The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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The bugles were still playing; the company were walking about the
garden, or sitting before the house. The sun had gone down behind thick,
murky clouds, and the country was lying in the gray dusk, when a parting
gleam suddenly burst forth athwart the cloudy veil, and flooded every
spot around, but especially the building, and its galleries, and
pillars, and wreaths of flowers, as it were with red blood. At this
moment the parents of the bride and the other spectators beheld a train
of the wildest appearances move toward the upper corridor. Roderick led
the way as the scarlet old woman, and was followed by hump-backs,
mountain-paunches, massy wigs, clowns, punches, skeleton-like
pantaloons, female figures embanked by enormous hoops and over-canopied
with three feet of horsehair, powder and pomatum, and by every
disgusting shape that can be conceived, as though a nightmare were
unrolling her stores. They jumped, and twirled, and tottered, and
stumbled, and straddled, and strutted, and swaggered along the gallery,
and then vanished behind one of the doors. But few of the beholders had
been able to laugh: so utterly were they amazed by the strange sight.
Suddenly a piercing shriek burst from one of the rooms, and there rushed
forth into the blood-red glow of the sunset the pale bride, in a short
white frock, round which wreaths of flowers were waving, with her lovely
bosom all uncovered, and her rich locks streaming through the air. As
though mad, with rolling eyes and distorted face, she darted along the
gallery, and, blinded by terror, could find neither door nor staircase;
and immediately after rushed Emilius in chase of her, with the sparkling
Turkish dagger in his high, upraised hand. Now she was at the end of the
passage; she could go no further; he reached her. His masked friends and
the gray old woman were running after him. But he had already furiously
pierced her bosom, and cut through her white neck; her blood spouted
forth into the radiance of the setting sun. The old woman had clasped
round him to tear him back; he struggled with her, and hurled himself
together with her over the railing, and they both fell, almost lifeless,
down at the feet of the relations who had been staring in dumb horror at
the bloody scene. Above and below, or hastening down the stairs and
along the galleries, were seen the hideous masks, standing or running
about in various clusters, like fiends of hell.

Roderick took his dying friend in his arms. He had found him in his
wife's room playing with the dagger. She was almost dressed when he
entered. At the sight of the hated red bodice his memory had rekindled;
the horrible vision of the night had risen upon his mind; and gnashing
his teeth he had sprung after his trembling flying bride, to avenge that
murder and all those devilish doings. The old woman, ere she expired,
confessed the crime that had been wrought; and the gladness and mirth of
the whole house were suddenly changed into sorrow and lamentation and
dismay.

LUDWIG TIECK.

