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Yet the book has been remembered more persistently than any other work of its genre, except Jacobi’s works, undoubtedly in part because it was superior to many of its kind, partly, also, because its author won later and maintained a position of some eminence, as a writer and a pedagogue; but largely because Goethe’s well-known review of it in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen has been cited as a remarkably acute contribution to the discriminating criticism of the genuine and the affected in the eighteenth-century literature of feeling, and has drawn attention from the very fact of its source to the object of its criticism.
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
[Footnote 1: A writer in the Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1775 (II, 787
The first mention of Sterne in the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen is in the number for November 15, 1764. In the report from London is a review of the fifth edition of Yorick’s Sermons, published by Dodsley in two volumes, 1764. To judge by the tenor of his brief appreciation, the reviewer does not anticipate any knowledge of Sterne whatsoever or of Shandy among the readers of the periodical. He states that the sermons had aroused much interest in England because of their authorship “by Lorenz Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, a
The essays on The Study of Latin, on Men of Learning, and on Some Forms of Literature, are taken chiefly from the four sections Ueber Gelehrsamkeit und Gelehrte, Ueber Sprache und Worte, Ueber Lesen und Bücher: Anhang, and Zur Metaphysik des Schönen. The essay on Thinking for Oneself is a rendering of certain remarks under the heading Selbstdenken.
Timme’s book was sufficiently popular to demand a second edition, but it never received the critical examination its merits deserved. Wieland’s Teutscher Merkur and the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften ignore it completely. The Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen announces the book in its issue of August 2, 1780, but the book itself is not reviewed in its columns. The Jenaische Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen accords it a colorless and unappreciative review in which Timme is reproached for lack of order in his work (a
[Footnote 87: “Der Reisegefährte,” Berlin, 1785-86. “Komus oder der Freund des Scherzes und der Laune,” Berlin, 1806. “Museum des Witzes der Laune und der Satyre,” Berlin, 1810. For reviews of Coriat in German periodicals see Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitungen, 1774, p.
By this article Nicolai choked the malicious criticism of the late favorite which might have followed from some sources, had another communicated the facts of Sterne’s thievery. Lichtenberg in the “Göttingischer Taschenkalender,” 1796, that is, after the publication of Nicolai’s article, but with reference to Ferriar’s essay in the Manchester Memoirs, Vol. IV, under the title of “Gelehrte Diebstähle” does impugn Sterne rather spitefully without any acknowledgment of his extraordinary and extenuating use of his borrowings. “Yorick,” he says, “once plucked a nettle which had grown upon Lorenzo’s grave; that was no labor for him. Who will uproot this plant which Ferriar has set on his?” Ferriar’s book was reviewed by the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, LXII, p.
Goethe’s criticism of the second volume, already alluded to, is found in the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in the issue of March 3, 1772. The nature of the review is familiar: Goethe calls the book a thistle which he has found on Yorick’s grave. “Alles,” he says, “hat es dem guten Yorick geraubt, Speer, Helm und Lanze, nur Schade! inwendig steckt der Herr Präceptor S. zu Magdeburg .
[Footnote 79: For reviews of “Tobias Knaut” see Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung, April 13, 1774, pp. 193-5; Magazin der deutschen Critik, III,
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