Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 21 (US).djvu/16

 x enchantments' and 'will complain that the whole is rather dull,' while 'cultivated freethinkers again, well knowing that no ghosts or elves exist in the country, will smile at the crackbrained dreamer with his spelling-book prose and doggerel verse, and dismiss him good-naturedly as a German Lake-poet.' With which parting commendation of a romancer whose merits are so unobtrusive as to be virtually non-existent, and whose stories are likely to prove equally disappointing to those who like fairy tales and those who do not, this truly singular preface is brought to a close.

Widely different is the manner in which Carlyle introduces Richter to his reader. Here he was dealing with a writer for whom he felt genuine admiration and love; and he discourses of him with a spirit and an eloquence which we look for in vain in the other three introductory essays. His sketch of Jean Paul's literary genius is a mere outline compared with the fuller and more finished portrait of the Miscellanies; but even this brief appreciation of the German humorist contains many passages of striking power, and one in particular of almost autobiographic significance. To characterise the works of Richter 'would,' he says, 'be difficult after the fullest inspection; to describe them to the English reader would be next to impossible.'

'Whether poetical, philosophical, didactic, or fantastic, they seem all to be emblems, more or less complete, of the singular mind where they originated. As a whole, the first perusal of them, more particularly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive; and neither their meaning, nor their no-meaning, is to be discerned without long and sedulous study. They are a tropical wilderness, full of endless tortuosities; but with the fairest flowers, and the coolest fountains; now overarching us with high umbrageous gloom, now opening in long gorgeous vistas. We wander through them enjoying their wild grandeur; and by degrees our half-contemptuous wonder at the Author passes into reverence and love. His face was long hid from us: but we see him at length in the firm shape of spiritual manhood; a vast and most singular nature, but vindicating his singular nature by the force, the beauty and benignity which pervade it. In fine, we joyfully accept him for what he is, and was