After a passage in which the rhymester enlarges upon the probability of distorted judgment, he closes with these lines:

This was at the time of Wieland’s early enthusiasm, when he was probably contemplating, if not actually engaged upon a translation of Tristram Shandy. “Thy fate of yore” in the second line is evidently a poetaster’s acceptation of an obvious rhyme and does not set Yorick’s German experience appreciably into the past. The translator supplies frequent footnotes explaining the allusions to things specifically English. He makes occasional comparison with German conditions, always with the claim that Germany is better off, and needs no such satire. The Hallische Neue Gelehrte Zeitungen for June 1, 1769, devotes a review of considerable length to this translation; in it the reviewer asserts that one would have recognized the father of this creation even if Yorick’s name had not stood on its forehead; that it closely resembles its fellows even if one must place it a degree below the Journey. The Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek71 throws no direct suspicion on the authenticity, but with customary insight and sanity of criticism finds in this early work “a great deal that is insipid and affected.” The Deutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, however, in a review which shows a keen appreciation of Sterne’s style, openly avows an inclination to question the authenticity, save for the express statement of the translator; the latter it agrees to trust.72 The book is placed far below the Sentimental Journey, below Shandy also, but far above the artificial tone of many other writers then popular. This relative ordering of Sterne’s works is characteristic of German criticism. In the latter part of the review its author seizes on a mannerism, the exaggerated use of which emphatically sunders the book from the genuine Sterne, the monotonous repetition of the critic’s protests and Yorick’s verbal conflicts with them. Sterne himself used this device frequently, but guardedly, and in ever-changing variety. Its careless use betrays the mediocre imitator.73

The more famous Koran was also brought to German territory and enjoyed there a recognition entirely beyond that accorded it in England. This book was first given to the world in London as the “Posthumous Works of a late celebrated Genius deceased;”74 a work in three parts, bearing the further title, “The Koran, or the Life, Character and Sentiments of Tria Juncta in Uno, M. N. A., Master of No Arts.” Richard Griffith was probably the real author, but it was included in the first collected edition of Sterne’s works, published in Dublin, 1779.75 The work purports to be, in part, an autobiography of Sterne, in which the late writer lays bare the secrets of his life, his early debauchery, his father’s unworthiness, his profligate uncle, the ecclesiastic, and the beginning of his literary career by advertising for hack work in London, being in all a confused mass of impossible detail, loose notes and disconnected opinion, which contemporary English reviews stigmatize as manifestly spurious, “an infamous attempt to palm the united effusions of dullness and indecency upon the world as the genuine production of the late Mr. Sterne.”76

In France the book was accepted as genuine and it was translated (1853) by Alfred Hédouin as an authentic work of Sterne. In Germany, too, it seems to have been recognized with little questioning as to its genuineness; even in recent years Robert Springer, in an article treating of Goethe’s relation to the Koran, quite openly contends for its authenticity.77

Since a German translation appeared in the following year (1771), the German reviews do not, in the main, concern themselves with the English original. The Neues Bremisches Magazin,78 however, censures the book quite severely, but the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften79 welcomes it with unquestioning praise. The German rendering was by Johann Gottfried Gellius, and the title was “Yorick’s Nachgelassene Werke.”80 The Deutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften81 does acknowledge the doubtful authorship but accepts completely its Yorick tone and whim—“one cannot tell the copyist from the original.” Various characteristics are cited as common to this work and Yorick’s other writings, the contrast, change, confusion, conflict with the critics and the talk about himself. For the collection of aphorisms, sayings, fragments and maxims which form the second part of the Koran, including the “Memorabilia,” the reviewer suggests the name “Sterniana.” The reviewer acknowledges the occasional failure in attempted thrusts of wit, the ineffective satire, the immoral innuendo in some passages, but after the first word of doubt the review passes on into a tone of seemingly complete acceptation.

In 1778 another translation of this book appeared, which has been ascribed to Bode, though not given by Goedeke, Jördens or Meusel. Its title was “Der Koran, oder Leben und Meynungen des Tria Juncta in Uno.”82 The Almanach der deutschen Musen83 treats this work with full measure of praise. The Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek84 accepts the book in this translation as a genuine product of Sterne’s genius. Sammer reprinted the “Koran” (Vienna, 1795, 12^o) and included it in his nine volume edition of Sterne’s complete works (Vienna, 1798).