The author of the foregoing tale, Ludwig Tieck, has lately been
introduced to the English reader by an admirable translation of his two
exquisite little novels, _The Pictures_ and _The Betrothing_. He is one
among the great German writers who made their appearance during the last
ten years of the eighteenth century; a period--whether from any
extraordinary productiveness in the power that regulates the seed-time
and the harvests of the human race, or from the mighty excitements and
stimulants wherewith the world was then teeming--among the richest in
the blossoming of genius. For not to mention the great military talents
first developed in those days, among the holders of which were he who
conquered all the continent of Europe, and he before whom that conqueror
fell; turning away from the many rank but luxuriant weeds that sprang up
in France, after all its plains had been manured with blood; and fixing
the eye solely upon literary excellence, we find in our own country,
that the chief part of those men by whom we may hope that the memory of
our days will be transmitted to posterity as a thing precious and to be
held in honour, that Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Southey, and Lamb,
and Landor, and Scott, put forth during those ten years the first-fruits
of their minds; while in Germany, the same period was rendered
illustrious by Fichte and John Paul Richter at its commencement, and
subsequently by Schelling, and Hegel, and Steffens, Schleiermacher, and
the Schlegels, and Novalis, and Tieck. Of this noble brotherhood, who
all, I believe, studied at the same university, that of Jena, and who
were all bound together by friendship, by affinity of genius, and by
unity of aim, the two latter, Novalis and Tieck, were the poets: for
though there are several things of great poetical beauty in the works of
the Schlegels, their fame, upon the whole, rests on a different basis.
The lovely dreamy mind of Novalis was cut off in the full promise of its
spring; it only just awoke from the blissful visions of its childhood,
to breathe forth a few lyrical murmurs about the mysteries it had been
brooding over, and then fell asleep again. Upon Tieck, therefore, the
character of German poetry in the age following those of Goethe and
Schiller will mainly depend: and never did Norwegian or Icelandic spring
burst forth more suddenly than the youth of Ludwig Tieck. I know not in
the whole history of literature, any poet who can count up so many and
so great exploits achieved on his first descent into the arena: in
number and variety even Goethe must yield the precedence, though his
youthful triumphs were _Goetz of Berlichingen_ and _Werther_. There was
in Tieck's early works the promise, and far more than the promise, of
the greatest dramatic poet whom Europe had seen since the days of
Calderon; there was a rich, elastic, buoyant, comic spirit, not like the
analytical reflection, keen biting wit of Moliere and Congreve, and
other comic writers of the satirical school, but like the living
merriment, the uncontrollable, exuberant joyousness, the humour arising
from _good_ humour, not, as it often does, from _ill_ humour, the
incarnation, so to say, of the principle of mirth, in Shakespeare, and
Cervantes, and Aristophanes; and as a wreath of flowers to crown the
whole, there was the heavenly purity and starlike loveliness of his
_Genoveva_. Had the rest of Tieck's life kept pace with the fertility of
the six years from 1798 to 1804, he must have been beyond all rivalry
the second of German poets; and as Eschylus in the _Frogs_ shares his
supremacy with Sophocles, so would Goethe have invited Tieck to sit
beside him on his throne. Unfortunately for those who would have feasted
upon his fruits, the poet, during the last twenty years, has been so
weighed down by almost unintermitting ill health, that he has published
but little. There was a short interval indeed that seemed to bid fairer,
about the year 1812, when he began to collect his tales and lesser
dramas, on a plan something like that of the _Decameron_, in the
_Phantasm_, but it has not yet been carried beyond the second reign, out
of seven through which it was designed to extend. Of that collection the
chief part had been known to the world ten or twelve years before: some
things, however, appeared then for the first time, and among them, I
believe, was the tale of _The Love-Charm_. Latterly, Tieck's genius has
taken a new spring, in a somewhat different direction from that of his
youth. He has written half a dozen novels, in the manner of the couple
recently translated; nor are the others of less excellence than those
two; a beautiful tale of magic has also been just published; and the
speedy appearance of several other things that have employed him during
the long period of seeming inactivity, is promised; wherein he has been
engaged more or less for above a quarter of a century, and to gather
materials for which he some years since visited England. Of this work
the highest expectations may justly be formed: not many people, even, in
this country, possess a more extensive and accurate acquaintance with
our ancient drama than Tieck; no one has entered more fully into the
spirit of its great poets, than Tieck has shown himself to have done in
the prefaces to his _Old English Theatre_ and his _Shakespeare's
Vorschule_; few have ever bestowed such attention on the history of the
stage in all countries, or have so studied the principles of dramatic
composition and the nature of dramatic effect; hardly any one, I may say
no one, ever learnt so much from Shakespeare: no one, therefore, can
have more to teach us about him; and to judge from the remarks on some
of the plays which have already been printed in the _Abendzeitung_, no
one was ever so able to trace out the most secret workings of the great
master's mind, or to retain his full, calm self-possession when
following him on his highest flights; no one ever united in such
perfection the great critic with the great poet. One may look forward,
therefore, with confidence to the greatest work in aesthetical criticism
that even Germany will ever have produced.

