Seven years he serves for his beloved, without impatience and without wavering. His father-in-law, crafty like himself, and disposed, like him, to consider legitimate this means to an end, deceives him, and so repays him for what he has done to his brother. Jacob finds in his arms a wife whom he does not love. Laban, indeed, endeavours to appease him, by giving him his beloved also after a short time, and this but on the condition of seven years of further service. Vexation arises out of vexation. The wife he does not love is fruitful, the beloved one bears no children. The latter, like Sarai, desires to become a mother through her handmaiden; the former grudges her even this advantage. She also presents her husband with a maid; but the good patriarch is now the most troubled man in the world—he has four women, children by three, and none from her he loves. Finally she also is favoured, and Joseph tomes into the world, the late fruit of the most passionate attachment. Jacob's fourteen years of service are over, but Laban is unwilling to part with him, his chief and most trusty servant. They enter into a new compact, and portion the flocks between them. Laban retains the white ones as most numerous, Jacob has to put up with the spotted ones, as the mere refuse. But he is able here too to secure his own advantage; and as by a paltry mess (of pottage) he had procured the birthright, and by a disguise his father's blessing, he manages by art and sympathy to appropriate to himself the best and largest part of the herds; and on this side also he becomes the truly worthy progenitor of the people of Israel, and a model for his descendants. Laban and his household remark the result, if not the stratagem. Vexation ensues; Jacob flees with his family and goods, and partly by fortune, partly by cunning, escapes the pursuit of Laban. Rachel is now about to present him another son, but dies in the travail: Benjamin, the child of sorrow, survives her; but the aged father is to experience a still greater sorrow from the apparent loss of his son Joseph.
Perhaps some one may ask why I have so circumstantially narrated histories so universally known and so often repeated and explained. Let the inquirer be satisfied with the answer, that I could in no other way exhibit, how with my distracted life and desultory education, I concentrated my mind and feelings in quiet action on one point; that I was able in no other way to depict the peace that prevailed about me, even when all without was so wild and strange. If an ever busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither, if the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me, I readily fled to those oriental regions, plunged into the first books of Moses, and there, amid the scattered shepherd-tribes, found myself at once in the greatest solitude and the greatest society.
History of Joseph.
These family scenes, before they were to lose themselves in a history of the Jewish nation, show us now, in conclusion, a form by which the hopes and fancies of the young in particular are agreeably excited: Joseph, the child of the most passionate wedded love. He seems to us tranquil and clear, and predicts to himself the advantages which are to elevate him above his family. Cast into misfortune by his brothers, he remains steadfast and upright in slavery, resists the most dangerous temptations, rescues himself by prophecy, and is elevated according to his deserts to high honours. He shows himself first serviceable and useful to a great kingdom, then to his own kindred. He is like his ancestor Abraham in repose and greatness, his grandfather Isaac in silence and devotedness. The talent for traffic inherited from his father he exercises on a large scale. It is no longer flocks which are gained for himself from a father-in-law, but people, with all their possessions, which he knows how to purchase for a king. Extremely graceful is this natural story, only it appears too short, and one feels called upon to paint it in detail.
Such a filling-up of biblical characters and events given only in outline, was no longer strange to the Germans. The personages of both the Old and New Testaments had received through Klopstock a tender and affectionate nature, highly pleasing to the Boy as well as to many of his contemporaries. Of Bodmer's efforts in this line little or nothing came to him; but Daniel in the Lion's Den, by Moser, made a great impression on the young heart. In that work a right-minded man of business and courtier arrives at high honours through manifold tribulations, and the piety for which they threatened to destroy him became early and late his sword and buckler. It had long seemed to me desirable to work out the history of Joseph, but I could not get on with the form, particularly as I was conversant with no kind of versification which would have been adapted to such a work. But now I found a treatment of it in prose very suitable, and I applied all my strength to its execution. I now endeavoured to discriminate and paint the characters, and by the interpolation of incidents and episodes, to make the old simple history a new and independent work. I did not consider, what, indeed, youth cannot consider, that subject-matter was necessary to such a design, and that this could only arise by the perceptions of experience. Suffice, it to say, that I represented to myself all the incidents down to the minutest details, and narrated them accurately to myself in their succession.
What greatly lightened this labour was a circumstance which threatened to render this work, and my authorship in general, exceedingly voluminous. A young man of various capacities, but who had become imbecile from over exertion and conceit, resided as a ward in my father's house, lived quietly with the family, and if allowed to go on in his usual way, was contented and agreeable. He had with great care written out notes of his academical course, and had acquired a rapid legible hand. He liked to employ himself in writing better than in anything else, and was pleased when something was given him to copy; but still more when he was dictated to, because he then felt carried back to his happy academical years. To my father, who was not expeditious in writing, and whose German letters were small and tremulous, nothing could be more desirable, and he was consequently accustomed, in the conduct of his own and other business, to dictate for some hours a day to this young man. I found it no less convenient, during the intervals, to see all that passed through my head fixed upon paper by the hand of another, and my natural gift of feeling and imitation grew with the facility of catching up and preserving.
As yet I had not undertaken any work so large as that biblical prose-epic. The times were tolerably quiet, and nothing recalled my imagination from Palestine and Egypt. Thus my manuscripts swelled more and more every day, as the poem, which I recited to myself, as it were, in the air, stretched along the paper; and only a few pages from time to time needed to be rewritten.
When the work was done—for to my own astonishment it really came to an end—I reflected that from former year, many poems were extant, which did not even now appear to me utterly despicable, and which, if written together in the same size with Joseph, would make a very neat quarto, to which the title "Miscellaneous Poems" might be given. I was pleased with this, as it gave me an opportunity of quietly imitating well-known and celebrated authors. I had composed a good number of so-called Anacreontic poems, which, on account of the convenience of the metre and the easiness of the subject, flowed forth readily enough. But these I could not well take, as they were not in rhyme, and my desire before all things was to show my father something that would please him. So much the more, therefore, did the spiritual odes seem suitable, which I had very zealously attempted in imitation of the Last Judgment of Elias Schlegel. One of these, written to celebrate the descent of Christ into hell, received much applause from my parents and friends, and had the good fortune to please myself for some years afterwards. The so-called texts of the Sunday church-music, which were always to be had printed, I studied with diligence. They were, indeed, very weak, and I could well believe that my verses, of which I had composed many in the prescribed manner, were equally worthy of being set to music, and performed for the edification of the congregation. These and many like them I had for more than a year before copied with my own hand, because through this private exercise I was released from the copies of the writing-master. Now, all were corrected and put in order, and no great persuasion was needed to have them neatly copied by the young man who was so fond of writing. I hastened with them to the bookbinder, and when very soon after I handed the nice-looking volume to my father, he encouraged me with peculiar satisfaction to furnish a similar quarto every year; which he did with the greater conviction, as I had produced the whole in my spare moments alone.
Plitt's Sermons.