“OF GLORY.
“Most men judge so miserably; why would you be praised by a child?
“No one would praise you in a beggar’s frock; be not proud of the esteem that is given to your coat.
“Do not expect more esteem from others because you deserve more, but reflect that they will expect still more merit in yourself.
“Do not seek to justify all thy actions. Value nothing merely because it is thy own, and look not always upon thyself.
“Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions, but make use of common situations. A long continued walk is better than a short flight.
“Never act in the heat of emotion: let reason answer first.
“Look upon every day as the whole of life, not merely as a section; and enjoy the present without wishing to spring on to another section that lies before thee.
“Seek to acquire that virtue in a month, to which thou feelest the least inclined.
“It betrays a greater soul to answer a satire with patience, than with wit.
“If thou wouldst be free, joyful, and calm, take the only means that cannot be affected by accident—virtue.”
A man who could act on these principles was morally a great man, and worthy of admiration even without genius. To know and feel habitually, as Richter seems to have done, that “EVIL is like the nightmare; the instant you bestir yourself it has already ended,” is to be a moral hero, and a triumphant Christian. See how every thing turns into gold at the touch of such a man!—the way of pædagogy (for he practised the “dominie” too for four years to eke out his scanty earnings,) to him is spread not with thorns, but with violets and primroses. The following account of his pædagogic practice cannot fail to interest many:—
“The deep and marked peculiarities of a poetic nature were never brought into fuller exercise than by Richter, in the formation and government of his little school. That which is usually to men of rich endowments a vexing and wearisome employment, the daily routine of instruction for little children in the elements of knowledge, became to him a source of elevated and ennobling thought. His mode of instruction was the opposite of that from which he thought he had himself suffered. In this little school there was no learning by heart, no committing to memory the thoughts of others, but every child was expected to use its own powers. His exertions seemed mainly directed to awaken in the children a reproducing and self-creating power; all knowledge was therefore the material, out of which they were to form new combinations. In a word, the whole of his instruction was directed to create a desire for self-study, and thus lead his pupils to self-knowledge. He aimed to bring out, as much as possible, the talents that God had given his pupils; and, after exciting a love of knowledge, he left them to a free choice as to what they would study; but their zeal and emulation were kept alive by a (so-called) ‘red book,’ in which an exact account of the work of each individual was recorded; this was shown to parents and friends at the end of the quarter, and so great was their zeal, that they needed a rein rather than a spur. While he accustomed the children to the spontaneous activity of all their faculties, he gave them five hours a-day of direct instruction, in which he led them through the various departments of human knowledge, and taught them to connect ideas and facts by comparison and association. From the kingdom of plants and animals he ascended to the starred firmament, made them acquainted with the course of the planets, and led their imaginations to these worlds and their inhabitants. Then he conducted them through the picture-gallery of the past history of nations, and placed the heroes, and saints, and martyrs of antiquity before them, or he turned their attention to the mystery of their own souls and the destiny of man. Above all, and with all, he directed their tender, childish hearts, to a Father in heaven. He said, ‘There can be no such companion to the heart of children, for the whole life, as the ever-present thought of God and immortality.’”
But these humble avocations were soon to cease. Richter was destined to emerge from the obscurity of a village schoolmaster, and appear on the public stage of Germany as the compeer of Herder and Schiller, of Wieland and Göethe—second to none of these now European names in originality, brilliancy, and vigour of literary talent; superior to all of them in the purity and intensity with which there glowed in him many of those highest moral qualities which distinguish the man and the Christian. The following extract, relating to the publication of his first very successful work, and the commencement of his German celebrity, in the year 1790, is steeped in the purest essence of poetry, and most characteristic of that flow of pure, cheerful, and exalted emotion which freshens one’s moral nature like milk and honey, in all the mature writings of this extraordinary man.
“The weeks that followed the successful reception of the Invisible Lodge were the ‘Sabbath weeks’ of Paul’s life. He had had the courage to speak out in the fulness of his nature, and had found a response in many hearts. In the paradise that opened before him, he determined to give full course to the flood of his genius; but he well knew, that the richest fulness of poetic thought could only exist in connexion with peace of soul, cheerfulness of disposition, and firmness of purpose, and that the truth of his representations must arise from corresponding inward truth and integrity; in short, if he would be a poet in his works, he must be a poet in his life.
