Library (Circulating) for Reviewers and Young Ladies.—I still always adhere to my purpose of having it inserted in the Intelligence-leaf of the Literary Gazette, that I shall not destroy the purchase-money which I raise upon my evening star [Hesperus], nor, like Musæus, fritter it away in the purchase of summer-houses, but shall lay out the whole capital upon a complete collection of all German prefaces and titles that appear from fair to fair. I can carry out the plan, if I give out a preface a week, on the payment of a penny, to reviewers, who do not care to read the book itself when they review it.
That not even the surplus of the aforesaid mintage may lie as dead capital in my house, I shall employ it—if I do not change my mind—in getting the bookbinder to publish the heavier German masterpieces,—e. g. Frederick Jacobi's, Klinger's, Goethe's Tasso,—likewise the better satirical and philosophical ones, in a lighter ladies' edition, which shall consist wholly of so-called puzzle-volumes, which have no book slid into them. I shall thereby, methinks, be playing something pithy into the hands of my fair readers, which shall be as well bound and as well titled as the booksellers' edition, and in which—because the hard stone-fruit is already shelled out, and there is nothing inside—they can lay not only just as much of silk threads and silk snippings as in the printed edition, but six ounces more. Allwill's correspondence—a heavy, two-yolked ostrich's egg of the author's, which I have had blown out by the bookbinder in this manner, because most of the fair readers are too cold to hatch it—is now quite light. But of the German romances I shall never prepare such a work-box edition of empty state-carriages of the God of the Sun and the Muses, because I fear the trade would cry out about piracy.—A happy man were I, if the joint subscribers to my circulating-capsule-library had only been shown round as much as twice in some Italian and Portuguese bookeries:[[228]] they would there, where often only the titles of works—and of the stupidest, into the bargain—are daubed on the wall, be astonished to see what a miserable figure such useless libraries, beside my bookery of regular puzzle-books, which I select from so many departments and with some originality, cannot do otherwise than cut.
—Thus, of course, German capsule-readers among the ladies will never be overtaken by you Portuguese women! Much rather will the former follow in the footsteps even of the men, advocates and business people, who subscribe to similar capsule-journalistics, and jointly read and circulate the covers of the best German journals,—which latter are often annexed as curiosa even to the capsules, and fill them out.... Such is my plan and sketch; but even sheep would presume I were merely playing off a joke here, unless I really carried it through.
M.
Maidens.—Young maidens are like young turkey-hens, that thrive poorly, if one touches them often; and mothers keep these soft creatures, made of floating pollen, like pastel-pictures, under window-glass—because everything is afraid of us princess-stealers and fruit-thieves—until they are fixed. Meanwhile the proper crown-guard around a female heart is neither solitude,—which leads only to an untried innocence,[[229]] that falls, to be sure, not before the debauchee, but yet before the hypocrite,—nor society, nor hard labor,—otherwise no country girl would ever fall,—nor good teachings,—for these are to be had in every mouth and in every circulating library; but these four first and last things do it all at once, and they are at once superseded, united, and replaced by a wise and virtuous mother.
N.
Names of the Great.[[230]]—When I see, as I do, how they scatter their productions for the Fair, occasional writings and fugitive pieces (children born out of wedlock) as anonymously as if they were reviews, then I say: "Herein I recognize genuine modesty; for natural children are precisely their best and their own, and can, besides, be acknowledged by the Prince as genuine; whereas their supernatural [or extra-natural] ones born in wedlock have to do without the certification; and yet they will not let the world know the name of the benefactor, but quite as often (nay, oftener) get people into it as out of it secretly. What the child in other cases first learns to pronounce, such parents speak to him last,—their name. Methinks they follow herein Goethe's fine ear; for they hide themselves, while they fill the orchestra of the world with children's voices and with vingt-quatre,[[231]] and with alarm-works and repeating-works, (what a juxtaposition of unlike things!) just as Goethe demands of the playing musical artist that he shall work for the ears, but hide himself for the sake of sparing the eyes. Quite as beautifully do they do the thing when they finally adopt as children, and show to the world, their children by the thirtieth marriage (often after the five or twenty years' limitation), and thus imitate the greenfinches, which, it is said, make their nest and its inmates invisible by means of the so-called greenfinch-stone, till the latter are fledged."
O.
Ostracism.—It was among the Greeks, as is well known, no punishment. Only people of great merits achieved it; and so soon as this banishment from the country was lavished upon bad men, it went entirely into disuse. An imperial citizen must lament that we, who have a similar public educational institution,—namely, banishment,—squander it often upon the very wretchedest rascals, and therefore—with the design of making one circle or country the spit-box and secreting-vessel of another—drive out of the country scoundrels who are hardly fit to stay in it. Thereby is this clearing of the country deprived for the most part of the honorable and distinguishing feature which it might have for the man of merit, and an honest man—e. g. a Bahrdt[[232]]—is almost ashamed to be invested with such an honor. There should, therefore, be an imperial police-regulation that only ministers, professors, and officers of decided worth, like important documents, should be dismissed and banished. To similar men I would also limit hanging. With the Romans, in truth, only great heads and lights were interred on the way[[233]] at the expense of a whole state; but what shall I think of the Germans, with whom seldom serviceable subjects, but mostly finished rogues, are buried at public expense, which they call hangman's fees, having been previously hanged on the gallows by the roadside?—Not even in his lifetime can a man, unless he has extraordinary, and often eccentric merits,—although eccentric men fall back into the truth, as comets do into the sun, as fuel,—make his calculations upon being, in some manner, as the ancients duplicated their noble men in statues and pictures, hung up in effigy in a thick stone frame.... Let me have an answer; I allow myself to be talked with.