JOHANN AUGUST MUSÄUS was born in the year 1735, at Jena, where his father then held the office of Judge. The quick talents, and kind lively temper of the boy, recommended him to the affection of his uncle, Herr Weissenborn, Superintendant at Allstadt, who took him to his house, and treated him in all respects like a son. Johann was then in his ninth year: a few months afterwards, his uncle was promoted to the post of General Superintendant at Eisenach; a change which did not alter the domestic condition of the nephews though it replaced him in the neighbourhood of his parents; for his father had also been transferred to Eisenach, in the capacity of Councillor and Police Magistrate. With this hospitable relative he continued till his nineteenth year.
Old Weissenborn had no children of his own, and he determined that his foster-child should have a liberal edilcation. In due time he placed him at the University of Jena, as a student of theology. It is not likely that the inclinations of the youth himself had been particularly consulted in this arrangement; nevertheless he appears to have studied with sufficient diligence; for in the usual period of three years and a half, he obtained his degree of Master, and what was then a proof of more than ordinary merit, was elected a member of the German Society. With these titles, and the groundwork of a solid culture, he returned to Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the Church, of which he was now licentiate.
For several years, though he preached with ability, and not without approval, no appointment presented itself; and when at last a country living in the neighbourhood of Eisenach was offered him, the people stoutly resisted the admission of their new pastor, on the ground, says his Biographer, that " he had once been seen dancing." It may be, however, that the sentence of the peasants was not altogether so infirm as this its alleged very narrow basis would betoken: judging from external circumstances, it by no means appears that devotion was at any time the chief distinction of the new candidate; and to a simple rustic flock, his shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be empty and unprofitable, as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. At all events, this hinderance closed his theological career: it came in good season to withdraw him from a calling, in which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopted, his history must have been dishonest and contemptible, and his gifts could never have availed him.
Musäus had now lost his profession; but his resources were not limited to one department of activity, and he was still young enough to choose another. His temper was gay and kindly; his faculties of mind were brilliant, and had now been improved by years of steady industry. His residence at Eisenach had not been spent in scrutinizing the phases of church preferment, or dancing attendance on patrons and dignitaries: he had stored his mind with useful and ornamental knowledge; and from his remote watchtower, his keen eye had discerned the movements of the world, and film judgements of its wisdom and its folly were gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty-fifth year he became an author; a satirist, and what is rarer, a just one. Germany, by the report of its enemies and lukewarm friends, is seldom long without some Idol; some author of superhuman endowments, some system that promises to renovate the earth, some science destined to conduct, by a northwest passage, to universal knowledge. At this period, the Brazen Image of the day was our English Richardson: his novels had been translated into German with unbounded acceptance; and Grandison was figuring in many weak heads as the sole model of a true Christian gentleman. Musaus published his German Grandison in 1760; a work of good omen as a first attempt, and received with greater favour than the popularity of its victim seemed to promise. It co-operated with Time in removing this spitritual epidemic; and appears to have survived its object, for it was reprinted in 1781.
The success of his anonymous parody, however gtatifying to the youthful author, did not tempt him to disclose his name, and still less to think of literature as a profession. With his cool sceptical temper, he was little liable to over-estimate his talents, or the prizes set up for them; and he longed much less for a literary existence than for a civic one. In 1763, his wisll, to a certain extent, was granted: he became Tutor of the Pages ill the court of Weinnar; which office, after seven punctual and laborious years, he exchanged for a professorship in the Gymnasium, or public school of the same towns. He had now married; and amid the cares and pleasures of providing for a family, and keeping house like an honest burgher, the dreams of fame had faded still farther from his mind. The emoluments of his post were small; but his heart was light, anal his mind humble: to increase his income he gave private lessons in history and the like, " to young ladies and gentlemen of quality ;" and for several years took charge of a few boarders. The names of Wieland and Goethe had now risen on the world, while his own was still under the horizon: but this obscurity, enjoying as he did the kind esteem of all his many personal acquaintances, he felt to be a very light evil; and participated without envy in whatever entertainment or instruction his famed contemporaries could afford hint With literature he still occupied his leisure; he had read and reflected much; but for any public display of his acquirements he was making no preparation, and feeling no anxiety.