Of the foregoing tale itself little need be said. If the translator has
failed so grievously that an English reader cannot see its merits, he
would hardly help himself out of the scrape by talking about the effect
he ought to have produced. And grievously he must have failed, if any
reader with a feeling for poetry does not perceive and enjoy the beauty
of the descriptions, especially of the two eventful scenes, the power
and passion of the wild dithyramb, the admirable delineation of the
characters in proportion to their relative importance, and the poetical
harmony and perfect _keeping_ of the whole. Nothing can be more delicate
than the way of softening the horror that might be felt for the bride:
she has not even a name, that there may be no distinct object for our
disgust to fasten on; she is only spoken of under titles of a
pleasurable meaning; her beauty, like Helen's on the walls of Troy, is
manifested by its effect: the young men are astonished at it; her air of
deep melancholy impresses even the gayest and most thoughtless, and is
thus more powerful than if pages had been employed in giving utterance
to her remorse; besides which, had the latter course been adopted, the
main object would have been the wicked heart, not the wicked deed, the
sin, not the crime; and sin is always loathsome, whereas a crime may
often be looked upon with pity. The poet has therefore wisely kept all
his power of characteristic delineation for the two chief persons in the
tale; and rarely have any characters been brought out so distinctly
within a work of such dimensions; the contrast between them runs through
every feature, yet each is the necessary complement to the other; the
abuse which they vent in the ball-room each against his dearest friend,
and in the ears of almost a stranger, is in the true style of our frail
affections, veering before the slightest puff of self-will; nor is there
a circumstance mentioned about either, which tends not to complete the
picture, and is not all but indispensable. On some occasions a whole
life and character are revealed by a single touch; as for instance when
Emilius exclaims, _No bread! Can such things be?_ No other man could
have been so ignorant of what goes on in the world, as to marvel at such
a common occurrence; yet Emilius, it is quite certain, would be
surprised, when awaked from his dreams, to behold the face of real life;
so that this exclamation is, as it were, a great toe from which to
construct one who is anything rather than a Hercules. Indeed the whole
scene of the peasant's marriage, which at first sight may appear like a
somewhat idle digression, brought in for no better reason than
amusement, is absolutely necessary to the tale as a work of art: it not
only shows the character of Emilius in a fresh and important point of
view, not only supplies him with fuel, so that he is ready to burn at
the approach of the first spark, as for the former scene he had been
prepared by the arousal of his feelings in the ball-room; which,
besides, cast a mysterious haze over the scene, and leave it half
doubtful how much of the crime was actually perpetrated: the peasant's
wedding is necessary as a contrast, as a complement, and as a relief to
the other marriage; nor can that calm and masterly irony, which is among
the first elements in the mind of a great poet, be more clearly
manifested, than it is here, where the pomp and rejoicing of the great
and wealthy are suddenly turned 'into sorrow and lamentation and
dismay;' while the poor and the abashed and the despised are enabled to
pass their days in what to them is comfort, and to obtain the enjoyment
of a day 'unto which in after-times they may look back with delight.'

Everything about the one marriage seems happy; everything about the
other seems wretched; but neither is what it seems: they who seem happy
are a prey to extravagant and sinful desires; those who seem wretched
have moderate wishes, and, though they have offended, have not done it
wantonly or in malice; they are making what seems to them the only
atonement in their power, and 'the fellow bears the creature the same
good-will, though she is such a sorry bit of clay'; therefore the end of
each marriage is according, not unto the outward show and promise, but
unto that which lies within the heart. It is thus that poetical justice
endeavours, so far as it may, to anticipate the sentence of Omniscient
justice.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.--THE HOUSE OF WEEPING.

_From Jean Paul Frederick Richter._

Since the day when the town of Haslau first became the seat of a Court,
no man could remember that any one event in its annals (always excepting
the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious
a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van
der Kabel. This Van der Kabel may be styled the Haslau Croesus; and
his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits,
one long festival of god-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands
nightly impregnated by golden showers of Danae. Seven distant surviving
relatives of seven distant relatives deceased of the said Van der Kabel,
entertained some little hopes of a place amongst his legatees, grounded
upon an assurance which he had made, 'that upon his oath he would not
fail to _remember them_ in his will.' These hopes, however, were but
faint and weakly; for they could not repose any extraordinary confidence
in his good faith--not only because in all cases he conducted his
affairs in a disinterested spirit, and with a perverse obstinacy of
moral principle, whereas his seven relatives were mere novices, and
young beginners in the trade of morality,--but also because, in all
these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the
sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his
heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, and snares for unsuspicious
scoundrels, that (as they all said) no man who was but raw in the art of
virtue could deal with him, or place any reliance upon his intentions.
Indeed the covert laughter which played about his temples, and the
falsetto tones of his sneering voice, somewhat weakened the advantageous
impression which was made by the noble composition of his face, and by a
pair of large hands, from which were daily dropping favours little and
great--benefit nights, Christmas-boxes and New-Year's gifts; for this
reason it was that, by the whole flock of birds who sought shelter in
his boughs, and who fed and built their nests on him, as on any wild
service-tree, he was, notwithstanding, reputed a secret magazine of
springes; and they were scarce able to find eyes for the visible berries
which fed them, in their scrutiny after the supposed gossamer snares.

