his own life, to be printed by Walther, under a fictitious name,
and in this work he intended to indulge his spleen and his dislike
of all those who had offended him, and in particular all priests,
and rulers, and judges, who had given him so much trouble. He knew
that the strange, and many of them scandalous anecdotes, with which
he had so liberally interlarded many of his former publications,
would set curiosity on tiptoe, and would procure a rapid sale as
soon as the public should guess that it was his own performance, by
the singular but significant name which the pretended author would
assume. He had almost agreed with Walther for a thousand dahlers,
(about L. 200), when he was imprisoned for being the author of the
farce so often named, and of the commentary on the _Religion Edict_,
written by Pott, and for the proceedings of the German Union. He
was refused the use of pen and ink. He then applied to Pott, and
found means to correspond with him, and to give him part of his life
already written, and materials for the rest, consisting of stories,
and anecdotes, and correspondence. Pott sent him several sheets,
with which he was so pleased, that they concluded a bargain. Bahrdt
says, that Pott was to have 400 copies, and that the rest was to
go to the maintenance of Bahrdt and his family, consisting of his
wife, daughter, a Christina and her children who lived with them,
&c. Pott gives a different account, and the truth was different
from both, but of little consequence to us. Bahrdt's papers had
been seized, and searched for evidence of his transactions, but
the strictest attention was paid to the precise points of the
charge, and no paper was abstracted which did not relate to these.
All others were kept in a sealed room. Pott procured the removal
of the seals and got possession of them. Bahrdt says, that his
wife and daughter came to him in prison, almost starving, and told
him that now that the room was opened, Pott had made an offer to
write for their support, if he had the use of these papers--that
this was the conclusion of the bargain, and that Pott took away all
the papers. N. B. Pott was the associate of Walther, who had great
confidence in him (_Anecdotenbuch fur meinen lieben Amtsbruder,
p. 400_) and had conducted the business of Stark's book, as has
been already mentioned. No man was better known to Bahrdt, for
they had long acted together as chief hands in the Union. He would
therefore write the life of its founder _con amore_, and it might
be expected to be a rare and tickling performance. And indeed it
was. The first part of it only was published at this time; and
the narration reaches from the birth of the hero till his leaving
Leipzig in 1768. The attention is kept fully awake, but the emotions
which successively occupy the mind of the reader are nothing but
strong degrees of aversion, disgust, and horror. The figure set up
to view is a monster, a man of talents indeed, and capable of great
things; but lost to truth, to virtue, and even to the affectation of
common decency--In short, a shameless profligate.--Poor Bahrdt was
astonished,--stared--but, having his wits about him, saw that this
life would sell, and would also sell another.--Without loss of time,
he said that he would hold Pott to his bargain--but he reckoned
without his host. "No, no," said Pott, "your are not the man I took
you for--your correspondence was put into my hands--I saw that you
had deceived me, and it was my duty, as a man _who loves truth
above all things_, to hinder you from deceiving the world. I have
not written the book you desired me. I did not work for you, but for
myself--therefore you get not a groschen." "Why, Sir," said Bahrdt,
"we both know that this won't do. You and I have already tried it.
You received Stark's manuscript, to be printed by Walther--Walther
and you sent it hither to Michaelis, that I might see it during
the printing. I wrote an illustration and a key, which made the
fellow very ridiculous, and they were printed together, with one
title page.--You know that we were cast in court.--Walther was
obliged to print the work as Stark first ordered, and we lost all
our labour.--So shall you now, for I will commence an action this
instant, and let me see with what face you will defend yourself,
within a few weeks of your last appearance in court." Pott said,
"You may try this. My work is already sold, and dispersed over all
Germany--and I have no objection to begin yours to-morrow--believe
me, it will sell." Bahrdt pondered--and resolved to write one
himself.
This is another specimen of the _Union_.
