the Petition for the Hukelum parsonship--to be elaborated; in regard to
which I feel as if I myself must assist.... It were a simple turn, if
now at least the assembled public did not pay attention.
In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all the
Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills of the
road-money, which he had been obliged to pay, before the toll-gates at
the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown open: for the executor
of the Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as his
discharge would express it, "to penny and farthing." Another would have
summed up this post-excise much more readily; by merely looking what
he--owed; as these debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel
passages, elucidate and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case, there
was a small circumstance of peculiarity at work; which I cannot explain
till after what follows.
It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been obliged to
pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 41 kreutzers and one
halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to pass directly from the hands
of the testamentary executor into those of the Regiments-Quartermaster;
but yet he could have liked well, had he--for man is a fool from the
very foundation of him--had more to pay, and therefore to inherit. The
whole Conrectorate he had, by a slight deposit of 90 florins, plucked,
as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune; and so small a sum must surprise
my reader: but what will he say, when I tell him that there are
countries where the entry-money into schoolrooms is even more moderate?
In Scherau, a Conrector is charged only 88 florins, and perhaps he may
have an income triple of this sum. Not to speak of Saxony (what, in
truth, was to be expected from the cradle of the Reformation, in
Religion and Polite Literature), where a schoolmaster and a parson have
_nothing_ to pay,--even in Bayreuth, for example, in Hof, the progress
of improvement has been such, that a Quartus--a Quartus do I say,--a
Tertius--a Tertius do I say,--a Conrector, at entrance on his post, is
not required to pay down more than:
Fl. rhen. Kr. rhen.
30 49 For taking the oaths at the Consistorium.
4 0 To the Syndic for the Presentation.
2 0 To the then Buergermeister.
45 71/2 For the Government-sanction.
-------------
Total 81 fl. 561/2 kr.
If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some
points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus &c. come cheaper from
the press than even a Conrector. Now it is clear that in this case a
schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first year,
he gets an overplus beyond this _dock-money_ of his office. A
schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from class to
class, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest
for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly income
in the highest class. Another thing in his favour is, that our
institutions do not--as those of Athens did--prohibit people from
entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack
on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The
Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year
under the title of _Annates_, or First Fruits; and accordingly he, in
all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller one,
thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but it
shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and
Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their
school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two-thirds of
their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must
naturally have an eye to vacancies.
It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of Mentz,
when I confess, that in Schmausen's _Corp. Jur. Pub. Germ._ I have
turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of the 6th
January 1659; and there investigated how much this same
Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For
example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a _Poet
Laureate_, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues to pay
down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a Conrector,
who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and _ex
officio_.--The institution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1000 florins;
an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the teachers in the
instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the entrymoneys of their
schoolrooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any rate, often enough grows old
without knowing how, must purchase the _venia aetatis_ with 200 hard
florins; while with the half sum he might have become a schoolmaster,
and here _age_ would have come of its own accord.--And a thousand such
things!--They prove, however, that matters can be at no bad pass in our
Governments and Circles, where promotions are sold dearer to Folly than
to Diligence, and where it costs more to institute a school than to
serve in one.
The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks a
Town-Syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted for
mere dread of digressiveness.
The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the warmth
of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams of it
into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave me (I
had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair to the
_bench_ and the _ladder_, on which people are laid when about to be
tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30
reichsthalers;[49] if he annually purchase manufactured goods, according
as Political Economists have calculated for each individual, namely, to
the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundredweights of victual
than these assume, namely 10; in short, if he live like a substantial
wood-cutter,--then the Devil must be in it, if he cannot yearly lay by
so much net profit, as shall, in the long-run, pay the interest of his
entry-debts."
[49] So much, according to Political Economists, a man yearly
requires in Germany.