“He carefully continued his book of devotion, his rules and purposes of life. He never awoke without reviewing the past day; and where he had been assaulted by the force of any passion, there he placed a double bulwark, and with quiet satisfaction celebrated the victory gained. His quick and warm fancy led him often to outbreaking anger, and his ready wit to satire that was sometimes wounding, especially when his good-nature was misused; but the gentlest call led him back to tenderness—the accidental sight of a boy’s face with tears in his eyes was sufficient to disarm him; he thought of his future life, of the sorrows that would draw from him still bitterer tears, and he said, ‘I will not pour into the cup of humanity a single drop of gall;’ and he kept his word. Where he was obliged to assert his rights, he did it so calmly and gently, that the holy treasures of his life—love and truth—remained for ever undisturbed.
“Every thing living touched his heart—from the humblest flower that opened its leaves in the grass, up to the shining worlds on high; children and old men, the beggar and the rich, he would have embraced them all in the sacred glow of his emotions, or given all he possessed to make them happy. No one went from him unconsoled; and when he could give nothing but good counsel, he gave that. Were it only a poor mountaineer or a travelling apprentice to whom he could impart the smallest present, he would dwell the whole day with delight on the circumstance. Often he would say to himself, ‘Now he will draw the dollar from his pocket, and reckon which of his long-cherished wishes he can first satisfy. How often will he think of this day, and of the unexpected gift, and perhaps once more than usual upon the Giver of all good.’ Love was the ever-living principle of his character and of his writings, and before the thought of the Infinite, all differences in rank vanished away; all were equally great, or equally little.
“He gained nourishment for this principle from every circumstance in life. Where others would have been untouched and cold, there he heard whispered to his spirit the voice of humanity. Let him speak for himself. He says in his journal:-
“‘I picked up in the choir a faded rose-leaf, that lay under the feet of the boys. Great God! what had I in my hand but a small leaf, with a little dust upon it; and upon this small fugitive thing my fancy built a whole paradise of joy—a whole summer dwelt upon this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the boy held this flower in his hand, and when through the church window he saw the blue heaven and the clouds wandering over it; when every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and reminded him of the shadows on the grass from the over-flying clouds. Good God! thou scatterest satisfaction every where, and givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost thou invite us to great and exciting pleasures, but thou givest to the smallest a lingering perfume.’
“Above all things, his eye hung upon Nature. He lived and wrote whole days in the open air, on the mountain, or in the woods; and in the midst of winter he sought from the window the evening rose-colour, his beloved stars, and that magic enchanter, the moon. Every walk in the open air was to him the entrance into a church. He said in his journal—‘Dost thou enter pure into this vast, guiltless temple? Dost thou bring no poisonous passion into this place, where flowers bloom and birds sing? Dost thou bear no hatred where Nature loves! Art thou calm as the stream where Nature reflects herself as in a mirror? Ah, would that my heart were as true and as unruffled as Nature when she came from the hands of her great Creator!’ Every new excursion in this great temple gave him new strength, and he returned laden with spiritual treasures. He loved to make short journeys on foot; where the motion of the body kept the mind in a state of activity, and the insignificant gained value by its unexpectedness. A sunny day made him happy, and the perfumes of a spring morning, or dewy evening, seemed almost to intoxicate him with their incense; but the hours of night were those of his highest elevation, when he would lie long hours on the dewy grass, looking into the opening clouds. He says in his journal—‘I take my ink-flask in the morning, and write as I walk in the fragrant air. Then comes my joy, that I have conquered two of my faults—my disposition to be angry in conversation, and to lose my cheerfulness through a long day of dust and musquitoes. Nothing makes one so indifferent to the pin and musquito thrusts of life, as the consciousness of growing better.’”