DR. CARL FREDERICK BAHRDT was born in 1741. His father was then
a parish minister, and afterwards Professor of Theology at
Leipzig, where he died, in 1775. The youth, when at College,
enlisted in the Prussian service as a hussar, but was bought off
by his father. He was M. A. in 1761. He became catechist in his
father's church, was a popular preacher, and published sermons in
1765, and some controversial writings, which did him honour--But
he then began to indulge in conviviality, and in anonymous
pasquinades, uncommonly bitter and offensive. No person was
safe--Professors--Magistrates--Clergymen, had his chief notice--also
students--and even comrades and friends. (Bahrdt says, that these
things might cut to the quick but they were all just.) Unluckily
his temperament was what the atomical philosophers (who can explain
every thing by æthers and vibrations) call sanguine. He _therefore_
(his own word) was a passionate admirer of the ladies. Coming
home from supper he frequently met a young Miss in the way to his
lodgings, neatly dressed in a rose-coloured silk jacket and train,
and a sable bonnet, costly, and like a lady. One evening (after some
old Renish, as he says,) he saw the lady home. Some time after, the
mistress of the house, Madam Godschusky, came into his room, and
said that the poor maiden was pregnant. He could not help that--but
it was very unfortunate, and would ruin him if known.--He therefore
gave the old lady a bond for 200 dahlers, to be paid by instalments
of twenty-five.----"The girl was sensible, and good, and as he had
already paid for it, and her conversation was agreeable, he did not
discontinue his acquaintance." A comrade one day told him, that
one Bel, a magistrate, whom he had lampooned, knew the affair, and
would bring it into court, unless he immediately retrieved the bond.
This bond was the only evidence, but it was enough. Neither Bahrdt
nor his friend could raise the money. But they fell on another
contrivance. They got Madam Godschusky to meet them at another
house, in order to receive the money. Bahrdt was in a closet, and
his comrade wore a sword. The woman could not be prevailed on to
produce the bond till Bahrdt should arrive, and the money be put
into her hands, with a present to herself. The comrade tried to
flutter her, and, drawing his sword, shewed her how men fenced--made
passes at the wall--and then at her--but she was too firm--he then
threw away his sword, and began to try to force the paper from her.
She defended herself a good while, but at length he got the paper
out of her pocket, tore it in pieces, opened the closet door, and
said, "There you b----, there is the honourable fellow whom you and
your wh-- have bullied--but it is with me you have to do now, and
you know that I can bring you to the gallows." There was a great
squabble to be sure, says Bahrdt, but it ended, and I thought all
was now over.--But Mr. Bel had got word of it, and brought it into
court the very day that Bahrdt was to have made some very reverend
appearance at church. In short, after many attempts of his poor
father to save him, he was obliged to send in his gown and band,
and to quit the place. It was some comfort, however, that Madam
Godschusky and the young Miss did not fare much better. They were
both imprisoned. Madam G. died sometime after of some shocking
disease. The court records give a very different account of the
whole, and particularly of the scuffle; but Bahrdt's story is enough.
Bahrdt says, that his father was severe--but acknowledges that his
own temperament was hasty, (why does not his fathers temperament
excuse something? _Vibratiunculæ_ will explain every thing or
nothing.) "_Therefore_ (again) I sometimes forgot myself. One day I
laid a loaded pistol on the table, and told him that he should meet
with that if he went on so. But I was only seventeen."
Dr. Bahrdt was, of course, obliged to leave the place. His friends,
and Semler in particular, an eminent theological writer, who had
formed a very favourable opinion of his uncommon talents, were
assiduous in their endeavours to get an establishment for him. But
his high opinion of himself, his temper, impetuous, precipitant,
and overbearing, and a bitter satirical habit which he had freely
indulged in his outset of life, made their endeavours very
ineffectual.
At last he got a professorship at Erlangen, then at Erfurth, and
in 1771, at Giessen. But in all these places he was no sooner
settled than he got into disputes with his colleagues and with the
established church, being a strenuous partizan of the innovations
which were attempted to be made in the doctrines of christianity. In
his anonymous publications, he did not trust to rational discussion
alone, but had recourse to ridicule and personal anecdotes, and
indulged in the most cutting sarcasms and gross scurrility. Being
fond of convivial company, his income was insufficient for the
craving demand, and as soon as he found that anecdote and slander
always procured readers, he never ceased writing. He had wonderful
readiness and activity, and spared neither friends nor foes in his
anonymous performances. But this could not last, and his avowed
theological writings were such as could not be suffered in a
Professor of Divinity. The very students at Giessen were shocked
with some of his liberties. After much wrangling in the church
judicatories he was just going to be dismissed, when he got an
invitation to Marschlins in Switzerland to superintend an academy.