The Syndic must have failed to convince me at the time, since I
afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[50] "Illustrious Sir, you
know not, but I do--not a player in your Theatre would act the
Schoolmaster in Engel's _Prodigal Son_, three nights running, for such a
sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for acting it all the days of
the year.--In Prussia, Invalids are made Schoolmasters; with us,
Schoolmasters are made Invalids."...
[50] This singular tone of my address to a Prince can only be
excused by the equally singular relation, wherein the Biographer
stands to the Flachsenfingen Sovereign, and which I would willingly
unfold here, were it not that, in my Book, which, under the title
of _Dog-post-days_, I mean to give to the world at Easter-fair
1795, I hoped to expound the matter to universal satisfaction.
* * * * *
But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts;
but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has
still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be
Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle
stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also, and
the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New Jerusalem,
supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre
penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed.
For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the
strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby
scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way
he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial-torch than
for his bridal one.
For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered States, as little
permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In _Conringius de Antiquitutibus
Academicis_, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were
originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now
cloisters, and consequently we endeavour to maintain in our teachers at
least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The vow of Obedience
might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the
second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it
not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I
mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that
no man who has made it needs any farther _testimonium paupertatis_;--and
now _let_ this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when of
the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but
half-coins and half-beer!...
I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this
Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his
Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the
annexed wedding-mansion: for they see clearly enough, that directly
thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came
from such a repository.
Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking: it submitted to
the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the
parish: his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service;
therefore he prayed," &c.
2. "The here-documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreutzers and
one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten testament
secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the living,
and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.
_Voluntary Note by me._ It is plain he means to bribe his Godfather,
whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader, blame
not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and
school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine.
Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the
poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the
Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons,
by whom not indeed the church and churchyard--though these things are
articles of commerce in England--so much as the true management of them
had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from
Lange,[51] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing
to live upon: and might not a nobleman, before he actually began
begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his
alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?--
[51] His _Clerical Law_, p. 551.
3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fraeulein von Thiennette, and
given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed
the said Fraeulein were he once provided for," &c.
_Voluntary Note by me._ I hold this ground to be the strongest in the
whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's
genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten and full
of millepedes: she was his OEconoma, his Castle-Stewardess and
Legatess _a Latere_ for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an
alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His
indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy
might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will
have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....
4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had
purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that
the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far be it
from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it as a
special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without any
name, his Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself."
_My Voluntary Note._ The dog then, it seems, to which the nobleman has
hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a _second_ time from
him!--But how can the famishing gardener's son, whose career never
mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who
never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church,
how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any
finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies deeper:
not the contracted _situation_, but the contracted _eye_, not a
favourite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic, a soul
that cannot _measure_ and _separate_ the _concentric_ circles of human
knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal human
life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three
converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all----In short,
the true Pedant is the Intolerant.
* * * * *
The Conrector wrote out his petition splendidly in five propitious
evenings; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose; worked not indeed so
long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin letter, namely, some
months, if Scioppius' word is to be taken; still less so long as another
scholar at a Latin epistle, who--truly we have nothing but Morhof's word
for it--hatched it during four whole months; inserting his variations,
adjectives, feet, with the authorities for his phrases, accurately
marked between the lines. Fixlein possessed a more thorough-going
genius, and had completely mastered the whole enterprise in sixteen
days. While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this cover was the
seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many sweet or bitter
fruits, the swathing of his whole after-life.
Heaven bless his cover; but I let you throw me from the Tower of Babel,
if he get the parsonage: can't you see, then, that Aufhammer's hands are
tied? In spite of all his other faults, or even because of them, he will
stand like iron by his word, which he has given so long ago to the
Subrector. It were another matter had he been resident at Court; for
there, where old German manners still are, no promise is kept; for as,
according to Moeser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they
made in the _forenoon_ (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk),--so
the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon ones they
would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot possibly happen, as
at those hours they are--sleeping.
SEVENTH LETTER-BOX.
