a course of ethics, which from time to time he publicly read, and thus
in an honorable manner acquitted himself of his duty to the public.
Gellert's writings had already, for a long time, been the foundation of
German moral culture, and every one anxiously wished to see that work
printed; but, as this was not to be done till after the good man's
death, people thought themselves very fortunate to hear him deliver it
himself in his lifetime. The philosophical auditorium [Footnote: The
lecture-room. The word is also used in university language to denote a
professor's audience.] was at such times crowded: and the beautiful
soul, the pure will, and the interest of the noble man in our welfare,
his exhortations, warnings, and entreaties, uttered in a somewhat hollow
and sorrowful tone, made indeed an impression for the moment; but this
did not last long, the less so as there were many scoffers, who
contrived to make us suspicious of this tender, and, as they thought,
enervating, manner. I remember a Frenchman travelling through the town,
who asked what were the maxims and opinions of the man who attracted
such an immense concourse. "When we had given him the necessary
information, he shook his head, and said, smiling, "/Laissez le faire,
il nous forme des dupes./"
And thus also did good society, which cannot easily endure any thing
worthy near it, know how to spoil, on occasion, the moral influence
which Gellert might have had upon us. Now it was taken ill of him that
he instructed the Danes of distinction and wealth, who were particularly
recommended to him, better than the other students, and had a marked
solicitude for them; now he was charged with selfishness and nepotism
for causing a /table d'hôte/ to be established for these young men
at his brother's house. This brother, a tall, good-looking, blunt,
unceremonious, and somewhat coarse, man, had, it was said, been a
fencing-master; and, notwithstanding the too great lenity of his
brother, the noble boarders were often treated harshly and roughly:
hence the people thought they must again take the part of these young
folks, and pulled about the good reputation of the excellent Gellert to
such a degree, that, in order not to be mistaken about him, we became
indifferent towards him, and visited him no more; yet we always saluted
him in our best manner when he came riding along on his tame gray horse.
This horse the elector had sent him, to oblige him to take an exercise
so necessary for his health,--a distinction for which he was not easily
to be forgiven.
And thus, by degrees, the epoch approached when all authority was to
vanish from before me, and I was to become suspicious--nay, to despair,
even--of the greatest and best individuals whom I had known or imagined.
Frederick the Second still stood at the head of all the distinguished
men of the century in my thoughts; and it must therefore have appeared
very surprising to me, that I could praise him as little before the
inhabitants of Leipzig as formerly in my grandfather's house. They had
felt the hand of war heavily, it is true; and therefore they were not to
blame for not thinking the best of him who had begun and continued it.
They, therefore, were willing to let him pass as a distinguished, but by
no means as a great, man. "There was no art," they said, "in performing
something with great means; and, if one spares neither lands nor money
nor blood, one may well accomplish one's purpose at last. Frederick had
shown himself great in none of his plans, and in nothing that he had,
properly speaking, undertaken. So long as it depended on himself, he had
only gone on making blunders, and what was extraordinary in him had only
come to light when he was compelled to make these blunders good again.
It was purely from this that he had obtained his great reputation; since
every man wishes for himself that same talent of making good, in a
clever way, the blunders which he frequently commits. If one goes
through the Seven Years' War, step by step, it will be found that the
king quite uselessly sacrificed his fine army, and that it was his own
fault that this ruinous feud had been protracted to so great a length. A
truly great man and general would have got the better of his enemies
much sooner." In support of these opinions they could cite infinite
details, which I did not know how to deny; and I felt the unbounded
reverence which I had devoted to this remarkable prince, from my youth
upwards, gradually cooling away.