He went thither about the year 1776, and formed the seminary after
the model of Basedow's Philanthropine, or academy, at Dessau, of
which I have already given some account. It had acquired some
celebrity, and the plan was peculiarly suited to Bahrdt's taste,
because it left him at liberty to introduce any system of religious
or irreligious opinions that he pleased. He resolved to avail
himself of this liberty, and though a clergyman and Doctor of
Theology, he would outstrip even Basedow, who had no ecclesiastical
orders to restrain him. But he wanted the moderation, the prudence
and the principle of Basedow. He had, by this time, formed his
opinion of mankind, by meditating on the feelings of his own mind.
His theory of human nature was simple--"The leading propensities,
says he, of the human mind are three--Instinctive liberty
(Freyheitstriebe)-instinctive activity (Triebe fur Thatigkeit)--and
instinctive love (Liebes triebe)." I do not wish to misunderstand
him, but I can give no other translation.--"If a man is obstructed
in the exercise of any of these propensities he suffers an
injury.--The business of a good education therefore is to teach us
how they are to be enjoyed in the highest degree."
We need not be surprised although the Doctor should find it
difficult to manage the Cyclopedia in his Philanthropine in such
a manner as to give satisfaction to the neighbourhood, which was
habituated to very different sentiments,--Accordingly he found his
situation as uncomfortable as at Giessen. He says, in one of his
latest performances, "that the Grisons were a strong instance of
the immense importance of education. They knew nothing but their
handicrafts, and their minds were as coarse as their persons." He
quarrelled with them all, and was obliged to abscond after lying
sometime in arrest.
He came to Durkheim or Turkheim, where his father was or had been
minister. His literary talents were well known.--After some little
time he got an association formed for erecting and supporting a
Philanthropine or house of education. A large fund was collected,
and he was enabled to travel into Holland and England, to engage
pupils, and was furnished with proper recommendations.--On his
return the plan was carried into execution. The castle or residence
of Count Leining Hartzburgh, at Heidesheim, having gardens, park,
and every handsome accommodation, had been fitted up for it, and it
was consecrated by a solemn religious festival in 1778.
But his old misfortunes pursued him. He had indeed no colleagues
to quarrel with, but his avowed publications became every day more
obnoxious--and when any of his anonymous pieces had a great run, he
could not stifle his vanity and conceal the author's name. Of these
pieces, some were even shocking to decency. It was indifferent to
him whether it was friend or foe that he abused; and some of them
were so horribly injurious to the characters of the most respectable
men in the state, that he was continually under the correction
of the courts of justice. There was hardly a man of letters that
had ever been in his company who did not suffer by it. For his
constant practice was to father every new step that he took towards
Atheism on some other person; and, whenever the reader sees, in the
beginning of a book, any person celebrated by the author for sound
sense, profound judgment, accurate reasoning, or praised for acts of
friendship and kindness to himself, he may be assured that, before
the close of the book, this man will convince Dr. Bahrdt in some
private conversation, that some doctrine, cherished and venerated by
all Christians, is a piece of knavish superstition. So lost was Dr.
Bahrdt to all sense of shame. He said that he held his own opinions
independent of all mankind, and was indifferent about their praise
or their reproach.
Bahrdt's licentious, very licentious life, was the cause of most of
these enormities. No income could suffice and he wrote for bread.