_Sermon. School-Exhibition. Splendid Mistake._
The Conrector received his 135 florins, 43 kreutzers, one halfpenny
Frankish; but no answer: the dog remained without name, his master
without parsonage. Meanwhile the summer passed away; and the Dragoon
Rittmeister had yet drawn out no pike from the Candidate
_breeding-pond_, and thrown him into the _feeding-pond_ of the Hukelum
parsonage. It gratified him to be behung with prayers like a Spanish
guardian Saint; and he postponed (though determined to prefer the
Subrector) granting any one petition, till he had seven-and-thirty
dyers', buttonmakers', tinsmiths' sons, whose petitions he could at the
same time refuse. Grudge not him of Aufhammer this outlengthening of his
electorial power! He knows the privileges of rank; feels that a nobleman
is like Timoleon, who gained his greatest victories on his birthday, and
had nothing more to do than name some squiress, countess, or the like,
as his mother. A man, however, who has been exalted to the Peerage,
while still a foetus, may with more propriety be likened to the
_spinner_, which, contrariwise to all other insects, passes from the
chrysalis state, and becomes a perfect insect in its mother's womb.--
But to proceed! Fixlein was at present not without cash. It will be the
same as if I made a present of it to the reader, when I reveal to him,
that of the legacy, which was clearing off old scores, he had still
thirty-five florins left to himself, as _allodium_ and pocket-money,
wherewith he might purchase whatsoever seemed good to him. And how came
he by so large a sum, by so considerable a competence? Simply by this
means: Every time he changed a piece of gold, and especially at every
payment he received, it had been his custom to throw in, blindly at
random, two, three, or four small coins, among the papers of his trunk.
His purpose was to astonish himself one day, when he summed up and took
possession of this sleeping capital. And, by Heaven! he reached it too,
when on mounting the throne of his Conrectorate, he drew out these funds
from among his papers, and applied them to the coronation charges. For
the present, he sowed them in again among his waste letters. Foolish
Fixlein! I mean, had he not luckily exposed his legacy to jeopardy,
having offered it as bounty-money, and luck-penny to the patron, this
false clutch of his at the knocker of the Hukelum church-door would
certainly have vexed him; but now if he had missed the knocker, he had
the luck-penny again, and could be merry.
I now advance a little way in his History, and hit, in the rock of his
Life, upon so fine a vein of silver, I mean upon so fine a day, that I
must (I believe) content myself even in regard to the twenty-third of
Trinity-term, when he preached a vacation sermon in his dear native
village, with a brief transitory notice.
In itself the sermon was good and glorious; and the day a rich day of
pleasure; but I should really need to have more hours at my disposal
than I can steal from May, in which I am at present living and writing;
and more strength than wandering through this fine weather has left me
for landscape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any
well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of the length and
thickness, and the vibrations and accordant relations to each other, of
the various strings, which combined together to form for his heart a
Music of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing
would please myself as much as another.... Do not ask me! In my opinion,
when a man preaches on Sunday before all the peasants, who had carried
him in their arms when a gardener's boy; farther, before his mother, who
is leading off her tears through the conduit of her satin muff; farther,
before his Lordship, whom he can positively command to be blessed; and
finally, before his muslin bride, who is already blessed, and changing
almost into stone, to find that the same lips can both kiss and preach:
in my opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has some right to
require of any Biographer who would paint his situation, that he--hold
his jaw; and of the reader who would sympathise with it, that he open
his, and preach himself.----
But what I must _ex officio_ depict, is the day to which this Sunday was
but the prelude, the vigil and the whet; I mean the prelude, the vigil
and the whet to the _Martini Actus_, or _Martinmas Exhibition_, of his
school. On Sunday was the Sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the
Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the universe.
I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world
alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more
interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or the _opera seria_ of
a Frankfort Coronation; but that I likewise have people before me, who
have been at schools, and who know how the school-drama of an Actus, and
the stage-manager, and the playbill (the Program) thereof are to be
estimated, still without overrating their importance.
