his whole life, he had never learned the truth that for human souls a continuance of passive pleasure is inconceivable, has not only been denied us by Nature, but cannot, and could not, be granted.
From all this there grew up in Hoffmann's character something player-like, something false, brawling and tawdry, which we trace both in his writings and his conduct. His philosophy degenerates into levity, his magnanimity into bombast: the light of his fine mind is not sunshine, but the glitter of an artificial firework. As in Art, so in Life he had failed to discover that 'agreeable sensations' are not the highest good. His pursuit of these led him into many devious courses, and the close of his mistaken pilgrimage was—the tavern.
Yet if, in judging Hoffmann, we are forced to condemn him, let it be with mildness, with justice. Let us not forget, that for a mind like his the path of propriety was difficult to find, still more difficult to keep. Moody, sensitive and fantastic, he wandered through the world like a foreign presence, subject to influences of which common natures have happily no glimpse. A whole scale of the most wayward and unearthly humours stands recorded in his Diary: his head was forever swarming with beautiful or horrible chimeras; a common incident could throw his whole being into tumult, a distorted face or figure would abide with him for days, and rule over him like a spell. It was not things, but 'the shows of things,' that he saw; and the world and its business, in which he had to live and move, often hovered before him like a perplexed and spectral vision. Withal it should be remembered, that, though never delivered from Self, he was not cruel or unjust, nor incapable of generous actions and the deepest attachment. His harshness was often misinterpreted; for heat of temper deformed the movements of kindness; mockery also was the dialect in which he spoke and even thought, and often, under a calm or bitter smile, he could veil the wounds of a bleeding heart. A good or a