The artful manner in which the literary manufacture of Germany was
conducted, made it impossible to hinder the rapid dispersion of
his writings over all Germany; and the indelicate and coarse maw
of the public was as ravenous as the sensuality of Dr. Bahrdt, who
really battened in the Epicurean sty. The consequence of all this
was that he was obliged to fly from Heidesheim, leaving his sureties
in the _Philanthropine_ to pay about 14,000 dahlers, besides debts
without number to his friends. He was imprisoned at Dienheim, but
was released I know not how, and settled at Halle. There he sunk to
be a keeper of a tavern and billiard-table, and his house became
the resort and the bane of the students in the University.--He
was obliged therefore to leave the city. He had somehow got funds
which enabled him to buy a little vineyard, prettily situated in
the neighbourhood. This he fitted up with every accommodation that
could invite the students, and called it _Bahrdt's Ruhe_. We have
already seen the occupations of Dr. B. in this _Buen Retiro_--Can
we call it _otium cum dignitate_? Alas, no! He had not lived two
years here, bustling and toiling for the German Union, sometimes
without a bit of bread--when he was sent to prison at Halle, and
then to Magdeburg, where he was more than a year in jail. He was
set at liberty, and returned to _Bahrdt's Ruhe_, not, alas, to
live at ease, but to lie down on a sick-bed, where, after more
than a year's suffering increasing pain, he died on the 23d of
April 1793, the most wretched and loathsome victim of unbridled
sensuality. The account of his case is written by a friend, a Dr.
Jung, who professes to defend his memory and his principles. The
medical description melted my heart, and I am certain would make his
bitterest enemy weep. Jung repeatedly says, that the case was not
venereal--calls it the vineyard disease--the quicksilver disease,
(he was dying of an unconquerable salivation,) and yet, through the
whole of his narration, relates symptoms and sufferings, which, as
a medical man, he could not possibly mean to be taken in any other
sense than as effects of pox. He meant to please the enemies of poor
Bahrdt, knowing that such a man could have no friends, and being
himself ignorant of what friendship or goodness is. The fate of this
poor creature affected me more than any thing I have read of a great
while. All his open enemies put together have not said so much ill
of him as his trusted friend Pott, and another confident, whose name
I cannot recollect, who published in his lifetime an anonymous book
called _Bahrdt with the Iron Brow_--and this fellow Jung, under the
absurd mask of friendship, exhibited the loathsome carcase for a
florin, like a malefactor's at Surgeon's Hall. Such were the fruits
of the German Union, of that Illumination that was to refine the
heart of man, and bring to maturity the seeds of native virtue,
which are choaked in the hearts of other men by superstition and
despotism. We see nothing but mutual treachery and base desertion.
I do not concern myself with the gradual perversion of Dr. Bahrdt's
moral and religious opinions. But he affected to be the enlightener
and reformer of mankind; and affirmed that all the mischiefs in
life originated from despotism supported by superstition. "In
vain," says he, "do we complain of the inefficacy of religion. All
positive religion is founded on injustice. No Prince has a right
to prescribe or sanction any such system. Nor would he do it, were
not the priests the firmest pillars of his tyranny, and superstition
the strongest fetters for his subjects. He dares not show Religion
as she is--pure and undefiled----She would charm the eyes and the
hearts of mankind, would immediately produce true morality, would
open the eyes of freeborn man, would teach him what are his rights,
and who are his oppressors, and Princes would vanish from the face
of the earth."
Therefore, without troubling ourselves with the truth or falsehood
of his religion of Nature, and assuming it as an indisputable point,
that Dr. Bahrdt has seen it in this natural and so effective purity,
it is surely a very pertinent question, "Whether has the sight
produced on his mind an effect so far superior to the acknowledged
faintness of the impression of Christianity on the bulk of mankind,
that it will be prudent to adopt the plan of the German Union, and
at once put an end to the divisions which so unfortunately alienate
the minds of professing Christians from each other?" The account
here given of Dr. Bahrdt's life seems to decide the question.
But it will be said, that I have only related so many instances
of the quarrels of Priests and their slavish adherents, with Dr.
Bahrdt. Let us view him in his ordinary conduct, not as the champion
and martyr of Illumination, but as an ordinary citizen, a husband, a
father, a friend, a teacher of youth, a clergyman.
