Similar biographical Denunciantes and Familiars I maintain in several of the German cities;—my honored father pays for them;—in most places one, but in Leipsic two, in Dresden three, in Berlin six, in Vienna as many in every quarter of the city. Machines of such a nature, so much like perspective-glasses, whereby one can survey from his bed all that is going on in the street below, of course make it easy for an author, from behind his inkstand, to see clear down into dark household operations going on in some by-lane, hidden among buildings twenty miles distant. Therefore, the singular case may happen to me every week, that a staid, quiet man, whom nobody knows but his barber, and whose course of life is like a dark, unfrequented cul de sac, but whom one of my envoys and spies secretly follows, with a biographical concave mirror, which casts an image of the man, waistcoat, breeches, walk, and all, into my study, situated at a distance of thirty miles,—the case may occur to me, I say, that such a secluded man shall accidentally step up to the counter of the bookseller, and in my work, which lies there smoking hot from the oven, shall find himself, with all his hair, buttons, buckles, and warts, as clearly pictured out on the three hundred and seventy-first page, as the impressions of Indian plants which are found on rocks in France. That, however, is no matter.
People, on the other hand, who live at the same place with me, as the people of Hof formerly did, come off well; for I keep no ambassadors near me.
But this very advantage of getting my anecdotes, not out of my head, but from despatches, obliges me to take more pains in putting them into cipher, than others would have in dressing them up or thinking them out. No less a miracle than that which bars up and hides the masonic mystery, and the invisible church, and the invisible lodge, has seemed thus far to avert the discovery of the true names of my histories, and, indeed, with such success, that of all the manuscripts which have hitherto been despatched to the publishers, filled with conjectures on the subject, not one has smelt the mouse,—and truly fortunate for the world; for so soon, e. g., as one person shall have nosed out the names of the first volumes of Titan, disguised as they have been in the best hieroglyphic chancery offices, that moment I upset my inkstand, and publish no more.
Nothing is to be inferred from the names which I use, for I press into the service God-parents for my heroes in the most singular ways. Have I not, e. g., often of an evening, during the marching and countermarching of the German armies, who made their crusades to the holy sepulchre of freedom, gone up and down through the lanes of the camp, with my writing-tablets in my hands, and caught and entered the names of the privates,—which, just before bedtime, were called out aloud, like the names of saints,—just as they fell, in order to distribute them again among my biographical people? And has not merit been promoted thereby, and many a common soldier risen to be a nobleman fit for table and tournament, and have not provost-marshals been raised to ministers of justice, and red-cloaks to patribus purpuratis? And did ever a cock crow in all the army after this corps of observation slinking round mobilized on two legs?
For authors who wish at the same time to narrate and disguise true anecdotes, I am, perhaps, on the whole, a model and file-leader. I have studied and imitated longer than other historical inquirers those little innocent stretching and wrenching processes which can make a history unrecognizable to the very hero of the same, and I fancy I know how one is to make good biographies of princes, protocols of high traitors, legends of saints, and auto-biographies; no stronger touches decide the matter than those slight ones, by which Peter of Cortona (or Beretino) in the presence of Ferdinand of Tuscany transformed a weeping child into a laughing one, and the reverse.
Voltaire demands more than once, as he always does,—for he gave mankind, like an army, every order of march three times, and repeated himself and everything else most indefatigably,—that the historian shall arrange his history after the law-table of the drama, to a dramatic focal point. It is, however, one of the first dramatic rules which Lessing, Aristotle, and the Greek models give us, that the dramatic poet must lend to every historical circumstance which he treats all that is favorable to the poetic illusion, as well as keep clear of everything opposite, and that he must never sacrifice beauty to truth, but the reverse. Voltaire gave, as is well known, not only the easy rule, but the hard model also; and this great theatre poet of the world's theatre, in his benefit dramas of Peter and Charles, never stuck to the truth where he was sure he could attain sooner to illusion. And that is properly the genuine romantic history corresponding to the historical romance. It is not for me, but for others,—namely, the Provost and the Secretaries of Legation,—to decide how far I have treated a true history illusorily. It is a misfortune that the true history of my hero can hardly ever see the light; otherwise the justice might be done me that connoisseurs would confront my poetical deviations with the truth, and thereafter give each of us more easily his own, as well the truth as myself. But this reward is what all royal historiographers and scandalous chroniclers must resign nolens volens, because the true history never appears in conjunction with their works.
But in the composition of a history an author must also keep a sharp look-out upon this point, that it shall not only hit and betray no real persons, but also no false ones, and in fact nobody at all. Before I, e. g., choose a name for a bad prince, I must look through the genealogical index of all governing and governed families, in order not to use a name which some person or other already bears; thus, in Otaheite, even the words which sound like the name of the king are abolished after his coronation, and supplied by others. Now, as I was formerly acquainted with no living courts at all, I was not in a situation, when preparing the battle-pieces and night-pieces which I painted of the Cabals, the Egoism, and the Libertinism of biographical courts, to succeed in skilfully avoiding every resemblance to real ones; yes, for such an idiot as I, it was a miserable help, even, to be often laying Machiavelli open before me, in order, with the assistance of the French history, by painting from the two, to turn off the edge of the application at least upon countries in which no Frenchman or Italian ever had the influence that is generally attributed to both of them upon other Germans; just as Herder, in opposition to those naturalists who derive certain misshapen tribes of men from a half-parentage of apes, makes the very good remark that most of the resemblances to apes—the retreating skull of the Calmucks, the prominent ears of the Pevas, the slender hands in Carolina—appear just in those countries where there are no apes at all. Formerly, then, as was said, striking unlikenesses I could not succeed in hitting; now, on the contrary, every court around which my legation-flotilla coasts is well known to me, and therefore secure from accidental resemblances, particularly every one which I describe,—that of Flachsenfingen, that of Hohenfliess, &c. The theatrical mask which I have on in my works is not the mask of the Greek comedian, which was embossed after the face of the individual satirized,[25] but the mask of Nero, which, when he acted a goddess on the stage, looked like his mistress,[26] and when he acted a god, like himself.
Enough! This digressive introductory programme has been somewhat long, but the Jubilee-period was so, too: the longer the St. John's day of a country, the longer its St. Thomas's night. And now let us dance along together into the book,—into this free ball of the world,—I first as leader in the dance, and then the readers as hop-dancers after me; so that, amidst the sounding baptismal and funeral bells in the Chinese house of this world-building,—welcomed by the singing-school of the muses,—serenaded from on high by the guitar of Phœbus,—we may dance gayly from Tome to Tome, from Cycle to Cycle, from one digression to another, from one dash to another,—till either the work comes to an end, or the workman, or everybody!
