Biographia Literaria
that is most beautiful and magnificent in architecture. It might have
been the rival of Venice, and it is huddle and ugliness, stench and
stagnation. The Jungfer Stieg, (that is, Young Ladies’ Walk), to which
my letters directed me, made an exception. It was a walk or promenade
planted with treble rows of elm trees, which, being yearly pruned and
cropped, remain slim and dwarf-like. This walk occupies one side of a
square piece of water, with many swans on it perfectly tame, and, moving
among the swans, shewy pleasure-boats with ladies in them, rowed by
their husbands or lovers.------
(Some paragraphs have been here omitted.)------thus embarrassed by sad
and solemn politeness still more than by broken English, it sounded like
the voice of an old friend when I heard the emigrant’s servant inquiring
after me. He had come for the purpose of guiding me to our hotel.
Through streets and streets I pressed on as happy as a child, and, I
doubt not, with a childish expression of wonderment in my busy eyes,
amused by the wicker waggons with movable benches across them, one
behind the other, (these were the hackney coaches;) amused by the
sign-boards of the shops, on which all the articles sold within are
painted, and that too very exactly, though in a grotesque confusion, (a
useful substitute for language in this great mart of nations;) amused
with the incessant tinkling of the shop and house door bells, the
bell hanging over each door and struck with a small iron rod at every
entrance and exit;--and finally, amused by looking in at the windows,
as I passed along; the ladies and gentlemen drinking coffee or playing
cards, and the gentlemen all smoking. I wished myself a painter, that I
might have sent you a sketch of one of the card parties. The long pipe
of one gentleman rested on the table, its bole half a yard from his
mouth, fuming like a censer by the fish-pool--the other gentleman, who
was dealing the cards, and of course had both hands employed, held his
pipe in his teeth, which hanging down between his knees, smoked beside
his ancles. Hogarth himself never drew a more ludicrous distortion both
of attitude and physiognomy, than this effort occasioned nor was there
wanting beside it one of those beautiful female faces which the same
Hogarth, in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty
which belonged to him as a poet, so often and so gladly introduces, as
the central figure, in a crowd of humorous deformities, which figures,
(such is the power of true genius!) neither acts, nor is meant to act
as a contrast; but diffuses through all, and over each of the group,
a spirit of reconciliation and human kindness; and, even when the
attention is no longer consciously directed to the cause of this
feeling, still blends its tenderness with our laughter: and thus
prevents the instructive merriment at the whims of nature or the foibles
or humours of our fellow-men from degenerating into the heart-poison of
contempt or hatred.
Our hotel DIE WILDE MAN, (the sign of which was no bad likeness of the
landlord, who had ingrafted on a very grim face a restless grin, that
was at every man’s service, and which indeed, like an actor rehearsing
to himself, he kept playing in expectation of an occasion for
it)--neither our hotel, I say, nor its landlord were of the genteelest
class. But it has one great advantage for a stranger, by being in the
market place, and the next neighbour of the huge church of St. Nicholas:
a church with shops and houses built up against it, out of which wens
and warts its high massy steeple rises, necklaced near the top with a
round of large gilt balls. A better pole-star could scarcely be desired.
Long shall I retain the impression made on my mind by the awful echo,
so loud and long and tremulous, of the deep-toned clock within this
church, which awoke me at two in the morning from a distressful dream,
occasioned, I believe, by the feather bed, which is used here instead
of bed-clothes. I will rather carry my blanket about with me like a wild
Indian, than submit to this abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance
was, we found, an intimate friend of the celebrated Abbe de Lisle:
and from the large fortune which he possessed under the monarchy, had
rescued sufficient not only for independence, but for respectability. He
had offended some of his fellow-emigrants in London, whom he had obliged
with considerable sums, by a refusal to make further advances, and
in consequence of their intrigues had received an order to quit the
kingdom. I thought it one proof of his innocence, that he attached no
blame either to the alien act, or to the minister who had exerted it
against him; and a still greater, that he spoke of London with rapture,
and of his favourite niece, who had married and settled in England, with
all the fervour and all the pride of a fond parent. A man sent by force
out of a country, obliged to sell out of the stocks at a great loss, and
exiled from those pleasures and that style of society which habit had
rendered essential to his happiness, whose predominant feelings were yet
all of a private nature, resentment for friendship outraged, and anguish
for domestic affections interrupted--such a man, I think, I could dare
warrant guiltless of espionnage in any service, most of all in that of
the present French Directory. He spoke with ecstasy of Paris under the
Monarchy: and yet the particular facts, which made up his description,
left as deep a conviction on my mind, of French worthlessness, as his
own tale had done of emigrant ingratitude. Since my arrival in
Germany, I have not met a single person, even among those who abhor
the Revolution, that spoke with favour, or even charity of the French
emigrants. Though the belief of their influence in the organization
of this disastrous war (from the horrors of which, North Germany deems
itself only reprieved, not secured,) may have some share in the general
aversion with which they are regarded: yet I am deeply persuaded
that the far greater part is owing to their own profligacy, to their
treachery and hardheartedness to each other, and the domestic misery or
corrupt principles which so many of them have carried into the families
of their protectors. My heart dilated with honest pride, as I recalled
to mind the stern yet amiable characters of the English patriots, who
sought refuge on the Continent at the Restoration! O let not our civil
war under the first Charles be paralleled with the French Revolution!
