Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/315

298 and make this stupid existence cold,' cried Schoppe with a last effort of expiring manhood. 'I am Siebenkäs,' said his double tenderly, and stepped quite close to him. 'So am I, "I " equal to "I," added the other in a low tone, and his heart, overwhelmed, broke in death.' "—Titan, s. W., t. xxiv. p. 158.

As regards the plot itself, in the dénoument of which the tragic end of Schoppe bears so conspicuous a part, it is by far the most complicated among all the novels of our author; and, in fact, so full of the most inconceivable conceits, and the most monstrous improbabilities, that Jean Paul's merit consists, not so much in the invention of his story, as in the skilful management of it, by which he contrives to make his reader forget the fictitious character of the wildest fictions, and carries him through them all, in spite of himself, with an intensity of interest, such as usually belongs only to real persons and events. The whole is evidently an improved and enlarged edition of "Hesperus:" the groundwork of the story in this, as in the other case, is the education, in a private station, and under a feigned name, of the heir to a throne. In Hesperus, the disguised prince, Flamin, is one of the subordinate characters, distinguished indeed by a certain princely excess of self-will and violence of passion, but otherwise not rising above the common level; and this, which cannot be accounted otherwise than a defect in the whole plan of Hesperus, seems to have suggested to Jean Paul the notion of reproducing the same idea, of course with necessary variations in the details of the plot to prevent actual repetition, in his Titan. Here, accordingly, the whole interest of the story is concentrated upon Count Albano, who is the rightful heir to the German principality, in which the scene is laid, but who appears on the stage as the son of a Spanish grandee. Around his lofty and highly-finished character all the other personages revolve, like attendant stars around the central sun. In the place of Lord Horion we have in Titan the Spanish knight Don Gaspard de Cesara, but with this difference, that Lord Horion is animated by high thoughts for the good of mankind, whereas Don Gaspard is impelled partly by vindictive feelings, and partly by an ambitious design to effect an alliance between Albano and his own daughter, the Countess Linda de Romeiro. Of the female characters, not one approaches to the perfection of Clotilda in Hesperus: Liana, the first object of Albano's love, placed in circumstances very similar to those of Clotilda, in the house of thoroughly worldly and ill-assorted parents, is too soft and morbidly poetic, and melts away before the heat of life's trials, like fresh fallen snow before the sun's rays. Her early death removes this formidable obstacle to the accomplishment of Don Gaspard's ambitious designs, and Albano is captivated by