Goethe’s connection with the “Koran,” which forms the most interesting phase of its German career, will be treated later.

Sterne’s unacknowledged borrowings, his high-handed and extensive appropriation of work not his own, were noted in Germany, the natural result of Ferriar’s investigations in England, but they seem never to have attracted any considerable attention or aroused any serious concern among Sterne’s admirers so as to imperil his position: the question in England attached itself as an ungrateful but unavoidable concomitant of every discussion of Sterne and every attempt to determine his place in letters. Böttiger tells us that Lessing possessed a copy of Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” from which Sterne filched so much wisdom, and that Lessing had marked in it several of the passages which Ferriar later advanced as proof of Sterne’s theft. It seems that Bode purchased this volume at Lessing’s auction in Hamburg. Lessing evidently thought it not worth while to mention these discoveries, as he is entirely silent on the subject. Böttiger is, in his account, most unwarrantedly severe on Ferriar, whom he calls “the bilious Englishman” who attacked Sterne “with so much bitterness.” This is very far from a veracious conception of Ferriar’s attitude.

The comparative indifference in Germany to this phase of Sterne’s literary career may well be attributed to the medium by which Ferriar’s findings were communicated to cultured Germany. The book itself, or the original Manchester society papers, seem never to have been reprinted or translated, and Germany learned their contents through a résumé written by Friedrich Nicolai and published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift for February, 1795, which gives a very sane view of the subject, one in the main distinctly favorable to Sterne. Nicolai says Sterne is called with justice “One of the most refined, ingenious and humorous authors of our time.” He asserts with capable judgment that Sterne’s use of the borrowed passages, the additions and alterations, the individual tone which he manages to infuse into them, all preclude Sterne from being set down as a brainless copyist. Nicolai’s attitude may be best illustrated by the following passages:

“Germany has authors enough who resemble Sterne in lack of learning. Would that they had a hundredth part of the merits by which he made up for this lack, or rather which resulted from it.” “We would gladly allow our writers to take their material from old books, and even many expressions and turns of style, and indeed whole passages, even if like Sterne . . . . they claimed it all as their own: only they must be successful adapters; they must add from their own store of observation and thought and feeling. The creator of Tristram Shandy does this in rich measure.”

Nicolai also contends that Sterne was gifted with two characteristic qualities which were not imitation,—his “Empfindsamkeit” and “Laune”—and that by the former his works breathe a tender, delicate beneficence, a character of noble humanity, while by the latter a spirit of fairest mirth is spread over his pages, so that one may never open them without a pleasant smile. “The investigation of sources,” he says, “serves as explanation and does not mean depreciation of an otherwise estimable author.”

By this article Nicolai choked the malicious criticism of the late favorite which might have followed from some sources, had another communicated the facts of Sterne’s thievery. Lichtenberg in the “Göttingischer Taschenkalender,” 1796, that is, after the publication of Nicolai’s article, but with reference to Ferriar’s essay in the Manchester Memoirs, Vol. IV, under the title of “Gelehrte Diebstähle” does impugn Sterne rather spitefully without any acknowledgment of his extraordinary and extenuating use of his borrowings. “Yorick,” he says, “once plucked a nettle which had grown upon Lorenzo’s grave; that was no labor for him. Who will uproot this plant which Ferriar has set on his?” Ferriar’s book was reviewed by the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, LXII, p. 310.

Some of the English imitations of Sterne, which did not actually claim him as author, also found their way to Germany, and there by a less discriminating public were joined in a general way to the mass of Yorick production, and the might of Yorick influence. These works represent almost exclusively the Sterne of the Sentimental Journey; for the shoal of petty imitations, explanations and protests which appeared in England when Shandy was first issued85 had gone their own petty way to oblivion before Germany awakened to Sterne’s influence.