After an interval of nineteen years, the appearance of a new idol again called forth his iconoclastic faculty. Lavater had left his parsonage among the Alps, and set out on a cruize over Europe, in search of proselytes and striking physiognomies. His theories, supported by his personal influence, and the honest rude ardour of his character, became the rage in Germany; and men, women, and children were immersed in promoting philanthropy, and studying the human mind. Where-upon Musaus grasped his satirical hammer; and with lusty strokes, defaced and unshrined the false divinity. His Physiognomical Travels, which appeared in 1779, is still ranked by the German critics among the happiest productions of its kind in their literature; and still read for its wit and acuteness, and genial overflowing humour, though the object it attacked leas long ago become a reminiscence. At the time of its publication, when everything conspired to give its qualities their full effect, the applause it gained was instant and general. The author had, as in the former case, concealed his name: but the public curiosity soon penetrated the secret, which he had noxv no interest in keeping; and Musaus was forthwith enrolled among the lights of his day and generation; and courteous readers crowded to him from far and near, to see his face, and pay him the tribute of their admiration. This unlooked-for celebrity he valued at its just price; continuing to live as if it were not; gratified chiefly in his cllaracter of father, at having found an honest mean of improving his domestic circumstances, and enlarging the comforts of his family . The ground was now broken, and he was not long in digging deeper.
The popular traditions of Germany, so numerous and often so impressive, had attracted his attention; and their rugged Gothic vigour, saddened into sternness or venerable grace by the flight of ages, became dearer to his taste, as he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge of Sentimentality, with which The Sorrows of Werter had been the innocent signal for a legion of imitators to drown the land. The spirit of German imagination seemed but ill represented by these tearful persons, who, if their hearts were full, minded little though their heads were empty: their spasmodic tenderness made no imposing figure beside the gloomy strength, which might still in fragments be discerned in their distant predecessors. Of what has been preserved from age to age by living memory alone, the chance is that it possesses some intrinsic merit: its very existence declares it to be adapted to some form of our common nature, and therefore calculated more or less to interest all its forms. It struck Musaus that these rude traditionary fragments might be worked anew into shape and polish, and transferred from the hearths of the common people, to the parlours of the intellectual and refined. He determined on forming a series of Volksmärchen, or Popular Traditionary Tales; a task of more originality and smaller promise in those days than it would be now. In the collection of materials, he spared no pains; and despised no source of intelligence, however mean. He would call children from the street; become a child along with them, listen to their nursery tales, and reward his tiny narrators with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes he assembled a knot of old women, with their spinningwheels, about him; and amid the hum of their industrious implements, gathered stories of the ancient time from the lips of the garrulous sisterhood. Once his wife had been out paying visits: on opening the parlour door at her return, she was met by a villainous cloud of tobaccosmoke; and venturing forward through the haste, she found her husband seated by the stove, in company with an old soldier, who was smoking vehemently on his black stump of a pipe, and charming his landlord, between whiffs, with legendary lore.
The Volksmärchen, in five little volumes, appeared in 1782. They soon rose into favour with a large class of readers; and while many generations of novels have since that time been ushered into being, and conducted out of it, they still survive, increasing in popularity rather than declining. This preeminence is owing less to the ancient materials, than to the author's way of treating them. The primitive tradition often serves him only as a vehicle for interesting description, shrewd sarcastic speculation, and gay fanciful pleasantry, extending its allusions over all things past and present, now rising into comic humour, now sinking ill to drollery, often tasteless, strained, or tawdry, but never dull. The traces of poetry and earnest imagination, here and there discernible in the original fiction, he treats with levity and kind sceptical derision: nothing is required of the reader but what all readers are prepared to give. Since the publication of this work, the subject of popular tradition has been handled to triteness; Volksmärchen have been written and collected without stint or limit; and critics, in admitting that Musaus was the first to open this mine of entertainment, have lamented the incongruity between his subject and his style. But the faculty of laughing has been given to all men, and the feeling of imaginative beauty has been given only to a ferv: the lovers of primeval poetry, in its unadulterated state, may censure Musaus; but they join with the public at large in reading him.
