POPULAR

LITERATURE

Science and Arts.

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

No. 221.

SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1858.

MRS B.'S ALARM S. MRS B. is my wife; and her alarms are those produced by a delusion under which she labours, that there are assassins, gnomes, vampires, or what not in our house at night, and that it is my bounden duty to leave my bed at any hour or temperature, and to do battle with the same, in very inadequate apparel. The circumstances which attend Mrs B.'s alarms are generally of the following kind. I am awakened by the mention of my baptismal name, in that peculiar | species of whisper which has something uncanny in its very nature, besides the dismal associations which belong to it, from the fact of its being used only in melodramas and sick-rooms:

'Henry, Henry, Henry.'

PRICE 14d.

Mrs B. locks and double-locks the door behind me with a celerity that almost catches my retreating garment. My expedition therefore combines all the dangers of a sally, with the additional disadvantage of having my retreat into my own fortress cut off. Thus cumbrously but ineffectually caparisoned, I perambulate the lower stories of the house in darkness, in search of that disturber of Mrs B.'s repose, which, I am well convinced, is behind the wainscot of her own apartment, and nowhere else. The pantry, I need not say, is as silent as the grave, and about as cold. The great clock in the kitchen looks spectral enough by the light of the expiring embers, but there is nothing there with life except black beetles, which crawl in countless numbers over my naked ankles. There is a noise in the cellar such as Mrs B. would at once identify with the suppressed converse of anticipative burglars, but which I recognise in a moment as the dripping of the small-beer cask, whose tap is troubled with a nervous disorganisation of that kind. The dining-room is chill and cheerless: a ghostly arm-chair is doing the grim honours of the table to three other vacant seats, and dispensing hospitality in the shape of a mouldy orange and some biscuits, which I remember to have left in some disgust, about Hark! the clicking of a revolver? No; the warning of the great clock-one, two, three. . . . What a frightful noise it makes in the startled ear of night! Twelve o'clock. I left this dining-room, then, but three hours and a half ago; it certainly does not look like the same room now. The drawing-room is also far from wearing its usual snug and comfortable appearance. Could we possibly have all been sitting in the relative positions to one another which these chairs assume? Or since we were there, has some spiritual company, with no eye for order left among them, taken advantage of the remains of our fire to hold a reunion? They are here even at this moment perhaps, and their gentlemen have not yet come up from the dining-room. I shudder from head Whenever my wife makes use of this particular to foot, partly at the bare idea of such a thing, form of words, I know that opposition is useless. I partly from the naked fact of my exceedingly unrise, therefore, and put on my slippers and dressing-clothed condition. They do say that in the very gown. Mrs B. refuses to let me have the candle, because she will die of terror if she is left alone without a light. She puts the poker into my hand, and with a gentle violence is about to expel me from the chamber, when a sudden thought strikes her.

How many times she has repeated this, I know not; the sound falls on my ear like the lapping of a hundred waves, or as the 'Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe' of the parrot smote upon the ear of the terrified islander of Defoe; but at last I wake, to view, by the dim firelight, this vision: Mrs B. is sitting up beside me, in a listening attitude of the very intensest kind; her night-cap (one with cherry-coloured ribbons, such as it can be no harm to speak about) is tucked back behind either ear; her hair-in paper-is rolled out of the way upon each side like a banner furled; her eyes are rather wide open, and her mouth very much so; her fingers would be held up to command attention, but that she is supporting herself in a somewhat absurd manner upon her hands. 'Henry, did you hear that?' 'What, my love?'

"That noise. There it is again; there-there. The disturbance referred to is that caused by a mouse nibbling at the wainscot; and I venture to say so much in a tone of the deepest conviction.

'No, no, Henry; it's not the least like that: it's a file working at the bars of the pantry-window. I will stake my existence, Henry, that it is a file.'

'Stop a bit, Henry,' she exclaims, until I have looked into the cupboards and places;' which she proceeds to do most minutely, investigating even the short drawers of a foot and a half square. I am at length dismissed upon my perilous errand, and

passage which I have now to cross in order to get to Mrs B. again, my great-grandfather 'walks;' in compensation, I suppose, for having been prevented by gout from taking that species of exercise while he was alive. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, I think as I approach this spot; but I do not say so, for I am well-nigh speechless with the cold-yes, the cold: it is only my teeth that chatter. What a scream that was! There it comes again, and there is no doubt

this time as to who is the owner of that terrified voice. Mrs B.'s alarms have evidently taken some other direction. 'Henry, Henry,' she cries in tones of a very tolerable pitch. A lady being in the case, I fly upon the wings of domestic love along the precincts sacred to the perambulations of my great-grandfather. I arrive at my wife's chamber; the screams continue, but the door is locked.

tion too incompatible with reason for Mrs B. to build her alarms upon. Sometimes, although we lodge upon the second story, she imagines that the window is being attempted; sometimes, although the register may be down, she is confident that the chimney is being used as the means of ingress.