One of the best known of the English Sentimental Journeys was the work of Samuel Paterson, entitled, “Another Traveller: or Cursory Remarks and Critical Observations made upon a Journey through Part of the Netherlands,—by Coriat Junior,” London, 1768, two volumes. The author protested in a pamphlet published a little later that his work was not an imitation of Sterne, that it was in the press before Yorick’s book appeared; but a reviewer86 calls his attention to the sentimental journeying already published in Shandy. This work was translated into German as “Empfindsame Reisen durch einen Theil der Niederlande,” Bützow, 1774–1775, 2 Parts, 8^o. The translator was Karl Friedrich Müchler, who showed his bent in the direction of wit and whim by the publication of several collections of humorous anecdotes, witty ideas and satirical skits.87

Much later a similar product was published, entitled “Launige Reise durch Holland in Yoricks88 Manier, mit Charakterskizzen und Anekdoten über die Sitten und Gebräuche der Holländer aus dem Englischen,” two volumes, Zittau und Leipzig, 1795. The translation was by Reichel in Zittau.88 This may possibly be Ireland’s “A Picturesque Tour through Holland, Brabant and part of France, made in 1789,” two volumes, London, 1790.89 The well-known “Peter Pennyless” was reproduced as “Empfindsame Gedanken bey verschiedenen Vorfällen von Peter Pennyless,” Leipzig, Weidmann, 1770.

In 1788 there appeared in England a continuation of the Sentimental Journey90 in which, to judge from the reviewers, the petty author outdid Sterne in eccentricities of typography, breaks, dashes, scantily filled and blank pages. This is evidently the original of “Die neue empfindsame Reise in Yoriks Geschmack,” Leipzig, 1789, 8^o, pp. 168, which, according to the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung bristles with such extravagances.91

A much more successful attempt was the “Sentimental Journey, Intended as a Sequel to Mr. Sterne’s, Through Italy, Switzerland and France, by Mr. Shandy,” two volumes, 12^o, 1793. This was evidently the original of Schink’s work;92 “Empfindsame Reisen durch Italien, die Schweiz und Frankreich, ein Nachtrag zu den Yorikschen. Aus und nach dem Englischen,” Hamburg, Hoffmann, 1794, pp. 272, 8^o. The translator’s preface, which is dated Hamburg, March 1794, explains his attitude toward the work as suggested in the expression “Aus und nach dem Englischen,” that is, “aus, so lange wie Treue für den Leser Gewinn schien und nach, wenn Abweichung für die deutsche Darstellung notwendig war.” He claims to have softened the glaring colors of the original and to have discarded, or altered the obscene pictures. The author, as described in the preface, is an illegitimate son of Yorick, named Shandy, who writes the narrative as his father would have written it, if he had lived. This assumed authorship proves quite satisfactorily its connection with the English original, as there, too, in the preface, the narrator is designated as a base-born son of Yorick. The book is, as a whole, a fairly successful imitation of Yorick’s manner, and it must be judged as decidedly superior to Stevenson’s attempt. The author takes up the story where Sterne left it, in the tavern room with the Piedmontese lady; and the narrative which follows is replete with allusions to familiar episodes and sentiments in the real Journey, with sentimental adventures and opportunities for kindly deeds, and sympathetic tears; motifs used originally are introduced here, a begging priest with a snuff-box, a confusion with the Yorick in Hamlet, a poor girl with wandering mind seated by the wayside, and others equally familiar.

It is not possible to determine the extent of Schink’s alterations to suit German taste, but one could easily believe that the somewhat lengthy descriptions of external nature, quite foreign to Sterne, were original with him, and that the episode of the young German lady by the lake of Geneva, with her fevered admiration for Yorick, and the compliments to the German nation and the praise for great Germans, Luther, Leibnitz and Frederick the Great, are to be ascribed to the same source. He did not rid the book of revolting features, as one might suppose from his preface.93 Previous to the publication of the whole translation, Schink published in the February number of the Deutsche Monatsschrift94 two sections of his book, “Die Schöne Obstverkäuferin” and “Elisa.” Later, in the May number, he published three other fragments, “Turin, Hotel del Ponto,” “Die Verlegenheit,” “Die Unterredung.”95

