and later,

To Sterne’s further enunciation of this joyous theory of life, Young naturally replies in characteristic terms, emphasizing life’s evanescence and joy’s certain blight. But Sterne, though acknowledging the transitoriness of life’s pleasures, denies Young’s deductions. Yorick’s conception of death is quite in contrast to Young’s picture and one must admit that it has no justification in Sterne’s writings. On the contrary, Yorick’s life was one long flight from the grim enemy. The idea of death cherished by Asmus in his “Freund Hein,” the welcome guest, seems rather the conception which Wezel thrusts on Sterne. Death comes to Yorick in full dress, a youth, a Mercury:

so he takes the wreathèd cup, drinks joyfully, and follows death, embracing him.

The latter part of the poem contains a rather extended laudation of the part played by sympathetic feeling in the conduct of life.

That there would be those in Germany as in England, who saw in Sterne’s works only a mine of vulgar suggestion, a relation sometimes delicate and clever, sometimes bald and ugly, of the indelicate and sensual, is a foregone conclusion. Undoubtedly some found in the general approbation which was accorded Sterne’s books a sanction for forcing upon the public the products of their own diseased imaginations.

This pernicious influence of the English master is exemplified by Wegener’s “Raritäten, ein hinterlassenes Werk des Küsters von Rummelsberg.”80 The first volume is dedicated to “Sebaldus Nothanker,” and the long document claims for the author unusual distinction, in thus foregoing the possibility of reward or favor, since he dedicates his book to a fictitious personage. The idea of the book is to present “merry observations” for every day in the year. With the end of the fourth volume the author has reached March 17, and, according to the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, the sixth volume includes May 22. The present writer was unable to examine the last volume to discover whether the year was rounded out in this way.

The author claims to write “neither for surly Catos nor for those fond of vulgar jests and smutty books,” but for those who will laugh. At the close of his preface he confesses the source of his inspiration: “In order to inspire myself with something of the spirit of a Sterne, I made a decoction out of his writings and drank the same eagerly; indeed I have burned the finest passages to powder, and then partaken of it with warm English ale, but”—he had the insight and courtesy to add—“it helped me just a little as it aids a lame man, if he steps in the footprints of one who can walk nimbly.” The very nature of this author’s dependence on Sterne excludes here any extended analysis of the connection. The style is abrupt, full of affected gaiety and raillery, conversational and journalistic. The stories, observations and reflections, in prose and verse, represent one and all the ribaldry of Sterne at its lowest ebb, as illustrated, for example, by the story of the abbess of Andouillets, but without the charm and grace with which that tale begins. The author copies Sterne in the tone of his lucubrations; the material is drawn from other sources. In the first volume, at any rate, his only direct indebtedness to Sterne is the introduction of the Shandean theory of noses in the article for January 11. The pages also, sometimes strewn with stars and dashes, present a somewhat Sternesque appearance.

These volumes are reviewed in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek81 with full appreciation of their pernicious influence, and with open acknowledgment that their success demonstrates a pervision of taste in the fatherland. The author of the “Litterarische Reise durch Deutschland”82 advises his sister, to whom his letters are directed, to put her handkerchief before her mouth at the very mention of Wegener, and fears that the very name has befouled his pen. A similar condemnation is meted out in Wieland’s Merkur.83

A similar commentary on contemporary taste is obtained from a somewhat similar collection of stories, “Der Geist der Romane im letzten Viertel des 18ten Jahrhunderts,” Breslau and Hirschberg, 1788, in which the author (S. G. Preisser?) claims to follow the spirit of the period and gives six stories of revolting sensuality, with a thin whitewash of teary sentimentalism.

