୧

whom thou knowest?

The Andreas and Gretchen, or 'the Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a 'time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy 'nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning 5 'and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye 'thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual.'

The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. 10 'From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On 'the name I have many times meditated and conjectured; 'but neither in this lay there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To 15

no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (Pränumeranten), MilitiaRolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdröckh, except 20 as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again ୧ what may the unchristian rather than Christian " Diogenes mean ? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend by such designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, 'or his own present malign humour? Perhaps the latter, 25 'perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an 'Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or in- 30 'deed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. 'Often have I fanced how, in thy hard life-battle, thou 'wert shot at and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, ham'strung, browbeaten and bedevilled, by the Time-Spirit

' (Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, till the good soul first 'given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst 'nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal 'to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the 5 'Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named ! Which Appeal and Pro'test, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite 'lost in air.

'For indeed as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is 10 'much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the ear

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'liest garment you wrap round the earth-visiting ME; to 'which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there 'are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than 'the very skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole. 'soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seed-grain 'will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the 20 most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Sci'ence, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, 'than a right Naming. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a 25 continuation of the same; be the Appearances exotic' vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in Science), or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, ca'lamities, God-attributes, Gods? In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief, and he will steal; in 30 an almost similar sense, may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?'

'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all 'ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was open

'ing his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling-out his ten 'fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half'awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for 5 'himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where 'he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infi'nite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he 'could perform the miracle of-Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) 10 Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by 'degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the *watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation, grows Thought, grow Fantasy and Force, and we have Phil'osophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions!

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'Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by 'such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, ' travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave- 20 out that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some 'sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birth-land; of whom, as of her indigent ' sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Ente'pfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his 25 spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above 'all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut-out for him than whimpering.'

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdröckh's genealogy. More

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imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in 5 honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating-Library, some cultivated 10 native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing stranger, who in a 15 state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?

CHAPTER II.

IDYLLIC.

'HAPPY season of Childhood!'exclaims Teufelsdröckh: Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that 20 visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and 'for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round (umgaukelt) by sweetest Dreams! If the * paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens 25us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, priest and 'king, and Obedience that makes us free. The young 'spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what

e.

we mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying 'stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain to the 5 'man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirl'ing Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest.

९

Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long rough journey is at 'hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, 10 'but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: e ee Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in?" Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus conquer

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* empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee 15 not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's e child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the fair 'Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere are dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which bud- 20 'ding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded 'stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.'

In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical 25 details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on, with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out- 30 post from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how the brave old Linden,' stretching