A few years later Schink published another and very similar volume with the title, “Launen, Phantasieen und Schilderungen aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden Engländers,”96 Arnstadt und Rudolstadt, 1801, pp. 323. It has not been possible to find an English original, but the translator makes claim upon one, though confessing alterations to suit his German readers, and there is sufficient internal evidence to point to a real English source. The traveler is a haggard, pale-faced English clergyman, who, with his French servant, La Pierre, has wandered in France and Italy and is now bound for Margate. Here again we have sentimental episodes, one with a fair lady in a post-chaise, another with a monk in a Trappist cloister, apostrophes to the imagination, the sea, and nature, a new division of travelers, a debate of personal attributes, constant appeals to his dear Sophie, who is, like Eliza, ever in the background, occasional references to objects made familiar through Yorick, as Dessein’s Hotel, and a Yorick-like sympathy with the dumb beast; in short, an open imitation of Sterne, but the motifs from Sterne are here more mixed and less obvious. There is, as in the former book, much more enthusiasm for nature than is characteristic of Sterne; and there is here much more miscellaneous material, such, for example, as the tale of the two sisters, which betrays no trace of Sterne’s influence. The latter part of the volume is much less reminiscent of Yorick and suggests interpolation by the translator.97

Near the close of the century was published “Fragments in the manner of Sterne,” 8^o, Debrett, 1797, which, according to the Monthly Review,98 caught in large measure the sentimentality, pathos and whimsicality of Sterne’s style. The British Museum catalogue suggests J. Brandon as its author. This was reprinted by Nauck in Leipzig in 1800, and a translation was given to the world by the same publisher in the same year, with the added title: “Ein Seitenstück zu Yoricks empfindsamen Reisen.” The translation is attributed by Kayser to Aug. Wilhelmi, the pseudonym of August Wilhelm Meyer.99 Here too belongs “Mariens Briefe nebst Nachricht von ihrem Tode, aus dem Englischen,”100 which was published also under the title: “Yoricks Empfindsame Reisen durch Frankreich und Italien,” 5th vol., 8^o, Weissenfels, Severin, Mitzky in Leipzig, 1795.

CHAPTER V
 
STERNE’S INFLUENCE IN GERMANY

Thus in manifold ways Sterne was introduced into German life and letters.1 He stood as a figure of benignant humanity, of lavish sympathy with every earthly affliction, he became a guide and mentor,2 an awakener and consoler, and probably more than all, a sanction for emotional expression. Not only in literature, but in the conduct of life was Yorick judged a preceptor. The most important attempt to turn Yorick’s teachings to practical service in modifying conduct in human relationships was the introduction and use of the so-called “Lorenzodosen.” The considerable popularity of this remarkable conceit is tangible evidence of Sterne’s influence in Germany and stands in striking contrast to the wavering enthusiasm, vigorous denunciation and half-hearted acknowledgment which marked Sterne’s career in England. A century of criticism has disallowed Sterne’s claim as a prophet, but unquestionably he received in Germany the honors which a foreign land proverbially accords.

To Johann Georg Jacobi, the author of the “Winterreise” and “Sommerreise,” two well-known imitations of Sterne, the sentimental world was indebted for this practical manner of expressing adherence to a sentimental creed.3 In the Hamburgischer Correspondent he published an open letter to Gleim, dated April 4, 1769, about the time of the inception of the “Winterreise,” in which letter he relates at considerable length the origin of the idea.4 A few days before this the author was reading to his brother, Fritz Jacobi, the philosopher, novelist and friend of Goethe, and a number of ladies, from Sterne’s Sentimental Journey the story of the poor Franciscan who begged alms of Yorick. “We read,” says Jacobi, “how Yorick used this snuff-box to invoke its former possessor’s gentle, patient spirit, and to keep his own composed in the midst of life’s conflicts. The good Monk had died: Yorick sat by his grave, took out the little snuff-box, plucked a few nettles from the head of the grave, and wept. We looked at one another in silence: each rejoiced to find tears in the others’ eyes; we honored the death of the venerable old man Lorenzo and the good-hearted Englishman. In our opinion, too, the Franciscan deserved more to be canonized than all the saints of the calendar. Gentleness, contentedness with the world, patience invincible, pardon for the errors of mankind, these are the primary virtues he teaches his disciples.” The moment was too precious not to be emphasized by something rememberable, perceptible to the senses, and they all purchased for themselves horn snuff-boxes, and had the words “Pater Lorenzo” written in golden letters on the outside of the cover and “Yorick” within. Oath was taken for the sake of Saint Lorenzo to give something to every Franciscan who might ask of them, and further: “If anyone in our company should allow himself to be carried away by anger, his friend holds out to him the snuff-box, and we have too much feeling to withstand this reminder even in the greatest violence of passion.” It is suggested also that the ladies, who use no tobacco, should at least have such a snuff-box on their night-stands, because to them belong in such a high degree those gentle feelings which were to be associated with the article.