The pursuit of references to Yorick and direct appeals to his writings in the German literary world of the century succeeding the era of his great popularity would be a monstrous and fruitless task. Such references in books, letters and periodicals multiply beyond possibility of systematic study. One might take the works84 of Friedrich Matthison as a case in point. He visits the grave of Musäus, even as Tristram Shandy sought for the resting-place of the two lovers in Lyons (III, p. 312); as he travels in Italy, he remarks that a certain visit would have afforded Yorick’s “Empfindsamkeit” the finest material for an Ash-Wednesday sermon (IV, p. 67). Sterne’s expressions are cited: “Erdwasserball” for the earth (V, p. 57), “Wo keine Pflanze, die da nichts zu suchen hatte, eine bleibende Stäte fand” (V, p. 302); two farmsteads in the Tyrol are designated as “Nach dem Ideal Yoricks” (VI, pp. 24–25). He refers to the story of the abbess of Andouillets (VI, 64); he narrates (VIII, pp. 203–4) an anecdote of Sterne which has just been printed in the Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten (1769, p. 151); he visits Prof. Levade in Lausanne, who bore a striking resemblance to Sterne (V, p. 279), and refers to Yorick in other minor regards (VII, 158; VIII, pp. 51, 77, and Briefe II, 76). Yet in spite of this evident infatuation, Matthison’s account of his own travels cannot be classed as an imitation of Yorick, but is purely objective, descriptive, without search for humor or pathos, with no introduction of personalities save friends and celebrities. Heinse alluded to Sterne frequently in his letters to Gleim (1770–1771),85 but after August 23, 1771, Sterne vanished from his fund of allusion, though the correspondence lasts until 1802, a fact of significance in dating the German enthusiasm for Sterne and the German knowledge of Shandy from the publication of the Sentimental Journey, and likewise an indication of the insecurity of Yorick’s personal hold.

Miscellaneous allusions to Sterne, illustrating the magnitude and duration of his popularity, may not be without interest: Kästner “Vermischte Schriften,” II, p. 134 (Steckenpferd); Lenz “Gesammelte Werke,” Berlin, 1828, Vol. III, p. 312; letter from the Duchess Amalie, August 2, 1779, in “Briefe an und von Merck,” Darmstadt, 1838; letter of Caroline Herder to Knebel, April 2, 1799, in “K. L. von Knebel’s Literarischer Nachlass,” Leipzig, 1835, p. 324 (Yorick’s “heiliges Sensorium”); a rather unfavorable but apologetic criticism of Shandy in the “Hinterlassene Schriften” of Charlotta Sophia Sidonia Seidelinn, Nürnberg, 1793, p. 227; “Schiller’s Briefe,” edited by Fritz Jonas, I, pp. 136, 239; in Hamann’s letters, “Leben und Schriften,” edited by Dr. C. H. Gildermeister, Gotha, 1875, II, p. 338; III, p. 56; V, pp. 16, 163; in C. L. Jünger’s “Anlage zu einem Familiengespräch über die Physiognomik” in Deutsches Museum, II, pp. 781–809, where the French barber who proposes to dip Yorick’s wig in the sea is taken as a type of exaggeration. And a similar reference is found in Wieland’s Merkur, 1799, I, p. 15: Yorick’s Sensorium is again cited, Merkur, 1791, II, p. 95. Other references in the Merkur are: 1774, III, p. 52; 1791, I, p. 418; 1800, I, p. 14; 1804, I, pp. 19–21; Deutsches Museum, IV, pp. 66, 462; Neuer Gelehrter Mercurius, Altona, 1773, August 19, in review of Goethe’s “Götz;” Almanach der deutschen Musen, 1771, p. 93. And thus the references scatter themselves down the decades. “Das Wörtlein Und,” by F. A. Krummacher (Duisberg und Essen, 1811), bore a motto taken from the Koran, and contained the story of Uncle Toby and the fly with a personal application, and Yorick’s division of travelers is copied bodily and applied to critics. Friedrich Hebbel, probably in 1828, gave his Newfoundland dog the name of Yorick-Sterne-Monarch.86 Yorick is familiarly mentioned in Wilhelm Raabe’s “Chronik der Sperlingsgasse” (1857), and in Ernst von Wolzogen’s “Der Dornenweg,” two characters address one another in Yorick similes. Indeed, in the summer of 1902, a Berlin newspaper was publishing “Eine Empfindsame Reise in einem Automobile.”87

