went to Jean Paul's. Friend Harscher was out of humor, and would not go, say what I would. I too, for that matter, am but a poor nameless student; but what of that?

"A pleasant, kindly, inquisitive woman, who had opened the door to me, I at once recognized for Jean Paul's wife by her likeness to her sister. A child was sent off to call its father. He came directly; he had been forewarned of my visit by letters from Berlin and Leipzig; and received me with great kindness. As he seated himself beside me on the sofa, I had almost laughed in his face, for in bending down somewhat he had the very look our Neumann, in his Versuchen und Hindernissen, has jestingly given him, and his speaking and what he spoke confirmed that impression. Jean Paul is of stout figure; has a full, well-ordered face; the eyes small, gleaming out on you with lambent fire, then again veiled in soft dimness; the mouth friendly, and with some slight motion in it even when silent. His speech is rapid, almost hasty, even stuttering somewhat here and there; not without a certain degree of dialect, difficult to designate, but which probably is some mixture of Frankish and Saxon, and of course is altogether kept down within the rules of cultivated language.

"First of all, I had to tell him what I was charged with in the shape of messages, then whatsoever I could tell in any way, about his Berlin friends. He willingly remembered the time he had lived in Berlin, as Marcus Herz's neighbor, in Leder's house; where I, seven years before, had first seen him in the garden by the Spree, with papers in his hand, which it was privately whispered were leaves of Hesperus. This talk about persons, and then still more about Literature growing out of that, set him fairly under way, and soon he had more to impart than to inquire. His conversation was throughout amiable and good-natured, always full of meaning, but in quite simple tone and expression. Though I knew beforehand that his wit and humor belonged only to his pen, that he could hardly write the shortest note without these introducing themselves, while on the contrary his oral utterance seldom showed the like, yet it struck me much that,

in this continual movement and vivacity of mood to which he yielded himself, I observed no trace of these qualities. His demeanor otherwise was like his speaking; nothing forced, nothing studied, nothing that went beyond the burgher tone. His courtesy was the free expression of a kind heart; his way and bearing were patriarchal, considerate of the stranger, yet for himself too altogether unconstrained. Neither in the animation to which some word or topic would excite him, was this fundamental temper ever altered; nowhere did severity appear, nowhere any exhibiting of himself, any watching or spying of his hearer; everywhere kind-heartedness, free movement of his somewhat loose-flowing nature, open course for him, with a hundred transitions from one course to the other, howsoever or whithersoever it seemed good to him to go.

"At first he praised everything that was named of our new appearances in Literature; and then, when we came a little closer to the matter, there was blame enough and to spare. So of Adam Müller's Lectures, of Friedrich Schlegel, of Tieck and others. He said, German writers ought to hold by the people, not by the upper classes, among whom all was already dead and gone; and yet he had just been praising Adam Müller, that he had the gift of speaking a deep word to cultivated people of the world. He is convinced that from the opening of the old Indian world nothing is to be got for us, except the adding of one other mode of poetry to the many modes we have already, but no increase of ideas: and yet he had just been celebrating Friedrich Schlegel's labors with the Sanscrit, as if a new salvation were to issue out of that. He was free to confess that a right Christian in these days, if not a Protestant one, was inconceivable to him; that changing from Protestantism to Catholicism seemed a monstrous perversion; and with this opinion great hope had been expressed, a few minutes before, that the Catholic spirit in Friedrich Schlegel, combined with the Indian, would produce much good! Of Schleiermacher he spoke with respect; signified, however, that he did not relish his Plato greatly; that in Jacobi's, in Herder's soaring flight of soul he traced far more of those divine old sages than in the learned acumen of Schleiermacher;

a deliverance which I could not let pass without protest. Fichte, of whose Addresses to the German Nation, held in Berlin under the sound of French drums, I had much to say, was not a favorite of his; the decisiveness of that energy gave him uneasiness; he said he could only read Fichte as an exercise, 'gymnastically,' and that with the purport of his Philosophy he had now nothing more to do.

"Jean Paul was called out, and I stayed a while alone with his wife. I had now to answer many new questions about Berlin; her interest in persons and things of her native town was by no means sated with what she had already heard. The lady pleased me exceedingly; soft, refined, acute, she united with the loveliest expression of household goodness an air of higher breeding and freer management than Jean Paul seemed to manifest. Yet, in this respect too, she willingly held herself inferior, and looked up to her gifted husband. It was appar ent every way that their life together was a right happy one. Their three children, a boy and two girls, are beautiful, healthy, well-conditioned creatures. I had a hearty pleasure in them; they recalled other dear children to my thoughts, whom I had lately been beside! . . .