Once, when we happened to be in London-where she feels, however, a good deal safer than in the

'Open, open!' shout I. 'What on earth is the country-we had a real aların, and Mrs B., since I matter?'

There is silence; then a man's voice-that is to say, my wife's voice in imitation of a man's-replies in tones of indignant ferocity, to convey the idea of a life-preserver being under the pillow of the speaker, and ready to his hand: 'Who are you-what do you want?'

'You very silly woman,' I answer; not from unpoliteness, but because I find that that sort of language recovers and assures her of my identity better than any other-'why, it's I.'

The door is then opened about six or seven inches, and I am admitted with all the precaution which attends the entrance of an ally into a besieged garrison.

Mrs B., now leaning upon my shoulder, dissolves into copious tears, and points to the door communicating with my attiring-chamber.

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"There's sur-sur-somebody been snoring in your dressing-room,' she sobs, all the time you were away.'

This statement is a little too much for my sense of humour, and although sympathising very tenderly with poor Mrs B., I cannot help bursting into a little roar of laughter. Laughter and fear are deadly enemies, and I can see at once that Mrs B. is all the better for this explosion.

'Consider, my love,' I reason-'consider the extreme improbability of a burglar or other nefarious person making such a use of the few precious hours of darkness as to go to sleep in them! Why, too, should he take a bedstead without a mattress, which I believe is the case in this particular supposition of yours, when there were feather-beds unoccupied in other apartments? Moreover, would not this be a still greater height of recklessness in such an individual, should he have a habit of snor

I

was suffering from a quinsy-contracted mainly by my being sent about the house o' nights in the usual scanty drapery-had to be sworn in as her own special constable.

'Henry, Henry,' she whispered upon this occasion, there's a dreadful cat in the room.'

"Pooh, pooh!' I gasped; 'it's only in the street: I've heard the wretches. Perhaps they are on the tiles.'

'No, Henry. There, I don't want you to talk since it makes you cough; only listen to me. What am I to do, Henry? I'll stake my existence that there's a Ugh, what's that?'

And, indeed, some heavy body did there and then jump upon our bed, and off again, at my wife's interjection, with extreme agility. I thought Mrs B. would have had a fit, but she hadn't. She told me, dear soul, upon no account to venture into the cold with my bad throat. She would turn out the beast herself, single-handed. We arranged that she was to take hold of my fingers, and retain them, until she reached the fireplace, where she would find a shovel or other offensive weapon fit for the occasion. During the progress of this expedition, however, so terrible a caterwauling broke forth, as it seemed, from the immediate neighbourhood of the fender, that my disconcerted helpmate made a most precipitate retreat. She managed, after this mishap, to procure a light, and by a circuitous route, constructed of tables and chairs, to avoid stepping upon the floor, Mrs B. better than a play to behold that heroic woman obtained the desired weapon. It was then much defying grimalkin from her eminence, and to listen to the changeful dialogue which ensued between herself and that far from dumb, though inarticulately speaking animal.

'Puss, puss, pussy-poor pussy.'

'Miau, miau, miau,' was the linked shrillness, long drawn out, of the feline reply.

'Ps-s-s-s, ps-s-s-s, miau; ps-8-8-8-8-8-8-8,' replied the other in a voice like fat in the fire.

A slight noise in the dressing-room, occasioned by the Venetian blind tapping against the window, here 'Poor old puss, then, was it ill? Puss, puss. causes Mrs B. to bury her head with extreme swift-Henry, the horrid beast is going to fly at me! Whist, whist, cat.' ness, ostrich-like, beneath the pillow, so that the peroration of my argument is lost upon her. enter the suspected chamber-this time with a lighted candle and find my trousers, with the boots in them, hanging over the bedside something after the manner of a drunken marauder, but nothing more. Neither is there anybody reposing under the shadow of my boot-tree upon the floor. All is peace there, and at sixes and sevens as I left it upon retiring-as I had hoped-to rest.

Once more I stretch my chilled and tired limbs upon the couch; sweet sleep once more begins to woo my eyelids, when Henry, Henry,' again dissolves the dim and half-formed dream.