Musäus is named as an imitator of Sterne by Koberstein, and Erich Schmidt implies in his “Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe,” that he followed Sterne in his “Grandison der Zweite,” which could hardly be possible, for “Grandison der Zweite” was first published in 1760, and was probably written during 1759, that is, before Sterne had published Tristram Shandy. Adolph von Knigge is also mentioned by Koberstein as a follower of Sterne, and Baker includes Knigge’s “Reise nach Braunschweig” and “Briefe auf einer Reise aus Lothringen” in his list. Their connection with Sterne cannot be designated as other than remote; the former is a merry vagabond story, reminding one much more of the tavern and way-faring adventures in Fielding and Smollett, and suggesting Sterne only in the constant conversation with the reader about the progress of the book and the mechanism of its construction. One example of the hobby-horse idea in this narration may perhaps be traced to Sterne. The “Briefe auf einer Reise aus Lothringen” has even less connection; it shares only in the increase of interest in personal accounts of travel. Knigge’s novels, “Peter Claus” and “Der Roman meines Lebens,” are decidedly not imitations of Sterne; a clue to the character of the former may be obtained from the fact that it was translated into English as “The German Gil Blas.” “Der Roman meines Lebens” is a typical eighteenth century love-story written in letters, with numerous characters, various intrigues and unexpected adventures; indeed, a part of the plot, involving the abduction of one of the characters, reminds one of “Clarissa Harlowe.” Sterne is, however, incidentally mentioned in both books, is quoted in “Peter Claus” (Chapter VI, Vol. II), and Walter Shandy’s theory of Christian names is cited in “Der Roman meines Lebens.”88 That Knigge had no sympathy with exaggerated sentimentalism is seen in a passage in his “Umgang mit Menschen.”89 Knigge admired and appreciated the real Sterne and speaks in his “Ueber Schriftsteller und Schriftstellerei”90 of Yorick’s sharpening observation regarding the little but yet important traits of character.

Moritz August von Thümmel in his famous “Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen von Frankreich” adopted Sterne’s general idea of sentimental journeying, shorn largely of the capriciousness and whimsicality which marked Sterne’s pilgrimage. He followed Sterne also in driving the sensuous to the borderland of the sensual.

Hippel’s novels, “Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie” and “Kreuz und Querzüge des Ritters A. bis Z.” were purely Shandean products in which a humor unmistakably imitated from Sterne struggles rather unsuccessfully with pedagogical seriousness. Jean Paul was undoubtedly indebted to Sterne for a part of his literary equipment, and his works afford proof both of his occupation with Sterne’s writings and its effect upon his own. A study of Hippel’s “Lebensläufe” in connection with both Sterne and Jean Paul was suggested but a few years after Hippel’s death by a reviewer in the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften91 as a fruitful topic for investigation. A detailed, minute study of von Thümmel, Hippel and Jean Paul92 in connection with the English master is purposed as a continuation of the present essay. Heine’s pictures of travel, too, have something of Sterne in them.

CHAPTER VII
 
OPPOSITION TO STERNE AND HIS TYPE
OF SENTIMENTALISM

Sterne’s influence in Germany lived its own life, and gradually and imperceptibly died out of letters, as an actuating principle. Yet its dominion was not achieved without some measure of opposition. The sweeping condemnation which the soberer critics heaped upon the incapacities of his imitators has been exemplified in the accounts already given of Schummel, Bock and others. It would be interesting to follow a little more closely this current of antagonism. The tone of protest was largely directed, the edge of satire was chiefly whetted, against the misunderstanding adaptation of Yorick’s ways of thinking and writing, and only here and there were voices raised to detract in any way from the genius of Sterne. He never suffered in Germany such an eclipse of fame as was his fate in England. He was to the end of the chapter a recognized prophet, an uplifter and leader. The far-seeing, clear-minded critics, as Lessing, Goethe and Herder, expressed themselves quite unequivocally in this regard, and there was later no withdrawal of former appreciation. Indeed, Goethe’s significant words already quoted came from the last years of his life, when the new century had learned to smile almost incredulously at the relation of a bygone folly.

