LETTER TO MY FRIENDS,
INSTEAD OF PREFACE.
Merchants, Authors, young Ladies, and Quakers, call all persons, with
whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my
table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so
many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my
Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with
his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to
printers, pressmen, and other such persons. But as I could not, like
the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank
leaf in front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a
complimentary word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore
caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page;
on these we are now printing.
My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled
from various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear
Friends, it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a
pleasure as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should
have offered his prize-medals, not for the invention of new pleasures,
but for a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.
Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more
than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: to soar away
so far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world,
with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, lying far down
beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: simply
to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so
snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that, in looking out from your
warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses,
or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the
nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and a rain-screen. The third,
finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of
alternating between the other two.
This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large.
The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he
whom civic storm, or genius poetic storm, impels; in short, every
mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but
that of writing the largest folios); all these men fence themselves in
by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external,
as the madman in a worse sense does; every _fixed_ idea, such as rules
every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and
elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its
Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns, and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of
Paradise, he slumbers flying; and, on his outspread pinions, oversleeps
unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long,
fair dream of his ideal Mother-land.--Alas! To few is this dream
granted; and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![33]
This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the
human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving
brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of
wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast, and
neck-fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State,
and are not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to
the shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole
standing and writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors,
Clerks of all departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels
over head into the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and
for refreshments, sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons,
what way of becoming happy _here_ can I possibly point out?
My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: to take a compound
microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that
their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is
peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of
jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all
costly watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors
by new ones. The purpose for which I have sent _Fixlein's Life_
into the Messrs. Luebeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same
_Life_--therefore in this Preface it is less needful--I may show to the
whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones, the
night-gown more than the dress-coat; that Plutus's heaps are worth less
than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that
not great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish
this, I shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity a race
of men finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms
and of their night-caps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals;
in mere Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when
these gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some
Dowager Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the
bloodletting-day of these their newsbringers; in the day of
slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigor of grim winter; and in
all such days. You perceive, my drift is, that man must become a little
Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost,
roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews
itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon
one could preach to our century were a sermon on the duty of staying at
home.
The _third_ skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The
foregoing _second_ way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth
should take into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The
_first_ is too good for him. He has not always the force, like
Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces; and,
like Backhuisen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the
drawing-board to paint it on. And then his pains are not less lasting
than his _fatigues_. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena; it is
but the smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps,
Revolutions, Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes; and for
the whole it is better so; the longer portion of life is a field beaten
flat as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains; often it is
a tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with dawn.
But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing; by
little joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must
contrive to plough down his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot
field; to transform his theatre of war into a parlor theatre, on which
his children may enact some good pieces from the _Children's Friend_.
Can he accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path of poetical
happiness into that of household happiness,--then is he little
different from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to
disclose it--who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter,
have been enabled to reflect, that, when it is done, so also will the
Roses and Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is
seething in butter for the Author of this Work.
As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the
Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third[34]
half-satirical, half-philosophical part of the Work till that
opportunity.
Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his
half anonymity,[35] and for the first time subscribes himself with his
whole true name,
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.
_Hof in Voigtland, 29th June_, 1795.
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN,
DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES.
IN FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES.