British “Laune” is cited as such an untranslatable “Idiotism” and the lack of German humorists is noted, and Swift is noted particularly as an English example. In the second and revised edition Herder adds material containing allusion to Hudibras and Tristram.[45] The first and second “Kritische Wäldchen” contain several references to Sterne and Shandy.[46] Herder, curiously enough, did not read the Sentimental Journey until the autumn of 1768, as is disclosed in a letter to Hamann written in November,[47] which also shows his appreciation of Sterne. “An Sterne’s Laune,” he says, “kann ich mich nicht satt lesen. Eben den Augenblick, da ich an ihn denke, bekomme ich seine Sentimental Journey zum Durchlesen, und wenn nicht meine Englische Sprachwissenschaft scheitert, wie angenehm werde ich mit ihm reisen. Ich bin an seine Sentiments zum Theil schon so gewöhnt, sie bis in das weiche innere Mark seiner Menschheit in ihren zarten Fäden zu verfolgen: dass ich glaube seinen Tristram etwas mehr zu verstehn als the common people. Nur um so mehr ärgern mich auch seine verfluchten Säuereien und Zweideutigkeiten, die das Buch wenigerer Empfehlung fähig machen als es verdient.” We learn from the same letter that Herder possessed the sermons of Yorick in the Zürich translation. Herder’s own homiletical style during this period, as evinced by the sermons preserved to us, betrays no trace of Sterne’s influence.
Riedel, in his “Theorie der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften,”[48] shows appreciation of Shandy complete and discriminating, previous to the publication of the Sentimental Journey. This book is a sort of compendium, a series of rather disconnected chapters, woven together out of quotations from aesthetic critics, examples and comment. In the chapter on Similarity and Contrast he contends that a satirist only may transgress the rule he has just enunciated: “When a perfect similarity fails of its effect, a too far-fetched, a too ingenious one, is even less effective,” and in this connection he quotes from Tristram Shandy a passage describing the accident to Dr. Slop and Obadiah.[49] Riedel translates the passage himself. The chapter “Ueber die Laune”[50] contains two more references to Shandy. In a volume dated 1768 and entitled “Ueber das Publikum: Briefe an einige Glieder desselben,” written evidently without knowledge of the Journey, Riedel indicates the position which Shandy had in these years won for itself among a select class. Riedel calls it a contribution to the “Register” of the human heart and states that he knows people who claim to have learned more psychology from this novel than from many thick volumes in which the authors had first killed sentiment in order then to dissect it at leisure.[51]
Early in 1763, one finds an appreciative knowledge of Shandy as a possession of a group of Swiss literati, but probably confined to a coterie of intellectual aristocrats and novelty-seekers. Julie von Bondeli[52] writes to Usteri from Koenitz on March 10, 1763, that Kirchberger[53] will be able to get him the opportunity to read Tristram Shandy as a whole, that she herself has read two volumes with surprise, emotion and almost constant bursts of laughter; she goes on to say: “Il voudrait la peine d’apprendre l’anglais ne fut-ce que pour lire cet impayable livre, dont la vérité et le génie se fait sentir à chaque ligne au travers de la plus originelle plaisanterie.” Zimmermann was a resident of Brugg, 1754–1768, and was an intimate friend of Fräulein von Bondeli. It may be that this later enthusiastic admirer of Sterne became acquainted with Shandy at this time through Fräulein von Bondeli, but their correspondence, covering the years 1761–1775, does not disclose it.