Jean Paul first became one of the notabilities of German literature after he had published “Hesperus,” a novel which contains the originals of the characters that reappear under different names in “Titan.”  His previous popularity did not penetrate far within the circle of scholars and thinkers, and never knocked at the charmed threshold of the Weimar set, whose taste was controlled by Goethe and Schiller.  But “Hesperus” made a great noise, and these warders of the German Valhalla were obliged to open the door just a crack, in order to reconnoitre the pretentious arrival.  Goethe first called the attention of Schiller to the book, sending him a copy while he was at Jena, in 1795.  Schiller recognized at once its power and geniality, but was disposed to regard it as a literary oddity, whose grotesque build and want of finish rather depreciated the rich cargo,—­at least, did not bring it handsomely into port.  The first book of “Wilhelm Meister” had appeared the year before, and that was more acceptable to Schiller, who had cooled off after writing his “Robbers,” and was looking out for the true theory of poetry and art.  He and Goethe concluded that “Hesperus” was worth liking, though it was a great pity the author had not better taste; he ought to come up and live with them, in an aesthetic atmosphere, where he could find and admire his superiors, and have his great crude gems ground down to brilliant facets.  Schiller said it was the book of a lonely and isolated man.  It was, indeed.

But it was a book which represented, far more profoundly and healthily than Schiller’s “Robbers,” that revolt of men of genius against every species of finical prescription, in literature and society, which ushered in the new age of Germany.  And it expresses with uncalculating sincerity all the natural emotions which a century of pedantry and Gallic affectation had been crowding out of books and men.  It was a charge at the point of the pen upon the dapper flunkeys who were keeping the door of the German future; the brawny breast, breathing deep with the struggle, and pouring out great volumes of feeling, burst through the restraints of the time.  He cleared a place, and called all men to stand close to his beating heart, and almost furiously pressed them there, that they might feel what a thing friendship was and the ideal life of the soul.  And as he held them, his face grew broad and deep with humor; men looked into it and saw themselves, all the real good and the absurdly conventional which they had, and there was a great jubilation at the genial sight.  And it was as if a lot of porters followed him, overloaded with quaint and curious knowledge gathered from books of travel, of medicine, of history, metaphysics, and biography, which they dumped without much concert, but just as it happened, in the very middle of a fine emotion, and all through his jovial speech.  What an irruption it was!—­as if by a tilt of the planet the climate had changed suddenly, and palm-trees, oranges, the sugarcane, the grotesque dragon-tree, and all the woods of rich and curious grain, stood in the temperate and meagre soil.