Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/322

Rh Paul's beautiful comparison of the stars above, to eyes twinkling to each other, "eye to eye, life to life," and so disclosing by their bright sheen to the mortal eye below "the world in deeper and deeper depth," all which the ill-starred translator understands of human eye meeting human eye, one living man with another living man, in "the outward living world."

We were inclined, before we looked more nearly into the matter, to pity Jean Paul's translator; but we confess our pity is altogether transferred to poor Jean Paul himself, who, if he were alive to see how one of his favourite works is "dished " in a language for the literature of which be felt such intense love and veneration, would assuredly pay a visit to his caricaturist across the Atlantic, in the character of Siebenkäs, or Leibgeber, or Schoppe, and chastise him soundly for his murderous assaults upon his finest thoughts.

But enough of the Flegeljahre, and this travesty of them. We must draw our article to a close; which we shall do with a brief account of the philosophical works of our author. These are, besides two treatises on the immortality of the soul, his "Levana" and his "Æsthetic." The former of these contains his views on education, in a series of what be himself calls "fragments;" the latter, in a no less fragmentary form, his theory of poetic beauty. The following list of the subjects treated of in the two first volumes of the "Æsthetic," will give our reader some idea of the plan of this ars poetica of Jean Paul:—

"Of poetic art in general—of the successive degrees of poetic power—of genius—of Greek or plastic poesy—of romantic poesy—of the ridiculous—of humoristic poesy—of epic, dramatic, and lyric humour—of wit—of characters—historic fable of the drama and the epos—of the novel—of lyric poetry—of style—a fragment on the German language."

The three following volumes are of a much more miscellaneous character, consisting of short disquisitions, essays, and fragments, on a variety of points connected with the main subject of the work; among them, in the fourth volume, under the title "Kleine Bücherschau," a reprint is given of several reviews written at different times for the "Heidelberger Jahhrbücher," one of which, doubly interesting on account of the reviewee, as well as the reviewer,—the review of Mad. de Stael's Germany,—is already known to the English public by Mr. Carlyle's translation.

Far more interesting, however, than either the "Levana" or the "Æsthetic," are Jean Paul's two treatises on the immortality of the soul, his "Kampaner Thal," and his "Selina." Both are in the form of dialogues, after the manner of Cicero's philosophical