Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/29

 Yet Hoffmann could not do without society, without excitement, and now not well without exclusive admiration. His old friends he had not forsaken, for he seldom, and with difficulty, got intimate with a stranger; but their quiet life could not content him: it was clear that the enjoyment he sought was only to be found among gay laughter-loving topers, as a guest at their table, or still better, as their sovereign in the wine-house. 'The order of his life, from 1816, downwards,' says his Biographer, 'was this: on Mondays and Thursdays he passed his forenoons at his post in the Kammergericht; on other days at home, in working; the afternoons he regularly spent in sleep, to which, in summer, perhaps he added walking: the evenings and nights were devoted to the tavern. Even when out in company, while the other guests went home, he retired to the tavern to await the morning, before which time it was next to impossible to bring him home.' Strangers who came to Berlin went to see him in the tavern; the tavern was his study, and his pulpit, and his throne: here his wit flashed and flamed like an Aurora Borealis, and the table was forever in a roar; and thus, amid tobacco-smoke, and over coarse earthly liquor, was Hoffmann wasting faculties which might have seasoned the nectar of the gods.

Poor Hoffmann was on the highway to ruin; and the only wonder is, that with such fatal speed, he did not reach the goal even more balefully and sooner. His official duties were, to the last, punctually and irreproachably performed. He wrote more abundantly than ever; no Magazine Editor was contented without his contributions; the Nachtstucke (Night-pieces) were published in 1817; two years afterwards Klein Zaches, regarded (it would seem falsely) as a local satire; and at last, between 1819 and 1821, appeared in four successive volumes, the Serapionsbrüder, containing most of his smaller Tales, collected from various fugitive publications, and combined together by dialogues of the Serapion-brethren, a little club of friends, which for some time met weekly in Hoff-