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But apart from the general impulse and borrowing of motif from the foreign novel, there is in this little volume considerable that is genuine and original: the author’s German patriotism, his praise of the old days in the Fatherland in the chapter entitled “Die Gaststube,” his “Trinklied eines Deutschen,” his disquisition on the position of the poet in the world (“ein eignes Kapitel”), and his adulation of Gellert at the latter’s grave. The reviewer in the Deutsche Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften chides the unnamed, youthful author for not allowing his undeniable talents to ripen to maturity, for being led on by Jacobi’s success to hasten his exercises into print. In reality Bock was no longer youthful (forty-six) when the “Tagereise” was published. The Almanach der deutschen Musen for 1771, calls the book “an unsuccessful imitation of Yorick and Jacobi,” and wishes that this “Rhapsodie von Cruditäten” might be the last one thrust on the market as a “Sentimental Journey.” The Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek comments also on the double inspiration, and the insufficiency and tiresomeness of the performance. And yet Boie says the papers praised the little book; for himself, however, he observes, he little desires to read it, and adds “What will our Yoricks yet come to? At last they will get pretty insignificant, I
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.
Johann Christian Bock (1724-1785), who was in 1772 theater-poet of the Ackerman Company in Hamburg, soon after the publication of the Sentimental Journey, identified himself with the would-be Yoricks by the production of “Die Tagereise,” which was published at Leipzig in 1770. The work was re-issued in 1775 with the new title “Die Geschichte eines empfundenen Tages.” The only change in the new edition was the addition of a number of copperplate engravings. The book is inspired in part by Sterne directly, and in part indirectly through the intermediary Jacobi. Unlike the work of Schummel just treated, it betrays no Shandean influence, but is dependent solely on the Sentimental Journey. In outward form the book resembles Jacobi’s “Winterreise,” since verse is introduced to vary the prose narrative. The attitude of the author toward his journey, undertaken with conscious purpose, is characteristic of the whole set of emotional sentiment-seekers, who found in their Yorick a challenge to go and do likewise: “Everybody is journeying, I
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