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Passionately he seized on Herder’s idea of evolution, and it was towards establishing it that all his endeavours, botanical, zoological, morphological and osteological, were directed.
[Footnote 47: “Herder’s Briefwechsel mit seiner Braut, April, 1771, to April, 1773,” edited by Düntzer and F.
[Footnote 14: Herder’s sämmtliche Werke, edited by B.
Herder’s early acquaintance with Sterne has been already treated. Subsequent writings offer also occasional indication of an abiding admiration. Soon after his arrival in Paris he wrote to Hartknoch praising Sterne’s characterization of the French people. The fifth “Wäldchen,” which is concerned with the laughable, contains reference to Sterne.
Nur um so mehr ärgern mich auch seine verfluchten Säuereien und Zweideutigkeiten, die das Buch wenigerer Empfehlung fähig machen als es verdient.” We learn from the same letter that Herder possessed the sermons of Yorick in the Zürich translation. Herder’s own homiletical style during this period, as evinced by the sermons preserved to us, betrays no trace of Sterne’s influence.
This is his own statement in “Dichtung und Wahrheit.” That Herder’s enthusiasm for Sterne was generous has already been shown by letters written in the few years previous to his sojourn in Strassburg. Whatever the exact time of Goethe’s first acquaintance with Sterne, we know that he recommended the British writer to Jung-Stilling for the latter’s cultivation in letters.
Among German literati, Herder is another representative of acquaintance with Sterne and appreciation of his masterpiece. Haym implies that Sterne and Swift are mentioned more often than any other foreign authors in Herder’s writings of the Riga period (November, 1764, to May, 1769). This would, of course, include the first fervor of enthusiasm concerning the Sentimental Journey, and would be a statement decidedly doubtful, if applied exclusively to the previous years. In a note-book, possibly reaching back before his arrival in Riga to his student days in Königsberg, Herder made quotations from Shandy and Don Quixote, possibly preparatory notes for his study of the ridiculous in the Fourth Wäldchen. In May, 1766, Herder went to Mitau to visit Hamann, and he designates the account of the events since leaving there as “ein Capitel meines Shandyschen Romans” and sends it as such to “my uncle, Tobias Shandy.” Later a letter, written 27-16, August, 1766, is begun with the heading, “Herder to Hamann and no more Yorick to Tobias Shandy,” in which he says: “I
Less than a year after Goethe’s departure from Strassburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder’s fiancée.
In Strassburg under Herder’s guidance, Goethe seems first to have read the works of Sterne. His life in Frankfurt during the interval between his two periods of university residence was not of a nature calculated to increase his acquaintance with current literature, and his studies did not lead to interest in literary novelty.
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