Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/19

 Now and then I have been honestly amused at people who, reckoning themselves men of experience and expert judges of human nature, have passed opinions on me. How shockingly wide of the mark they were! One judged me to be ever so much better and another ever so much worse than I was, and invariably on what they imagined to be very subtle grounds.

So much unmerited honour has been paid me in my lifetime that I may upon occasion well put up with a little unmerited censure.

Lichtenberg’s other works include one dealing with all the most notable estimates and interpretations of the character of Hamlet ; while another of interest to Englishmen is entitled, “Exhaustive Exposition of the Hogarthian Copper-plate Engravings.” The latter, he acknowledges quite frankly, was a piece of hack-work ; and in writing to Goethe, who had presented him with a copy of “Wilhelm Meister,” he alludes to this Hogarthian enterprise as “my scandalous excursion.” Goethe, by the way, also had some correspondence with the Göttingen professor on the subject of the colour theory he had so much at heart.

Apart from his scientific reputation, Lichtenberg was in his lifetime best known as a satirist. He made a special butt of Lavater; and his “Fragment on Tails,” directed against the new theory of physiognomy, was an exquisite skit written with Swiftian diablerie, and illustrated with the absurdest of pig-tail silhouettes. “The Paraclete ; or