“And what do you think of Heidelberg and the old castle up there?” said he, as they seated themselves at the breakfast-table.
“Last night the town seemed very long to me,” replied Flemming; “and as to the castle, I have as yet had but a glimpse of it through the mist. They tell me there is nothing finer in its way, excepting the Alhambra of Granada; and no doubt I shall find it so. Only I wish the stone were gray and not red. But, red or gray, I foresee that I shall waste many a long hour in its desolate halls. Pray, does anybody live up there now-a-days?”
“Nobody,” answered the Baron, “but the man, who shows the Heidelberg Ton, and Monsieur Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who has been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred and ten. He has, moreover, written a super-magnificent description of the ruin, in which he says, that during the day only birds of prey disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night, screech-owls, and other fallow deer. These are his own words. You must buy his book and his sketches.”
“Yes, the quotation and the tone of your voice will certainly persuade me so to do.”
“Take his or none, my friend, for you will find no others. And seriously, his sketches are very good. There is one on the wall there, which is beautiful, save and except that straddle-bug figure among the bushes in the corner.”
“But is there no ghost, no haunted chamber in the old castle?” asked Flemming, after casting a hasty glance at the picture.
“Oh, certainly,” replied the Baron; “there are two. There is the ghost of the Virgin Mary in Ruprecht’s Tower, and the Devil in the Dungeon.”
“Ha! that is grand!” exclaimed Flemming, with evident delight. “Tell me the whole story, quickly! I am as curious as a child.”
“It is a tale of the times of Louis the Debonnaire,” said the Baron, with a smile; “a mouldy tradition of a credulous age. His brother Frederick lived here in the castle with him, and had a flirtation with Leonore von Luzelstein, a lady of the court, whom he afterwards despised, and was consequently most cordially hated by her. Frompolitical motives he was equally hateful to certain petty German tyrants, who, in order to effect his ruin, accused him of heresy. But his brother Louis would not deliver him up to their fury, and they resolved to effect by stratagem, what they could not by intrigue. Accordingly, Leonore von Luzelstein, disguised as the Virgin Mary, and the father confessor of the Elector, in the costume of Satan, made their appearance in the Elector’s bed-chamber at midnight, and frightened him so horribly, that he consented to deliver up his brother into the hands of two Black Knights, who pretended to be ambassadors from the Vehm-Gericht. They proceeded together to Frederick’s chamber; where luckily old Gemmingen, a brave soldier, kept guard behind the arras. The monk went foremost in his Satanic garb; but, no sooner had he set foot in the prince’s bed-chamber, than the brave Gemmingen drew his sword, and said quaintly, `Die, wretch!’ and so he died. The rest took to their heels, and were heard of no more. And now the souls of Leonore and the monk haunt the scene of their midnight crime. You will find the story in Grainberg’s book, worked up with a kind of red-morocco and burnt-cork sublimity, and great melo-dramatic clanking of chains, and hooting of owls, and other fallow deer!”
“After breakfast,” said Flemming, “we will go up to the castle. I must get acquainted with this mirror of owls, this modern Till Eulenspiegel. See what a glorious morning we have! It is truly a wondrous winter! what summer sunshine; what soft Venetian fogs! How the wanton, treacherous air coquets with the old gray-beard trees! Such weather makes the grass and our beards grow apace! But we have an old saying in English, that winter never rots in the sky. So he will come down at last in his old-fashioned, mealy coat. We shall have snow in spring; and the blossoms will be all snow-flakes. And afterwards a summer, which will be no summer, but, as Jean Paul says, only a winter painted green. Is it not so?”
“Unless I am much deceived in the climate of Heidelberg,” replied the Baron, “we shall not have to wait long for snow. We have sudden changes here, and I should not marvel much if it snowed before night.”
“The greater reason for making good use of the morning sunshine, then. Let us hasten to the castle, after which my heart yearns.”
CHAPTER VII. LIVES OF SCHOLARS.
The forebodings of the Baron proved true. In the afternoon the weather changed. The western wind began to blow, and its breath drew a cloud-veil over the face of heaven, as a breath does over the human face in a mirror. Soon the snow began to fall. Athwart the distant landscape it swept like a white mist. The storm-wind came from the Alsatian hills, and struck the dense clouds aslant through the air. And ever faster fell the snow, a roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds. The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea, wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an old rhyme:— “How cold it is! how cold it is!”
“I like such a storm as this,” said Flemming, who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness. “The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me. But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss their arms about, — and the wind plays on those great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How the old churl whistles and threshes the snow! Sleet and rain are falling too. Already the trees are bearded with icicles; and the two broad branches of yonder pine look like the white mustache of some old German Baron.”
“And to-morrow it will look more wintry still,” said his friend. “We shall wake up and find that the frost-spirit has been at work all night building Gothic Cathedrals on our windows, just as the devil built the Cathedral of Cologne. Sodraw the curtains, and come sit here by the warm fire.”
“And now,” said Flemming, having done as his friend desired, “tell me something of Heidelberg and its University. I suppose we shall lead about as solitary and studious a life here as we did of yore in little Göttingen, with nothing to amuse us, save our own day-dreams.”