This letter printed in the Hamburg paper was to explain the snuff-box, which Jacobi had sent to Gleim a few days before, and the desire is also expressed to spread the order. Hence others were sent to other friends. Jacobi goes on to say: “Perhaps in the future, I may have the pleasure of meeting a stranger here and there who will hand me the horn snuff-box with its golden letters. I shall embrace him as intimately as one Free Mason does another after the sign has been given. Oh! what a joy it would be to me, if I could introduce so precious a custom among my fellow-townsmen.” A reviewer in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek5 sharply condemns Jacobi for his conceit in printing publicly a letter meant for his friend or friends, and, to judge from the words with which Jacobi accompanies the abridged form of the letter in the later editions it would seem that Jacobi himself was later ashamed of the whole affair. The idea, however, was warmly received, and among the teary, sentimental enthusiasts the horn snuff-box soon became the fad. A few days after the publication of this letter, Wittenberg,6 the journalist in Hamburg, writes to Jacobi (April 21) that many in Hamburg desire to possess these snuff-boxes, and he adds: “A hundred or so are now being manufactured; besides the name Lorenzo, the following legend is to appear on the cover: Animae quales non candidiores terra tulit.” Wittenberg explains that this Latin motto was a suggestion of his own, selfishly made, for thereby he might win the opportunity of explaining it to the fair ladies, and exacting kisses for the service. Wittenberg asserts that a lady (Longo guesses a certain Johanna Friederike Behrens) was the first to suggest the manufacture of the article at Hamburg. A second letter7 from Wittenberg to Jacobi four months later (August 21, 1769) announces the sending of nine snuff-boxes to Jacobi, and the price is given as one-half a reichsthaler. Jacobi himself says in his note to the later edition that merchants made a speculation out of the fad, and that a multitude of such boxes were sent out through all Germany, even to Denmark and Livonia: “they were in every hand,” he says. Graf Solms had such boxes made of tin with the name Jacobi inside. Both Martin and Werner instance the request8 of a Protestant vicar, Johann David Goll in Trossingen, for a “Lorenzodose” with the promise to subscribe to the oath of the order, and, though Protestant, to name the Catholic Franciscan his brother. According to a spicy review9 in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek10 these snuff-boxes were sold in Hamburg wrapped in a printed copy of Jacobi’s letter to Gleim, and the reviewer adds, “like Grenough’s tooth-tincture in the directions for its use.”11 Nicolai in “Sebaldus Nothanker” refers to the Lorenzo cult with evident ridicule.12

There were other efforts to make Yorick’s example an efficient power of beneficent brotherliness. Kaufmann attempted to found a Lorenzo order of the horn snuff-box. Düntzer, in his study of Kaufmann,13 states that this was only an effort on Kaufmann’s part to embrace a timely opportunity to make himself prominent. This endeavor was made according to Düntzer, during Kaufmann’s residence in Strassburg, which the investigator assigns to the years 1774–75. Leuchsenring,14 the eccentric sentimentalist, who for a time belonged to the Darmstadt circle and whom Goethe satirized in “Pater Brey,” cherished also for a time the idea of founding an order of “Empfindsamkeit.” 

In the literary remains of Johann Christ Hofmann15 in Coburg was found the “patent” of an order of “Sanftmuth und Versöhnung.” A “Lorenzodose” was found with it marked XXVIII, and the seven rules of the order, dated Coburg “im Ordens-Comtoir, den 10 August, 1769,” are merely a topical enlargement and ordering of Jacobi’s original idea. Longo gives them in full. Appell states that Jacobi explained through a friend that he knew nothing of this order and had no share in its founding. Longo complains that Appell does not give the source of his information, but Jacobi in his note to the so-called “Stiftungs-Brief” in the edition of 1807 quotes the article in Schlichtegroll’s “Nekrolog” as his only knowledge of this order, certainly implying his previous ignorance of its existence.