This book of Volksmärchen established the character of its author for wit and general talent, and forms the chief support of his reputation with posterity. A few years after, he again appeared before the public with a humorous performance, entitled, Friend Hein's Apparitions, in the style of Holberg, printed in 1785. Friend Hein is a name under which Musäus, for what reason his commentator Wieland seems unable to inform us, usually personifies Death: the essay itself, which I have never seen, may be less irreverent and offensive to pious feeling than its title indicates, and it is said to ahollnfl with a wit, humour and knowledge of life," as much as any of his former works. He had also begun a second series of Tales, under the title of Straussfedern (Ostrich-feathers): but only the first volume had appeared, when death put a period to his labours. He had long been in weakly health; often afflicted with violent head-achs: his disorder was a polypus of the heart, which cut him off on the 28th of October 1787, in the fifty-second year of his age. The Straussfedern was completed by another hand; and a small volume of Remains, edited by Kotzebue in 1791, concludes the list of his writings. A simple but tasteful memorial, we are told, was erected over his grave lay some unknown friend.
Musäus was a practical believer in the Horatian maxim, Nil admirari: of a jovial heart, and a penetrating, well-cultivated understanding, he saw things as they were, and had little disposition or aptitude to invest them with any colours but their own. Without much effort, therefore, he stood aloof from every species of cant; and was the man he thought himself, and wished others to think him. Had his temper been unsocial and melancholic, such a creed nzight have rendered him spiteful, narrow, and selfish: but nature had been kinder to him than education; he did not quarrel with the world, though he saw its barrenness, and knew not holv to make it solemn any more than lovely; for his heart was gay and kind; and an imperturbable good-humour, more potent than a panoply of brass, defended him from the stings and arrows of outrageous Fortune to the end of his pilgrimage. Few laughers have walked so circumspectly, and acquired or merited so much affection. By profession a Momus, he looked upon the world as little else than a boundless Chase, where the wise were to recreate themselves with the hunting of Follies; and perhaps he is the only satirist on record of whom it can be said, that his jesting never cost him a friend. His humour is, indeed, untinctured with bitterness; sportful, ebullient, and guileless, as the frolics of a child. He could not reverence men; but with all their faults he loved them; for they were his brethren, and their faults were not clearer to him than his own. He inculcated or entertained no lofty principles of generosity; yet though never rich in purse, he was always ready to divide his pittance with a needier fellow-man. Of vanity, he showed little or none: in obscurity he was contented; and when his honours came, he wore them meekly, and was the last to see that they were merited. in society he was courteous and yielding; a universal favourite; in his chosen circle, the most fascinating of companions. From the slenderest trifle, he could spin a boundless web of drollery; and his brilliant mirth enlivened without wounding. With the foibles of others, he abstained from meddling; but among his friends, we are informed, he could for hours keep the table in a roar, when, with his dry inimitable vein, he started some banter on himself or his wife; and, in trustful abandonment, laid the reins on the neck of his fancy to pursue it. Without enthusiasm of character, or any pretension to high or even earnest qualities, he was a well-conditioned, laughter-loving, kindly man; led a gays jestful life; conquering by contentment and mirth of heart, the long series of difficulties and distresses with which it assailed him; and died regretted by his nation, as a forwarder of harmless pleasure; and by those that knew him better, as a truthful, unassuming, affectionate, and, on the whole, very estimable person.
