to his countrymen; for the Germans have always shown a peculiar pious kindliness to talents of good promise, when prematurely cut off.  Suffice it to say, that Liskow was very soon praised and recommended to us as an excellent satirist, who could have attained a rank even above the universally beloved Rabener.  Here, indeed, we saw ourselves no better off than before; for we could discover nothing in his writings, except that he had found the silly, silly, which seemed to us quite a matter of course.

Rabener, well educated, grown up under good scholastic instruction, of a cheerful, and by no means passionate or malicious, disposition, took up general satire.  His censure of the so-called vices and follies springs from the clear views of a quiet common sense, and from a fixed moral conception of what the world ought to be.  His denunciation of faults and failings is harmless and cheerful; and, in order to excuse even the slight boldness of his writings, it is supposed that the improving of fools by ridicule is no fruitless undertaking.

Rabener’s personal character will not easily appear again.  As an able, punctual man of business, he does his duty, and thus gains the good opinion of his fellow-townsmen and the confidence of his superiors; along with which, he gives himself up to the enjoyment of a pleasant contempt for all that immediately surrounds him.  Pedantic literati, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit, he banters rather than satirizes; and even his banter expresses no contempt.  Just in the same way does he jest about his own condition, his misfortune, his life, and his death.

There is little of the aesthetic in the manner in which this writer treats his subjects.  In external forms he is indeed varied enough, but throughout he makes too much use of direct irony; namely, in praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy, whereas this figure of speech should be used but extremely seldom; for, in the long run, it becomes annoying to clear-sighted men, perplexes the weak, while indeed it pleases the great middle class, who, without any special expense of mind, can fancy themselves more knowing than others.  But whatever he brings before us, and however he does it, alike bears witness to his rectitude, cheerfulness, and equanimity; so that we always feel prepossessed in his favor.  The unbounded applause of his own times was a consequence of such moral excellencies.

That people looked for originals to his general descriptions and found them, was natural; that individuals complained of him, followed from the above; his lengthy apologies that his satire is not personal, prove the spite it provoked.  Some of his letters crown him at once as a man and an author.  The confidential epistle in which he describes the siege of Dresden, and how he loses his house, his effects, his writings, and his wigs, without having his equanimity in the least shaken or his cheerfulness clouded, is highly valuable; although his contemporaries and fellow-citizens could not forgive him his happy turn of mind.  The letter where he speaks of the decay of his strength and of his approaching death is in the highest degree worthy of respect; and Rabener deserves to be honored as a saint by all cheerful, intelligent men, who cheerfully resign themselves to earthly events.