Somewhat akin to these attempts to incorporate Yorick’s ideas is the fantastic laying out of the park at Marienwerder near Hanover, of which Matthison writes in his “Vaterländische Besuche,”16 and in a letter to the Hofrath von Köpken in Magdeburg,17 dated October 17, 1785. After a sympathetic description of the secluded park, he tells how labyrinthine paths lead to an eminence “where the unprepared stranger is surprised by the sight of a cemetery. On the crosses there one reads beloved names from Yorick’s Journey and Tristram Shandy. Father Lorenzo, Eliza, Maria of Moulines, Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby and Yorick were gathered by a poetic fancy to this graveyard.” The letter gives a similar description and adds the epitaph on Trim’s monument, “Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother,”18 a quotation, which in its fuller form, Matthison uses in a letter19 to Bonstetten, Heidelberg, February 7, 1794, in speaking of Böck the actor. It is impossible to determine whose eccentric and tasteless enthusiasm is represented by this mortuary arrangement.

Louise von Ziegler, known in the Darmstadt circle as Lila, whom Merck admired and, according to Caroline Flaschsland, “almost compared with Yorick’s Maria,” was so sentimental that she had her grave made in her garden, evidently for purposes of contemplation, and she led a lamb about which ate and drank with her. Upon the death of this animal, “a faithful dog” took its place. Thus was Maria of Moulines remembered.20

It has already been noted that Yorick’s sympathy for the brute creation found cordial response in Germany, such regard being accepted as a part of his message. That the spread of such sentimental notions was not confined to the printed word, but passed over into actual regulation of conduct is admirably illustrated by an anecdote related in Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur in the January number for 1776, by a correspondent who signs himself “S.” A friend was visiting him; they went to walk, and the narrator having his gun with him shot with it two young doves. His friend is exercised. “What have the doves done to you?” he queries. “Nothing,” is the reply, “but they will taste good to you.” “But they were alive,” interposed the friend, “and would have caressed (geschnäbelt) one another,” and later he refuses to partake of the doves. Connection with Yorick is established by the narrator himself: “If my friend had not read Yorick’s story about the sparrow, he would have had no rule of conduct here about shooting doves, and my doves would have tasted better to him.” The influence of Yorick was, however, quite possibly indirect through Jacobi as intermediary; for the latter describes a sentimental family who refused to allow their doves to be killed. The author of this letter, however, refers directly to Yorick, to the very similar episode of the sparrows narrated in the continuation of the Sentimental Journey, but an adventure original with the German Bode. This is probably the source of Jacobi’s narrative.

The other side of Yorick’s character, less comprehensible, less capable of translation into tangibilities, was not disregarded. His humor and whimsicality, though much less potent, were yet influential. Ramler said in a letter to Gebler dated November 14, 1775, that everyone wished to jest like Sterne,21 and the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen (October 31, 1775), at almost precisely the same time, discourses at some length on the then prevailing epidemic of whimsicality, showing that shallowness beheld in the then existing interest in humor a justification for all sorts of eccentric behavior and inconsistent wilfulness.

Naturally Sterne’s influence in the world of letters may be traced most obviously in the slavish imitation of his style, his sentiment, his whims,—this phase represented in general by now forgotten triflers; but it also enters into the thought of the great minds in the fatherland and becomes interwoven with their culture. Their own expressions of indebtedness are here often available in assigning a measure of relationship. And finally along certain general lines the German Yorick exercised an influence over the way men thought and wanted to think.

The direct imitations of Sterne are very numerous, a crowd of followers, a motley procession of would-be Yoricks, set out on one expedition or another. Musäus22 in a review of certain sentimental meanderings in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,23 remarked that the increase of such journeyings threatened to bring about a new epoch in the taste of the time. He adds that the good Yorick presumably never anticipated becoming the founder of a fashionable sect. This was in 1773. Other expressions of alarm or disapprobation might be cited.