As the inhabitants of Leipzig had now destroyed for me the pleasant
feeling of revering a great man; so did a new friend, whom I gained at
the time, very much diminish the respect which I entertained for my
present fellow-citizens. This friend was one of the strangest fellows in
the world. He was named Behrisch, and was tutor to the young Count
Lindenau. Even his exterior was singular enough. Lean and well-built,
far advanced in the thirties, a very large nose, and altogether marked
features: he wore from morning till night a scratch which might well
have been called a peruke, but dressed himself very neatly, and never
went out but with his sword by his side, and his hat under his arm. He
was one of those men who have quite a peculiar gift of killing time, or,
rather, who know how to make something out of nothing, in order to pass
time away. Every thing he did had to be done with slowness, and with a
certain deportment which might have been called affected if Behrisch had
not even by nature had something affected in his manner. He resembled an
old Frenchman, and also spoke and wrote French very well and easily. His
greatest delight was to busy himself seriously about drolleries, and to
follow up without end any silly notion. Thus he was constantly dressed
in gray; and as the different parts of his attire were of different
material, and also of different shades, he could reflect for whole days
as to how he should procure one gray more for his body, and was happy
when he had succeeded in this, and could put to shame us who had doubted
it, or had pronounced it impossible. He then gave us long, severe
lectures about our lack of inventive power, and our want of faith in his
talents.
For the rest, he had studied well, was particularly versed in the modern
languages and their literature, and wrote an excellent hand. He was very
well disposed towards me; and I, having been always accustomed and
inclined to the society of older persons, soon attached myself to him.
My intercourse served him, too, for a special amusement; since he took
pleasure in taming my restlessness and impatience, with which, on the
other hand, I gave him enough to do. In the art of poetry he had what is
called taste,--a certain general opinion about the good and bad, the
mediocre and tolerable: but his judgment was rather censorious; and he
destroyed even the little faith in contemporary writers which I
cherished within me, by unfeeling remarks, which he knew how to advance
with wit and humor, about the writings and poems of this man and that.
He received my productions with indulgence, and let me have my own way,
but only on the condition that I should have nothing printed. He
promised me, on the other hand, that he himself would copy those pieces
which he thought good, and would present me with them in a handsome
volume. This undertaking now afforded an opportunity for the greatest
possible waste of time. For before he could find the right paper, before
he could make up his mind as to the size, before he had settled the
breadth of the margin and the form of handwriting, before the crow-
quills were provided and cut into pens, and Indian ink was rubbed, whole
weeks passed, without the least bit having been done. With just as much
ado he always set about his writing, and really, by degrees, put
together a most charming manuscript. The title of the poems was in
German text; the verses themselves in a perpendicular Saxon hand; and at
the end of every poem was an analogous vignette, which he had either
selected somewhere or other, or had invented himself, and in which he
contrived to imitate very neatly the hatching of the wood-cuts and tail-
pieces which are used for such purposes. To show me these things as he
went on, to celebrate beforehand in a comico-pathetical manner my good
fortune in seeing myself immortalized in such exquisite handwriting, and
that in a style which no printing-press could attain, gave another
occasion for passing the most agreeable hours. In the mean time, his
intercourse was always secretly instructive, by reason of his liberal
acquirements, and, as he knew how to subdue my restless, impetuous
disposition, was also quite wholesome for me in a moral sense. He had,
too, quite a peculiar abhorrence of roughness; and his jests were always
quaint without ever falling into the coarse or the trivial. He indulged
himself in a distorted aversion from his countrymen, and described with
ludicrous touches even what they were able to undertake. He was
particularly inexhaustible in a comical representation of individual
persons, as he found something to find fault with in the exterior of
every one. Thus, when we lay together at the window, he could occupy
himself for hours criticising the passers-by, and, when he had censured
them long enough, in showing exactly and circumstantially how they ought
to have dressed themselves, ought to have walked, and ought to have
behaved, to look like orderly people. Such attempts, for the most part,
ended in something improper and absurd; so that we did not so much laugh
at how the man looked, but at how, perchance, he might have looked had
he been mad enough to caricature himself. In all such matters. Behrisch
went quite unmercifully to work, without being in the slightest degree
malicious. On the other hand, we knew how to tease him, on our side, by
assuring him, that, to judge from his exterior, he must be taken, if not
for a French dancing-master, at least for the academical teacher of the
language. This reproval was usually the signal for dissertations an hour
long, in which he used to set forth the difference, wide as the heavens,
which there was between him and an old Frenchman. At the same time he
commonly imputed to us all sorts of awkward attempts, that we might
possibly have made for the alteration and modification of his wardrobe.