His intellectual character corresponds with his moral and social one; not high or glorious, but genuine so far as it goes He does not approach the first rank of writers; he attempts not to deal with the deeper feelings of the heart; and for instructing the judgement, he ranks rather as a sound, well-informed, common-sense thinker, than as a man of high wisdom or originality. He advanced few new truths, but he dresed many old ones in sprightly apparel; and it ought to be remembered, that he kept himself unspotted from the errors of his time i a merit which posterity is apt to underrate; for nothing seems more stolid than a past delusion; and we forget that delusions, destined also to be past, are now present with ourselves, about us and within us, which, were the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forthwith convict and cast away. Musaus had a quick vigorous intellect, a keen eye for the common forms of the beautiful, a fancy ever prompt with allusions, and an overflowing store of sprightly and bee nignant humour. These natural gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by study both of books and things; his reading distinguishes him even in Germany; nor does he bear it about him like an ostentatious burdens but ill the shape of spiritual strength and plenty derived from it. As an author, his beauties and defects are numerous and easily discerned. His style sparkles with metaphors, sometimes just and beautiful, often new and surprising; but it is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. Of his humour, his distinguishing gift, it may be remarked, that it seems copious rather than fine, and originates rather in the understanding than in the character: his heart is not delicate, or his affections tender; but he loves the ludicrous with true passion; and see ing keenly, if he feels obtusely, he can choose with sufficient skill the point of view from which his object shall appear distorted, as he requires it. This is the humour of a Swift or a Voltaire, but not of a Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best passages; it may produce a Zadig or a Battle of the Books; but not a Don Quixote or a Corporal Trziel. Musaus is, in fact, no poet; he can see, and describe with rich graces what he sees; but he is nothing, or very little, of a Maker. His imagination is not powerless: it is like a bird of feeble wing, which can fly from tree to tree; but never soars for a moment into the Ether of Poetry, to bathe in its serene splendour, with the region of the Actual lying far below, and brightened into beauty by radiance not its own. Lie is a man of fine and varied talent, but scarcely of any genius.
These characteristics are apparent enough in his Popular Tales; they may be traced even in the few specimens of that work, by which lie is now introduced to the English reader. As has been already stated his Volksmahrchen exhibit himself much better than his subject. He is not admitted by his critics to have seized the finest spirit of this species of fiction, or turned it to the account of which it is capable in other hands. Whatever was austere or earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon awe or horror, his riant fancy rejected with aversion: the rigorous moral sometimes hid in these traditions, the grim lines of primeval feeling and imagination to be traced in them, had no charms for him. These ruins of the remote time he l as not attemptetl to complete into a perfect edifice, according to the first simple plan; he has rather pargetted them anew, and decorated them with the most modern ornaments and furniture; and he introduces his guests, with a roguish smile at the strange, antic contrast they are to perceive between the movables and the apartment. Sometimes he rises into a flight of simple eloquence, and for a sentence or two, seems really beautiful and affecting; but the knave is always laughing in his sleeve at our credulity, and returns with double relish to riot at will in his favourite domain.
Of the three Tales here offered to the reader, nothing need be said in explanation; for their whole significance, with all their beauties and blemishes, lies very near the surface. I have selected them, as specimens at once of his manner and his materials; in the hope, that, conveying some impression of a gifted and favourite writer, they may furnish a little entertainment both to the lovers of intellectual novelty, and of innocent amusement. To neither can I promise very much: Musäus is a man of sterling powers,but no literary monster; and his Tales, though smooth and glittering, are cold; they have beauty, yet it is the beauty not of living forms, but of wellproportioned statues. Meanwhile, I have given him as I found himn endeavouring to copy faithfully; changing nothing, whether I might think it good or bail, that my skill enabled me to keep unchanged. With all drawbacks, I anticipate some favour for him: but his case admits no pleading; being clear by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first judgement, and with out the help of advocates.
This page was created by Michele Nichols and Maria Sloughter