“Pretty much so,” replied the Baron; “which cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was founded in the fourteenth century by the Count Palatine Ruprecht, and had in the first year more than five hundred students, all busily committing to memory, after the old scholastic wise, the rules of grammar versified by Alexander de Villa Dei, and the extracts made by Peter the Spaniard from Michel Psellus’s Synopsis of Aristotle’s Organon, and the Categories, with Porphory’s Commentaries. Truly, I do not much wonder, that Eregina Scotus should have been put to death byhis scholars with their penknives. They must have been pushed to the very verge of despair.”
“What a strange picture a University presents to the imagination. The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness; — literary men of retired habits, and Professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror’s banner, would blow it out forever. The light of the soul is easily extinguished. And whenever I reflect upon these things I become aware of the great importance, in a nation’s history, of the individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear, that it is far greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out from England’s history the names of Chaucer, Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michel Angelo, and Raphael, and how much
would still be wanting to the completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon! What would be the fame of Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller! — Nay, what were the nations of old, without their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings of their country? Yes, and far more than this; for in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its greatness; and say; Call not this time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve! But the boisterous world has hardlythought of acknowledging all this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded! That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an age when books were few, — so few, so precious, that they were often chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley-slaves to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that, but for these monks, not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely, then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, perhaps even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible for the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Martin Luther, the monk of Wittemberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhoodfrom the reproach of laziness! If this will not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas will; — or the countless manuscripts, still treasured in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the faces that once bent over them.”
“An eloquent homily,” said the Baron laughing, “a most touching appeal in behalf of suffering humanity! For my part, I am no friend of this entire seclusion from the world. It has a very injurious effect on the mind of a scholar. The Chinese proverb is true; a single conversation across the table with a wise man, is better than ten years’ mere study of books. I have known some of these literary men, who thus shut themselves up from the world. Their minds never come in contact with those of their fellow-men. They read little. They think much. They are mere dreamers. They know not what is new nor what is old. They often strike upon trains of thought, which stand written in good authors some century or so back, and are even current in the mouths of men aroundthem. But they know it not; and imagine they are bringing forward something very original, when they publish their thoughts.”
“It reminds me,” replied Flemming, “of what Dr. Johnson said of Goldsmith, when he proposed to travel abroad in order to bring home improvements; — `He will bring home a wheelbarrow, and call that an improvement.’ It is unfortunately the same with some of these scholars.”
“And the worst of it is,” said the Baron, “that, in solitude, some fixed idea will often take root in the mind, and grow till it overshadow all one’s thoughts. To this must all opinions come; no thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded to the fixed idea. There it remains, and grows. It is like the watchman’s wife, in the tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size, that she could not get down the narrow stair-case; and, when her husband died, his successor was forced to marry the fat widow in the tower.”
“I remember an old English comedy,” said Flemming laughing, “in which a scholar is described, as a creature, that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, — put on a pair of lined slippers, — sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings; — one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit; — or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg; — one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think you of that?”
“That it is just as people are always represented in English comedy,” said the Baron. “The portrait is over-charged, — caricatured.”
“And yet,” continued Flemming, “no longer ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle, I read this passage.”
He opened a book and read.
“Here in Halle, where we have no public garden and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres, no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps, — no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine, nothing, which after one’s daily task is finished, can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or caring how, — I consider the sight of a proof-sheet quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl — (the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit’s life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with a proof-sheet in my hand.”
“This,” said Flemming, closing the book, “is no caricature by a writer of comedy, but a portrait by a man’s own hand. We can see by it how easily, under certain circumstances, one may glide into habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress, slipshod hardihood, with a pipe and a proof-sheet, defy the world. Into this state scholars have too often fallen; thus giving some ground for the prevalent opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are inseparable. To me, I confess, it is painful to see the scholar and the world assume so often a hostile attitude, and set each other at defiance. Surely, it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal mind, that it recognises humanity in all its forms and conditions. I am a student; — and always, when I sit alone at night, I recognise the divinity of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the smoke of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude and books are not unpleasant to me, — nay, wished-for, — sought after, — shall I say to my brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the beard and say, Thou art old, and mad! — Shall I look society in the face and say, Thou art heartless! — Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says very wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every shape, should be precious to us, for the same reason that the Turks carefully collect every scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may be written upon it. Nothing is more true than this, yet nothing more neglected!”
“If it be painful to see this misunderstanding between scholars and the world,” said the Baron, “I think it is still more painful to see the private sufferings of authors by profession. How many have languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted, how many gone mad with over-excitement and disappointed hopes! How instructive and painfully interesting are their lives! with so many weaknesses, — so much to pardon, — so much to pity, — so much to admire! I think he was not so far out of the way, who said, that, next to the Newgate Calendar, the Biography of Authors is the most sickening chapter in the history of man.”
“It is indeed enough to make one’s heart ache!” interrupted Flemming. “Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and then, in his poverty, about to marry his
landlady in Green Arbour Court.”
“A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed, do these poor devil authors have of it,” replied the Baron; “and then at last must get them to the work-house, or creep away into some hospital to die.”
“After all,” said Flemming with a sigh, “poverty is not a vice.”
“But something worse,” interrupted the Baron; “as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made; — I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, `L’amour a vaincu Loth,’ (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, `Qu’il en donne une à l’auteur!’”
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 154
