Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. I. A Biography   By: Unknown (1763-1825)

1. Page scan source: Making of America http://www.archive.org/details/hesperusorforty01paulgoog

2. Greek words are transliterated within brackets, e.g. [Greek: naos].

3. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

4. [=a] represents a macron above the letter a.

JEAN PAUL'S WRITINGS.

TITAN . 2 vols. 16mo.

FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES . 2 vols. 16mo.

LEVANA, OR THE DOCTRINE OF EDUCATION . 1 vol. 16mo.

THE CAMPANER THAL, AND OTHER WRITINGS . 1 vol. 16mo.

HESPERUS . 2 vols. 16mo.

LIFE OF JEAN PAUL . By Mrs. E. B. Lee. Preceded by his Autobiography. 1 vol. 16mo.

The above are published in uniform volumes by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Boston.

HESPERUS

OR

Forty Five Dog Post Days

A BIOGRAPHY

FROM THE GERMAN OF

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES T. BROOKS

"The Earth is the cul de sac in the great city of God, the camera obscura full of inverted and contracted images from a fairer world, the coast of God's creation, a vaporous halo around a better sun, the numerator to a still invisible denominator, in fact, it is almost nothing at all."

Selections from the Papers of the Devil .

IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.

BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1865.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, And Company, Cambridge.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

A work which has three prefaces by its author may be thought by some to need, and by others not to permit, a very long one from its translator. This is the first of Richter's romances which took hold of the German public. After he had long tried in vain, by a variety of literary devices, to entice or provoke the people's attention, and win or force a way to their hearts for his wit and his wisdom, his odd fancies and his noble sentiments, on the appearance of Hesperus, the siege, as Carlyle says, ("the ten years' siege of a poverty stricken existence" Jean Paul himself calls it,) may be said to have terminated by storm.

It was the Hesperus that brought Richter to Weimar. It was in Hesperus, and as Hesperus, that this singular genius rose on the horizon of Goethe and Schiller, the latter of whom (as will be well remembered) tells his great friend that he has met "Hesperus," a strange being, like a man who has dropped from the moon. English readers may have different opinions on the question whether he "came down too soon" or too late. The Translator seems to see signs that Jean Paul is to be better and better understood and appreciated among us in this free and forming Western world, and he concludes his introduction of this second great labor to the public with the benediction upon the book which, in the closing paragraph of his second Preface, the author so touchingly pronounces on this evening and morning star of his heart.