In the very heyday of Sterne’s popularity, 1772, a critic of Wieland’s “Diogenes” in the Auserlesene Bibliothek der neuesten deutschen Litteratur1 bewails Wieland’s imitation of Yorick, whom the critic deems a far inferior writer, “Sterne, whose works will disappear, while Wieland’s masterpieces are still the pleasure of latest posterity.” This review of “Diogenes” is, perhaps, rather more an exaggerated compliment to Wieland than a studied blow at Sterne, and this thought is recognized by the reviewer in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen,2 who designates the compliment as “dubious” and “insulting,” especially in view of Wieland’s own personal esteem for Sterne. Yet these words, even as a relative depreciation of Sterne during the period of his most universal popularity, are not insignificant. Heinrich Leopold Wagner, a tutor at Saarbrücken, in 1770, records that one member of a reading club which he had founded “regarded his taste as insulted because I sent him “Yorick’s Empfindsame Reise.”3 But Wagner regarded this instance as a proof of Saarbrücken ignorance, stupidity and lack of taste; hence the incident is but a wavering testimony when one seeks to determine the amount and nature of opposition to Yorick.

We find another derogatory fling at Sterne himself and a regret at the extent of his influence in an anonymous book entitled “Betrachtungen über die englischen Dichter,”4 published at the end of the great Yorick decade. The author compares Sterne most unfavorably with Addison: “If the humor of the Spectator and Tatler be set off against the digressive whimsicality of Sterne,” he says, “it is, as if one of the Graces stood beside a Bacchante. And yet the pampered taste of the present day takes more pleasure in a Yorick than in an Addison.” But a reviewer in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek5 discounts this author’s criticisms of men of established fame, such as Shakespeare, Swift, Yorick, and suggests youth, or brief acquaintance with English literature, as occasion for his inadequate judgments. Indeed, Yorick disciples were quick to resent any shadow cast upon his name. Thus the remark in a letter printed in the Deutsches Museum that Asmus was the German Yorick “only a better moral character,” called forth a long article in the same periodical for September, 1779, by L. H. N.,6 vigorously defending Sterne as a man and a writer. The greatness of his human heart and the breadth and depth of his sympathies are given as the unanswerable proofs of his moral worth. This defense is vehemently seconded in the same magazine by Joseph von Retzer.

The one great opponent of the whole sentimental tendency, whose censure of Sterne’s disciples involved also a denunciation of the master himself, was the Göttingen professor, Georg Christopher Lichtenberg.7 In his inner nature Lichtenberg had much in common with Sterne and Sterne’s imitators in Germany, with the whole ecstatic, eccentric movement of the time. Julian Schmidt8 says: “So much is sure, at any rate, that the greatest adversary of the new literature was of one flesh and blood with it.”9 But his period of residence in England shortly after Sterne’s death and his association then and afterwards with Englishmen of eminence render his attitude toward Sterne in large measure an English one, and make an idealization either of the man or of his work impossible for him.

The contradiction between the greatness of heart evinced in Sterne’s novels and the narrow selfishness of the author himself is repeatedly noted by Lichtenberg. His knowledge of Sterne’s character was derived from acquaintance with many of Yorick’s intimate friends in London. In “Beobachtungen über den Menschen,” he says: “I can’t help smiling when the good souls who read Sterne with tears of rapture in their eyes fancy that he is mirroring himself in his book. Sterne’s simplicity, his warm heart, over-flowing with feeling, his soul, sympathizing with everything good and noble, and all the other expressions, whatever they may be; and the sigh ‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ which expresses everything at once—have become proverbial among us Germans. . . . Yorick was a crawling parasite, a flatterer of the great, an unendurable burr on the clothing of those upon whom he had determined to sponge!”10

In “Timorus” he calls Sterne “ein scandalum Ecclesiae”;11 he doubts the reality of Sterne’s nobler emotions and condemns him as a clever juggler with words, who by artful manipulation of certain devices aroused in us sympathy, and he snatches away the mask of loving, hearty sympathy and discloses the grinning mountebank. With keen insight into Sterne’s mind and method, he lays down a law by which, he says, it is always possible to discover whether the author of a touching passage has really been moved himself, or has merely with astute knowledge of the human heart drawn our tears by a sly choice of touching features.12