Through Sterne’s influence the account of travels became more personal, less purely topographical, more volatile and merry, more subjective.24 Goethe in a passage in the “Campagne in Frankreich,” to which reference is made later, acknowledges this impulse as derived from Yorick. Its presence was felt even when there was no outward effort at sentimental journeying. The suggestion that the record of a journey was personal and tinged with humor was essential to its popularity. It was probably purely an effort to make use of this appeal which led the author of “Bemerkungen eines Reisenden durch Deutschland, Frankreich, England und Holland,”25 a work of purely practical observation, to place upon his title-page the alluring lines from Gay: “Life is a jest and all things shew it. I thought so once, but now I know it;” a promise of humorous attitude which does not find fulfilment in the heavy volumes of purely objective description which follow.

Probably the first German book to bear the name Yorick in its title was a short satirical sketch entitled, “Yorick und die Bibliothek der elenden Scribenten, an Hrn.—” 1768, 8^o (Anspach),26 which is linked to the quite disgustingly scurrilous Antikriticus controversy.

Attempts at whimsicality, imitations also of the Shandean gallery of originals appear, and the more particularly Shandean style of narration is adopted in the novels of the period which deal with middle-class domestic life. Of books directly inspired by Sterne, or following more or less slavishly his guidance, a considerable proportion has undoubtedly been consigned to merited oblivion. In many cases it is possible to determine from contemporary reviews the nature of the individual product, and the probable extent of indebtedness to the British model. If it were possible to find and examine them all with a view to establishing extent of relationship, the identity of motifs, the borrowing of thought and sentiment, such a work would give us little more than we learn from consideration of representative examples. In the following chapter the attempt will be made to treat a number of typical products. Baker in his article on Sterne in Germany adopts the rather hazardous expedient of judging merely by title and taking from Goedeke’s “Grundriss,” works which suggests a dependence on Sterne.27

The early relation of several great men of letters to Sterne has been already treated in connection with the gradual awakening of Germany to the new force. Wieland was one of Sterne’s most ardent admirers, one of his most intelligent interpreters; but since his relationship to Sterne has been made the theme of special study,28 there will be needed here but a brief recapitulation with some additional comment. Especially in the productions of the years 1768–1774 are the direct allusions to Sterne and his works numerous, the adaptations of motifs frequent, and imitation of literary style unmistakable. Behmer finds no demonstrable evidence of Sterne’s influence in Wieland’s work prior to two poems of the year 1768, “Endymions Traum” and “Chloe;” but in the works of the years immediately following there is abundant evidence both in style and in subject matter, in the fund of allusion and illustration, to establish the author’s indebtedness to Sterne. Behmer analyzes from this standpoint the following works: “Beiträge zur geheimen Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes und Herzens;” “Sokrates Mainomenos oder die Dialogen des Diogenes von Sinope;” “Der neue Amadis;” “Der goldene Spiegel;” “Geschichte des Philosophen Danischmende;” “Gedanken über eine alte Aufschrift;” “Geschichte der Abderiten.”29

In these works, but in different measure in each, Behmer finds Sterne copied stylistically, in the constant conversations about the worth of the book, the comparative value of the different chapters and the difficulty of managing the material, in the fashion of inconsequence in unexplained beginnings and abrupt endings, in the heaping up of words of similar meaning, or similar ending, and in the frequent digressions. Sterne also is held responsible for the manner of introducing the immorally suggestive, for the introduction of learned quotations and references to authorities, for the sport made of the learned professions and the satire upon all kinds of pedantry and overwrought enthusiasm. Though the direct, demonstrable influence of Sterne upon Wieland’s literary activity dies out gradually30 and naturally, with the growth of his own genius, his admiration for the English favorite abides with him, passing on into succeeding periods of his development, as his former enthusiasm for Richardson failed to do.31 More than twenty years later, when more sober days had stilled the first unbridled outburst of sentimentalism, Wieland speaks yet of Sterne in terms of unaltered devotion: in an article published in the Merkur,32 Sterne is called among all authors the one “from whom I would last part,”33 and the subject of the article itself is an indication of his concern for the fate of Yorick among his fellow-countrymen. It is in the form of an epistle to Herr . . . . zu D., and is a vigorous protest against heedless imitation of Sterne, representing chiefly the perils of such endeavor and the bathos of the failure. Wieland includes in the letter some “specimen passages from a novel in the style of Tristram Shandy,” which he asserts were sent him by the author. The quotations are almost flat burlesque in their impossible idiocy, and one can easily appreciate Wieland’s despairing cry with which the article ends.