My poetical compositions, which I only carried on the more zealously as
the transcript went on becoming more beautiful and more careful, now
inclined altogether to the natural and the true: and if the subjects
could not always be important, I nevertheless always endeavored to
express them clearly and pointedly, the more so as my friend often gave
me to understand what a great thing it was to write down a verse on
Dutch paper, with the crow-quill and Indian ink; what time, talent, and
exertion it required, which ought not to be squandered on any thing
empty and superfluous. He would, at the same time, open a finished
parcel, and circumstantially to explain what ought not to stand in this
or that place, or congratulate us that it actually did not stand there.
He then spoke with great contempt of the art of printing, mimicked the
compositor, ridiculed his gestures and his hurried picking out of
letters here and there, and derived from this manoeuvre all the
calamities of literature. On the other hand, he extolled the grace and
noble posture of a writer, and immediately sat down himself to exhibit
it to us; while he rated us at the same time for not demeaning ourselves
at the writing-table precisely after his example and model. He now
reverted to the contrast with the compositor, turned a begun letter
upside down, and showed how unseemly it would be to write any thing from
the bottom to the top, or from the right to the left, with other things
of like kind with which whole volumes might have been filled.
With such harmless fooleries we squandered our precious time; while it
could have occurred to none of us, that any thing would chance to
proceed out of our circle which would awaken a general sensation and
bring us into not the best repute.
Gellert may have taken little pleasure in his "Practicum;" and if,
perhaps, he took pleasure in giving some directions as to prose and
poetical style, he did it most privately only to a few, among whom we
could not number ourselves. Professor Clodius thought to fill the gap
which thus arose in the public instruction. He had gained some renown in
literature, criticism, and poetry, and, as a young, lively, obliging
man, found many friends, both in the university and in the city. Gellert
himself referred us to the lectures now commenced by him; and, as far as
the principal matter was concerned, we remarked little difference. He,
too, only criticised details, corrected likewise with red ink; and one
found one's self in company with mere blunders, without a prospect as to
where the right was to be sought. I had brought to him some of my little
labors, which he did not treat harshly. But just at this time they wrote
to me from home, that I must without fail furnish a poem for my uncle's
wedding. I felt far removed from that light and frivolous period in
which a similar thing would have given me pleasure; and, since I could
get nothing out of the actual circumstance itself, I determined to trick
out my work in the best manner with extraneous ornament. I therefore
convened all Olympus to consult about the marriage of a Frankfort
lawyer, and seriously enough, to be sure, as well became the festival of
such an honorable man. Venus and Themis had quarrelled for his sake; but
a roguish prank, which Amor played the latter, gained the suit for the
former: and the gods decided in favor of the marriage.
My work by no means displeased me. I received from home a handsome
letter in its praise, took the trouble to have another fair copy, and
hoped to extort some applause from my professor also. But here I had
missed my aim. He took the matter severely; and as he did not notice the
tone of parody, which nevertheless lay in the notion, he declared the
great expenditure of divine means for such an insignificant human end in
the highest degree reprehensible; inveighed against the use and abuse of
such mythological figures, as a false habit originating in pedantic
times; found the expression now too high, now too low; and, in divers
particulars, had indeed not spared the red ink, though he asserted that
he had yet done too little.
Such pieces were read out and criticised anonymously, it is true; but we
used to watch each other, and it remained no secret that this
unfortunate assembly of the gods was my work: yet since his critique,
when I took his point of view, seemed to be perfectly just, and those
divinities more nearly inspected were in fact only hollow shadow-forms,
I cursed all Olympus, flung the whole mythic Pantheon away; and from
that time Amor and Luna have been the only divinities which at all
appear in my little poems.
Among the persons whom Behrisch had chosen as the butts of his wit,
Clodius stood just at the head; nor was it hard to find a comical side
in him. Being of small stature, rather stout and thick-set, he was
violent in his motions, somewhat impetuous in his utterances, and
restless in his demeanor. In all this he differed from his fellow-
citizens, who, nevertheless, willingly put up with him on account of his
good qualities, and the fine promise which he gave.
