Transcriber's Note:

1. Page scan source: Making of America http://www.archive.org/details/hesperusorforty01paulgoog

2. Greek words are transliterated within brackets, e.g. [Greek: naos].

4. [=a] represents a macron above the letter a.

JEAN PAUL'S WRITINGS.

TITAN.

2 vols. 16mo.

FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES.

2 vols. 16mo.

LEVANA, OR THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION.

1 vol. 16mo.

THE CAMPANER THAL, AND OTHER WRITINGS.

1 vol. 16mo.

HESPERUS.

2 vols. 16mo.

LIFE OF JEAN PAUL.

By Mrs. E. B. Lee. Preceded by his Autobiography.

1 vol. 16mo.

The above are published in uniform volumes by

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Boston.

HESPERUS

OR

Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days

A BIOGRAPHY

FROM THE GERMAN OF

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER

TRANSLATED BY

CHARLES T. BROOKS

"The Earth is the cul-de-sac in the great city of God,—the camera obscura full of inverted and contracted images from a fairer world,–the coast of God's creation,–a vaporous halo around a better sun,–the numerator to a still invisible denominator,–in fact, it is almost nothing at all."

Selections from the Papers of the Devil.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1865.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

University Press:
Welch, Bigelow, And Company,
Cambridge.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

A work which has three prefaces by its author may be thought by some to need, and by others not to permit, a very long one from its translator. This is the first of Richter's romances which took hold of the German public. After he had long tried in vain, by a variety of literary devices, to entice or provoke the people's attention, and win or force a way to their hearts for his wit and his wisdom, his odd fancies and his noble sentiments, on the appearance of Hesperus, the siege, as Carlyle says, ("the ten-years'-siege of a poverty-stricken existence" Jean Paul himself calls it,) may be said to have terminated by storm.

It was the Hesperus that brought Richter to Weimar. It was in Hesperus, and as Hesperus, that this singular genius rose on the horizon of Goethe and Schiller,–the latter of whom (as will be well remembered) tells his great friend that he has met "Hesperus," a strange being, like a man who has dropped from the moon. English readers may have different opinions on the question whether he "came down too soon" or too late. The Translator seems to see signs that Jean Paul is to be better and better understood and appreciated among us in this free and forming Western world, and he concludes his introduction of this second great labor to the public with the benediction upon the book which, in the closing paragraph of his second Preface, the author so touchingly pronounces on this evening and morning star of his heart.

The Translator is exceedingly indebted to his friend, Professor Knorr of Philadelphia, and to his former teacher, Dr. Beck of Cambridge, for their kind and patient assistance in correcting the proof-sheets of his work; and from the keen and practised eye of Mr. George Nichols he also received for some time valuable aid.

Newport, R. I.

PREFACE

TO THE THIRD EDITION.

Two long Prefaces follow on the heels of this third,–the first that of the second edition, and the next that of the first. Now, if I make this third again a long one,–and perhaps also, in fact, the many remaining ones of future editions,–I do not see how a reader of these latter can get through the lane of antechambers to the historical picture-gallery: he will die on his way to the book.

I report, then, briefly. In this edition such amendments have been made as were most needed and easiest. In the first place, I have frequently translated myself into German out of the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, and in fact in every instance where the speech-cleanser, with proper respect for the subject itself, demanded it. Once for all, we writers must all accommodate ourselves to the verbal-alien-bill, or decree for exiling foreigners, of Campe, Kolbe, and others; and even our beloved Goethe, however much he too "emergiert" and "eminiert," will at last, in some future edition or other, have, for example, to throw both of these very words, which in the latest^[1] he brings forward in the same line, out of the book. Is it not time, now that we have ejected the foreign peoples which had been long enough encamped in Germany, that we should send after them what has still longer remained behind,–their echo, or words?

Only let Kolbe, or any other Purist, be a reasonable man, and not exhort us to change the technical words which are the common property of cultivated Europe–e. g. of music, of philosophy–into vernacular ones which will not be understood, especially in cases where the hand of the interpreter would snatch and pluck away the butterfly-dust of variegated allusions. For example, the name Purist itself may serve as an example. Supposing one should call Arndt a political Purist of Germany, and Kolbe should substitute political speech-purifier, or pure of speech, this small conceit would give up in the translation the little bit of ghost that it haply possessed.

Even if the author, however, has not turned out such things,–as some philological anchorites do, who, like the windpipe, eject all foreign matter with disagreeable coughing and spitting, and only retain their native air,–still he has at least sought to imitate the glaciers, which from year to year gradually shove down foreign bodies, such as stone and wood, from their sides. How diligently I have done this in the present edition of Hesperus, on every side, may be seen by the old printed copy interlined with the new emendations, and I could well wish Herr Kolbe would just travel to Berlin and inspect the copy. At least I will beseech the German