When Dr. Bahrdt was a parish-minister, and president of some
inferior ecclesiastical district, he was empowered to take off the
censures of the church from a young woman who had born a bastard
child. By violence he again reduced her to the same condition, and
escaped censure, by the poor girl's dying of a fever before her
pregnancy was far advanced, or even legally documented. Also, on the
night of the solemn farce of consecrating his Philanthropine, he
debauched the maid-servant, who bore twins, and gave him up for the
father. The thing, I presume, was not judicially proved, otherwise
he would have surely been disgraced; but it was afterwards made
evident, by the letters which were found by Pott, when he undertook
to write his life. A series of these letters had passed between him
and one Graf, a steward, who was employed by him to give the woman
the small pittance by which she and the infants were maintained.
Remonstrances were made when the money was not advanced; and there
are particularly letters about the end of 1779, which show that
Bahrdt had ceased giving any thing. On the ** of February 1780,
the infants (three years old) were taken away in the night, and
were found exposed, the one at Usstein, and the other at Worms,
many miles distant from each other, and almost frozen to death. The
first was discovered by its moans, by a shoemaker in a field by the
road-side, about six in the morning; the other was found by two
girls between the hedges in a lane, set between two great stones,
past all crying. The poor mother travelled up and down the country
in quest of her infants, and hearing these accounts, found them
both, and took one of them home; but not being able to maintain
both, when Bahrdt's commissioner refused contributing any more, it
remained with the good woman who had taken it in[17].
[17] This is worse than Rousseau's conduct, who only sent his
children to the Foundling hospital, that he might never know them
again. (See his Confessions.)
Bahrdt was married in 1772, while at Giessen; but after wasting the
greatest part of his wife's little fortune left her by a former
husband, he was provoked by losing 1000 florins (about 110l.) in
the hands of her brother who would not pay it up. After this he
used her very ill, and speaks very contemptuously of her in his
own account of his life, calling her a dowdy, jealous, and every
thing contemptible. In two infamous novels, he exhibits characters,
in which she is represented in a most cruel manner; yet this
woman (perhaps during the honey-moon) was enticed by him one day
into the bath, in the pond of the garden of the Philanthropine at
Heidesheim, and there, in the sight of all the pupils did he (also
undressed) toy with his naked wife in the water. When at Halle,
he used the poor woman extremely ill, keeping a mistress in the
house, and giving her the whole command of the family, while the
wife and daughter were confined to a separate part of it. When in
prison at Magdeburgh, the strumpet lived with him, and bore him two
children. He brought them all to his house when he was at liberty.
Such barbarous usage made the poor woman at last leave him and
live with her brother. The daughter died about a year before him,
of an overdose of laudanum given by her father, to procure sleep,
when ill of a fever. He ended his own wretched life in the same
manner, unable, poor man, to bear his distress, without the smallest
compunction or sorrow for his conduct; and the last thing he did was
to send for a bookseller, (Vipink of Halle, who had published some
of his vile pieces,) and recommend his strumpet and her children to
his protection, without one thought of his injured wife.
I shall end my account of this profligate monster with a specimen of
his way of using his friends.
"Of all the acquisitions which I made in England, Mr. ---- (the
name appears at full length) was the most important. This person
was accomplished in the highest degree. With sound judgment, great
genius, and correct taste, he was perfectly a man of the world. He
was my friend, and the only person who warmly interested himself for
my institution. To his warm and repeated recommendations I owe all
the pupils I got in England, and many most respectable connections;
for he was universally esteemed as a man of learning and of the most
unblemished worth. He was my friend, my conductor, and I may say my
preserver; for when I had not bread for two days, he took me to his
house, and supplied all my wants. This gentleman was a clergyman,
and had a small but genteel and selected congregation, a flock
which required strong food. My friend preached to them pure natural
religion, and was beloved by them. His sermons were excellent, and
delivered with native energy and grace, because they came from
the heart. I had once the honour of preaching for him. But what a
difference--I found myself afraid--I feared to speak too boldly,
because I did not know where I was, and thought myself speaking to
my crouching countrymen. But the liberty of England opens every
heart, and makes it accessible to morality. I can give a very
remarkable instance.