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After years the Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung implies incidentally that Bode’s esteeming this continuation worthy of his attention is a fact to be taken into consideration in judging its merits, and states that Bode beautified it. Bode’s additions and alterations were, as has been pointed out, all directly along the line of the Yorick whom the Germans had made for themselves.
It is interesting to observe that the reviewer of these two volumes of the continuation in the Neue Critische Nachrichten, while recognizing the inevitability of failure in such a bold attempt, and acknowledging that the outward form of the work may by its similarity be at first glance seductive, notes two passages of sentiment “worthy even of a Yorick,” the episode “Das Hündchen” and the anecdote of the sparrows which the traveler shot in the garden: both are additions on Bode’s part, and have no connection with the original.
To return to Bode’s preface. With emphatic protestations, disclaiming vanity in appealing to the authority of so distinguished a friend, Bode proceeds to relate more in detail Lessing’s connection with his endeavor. He does not say that Lessing suggested the translation to him, though his account has been interpreted to mean that, and this fact has been generally accepted by the historians of literature and the biographers of Lessing. The tone of Bode’s preface, however, rather implies the contrary, and no other proof of the supposition is available. What Bode does assert is merely that the name of the scholar whom he quotes as having expressed a willingness to give a part of his own life if Sterne’s literary activity might be continued, would create a favorable prepossession for his original (“ein günstiges Vorurtheil”), and that a translator is often fortunate enough if his selection of a book to translate is not censured. All this implies, on Lessing’s part, only an approval of Bode’s choice, a
To forfend the possibility of such dubious appreciation, the account of the watchcoat episode is copied word for word from Bode’s introduction to the “Empfindsame Reise.” In this same year, an unknown translator issued in a single volume a rendering of these three collections. The following year Mme.
Medalle,” Leipzig, 1776, pp. xxviii, 391. Weidmanns Erben und Reich. Bode’s translation of Yorick’s letters to Eliza is reviewed in the Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung, August 9, 1775, with quotation of the second letter in full. The same journal notes the translation of the miscellaneous collection, November 4, 1775, giving in full the letter of Dr. Eustace and Sterne’s reply.
Bode’s complete translation was issued probably in October, possibly late in September, 1768, and bore the imprint of the publisher Cramer in Hamburg and Bremen, but the volumes were printed at Bode’s own press and were entitled “Yoricks Empfindsame Reise durch Frankreich und Italien, aus dem Englischen übersetzt.”
Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation.
In this note Bode’s identity is evident in the following quotation: He says he has translated the letters “because I believe that they will be read with pleasure, and because I fancy I have a kind of vocation to give in German everything that Sterne has written, or whatever has immediate relation to his writings.” This note is dated Hamburg, September 16, 1775.
In the third volume, the miscellaneous collection, there is a translator’s preface in which again Bode’s hand is evident.
[Footnote 23: The following may serve as examples of Bode’s errors. He translated, “Pray, what was your father saying?” (I,
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