'My dear love,' cried I, almost suffocated with a combination of laughter and quinsy, you have never opened the door: where is the poor thing to run to?'

Mrs B. had all this time been exciting the beshovel, without giving it the opportunity of escape, wildered animal to frenzy by her conversation and which, as soon as offered, it took advantage of with an expression of savage impatience partaking very closely indeed of the character of an oath.

This is, however, the sole instance of Mrs B.'s having ever taken it in hand to subdue her own alarms. It is I who, ever since her marriage, have done the duty, and more than the duty, of an efficient house-dog, which, before that epoch, I understand was wont to be discharged by one of her younger sisters. Not seldom, in these involuntary rounds of mine, I have become myself the cause of alarm or No grounds, indeed, are too insufficient, no supposi inconvenience to others. Our little foot-page, with a

'Are you certain, Henry, that you looked in the shower-bath? I am almost sure that I heard somebody pulling the string.'

inconvenience you, miss. It was only a looking-glass; and as I know pretty young ladies don't object to seeing themselves in looking-glasses, I turned its face towards you.'

took private lessons of painters and artists for recreation and pleasure; Richter gave them, 'because the prison fare of bread and water depended upon them.' From Oeser's studio Goethe sauntered to the drawingroom of the Breitkopf family, or gossiped at the Clavier with Corona Schröter, or dined and danced at

A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND RECOGNITION. the hotel at Dölitz with mine host's amiable daughter,

A SKETCH OF LITERARY HISTORY.

In the latter half of the last century, the university of Leipsic was twice honoured in a way that is seldom the privilege of the same seat of learning: in the year 1765 Wolfgang Goethe, and in 1781 Friedrich Richter, matriculated in it. No further merit, however, belongs to Leipsic, either in the case of Goethe or of Jean Paul. A striking parallel is offered in the academic lives of the two poets at the Saxon university. The son of the Frankfort patrician was designed for the study of jurisprudence, without either choice or opposition on his part; and with just as little personal preference the son of the widow of Hof was devoted to the study of theology. Both, at first, regularly attended certain lectures, rather, however, as critics than as students; both were accustomed, though yet mere lads, to regard themselves as equal to the men whom age and experience, office and distinction, had placed far above them, and to try their strength with every authority, fearless of an overthrow. Where is the wonder that the religious awe, with which they ought to have regarded such high dignitaries, had dwindled down to nothing? Both Goethe and Richter quickly separated themselves from all learned circles and companions, their original plans of study were abandoned, their intended professions-the law of the one, and the divinity of the other-were renounced in favour of a multitude of other objects; both worked hard in all directions, read books, and wrote poems, excerpts, and notices; neither of them received or expected any guidance from the university, but each laboured, by rigorous self-culture, to lay the foundation of his own intellectual life. Both roamed the fields and the woods, had a seeing eye and a sensitive mind for the beautiful and the living, recognised the great and the whole in the minute and the particle; both greatly preferred the blue heavens, the misty heights at morning dawn, the green forest, and silent nature in her peaceful majesty, to the speaking professors on their wooden chairs, and the choking atmosphere and dust of a lecture-room: on which account both were regarded as bad students. When young Goethe returned to his native city, many a tongue was eager to defame him; and in whatever company he appeared, whispers began to circulate about him as a wild and riotous youth. The scandal-mongers of Hof acted in just the same manner towards Richter, when he fancied he could go on with his writing just as well at his mother's, as in Leipsic, where he met with nothing but hunger and hardship: for years he was regarded as a wild and unbridled genius. Twice ten years afterwards, the best and noblest spirits of the time listen to the words of the sage of Weimar as to an oracle; and ladies of quality are found crowding the antechamber of the author of Titan, begging a lock of his hair.

In the features presented, Richter's residence in Leipsic bore a perfect resemblance to that of Goethe; in others, the most striking distinctions are apparent. The university men set up a loud laugh at the Frankfort freshman, on account of his old-fashioned wardrobe; but at the same time they secretly envied him for the large remittances and letters of credit with which he was furnished. Jean Paul met with no ridicule on account of his large wardrobe, but with plenty because of his poor and torn attire; instead of having credit at the bankers, he was only too happy when he could earn his dinner from day to day. Goethe

or wrote songs for Annette Schönkopf, and played
them with her. Jean Paul lodged in an out-of-
the-way garret, and the only visits he paid were to
beg: if they had only been successful! Bankruptcy
was advancing with rapid strides upon the finances of
the young theologian, every prop of his house was
failing, the widow was alone with her infant children,
and under the pressure of extreme destitution, wrote
bitter lamentations. Fate seemed to have let her
blood-hounds loose upon our hero. It was not that
poverty which Horace admonishes the Roman youth to
accustom themselves to look upon, which had burst
upon him-