In the interval between two apoplectic fits he had drawn up his will,
and had deposited it with the magistrate. When he was just at the point
of death he transferred to the seven presumptive heirs the certificate
of this deposit; and even then said, in his old tone--how far it was
from his expectation, that by any such anticipation of his approaching
decease, he could at all depress the spirits of men so steady and
sedate, whom, for his own part, he would much rather regard in the light
of laughing than of weeping heirs; to which remark one only of the whole
number, namely, Mr. Harprecht, inspector of police, replied as a cool
ironist to a bitter one--'that the total amount of concern and of
_interest_, which might severally belong to them in such a loss, was
not (they were sincerely sorry it was not) in their power to determine.'

At length the time is come when the seven heirs have made their
appearance at the town-hall, with their certificate--of deposit;
_videlicet_, the ecclesiastical councillor Glantz; Harprecht, the
inspector of police; Neupeter, the court-agent; the court-fiscal, Knoll;
Pasvogel, the bookseller; the reader of the morning lecture, Flacks; and
Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace. Solemnly, and in due form, they demanded
of the magistrate the schedule of effects consigned to him by the late
Kabel, and the opening of his will. The principal executor of this will
was Mr Mayor himself; the sub-executors were the rest of the
town-council. Thereupon, without delay, the schedule and the will were
fetched from the register office of the council to the council chamber:
both were exhibited in rotation to the members of the council and the
heirs, in order that they might see the privy seal of the town impressed
upon them: the registry of consignment, indorsed upon the schedule, was
read aloud to the seven heirs by the town-clerk: and by that registry it
was notified to them, that the deceased had actually consigned the
schedule to the magistrate, and entrusted it to the corporation-chest;
and that on the day of consignment he was still of sound mind: finally,
the seven seals, which he had himself affixed to the instrument, were
found unbroken. These preliminaries gone through, it was now (but not
until a brief registry of all these forms had been drawn up by the
town-clerk) lawful, in God's name, that the will should be opened and
read aloud by Mr Mayor, word for word as follows:--

'I, Van der Kabel, on this 7th day of May, 179-, being in my house at
Haslau, situate in Dog-street, deliver and make known this for my last
will; and without many millions of words, notwithstanding I have been
both a German notary and a Dutch schoolmaster. Howsoever I may disgrace
my old professions by this parsimony of words, I believe myself to be so
far at home in the art and calling of a notary, that I am competent to
act for myself as a testator in due form, and as a regular devisor of
property.

'It is a custom of testators to premise the moving causes of their
wills. These, in my case, as in most others, are regard for my happy
departure, and for the disposal of the succession to my property--which,
by the way, is the object of a tender passion in various quarters. To
say anything about my funeral, and all that, would be absurd and stupid.
This, and what shape my remains shall take, let the eternal sun settle
above, not in any gloomy winter, but in some of his most verdant
springs.

'As to those charitable foundations and memorial institutions of
benevolence, about which notaries are so much occupied, in my case I
appoint as follows: to three thousand of my poor townsmen of every
class, I assign just the same number of florins, which sum I will that,
on the anniversary of my death, they shall spend in feasting upon the
town common, where they are previously to pitch their camp, unless the
military camp of his Serene Highness shall be already pitched there, in
preparation for the reviews; and when the gala is ended, I would have
them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the school-masters in
our locality I bequeath one golden augustus. Item, to the Jews of this
place I bequeath my pew in the high church.--As I would wish that my
will should be divided into clauses, this is considered to be the first.

* * * * *

CLAUSE II.