A few words of comment upon Behmer’s work will be in place. He accepts as genuine the two added volumes of the Sentimental Journey and the Koran, though he admits that the former were published by a friend, not “without additions of his own,” and he uses these volumes directly at least in one instance in establishing his parallels, the rescue of the naked woman from the fire in the third volume of the Journey, and the similar rescue from the waters in the “Nachlass des Diogenes.”34 That Sterne had any connection with these volumes is improbable, and the Koran is surely a pure fabrication. Behmer seeks in a few words to deny the reproach cast upon Sterne that he had no understanding of the beauties of nature, but Behmer is certainly claiming too much when he speaks of the “Farbenprächtige Schilderungen der ihm ungewohnten sonnenverklärten Landschaft,” which Sterne gives us “repeatedly” in the Sentimental Journey, and he finds his most secure evidence for Yorick’s “genuine and pure” feeling for nature in the oft-quoted passage beginning, “I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry ‘’Tis all barren.’” It would surely be difficult to find these repeated instances, for, in the whole work, Sterne gives absolutely no description of natural scenery beyond the most casual, incidental reference: the familiar passage is also misinterpreted, it betrays no appreciation of inanimate nature in itself, and is but a cry in condemnation of those who fail to find exercise for their sympathetic emotions. Sterne mentions the “sweet myrtle” and “melancholy cypress,”35 not as indicative of his own affection for nature, but as exemplifying his own exceeding personal need of expenditure of human sympathy, as indeed the very limit to which sensibility can go, when the desert denies possibility of human intercourse. Sterne’s attitude is much better illustrated at the beginning of the “Road to Versailles”: “As there was nothing in this road, or rather nothing which I look for in traveling, I cannot fill up the blank better than with a short history of this self-same bird.” In other words, he met no possibility for exercising the emotions. Behmer’s statement with reference to Sterne, “that his authorship proceeds anyway from a parody of Richardson,” is surely not demonstrable, nor that “this whole fashion of composition is indeed but ridicule of Richardson.” Richardson’s star had paled perceptibly before Sterne began to write, and the period of his immense popularity lies nearly twenty years before. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that his works have any connection whatsoever with Richardson’s novels. One is tempted to think that Behmer confuses Sterne with Fielding, whose career as a novelist did begin as a parodist of the vain little printer. That the “Starling” in the Sentimental Journey, which is passed on from hand to hand, and the burden of government which wanders similarly in “Der Goldene Spiegel” constitute a parallelism, as Behmer suggests (p. 48), seems rather far-fetched. It could also be hardly demonstrated that what Behmer calls “die Sternische Einführungsweise”36 (p. 54), as used in the “Geschichte der Abderiten,” is peculiar to Sterne or even characteristic of him. Behmer (p. 19) seems to be ignorant of any reprints or translations of the Koran, the letters and the sermons, save those coming from Switzerland.

Bauer’s study of the Sterne-Wieland relation is much briefer (thirty-five pages) and much less satisfactory because less thorough, yet it contains some few valuable individual points and cited parallelisms. Bauer errs in stating that Shandy appeared 1759–67 in York, implying that the whole work was issued there. He gives the dates of Sterne’s first visit to Paris, also incorrectly, as 1760–62.

Finally, Wieland cannot be classed among the slavish imitators of Yorick; he is too independent a thinker, too insistent a pedagogue to allow himself to be led more than outwardly by the foreign model. He has something of his own to say and is genuinely serious in a large portion of his own philosophic speculations: hence, his connection with Sterne, being largely stylistic and illustrative, may be designated as a drapery of foreign humor about his own seriousness of theorizing. Wieland’s Hellenic tendencies make the use of British humor all the more incongruous.37

Herder’s early acquaintance with Sterne has been already treated. Subsequent writings offer also occasional indication of an abiding admiration. Soon after his arrival in Paris he wrote to Hartknoch praising Sterne’s characterization of the French people.38 The fifth “Wäldchen,” which is concerned with the laughable, contains reference to Sterne.39