Before proceeding to the Rehearsal of the _Martini Actus_, I impose upon
myself, as dramaturgist of the play, the duty, if not of extracting, at
least of recording the Conrector's Letter of Invitation. In this
composition he said many things; and (what an author likes so well) made
proposals rather than reproaches; interrogatively reminding the public,
Whether in regard to the well-known head-breakages of Priscian on the
part of the Magnates in Pest and Poland, our school-houses were not the
best quarantine and lazar-houses to protect us against infectious
_barbarisms_? Moreover, he defended in schools what could be defended
(and nothing in the world is sweeter or easier than a defence); and
said, Schoolmasters, who not quite justifiably, like certain Courts,
spoke nothing, and let nothing be spoken to them but Latin, might plead
the Romans in excuse, whose subjects, and whose kings, at least in their
epistles and public transactions, were obliged to make use of the Latin
tongue. He wondered why only our Greek, and not also our Latin Grammars,
were composed in Latin, and put the pregnant question: Whether the
Romans, when they taught their little children the Latin tongue, did it
in any other than in this same? Thereupon he went over to the Actus, and
said what follows, in his own words:
"I am minded to prove, in a subsequent Invitation, that everything which
can be said or known about the great founder of the Reformation, the
subject of our present Martini Prolusions, has been long ago exhausted,
as well by Seckendorf as others. In fact, with regard to Luther's
personalities, his table-talk, incomes, journeys, clothes, and so forth,
there can now nothing new be brought forward, if at the same time it is
to be true. Nevertheless, the field of the Reformation history is, to
speak in a figure, by no means wholly cultivated; and it does appear to
me as if the inquirer even of the present day might in vain look about
for correct intelligence respecting the children, grandchildren and
children's children, down to our own times, of this great Reformer; all
of whom, however, appertain, in a more remote degree, to the Reformation
history, as he himself in a nearer. Thou shalt not perhaps be threshing,
said I to myself, altogether empty straw, if, according to thy small
ability, thou bring forward and cultivate this neglected branch of
History. And so have I ventured, with the last male descendant of
Luther, namely, with the Advocate Martin Gottlob Luther, who practised
in Dresden, and deceased there in 1759, to make a beginning of a more
special Reformation history. My feeble attempt, in regard to this
Reformationary Advocate, will be sufficiently rewarded, should it excite
to better works on the subject: however, the little which I have
succeeded in digging up and collecting with regard to him I here
submissively, obediently, and humbly request all friends and patrons of
the Flachsenfingen Gymnasium to listen to, on the 14th of November, from
the mouths of sis well-conditioned perorators. In the first place, shall
"_Gottlieb Spiesglass_, a Flachsenfinger, endeavour to show, in a Latin
oration, that Martin Gottlob Luther was certainly descended of the
Luther family. After him strives
"_Friedrich Christian Krabbler_, from Hukelum, in German prose, to
appreciate the influence which Martin Gottlob Luther exercised on the
then existing Reformation; whereupon, after him, will
"_Daniel Lorenz Stenzinger_ deliver, in Latin verse, an account of
Martin Gottlob Luther's lawsuits; embracing the probable merits of
Advocates generally, in regard to the Reformation. Which then will give
opportunity to
"_Nikol Tobias Pfizman_ to come forward in French, and recount the most
important circumstances of Martin Gottlob Luther's school-years,
university-life and riper age. And now, when
"_Andreas Eintarm_ shall have endeavoured, in German verse, to apologise
for the possible failings of this representative of the great Luther,
will
"_Justus Strobel_, in Latin verse according to ability, sing his
uprightness and integrity in the Advocate profession; whereafter I
myself shall mount the cathedra, and most humbly thank all the patrons
of the Flachsenfingen School, and then farther bring forward those
portions in the life of this remarkable man, of which we yet know
absolutely nothing, they being spared _Deo volente_ for the speakers of
the next _Martini Actus_."
* * * * *