Angustam, amice, pauperiem pati
Robustus acri militia puer
Condiscat-

poverty not in the form of hardiness and abstemious-
ness, but in the shape of ghastly, hollow-eyed destitu-
tion. He pressed his suit among the professors, but
the professors had amanuenses and famuli, native lads
of the town, and most diligent attendants at lectures,
whose exemplary virtues secured them the preference.
The situations were few, and the applicants many.
Strangers coming to Leipsic found the local charities
reserved for local purposes.

The battle-field tries the quality of our armour. Weak souls bend before the first storm of adversity; not so, however, the brave spirits that have within them an unconquerable strength and freedom of will, and proud hearts, that nothing can crush. Richter, perhaps, was fired with some thoughts of ambition when he exchanged the solitude of his quiet village for the driving bustle of Leipsic; dreamy fancies hovered round him when he was in company with distinguished men of science, and a gentle voice whispered to him that he would one day be as famous as any of them. The day of hope had dawned brilliantly on his horizon, but as rapidly as a dream its glow vanished before the rough realities of the world. Jean Paul was not disposed, however, to admit that evening had come down upon his soul. It is true, dark thoughts did at times steal upon him, but a livelier, loftier stoicism taught him to overcome them. He possessed a bold, elastic humour; and all his unsuccessful suits, vain toils, and thick-coming misfortunes, he used to welcome with a quiet and severe irony. 'Misfortune,' he used to say, 'is like a nightmare-the moment you begin to fight with it, or to bestir yourself, it is gone. What is poverty? Where is he that complains of it? The pain is only like the piercing of a maiden's ears, in order to hang jewels in the wounds.' A youth who feels and reasons in this way, and who studs his reasonings with such poetry, will find or make a way for himself in the world. Viam aut inveniam aut faciam!' as his motto expresses it.

He set out with the conviction that the only successful plan of resisting sufferings, destitution, and starvation, was downright uninterrupted work. He began, mindful of his maxim, by preparing for fight. He had now finally abandoned theology; literary labours must henceforth be the stay of his life. In his little bow-windowed chamber, the philosopher of nineteen thinks and writes night and day. The Greenland Processes are ready. The manuscript is taken to the nearest bookseller, and in an hour is returned to its author. A second, a third proposal, with like results. Now he goes about among the publishers, imploring them, as he had before done the professors, and with

the like invariable refusals. How ignorant of the world this scribbler must be, to fancy that a publisher who knows what he is about, will, in circumstances so unfavourable to the bookselling craft-which indeed always exist!-undertake, as soon as he is asked, the printing of a work whose author has never been heard of, whom no one patronises, no one recommends! What prodigious assumption, too, to expect payment! If the work had been of a popular nature, and he had said nothing about twenty louis-d'ors, the case might have been different, but a book like that, and a price! The Greenland Processes continued to wander from one office to another, from this city to that, their author in the meanwhile having to solve the problem, whether it were possible to live upon nothing, and how? At length a Potosi was discovered in Berlin: an adventurous speculator, Voss by name, purchased the right, for sixteen louis-a reduction of four from the twenty-of bringing Jean Paul into the market!

I scarcely know with what to compare the feeling of a young writer who holds his first printed essay in his hands: a joy, a pride overpowers him-an ecstasy that swells all the higher from the consciousness (whether he will confess it or not) that he has taken the first step towards immortality. The critics take care to dispel all such pleasing illusions. A letter from his mother did the work as effectually in the mind of the author of the Greenland Processes. The good woman, hearing that her son had published a book, began to believe it at last possible that he might actually produce a sermon; so she wrote to Friedrich, desiring him to come to Hof, where there was a chance of his being permitted to preach in the Hospital Church. Such a proposal operated like a cold bath on any remains there might have been of the author's selfsatisfaction. Jean Paul's answer shews he thought no better of his private critic than modern writers do of official reviewers. What is a sermon,' returned he, 'but something every student can make and deliver? But do you suppose that all your clergymen in Hof can understand a line of my book, to say nothing of being able to write it?'

suffered quite enough loss by the Greenland Processes. The manuscript travelled over all Germany, and from every journey returned with the invariable reply: 'We thank you for your esteemed offer, but regret that our time and resources are fully engrossed by other undertakings.'

