The Investiture on Sunday (whose Gospel, of the Good Shepherd, suited well with the ceremony) I must despatch in few words; because nothing truly sublime can bear to be treated of in many. However, I shall impart the most memorable circumstances, when I say that there was--drinking (in the Parsonage),--music-making (in the Choir),--reading (of the Presentation by the Senior, and of the Ratification-rescript by the lay Rath),--and preaching, by the Consistorialrath, who took the soul-curer by the hand, and presented, made over, and guaranteed him to the congregation, and them to him. Fixlein felt that he was departing as a high-priest from the church which he had entered as a country parson, and all day he had not once the heart to ban. When a man is treated with solemnity, he looks upon himself as a higher nature, and goes through his solemn feasts devoutly.
This indenturing, this monastic profession, our Head-Rabbis and Lodge-masters (our Superintendents) have usually a taste for putting off till once the pastor has been some years ministering among the people, to whom they hereby present him; as the early Christians frequently postponed their consecration and investiture to Christianity, their baptism namely, till the day when they died. Nay, I do not even think this clerical Investiture would lose much of its usefulness, if it and the declaring-vacant of the office were reserved for the same day; the rather, as this usefulness consists entirely in two items; what the Superintendent and his Raths can eat, and what they can pocket.
Not till towards evening did the Parson and I get acquainted. The Investiture officials and elevation pulley-men had, throughout the whole evening, been very violently--breathing. I mean thus; as these gentlemen could not but be aware, by the most ancient theories and the latest experiments, that air was nothing else than a sort of rarefied and exploded water, it became easy for them to infer, that, conversely, water was nothing else than a denser sort of air. Wine-drinking, therefore, is nothing else but the breathing of an air pressed together into proper spissitude, and sprinkled over with a few perfumes. Now, in our days, by clerical persons too much (fluid) breath can never be inhaled through the mouth; seeing the dignity of their station excludes them from that breathing through the smaller pores which Abernethy so highly recommends under the name of air-bath; and can the Gullet in their case be aught else than door-neighbor to the Windpipe, the consonant and fellow-shoot of the Windpipe?--I am running astray; I meant to signify that I this evening had adopted the same opinion; only that I used air or ether, not like the rest for loud laughter, but for the more quiet contemplation of life in general. I even shot forth at my gossip certain speeches which betrayed devoutness. These he at first took for jests, being aware that I was from Court, and of quality. But the concave mirror of the wine-mist at length suspended the images of my soul, enlarged and embodied like spiritual shapes, in the air before me.--Life shaded itself off to my eyes like a hasty summer night, which we little fireflies shoot across with transient gleam;--I said to him that man must turn himself like the leaves of the great mallow, at the different day-seasons of his life, now to the rising sun, now to the setting, now to the night, towards the Earth and its graves;--I said, the omnipotence of Goodness was driving us and the centuries of the world towards the gates of the City of God, as, according to Euler, the resistance of the Ether leads the circling Earth towards the Sun, &c., &c.
On the strength of these entremets, he considered me the first theologian of his age; and had he been obliged to go to war, would previously have taken my advice on the matter, as belligerent powers were wont of old from the theologians of the Reformation. I hide not from myself, however, that what preachers call vanity of the world is something altogether different from what philosophy so calls. When I, moreover, signified to him that I was not ashamed to be an Author; but had a turn for working up this and the other biography; and that I had got a sight of his Life in the hands of the Superintendent; and might be in case to prepare a printed one therefrom, if so were he would assist me with here and there a tint of flesh-color,--then was my silk, which, alas! not only isolates one from electric fire, but also from a kindlier sort of it, the only grate which rose between his arms and me; for, like the most part of poor country parsons, it was not in his power to forget the rank of any man, or to vivify his own on a higher one. He said: "He would acknowledge it with veneration, if I should mention him in print; but he was much afraid his life was too common and too poor for a biography." Nevertheless, he opened me the drawer of his Letter-boxes, and said, perhaps he had hereby been paving the way for me.
The main point, however, was, he hoped that his Errata, his Exercitationes, and his Letters on the Robber-Castle, if I should previously send forth a Life of the Author, might be better received; and that it would be much the same as if I accompanied them with a Preface.
In short, when on Monday the other dignitaries with their nimbus of splendor had dissipated, I alone, like a precipitate, abode with him; and am still abiding, that is, from the fifth of May (the Public should take the Almanac of 1794, and keep it open beside them) to the fifteenth; to-day is Thursday, to-morrow is the sixteenth and Friday, when comes the Spinat-Kirmes, or Spinage-Wake, as they call it, and the uplifting of the steeple-ball, which I just purposed to await before I went. Now, however, I do not go so soon; for on Sunday I have to assist at the baptismal ceremony, as baptismal agent for my little future godson. Whoever pays attention to me, and keeps the Almanac open, may readily guess why the christening is put off till Sunday; for it is that memorable Cantata-Sunday, which once, for its mad, narcotic hemlock-virtues, was of importance in our History; but is now so only for the fair betrothment, which after two years we mean to celebrate with a baptism.
Truly it is not in my power--for want of colors and presses--to paint or print upon my paper the soft, balmy flower-garland of a fortnight which has here wound itself about my sickly life; but with a single day I shall attempt it. Man, I know well, cannot prognosticate either his joys or his sorrows, still less repeat them, either in living or writing.
The black hour of coffee has gold in its mouth for us and honey; here, in the morning coolness, we are all gathered; we maintain popular conversation, that so the parsoness and the gardeneress may be able to take share in it. The morning service in the church, where often the whole people[[62]] are sitting and singing, divides us. While the bell is sounding, I march with my writing-gear into the singing Castle-garden; and seat myself in the fresh acacia-grove, at the dewy two-legged table. Fixlein's Letter-boxes I keep by me in my pocket; and I have only to look and abstract from his what can be of use In my own.--Strange enough! so easily do we forget a thing in describing it, I really did not recollect for a moment that I am now sitting at the very grove-table of which I speak, and writing all this.--
My gossip in the mean time is also laboring for the world. His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe. A man who is making a book will scarcely hang himself; all rich lords'-sons, therefore, should labor for the press; for, in that case, when you awake too early in bed, you have always a plan, an aim, and therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off, too, is the author who collects rather than invents,--for the latter with its eating fire calcines the heart; I praise the Antiquary, the Heraldist, Note-maker, Compiler; I esteem the Title-perch (a fish called Perca-Diagramma, because of the letters on its scales), and the Printer (a chafer, called Scarabæus Typographus, which eats letters in the bark of fir),--neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty letter-eggs.--In regard to the catalogue raisonné, which my gossip is now drawing up of German Errata, I have several times suggested to him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect, and revised the rule by which it has been computed, that, e. g. for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, &c., are required; and to recount, and see whether, in Political writings and Dedications, the fifty notes of admiration for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter were not far too small an allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was."
Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters which were not, like forest-shooters, absent on furlough by reason of the spring, through their platoon firing in the Hornbook. He never did more than his duty, but also never less. It brought a soft, benignant warmth over his heart, to think that he, who had once ducked under a School-inspectorship, was now one himself.