He was usually commissioned with the poems which had become necessary on
festive occasions. In the so-called "Ode," he followed the manner
employed by Ramler, whom, however, it alone suited. But Clodius, as an
imitator, had especially marked the foreign words by means of which the
poems of Ramler come forth with a majestic pomp, which, because it is
conformable to the greatness of his subject and the rest of his poetic
treatment, produces a very good effect on the ear, feelings, and
imagination. In Clodius, on the contrary, these expressions had a
heterogeneous air; since his poetry was in other respects not calculated
to elevate the mind in any manner.
Now, we had often been obliged to see such poems printed and highly
lauded in our presence; and we found it highly offensive, that he who
had sequestered the heathen gods from us, now wished to hammer together
another ladder to Parnassus out of Greek and Roman word-rungs. These
oft-recurring expressions stamped themselves firmly on our memory; and
in a merry hour, when we were eating some most excellent cakes in the
kitchen-gardens (/Kohlgärten/), it all at once struck me to put
together these words of might and power, in a poem on the cake-baker
Hendel. No sooner thought than done! And let it stand here too, as it
was written on the wall of the house with a lead-pencil.
"O Hendel, dessen Ruhm vom /Süd/ zum /Norden/ reicht,
Vernimm den /Päan/ der zu deinen Ohren steigt.
Du bäckst was /Gallien/ und /Britten/ emsig suchen,
Mit /schöpfrischen Genie, originelle/ Kuchen.
Des Kaffee's /Ocean/, der sich vor dir ergiesst,
Ist süssev als der Saft der vom /Hymettus/ fliesst.
Dein Haus ein /Monument/, wie wir den Künsten lohnen
Umhangen mit /Trophän/, erzählt den /Nationen/:
Auch ohne /Diadem/ fand Hendel hier sein Glück
Und raubte dem /Cothurn/ gar manch Achtgroschenstück.
Glänzt deine /Urn/ dereinst in majestäts'chen /Pompe/,
Dann weint der /Patriot/ an deinem /Katacombe/.
Doch leb! dein /Torus/ sey von edler Brut ein /Nest/,
Steh' hoch wie der /Olymp/, wie der /Parnassus/ fest!
Kein /Phalanx/ Griechenland mit römischen /Ballisten/
Vermög /Germanien/ und Hendel zu verwüsten.
Dein /Wohl/ is unser /Stolz/, dein /Leiden/, unser
/Schmerz/,
/Und/ Hendel's /Tempel ist der Musensöhne Herz/."
[Footnote: The humor of the above consists, not in the thoughts, but in
the particular words employed. These have no remarkable effect in
English, as to us the words of Latin origin are often as familiar as
those which have Teutonic roots; and these form the chief peculiarity of
the style. We have therefore given the poem in the original language,
with the peculiar words (as indicated by Goethe) in Italics, and subjoin
a literal translation. It will be observed that we have said that the
peculiarity consists /chiefly/, not /solely/, in the use of
the foreign words; for there are two or three instances of
unquestionably German words, which are Italicized on account of their
high-sounding pomp.
"O Hendel, whose fame extends from /south/ to /north/, hear
the /paean/i> which ascends to thine ears! Thou bakest that which
/Gauls/ and /Britons/ industriously seek, (thou bakest) with
/creative genius original/ cakes. The /ocean/ of coffee which
pours itself out before thee is sweeter than the juice which flows from
/Hymettus/. Thy house, a /monument/, how we reward the arts,
hung round with /trophies/, tells the nations: 'Even without a
/diadem/, Hendel formed his fortune here, and robbed the
/Cothurnus/ of many an eight-groschen-piece.' When thy /urn/
shines hereafter in majestic /pomp/, then will the
/patriot/ weep at thy /catacomb/. But live! let /thy/ bed
(/torus/) be the /nest/ of a noble brood, stand high as
/Olympus/, and firm as /Parnassus/. May no /phalanx/ of
Greece with Roman /ballistoe/ be able to destroy /Germania/
and Hendel. Thy /weal/ is our /pride/, thy /woe/ our
/pain/, and Hendel's /temple/ is the /heart/ of the
/sons of the Muses/."-TRANS.]