A ship is dashed to pieces on a rock; the crew are drowning; boards and planks, spars and masts, are drifting about amid the waves; from the surging flood a hand is thrust up; it grasps a beam, and holds fast by it, and the elements lose one of their victims. The demons of the sea are laughing; sure of their prey, they mock the struggle of the swimmer: 'Look, poor wretch; stare your very eyes blind; wave your white signal in the wind, and burst with your wail of anguish: but no sail comes in sight. Tremble, and say your last prayer, if you can; for see, there swims the shark: a moment, and all is over with you!' The situation has often been represented in smaller or larger paintings: it was the situation of Richter. He had shouted himself hoarse, and the only answer to his cry had been the murmur of the waves; he had looked himself blind, and the white sail-the letter that announced the acceptance of his manuscript-had never hove in sight. The shark swims towards himthe prospect of disgrace and destitution! Are his lips uttering their last prayer? No! Richter will fight with the shark for life or death.

Weeks and months rush past us like the wind; we see not from whence the whirlwind comes nor whither it goes. A morning chases away the evening; to-day replaces yesterday; we complete another year, we know not how, we whose lives are happy, or even tolerably so. But the poor, the unfortunate? Time flies with rapid wing over plenty and enjoyment, but slowly the days and hours of poverty drag their lengths along. In winter, spring is longed for on account of its lengthening days and greater warmth; in summer, the shorter days of autumn are looked forward to, which yield a few hours more rest to the weary body. In this manner, during his three years' residence in Leipsic, Jean Paul told off his evil hours and dreary days; he deluged the journals and newspapers with essays and treatises, wrote verses to order, also congratulations and wedding-eve jokes, and filled whole chests with the extracts he had made from borrowed books. By this means, indeed, he became possessed of a library, for books he did not possess. A vehement, but yet measured, heat burned within him. Necessity and destitution had lost their sting for him; he has looked despair in the face, and found that it has nothing maddening for him. His philosophy consoles him with the assurance that hunger and nakedness, perils and contempt, yea ofttimes the cross and the poisoned cup, have been the reward the world has given for wisdom. In all ages and countries the world has neglected its benefactors and persecuted its poets and instructors: Roger Bacon and Galileo pined away in the prisons of the inquisition; Torquato Tasso was confined in the cell of a madhouse; Camoens died in the streets of Lisbon, a beggar; and Burns, a thoroughbred steed of Phoebus, was compelled to drudge all his days in the gear of a cart-horse. But the gold that is thrown into the hottest melting-pot comes out the purest, and the canary-bird sings all the sweeter the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.

Unfortunately for Richter, the speculation Voss embarked in did not succeed: the Greenland Processes was printed, but nobody bought or read the book. The world had something better to do; far greater trifles claimed its attention. The Cagliostrians and Rosicrucians occupied the attention of politicians; the fashionable world was just then horrified at the wife of one of the court-councillors passing the lady of the president without greeting her. In another rank, a dreadful tale was going the round of the tea-tables: the comptroller's wife, forgetful of her station, had given orders for a new velvet mantle with a broad fringe! A new actress had appeared in one of the theatres, or some syren's bell-like voice was to be heard; to-day there was to be a procession, and to-morrow a deserter was to be shot. How, in the face of so many comedies and tragedies, could time or inclination be found for reading the Greenland Processes? Just as the public ignored the work, so did the critics. Editors and reviewers disdained to notice a writer who had neither contributed to nor corresponded with them. A solitary scribe in Leipsic condescended, with an undisguised sneer, to notice the work in these terms: Much, perhaps all, the author has written with great bitterness against literature, theology, wives, coxcombs, &c., may be true, but we have no doubt what-instance, as the only means of providing himself with ever that the attempt at wit, which is evident on every page, will excite disgust in the mind of the rational reader, and lead him to throw the book aside with contempt.'

A potosi of sixteen louis-d'ors is very soon exhausted; a fresh shaft must be sunk. The Selections from the Papers of the Devil was tried; but Voss declined the publication, vehemently protesting that he had

Jean Paul betook himself to literature, in the first

a living; he wrote, in fact, to get money-to live. In the further prosecution of this course, the material aim gradually began to disappear. Jean Paul will labour on, and think and feel, and will still demand, and at length receive recognition; literature ceases to be a means, and becomes an end with him; the struggle for existence merges in a struggle for recognition. Many years ago, at Paris, in the early dawn, a young