Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/12

 —an event which must have had an air almost of superfluity, if not of monotony, for our philosopher was the eighteenth and youngest child. Like Pope, a fellow satirist, Lichtenberg was deformed. In early childhood, through the carelessness of his nurse, he suffered an injury resulting in curvature of the spine. The malformation became more and more pronounced, so that in his later years the philosopher withdrew almost entirely from social intercourse, shut himself up in his room for months at a time, and grew misanthropic. He had been a professor at Göttingen, and was also concerned in editing or contributing to literary and scientific publications. As these were not very successful, he subsequently devoted himself to similar work on his own account, for which and his former researches he received many honorary distinctions. He died in his fifty-seventh year. So apparently uneventful a life was diversified by two journeys to England, made when Lichtenberg was a young man, and the letters and memoranda which he then made still retain some interest for Englishmen. They have much to say about Garrick, of whose art they contain a careful, intimate, and reverent appreciation, down to the very smallest detail. One characteristic entry perhaps worth mentioning tells of Lichtenberg strolling down Piccadilly and the “Heumarkt,” and being thrown