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[Footnote 1: A writer in the Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1775 (II, 787
In 1767, the year before the publication of the Sentimental Journey, we find three notices of Tristram Shandy. In the Deutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften is a very brief but, in the main, commendatory review of the Zückert translation, coupled with the statement that the last parts are not by Sterne, but with the claim that the humor of the original is fairly well maintained. The review is signed “Dtsh.” Another Halle periodical, the Hallische Neue Gelehrte Zeitungen, in the issue for August 10, 1767 reviews the same volumes with a much more decided acknowledgment of merit. It is claimed that the difference is not noticeable, and that the ninth part is almost more droll than all the others, an opinion which is noteworthy testimony to its originator’s utter lack of comprehension of the whole work and of the inanity of this spurious last volume. The statement by both of these papers that the last three volumes, parts VII, VIII and IX, of the Zückert translation, rest on spurious English originals, is, of course, false as far as VII and VIII are concerned, and is true only of
Other journals devote long reviews to the new favorite: according to the Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen all the learned periodicals vied with one another in lavish bestowal of praise upon these Journeys. The journals consulted go far toward justifying this statement.
The Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen for December 18, 1769, in mentioning this new edition of Zückert’s translation, states that Wieland has now given up his intention, but adds: “Perhaps he will, however, write essays which may fill the place of a philosophical commentary upon the whole book.” That Wieland had any such secondary purpose is not elsewhere stated, but it does not seem as if the journal would have published such a rumor without some foundation in fact.
A little more than a year after the review in the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent, which has been cited, the Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen in the number dated March 1, 1765, treats Sterne’s masterpiece in its German disguise. This is the first mention of Sterne’s book in the distinctively literary journals.
[Footnote 57: The same opinion is expressed in the Jenaische Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen, 1776, p.
A critic in the Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen for January 17, 1772, treating the first two volumes, expresses the opinion that Jacobi, the author of the “Tagereise,” and Schummel have little but the title from Yorick.
This was at the time of Wieland’s early enthusiasm, when he was probably contemplating, if not actually engaged upon a translation of Tristram Shandy. “Thy fate of yore” in the second line is evidently a poetaster’s acceptation of an obvious rhyme and does not set Yorick’s German experience appreciably into the past. The translator supplies frequent footnotes explaining the allusions to things specifically English. He makes occasional comparison with German conditions, always with the claim that Germany is better off, and needs no such satire. The Hallische Neue Gelehrte Zeitungen for June 1, 1769, devotes a review of considerable length to this translation; in it the reviewer asserts that one would have recognized the father of this creation even if Yorick’s name had not stood on its forehead; that it closely resembles its fellows even if one must place it a degree below the Journey. The Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek throws no direct suspicion on the authenticity, but with customary insight and sanity of criticism finds in this early work “a
[Footnote 77: Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1775. See Gothaische Gel. Zeitungen, 1776, I, pp. 208-9, and Allg. deutsche Bibl., XXXII,
[Footnote 60: XII, 1, pp. 210-211. Doubt is also suggested in the Hallische Neue Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1769, IV, p.
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