Richter belonged now to Germany, and should have been transferred immediately, you will think, like Göethe, Schiller, Wieland, Herder, and the other Dii majorum gentium, to Weimar, the one literary capital of Deutschland; for political capital it neither had then nor has now, nor in the common course of things, notwithstanding the songs of 1813 and the Zoll-Verein, is ever like to have. And in Weimar, no doubt, there were some men who looked upon the apparition of the Richter comet with a more favourable eye than senatorian Göethe. Old Father Wieland, in particular, “who had read Tristram Shandy eighty times over,” called him “our Yorick, our Rabelais, the purest spirit!”—and the earnest Herder, with his capacious sympathy, was able to appreciate the religious and Christian element in Paul’s character, which naturally was a mystery to the author of Agathon. Taken as a whole, however, Weimar, with Göethe as its real king and god, was by no means the proper element for Richter. There was too much mere literature in it for one with whom goodness was the one thing needful, and greatness only an accident, agreeable or disagreeable, as the case might be. There was too much head in Weimar, and too little heart. Freedom, indeed, there was, in grand style, from all those civic formalities, and minute observation of small points, which had vexed him so much in Hof. But what one might complain of there, to use his own words, was “PAINTED EGOTISM AND UNPAINTED SCEPTICISM;”—the French Voltaire in a German Avatar! For the true Teut, Richter, that would never do. We are not, therefore, to be surprised if the visit which Paul made to Weimar in 1796, though full of joy and exhilaration, was not followed up by any permanent change in his quiet and retired mode of life. His native secluded region of the Fichtelgebirge was still to be his home. Hof and Bayreuth, in the centre of central Germany, and therefore out of every body’s way, were to boast the possession of this the most German of great German men. How little attraction there was between the calm, cold, artistical contemplativeness of Göethe, and the bickering sportiveness of sunny joy in the essentially moral nature of Richter, the following extract will declare:—
“‘On the second day I threw away my foolish prejudices in favour of great authors. They are like other people. Here, every one knows that they are like the earth, that looks from a distance, from heaven, like a shining moon, but when the foot is upon it, it is found to be made of boue de Paris (Paris mud.) An opinion concerning Herder, Wieland, or Göethe, is as much contested as any other. Who would believe that the three watch-towers of our literature avoid and dislike each other! I will never again bend myself anxiously before any great man, only before the virtuous. Under this impression, I went timidly to meet Göethe. Every one had described him as cold to every thing upon the earth. Madam von Kalb said, he no longer admires any thing, not even himself. Every word is ice! Curiosities, merely, warm the fibres of his heart. Therefore I asked Knebel to petrify or incrust me by some mineral spring, that I might present myself to him like a statue or a fossil. Madam von Kalb advised me, above all things, to be cold and self-possessed, and I went without warmth, merely from curiosity. His house, palace rather, pleased me; it is the only one in Weimar in the Italian style—with such steps! A Pantheon full of pictures and statues. Fresh anxiety oppressed my breast! At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing towards Paris,’ said Knebel. ‘Hm!’ said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But at last, the conversation led from the campaign to art, publications, &c., and Göethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned, penetrating, and calm. At last, he read, that is, he played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. (It was my face, not my voice, for I said not a word.) He did it again when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft whispering rain-drops. There is nothing like it.’”
To which add the following passage, where we are sorry to find rather an unfavourable mention of our great favourite Schiller. Authors, however, especially poets, are a strange race: he who expects to find them always like their books, knows little. How unlike is Vesuvius, being calm and mantled with green grass, to the same Vesuvius when it spouts molten rock and spits lightning!
“‘I went yesterday to see the stony Schiller, from whom, as from a precipice, all strangers spring back. His form is worn, severely powerful, but angular. He is full of sharp-cutting power, but without love. His conversation is nearly as excellent as his writings. As I brought a letter from Göethe, he was unusually pleasant; he would make me a fellow-contributor to the Horen (a periodical,) and would give me a naturalization act in Jena.’
“Notwithstanding this courtesy, Richter did not repeat his visit to Schiller, and his intimate union with Herder excluded all hope of his being drawn to the party of Göethe. The latter wrote to Schiller, ‘I am glad you have seen Richter. His love of truth and his wish for self-improvement have prepossessed me in his favour; but the social man is a sort of theoretical man, and I doubt if Richter will ever approach us in a practical way, although in theory he seems to have some pretensions to belong to us.’ They were never friends. Richter could not conceal his disappointment at the character of Göethe’s latter poetical works; and soon after his return to Hof he wrote to Knebel in relation to one of them, ‘that in such stormy times we needed a Tyrtæus rather than a Propertius.’ The remark reached Göethe’s ears; and Göethe, usually so indifferent to censure or criticism, showed himself deeply susceptible and offended at this so-called ‘manifestation of arrogance in Herr Richter.’”