CHAPTER VI.
MATRIMONIAL JARS—EXTRA LEAFLET ON THE LOQUACITY OF WOMEN—MORE PLEDGING—THE MORTAR AND THE SNUFF-MILL—A SCHOLAR’S KISS—ON THE CONSOLATIONS OF HUMANITY—CONTINUATION OF THE SIXTH CHAPTER.
This chapter commences at once with pecuniary difficulties. The wretched, leaky Danaid’s bucket which our good couple had to use for washing their groschen or two, their grains of gold-dust—few and far between as they were—out of the sands of their Pactolus, had always run dry again in the course of a couple of days, or of three at the outside. On this occasion, however, they had something certain to go upon, namely, the reviews of the two works; they could count upon four florins certainly, if not upon five.
Early next day, after his morning kiss, Firmian seated himself upon his critical judgment-bench again, and proceeded to pass his sentences. He might have written an epic poem, so light were the trade-winds which had hitherto been prevalent during the early hours of the day. From eight o’clock in the morning till eleven in the forenoon, he was engaged in holding up to the world in a favourable light the programme of Dr. Frank of Pavia, which was entitled: ‘Sermo Academicus de civis medici in republica conditione atque officiis, ex lege præipue erutis. Auct. Frank. 1785.’ He criticised, praised, blamed, and made extracts from this little production, till he thought he had covered enough paper to earn what would suffice to redeem the pawned herring-dish, salad-bowl, sauce-boat, and plates—his views on the work occupying one sheet, four pages, and fifteen lines.
The morning had passed so pleasantly, in holding Vehmgericht in this manner, that he thought he might as well go on, and hold another in the afternoon on the other book. He had never ventured upon this before; in the afternoons he had done advocate’s work, not reviewer’s, appearing in the character of defendant (maker of defence), not of fiscal (prosecutor). He had ample reason for this, seeing that every afternoon girls and maid-servants came with bonnets and caps, and with mouths full of conversational treasures, which they at once unpacked; richer in language than the Arabs, who have only a thousand words to express the same idea, these young women had a thousand idioms for it, or different ways of putting it;—and, as an organ when it’s out of order, immediately begins to cipher on twenty of its pipes or so at a time as soon as you begin to work the bellows, though no notes may be pressed down, so would they the moment the bellows of their lungs was set a-going. He didn’t mind this, however, seeing that at the particular hours to which these feminine alarum clocks were set, he let his own juristical alarum go rattling off too, and during the arguing of Lenette’s cases, went on with the arguing of his. He wasn’t disturbed by this; he maintained: “A lawyer is not to be put out, he can open and close his sentences when he chooses—his periods are long tapeworms, and can be lengthened or cut down with impunity—for each segment of them is itself a worm, each comma a period.”
But reviewing was another matter, and couldn’t be done so well. At the same time, I shall here faithfully transcribe for the benefit of the unlearned (the learned have read the review long ago), so much as he actually did manage to get done after his dinner. He wrote down the title of Steffen’s Latin translation of “Emilia Galotti,” and proceeded as follows—
“This translation meets a want which we have long experienced. It is, indeed, a striking phenomenon, that so few of the German classics have as yet been translated into Latin for the use of scholars, who, for their part, have supplied us with German versions of nearly all the Greek and Roman classic authors. The German nation can point to literary productions of its own which are quite worthy of perusal by scholars and by linguists, who, although they can translate them, do not understand them, because they are not written in Latin. Lichtenberg’s ‘Pocket Calendar’ has appeared simultaneously in a German edition—for the English, who are studying German—and in a French for our own haute noblesse. But why should not German original works, and even the very ‘Calendar’ itself, be made known to linguists and to scholars by means of a good and faithful Latin translation? There can be no doubt that they would be the very first to be struck by the great resemblance which may be traced between the odes of Ramler and those of Horace, if the former were but translated. The reviewer must confess that it has always been matter of surprise, as well as regret, to him that but two correct editions of Klopstock’s ‘Messiah’ have as yet appeared, the original edition and his own—and that there is no Latin edition of it for scholars—(Lessing having scarcely translated the ‘Invocation’ in his miscellaneous writings)—nor one in the curial style for lawyers, nor a plain prose one for the commercial world, nor one in Jew-German for the Jewish community.”
When he had got thus far, he was compelled to stop, because a housemaid wouldn’t stop, but went on reiterating what her mistress had gone on re-iterating, namely, how her night-cap was to be done up; twenty times did she sketch the ground-plan and elevation of the said cap, and laid weight on the necessity for speedy execution. Lenette answered her tautologies with equivalent ones, paying her back to the full in her own coin. Scarce was the housemaid out at the door, when the reviewer said—
“I haven’t written a word while that windmill was clacking. Lenette, tell me, is it really a positive impossibility for a woman to say, ‘It’s four o’clock,’ instead of ‘The four quarters to four have gone?’ Can no woman say, ‘The head-clout will be ready to-morrow,’ and then an end of the matter? Can no woman say, ‘I want a dollar for it,’ and there an end of the story? Nor, ‘Run in again to-morrow!’ and no more about it? Can you not do it, for instance?”
Lenette answered very coldly, “Oh! of course you think everybody thinks just as you think yourself!”