Akin to this is the following passage in which the author is unquestionably thinking of Sterne, although he does not mention him: “A heart ever full of kindly feeling is the greatest gift which Heaven can bestow; on the other hand, the itching to keep scribbling about it, and to fancy oneself great in this scribbling is one of the greatest punishments which can be inflicted upon one who writes.”13 He exposes the heartlessness of Sterne’s pretended sympathy: “A three groschen piece is ever better than a tear,”14 and “sympathy is a poor kind of alms-giving,”15 are obviously thoughts suggested by Yorick’s sentimentalism.16

The folly of the “Lorenzodosen” is several times mentioned with open or covert ridicule17 and the imitators of Sterne are repeatedly told the fruitlessness of their endeavor and the absurdity of their accomplishment.18 His “Vorschlag zu einem Orbis Pictus für deutsche dramatische Schriftsteller, Romanendichter und Schauspieler”19 is a satire on the lack of originality among those who boasted of it, and sought to win attention through pure eccentricities.

The Fragments20 are concerned, as the editors say, with an evil of the literature in those days, the period of the Sentimentalists and the “Kraftgenies.” Among the seven fragments may be noted: “Lorenzo Eschenheimers empfindsame Reise nach Laputa,” a clever satirical sketch in the manner of Swift, bitterly castigating that of which the English people claim to be the discoverers (sentimental journeying) and the Germans think themselves the improvers. In “Bittschrift der Wahnsinnigen” and “Parakletor” the unwholesome literary tendencies of the age are further satirized. His brief essay, “Ueber die Vornamen,”21 is confessedly suggested by Sterne and the sketch “Dass du auf dem Blockberg wärst,”22 with its mention of the green book entitled “Echte deutsche Flüche und Verwünschungen für alle Stände,” is manifestly to be connected in its genesis with Sterne’s famous collection of oaths.23 Lichtenberg’s comparison of Sterne and Fielding is familiar and significant.24 “Aus Lichtenbergs Nachlass: Aufsätze, Gedichte, Tagebuchblätter, Briefe,” edited by Albert Leitzmann,25 contains additional mention of Sterne.

The name of Helfreich Peter Sturz may well be coupled with that of Lichtenberg, as an opponent of the Sterne cult and its German distortions, for his information and point of view were likewise drawn direct from English sources. Sturz accompanied King Christian VII of Denmark on his journey to France and England, which lasted from May 6, 1768, to January 14, 176926; hence his stay in England falls in a time but a few months after Sterne’s death (March 18, 1768), when the ungrateful metropolis was yet redolent of the late lion’s wit and humor. Sturz was an accomplished linguist and a complete master of English, hence found it easy to associate with Englishmen of distinction whom he was privileged to meet through the favor of his royal patron. He became acquainted with Garrick, who was one of Sterne’s intimate friends, and from him Sturz learned much of Yorick, especially that more wholesome revulsion of feeling against Sterne’s obscenities and looseness of speech, which set in on English soil as soon as the potent personality of the author himself had ceased to compel silence and blind opinion. England began to wonder at its own infatuation, and, gaining perspective, to view the writings of Sterne in a more rational light. Into the first spread of this reaction Sturz was introduced, and the estimate of Sterne which he carried away with him was undoubtedly colored by it. In his second letter written to the Deutsches Museum and dated August 24, 1768, but strangely not printed till April, 1777,27 he quotes Garrick with reference to Sterne, a notable word of personal censure, coming in the Germany of that decade, when Yorick’s admirers were most vehement in their claims. Garrick called him “a lewd companion, who was more loose in his intercourse than in his writings and generally drove all ladies away by his obscenities.”28 Sturz adds that all his acquaintances asserted that Sterne’s moral character went through a process of disintegration in London.

In the Deutsches Museum for July, 1776, Sturz printed a poem entitled “Die Mode,” in which he treats of the slavery of fashion and in several stanzas deprecates the influence of Yorick.29