This poem had its place for a long time among many others which
disfigured the walls of that room, without being noticed; and we, who
had sufficiently amused ourselves with it, forgot it altogether amongst
other things. A long time afterwards, Clodius came out with his "Medon,"
whose wisdom, magnanimity, and virtue we found infinitely ridiculous,
much as the first representation of the piece was applauded. That
evening, when we met together in the wine-house, I made a prologue in
doggerel verse, in which Harlequin steps out with two great sacks,
places them on each side of the /proscenium/, and, after various
preliminary jokes, tells the spectators in confidence, that in the two
sacks moral aesthetic dust is to be found, which the actors will very
frequently throw into their eyes. One, to wit, was filled with good
deeds, that cost nothing; and the other with splendidly expressed
opinions, that had no meaning behind them. He reluctantly withdrew, and
sometimes came back, earnestly exhorted the spectators to attend to his
warning and shut their eyes, reminded them that he had always been their
friend, and meant well with them, with many more things of the kind.
This prologue was acted in the room, on the spot, by friend Horn: but
the jest remained quite among ourselves, not even a copy had been taken;
and the paper was soon lost. However, Horn, who had performed the
Harlequin very prettily, took it into his head to enlarge my poem to
Hendel by several verses, and then to make it refer to "Medon." He read
it to us; but we could not take any pleasure in it, for we did not find
the additions even ingenious: while the first poem, being written for
quite a different purpose, seemed to us disfigured. Our friend,
displeased with our indifference, or rather censure, may have shown it
to others, who found it new and amusing. Copies were now made of it, to
which the reputation of Clodius's "Medon" gave at once a rapid
publicity. Universal disapproval was the consequence, and the
originators (it was soon found out that the poem had proceeded from our
clique) were severely censured; for nothing of the sort had been seen
since Cronegk's and Rost's attacks upon Gottsched. We had besides
already secluded ourselves, and now found ourselves quite in the case of
the owl with respect to the other birds. In Dresden, too, they did not
like the affair; and it had for us serious, if not unpleasant,
consequences. For some time, already, Count Lindenau had not been quite
satisfied with his son's tutor. For although the young man was by no
means neglected, and Behrisch kept himself either in the chamber of the
young count, or at least close to it, when the instructors gave their
daily lessons, regularly frequented the lectures with him, never went
out in the daytime without him, and accompanied him in all his walks,
yet the rest of us were always to be found in Apel's house, and joined
them whenever they went on a pleasure ramble: this already excited some
attention. Behrisch, too, accustomed himself to our society, and at
last, towards nine o'clock in the evenings, generally transferred his
pupil into the hands of the /valet de chambre/, and went in quest
of us to the wine-house, whither, however, he never used to come but in
shoes and stockings, with his sword by his side, and commonly his hat
under his arm. The jokes and fooleries, which he generally started, went
on /ad infinitum/. Thus, for instance, one of our friends had a
habit of going away precisely at ten, because he had a connection with a
pretty girl, with whom he could converse only at that hour. We did not
like to lose him; and one evening, when we sat very happily together,
Behrisch secretly determined that he would not let him off this time. At
the stroke of ten, the other arose and took leave. Behrisch called after
him, and begged him to wait a moment, as he was just going with him. He
now began, in the most amusing manner, first to look after his sword,
which stood just before his eyes, and in buckling it on behaved
awkwardly, so that he could never accomplish it. He did this, too, so
naturally, that no one took offence at it. But when, to vary the theme,
he at last went farther, so that the sword came now on the right side,
now between his legs, an universal laughter arose, in which the man in a
hurry, who was like-wise a merry fellow, chimed in, and let Behrisch
have his own way till the happy hour was past, when, for the first time,
there followed general pleasure and agreeable conversation till deep
into the night.
Unfortunately Behrisch, and we through him, had a certain other
propensity for some girls who were better than their reputation,--by
which our own reputation could not be improved. We had often been seen
in their garden; and we directed our walks thither, even when the young
count was with us. All this may have been treasured up, and at last
communicated to his father: enough, he sought, in a gentlemanly manner,
to get rid of the tutor, to whom the event proved fortunate. His good
exterior, his knowledge and talents, his integrity, which no one could
call in question, had won him the affection and esteem of distinguished
persons, on whose recommendation he was appointed tutor to the
hereditary prince of Dessau, and at the court of a prince, excellent in
every respect, found a solid happiness.