"With continual copiousness and in the best humor, Jean Paul (we were now at table) expatiated on all manner of objects. Among the rest, I had been charged with a salutation from Rahel Levin to him, and the modest question, 'Whether he remembered her still?' His face beamed with joyful satisfaction: 'How could one forget such a person?' cried he impressively. That is a woman alone of her kind: I liked her heartily well, and more now than ever, as I gain in sense and apprehension to do it; she is the only woman in whom I have found genuine humor, the one woman of this world who had humor!' He called me a lucky fellow to have such a friend; and asked, as if proving me and measuring my value, How I had deserved that?

"Monday, 24th October. Being invited, I went a second time to dine. Jean Paul had just returned from a walk; his wife, with one of the children, was still out. his writings; that questionable string with

We came upon most authors,

which the one will not have you touch, which another will have you keep jingling continually. He was here what I expected him to be; free, unconstrained, good-natured, and sincere with his whole heart. His Dream of a Madman, just published by Cotta, was what had led us upon this. He said he could write such things at any time; the mood for it, when he was in health, lay in his own power; he did but seat himself at the harpsichord, and fantasying for a while on it, in the wildest way, deliver himself over to the feeling of the moment, and then write his imaginings, according to a certain predetermined course, indeed, which however he would often alter as he went on. In this kind he had once undertaken to write a Hell, such as mortal never heard of; and a great deal of it is actually done; but not fit for print. Speaking of descriptive composition, he also started as in fright when I ventured to say that Goethe was less complete in this province; he reminded me of two passages in Werter, which are indeed among the finest descriptions. He said that to describe any scene well, the poet must make the bosom of a man his camera obscura, and look at it through this, then would he see it poetically. . . .

"The conversation turned on public occurrences, on the condition of Germany, and the oppressive rule of the French. To me discussion, of that sort are usually disagreeable; but it was delightful to hear Jean Paul express, on such occasion, his noble patriotic sentiments; and, for the sake of this rock-island, I willingly swam through the empty tide of uncertain news and wavering suppositions which environed it. What he said was deep, considerate, hearty, valiant, German to the marrow of the bone. I had to tell him much; of Napoleon, whom he knew only by portraits; of Johannes von Müller; of Fichte, whom he now as a patriot admired cordially; of the Marquez de la Romana and his Spaniards, whom I had seen in Hamburg. Jean Paul said he at no moment doubted but the Germans, like the Spaniards, would one day rise; and Prussia would avenge its disgrace, and free the country; he hoped his son would live to see it, and did not deny that he was bringing him up for a soldier.

"October 25th. I stayed to supper, contrary to my purpose, having to set out next morning early. The lady was so kind, and Jean Paul himself so trustful and blithe, I could not withstand their entreaties. At the neat and well-furnished table (reminding you that South Germany was now near), the best humor reigned. Among other things, we had a good laugh at this, that Jean Paul offered me an introduction to one of what he called his dearest friends in Stuttgard, — and then was obliged to give it up, having irrecoverably forgotten his name! Of a more serious sort, again, was our conversation about Tieck, Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel, and others of the romantic school. He seemed in ill-humor with Tieck at the moment. Of Goethe he said: 'Goethe is a consecrated head; he has a place of his own, high above us all.' We spoke of Goethe afterwards, for some time: Jean Paul, with more and more admiration, nay with a sort of fear and awestruck reverence.

"Some beautiful fruit was brought in for dessert. On a sudden, Jean Paul started up, gave me his hand, and said: 'Forgive me, I must go to bed! Stay you here in God's name, for it is still early, and chat with my wife; there is much to say between you, which my talking has kept back. I am a Spiessburger [of the Club of Odd Fellows], and my hour is come for sleep.' He took a candle, and said good-night. We parted with great cordiality, and the wish expressed on both sides, that I might stay at Baireuth another time."

These biographic phenomena; Jean Paul's loose-flowing talk, his careless variable judgments of men and things; the prosaic basis of the free-and-easy in domestic life with the poetic Shandean, Shakspearean, and even Dantesque, that grew from it as its public outcome; all this Varnhagen had to rhyme and reconcile for himself as he best could. The loose-flowing talk and variable judgments, the fact that Richter went along, "looking only right before him as with blinders on," seemed to Varnhagen a pardonable, nay an amiable peculiarity, the mark of a trustful, spontaneous, artless nature; connected with whatever was best in Jean Paul. He found him on the whole (what we at a distance have always done) "a genuine