'Amongst the important offices of a will, it is universally agreed to be
one, that from amongst the presumptive and presumptuous expectants, it
should name those who are, and those who are not, to succeed to the
inheritance; that it should create heirs and destroy them. In conformity to
this notion, I give and bequeath to Mr Glantz, the councillor for
ecclesiastical affairs, as also to Mr Knoll, the exchequer officer; likewise
to Mr Peter Neupeter, the court-agent; item to Mr Harprecht, director of
police; furthermore to Mr Flacks, the morning lecturer; in like manner to
the court-bookseller, Mr Pasvogel; and finally to Monsieur Flitte,--nothing;
not so much because they have no just claims upon me--standing, as they do,
in the remotest possible degree of consanguinity; nor again, because they
are for the most part themselves rich enough to leave handsome inheritances;
as because I am assured, indeed I have it from their own lips, that they
entertain a far stronger regard for my insignificant person than for my
splendid property; my body, therefore, or as large a portion of it as they
can get, I bequeath to them.'

At this point seven faces, like those of the Seven Sleepers, gradually
elongated into preternatural extent. The ecclesiastical councillor, a young
man, but already famous throughout Germany for his sermons printed or
preached, was especially aggrieved by such offensive personality; Monsieur
Flitte rapped out a curse that rattled even in the ears of magistracy; the
chin of Flacks the morning lecturer gravitated downwards into the dimensions
of a patriarchal beard; and the town-council could distinguish an assortment
of audible reproaches to the memory of Mr Kabel, such as prig, rascal,
profane wretch, &c. But the Mayor motioned with his hand, and immediately
the fiscal and the bookseller recomposed their features and set their faces
like so many traps with springs, and triggers, at full cock, that they might
catch every syllable; and then with a gravity that cost him some efforts:--

* * * * *

CLAUSE III.

'Excepting always, and be it excepted, my present house in Dog-street: which
house by virtue of this third clause is to descend and to pass in full
property just as it now stands, to that one of my seven relatives
above-mentioned, who shall, within the space of one half-hour (to be
computed from the reciting of this clause), shed, to the memory of me his
departed kinsman, sooner than the other six competitors, one, or, if
possible, a couple of tears, in the presence of a respectable magistrate,
who is to make a protocol thereof. Should, however, _all remain dry_, in
that case, the house must lapse to the heir-general--whom I shall proceed to
name.'

Here Mr Mayor closed the will: doubtless, he observed, the condition annexed
to the bequest was an unusual one, but yet, in no respect contrary to law:
to him that wept the first the court was bound to adjudge the house: and
then placing his watch on the session table, the pointers of which indicated
that it was now just half-past eleven, he calmly sat down--that he might
duly witness in his official character of executor, assisted by the whole
court of aldermen, who should be the first to produce the requisite tear or
tears on behalf of the testator.

That since the terraqueous globe has moved or existed, there can ever
have met a more lugubrious congress, or one more out of temper and
enraged than this of Seven United Provinces, as it were, all dry and all
confederated for the purpose of weeping,--I suppose no impartial judge
will believe. At first some invaluable minutes were lost in pure
confusion of mind, in astonishment, in peals of laughter: the congress
found itself too suddenly translated into the condition of the dog to
which, in the very moment of his keenest assault upon some object of his
appetite, the fiend cried out--Halt! Whereupon, standing up as he was,
on his hind legs, his teeth grinning, and snarling with the fury of
desire, he halted and remained petrified:--from the graspings of hope,
however distant, to the necessity of weeping for a wager, the congress
found the transition too abrupt and harsh.

One thing was evident to all--that for a shower that was to come down at
such a full gallop, for a baptism of the eyes to be performed at such a
hunting pace, it was vain to think of any pure water of grief: no
hydraulics could effect this: yet in twenty-six minutes (four
unfortunately were already gone), in one way or other, perhaps, some
business might be done.

'Was there ever such a cursed act,' said the merchant Neupeter, 'such a
price of buffoonery enjoined by any man of sense and discretion? For my
part, I can't understand what the d----l it means.' However, he
understood this much, that a house was by possibility floating in his
purse upon a tear: and _that_ was enough to cause a violent irritation
in his lachrymal glands.

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