Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/30

 mann's house. The Prinzessin Brambilla (1821) is properly another Fantasy-piece. The Lebensaussichten des Kater Murr (Tom-cat Murr's Philosophy of Life), published in 1820 and 1821, was meant by the author as his masterwork; but the third volume is wanting; and the wild anarchy, musical and moral, said to reign in the first two, may forever remain unreconciled.

Meanwhile, Hoffmann's tavern orgies continued unabated, and his health at last sunk under them. In 1819, he had suffered a renewed attack of gout; from which, however, he had recovered by a journey to the Silesian baths. On his forty-fifth birthday, the 24th of January 1822, he saw his best and oldest friends, including Hitzig and Hippel, assembled round his table; but he himself was sick; no longer hurrying to and fro in hospitable assiduity, as was his custom, but confined to his chair, and drinking bath-water, while his guests were enjoying wine. It was his death that lay upon him, and a mournful lingering death. The disease was a tabes dorsalis; limb by limb, from his feet upwards, for five months, his body stiffened and died. Hoffmann bore his sufferings with inconceivable gaiety; so long as his hands had power, he kept writing; afterwards, he dictated to an amanuensis; and four of his Tales, the last, Der Feind (The Enemy), discontinued only some few days before his death, were composed in this melancholy season. He would not believe that he was dying, and he longed for life with inexpressible desire. On the evening of the 24th of June, his whole body to the neck had become stiff and powerless; no longer feeling pain, he said to his Doctor: "I shall soon be through it now." "Yes," said the Doctor, "you will soon be through it." Next morning he was evidently dying: yet about eleven o'clock he awoke from his stupor; cried that he was well, and would go on with dictating the Feind that night; at the same time calling on his wife to read him the passage where he had stopt. She spoke to him in kind dissuasion: he was silent; he motioned to be turned towards