but even this cannot reconcile us to a conceit so wild and strange, and, as we cannot help feeling, in spite of all the apologies by which Jean Paul prefaces it, so irreverent. At the same time, it is impossible not to admire the depth and grandeur of many of the thoughts which occur in this extraordinary composition. The idea., for instance, of "a vacant, bottomless eye-socket, staring down upon the immensity of creation," instead of "the Divine eye," is a delineation of atheism at once so bold and so graphic, as to be worth a score of dry arguments against it: the fault we find is, that such an idea should be put into the mouth of Christ, who gives the description of that "vacant, bottomless eye-socket" to the expectant universe as the result of his inquiries after the Eternal Father.
The next, and by far the most eminent of Jean Paul's productions, is his "Titan," on which he was engaged one year beyond the Horatian term of literary finish. It was already written in part, when Siebenkäs was given to the world; and with his usual love of fun and mystification, Jean Paul brings several of the characters of Siebenkäs on the stage again in Titan. The most conspicuous among these is Leibgeber, who, having restored that name to its original owner, and being precluded from resuming his own proper name, Siebenkäs, by its appropriation to the cenotaph of his friend, has now assumed the name of Scioppius, contracted into the German Schoppe, an eccentric character, as Bayle's dictionary testifies, full of strange opinions, and a wandering Proteus with many aliases like himself. In the story of Titan, he enacts the part of the devoted friend and tutor extraordinary of the young hero, who, by his knowledge of the world and his sagacity, manages to penetrate into various secrets, and, amidst all his wild vagaries, renders the most essential services to his pupil-friend. The chief interest, however, which attaches to the character of Schoppe, is not the place which he fills in the wheelwork of the novel, but the fact of his being an impersonation of the keenest satire upon the philosophy of Fichte, by which he is represented as becoming at last half-crazed. He is the alleged author of the "Clavis Fichtiana seu Leibgeberiana[1],"published by
- ↑ One of the mystifications by which Jean Paul makes himself merry at the expense of his readers, is, that, on the one hand, he works his own person into the story of his novels, under various disguises; so, on the other hand, he attributes some of his own publications to the fictitious characters in his novels. Thus, while Leibgeber or Schoppe is made the author of the Clavis Fichtiana, the "Selection from the Devil's Papers," mentioned before, is alleged to be from the pen of Siebenkäs, the production of his tortured brain during his purgatorial matrimony with Lenette and in the "Flegeljahre" the "Greenland Lawsuits " are attributed to the humorous twin-brother, Vult.
