



Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive









Transcriber's Notes:

   1. Page scan source: Making of America
      http://www.archive.org/details/hesperusorforty01paulgoog

   2. Greek words are transliterated within brackets, e.g. [Greek:
      naos].

   3. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

   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,--the
camera obscura full of inverted and contracted images from a fairer
world,--the coast of God's creation,--a vaporous halo around a better
sun,--the numerator to a still invisible denominator,--in fact, it is
almost 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 of
                             Massachusetts.





                           University Press:
                      Welch, Bigelow, And Company,
                               Cambridge.




                         TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


A work which has three prefaces by its author may be thought by some to
need, 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 German
public. After he had long tried in vain, by a variety of literary
devices, to entice or provoke the people's attention, and win or force
a way to their hearts for his wit and his wisdom, his odd fancies and
his noble sentiments, on the appearance of Hesperus, the siege, as
Carlyle 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 of
Goethe 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 the moon. English readers may have
different opinions on the question whether he "came down too soon" or
too late. The Translator seems to see signs that Jean Paul is to be
better and better understood and appreciated among us in this free and
forming Western world, and he concludes his introduction of this second
great labor to the public with the benediction upon the book which, in
the closing paragraph of _his_ second Preface, the author so touchingly
pronounces on this evening and morning star of his heart.

The Translator is exceedingly indebted to his friend, Professor Knorr
of Philadelphia, and to his former teacher, Dr. Beck of Cambridge, for
their kind and patient assistance in correcting the proof-sheets of his
work; and from the keen and practised eye of Mr. George Nichols he also
received for some time valuable aid.

Newport, R. I.




                                PREFACE
                         TO THE THIRD EDITION.


Two long Prefaces follow on the heels of this third,--the first that of
the second edition, and the next that of the first. Now, if I make this
third again a long one,--and perhaps also, in fact, the many remaining
ones of future editions,--I do not see how a reader of these latter can
get through the lane of antechambers to the historical picture-gallery:
he will die on his way to the book.

I report, then,