In the former, the character overflowed from excess of principle; in the
latter from the fermentation of the dregs! The former, was a civil war
between the virtues and virtuous prejudices of the two parties; the
latter, between the vices. The Venetian glass of the French monarchy
shivered and flew asunder with the working of a double poison.
Sept. 20th. I was introduced to Mr. Klopstock, the brother of the poet,
who again introduced me to Professor Ebeling, an intelligent and lively
man, though deaf: so deaf, indeed, that it was a painful effort to talk
with him, as we were obliged to drop our pearls into a huge ear-trumpet.
From this courteous and kind-hearted man of letters, (I hope, the
German literati in general may resemble this first specimen), I heard a
tolerable Italian pun, and an interesting anecdote. When Buonaparte was
in Italy, having been irritated by some instance of perfidy, he said in
a loud and vehement tone, in a public company--“’tis a true proverb, gli
Italiani tutti ladroni”--(that is, the Italians all plunderers.) A lady
had the courage to reply, “Non tutti; ma BUONA PARTE,” (not all, but a
good part, or Buonaparte.) This, I confess, sounded to my ears, as one
of the many good things that might have been said. The anecdote is more
valuable; for it instances the ways and means of French insinuation.
Hoche had received much information concerning the face of the country
from a map of unusual fulness and accuracy, the maker of which, he
heard, resided at Duesseldorf. At the storming of Duesseldorf by the
French army, Hoche previously ordered, that the house and property of
this man should be preserved, and intrusted the performance of the order
to an officer on whose troop he could rely. Finding afterwards, that the
man had escaped before the storming commenced, Hoche exclaimed, “HE had
no reason to flee! It is for such men, not against them, that the French
nation makes war, and consents to shed the blood of its children.” You
remember Milton’s sonnet--
“The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground”------
Now though the Duesseldorf map-maker may stand in the same relation to
the Theban bard, as the snail, that marks its path by lines of film on
the wall it creeps over, to the eagle that soars sunward and beats the
tempest with its wings; it does not therefore follow, that the Jacobin
of France may not be as valiant a general and as good a politician, as
the madman of Macedon.
From Professor Ebeling’s Mr. Klopstock accompanied my friend and me
to his own house, where I saw a fine bust of his brother. There was a
solemn and heavy greatness in his countenance, which corresponded to my
preconceptions of his style and genius.--I saw there, likewise, a very
fine portrait of Lessing, whose works are at present the chief object of
my admiration. His eyes were uncommonly like mine, if anything, rather
larger and more prominent. But the lower part of his face and his
nose--O what an exquisite expression of elegance and sensibility!--There
appeared no depth, weight, or comprehensiveness in the forehead.--The
whole face seemed to say, that Lessing was a man of quick and voluptuous
feelings; of an active but light fancy; acute; yet acute not in the
observation of actual life, but in the arrangements and management of
the ideal world, that is, in taste, and in metaphysics. I assure you,
that I wrote these very words in my memorandum-book with the portrait
before my eyes, and when I knew nothing of Lessing but his name, and
that he was a German writer of eminence.
We consumed two hours and more over a bad dinner, at the table d’hote.
“Patience at a German ordinary, smiling at time.” The Germans are the
worst cooks in Europe. There is placed for every two persons a bottle
of common wine--Rhenish and Claret alternately; but in the houses of the
opulent, during the many and long intervals of the dinner, the servants
hand round glasses of richer wines. At the Lord of Culpin’s they came
in this order. Burgundy--Madeira--Port--Frontiniac--Pacchiaretti--Old
Hock--Mountain--Champagne--Hock again--Bishop, and lastly, Punch. A
tolerable quantum, methinks! The last dish at the ordinary, viz. slices
of roast pork, (for all the larger dishes are brought in, cut up, and
first handed round and then set on the table,) with stewed prunes and
other sweet fruits, and this followed by cheese and butter, with plates
of apples, reminded me of Shakespeare [76], and Shakespeare put it in my
head to go to the French comedy.
Bless me! why it is worse than our modern English plays! The first act
informed me, that a court martial is to be held on a Count Vatron, who
had drawn his sword on the Colonel, his brother-in-law. The officers
plead in his behalf--in vain! His wife, the Colonel’s sister, pleads
with most tempestuous agonies--in vain! She falls into hysterics and
faints away, to the dropping of the inner curtain! In the second act
sentence of death is passed on the Count--his wife, as frantic and
hysterical as before: more so (good industrious creature!) she could
not be. The third and last act, the wife still frantic, very frantic
indeed!--the soldiers just about to fire, the handkerchief actually