Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source: Making of Americahttp://www.archive.org/details/hesperusorforty01paulgoog
2. Greek words are transliterated within brackets, e.g. [Greek:naos].
4. [=a] represents a macron above the letter a.
JEAN PAUL'S WRITINGS.
TITAN.
2 vols. 16mo.
FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES.
2 vols. 16mo.
LEVANA, OR THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION.
1 vol. 16mo.
THE CAMPANER THAL, AND OTHER WRITINGS.
1 vol. 16mo.
HESPERUS.
2 vols. 16mo.
LIFE OF JEAN PAUL.
By Mrs. E. B. Lee. Preceded by his Autobiography.
1 vol. 16mo.
The above are published in uniform volumes by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Boston.
HESPERUS
OR
Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days
A BIOGRAPHY
FROM THE GERMAN OF
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER
TRANSLATED BY
CHARLES T. BROOKS
"The Earth is the cul-de-sac in the great city of God,—thecamera obscura full of inverted and contracted images from a fairerworld,—the coast of God's creation,—a vaporous halo around a bettersun,—the numerator to a still invisible denominator,—in fact, it isalmost nothing at all."
Selections from the Papers of the Devil.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1865.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
University Press:
Welch, Bigelow, And Company,
Cambridge.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
A work which has three prefaces by its author may be thought by some toneed, and by others not to permit, a very long one from its translator.This is the first of Richter's romances which took hold of the Germanpublic. After he had long tried in vain, by a variety of literarydevices, to entice or provoke the people's attention, and win or forcea way to their hearts for his wit and his wisdom, his odd fancies andhis noble sentiments, on the appearance of Hesperus, the siege, asCarlyle says, ("the ten-years'-siege of a poverty-stricken existence"Jean Paul himself calls it,) may be said to have terminated by storm.
It was the Hesperus that brought Richter to Weimar. It was in Hesperus,and as Hesperus, that this singular genius rose on the horizon ofGoethe and Schiller,—the latter of whom (as will be well remembered)tells his great friend that he has met "Hesperus," a strange being,like a man who has dropped from